Breaking Bread

By Asynca

Alex wouldn't exactly have called himself unpopular in high school. He always had plenty of friends, even a couple of girlfriends even if he wasn't that into them.

Uni was a whole different kettle of fish. He'd done the first year of electrical engineering in Chicago, made exactly zero friends and spent a lot of quality time with Chinese take away and several old Apple Macs he was gutting turning into weird PC-Mac Franken-Apples. What he'd essentially created was this amazing synergy between the old and the new, the Apple and the PC, the uncool and the cool… and he'd also been given a 'C' with the comment, 'Alex. No'. Those idiots didn't know genius when they were staring into the perfectly restored cathode ray tube screen of it.

That was when he'd decided to transfer to England, where hot British girls would think his generic American accent was 'cute'.

Actually, that was the first thing Sam had ever said to him. He'd been holding up the line in the cafeteria, trying to explain to a very blank face exactly what was in a Reuben when a bubbly Asian girl had leaned over to him. She was chewing gum, and she was close enough that he could smell it on her breath. "Cute accent," she had said. It had taken him a second to realize she was being sarcastic, because she also had a US accent. They'd quickly become friends, and that's when he'd been introduce to Sam's best friend, the elusive Lara Croft.

Fuck, she was hot. Not in a Sam way, though. Sam could pull off the most scandalous outfit and get away with the most outrageous behaviour and, sure, she was hot, but she was US hot. Lara was British hot. 'Glasses-girl' hot, without the glasses. She was smart. She was smart enough to be in engineering. She would have made a great electrical engineer, Alex thought, if she'd been exposed enough to the subject to have discovered how fascinating it was.

Alex was pretty good looking, he thought. He knew he was no David Beckham, but girls batted their eyelashes it him from time to time and on the days he forgot to shave there was probably a rugged attractiveness to him.

So when Lara invited him to her twentieth despite the fact they weren't that close, boy was he psyched for it. He even set an alarm on his hybrid clock-mirror (a personal invention) to remind him not to shave. He'd been working for a straight week on her present, too.

When he got to the restaurant –Japanese, of course, Lara had some weird thing about Japanese stuff – he was surprised and disappointed to see that Lara had invited something like ten to twelve other people including two or three other boys. Lara was dressed up, though, which made it all worth it. Sam must have had somehow managed to get her into a dress, because there was no way she'd have voluntarily worn one. He made sure he sat across from her so he could weave his way into her conversations (and not at all so he could look down the gaping neckline of that dress).

Sam sat next to him, and her dress was so short he could see the gap at the top of her thighs. It was distracting, especially since he was here for Lara.

"Uh, don't we need to put napkins in our laps?" he asked to no one in particular.

"No," Lara said, and he felt like a total idiot. "They don't do that in Japan. You can use a fork if you're no good with chopsticks."

Beside him, Sam was moving in on the guy sitting on the far side of her. He looked far more the David Beckham-type and far more interested in taking advantage of her short dress than Alex was.

When it was time to open presents, Lara spent a good five minutes uncomfortably complaining she'd told everyone not to buy her things before she actually opened a single one. He hadn't been sure how close Lara was with this large number of people, but judging by the number of scented candles, gift cards and spa-packs, probably not that close. It made him feel really confident about the moment when Lara would open his present.

It was in a tiny little box. She picked it up and checked the tag, looking suspiciously at him with a very slight smile. "What could this be?" she asked him. He gestured at her to open it as coolly as he could, despite the fact he wanted to jump out and down and rave about it. She eventually managed to get past all the ribbons and took out Alex's greatest creation yet: a Frankenpod.

Lara squinted at it. "Uh, it's very nice," she said, but she looked uncomfortable. "What is it?"

This was Alex's opportunity to gush. "Well, you know how you were saying that you hate the fact that you can't sync your iTunes music onto a non-standard iPod? Well," he said, leaning forward, "I'll spare you the technobabble, but I took the circuitry out of the generic device and cracked open a first-generation iPod." He paused. "Actually their technology is still pretty impressive, even by today's standards. Anyway, I used some bridges I created myself to patch them through and," he gestured at the small device, "tada! Now you have a hacked mp3 player that functions like PC but has the guts of an iPod and works perfectly with iTunes. Pretty cool, huh?"

