So I guess, this is really only tangentially related to Make It Or Break It, but I had to write it. This idea just wouldn't leave me.
Full disclosure: the idea for an Austin's sister/Max pairing was not mine. I believe that Romance Novel was the first to write it (if I'm wrong, please correct me; I want to give credit where credit is due). This took on a line of its own though and definitely diverges from the other Austin's sister/Max pairings out there so this is my own original work.
This takes place pre-series.
Warning: suicide, eating disorder
Please read and review.
Max never tells anyone and neither does Katelyn, but he takes her first head shots.
It's the start of her modeling career and the first time he goes anywhere near a camera.
She swipes her father's digital camera and shoves it into his hands telling him to do something useful for a change, because she hates that he's always over at their house for no particular reason and that he's loud and together, he and Austin destroy the once-pristine house. He listens to her, because he's twelve and she's thirteen and the allure of an older girl convinces him it's a good idea. Neither one of them has any clue what they're doing, but she smiles and poses, and he looks at the little display and tells her the pictures are going to turn out great (and he doesn't say it, but it's because she's beautiful). They print the pictures on that glossy photo paper you can buy at the office store after they pool together their allowances, and she frowns when she sees her glossy face staring back at her but doesn't say anything. Just grabs the pictures a walks away without a second glance.
She sees her face staring back at her and thinks the photos aren't anywhere near good enough (for her, nothing ever is), but she spends a couple hours on the Internet finding an agency to send them to and finds herself pleasantly surprised when she hears back from one of the agencies.
She tells him first.
She calls him, but he doesn't pick up so after she listens to the pre-recorded message on the answering machine and hears that beeping sound that drives her crazy, she leaves a message. She says something along the lines of: "Max, as it turns out, you aren't completely useless, because I got a job... and uh... yeah...bye."
He gets home first that afternoon and finds the red light on the answering machine blinking and when he hears her voice flood out the speakers, he thanks God that he got home first and doesn't have to deal with his older brothers' teasing. He never tells anyone that he replays the message more than a few times just to hear her voice filter through. It isn't quite a thank-you, but he knows it's as good as he'll get.
O-O-O
When she tells her parents, they're doubtful, because they're the logical sort of people who try not to impulsively jump into things or take leaps of faith. She manages to convince them to take a leap, because as she reminds them, they took one on Austin and this whole Olympics thing so she thinks she deserves at least a fraction of that faith. She's not asking them to support a career, just sign off on a small print ad and see where it takes them.
It's a print ad that ends up running in some small local newspaper in Boulder, Colorado (wherever that is), but it's a start and she earns some money that she promptly hands over to her parents. They refuse at first, because along with being logical people, they're also prideful people who don't take handouts or help, especially from their thirteen-year-old daughter. She's always been particularly persuasive though so she convinces them. She manages to force them into swallowing their pride because as it turns out, you can put a price tag on a dream and the one hanging off Austin's (gym dues, equipment, travel fees) is almost more than her parents can afford.
Max leaves his gym bag over at their house one day so she shoves a wad of bills into one of the smaller pouches, because she has her pride too. She doesn't take handouts either and knows everything has a price so she silently fumes when she finds an envelope stuffed with the money she left in his bag taped to her bedroom door. Scrawled across the front of the envelope in his messy script are the words "Nice Try." She frowned but kept the money, refusing to play a game of hot potato with Austin's best friend and a wad of cash. Instead, she slips the money into her father's wallet or into her mother's messy purse in small amounts exactly one time each day. They don't notice.
(They don't notice anything.)
O-O-O
He leaves.
Not because he wants to, but because he doesn't have a choice.
His mom dies, and every time he comes home memories flash before his eyes. All he can see is bright red and blue flashing lights reflecting off the rain falling from the sky in torrents, and all he can hear are the high-pitch sounds of sirens. He only vaguely remembers the paramedics rushing around his home trying to save his mother, only vaguely remember the pronouncement of his mother's death.
O-O-O
She keeps getting jobs, but they don't come in with enough regularity to provide a steady flow of income. In small-town Texas, modeling jobs are few and far between so she doesn't make nearly as much money as she would like.
