Summary: What if Max and the Flock had never gotten "the talk"? What is the outcome of an adolescence without an adult and knowledge of societal norms?


Chapter Fifteen: Someone So Beautiful

I ran my hands through my scalp in the shower, rubbing some soap into it, thinking about how much Max could piss me off sometimes, like she had just done downstairs. And she couldn't even tell how irritating she was being either. Its amazing, isn't it? Max is amazing, I thought incredulously. On so many different levels.

She could be so fucking insensitive. Its amazing. How dense can you get..? Its almost as if she didn't have that inherently human capability in her to see through subtlety. Man, she certainly was.. huh, amazing, on so many levels. Next to that body, I mean..

I closed my eyes shut in frustration. The water droplets weakly streaming out from the shower head ran down the folds on my eyes and seeped through the long dark eyelashes that Gassers nor Angel had. Man, what was my issue? I don't even know how or why that mental image found its way into my brain.

Huh. No, well thats sort of a lie. I sort of knew. Afterall, the image of her sitting on the forest floor yesterday.. it'd been running through me nonstop, constantly. I couldn't look at her without thinking of her pulling one of those... to the side.. and it bouncing back.. I felt a tingling sensation down below and mentally groaned.

Before, it had been confusing. Before, it had been scary--something unknown.

But now, this was just getting to be annoying.

It wasn't debilitating anymore, but just inconvenient.

The water still running down me, I turned to the side to lean my hand against the side of the shower. My fingers didn't even tremble against the cool, wet, white shower tiles as I began to go up and down. I looked down and watched my fingers slide up and down.. I found myself slowing down as I did it, watching my fingers send pleasure through my bones. It stopped feeling so weird.. I stopped feeling bad, guilty, I dont know what it was that I was feeling before, but I know that its stopped. It was irritating at times, uncomfortable, inconvenient frequently, but god it felt so damn good.

Leaning against the wall, the water still beating down on my hard back, I started to go faster, willing those images of Max to come riding back into my mind, thinking of her when she was flying that day first day we picnicked, thinking of her hands on me. I released with a shudder, turning around and slumping against the wall. Whipping my wet hair from my face towards the back of my neck, I breathed heavily against the hot impact of what had just flown through me.

Max was still fresh on my mind. I didn't know why I had been thinking about her in this way so frequently these days, but all I knew is that.. I wanted to see more.. I wanted her more. It felt like a weird, primal instinct. Maybe it was the 2% bird part of me. But it was.. bad, for some reason. Somewhere deep inside me, it felt like I should be restraining myself. That all that was coming over me, all these strange, incredible urges, that I should be resisting them.

... But why?

I reached over and turned off the water, the water dripping from the broken, and then mended, shower head slowly coming to a halt as I stepped out of the tub I had been standing in, successfully staining the bathroom doormat wet with water. It didn't matter though, Max didn't use this bathroom and so couldn't complain. Iggy and Gaz would have to deal with it, cause I couldn't find my towel. I'd probably thrown it into the dryer this morning and forgotten to take it out after I did the last load, the one with all of my messed-up sheets.

I walked over to the mirror sitting above the sink, still dripping all over the floor, clad in my birthday suit. I could only see my head down to my middle torso. I whipped my hair back on my head again and looked at myself in the mirror. For the first time, I really assessed myself. As a personality, no, but as a person, aesthetically oriented. As... a guy. The same way that Max.. was.. a girl.

It was pretty amazing.. its like I had never actually known she was one until a few months ago. I'm sure she had always flipped her hair in the same way. I'm sure her skin had always been that soft. I'm sure her eyes had always been that cute when they crinkled up as she laughed. I'm sure that she had always been like that, cause I'd always been there. I'd always noticed those things.. but I'd never actually.. really.. noticed. I'm sure her body had always been be full of hidden secrets, but only now it was truly so tantalizing. Its like I just never had noticed. Never.. cared. It had never mattered to me.. until now.

Now it mattered that her breasts looked round and soft, that her eyes made me feel weird things when she sent me certain looks. It mattered to me when she'd stare just a second longer at me. It mattered when she would accidentally brush up against me. I was hypersensitive of anything and everything that she did, and it was killing me.

Life was so much easier back when stuff like this didn't happen, I thought wearily, thinking back to what I had just done in the shower.

It was all trouble now. Think about Max for a second, think about her body the next, and then your pants start getting too tight for you to breath in. Messy and irritable, what else?

I needed to get away from her. All I was doing was giving her trouble anyway, although in my defense, she was the one butting into all this shit. She was so beautiful, she didn't deserve this, she didn't need this.

No, I was wrong. She wasn't a girl. Back when we were younger and watched television, Max didn't look a thing like those grown-up woman on tv. But now she did. She was a woman.

