In Dire Need Of Consequences
Disclaimer: Anything you could sue me for isn't mine
This is an AU story
The couch was a two seat, which Logan thought would explain why she went and sat on the arm of the furniture, her feet on it, dirty or not. Sitting in front of her as she looked in he thought about how his uncle would act in this situation. At even the slight hint of putting feet on the couch he would have executed Max, his expensive taste being degraded before his eyes. Logan's couch was less regal in appearance, but still a rather extortionately priced piece. He couldn't fathom telling her to move, the sheer blissful ignorance was perfection in his eyes. She didn't jump on his furniture to piss him off, or because she was just plain rude, she did it because that's where she wanted to sit. Spare of the moment, free and unassuming she perched there happily enjoying something it took all of 30 seconds to create. No wonder she was becoming an obsession of his.
She looked up at him, raising her well-defined shoulder blades and her head tilted to one side, smiling playfully at him. He melted.
Her tight blood red top rode up above her faded jeans, exposing an inch or so of naturally dark toned skin, her leather jacket cast on the coffee table behind her. He couldn't help but marvel at her; she seemed different every time he saw her. Today she seemed quite care free, girlish even, in the very remotest sense of the word. What ever it was she seemed happy, and looked irresistible. He somehow had never envisaged her in red, but she gave new definition to the colour of life, which seemed to shout at his eyes, everything about her deafened him.
All through his life he had been given whatever he wanted by people, pretty much anything. Girls had never argued with him, accepting his opinions as law, his views as reality without question. His friends would nod their heads for cash, cash which allowed him things others could only aspire to. He felt fake, he hated people agreeing with him. Sure not everybody had, but if they didn't then they still didn't argue, they just vanished. Max was different. She came she saw she kicked his ass. Then she stayed. Over the 8 days he had feared the worst, his ass would go unkicked, his ego unchecked. Girls had previously only defied him lightly, over why certain things they liked weren't this or weren't that, but nobody had ever really had a conversation with him in which he didn't feel he had to continue out of relationship requirement. Talking to Max was different, she was entertaining, amusing, harsh and rude and all with that underlying hint of feminine wiles.
Like usual he had rather nervously nibbled his way through everything on his plate without conscious thought, and placed his plate on hers which had just arrived at his tabletop seconds earlier yet still as bare.
He looked up and met her gaze, he smirked a shy look, yet not a bashful shy, a confident but unsure of safe progression shy. Her eyes deep like bottomless well she breathed out roughly.
"So" He said lightly.
"So" She replied, sliding down from the arm of the couch to sit closer to him, yet still at different angles.
He wasn't sure entirely if he could feel her foot rub on his leg, it was probably just his overloaded mind, but he was still enjoying his own misperceptions more than she could know.
His eyes flickered, the facial contortions of extreme but not wholly unfamiliar pain blurring his vision as the rays of light enflamed his retina, and he coughed as he tried his best to rouse his body into movement, no matter how subtle.
Straining to sit up in his hospital bed Donald Lydecker had no idea how long he had been out, how the hell he wasn't dead. He also was rather pissed off about the fact only one retina was struggling to adjust to the light, the other had been sliced in half. His eye was gone, but that was the least of his worries. 57, James had to know that he was alive, and he wouldn't just let it drop, he would return to put him 6 feet under, or more than likely spread him liberally across the surface.
He had seen 452, he remembered her case file, and had even worked with her unit on the odd occasion, but couldn't remember her from the rest, not a stand out solider in his opinion. Either way he suspected she was dead, James was bound to have slaughtered her an instant after she left him be. His arm was all bandaged up as he distinguished that particular pain as her fault. The bitch broke his wrist, and then saved his life? Lydecker wasn't stupid enough to assume they found him so far away from the main burning corpse pile, she must have moved him, didn't matter anyhow.
Struggling to make his lazy body obey Lydecker had only one thing in mind. Escape.
Looking across the couch at him, she was closer to him than she had ever been, his smell distinct and her foot slightly brushing his leg. She knew he was paraplegic, that contraption somehow in hell let him walk around; even she had never seen anything like it. But hey, Eyes Only could get partridge for hells sake, that was like the holy grail or something, but her train of thought seem scattered at best, ever slight contact with his mute body sparked her into a strange feeling. Tonight was meant to be strictly business, but this feeling that she had seemed to be making that awkward, making the air between them distinctly not so. She knew she was flirting, not in an open way, but in the strange way that she knew he did with her, it was a hard thing to describe.
The silence was only momentary, but it felt like his words were forever delayed. Fearing that he was going to shoot her down whilst she was almost blatantly stroking his leg with her foot she withdrew it and started first, but he uttered almost in sync with her own injection.
"Well I'd…" "So are we…"
They both stopped.
