Undone in this Mad Season
The title for this comes from a Goo Goo Dolls song that I feel fits Logan and Maxie.
Chapter One
Its only in the middle of the night when she visits him. Somehow, to Maxie's way of thinking, that seems fitting. She's dark- her mind, her heart, her memories. And he is nothing but dark- rage is the fuel that drives this man.
And what they have been to each other is dark. A place to get lost, a person to abuse...yell, use, shake and try to make feel something...she wouldn't call any of it pretty. Thinking of killing him had not been pretty. Trying to use him to ruin herself wasn't pretty. But it was all real.
Bloody and painful and intense. But real.
That a machine is breathing for him now is real too. That he could die today or tomorrow hangs in the air of this hospital room. Another guy of hers...dead.
She smiles then, looking at him, and it is the first time she has been able to smile around him in a while. What would he think about being lumped in with her other heartbreaks?
Don't freaking put me on that list. You trying to kill me or what? he would probably ask in his bitter southern drawl.
Had she been trying to kill him all along? Or just herself? Or just the pain?
Some days she would find herself on his doorstep, with a good excuse firm on her lips, but why she really went there last summer was to see his eyes...see that reflection of what she knew was in her own staring back at her. To see if it meant a thing that they were alike or if it meant nothing at all.
Maxie reaches out and lets one finger brush over the top of his hand. She is sure if Lulu was holding this hand, he would wake up. He'd probably jump out of bed completely healed and grateful she cared enough to stop by. Sucker. But all men seemed to be that around her.
One sweet feigning naive smile, is that all it took to be adored?
Maxie pulls her hand back. She has already laid out her terms for him. She told him, the first night she found herself here instead of in bed at midnight, I'm not gonna apologize or ask you not to hate me. But wake up anyway. Wake up and yell at me. You know you want to.
Standing up, her heels click on the ground. She leans close to him. The machines play out their usual song of beep, beep, beep, assuring that for this minute he is alive. "Wake up. You're really starting to piss me off."
Maxie sneaks out of the room, careful to make sure no nurses or doctors, who would tell her she shouldn't be there at that hour, spot her. To the rest of the world, she was never there at all
But she was.
There is no real reason, that anyone who knows them might understand, why she should care if he lives or dies now.
But she does. It must be the fact that no one has eyes like his.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Three days later
He comes in and out of consciousness, hearing voices and seeing blurry faces, for what seems like days but later they will tell him it was only a few hours. During that time the tube is pulled from his throat. Scott's gruff voice is there and her soft, sad one. Lulu, always with the apologies and explanations. Snatches of conversations register. Son...could have died...lucky. Logan...God...sorry...understand...okay.
The first thing he remembers is the wrench in her hand. Whatever happened to him hadn't given him amnesia, he figures, which was really what would have been best. Forget it all. Start blank. Forget the total screw up he was, forget that Cooper was dead, forget the people he destroyed, forget himself.
Now that would have been the best gift Lulu could have ever given him. She could keep her so-called love if only she knew some way to bring on total memory loss.
He closes his eyes again. The voices faded away. Good. Go away. I don't need either of you. You don't know me and I don't know you. Just leave me alone...why didn't I die?
The next thing he hears is the sound of something crashing onto the tile floor, and a soft, hissed out, "Damn," in a voice he would recognize anywhere. Her voice is like the rest of her: a little angry and frustrated but sexy as hell, all the same.
His eyes slowly open to see Maxie picking up a cup off the floor. Off handedly, she says "Oh, you're awake. That's nice." With a shrug she turns to leave.
"I'm sure."
Sighing, she turns back around. "Do you have to do that every time? Be pitiful. Oh, I'm sure," she mocks. "As if no one would care if you live or die."
Pushing himself up slightly, Logan lets out a small moan. He catches sight of the clock and his eyebrows furrow together. "Nothing better to do at midnight?"
"Actually I do. Sleep. So see you."
"Can't run away fast enough, can you?" he teases. Moments before he wouldn't have thought he couldn't work up the energy to bother, but it seemed this woman brought it out of him.
"Shut up, idiot."
"I feel like hell. You can't even be nice to be today of all days. How'd you end up in here anyway?"
Slowly she turns to face him. And its there in her eyes. Guilt. So stark and deep that it takes the moisture right out of his mouth. He thinks he knows...no, that is lie...he does know. He just wish he didn't.
He asks "You come here to pull my plug?"
"No, that was last week I tried that."
For a long moment he just stares at her. Logan can't say he is shocked. If anyone had the guts to get revenge in the most brutal fashion available it was this woman standing before him. He couldn't say that wasn't one of the traits that first made him hot for her. She liked blackmail, lies, schemes, destruction. She didn't pull back out of pity- not ever. If you did her wrong, she made sure you would never forget she could come back at you, at any moment, and crush your happiness, like she believed you had done to her.
Still, there was a small part of him that had hoped she wouldn't feel that way about him. Even after what he did to her, what she did to him, what she must have been told about him being The TMK. But hoping was for fools.
"Tried? If you do something, its done. So why am I breathing?"
Her eyes darted down. "Must have been your lucky day."
"That would make it my first one ever."
She chuckles. "Whiner."
He smiles slightly. If he had to wake up and find anyone hovering over him, like he was an exhibit at the zoo, he could admit to himself he was glad it was her. She didn't expect anything out of him...not that he became a better man, like Scott hoped, or that he would grant absolution, like Lulu needed. Maxie wouldn't think Logan was capable of the first- she was probably right about that, he believed- and she sure as hell would never ask for the second.
After a moment, she asked "Do you need a doctor or something?"
"Oh, now you want to keep me alive, huh. Nah, I'm fine. I ...don't want to see anyone...all day long people have been in and out of here...they'll all be back soon enough...to poke and prod and," he groaned "want to talk."
Smiling she says "God forbid."
"What's there to talk about? I could have died. Looks like I didn't. End of story."
"No. The end of the story..." Her eyes fill with tears and her voice softened"...came for Coop and my sister. Don't you dare lump yourself in the same category as them. You get to check out of this place in a few days. You get to live. We both do. So what right do we have to feel sorry for ourselves?"
He hadn't meant to upset her. But of course that was par for the course. Almost everything that happened in his life was a result of something he had not met to happen.
"I still do," he says, his tone dry and brittle but underneath that something gentle rested. Something only she would get.
Blinking back her tears, Maxie straightened her shoulders, and softly admits "Yeah, me too."
XXXXXXXXX
Looking at him, in that moment, she felt understood. And in danger. Letting him too close was only reckless. He wasn't a good man. Hell, she wasn't a good woman. Together they were too much of everything insane in the world.
They shouldn't be friends. It was better to walk away now and never even glance back.
Still, like a moth to flame, she inched closer, her heels dragging on the tile. She would love to say she did not care, she never cared, she would never ever care...for him. No, never.
A little lie. She had told worse before. Her hand motioned at his bandaged head. "Your little girlfriend really did a number on you this time. She packs quite a wallop. What a crazy bitch."
"I thought that was her nickname for you."
"It better not be!"
He smirks.
She never would have thought she'd be glad to see that look on his face again. He wasn't dead. Maybe, tomorrow, she would go back to avoiding him and maybe, tomorrow, he would be glad when she didn't show up for her midnight visit, but right now all she could think was :
One of my guys didn't die.
Score one for Maxie.