She didn't look as impressed as he had expected her to. He'd even painted the thing a nice gun-metal grey so it matched her MacBook, but she didn't notice. "Thanks," she said. At least that sounded genuine, which rescued Alex's mood a little. "You must have put a lot of work into this. I appreciate it."

He then got an across-the-table hug out of it.

Last was Sam's present. She'd been dancing around the table beside him and had even been neglecting Football Jock for at least ten minutes. Her box was bigger than Alex's, and had a big Fragile sticker on it.

"Open it!" Sam was practically dying with excitement.

Lara did. Inside was some old shell bracelet thing which looked like it might fall apart at any minute. Not that Alex really understood any of that girl stuff, but it was also kind of ugly.

Lara swallowed with emotion when she saw it, and probably not because it was hideously ugly. Looking up at Sam like she couldn't believe it, her eyes glistened. "Sam, is this what I think it is?" she asked, sounding at any moment like she might burst into tears.

Sam just looked smug. "You tell me, Ms. Archaeologist."

Lara used the fingertips on both hands to delicately lift it from the box and hold it up to the light. She turned it over. "Oh, God," she said, looking up at Sam again and then hungrily back at the old bracelet in her hands. "It is! It's from the Kobun period, isn't it?" She swallowed again before speaking in hushed tones. "Can you even imagine the people who would have worn this, fifteen hundred years ago?" She shook her head and then looked incredulously at Sam. "You're just brilliant. How did you even get this?"

Sam smiled indulgently and tapped her nose. "Come here."

Lara very carefully put the treasured object down and rushed around the table to give Sam a long, firm hug. Sam was giggling. "Lara," she said in a strained voice. "You're suffocating me."

"I can't help it! I'm just so happy!"

Alex had to admit that while it was kind of endearing watching Lara get all choked up about an old bracelet, it was wasted on Sam. What was Sam going to get out of it? She was already best friends with Lara. She could have at least waited until Lara's actual birthday tomorrow and let him bask in the glory of creating new technology especially for Lara.

Gift time over, Sam got stuck straight back into Football boy and Lara laughed politely at various people's (unfunny, in Alex's opinion) jokes and pushed her food around the plate.

To be honest, Alex was pushing his food around, too. He'd ordered something without knowing what it was and it clearly had wheat in it.

Lara noticed. "Don't like Japanese food?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "Nah, I love it. It just doesn't love me." He patted his stomach. "I'm coeliac."

Lara looked alarmed. "Oh!" she said. "Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry. Why didn't you say? We could have ordered you something that you could eat." In the middle of actually saying that, she looked down at her fish-rice thing. "Would you like some of mine?" she said. "I'm really not all that hungry."

"On your birthday?" he said, absolutely delighted to be having an actual conversation with her, one-on-one. "That's tragic. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to stuff yourself full of junk food and alcohol and pass out."

She smiled. "Well. I suppose I'm tragic then."

He panicked. He hadn't meant it like that. "Uh—" he said quickly. "What I mean to say is, I'm not about doing the normal thing, either." He winced. Real smooth, Mr. Weiss, real smooth.

Despite the fact he was an idiot, the little smile she gave him – killer. He was never going to get it out of his head. She lifted her plate off the table and held it towards him. "Go on," she said. "Let's swap and get stuffed together."

Well, how could he say no to that? He accepted her plate and tucked into the fish-rice thing, getting it everywhere because he failed at chopsticks. At least Lara looked entertained by it.

"So, if you're coeliac, what's your favourite food?" she asked, her eyes flickering between him and something else. "I've always wondered what it would be like."

He laughed darkly. "Honestly? Bread." She looked surprised, so he explained. "It's like the one thing I can't eat and I always want it. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment." He waited, but she didn't catch on. "Get it? 'Gutton' about food and 'punishment'… okay, forget it."

Lara made a face. "Sorry, I suppose I'm a little distracted by what's happening next to you."

Alex had been so focused on Lara that he hadn't even noticed than Sam was practically mashing faces with Football. Football had broken the Japanese restaurant code and had a napkin in his lap.