"Go on" You First"
They did it again, and Max smiled, he almost blushed and gestured with his hand that the floor was open to her to speak. She did so, and almost forgot what to say as his hand flicked past her leg to rest on the empty couch between the two. Explaining how he blacked out, about the guy called Lydecker she dragged into the opening, how badly hurt he was, not mentioning how she helped him in that respect, the snapping of limbs wasn't the best conversation piece when you were getting almost unnoticeably closer to a hot guy on a couch. He seemed generally oblivious to the whole thing, but after she joked about the sector cops scandal, she knew he was going to ask why she bailed on him so sharply, and she didn't know how to answer. Their banter raised his interest almost as much as his body temperature, being so close to her while she captivated him, albeit in a most disturbing way, made him think less of the fact he had hit the floor like a sack of crap for some reason.
He never asked why she bailed. She was relived, but wasn't sure if it was entirely. She thought that if she faced it down then he might understand; he might have a clue how she felt, why she felt and why she was afraid of it.
He had heard everything, and was completely non-the wiser for it all; he still had no idea why he had suddenly dropped, and if it would happen again. Really now wasn't the time, he had more important things at hand, or in this case arm's length. She sat there thinking, her head ever so slightly rolled away from him, her eyes in conversation with her mind. He stood and she sudden blinked and looked up at him, he yet again noticed her innocent eyes pleading for something, he wasn't sure what.
"Coffee?" He asked. He scratched his nails on his leg, he had to occupy his hands, they wanted somebody else's leg, but that wasn't going to happen.
"Is there any of that cherry stuff left, you know the coke?" She seemed to have dropped the exuberant sparkle of life she had upon her entrance, now clear and open he had a feeling she was laying it bare, if not to him than to herself.
"I'll see what I can do"
Turning he walked to his fridge and found just enough for a glass left. Pouring it he turned to his kitchen island for coffee beans, only to find her propped up on the other side of it. He was too deep in his own world to be visibly startled.
"Whoa, you're going to have to watch that little trick of yours when I'm cooking, I'll burn myself in fright" He smiled, reaching out for the sealed box of imported coffee.
"Am I really that harsh on the eyes?" She asked in an obviously mocking sad tone, he knew she was playing with him. Split second memories of their first chance meeting in her apartment appearing in his mind's eye, their casual flirting care free and flowing, now he felt the difference. Now it felt more real, he knew that then it was just because she found him attractive on the outside whilst this seemed different. But maybe that's all it was? It just 'seemed' different because he was starting to get attached to her? Maybe to her this was exactly the same? Maybe she was only using him for food, which is what they mostly seemed to do while she was here, eat, and then she usually ran. Still the jesting suggestion that he found her repulsive caught him like a deer in headlights. Not knowing what to say words dropped from his mouth like dead weights, in free fall without his control.
"Is that what you think?"
"I was asking you" She threw it back, almost harshly, but still toying with him.
"Does it matter what I think?" He wasn't biting, seeing it on her face she was getting slightly wound up by his avoiding of the lure.
"It does to me". Did he hear that right? She sounded sincere for the first time since she got to his kitchen. She looked at him again with those eyes that stole his breath, and he knew that this was one of those turning points. She was trying to get a valid milestone in from him. He could say she was hideous, which he wouldn't even do if it was true, tell her she wasn't bad, which would confirm they were at the pinnacle of their intimacy at either end of the kitchen island, or he could tell her the truth.
"In my opinion, …your breathtaking" He had told her the truth, and he knew more than her it was literal also.
"There now that wasn't so hard was it? Just testing to see if those glasses of yours actually work." She smirked, and despite his lack of belief he was almost certain he had seen her blush before she turned away.
"It's raining pretty bad out" She stated, and he placed he walked around to stand next to her, standing tall as she leant against the furniture as they admired the twilight ruin of the city. Holding her glass out to his left she accepted it with both hands, bushing against his and they both felt it, that feeling you get when your body radiates heat, the warmth of your apprehension excelling yet melting away, the flickering of the heart in the blankness of the vacant mind.
"Yeah I think there's a storm coming on. Maybe you should get going before it gets too rough, or you cou." He stopped when his kettle clicked off and beeped, sending him walking away from her to finalise the brew.
"I could what?" She asked, suspecting but wanting confirmation.
Logan swallowed hard as he stirred, but hell, he had already told her about her effect on his oxygen intake. "You could always stay here tonight" He heard her place her glass down. "Spare room of course".
"Yeah okay, I don't wanna mess my hair up now do I?" she smirked looking out across the city still, the weather now starting to slam down with the wrath of fate. As rain hit hard on the windows of his penthouse they stood back to back. The air was a heavy mix of exposed feelings and relaxed comfort in them. Both clung to their receptacles like life lines, clung to their hope that tonight wasn't going to end the way they both feared.
Max fighting her demons, struggling with the fact that he seemed to accept her more than she accepted herself.
