A/N: GAH! Why haven't you people reviewed!? I know you've read it…you can't lie…hmmm…I'm starting to get a bit sketchy. Never mind. Here's chapter two of Across the Universe. PLEASE REVIEW! Oh, and I changed the rating to T because my friend gaara'slittlegirl wouldn't read it because it was an M story. Damn…oh well. I might change it later :D
Disclaimer: FAX !!
…The Next Day….
"Would you care to explain what that was last night?"
Max had her mouth full of breakfast and was scribbling illegible notes onto a napkin. Every now and then, she shrugged back her hair, which was still dripping wet from the shower, so that it would not threaten to run her inked words. She didn't meet Fang's eyes and she didn't quite swallow. "What was what?"
"You know what."
Max finished the speech she had been mulling over, then hastily crossed it out again, unsatisfied. "Fang, I honestly don't know what you're talking about."
Fang quickly pulled up a seat, straddling it with his arms crossed in front of him over the back of the chair. He stared into his best friend's face, silently insisting that she return his persistent gaze. He wanted answers now, before the rest of the Flock would show up and disrupt the moment. He needed answers now, before his emotions naively convinced him that Max's behavior wielded deeper feelings of affection.
She glanced up, finishing off her toast and scattering crumbs everywhere. As she brushed them aside, he observed casually, "Fang, you all right? You look like you haven't slept in years."
"Max."
"What?"
Fang stared at her innocent expression. Her cheeks were still pink from the heat of the shower, making her scattered freckles stand out as if someone had just newly sprinkled them under her vivid eyes. For a moment, Edge faltered to find words.
"Last night," he managed. "When you…"
"When I kissed you?"
Relief washed over Fang as the words finally met the air. So he hadn't hallucinated the whole thing. So Max did consider it a kiss. He tried to shake off the fluttering in his head, but to no success. Keeping his eyes sharp, Fang picked a spot on Max's nose, forcing himself not to give anything away.
"Yes. When—when you kissed me."
"I was saying goodnight."
"But…but you never kissed me before."
"Fang." Max laughed loosely, the sound rattling around. "You've kissed me before."
"Not like that."
"Why? What was different?"
Fang's eyes flashed up into Max's. Even his mind could not suffice to form logical words. In the silence, Fang strained to hear something, anything—a squeaking of hotel maids pushing carts down the hall, a muffled voice next door, an overly exuberant television commercial leaking in from another room—anything to assure him that normalcy still existed. Because lingering on that kiss, Edge guiltily thought to himself, was hardly normal, hardly even sane, really. He suppressed the urge to touch his lips, or to touch Max's, to feel each individually and try to reason what had happened when they'd met last night. If there just was noise, he thought vainly, maybe that could drown out this ridiculousness. But it was only Max's quiet breathing and his own thoughts, swirling in and out together, into ribbons of nonsensical hope and daydream and confusion.
"I'd like to know, really, Fang," Max continued. She leaned in close, experimentally. Fang's fingers gripped the chair back in front of him, trying to steady himself.
"Max, what are you doing?"
"You've kissed me before, haven't you?"
Fang stammered, his eyes unblinking. "Y-yes. But that was different."
Max placed a hand lightly on Fang's trembling arm, observing the tendons flex and coil in panic. "Relax."
"You still haven't answered my question. Why did you kiss me?"
"You still haven't answered mine," Max retorted, grinning. Her face hovered so close now that Fang could smell the sweet-smelling soap on her skin. "Why was it different?"
When Fang failed to utter a comprehensible response, Max continued, her movements maddeningly still.
"Was it because it was on your lips, and not your cheek?"
Fang couldn't rip his gaze away from Max's eyes.
"It was such a light kiss, Fang. I hardly remember." Slowly, she moved forward. "Maybe we should try again, just to see?"
Fang's eyes widened as Max's lips met his. The same strange feeling lurched inside him, but he couldn't place it. Guilt, excitement, and fear struggled against each other to gain the upper hand on his emotions. Max had kept her eyes opened as well, and—fighting not to go cross-eyed—the two stared at each other, their mouths touching but unmoving.
Sensing Fang's quivering breath, Max pulled away from him just slightly, allowing him time to recollect himself. Fang couldn't figure out what to say, where to look, what to do with his hands. He ashamedly felt like a discarded marionette. Even with the other girls he'd been with, he had never felt this perplexed and off-guard.
Later, he reasoned that Max must have read his expression, because she then gently reached out and brushed the Fang's bangs to the side, clearing them away from his eyes.
"Fang," she murmured. Slowly, she traced a line down her friend's cheekbone to his jaw line, raising his chin so that their gazes met. She led Fang's hands to her waist, silently assuring him it was all right for him to hold on, to hold them together. Fang's fingers lingered hesitantly on the belt loops to Max's jeans, as if acclimating themselves to the warm material. His only saving grace was the back of the chair, which remained between them as a boundary, reassuring Fang that both were safe so long as they stayed on opposite sides.
Max whispered his name, and then lips met again, this time supple and compliant. Fang's hands tightened around Max's waist and he felt her tongue brush along his tingling mouth, asking for entrance. He gave it.
