"Looks like she's rejoining the world," Max heard Normal say from a thousand miles away. Her eyes fluttered, and then closed again, the bright light overhead burning them. She was lying down, and it felt like she had bugs all over her. Something clingy and sticky at any rate.
"Max?" she heard Logan say. "You there?"
She remembered everything now. Damn, it wasn't a real bad nightmare; Normal was a doctor and knew about Manticore. She'd peed in a cup for him. And Logan knew all this time.
"Logan?" she muttered. She could feel him lean closer. She grabbed the front of his turtleneck, and hauled him up so that he was a few inches from her, his blue eyes wide. He thought she was still mostly out of it. "Did you forget to tell me something?" she snarled, obviously alert. She pushed him back into his wheelchair, and sat up.
There were wires all over her. "Don't touch them," Normal ordered seeing her reaching for one. He was checking something on a machine. He notated what he was seeing in her chart, and then went to another one. "Interesting," he muttered.
"What the hell is going on?" she finally had to ask. The last thing she remembered was that she was going to leave, and then there was a pain, and then…nothing.
"You had a seizure," Logan said. "I heard a crash and came in." They both looked at Normal.
"Oh, you managed to knock over a table when you fell," he said absently, reading a test result. If this was right, then…it didn't make any sense though. "Since you weren't in the mood to object, I ran a few tests."
She looked outraged at both of them. "I am so out of here!" she declared, and started ripping off wires. It hurt like hell, but she was not in the mood to play around any more. She'd had enough of people experimenting on her body without permission. Where were her clothes? There they were at the end of the table.
She jumped up, and grabbed her jeans, still fuming. "Max," Logan tried to reason, "it was the only way he could get a reading while you were having a sei…"his words were cut off when she spun his chair around so that he was facing away from her. He heard the whistling of the denim and realized she was putting on her jeans. Oh Lord, she was mostly naked right behind him. He could feel himself start to sweat.
Normal had his back to her as she pulled up her jeans under the hospital gown. She yanked it off and pulled her shirt back on, furious at them both. She went to storm out of the room, her exit being spoiled by Normal's bland voice. "I'll give you the results tomorrow," he called out. When he was sure she was gone, he looked at Logan. "Well, that went better than you expected." Logan could only nod, and hope she would be okay.
Later that night Logan sat in front of his computer, trying to work on his next hack. He'd paged Max four times, but she had yet to respond. He wondered if she would go into work the next morning. He ran his hands through his hair, giving up all hope of getting any work done that night. He'd screwed up when he didn't tell Max everything, but she would never have gone if he had. He grabbed the phone and paged one last time for the night. If she wasn't going to call, then she wasn't going to call. What if she'd had another seizure? He was worried about her, and sitting there alone, he realized it wasn't the worry a boss has about his employee…was it the worry a friend has or…there was a weird beeping noise from his balcony.
He grabbed the gun from his desk, and wheeled himself over carefully. Max was sitting out there. He'd long ago given up hope she would ever do anything in a normal way. She had a key, but rarely used it. It was either a window or a picked lock for her. She said keys weighed her down. For a moment he sat there, admiring the moonlight on her face. She was nothing short of exquisite. He put the back in his desk and went out to her.
"Got your page," she said, not looking at him when he came out. She was staring out into the skyline.
"I was worried about you," he admitted. While she wasn't looking at him he felt free to trace every curve of her with his eyes.
"All's cool," she said. But it wasn't. They both knew it.
"If I had told you," Logan began, "you would have never gone."
"Friends don't trick friends," she cut him off. "I thought we got beyond that tricking stage after the mirror." There was silence. He should have been honest no matter what the reason.
"All I know is every seizure could be your last," Logan said hotly. Thinking of that made him feel sick. "If you had one while riding your motorcycle, or even while you were on top of the Space Needle and fell," he broke off. "I don't want anything to happen to you."
She jumped to her feet, trying to hold onto the anger. He had absolutely no right to hide this from her. Then, he helped Normal while she was down. That was absolutely whacked. You did not play a friend like that. You always covered a friend's back. That's why she had the implant in the first place. Caring was reserved for a relationship that they didn't have.
"You didn't think I could make the decision on my own," she yelled. "Whatever. You just worried 'cause I might not be able to save one of the huddled masses on your command."
Logan had no idea what made him react the way he did. There was no rational explanation for what he did, he just acted. He grabbed her wrist unexpectedly. He had gained a great deal of upper body strength from being in the chair, and pulled her back. She wasn't expecting him to move, and when she was pulled backwards, somehow she hit the edge of his wheelchair, and tumbled into his lap.
Logan caught her easily, his anger dissipating with her face inches from his. He let go of her wrist expecting her to jump up and run off into the night as she always did whenever things got tense. His free hand touched her face, his thumb running across her full lower lip. So soft. He crossed the space between them, his lips pressing gently against hers, almost like he was asking permission.
This was not what Max had been expecting. She wanted to storm off and rage at him for hours as she drove recklessly through the streets. But now…his mouth was as warm and sweet as it had been the one time they had kissed before. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and the kiss became deeper as months of tension began to be released. Was this what he'd been thinking about when he wrote that poem about her? She could feel his hand running up her leg, over her rear, and then up her back to her neck, and then back down again.
This was so not right. Absolutely whacked. To hell with rational, she thought. Never was my strong suit anyways.
