Alec stared at the ceiling, emotions ricocheting through him. She was regretting it, he knew she was. Laying as far from him as possible, not speaking, not moving, she was trying to disappear into the bedcovers. Any minute now she was going to get up, and break the unbearable silence by gathering her clothes and leaving. It was just like her to run after something like this, too much of a coward to take responsibility for her actions. Well, he didn't regret it, he thought rebelliously, getting more and more angry as he thought about it. And he wasn't going to let her get away with leaving and pretending nothing had ever happened.
He sat up abruptly, fully intending to confront her. He leaned over her, "Max…"
His voice trailed off.
She was sound asleep.
A fist was curled loosely on her pillow, one knee wrapped around the sheets, and an uncharacteristically peaceful look on her face.
Alec stared at her in astonishment. She was sleeping. She wasn't tense and uncomfortable. She wasn't regretting – at least not yet – she was… just asleep.
"Huh." He laid back down thoughtfully.
When Alec woke up the next morning Max was gone.
He stared, somewhat blankly, at the other side of the bed. For a long, horrible moment he wondered if he'd dreamed it. All three times of it.
He sat up slowly, noting the imprint her head had left in the pillow and the fact that the covers had been neatly smoothed on her side. No, she had definitely been here.
He let out an explosive breath and ran a hand down his face. Well, at least there was going to be no awkward morning after conversations. Was he expected to go into work today and pretend that nothing had happened? If he knew Max, that was exactly what he was supposed to do.
Fuck.
As soon as the front door opened, Original Cindy was out of her chair and across the room, "Where the hell have you been!" She bellowed. "I've been up all night worried sick..." O.C. trailed off as she caught sight of Max - disheveled, red-eyed and fairly radiating guilt.
"Oh, my God." O. C. breathed. "You did it with Alec."
Something lost and frightened came into Max's face. "It was the heat." She whispered. The words had a well-worn sound to them, as if she had been repeating them over and over again.
O.C. stared at her best friend, for once in her life at a complete loss of words.
"We can talk in a minute." Max said, looking strangely shaky. "Right now I really need a shower."
She moved with a deliberate slowness, like someone who had been in an earthquake and was afraid the world would start shaking again any second. O.C. watched her in silence, stunned by the frailty that surrounded the normally indomitable Max. She put her bag and helmet down and disappeared into the bedroom.
"I can smell him everywhere on me." She made the remark absently, as if she wasn't aware she was speaking out loud.
O.C. closed her eyes. What to do, what to do...
Could Max handle know that she hadn't been in heat? But could O.C. really keep something so monumental from her. Everyone knew – Sketchy, Sheena, Logan. There was no way Max and Alec couldn't find out.
O.C. tapped a fingernail against her lips thoughtfully and started making tea. Maybe this new, uncertain Max wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe what the girl needed was to get her world messed up a little, make her start thinking and re-prioritizing. Once she had to face the fact that she was explosively attracted to Alec, things could start to progress in the natural way that these things tend too.
She waited until Max was sitting down, sipping a warm cup of tea, before carefully explaining the detour trip and the tests that Dr. Carr had performed.
"How is any of this relevant to anything?" Max asked irritably, blowing on the cup she was holding.
"Max." O.C.'s voice was infinitely gentle. "Honey, Dr. Carr had seen your estrogen levels for this month. He said you're not in heat. You're nowhere near heat."
The silence was horrified. Deafening. Apocalyptic.
"That's impossible." Max's voice was suffocated. "O.C. that's impossible. You saw, you saw how we were..."
"Yeah, I did. We all did. And when he first told us we started thinking that something was really wrong. Then Sheena laughed in our faces and told us how obvious it was that you and Alec were crazy about each other."
"She's the one who's crazy," Max began, raising her voice. But O.C. cut her off, shaking her head, keeping her voice soft.
"Max, stop. Just stop. And think for a minute. She saw it better than the rest of us because she has an objective point of view. And as soon as the words were out of her mouth, it made sense. It made a shocking kind of sense to all of us. It's there Max, I can see it."
Max's head was down, her chin tucked against her neck, her damp hair hiding her face. "You don't understand." She whispered.
"What don't I understand?"
"It was... I didn't..." She tried to laugh but it came out a breathy, half-sob. Her voice was so low O.C. had to lean in. "Last night, if you had given me a choice between him and air... I would have chosen to never breathe again. It had to be something that wasn't me. It had to be. I'm not... I'm not capable of feeling so-so much."