Alex looked back at Lara. "Okay…" he said at length. "I didn't expect to see that."

Something passed over Lara's face. "I did." She quickly changed the topic. "So, if you love bread, it must be awful to never be able to eat it."

He sighed. "Hoo, yeah," he said. "Every time I see someone else eating it when I can't, this part of me goes, 'Hey! Life is unfair! Everything sucks! Grow your hair and live in your mom's basement!'" He leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his short hair. "You don't even know," he said. It was a figure of speech, but Lara seemed to have a reaction to it.

"Don't I?" she said, looking completely vulnerable for exactly half a second before becoming horrified with herself. "Okay, I think I need some air," she said, standing and excusing herself. "I'm being a total spoil-sport."

He watched her half-walk, half-jog outside, torn. Usually when a girl did that, it was either a total brush off, or an invitation. With Lara, though, it was difficult to tell. She was certainly being pretty nice to him and she hadn't been making snide comments, so it probably wasn't a brush off. But he didn't think it was an invitation, either.

He spent a few minutes shoveling the fish-rice thing down his throat while he agonized over whether or not to follow her. In the end, he decided that the nerds of the Internet were usually full of wisdom and that 'YOLO' was, in fact, the correct course of action here.

He would have excused himself, too, but the only other person he knew was Sam and she was basically in Muscle-Brain's lap. He didn't bother.

It had been raining – well it was England – and it was fucking freezing outside. Alex had brought his coat, but Lara hadn't thought to bring hers and she was sitting on the low fence out the front of the restaurant shivering and breathing clouds of steam into the air. At least it gave him a fool-proof cut-in.

"Hey," he said. "Here," he gave her his jacket.

She looked up and him and smiled. She'd been crying, and that made him panic. Fuck, he was hopeless at this stuff. He completely expected to watch himself screw this all up in a manner so spectacular it required pyrotechnics. Somehow while he was panicking, though, he'd managed to help her put on his jacket. It was far too big for her, and looking at her swimming in it got to him.

She was beautiful. Hell, she was perfect. Why on earth were there any other women in the world? God should have stopped when he got to this one.

"Look at me," she said, holding up the floppy sleeves and getting emotional over them. "It's my birthday and I'm crying in the rain. You were right. I am tragic."

"I didn't mean it like that," he said, sitting down beside her. He kind of wanted to touch her comfortingly in some way, but didn't want it to seem like he was being a sleaze. He reached out and patted her arm awkwardly. It was so awkward, in fact, that she just looked at him. "Yeah, I know, sorry. I suck that this," he said. They both laughed a little. He put his arm around her instead, and she leaned into it.

His heart fluttered a little when she relaxed her head against his collarbone and sighed. "You're nice," she said. "You don't have anything to be sorry about."

Yes, I do, Alex thought. He was having all sorts of inappropriate thoughts about kissing her, and having that kiss turn into something where that jacket and the dress underneath it would come off. But—he told himself, he wasn't one of those guys. He would treat her right. He would cook her breakfast, even. Hell, he'd do anything. Alex. No. "Is it kind of presumptuous of me to ask you what's up? Or is crying in the rain a normal girl thing?"

She laughed once. "No," she said. "Not that I'm the authority on normal girl things, to be honest. You'll need Sam for that." She sighed again.

Alex made a humming noise. "Yeah, well," he said. "I'd ask her myself but she seems a little busy."

Lara didn't say anything. For a few uncomfortable seconds he thought he might have said the wrong thing and blown it, especially when he realized she was crying again.

"Shit," he said, and then panicked. "I mean, not 'shit', I mean whatever is the appropriate thing to say when a girl is crying and she shouldn't be because she's too awesome to cry like this."

That made her laugh again. "You're hopeless," she told him affectionately, wiping her tears on the oversized sleeves of his jacket.

"Hey, that's Mr. Hopeless to you," he said. "Actually, who am I kidding? You can just drop the title. I'm cool with that."

"Now that you've seen me cry I'm sure we're on a first-name basis," she said. "I'll be 'Tragic' and you can be 'Hopeless'."

