Inside Out Chapter 1/?


Disclaimer: Fox, Cameron and Eglee made them. I just like to play with them.
Summary: A behind the scenes look at the episode "Out". This is part 1 of maybe 2 or 3.
Spoilers/Timeframe: "Out", obviously :)
Rating: PG
Feedback: Please! To jude_mustard@yahoo.com

There were still a few people on the streets of Seattle's upmarket financial district. Curfew was fast approaching, and most of them were hurrying to get home. At least, those who had homes were. Others had crawled under boxes on the sidewalk to sleep, forming a stark contrast to the glass-walled apartment buildings looming over them.

Amidst the sounds of car engines being turned off and people getting settled for the night, came an unusual sound. Thud, slap! Thud, slap! Thud, slap!

A young woman strode purposefully along the street. She was beautiful, but that wasn't the reason she drew stares and a few catcalls from those watching. It was because she was clad only in a large towel and a pair of black boots, carrying a dripping black bundle under one arm, her wet hair bouncing with each violent step and spraying small droplets as it slapped her bare shoulders.

Max hardly noticed the stinging each time her hair hit her back, nor the wide-eyed attention she received from the few stragglers left on the streets at this hour as she walked, lips pressed together in grim determination. She was walking home.

It had stopped raining soon after she had left Logan's apartment. She had travelled a few blocks before she became irritated by her clothes spraying water onto her, and stopped to wring them out again onto the pavement. She should have waited till she got home before washing them. But then, Logan had hot water from the tap, and she hadn't known at the time that she wouldn't be staying long enough for her clothes to dry.

She bundled her wet clothes under her arm and continued walking at a slower pace, wondering if she should stop being pissed off and start being sensible, and put on her clothes now even though they were wet and cold, and smelled annoyingly of Drakkar. This she was considering because the street was changing around her; she was about to enter a more seedy part of the city. She was already getting a great many stares, and she should probably put her clothes on before the unwanted attention got more physical. Not that she would have any trouble discouraging propositions, but kicking ass while clad in a towel might have embarrassing consequences.

Especially clad only in a towel. Because her underwear, she realised now, was still hanging in Logan's bathroom.

***earlier***

"If it doesn't clash with your busy schedule, I need to get cleaned up," Max said as she stormed into Logan's apartment ahead of him after he had unlocked the door.

"Okay, you can use the guest--" but Max had already walked straight into Logan's own bathroom and slammed the door in his face.

He pressed his lips together, feeling his face flush at the thought of Max in his bathroom. It was an invasion of his privacy, and probably deliberate. But he seemed to have forfeited his right to complain tonight. He turned sharply and then just sat there with his back to the bathroom door, hearing the click as Max locked it, and then sounds of Max taking her clothes off. His face grew even warmer.

Max wasted no time in stripping off her muddy mission gear. It was when she turned to fling them into the bathtub that she stopped short. Logan's bathroom wasn't like any other bathroom she'd seen.

For one thing, there were metal rods on the walls in the shower and next to the toilet, which also had a modified seat over it. There was no bathtub, but there was a seat in the shower, folded up into the wall below the shower fixture. She stood still for a moment, as the reason for the presence of the grab bars and other apparatus registered through the angry haze in her mind.

She leaned back against the door she had just slammed and wished for a moment that she had used the guest bathroom after all. Here she was, faced with the stark reality of Logan's physical disability--which Logan pretended didn't exist at all. She wondered why she was so angry that he didn't open up with her about it. Did she have a right to want him to?

But her doubts were banished as she reminded herself that he knew almost everything about her. He knew about what she was, her relationship with her siblings, her hopes and fears. She'd let him see her at her weakest, while she was having a seizure—a weakness that she'd never before revealed, even to Kendra or Original Cindy. One confidence after another she had poured out to him, showing him her vulnerabilities, while he'd managed to keep his armour intact.

She felt cheated. She looked at the rumpled mess of clothes she'd been kneading in her hands, and grit her teeth. Whatever he used the damn bars for, she didn't care, but they'd come in useful to hang her clothes on after she washed them. She threw the muddy bundle into the shower and stepped in. Pulling the seat down from the wall, she sat down and began to spray hot water onto her clothes.

"Takes everything he has for granted," Max muttered under her breath as the water steamed up around her. Including me, she didn't say out loud. "As if everyone has hot water just running from the tap."

She took a half-used bar of soap from the soap dish and began scrubbing the mud from her clothes, rubbing Logan's bath soap into them viciously until the water ran clear. By the time she was done, there was almost nothing left of it. Turning the water off, she wrung out her jacket and pants haphazardly, draping them over a bar each, then went in search of more soap.

Bending a little to open the medicine cabinet, she examined its contents. The first shelf contained bottles of pills. She picked one up and turned it over. Caffeine. She'd thought caffeine pills were illegal, not that Logan would have any trouble getting hold of them. "God, Logan, what are you doing to yourself?" she sighed, putting the bottle down and picking up the rest in turn. Relaxants for muscle spasms. Painkillers. Antacids and gastritis pills to take, she hoped, with the painkillers. Vitamins. Flu tablets. She picked up the next bottle which contained familiar-looking white capsules, and sucked in her breath sharply.

"Tryptophan? What are you doing with Tryptophan pills, Logan?" Especially with the caffeine on that shelf, it was rather incongruous. One put you to sleep, the other did the opposite.

Unless the Tryptophan wasn't for him. She swallowed hard. No Max, don't go there. Stay mad. Gotta stay mad.

She put the bottle back and methodically went through the next shelf. After all, the guy'd broken into her apartment and gone through her stuff, hadn't he? That was bent. This was payback.

There were creams on the next shelf beside his toothpaste. Regular toothpaste, she observed, not some strange concoction of baking soda and peppermint oil like what she and Kendra had been using. There was deep heating cream for sore muscles, an ordinary thing to find in any guy's medicine cabinet. Moisturisers and creams to promote healing of broken skin, not so ordinary.

The soap was on the bottom shelf. Taking a new bar from the neat stack, she closed the cabinet door and stepped back into the shower.

Max kicked the foldable seat back up into the wall and turned on the hot water again. Stepping under the spray, she turned her face to it, thinking that she would be enjoying this if she wasn't so pissed off. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a hot shower. Her apartment didn't have a water heater, and she and Kendra only managed to take hot baths by boiling water on the stove to pour into their bathtub. A hot shower was a rare treat. Max took her time and ended up enjoying it anyway, in spite of her resolution to stay angry.

There was a soft knock on the door as she turned the water off. Max sighed. Couldn't the idiot even let her shower in peace? She pressed herself against the wall, cracked the door open slightly, and peered out.

There was no one there. She bit back another expletive as something caught the corner of her eye. Looking down, she saw that a fresh towel had been hung on the doorknob. She pulled it in slowly and closed the door.

It was kind the kind of towel they gave you in hotel rooms: big, blue and fluffy. Real people living in real houses didn't have towels like this. She wound her fingers in it, brought it to her face and drew in the freshly laundered scent. God, it was going to be hard to stay mad at Logan if he was going to be such a sweet idiot. Well, perhaps she should give him a chance to apologise.

Quickly drying off with the towel, she wrapped it around herself. Scooping up her wet clothes, she went out to confront Logan.