Story Notes: This story is set sometime after "Hello, Goodbye," but prior to the end of Season Two. Logan has found the cure to the virus, Max has come clean about her fake relationship with Alec, the cure has been administered, and this is the telling of Max and Logan's first contact after the cure. Alec is with them in case an emergency transfusion is needed in the event the cure didn't work.
Entwined
It was torture for Alec, watching Max and Logan's first kiss after she took the cure for Manticore's lovely little viral parting gift. But he didn't have a choice. He needed to see the look on Max's face when the kiss was over so he'd know if there was any chance at all, any reason left for him to hope. So he quietly peaked around the corner from the kitchen as Logan's lips touched Max's, tentatively at first and then with a bit more determination. Alec's chest was constricting with the pain of impending heartbreak, and tears were beginning to clog his throat, but he forced himself to watch, to wait for Max's reaction. As Logan pulled away from Max, Alec focused on her face and his heart trilled at what he saw. Or maybe it was like that lady poet had once written about hope being a thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and it was the bird trilling and not his heart, but either way Alec felt like crowing with delight. Max was looking at Logan not with the love and adoration that Alec had expected, but with a sad resignation.
Max didn't understand. There had been no spark, no little bolt of electricity that raced through her at being able to touch the love of her life after so many months. Apparently she and Logan truly were "not like that." Max had been holding onto Logan for so long it had become habit, a mundane fact in her life that she had ceased paying actual attention to ages ago. And in ceasing to pay attention she had failed to notice when holding on slipped from being something she actually wanted to something she just did because she'd always done it. Logan Cale was not the love of her life, at least not anymore.
Alec watched with baited breath to see what Max would do with the revelation her face was telling him she'd had. Would she finally accept that she and Logan were over and move on with her life, maybe even move on with Alec? Or would she stubbornly deny what she'd just learned and cling to Logan and her dream of being a normal girl? Apparently, Logan too was wondering what Max was going to do, as she'd been standing silent and still with a strange look on her face for several minutes past their kiss.
"Max?" Logan asked in a hesitant but still hopeful tone.
"Logan, I'm sorry." Three simple words, but they changed the lives of both the men that heard them. Logan's face fell, even as Alec's lips rose in a smile and his eyes lit with joy.
"Max, please don't do this. Just give us a chance. We just need some time to remember how to be together again." Logan pleaded.
"No, Logan. There hasn't been an us for a long time now, not really. I'm sorry." Max said, as she turned and headed for the door; Alec coming out of the kitchen to fall into step behind her.
"Max, please . . ." Logan began, but Max was already out the door.
Alec, felt like a new born colt he was so unsteady. His heart was bursting, his head was zinging with a million thoughts and plans of how to make Max finally his own, but he couldn't do anything about the bursting or the zinging – at least not yet. The slump in Max's shoulders and look of loss and slight bewilderment on her face told Alec that he would have to wait, that Max needed time. So he did the only thing he could think of, he offered her his friendship. Silently Alec held out his hand, and after staring at it a few seconds as if she wasn't sure what it was, Max took it. The pair silently made their way through the sewers back to Terminal City; Max deep in thought, Alec offering her the comfort of his fingers solid and real entwined with her own.