Through the Eyes of a Servant | Chapter 4 | by: Rachel / Chapter posted June 18, 2010.

AU | Max/Fang | PG / 3,695 words

Max/Fang - 17 | Iggy - 19 | Nudge - 16 | Gazzy - 14 | Angel - 13 / The original age ranges have been changed.

When Max accepts a job as a maid in Fang's household, will it be love at first sight? Or will anything and everything come between them?

The idea for this story is my own, and no one else's. Everything else belongs to James Patterson -although I will be next in line for the throne when he retires xD-. I made no money writing this story, I simply write for reviews.

Fang blinked and rubbed his eyelids, slowly sitting up in the four-poster bed. It was later than he usually woke up, nine thirty-two. The light spilled through the window and into his tired eyes, and he yawned and fell back on the pillows groggily.

His eyes widened and he sat up again as he realized that Max was already there. Somewhere in his house, dusting something or other or fluffing a pillow or two. He'd been waiting for her to get there late into the night, passing out around four in the morning.

Today was going to be a very important day. He had given it a lot of thought. It was dangerous, even for her very life, to be around him, and she had no idea, but he'd do anything to protect her, should it come to that. She was the girl he had decided he wanted to be with.

So he had decided to just ask her out and get it over with. If she rejected him, that was fine, and she had every right to. He'd been a jerk, and a snooping jerk, using Angel's power to find out everything he could about her. At least she wasn't a freak with wings like he was.

Nevertheless, it wasn't just her mother's death that she'd been hiding. Angel couldn't find out anything more, but she told Fang that Max was trying desperately hard to forget whatever it was. Yes, she was hiding something, alright.

He stretched out his wings with a groan as they peeled off his back. He had to keep them hidden all day. His mother hated them, resented them in every way, that her special little son wasn't perfect. The servants couldn't know, and it was only in the family. He couldn't even go swimming. Ever. He hadn't been swimming once in his life. And they had a huge pool out back.

"Wow, it's just not your decade," a voice behind him remarked, and he jumped a foot off the bed and crashed against the nightstand. He groaned and looked up. Angel peered off the bed at him, grinning cheerily. "Hi, Fang!"

"Angel?" he blinked lazily, three Angel's swimming around his head. "What are you doing here? Stay out of my head!"

"Can't help it!" she complained. "Your thoughts are loud. All I hear is Max this and Max that, don't you have a life? If you want to ask her out, just ask her! And put a shirt on!"

"What? Oh, yeah." He walked over to the closet and grabbed a black shirt and a pair of black skinny jeans. He didn't even need to look. They were all the same, except for the design. The shirt he happened to be holding showed a cracked skull with emo hair. He turned invisible and slid the shirt on.

"Ugh, you know I hate it when you do that!" she complained.

"I'm invisible!"

"But I can tell that you're changing! It's wrong."

"Then get out of my room." He reappeared and walked into the bathroom. She followed him and handed him his toothbrush pointedly.

"Fang, this is important! Max isn't one of those stupid Barbie dolls like Lissa or Brigid!"

"Thanks, don't hold back," he rolled his eyes.

"Whatever," she continued. "The point is that you can't screw this one up! You have to be nice to her, and you have to make yourself seem like a normal human instead of the mutant bird slash retard you are!"

"Again, don't hold back!" he was really frustrated now. All he wanted to do was ask Max out, but Angel was making a good point. He couldn't let her think he had wings, and he had to seem better than her first impression of him. "You're right," he gave in.

"I know I am," she said cheerfully. "Look, put on some deodorant or something. And comb your hair. And pop that zit."

"What!" he yelped as Angel cackled.

"Just kidding," she rolled her eyes and walked out of the room. Fang shook his head as he fell back on the bed and cursed into the pillows.

The warm summer air brushed against Nudge slightly as she walked out onto the front steps of the house and out into the garden. It was enormous, stretching through most of the side yard with gardeners running along here and there. There was a small stream that flowed through the property, a white gazebo in the center, and more flowers than Fang had emo T-shirts.

She stepped around the side and crossed the stepping stones into the garden, stopping here and there to admire a certain rose or sit lazily on a bench. There wasn't much to do, stuck in a house where you couldn't have friends or even other teenagers over. She had always been homeschooled like Angel and Fang, and there simply weren't male servants her age.

She looked out to the rest of the world outside her cage, the world behind that wrought-iron fence. To be honest, she was somewhat comfortable in her life where she got every dress she wanted, every pair of shoes, anything she wanted, so she probably wouldn't ever escape the house. But then, it was her choice in two years' time.