"Sounds like a great couple," he said, and then winced again. Too soon, Alex!

She didn't seem to notice. Her hair was under his chin, and since it seemed like the appropriate thing to do, he stroked it. It was just so soft and fine, and it smelt like apples. He wanted to run it through his fingers and pull that ponytail out so it was loose around her beautiful shoulders…

"Alex," she said. She had a funny tone in her voice.

His hand froze on her scalp. "Sorry, is that not okay?"

She ignored his question, pulling away a little. "Can I tell you something I've never told anyone?"

What a question. "Yeah, of course."

She sat up away from him. "This is such a strange thing to say, but I really feel like I need to tell you," she said. "You're so warm and supportive and, well, nice."

"Is that what you wanted to tell me?" he said jokingly, and then immediately regretted it.

She play-scowled at him. "No," she said, sobering up again. "It's something secret. I've never told anyone."

This close to her, it would just take a little lean in to kiss her. To feel that tongue that was nervously wetting her lips on his lips and to part that jacket down the middle and let it fall open as he lay her back on the stone fence. He didn't think he was some incredible stud or anything, but by his assessment he was pretty okay in bed. Okay enough to make her forget about whatever was upsetting her. Several times, maybe.

He couldn't do that, though. That would be way inappropriate when she was this sad. Maybe he could just lift her hair from her cheeks and kiss the tears from them. Fuck, she was beautiful, and she was about to confide in him.

She had been expecting him to respond, and when he didn't she looked a bit unnerved. "Alex?"

"You're beautiful," he told her suddenly, and then could have taken off his own sneaker and shoved it down his throat.

She laughed awkwardly and smacked him playfully with the sleeve of his jacket. "Stop it," she said, and he realized she thought he was still joking. "I know what I look like when I cry, you don't have to rub it in!"

Wary of screwing up again, he decided not to explain he'd been serious.

She stopped laughing and looked down again. "I've kept it to myself so much that I feel like I'm going to burst," she said. Alex knew exactly what she meant. "But I really feel like I can open up to you. You're just so lovely to me."

He beamed.

She smiled dimly. "God, it's been killing me," she said. "Alex," she said, and then seemed to struggle to say the anymore. More tears rolled down her cheeks. This time, he felt like he was allowed to dry them, so he did, gentle with the back of his knuckles.

"Whatever it is," he said. "Lara, I'll help you through it. We can do it together."

She nodded mutely, gathering the strength to tell him. He waited patiently like the nice guy he knew he was, giving her all the time she needed. He wondered if she were going to tell him about her parents – he already knew because Sam had accidentally told him once before. Or maybe it was about the fact her best friend seemed to have no problem nailing guys, maybe she was insecure about that?

Well, whatever it was, he would be there for her. He would do anything for her.

"I'm in love with her," Lara said, and then dissolved into tears. "Sam. I'm such an idiot. All she wants to do is bed-hop with the entire team of Arsenal and all their paid members."

Did she just say…? For a second Alex didn't think he'd heard right. He just stared at her. 'Her'?

It was entirely the wrong response, because Lara looked up at Mr. Nice Guy clearly expecting to see comfort and instead saw shock and surprise. She looked stricken. "What am I doing?" she said, pushing away from him. "God, I'm such an idiot."

"No!" he said, trying to catch her as she went to stand up. "Lara, it's not like that, I just—"

She nodded, her jaw tight. "I know what 'it's just'," she said. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have brought you into this. Here," she took off his jacket and handed it to him, trying to wipe her eyes. "I think it's time for me to go home anyway. Best birthday ever."

Alex watched her duck back inside the restaurant, return outside and then disappear down the street at a desperate jog with more tears streaming down her beautiful pink cheeks.

No one followed her.

Nice work, Mr. Hopeless, Alex thought bitterly as he sat back down on the fence and stared down at the tear-stained jacket. Not only had he just screwed up the most important thing that had happened to him all year and spectacularly upset the sweetest girl ever, he was hopeless.

There's a whole university full of gorgeous women who would totally fall for his cute accent and neat gadgets and what was he doing? He'd somehow managed to order bread.