Her father loses his job, and her mother has to work two jobs just to make ends meet. She watches on the sidelines (a sixteen-year-old forced to grow up too fast) as bills continue to pour through the mail slot, and her parents fall behind on mortgage payments. There's barely enough to survive, let alone finance Austin's gymnastics career so she leaves, follows Austin's childhood friend (unintentionally, it's fate really) to a city of blinking sparkling lights.
O-O-O
She runs into him more than a year after she first moves to New York, and when she sees him, she doesn't realize that the strong, well-muscled guy she just tumbled into is the lanky mess of limbs that used to terrorize her house all grown up.
Then he smiles, and the way it slowly spreads across his whole face until it hits his face tells her it's him, that he's really standing here in front of her.
"M-max?" she stutters, and she mentally shakes herself, because she's a model, and she lives in New York, and she's glamorous and shouldn't lose her cool around sixteen-year-old boys from small-town Texas.
"Long time, no see, Kates," he says, and the smile never leaves his face, and for the first time in a long time, she feels beautiful.
O-O-O
He sees her, and he thinks he's seeing the ghosts of his past, only she can't be a ghost, because she's far too beautiful.
She's an angel, and for a while, he just stands there drinking her in, unmoving in the midst of the swarm of crushing bodies navigating the New York cityscape.
She smashes into him, and years ago, her weight would've knocked him off his feet, but he's bigger now, broader, stronger, and she's built like a gazelle, long and lean and slender so when she topples into him, he has to throw his arms out to catch her, and it strikes him that she's much too small.
His name passes her lips, and he feels a grin spread across his face, because yes, she's older and more beautiful and different in a thousand ways, but his name still sounds the same as it did filtering over his answering machine all those years ago.
O-O-O
He starts spending an awful lot of time around the apartment she shares with three other models. Well, as much time as he can afford between school and gymnastics and family, and he realizes that they're just two small-town kids, desperately trying to hold onto something familiar in a world that threatens to swallow them whole.
O-O-O
For her pride's sake (like mother, like daughter), she acts as if his presence burdens her, rolls her eyes every time he calls (even though she knows he can't see her) and teases him about his lack of friends every time he shows up at her apartment, but he knows (because he's always known) that his presence calms her.
She sometimes feels like keeping her shoulders straight and head high is a feat of extraordinary strength because of the pressures pushing down around her ("you're not good enough, not pretty enough, not small enough," they say), but she has to do this, have to keep booking jobs so she can send money home to her parents so Austin can keep his dream (because she loves them with everything she has).
She never tells him (that pesky pride again), but she needs him.
As cheesy and cliche as it is, he's her light.
Plain and simple.
O-O-O
He kisses her.
He kisses her in a haze of beer and the soft strains of country music, and it feels like coming home, and he doesn't say a word, but in those moments, he swears he loves her.
He never stops, not even when it all goes to hell.
O-O-O
She's not sure when it starts, when he starts looking at her the way he does, but it scares the hell out of her, because she's not sure what she's done to deserve that look and what it means, the pure and unconditional love that shines through his soft, brown eyes.
She cries as metal slides across her skin and a trail of blood follows, not because it hurts (she doesn't feel a thing) but because she thinks he'd hate her for this (thinks her mom and her dad and her brother would hate her for this too), because she needs to be strong. She can't afford to be weak, and she hates herself for her weakness.
When she's done, she treats the cuts with antiseptic and wraps them. In her profession, she can't afford to mar her skin with scars or infection so makes the scars invisible (on the outside, anyways).
The next day, she goes about her work as usual.
She shows up at the studio and sits silently as stylists brush make-up over her face and shove her into the proper clothing, and when they're done, she's not sure she recognizes herself as she examines her face in the mirror.
O-O-O
Something in his eyes tells her that he's seen the scars that run across her wrists and has noticed the way her meals have gotten smaller and smaller and fewer and fewer, and it irks her that he's always been the only one that's been able to see her truth, because he's not the smartest, most observant guys, but somehow, when it comes to her, his vision has always been twenty-twenty so she does what she does best: she pushes him.
She pushes him hard and far away, because she can't afford to have him around, nosing through her lies in search of the truth, because she knows he'll find it (maybe because some small part of her wants him to find it and save her) and then it'll be over for her. He'll tell her parents, and they'll force her back home, because even if they do want the money, they never wanted their baby girl half a country away, and Austin, he'll be overbearing and protective (because he always has been even if he was the younger of the two because he has some sort of saving people complex), and she can't stand to go back home.