I looked back up into the mirror, deep into my eyes. I wonder what she saw when she looked at them. Did she see everything that I saw in her eyes? Could she read my face the way that I could read hers? Did she even really care about me? That I was a guy?

Soon, I'd be a.. a, man, I dangerously thought. It was a word, said timidly in my mind, but said nonetheless. I don't look as similar to a kid now than I do a grown-up. I examined my face thoroughly. I think I needed to, whatsthe-word? Shave. Thats what Jeb did. I think Iggy needs to too.. more than I do, actually. Absentmindedly, I wondered why this stuff wasn't happening to Iggy. Knowing him, I'm sure that if it was happening, we'd know by now.

I would go into Jeb's old room and get the black thing he'd plug into the wall every morning out, but I didn't want to touch that bastard's stuff. Its gross. That man is nothing to us now.. We can take care of ourselves.. and Max.. I can't believe she had another dream about him the night before yesterday. That in itself disappoints me, and she had seemed so distraught.. She didn't need him. If she needed someone to rely on.. that could be me, or so I dared to believe. Maybe I'd go out and get something to shave the facial hair off with today, if I could find anything.

I looked in the mirror, trying to see a man. Jeb was an adult, he was someone to rely on, he was an adult, a man. I scoffed. Not a very dependable one, apparently. I wouldn't be like that. But the person I saw staring back at me paled in comparison to the memory I had of Jeb. The boy looking back at me looked thin and tense, insecure, wet and cold. He looked like a child, a pathetic excuse of an adult, ill-groomed and shivering. His shoulders were thin, the muscles on his biceps visible, but not well established. I looked down to my forearms, bringing it up to my eye level as I clenched my fist.

Weak, this was weak. I needed to work harder.. I needed to stop making Max worry more. She shouldn't have to worry about me, of all people. Not me. She needed to stop being such a dumbass sometimes. She was Maximum Ride, smart, intelligent, beautiful. But why was she so dumb sometimes. I sighed, turning around to lean against the white bathroom sink of the boy's washroom, the cupboard below slowly hitting the cool bare skin of my buttocks.

I lazily put on a pair of loose, baggy, dark pajama pants over some boxers and a white t-shirt over my head. I put my hand on the doorknob, ready to turn it, but took my hand back.

I wanted to see something.

A few seconds later, I walked out into the hallway, spotting Max and walking towards her casually. I smirked as I saw her eyes travel down me.

"Whatcha lookin' at?" I asked her quietly as I walked past her. I could practically feel her indignant blush fuming behind me. She probably looked like a tomato right now, having been caught in the act.

I stepped into my room, throwing the white shirt that had been bunched up in my hand over a desk chair. I threw myself onto my bed, staring up at the ceiling and smirking.

So, I wasn't so abnormal. It worked both ways. Max liked looking at me, and I liked looking at her, and both ways, it was so hard to hide it. I'd figure out this stuff after I came back. Hopefully I'd know more by then.

I stretched before I got up and went down to the kitchen to pick up something to eat and the credit card before I left. First though, I went down to the basement and snuck my laundry back up to my room. Found my towel in that pile, and changed into a t-shirt. Max would definitely kill me for not wearing a shirt once she got over that phase where her face gets all red. Though she's often rather disoriented afterwards. I shrugged absentmindedly in retaliation before I stepped out to walk down the stairs to the kitchen.

Igs was watching tv, a rerun of some football game, and was making Gazzy dictate all of the runs to him play by play. He was groaning and shouting enthusiastically as Gazzy described all of the plays to him and kept track of the scores, making sure to cite out any colorful words and replace them with more ridiculous euphemisms to avoid getting smacked.

I smirked as I swiveled my head away from him, 45 degrees to see Max around the kitchen counter. The list she and Iggy had made for me, full of stuff to buy, was sitting on the counter her back was facing. She had gotten the credit card out and put it near the list. I went over to the kitchen counter and sat across from her turned back, waiting for her to notice me. She knew I was there, she was just taking her sweet time to give me some attention.

At long last, or perhaps just a few minutes, she turned around, her face purposefully cleared of any restless emotions to look at me apathetically.

"You goin' out now?" she asked over-casually, her arms adorned with large pink rubber gloves.

I glanced at her for a moment, squinting, and then moved my gaze to observe the area to her left. Light drops were splattering against the kitchen window. I looked up a bit higher to assess the sky. Yup, rain. And it looked like it had just been starting to fall. It'd get worse. I looked back to Max.

She was just delaying my leaving and she knew perfectly well of the crappy weather. Ah well. Its not that I particularly cared, it's just that I'd have to go do this shit eventually anyway. She had been subtly asking me if I still planned on going out. I mulled it over for just a second, but the fact of the matter was that the fridge was pretty empty right now, and it was a responsibility to keep those kids from being malnourished.

"Yeah.. just gimme something to eat and then I'll get ready," I replied apathetically.

