Sort of an alternate side story to Emotions. For those who have expressed an interest in Max/Omega, but are looking for a little more than Emotions has offered.
Also for my own weird interest in the pairing and self-serving indulgence in writing it :(
BUT yes, this does take place after Omega has had Max as a prisoner in Janssen's facility, but is not an official part of the Emotions storyline!
"I read another book."
Max sat at the cafeteria table with her hands in her lap and a thoroughly bewildered expression. Across the table laid several sorted piles of different types of flowers and greenery, as well as two small ceramic pots filled with soaked green bricks.
She poked a brick, and it molded grittily around her finger.
"Don't do that," Omega said.
"Why not?"
He ignored her question and looked back to the book spread out before him where he sat next to her.
"I don't remember enrolling in an arts and crafts course," Max said testily. "What is this, the Academy for Gifted Hostages?"
"It will be a good exercise in bonding," Omega informed her distractedly, his silvery eyes skimming the pages laden with instructions, tips, and pictures she couldn't quite make out.
"Great," she muttered. "How to Enchant the Unwilling One-oh-One."
He stopped reading a moment and fixed her with an unreadable stare. Instantly uncomfortable, Max relented.
"Okay, what are we doing?" she asked quickly. "If you're going to interrupt my brooding hour we might as well get on with it."
"You brood for hours a day."
"There's not much else to do when you're locked up in a cell!"
His lips twisted, a gesture caught between the desire to retort and the intelligent decision to not goad her further. They engaged in a staring contest, his cool and hers daring, until Omega decided to be the more mature of the two and turned back to the task at hand.
"It says to make an oasis first," he said, and pulled a handful of leather leaf towards them both. "Break up the pieces and make a base of greenery lush enough to cover up the bricks, but not thick enough to leave no room for the flowers."
"I can't believe this," Max groaned. "Flower arranging? Really?"
"If you have trouble with something so simple, you can ask for help."
Pursing her lips at his baiting, Max began to rip up bits of the leather leaf and jabbed them unceremoniously into the brick at different angles. After eyeing her work with a lingering look of what she assumed to be disapproval, Omega remained silent and went about filling his own at a more deliberate pace.
While this wasn't the typical pastime Max would find herself taking part in, she began to grow frustrated before too long with the increasingly poor look of her oasis and peeked at Omega's from the corner of her eye. He took the time to snap the greenery off cleanly and cut the gnarled ends at a sleek angle before placing them. His handiwork was much prettier than hers, and Max found herself irritated that he was managing to beat her at something she thought would be easy.
"They'd stick in easier if you cut them," he said. "Otherwise you'll rip a bigger hole in the brick and the stem won't stay."
Without a word Max began to do as he said and used the sheers he'd placed on the table. Eventually her brick was full enough to be acceptable, though sad and messy-looking compared to his.
"Are you good at everything?" she asked bitterly.
"Yes," he said simply. "You can begin putting flowers in however you like."
"What, no two-second lecture on this part?"
"It is supposed to be...fun," Omega said. "The flowers should cover up the poor job you did on the greenery."
"Sorry," she scoffed. "I forgot you're the genius of all things fun. Must've slipped my mind somewhere between being kidnapped and-"
"There are several different colors of daisies," Omega interrupted, and she could tell by the subtle under layer in his tone that she was beginning to bother him. Falling quiet for the moment, Max looked to the different shades he'd gathered: white, yellow, light purple, and something close to magenta. There were also yellow buttons, purple strands that reminded her of baby's breath, and a few sticks of more extravagant flowers in bright yellow and purple.
He pointed them all out and listed off their names without Max quite digesting the information. What was his game, she wondered, or was he really so hopeless when it came to women? Dragging her to the cafeteria and forcing her to partake in such a task wasn't exactly a jolly good time in her book, but it seemed as though he was trying to make the activity work in favor of their strained relationship.
It was almost pathetic, and almost made her feel bad.
He took one of the prettier blooms and stuck it in the back corner against some greenery, then began to fill in the rest of the brick in a vague triangle-shape with the flowers placed at strategic points. Max followed suit.
By the time she'd managed to find a place for five daisies, she bit the inside of her cheek and attempted to make conversation.
"So..."
She saw Omega's eyes flit towards her even as his hands continued to work.
"Uh," Max began lamely, "did you get these from the fields?"
He nodded.
"The wildflowers that surround the facility are immense in variety," he explained. "I thought I would find some that were easy to work with, seeing as this is my first time doing this."
"You're not bad for a first-timer," Max remarked.
"You are."
Bristling, Max opened her mouth to make a scathing comeback when she noticed the tiniest quirk at the corner of his mouth. He was...smiling, almost, and teasing her. Her shoulders fell from aggressive to defensive.
"So she just lets you frolic around in the flowers?" she went on. "She doesn't keep you locked up?"
"The Director knows I wouldn't run."
