Part Six

The morning sunlight filtered through the half open blinds and Max groaned into the pillow. The lingering scent of stale sweat and regurgitated alcohol filled his nostrils as he breathed in and he scrunched his nose up in disdain. His hair was matted to his temples and forehead, the skin on his arms and chest sticky with spilled beer and God knows what else. He groaned again and rolled onto his back, his arms flailing on either side of him, impacting with empty air.

For a moment, he was startled.

Then his eyes focussed and he realised he was in Liz's room, not the room of the stranger he'd met in the bar last night.

He turned onto his side and drew her pillow to him, pulling in the scent of her, even as his stomach rolled. He closed his eyes against the dizzying sensation of movement and licked his dry lips, knowing he needed a drink but knowing he couldn't move to get it.

He called out, his voice hoarse in the empty room but there was no answer. He groaned again and called out once more but silence resonated. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, watching as a cobweb blew back and forth in a breeze he could not feel. Liz obviously hadn't seen it or else she'd have been out with the vacuum, scooping up the spider and its home without so much as a moment's hesitation.

He burped, the smell of half digested chicken pakora lingering in his mouth and he gagged, the scent turning his stomach more.

As he drew the covers back over his head, he swore that he was never drinking again.

--

"Max," John said, his tone surprised as he held the door to their apartment open. "This is a surprise."--

Max shrugged slightly, huddling against the cool fall wind that wafted up the lobby from the open window. His hair was windswept and his eyes were stinging and he knew he looked a riot but he didn't care; after his talk with Liz, he hadn't been able to get John off his mind and he knew that he had to see him, just to know.

And now he knew.

"Can I...?" He asked as he motioned the apartment and John shook his head, snapping from his stupor and stepped back, allowing Max passage into their hall. Max couldn't help but sniff at John's scent, so familiar and welcoming. So suffocating. "Thanks," he said as he sat on the worn brown leather sofa, his hands clasping and unclasping in his hands.

"It's your apartment, too." Max shrugged and drew a hand through his hair, pulling at the small tug the wind had caused. He couldn't met John's eyes because he knew that if he did, that would be it – that he'd be sucked back in and not do what he'd come here to do. "Max?"

Max made the mistake of looking up and he was struck by the way the sunlight cast half of John's angular face in shadow, the other side glowing gold in the rays that licked it. His hair, normally flicked naturally in all directions, lay flat and matted to his head, his beard unshaven for days.

He'd never looked better.

"John..."

"Shit." Max didn't say anything, only stared up at him, trying not to see all the things that had attracted to him in the first place. "Shit," John repeated, though weaker, as he threw himself onto the oversized armchair in the corner. Max watched as he drew his hand across his face, through his hair, to the nape of his neck before his slate grey eyes peered up at him. "I knew this was coming."

"John..."

"Don't," John said as he held up his hand in protest, palm out towards him and Max winced at the nail marks there. "Just tell me the truth."

"About what?"

"About why you're leaving me."

Max sighed and looked away, to the television in the corner, to the photos on the stand but in the things he knew he found no comfort. He saw only reminders of how much he'd failed, of all the things that John had bought for them, of all the things that he could have said and did before. John had tried to build them a home; Max had tried to quench a thirst.

"It's not that I don't love you-"

"Save the shit, Max."

Max flinched, blanching slightly at the cruelty in John's tone but he knew that it was just, that he deserved it.

It was more than he deserved.

"I do I'm just not... I'm just not here, in the same place – as you." The line sounded bad, even to his own ears. He grimaced at it, chancing a glance to John who simply glared at him. "I'm not happy – you make me not happy. When I'm with you I want to be... I want to not be with you. When you try and touch me, I find a reason to move away. When I tell you I love you, I have to force myself to kiss you on the lips – and I shouldn't be like that, not with someone I'm supposed to love."

Max could see John's jaw clench, could see the way his eyes had slid to darkness and he knew that he was irrevocably burning bridges with the only man he had loved. It hurt. It was also kind of liberating.

"I can't say that I haven't noticed. I wish I hadn't – God I wish I hadn't but how could I not?"

