Disclaimer - If they follow me home, can I keep them? er.. Just one, then? I have a specific one in mind...
A/N: Okay - embarrassed as I am to admit it, this one actually made me tear up when I wrote it. *blush* I hope it has the same kind of impact for you.
Learning of Alec - Chapter 10.
- infieRECAP
(Monday)"Why Alec, it's simple." she said when he was only a couple of meters away. "I needed to get your attention."
The absurdity of it stopped him dead. "You needed to get my attention? My attention? Sweet Jesus, Max! Have you ever heard of a fucking phone?"
"No, Alec. I mean your full, complete, undivided, attention."
{Mission fucking accomplished.}
He glared at her with furious eyes, his focus on her absolute. "Well, congratulations, sweetheart. You sure have it."
Max sighed heavily. "Look, I've been worried about you."
"Worried about me. Huh." He raised his eyebrows at her. He began padding towards her again, and she returned to backing up. This time there was no cage between them, and he knew he could have her in his hands in a heartbeat. By the look of the rapidly fluttering pulse in the hollow of her throat, Max knew it, too. "I've been fine."
Max snorted. "Of course you have." Sarcasm laced her words. "You haven't been to Crash, you haven't been to Terminal City, you haven't slept in days..."
He interrupted her with a pointed look at the pillow still on the floor in the cage. She smirked at him, then tensed up noticeably as her room ran out and her back hit the wall. She stopped moving and held up her hands in mock surrender. He noticed that her black clothes had light coloured smudges of dust all over them, likely from sitting on the floor while he was out.
"Okay, okay," she said, "I see your point, but I don't think unconsciousness brought on by electrocution counts as a 'good night's sleep.'"
{Why the fuck not? You count kidnapping as a good way to 'get someone's attention'.}
He continued his approach until he was almost brushing up against her, until he could feel the heat of her body through his clothes. He glared into her dark eyes from only inches away, invading her space and deliberately using his greater height and size to intimidate. The fine hairs on his arms lifted, reacting to her nearness and making his skin tingle.
"Of course it counts, Max." he told her silkily. "That was more hours of sleep in a row than I've had in years. And now I feel so... invigourated. What ever shall I do with all this energy?"
He had meant it to sound menacing, but instead of fear, he saw Max's chocolate eyes flare with a darker, more primitive awareness. He felt a flash of reluctant admiration for her. {She's not afraid of me at all. Jesus, right now I'm afraid of me, for fuck sake.}
Max licked her lips. "You wouldn't talk to me. I tried for days, and you just blew me off. After the other night..." Max paused, set her jaw stubbornly. "You've been different. Distant. Beyond distant. It freaked me out, and I don't like it. I don't like 'Empty Alec' at all." she shrugged. "So, I decided it was time to take some action."
"Fuck, Max, I just wanted to be all right! I didn't want to feel like shit anymore." he was shaking with rage. "I didn't want to feel anything anymore! What is so fucking wrong with that? What gives you the right to interfere in my life whenever you feel the need?" he shouted at her, the unmitigated gall of her actions pushing all of his buttons at once, and straining his already frayed control.
"I care about you, Alec. That gives me the right." Max said, in her arrogant 'end of discussion' tone.
"Max!" he exploded at her, beyond controlling his temper any longer. "You put me in a fucking cage!" He punctuated the last two words with full force punches into the wall inches beside her head, cracking the cement and making the wall tremble. The knuckles of his abused right hand complained fiercely, and blood smeared the wall where the cuts on his hand had reopened. Max blinked at him as he panted with the force of the emotions whipcracking through him, and laughed with a great, joyful sound. She grabbed his shoulders and shook him fiercely.
"Alec, Alec, don't you understand? Yes, I put you in a cage." she slipped her hands up his arms and cradled his face between them tenderly. "But I also Set. You. Free."
He stared at her with a stunned incomprehension so complete that she laughed again.
"You were already in a cage, Alec, one inside your own mind. You shut yourself away into a place where no one could reach you, and nothing could touch you, where you were safe." her voice softened. "Where you would be all right forever. But no one is all right all the time."
She stepped away from him and waved at the bars gleaming beside them. "That was a prison, because you were in there all alone, against your will, in that little place." She widened her gesture to include the room around them as well. "We're still locked in, Alec, but this," she paused, and he saw her swallow hard and blink back tears. "...this is a refuge, because we're in it together. I put you in there because I needed to make you angry enough to look outside your walls, so that I could make you see. Some cages we make for ourselves, and I had to... I needed... to break you free."
Alec saw.
He nodded slowly. "You needed to get my attention." he said softly.
"Tough love, Alec, but worth the trouble." she gave him a glowing smile that melted the mountain of his anger away like sugar in the rain. "Could have been worse, you know. After your little damage-fest when we captured you, Mole was all for electrifying the bars."
{Huh.} He thought suspiciously. {I wonder if Mole's ever been to Uzbekistan...} He set the thought aside.
"Tough love." he echoed her wryly. "Is that what you call this?" His ribs ached, his chest hurt, and his right hand was throbbing in pain with each beat of his pulse.
Max reached up and ran her fingers along the blood crusted injury on his cheekbone with a tenderness that made his breath catch in his chest. "Oh, yes." she said. "That's exactly what it is." she looked into his eyes, her own dark gaze liquid with some undefineable emotion. She drank in the view of him for a moment longer, then raised herself on her tiptoes and kissed him softly, comfortingly.
Alec's eyes closed of their own accord and he leaned into her body, supporting himself with one hand pressed against the wall. She broke the kiss and reclined back against the wall, her hand still resting against his cheek. He lowered his head slowly until his forehead was resting on her shoulder, her cheek pressed against his hair. He took a deep, shaky breath and let it out in a rush of air, releasing the last remnants of his resentment with it. As the anger left him, the pain he had been so ruthlessly suppressing returned relentlessly, and Max's arms came around him as he trembled again.
"Max?" To his own ears, his voice quavered. Max tightened her embrace, and his shoulders slumped as he let go of the wall to get even closer. He nestled his face into her neck, inhaling her warm, comforting scent deeply into his lungs. For the first time in his life, he felt secure, protected... safe.
"I'm here." Max told him, breath hot against his ear. "You're not alone. You're going to be all right." Her voice grew steely. "Later. You're going to be all right later"
Alec gave a half-laugh that came out more like a sob. "Later." he choked in agreement. A fine trembling began in his hands as he wrapped himself around Max like he was adrift in the ocean and she was the only thing keeping him afloat. The tremble progressed up his arms, and soon his entire body was shuddering with every breath. He felt dampness trickle along the edge of his ear, and realized dimly that Max was crying. Max loosened one hand and began to caress his hair in long, soothing strokes that started at the crown of his head and ended with his barcode. The tenderness inherent in the gesture was the last straw for his precariously balanced control, and he lost his grip.
Alec's legs buckled and Max caught him he went down, lowering him gently to his knees, mirroring his pose so that they were melded from knees to head. She readjusted her grip on him to allow him to burrow against her even more tightly, the noises of his laboured breathing muffled against her neck. He took a deep breath, and as he let it out the racking sobs came with it.