But just there, behind the fence and with no idea where he was going, was a pale boy with strawberry blonde hair. Nudge's heartbeat quickened as she realized that it was the one from the other day, Max's brother. Iggy. But what was he doing here?

"Iggy," she called, getting off the bench. "Iggy!" she repeated, running across the front lawn and down the driveway.

"…Nudge?" he asked uncertainly. "Man, I didn't think I walked this far. If I'm here, then I'm halfway across town."

"Um, well, now that you're here, maybe, do you want to come in? I mean, I've never really had a guy over here, because my mom is so strict and all, actually I've never had anyone over here, my mom wouldn't even let me have a goldfish, or even an imaginary friend, only my sister Angel,"

"I would love to come in!" he yelled over the noise. She closed her mouth and blinked up at him. "Just as long as you don't keep talking. Maybe I can find Max and figure out what time it is and maybe call my dad."

"Great!" she said, and she hoped she didn't sound too eager. For some reason, she really liked him, and she liked spending time with him, even though he was blind. She didn't look on him as handicapped. She had actually been looking forward to seeing him again. "I'll take you inside now," she said lamely, and grabbed his arm, dragging him along with her.

I'm usually a lot more dignified than this, she thought in despair. What if he thinks I'm uncool? Whenever I'm around him I always say way too much…I'm such a blabbermouth! She dragged him inside and was relieved to see that no one else was in the main hall. If her mother caught her, she'd be dead.

For once, Iggy didn't think about Ella. He'd had enough of feeling guilty. Just for today, maybe he'd let her go and have a little fun with the life that hadn't been in the least enjoyable. Just for today, he'd relax and go with the flow, see why Nudge had been popping into his mind for the last few days.

She led him past the main hallway and up the stairs, careful not to disturb anyone. It was still early in the morning, so her mother was probably still in her room or in the shower, getting ready for the day in some way. She led Iggy down the long hallway and into her room at the end.

If Iggy could've seen it, his jaw would have dropped to the floor. The very room echoed. A huge four-poster bed was on the wall to the left, with a huge canopy of silks and satins, a waterfall of pillows and the fluffiest bedspread you ever saw.

But it didn't end there. To the right, a huge vanity slash personal salon was standing, shelves of makeup resting next to it. In the enormous walk-in closet, there was a huge row of shelves in the middle just for the high-heeled shoes, with dress after dress –no plaid, of course- and every designer name you could think of.

"Are we in your room?" He asked curiously, marveling at the room, room, room echo as his voice bounced off the walls.

"Yup," she answered, flopping onto the bed. "It's the only place in the house where no one bothers me. My mom won't even let me off the grounds. I've been here pretty much forever. I get my clothes made for me."

"Still," he said in awe, "Your house…it's not a box! You have room to move, servants, gourmet food, you don't have to duck under the door…seriously. I think you're pretty lucky."

She shook her head. She should have known that he'd be just another worthless guy who didn't see what a prison the big house really was. He believed that she was a regular princess. "You don't understand," she said quietly. "I'm just as blind to what it's like outside of here as you are. It's more disabling than a reward. I hate it here."

"Nudge, I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that for me, it'd be a step up. Pretty much wherever I am is a prison. I just don't want to worry anymore." He walked over and sat down next to her on the bed with accuracy that she marveled at.

"Every day, I wake up and wonder if Max and my dad are going to fight. She scares out younger brother, Gazzy, and she goes on daily rampages. I don't blame her. She loved our mom a lot. But I don't want to worry about fights, or money for food, or if my dad will ever find a job. Hell, I'm only nineteen. I don't need that."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. He's gone through so much…I never really knew that. So he's nineteen…is that too old for me? Max and Fang are the same age…although Brigid was only fifteen, and Fang sort of dated her…

"Nudge?"

Her head snapped up. "Huh? What?"

"I just said that it's okay. I don't really want people to feel sorry for me. Just to understand."

She never had time to answer. She heard footsteps coming from down the hall, sharp, pointed footsteps that could only belong to her mother. Her eyes widened and she started to have a panic attack. Her mother couldn't find him here, certainly not a boy, most definetly not a poor guy, and absolutely not Max's brother.

She grabbed Iggy's arm, and before he could protest, she shoved him into the closet, shut the doors quickly, turned off the light and grabbed a magazine. She threw herself onto the bed and opened to a random page, all done in the course of three seconds. When the door opened, it was if Iggy had never entered the room.