Logan forgetting the injury and horrid past experiences with women was left with the nagging feeling that no matter what happened the future was bleak, uncertain. Something was giving him a feeling of doubt, and it was not only a shadow over his feelings for the woman behind him, but over the very existence her struggled to fill with meaning.
Something was coming, and he knew, like the storm to the city, it was going to wash him clean and bleed him dry.
Stalking through the deserted streets was a battle lost before it was started. Rumandello had no idea how to go about finding 452, the ever elusive genetically engineered man with whom he had a dance with destiny awaiting. The drains flooded and the neon signs flickering on and off due to a lack of care, the city was even more of a mess than he had thought, he hadn't been to this part before. He had taken residence in numerous places around the out skirts, churches and such abandoned buildings, but he had never really ventured inside.
The fact he had one person to find was annoying. The fact he had a person whom he didn't know anything about who wanted to stay hidden and was trained to do so infuriated the short mutating individual. But then he thought about it, he had two things to do in this city. One was 452, but failing that there was Lydecker, whom could possibly lead him to 452, possibly. But even if he didn't he was a valuable piece of fun to be taken advantage of immediately, he would enjoy cutting him up.
He had a vague idea of which direction the hospital lay in from his experiences watching ambulances rushing into the city past his varying abodes, and continued on his way. The first lightning strike of the approaching storm cracked its thunder, as did the wicked grin on the hunters face.
The flash momentarily lit his penthouse as Max looked over Logan's shoulder as he typed in various codes and backdoor combinations to gain acess to admittances.
"Are you sure he's not dead? He sounded pretty fucked up to me what you describe" Said Logan as he pushed aside slightly to allow Max to type a name into the search engine Logan had hacked.
"If what I heard was true this guy has a problem with dying, he's still kickin' I'm sure of it" She finished typing and Logan clicked the appropriate entry numbers.
"Your right there he is. Lydecker, Donald. He sounds messed up, what the hell happened to him?" Logan took in the horrific details of the patient.
"That's what we're going to find out" Max told him, and he spun his chair around to look up at her.
"When?"
"Tomorrow, or something. He's not going anywhere fast. Anyway, I'm hungry again" She cocked her head at his look of curious disbelief.
"Max its past midnight, and I gathered you don't sleep much but I'm beat. Could you let your own personal chef pass out on you?" He laughed when a look of hurt crossed her features.
"Why should I?"
"I'll make you breakfast in the morning, what ever you want" He stood up and yet again they seemed closer than most people stood when they weren't 'like that' as he had been trying to make himself believe they weren't.
"I guess I could let it slip this once. But I never asked you to make me food."
His tired eyes shot open as he was already watching her walking away towards the spare room. Why did she keep playing with him, that meagre suggestion was going to play on his impressionable male mind all night. She could have just meant she didn't want him to cook food, just stick something together. Or… but he was knackered anyway, and he stumbled off to his room. Waltzing down the corridor he flopped on his large soft sleep inducing bed. The crack left by his door not being quite shut shone light into the dark room. The light moved, disappeared and then flickered, something was moving in between him and the source. Rolling over he looked to see that the source was the light bulb in the spare room, and the movement was that of Max. The door was almost directly opposite; it was a strange design feature he had often thought, bu then then erm…
Her back to him she pulled her top over her head, revealing a black lacy bra and toned mocha skin enveloping her back. Practically speaking in tongues Logan was incoherent, watching in silent awe as she stretched her arms above her head, now standing sideways to him. Her flicked back, slipping down her neck likeblack water over chocolate, her lithe feminine curves driving him insane. Her bust drew his attention, and her toned stomach, ah hell. He rolled over, it was too much to stand. Trying to clear his mind he dropped from the struggle a few minutes later, falling into a deep vivid dream state. Looking through the gap in her door she observed his fully clothed state all over his bed. Walking in her underwear through to his room she pulled a blanket over him and took his glasses off. She knew he had seen her, and was glad she had worn the 'spicy number' as OC had put it. Looking down at him she noticed small things about him, and things about the room she had remembered as blurs, faded less interesting aspects of that night she had spent with the figure sprawled out beneath her. Seeing his innocent vulnerable state made her feel calm, at peace. Things receded back into their sordid little holes to leave her be, and she wasn't sure how she felt about feeling. She wasn't meant to be emotional, but tonight she had tried to be open with him, tried her best not to obey the built in urges to run at the slightest sign of him mirroring how she felt about him.
It had worked to her best guess, she had told him that his opinion mattered to her, which had taken some guts even for her, and confirmed that he wasn't blind, to which she smirked. Overall she was happy with it all, her little flirting and the business aspect. She would think about Lydecker tomorrow, for now she silently moved away from his sleeping form, her admiration for him having grown considerably, and she was sure that the fact he hadn't lay there staring at her blatantly meant something, whatever it meant she thought as she slipped into her bed after shutting the door, she liked how it made her feel to know it.