She can't stand to fail.
No. Not when she's already given up so much.
And he lets her.
He lets her push him away, and she wonders if maybe, that (the fact that he didn't fight) hurts her more than losing him does.
O-O-O
He lets her push him away for a thousand reasons, some of which he can't put a name too.
He's young.
He's scared.
He can't help her fight her demons when he hasn't even managed to look his own in the face, when he lets his own hide in some dark place in the deepest recesses of his mind.
And he's tired, tired of having to fight for every inch so maybe (probably), he doesn't deserve her.
When she pushes, he walks away.
It hurts like hell, but he does it anyway.
O-O-O
She's cliche in about a thousand ways.
She's an anorexic model.
She's in love with her brother's best friend.
And she's in New York, trying to find a dream, trying to be a star.
It might make her sick if she bothered to think about it, because she's always wanted to be special, to be unique, but she doesn't think about it so she also doesn't realize that she is special in about a thousand ways.
She gets her face plastered on a billboard over Times Square, and she thinks she should be elated, but she's not sure that (fame) was ever what this was about. She's not sure that she ever wanted this. Once upon a time, she thought she was beautiful and thought she could use beauty to save her family, and she guesses that someone somewhere in a different time and place must have thought she was beautiful too, because here she is, looking up at a glossy image of herself raised above the New York skyline.
But looking up at the billboard and at her own face staring down at her, she's not sure why, not sure why someone gave her a chance, because the girl up there smiling, somehow managing to paste on a smile that looks bright and honest and true, isn't good enough for this beautiful and glamorous city.
Never has been
Never will be.
O-O-O
The next time he sees her is just days after the Olympic Trials, and his stomach clenches just like it did when he first saw her in New York only this time, he thinks his heart breaks too.
She looks so small and delicate under the white hospital sheets with IV fluid and mess of other tubes attached to her, and he kinda hates himself (once again) for walking away.
Austin's there too and so are his parents.
"Did you know?" he asks, voice hoarse, as he runs a hand through his tousled hair, and in those moments, he looks exhausted and spent, and Max knows it isn't because of all the training his friend put into Olympic Trials. Austin's fatigue has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the barely breathing girl entwined in hospital sheets.
"No," he lies, and he doesn't lie to cover his own ass, because right now, he kind of wants to tell the truth, because maybe (definitely), Austin would punch him, and he kinda deserves that right now, but he provides the Tuckers comfort of a lie. "I thought she was happy," he adds, and when he sees the haunted look that's still filtering through Austin's brown eyes, he knows what his friend's remembering, probably because Max is remembering the same thing himself.
The two of them heard her soft voice filtering over the answering machine at the same time as they walked through Austin's front door after the chaos that was the Olympic Trials finally subsided. Austin was noticeably tired, but there was still a smile plastered on his face, because in a coup no one had expected, Austin Tucker had become the United States gymnastic team's youngest member and Max had had his arm thrown around his best friend's shoulders before he heard her voice like something out of a dream that quickly turned into a nightmare.
That message was her good-bye, her good-bye to Austin, to her family, to the world before she attempted to take herself from them forever.
"What are your parents going to do?" he asks, his voice breaking the stiff and oppressive silence of the hospital room.
"They're letting her go," Austin choked out, "They're giving up. They say that if she doesn't want to live then no medicine on Earth is going to save her." Max watches Austin's fists clench. "They're too scared to fight when she fought tooth and nail to keep us above water. I'm leaving after the Olympics," he announces, "I don't know where I'm going, but I can't be with them."
Max nods and clenches his fists at his sides, because he can't cry right now, because his best friend needs him, and he abandoned her so he doesn't deserve to cry.
Silently, with no words spoken between them, the two take a seat on either side of her bed, each holding her hand, gently intertwining her fingers with theirs. Max watches as Austin uses his free hand to push her hair away from her face, and Max thinks they are both remember how much she used to hate the way her hair fell into her eyes.
The doctors move around the three of them, a quiet, unmoving island in the midst of a sea of action and movement in the city that never sleeps, and slowly and quietly, she leaves their world.
He took her first head shots.
He fell in love with her (he thinks she loved him back).
She carries these secrets, and he doesn't tell a soul.
And quietly, their love story falls into oblivion like the secrets they never had the courage to voice.