Something about the way Nudge had shoved Iggy into the closet told him that he shouldn't come out or make a sound, so he sat and waited. He heard the bedroom door open, and footsteps. There was really no use in peeking through the crack in the door.

"Nudge, I need to ask you something…private…" he heard a voice. It had to be her mother. He pressed his ear to the door and tried not to breathe as he listened. "Ever since Brigid was fired-"

"You mean, ever since you fired her," Nudge said pointedly. "You should really let him have a life. What do you want him to be, gay?"

"You watch your mouth, young lady," her mother snapped. "Dating the maids is strictly against the rules. They'll get caught up in flirting and such, and find no time for their work. They'll start acting like silly little children, totally irresponsible."

"Then who should he date?" Nudge fired back. "You won't let us go out of this house, Mom! We'll never meet anyone decent to go out with until we're forty, at this rate! I'm sixteen and I have no friends. I don't know anyone from outside your little prison!"

"That's not fair! You know what happened to Fang when he was only two years old, and you know how he had to pay for it! If anyone finds out…you know…then we'll be swamped with people, and I will not let the same thing happen to you! That is final, young lady!"

Nudge stood up on the other side of the door and glared at her mother. "That's not fair! I don't care if it happens to me! Anything to get out of this house of horrors!"

"You are the only normal child left, Nudge, and I will not let anything happen to you. Believe it or not, you were never considered adopted. I love you the same as I love Fang and Angel, and vice versa. You know that's not the point!"

"Then what is?" Nudge asked blankly. She'd had enough of fighting with her mother time and time again. She didn't want to be protected anymore; she wanted to have her own life. And one thing was for sure – she had to escape.

"I want to know if Fang's seeing anyone. You know as well as I do that if anyone knows his secret, there'll be hell to pay. You think some girl won't give him up for money? Well she will! So tell me, is there anyone here, anyone at all, that he could possibly like?"

"No," Nudge lied through her teeth. "It's been three days since you drove Brigid out. How fast do you think he works?"

That seemed to be enough for her. She walked from the room, leaving Nudge alone once again. Iggy crawled out of the closet and glared at her, brushing the dust off his hair. "You have a lot of explaining to do," he growled. "Start at the beginning."

While Iggy and Nudge were sneaking through the front door, Max had been in one of the guest bedrooms changing the linens and fluffing pillows. As she finished placing the last pillow on top of the great pillow pyramid –not as extravagant as Nudge's, of course- she was about to leave when she ran headlong into Fang.

"I'm s-sorry," she stammered as she looked up at him, both of them doing an awkward shuffle before she grabbed his shoulders and held him in place while maneuvering around him.

"Wait!" he grabbed her shoulder and gulped nervously as he turned her around. "Um, I need to ask you something."

"Well, whatever it is, make it quick. I have lots of dusting and pillow-fluffing to do," she rolled her eyes. She still hated her job with a passion, even if she did think that Fang was kind of cute.

"Uh, I…uh…well…I was going to ask you…to….make my bed?" He winced internally but managed to keep a straight face.

"Make your bed?" she repeated in disbelief. "God, Fang, how lazy are you?" Nevertheless, she brushed past him and walked down the hall to his room. When she turned the corner and opened the door, she walked inside, only to find the bed already made.

"Uh…one of the other servants must have done that," he said slowly. She raised an eyebrow and walked towards him, backing him into the wall.

"You know, Fang…if there's something you want to say, just say it." She grinned mischievously up at him. She was so close…

"Yeah. I think there's a toilet on the first floor that needs scrubbing," he smirked, and ducked out of the room.

"So, let me get this straight," Iggy said as he tried to process the information he'd just been given. "Your little sister can read minds? How the hell did that happen? Is she from the planet Krypton, or has she been playing in toxic waste? Did she take steroids as a child? God, tell me something to make it all make sense."

"I can't," she sighed. "It was a surprise to us. Fang just tells people that she was born with it, but it's not the truth. She was abducted when she was a kid and experimented on. Something they did allowed her to read minds."

Iggy's thoughts immediately flew to Max and how she'd been abducted as a kid and taken to a horrible place. The kind where they experimented on humans, animals, and sometimes combined both into a whole new kind of person. DNA was blended into something it wasn't meant to be until the person just wasn't human anymore. Max had been lucky, as weird as it was to say it.