"But why not?" Max pressed. "Why wouldn't you go? You're a prisoner here!"
Omega took his time placing a yellow daisy near the back edge of his arrangement and silently contemplated the move, or perhaps the thoughtful knit of his brow came from her question.
"A prisoner has another home," he finally said. "Or a better place to be. This is where I belong."
"But there are better places. Even on the streets we were better off," she insisted. "You could be free, like me and my flock. You could come with us."
Again he stopped talking. With a shake of her head Max dropped the subject and went about making her arrangement look more and more like an unfortunate clusterfuck. His flowers were well-placed and the colors flowed together. Hers clashed and looked uneven, too much yellow in one spot and contrasting shades of purple not working together the way she thought they might.
It took on an awkward parallelogram shape.
"I think I'm done," she sighed. "This is getting depressing."
Omega's hands stopped and he looked at her work. He said nothing, but in that silence she sensed everything: laughter, pity, disbelief. Max scowled.
"I know it's not the prettiest," she said. "But at least I tried."
He simply nodded.
"You did," he agreed. "It could look worse."
"How?"
Shrugging, Omega cut the excess stem off a white daisy and exhaled through his nose, which she'd learned was his version of a chuckle.
"You could have kept working on it."
She rolled her eyes at that. How charming.
"There might be something to it," he added, angling in his seat to face her, his eyes boring into hers. "It's rough and unsophisticated."
"Yeah, well-"
"But," he cut in, and placed the white daisy he'd cut behind her ear, "it's made up of beautiful parts. And it's unique."
Suddenly unable to swallow, Max felt the petals of the flower brushing against her temple and stared at him in shock. She began to doubt he was talking about the arrangement she'd made by the way he spoke so softly, intimately, and locked stares with an intensity that made her squirm.
His gaze suddenly wavered with uncertainty.
"I lied," Omega admitted bluntly. "There is one thing I haven't shown much promise in."
He looked back to her, and Max forced her throat to swallow.
"You've noticed."
"Uh," she said.
His hand came up slowly, and with thumb and forefinger he grasped her chin gently and pulled her towards him just a fraction. She felt her open mouth quiver with stunned anticipation and couldn't tell if the twisting in her gut was wholly unpleasant.
Omega leaned towards her slowly, and as her face grew hot and every extension of her body became tense with expectancy, his eyes became heavily lidded, and still Max couldn't back away.
"I know you have," he murmured.
"Y-yeah," she croaked. "You're pretty bad at...this."
His mouth quirked, that tiny smile, and he closed the distance between them with a kiss so tender and absolute that Max shuddered. As he moved his hand from her chin to caress her cheek, stroked her jaw, then moved his palm to her neck where his fingers entwined in her hair, Max felt frozen by a mixture of confusion and something akin to pleasure.
He was gentle and warm as she never would have expected him to be. Before she could understand what she was doing, Max let her eyes fall shut and sank into the fit of his lips against hers and the rush of electricity of his hand against her neck, and of the other arm that encircled her waist and slid her closer to him on the bench. Their legs pressed together at the angle. She raised a hand against his chest, warm and muscled beneath his shirt, and let it rest there.
A term occurred to her in that instant: Stockholm Syndrome.
He broke away with a final brush of a kiss but did not move completely away. His breath was warm, his eyes shown, and Max let go of a shaky exhale. His arm remained around her waist for a second longer before slowly sliding away.
She found herself regretting the retreat, and was horrified by the thought.
"I thought-" It came out as a squawk. Max cleared her throat, but her voice still came out weak. "I thought you weren't good at everything."
"Are you saying I was good?"
She made a choked sound somewhere between a snort and a hacking cough.
"That's not what I said!"
"I saw it in a movie," he said simply, completely unashamed, "if you were wondering. I learn quickly."
"I didn't say it was good!" she shrieked.
"Your heart rate says otherwise."
Max blinked. "You have super hearing?"
"No."
It was just pounding that hard, then.
Mortified, Max rose from her seat as forcefully and noisily as she could and hurried to the other side of the cafeteria where she could force the bright blush from her face and calm her breathing. Omega raised no protest.
As she managed to slowly relax something tickled against her hairline. Max reached and pulled the daisy from behind her ear. Instead of crumpling the flower in a fit of contrariness, she twisted the stem between her fingers and watched the petals spin.
What a bastard. What an underhanded, pathetic, sorry bastard.
And yet...
What a damn good kisser.
I've come across a lot of confused debate over Omega's age and thought I might offer up a possibility. In the book it's mentioned that about sixty years of research went into his design, but that could just as well mean that he's all of a few years old (advanced aging, maybe, like with the Erasers?) and is the product of Itex finally utilizing that extensive research after Max and the flock ditched the School.
Although...that's not much better. Good job, Max. You're kind of a pedophile now. Just my two cents!
Thanks for reading!