"I'm sorry," Max said pathetically, looking to the floor.

"What for?" Max looked up, confused and after a moment he shrugged. "If you don't know what you're apologising for, how can you expect others to?" Max shrugged again, not knowing what to say. He wasn't very good at this. "The thing is, I don't even think you realise it."

"Realise what?"

John scoffed and pointed a gestured towards him and Max frowned, feeling anger replace his guilt.

"You see?" Max shook his head and rose, John following suit, rushing around the coffee table to stand in front of him. Max looked up to him, John's slight height advantage making Max feel inadequate in a way it never had before. "Did you ever love me Max?"

Max felt a rush of anger and he scoffed incredulously, using his bigger body mass to push past John, knocking John off balance.

"There's someone else isn't there?" John shouted down the hallway and Max stopped, pivoting on his heel and stared at John through the doorway and he felt the blood thunder through his veins.

"Of course there isn't."

"Where are you staying Max?"

Max was thrown by the swift change of subject and he took a step back towards the lounge.

"With Liz." John smirked, quirking half his mouth and Max frowned, clenching his jaw. "What?"

"You could never love anyone the way you love her."

Max reeled back, his fists rising from his side before he managed to control them. He didn't say anything as John watched him, almost goading, staring one another down across the lounge.

"I'm going to get laid."

He slammed the door as he left.

Liz yawned as she drew some of the solution into the pipette, dribbling a few droplets onto the worktop. She sighed and closed her eyes, sliding the pipette back into the beaker of solution, wondering why she had chosen to take the call that morning.

Usually, she didn't mind being hired out to the local high schools for the day but she'd had little to no sleep the night before with Max stampeding about her apartment, burning pizza topped with chicken pakora and then snoring like a freight train when he had eventually tumbled into bed.

She kind of wished he'd gone home with someone like he'd told her he would when he called.

Her tiredness didn't make her mood any better; she was still horny as hell, her fingers delivering little to no pleasure to her the night before after her and Soren's rendezvous over thousands of miles of static air and she found herself become increasingly frustrated.

When Max had interrupted her phone sex with his incessant ringing of her mobile, she'd let out a stream of expletives down the line to him, only to realise he wasn't paying attention. She knew this because she could hear clearly the sound of him making out with someone in a very noisy, public place. When she'd hung up from Soren and called him back almost an hour later, he'd told her that he was going to fuck the hottest man ever to have bought him a drink – John? She'd asked – who wasn't John. He'd told her that John was an asshole and wasn't his problem anymore.

And when he'd stumbled, not-so-stealthily – his chatter to himself in an attempt to silence his blabbering mouth would have been endearing if it hadn't been four thirty in the morning – down her hallway to the kitchen four hours later, before breaking down in tears, Liz had comforted him.

She may have also let him feel her up – just a little - to help make him feel better. Because it was, after all, her fault he hadn't pulled. Because she'd called him and he couldn't stop thinking about her. And he needed her. More than John. Always more than anyone else.

The words, spoken to her in a drunken slur as tears she was sure he was unaware of slid down his cheeks, warmed her heart and ached her stomach. If only he'd said those words to her years before, when he hadn't been gay and she hadn't stopped loving him like that, she knew that things would have turned out very differently.

She'd have had her heart broken, for sure, some years later when his true sexuality had eventually come out, for starters.

But then she'd have known what it was like to be with him. And she didn't. In her head, she wasn't sure she wanted to anymore. But when she'd let him fall asleep with his fingers grazing her backside, her body knew it did.

She hated that betrayal.

"Miss?"

Liz looked up, flushed, to the young girl in front of her and smiled.

"Yes, Briana?"

The girl looked quizzically to Liz for a moment before glancing quickly to the others in the group and looking back to Liz.

"We're making vitamin C." Liz nodded and looked to the group as they flicked gazes at one another. "You just added copper to the solution."

Liz looked down to the chemicals in front of her, noting the Fe and her shoulders sagged. She closed her eyes and sighed.

Soren had to come home.

And soon.