"Sometimes I feel like the only normal one in my family," Nudge admitted. "It isn't always a good thing. My mom's always trying to protect me from 'what's out there and trying to get me'. I just want to be a normal teenager without any psychotic control freak in my family."

"I know what you mean," Iggy answered. "Between Max and Gazzy, I'm always the normal one. I can't go to college, and I work at a gas station. I'm a loser with no friends and no life."

"It's not easy when your sibling has wings," they both said at the same time, then stared at each other. Neither one of them had meant to speak, and they certainly hadn't been prepared for the other to say the same thing. "Start talking," they both commanded.

"No, you go first this time," Nudge shook her head. "I gotta hear this."

Max rounded the corner to see if Nudge's room needed cleaning. This time of day, she was usually making her rounds. The poor kid. She was so bored that she'd be willing to do a servant's work –not that her mother would let her- to rid herself of the boredom. Even Max felt sorry for her.

She opened the door and came face to face with Nudge and Iggy sitting on the bed and chatting. They looked surprised, like she'd just walked in on them making out or something. Her eyes narrowed. The only explanation was for them to be sneaking around together.

"Alright, you guys. Nudge, your mom won't even let you date. And Iggy, you have a-"

"Condition, I know," Iggy interrupted her. "Nudge is perfectly okay with me being blind." He shook his head at her behind Nudge's back. Clearly he didn't want her to know that he already had a girlfriend. Not like Max was going to tell on him.

"What are you doing?" Max asked tiredly. "You know if you get caught your mom will just have something more to yell at you for, Nudge. It's not like you need that."

But Nudge wasn't concentrating on what Max had to say. Her eyes were round when she pointed to Max. "You have wings!" she almost yelled. Iggy clapped a hand over her mouth. "Not so loud!" he hissed. "Do you want the whole house to know?"

"Stip. Now," Nudge ordered. Max gave her a look of disbelief. "Oh, you have a bra on, right?" she questioned. "Just, like, undo your zipper. I just want to see your wings." Max glanced at Iggy. "He's blind!" Nudge cried. "Just undo the zipper!"

"Okay, okay!" Max gave in and unzipped the dress, and turned around, groaning as her wings came out of the dress. They were tawny brown and white speckled, stretching a good thirteen or fourteen feet across. Nudge nodded approvingly.

"Alrighty, well, this has been fun," Max said, folding her wings back in and zipping up her dress. "Iggy, I'll get you for this later. And Nudge, if you tell anyone about this, you're dead, I don't care how much your mom's paying me." And she left the room without a backward glance.

She trudged down the hall tiredly. This was just going to get worse with Nudge knowing her secret, because she couldn't keep a secret if you chained her to a deaf guy in a room alone for three months. Someone in the house was going to figure out that she had wings soon enough, that someone being her boss.

Now that it was lunchtime, everyone was gathering on the other side of the house to prepare the food for her majesty the queen.

Her luck only got worse as she ran into Fang on the stairs. He opened his mouth, but she stopped him. "Look, Fang, I don't really have time to talk to you about anything. You all want to know everything about me? Well, now you do. You can go ask Nudge anything about me, she'll tell you it all." She brushed past him, about to cry.

Fang wasn't nearly stupid enough to take her seriously, or to think that nothing was wrong. If he didn't get the guts to ask her now, he never would. And he knew it might not have been the best time, but it was now or never. So he grabbed her arm and pulled her back around, ignoring her watery eyes.

"Then I'll make this as quick as I possibly can. Look, Max…I like you." He prepared himself for the worst, for Max to turn him down or spit in his face or slap him, anything. He didn't expect for her to every say that maybe she felt the same way.

He was wrong.

She was silent. "…I like you, too," she said shyly after a while. A weight was lifted off his chest, and for a moment, he almost smiled. He was glad that everyone else was on the other side of the house, and therefore couldn't hear this little exchange.

"Max…do you want to go on a date with me?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "Yes, I do." She turned away and continued walking down the stairs, biting her lip to hide her growing smile.

"I'll pick you up at six," he called after her.

I already have the next chapter planned out. It's gonna be a lot better, probably not what you'd expect. Again, sorry for the lack of updates recently/any POV mistakes -again, writing in the third person sucks-.

My computer's had a lot of problems lately D: We had around eight hundred viruses when we got it fixed a few days ago. Then my dad's laptop crashed, and we lost all internet connection on my stepmom's. So it just recently got fixed, in other words. I'll probably be getting a new laptop soon...until then, don't fail me, damn computer! *shakes fist*

So please, don't forget to leave a review!

~Rachel