She shrugged at my obvious ignorance of the crap weather, probably sort of peeved that I didn't take her oh-so incredibly subtle suggestion into any consideration whatsoever. Well, whatever; my problem, not hers.

She turned around and started putting something together. Cold-cut, I was guessing. She was crap in the kitchen. I absentmindedly wondered about whether or not I should've just done it myself, but changed my mind. Whatever, foods' food, regardless of how.. uh.. awful, it is.

I looked at the window to note larger splatters hitting the pane now. The light and scattered drizzles turning into a fledging shower, the thick drops making a drum beat against the weak-willed, but experienced, glass piece.

Max slid me a plate with a bag of wonderbread sitting on top of it along with a knife and some butter. So it wasn't cold cut, it was just a pile of packaged stuff pulled out of the fridge that she hadn't even bothered to prepare. Absentmindedly I realized that I probably wouldnt've wanted her to prepare it anyway. How could someone mess up buttering bread? No idea, but Max can do it. Amazing, yes, beautiful, yes, but definitely no cook.

I shrugged, took it, and got to work. Iggy suddenly turned around, swinging his hand over the back of our living room couch and said to me, "oh and for the bread on the list, cross it out and write a note. That wonderbread sucks, get some potato, no wheat," he specified. I grunted a compliant response as I buttered and downed my 5th piece of bread. It was creepy how much that blind kid could tell.. yaknow, being blind and all.

I went upstairs and changed into some clothes for going out, throwing a windbreaker over my back before I went back down and grabbed the list and the card, kissing Angel on the forehead before heading out the door into the dark, rainy skies over the Colorado mountain tops.

Angel had pouted an endearing grimace when I had kissed her, still grumpy for me being irritable this morning, but I'd make it up to her when I went into town. She had abruptly and stubbornly walked away from me after I had done that, crossing her small 4-year old arms cutely and stomping up the stairs.

I was just about to head out the door after watching her walk away from me, a tiny smile on my face at her antics, but right as I was about to slam the door shut behind me to prevent any rain from splattering into the house, I felt tiny eyes on my back and abruptly turned around to spot Max staring at me leave.

She was taken aback by my sudden pointed eye contact, as I had suddenly stopped in my tracks and turned around to look at her. The soles of my shoes that had already gotten quite wet and rather muddy, left imprints on the multi-tiled floor as I walked back towards her.

With her arms adorned with large pink rubber gloves (she had been cleaning the racks in the ovens for Iggy, since he had put meat on the list and we needed a clean oven), she curiously watched me walk towards her. I could see a miniscule vein twitch in her forehead as I walked forward, leaving wet, muddy footsteps on the floor. Luckily, I didn't have to be here to clean up the footprints I was leaving. And at least I wasn't going into the carpeted den a few feet away from the kitchen, where Gazzy and Iggy were hanging out. Then she'd definitely throw a fit.

Walking around the corner, I quickly brought my hand around her head to caress her hair, and then shoved it towards me, pushing her forehead against my lips. I closed my eyes for a moment, relishing in the feeling. I could feel her forehead wrinkling in confusion tight against me, her hands still raised up over the sink in the middle of the kitchen counter, but I kept holding her for just one more moment. Finally, I walked away without a word. The door slammed shut behind me as I stepped outside into the pouring rain. I saw Gazzy cock his eyebrow weirdly at what I had just done through the windows. I felt like a weird psuedo-version of Jeb now. And I knew Max was confused.

I really had to stop giving in to those weird, incredible urges.

Sorry for the epically short chapter... I'm just preparing myself to write something that I.. dont really want to write.

But sorry that I didn't add the extra in Max's POV at the end of the chapter. I didn't really have time and I wasn't really sure how to go about it smoothly. But don't worry, I'll make it up to you guys soon.

But, say hello to plot progression coming with the next chapters. Its like hitting a tidal wave thats about to sink.

Its ultra important, something not all of you may be happy with (heck, i'm not happy with what i have to write), but, once again, necessary.

Encouragement would help support me for that ePic task.. so please review! =( I hope I make it good, cause it can go one way or another. If its bad.. then it'll be really, really, really bad. =(

Aah.. I hope I make it good.. __

Survey:

What song do you think would describe this story? Like the soundtrack for it. (I know how horribly corny that sounds, but I dunno..)

I've been thinking about it, but I'm not too sure. What do you guys think? I really can't get a feel for this story, since you know--its totally different since I'm actually writing it, rather than just reading it. And I'm a newbie and have never written one before this, so I'm curious as to what the feel of it is to my audience. =)

Please give me your opinions/suggestions! I'd love to hear back!! It'd be cool to check out some of the music you guys suggest too!! =DD

please review =) happy, well-informed me = faster updates! (and no, i'm not lying here. last week i literally updated in 2-day intervals because the amount of feedback i was getting was so plentiful).