Fang moaned and pulled Max towards him, and she scooted up as closely as she could, their torsos separated only by the chair, with their knees bumping each other's on either side. Cupping Fang's face with one hand, Max slipped the other down to the small of his back, where she supported his friend's trembling, wiry frame. Fang felt the fabric of his shirt lifting and Max's fingers extending along his skin at the base of his spine. The sensation from even the simplest of touches clouded Fang's mind completely, exterminating all thoughts of fear. His mouth could do nothing but explore Max's, could say nothing but moan her name. Lost to feeling, he rubbed up against the chair, desperate to feel Max moving beyond the inert hardness of the furniture in front of him.
"Max, please…"
Her voice came out muffled, humming against Fang's neck where she now trailed wet kisses. "Please what?"
"I…" Fang groaned, his face flushing as the words gamboled around in his head. No, he couldn't. He couldn't ask for that. It was too much, too much from Max, and the faintest doubts started tugging him down from the sweet aching of the moment. Too much—and so much that he didn't deserve.
"Max." Max's mouth and caresses were persistent. Her hands traveled up the ridges of his back, sending Fang arching under his touch. Her voice somehow remained steady, a stark contrast to her friend's frenetic body. "Fang…please what?"
"I want…"
"Yes…?"
Fang bit his lip, his head tossed back, and gasped. "Stop. Max—Max, I said, stop!"
Ignoring his pleas, Max suddenly grasped the seat of Fang's jeans, studying how he twisted and cried out. Her mouth fell over Fang's protests, smothering them as they toppled out.
"Come on, Fang," she whispered as she tugged Fang closer, stroking his hands in a steady rhythm. "Why get off on the chair when I can do it for you?"
Edge yanked himself away, toppling the chair in the process. Both he and Max stumbled to the ground, with the Flock leader pinning him down, breathing heavily above him.
"Max, stop!"
Fang caught her smirking just before her lips again found their mark on his mouth. Fang squirmed, trying desperately to wriggle his way out, but the more he moved the less anxious he was for separation. Every kick and cry he made sent pleasurable shivers through his veins. The more he thrashed, Fang discovered, the more fervent Max's mouth and hands on his body became, and their murmurs weaved together in dulcet tones. He closed his eyes, trying to delineate feeling from reason amid the desperate wrestling, but his growing ache indicated it was a losing battle. With a final attempt, Fang wrapped his leg around Max's thin waist and pushed, forcing her onto her back while Fang rolled over top.
He was free to go now, no longer trapped on the bottom, but he dully found that he couldn't move. Sprawled below him, Max gazed up with her eyes half-closed and face flushed, gasping for breath. She moaned, raising her hips to Fang's, her head rocking back and splaying lengthy light hair across the carpeting. Feeling that Fang had frozen, Max whimpered and stopped writhing, raising her head to search out her friend's face.
Sheen droplets of sweat gathered on their skin, their breathing tattered and quick, but expressions tranquil, lost to the sensation of this novel closeness. The aggressiveness had faded from Max's face, replaced with captivated bewilderment. Her shirt, crumpled and damp around her chest, gave the impression that she just been rolling around in dewy morning grass. Fang's own body was moistened with the her kisses and shower-soaked hair. He stared wordlessly at Max for moments impossible to measure.
"Max." Fang couldn't stop staring. "I love you."
The words arranged themselves—he was just as shocked as Max to hear them hit the air. But his mind felt obligated to put words to what his eyes had captured, and though he didn't know what he had seen, he had certainly seen something as they'd tumbled there on the floor.
There had been Max lying there with him, of course, but their two figures had interchanged at moments, like slides overlapping on a projector. The blue, green-flecked eyes of the Max suddenly contorted, and Fang was gazing into his own dark eyes; and Max's unceasing mouth melted into his skin until Fang felt swathed in his affection; and their respective colors—Max's bold, brave; Fang's quiet, measured—swirled like a frenzied painting doused with crystalline water running concurrently. Blending almost. For a moment, names evaded him. He knew not what they were individually but the one they were together. Fang had to blink to make the separation.
And those words he spoke were not his choice to say. Something higher compelled him to utter them, something innate and instinctive, vulnerable and professing. Max confusedly crawled out from beneath her dark-haired friend, watching him with wary eyes. Her movements were rigid and tentative as if she were slipping out of a booby-trapped clutch. Fang felt his stomach plummet with every second a reply went unspoken.
Drawing her knees to her chest, Max stared back at Fang, keeping a safe distance of at least three feet away. Her breath came uneasily.
"Max—"
"We shouldn't have," she muttered quietly. "It was a mistake."
"Listen to me, Max. I didn't—what I meant was—"
"Nothing. It was all nothing, okay?"
Fang had to brush his numb fingers along the ground to make sure it was still there. The ceiling threatened to dissipate as well, along with the rest of his already fragile world. It was all nothing. Fang felt like she'd never be happy again.
Max's POV
His words swirled around my head like a tornado. Him, loved me? This was all so confusing. I slowly and cautiously crawled out from beneath him and moved about a meter away.
"Max—" he started, but I cut him off.
"We shouldn't have, It was a mistake."
"Listen to me, Max. I didn't—what I meant was—"
"Nothing. It was all nothing, okay?"
Why did I have to say that? I asked angrily to myself. Everything was happening so fast, too fast almost. Fang looked like a little dark puppy that had been kicked too many times. I instantly regretted my words, and was going to say something but my legs disobeyed me and I ran out of the hotel room like the devil himself was at my heels.