O.C. heard something in Max's voice that she had never heard before. A depth of desperation that made her wonder if things had progressed farther than she'd thought. She stared at the dark head of the girl she knew best in the world. The next question, she thought, had to be presented very, very carefully.
"Max, I want you to think about something." She said slowly, lifting up her friends chin until their eyes met. Max's were opaque with the storm of emotion rioting around in her. "Don't react, just consider. Is it possible, just possible, you might be falling in love with Alec?"
Max's pupils dilated and O.C. braced herself for the explosion. It came in a way she wasn't expecting. Max Guevara - kicker of ass extraordinaire, genetically engineered soldier – burst into tears.
O.C. felt her mouth drop open even as sympathetic tears rose in her own eyes. She wrapped her arms tightly around her friend as words poured out of Max, punctuated by sobs.
"This morning, this morning when I woke up and opened my eyes and saw him laying there and he was so perfect and gorgeous and I wanted him to wake up and smile at me and tease me and irritate me and kiss me and I wanted to stay there and never get up and then I thought about all the mornings I was going to wake up and he wouldn't be there and it was the-it was the mosthorriblefeelingeverandmystomachfeltsick..."
O.C. couldn't decide if she was horrified or delighted by the outpouring of emotion. She had never seen Max like this, hadn't been certain that she was capable of it. It's just an emotional version of last night, she thought, last night they couldn't keep it in check any longer and today she's still feeling that overspill.
She murmured incoherent words of comfort, stroking her hair unconsciously, as one would a child. O.C. closed her eyes and rested her cheek against the top of Max's head. Please, she prayed silently to her friend, please don't shrug this off tomorrow.
Alec slammed his locker shut, enjoying the satisfying clang. He tightened the gloves on his hands almost ruthlessly and stomped outside.
It had been two days since the night of his and Max's little encounter, two days with absolutely no sign that she still existed. She had called in sick both days, providing Normal with even more crap to moan about. O.C. wasn't any better, she wasn't even trying to pretend that she wasn't avoiding him.
"Talk to Max." She would say, heading hurriedly in the other direction, every time he approached her.
His mood had only progressed in the downward direction in those two days. He couldn't manage to wrap himself in his usual charming devil-may-care smile and instead found himself snapping at everyone around him.
"Snap out of it." He growled to himself, walking into the ally where his bike was chained. If he didn't get a grip soon then he'd find himself without a job or any friends. He thought often of just leaving. Getting out before Max did show up and break his heart.
Break his heart? Alec stopped short. Where had that thought come from. As if she had such power. As if he had such feelings. What utter, complete rubbish.
He shook his head and continued walking, only to stop abruptly again when he saw who was leaning against the wall next to his bike. Said heart leapt first into his throat and then down into his stomach, leaving him strangely lightheaded.
"Max." It was more than a greeting.
Her eyes were locked on his and he had the sudden, insane urge to walk up to her and bury his face in her hair, breathing her in. It wasn't as urgent as it had been the past few days, but the craving to touch her was still very much present.
Then her appearance finally registered and concern made his mind sharpen again.
"Are you alright?" He studied her shadowed eyes and pale skin. "You look like you've been battling White." It was more than just her features though, there was something different about the look in her eyes. An ember that was starting to glow.
"No." A ghost of a smile crossed her lips, "Not battling White. Someone worse. Myself."
Before he could puzzle through that enigmatic statement she leaned back against the wall and stared at the ground. "There's something you should know. Dr. Carr's been studying my blood. He said that I'm not in heat, that I'm not even anywhere close to having another cycle."
Alec stared at her, wondering if he'd heard her wrong. "Not in... how is that possible Max?"
She took a deep breath and raised her eyes back to his. "Well. There seem to be a theory about that." She pushed away from the wall so that they were only a few inches apart. "In the interest of science we should probably test it out."
And then she did the last thing he would have ever expected her to do. She leaned up on her toes, grabbed the lapels of his leather jacket and kissed him.
Heat and magnetism flared instantly, surrounding them in a warm bubble. It was a slow kiss, tentative and awed. Alec felt her hands on his face, stroking with a gentleness that made his chest hurt. He pulled her closer, loving the way she fit into him.
He anchored an arm around her rear and lifted her against him; her legs wrapped instinctively around his waist. She opened her mouth, fingers curling into his hair and gripping. He deepened the kiss – it had been two days since he'd last tasted her, it felt like years.
They finally eased apart and when he could focus again, Alec realized that her lashes were damp. He kissed each eye gently. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head and buried her face in his neck. Her voice was raw with wonder when she spoke.
"I'm so stupid. It was you. It's always been you."
The End