DA: Veni, vidi... velcro

[green_apples]

Title: Veni, vidi... velcro
Author: ghani_atreides
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1.191
Disclaimer: I wish I owned Alec, but alas. Neither do I own anything else you can recognize. The words however...
Summary: All it took was for her to open her eyes and see what was there, see him.

“You worry too much for stuff that don’t matter Max” Alec had said before going for his morning shower.

 

She did not! Did she? Well maybe a little. But come on! What’s wrong with wanting to pinpoint the moment when she fell for Alec? It was a legitimate question, and completely worthy of her concern.

 

Max was still stuck in her quest to find that elusive moment that kept slipping through her fingers. Even when she thought she had it; then some other incident would pop into her mind and the previous moment was blinded by the new one. It was a vicious cycle! Maybe it wasn’t one moment, maybe it was more like a process, a series of seconds that had elongated into hours, until she had no more time to think about it and just took the dive.

 

Possibly she’d known she’d be here now since the first time he walked into her cell all that time ago. Possibly.

 

Max was kind of convinced that deep, deep –like really deep- down, she knew they’d end up here. Not that she’d ever tell him. But since that first time she saw him, Alec had managed to slide into her brain, coming to her thoughts completely uninvited. And while she was trying to ignore those thoughts, she knew she was just fooling herself. Even as she vehemently denied it out loud in the stillness of her room, Max knew that, albeit all of his flaws, Alec had come to stay and she was happy for that.

 

So he wasn’t perfect. Neither was she. There, that should make things even. He’d screwed up royally in the past… yesterday actually, but that wasn’t something new. He’ll screw up again the next week. And that wasn’t unexpected either. As he saw it, he was learning and teaching, all at once; he learned from his mistakes as to not to trip on the same stone again, he taught others to avoid those mistakes, and the fact that he kept on fucking things up only meant that there was a lot more to learn out there. A lot.

 

When he explained that to her, right after she’d cooled down from their previous fight –over something he’d done, of course- Max had to bite her tongue not to laugh. Only Alec.

 

Probably that was the moment she opened her eyes to see him. Probably.

 

There were other occasions when Alec had had a part in making her happy, for one reason or the other, in one way or another. All of them going completely overlooked by her until one night, when she was with Logan and was supposed to be all in love with him, she said something to him, expecting an Alec-like come back.

And when she didn’t get it –actually Logan didn’t get it- she was sorely disappointed.

 

Hey! Maybe that’s when the brick wall fell on her head. Or maybe the proverbial rug was swept from under her, when she actually put money on Alec’s capacity to beat the rhetorical crap out of Mole in a wit contest. Nah, by then she already knew, and by her calculations, so did Alec.

 

That she liked him, that is.

 

Max didn’t find out Alec liked her back until some solid five months after that. They had started a game, where Alec tried to get her to touch him and she pretended she didn’t realize what he was doing, just so she could touch him. She’d been silly; the game itself should have been a dead giveaway. In fact, when she put together that Alec shouldn’t be making such a big deal out of a hand on his forearm, she was ridiculously happy.

 

And so, she went to him to try and get a confession out of him. She’d gone playing a part she usually played for Logan. And when Alec called her on it –“C’mon Maxie, I know you too well. You know I’m not buyin’ it”- she’d walked up to him and firmly planted her lips against his.

 

He kissed her back. Though he’d been dying to do it. Holding her tightly against him and taking possession of her mouth, as if it was rightfully his and he was informing her that he knew it was.

 

Simple and devastating. Typical Alec.

 

It was then when she realized she played parts for Logan, she wore masks around him to hide herself. But that wasn’t what bothered her, what did, was that Logan couldn’t tell. How could he claim to be in love with her, if he didn’t know her?...

 

Okay, so maybe that’s when she realized there was a lot more to Alec than met the eye. That’s when it came to her, like a freaking revelation, that Alec saw her, knew her, and was still hanging around, trying to get her to laugh, doing his best to get her to notice him.

 

She couldn’t remember the last time Logan wrung laughter out of her. Like, real, honest-to-goodness laughter, the kind of laughter Alec got out of her should she let him do it. The kind of laughter that made her belly hurt and her breath catch. The kind of laughter that made her life a better place, putting things in perspective and giving her hopes of better times to come.

 

The kind of laughter that made her believe Alec when he said “its gonna be alright Maxie, we’ll get through this”. She believed it when Alec said it, but when it came out from Logan, she only felt he said it because he had nothing else to offer. And wasn’t that wrong? Wasn’t she supposed to think they could be together, no matter what?

 

Ahh, there was the issue; she wasn’t supposed to think it was possible, she was supposed to know it would happen, to feel they’d be together. Only she didn’t.

 

Max couldn’t remember when had she stopped believing in her and Logan. She just knew that for a long time, that sensation of certainty didn’t come from Logan anymore, it came from the man standing beside her.

 

So maybe it was a compilation of moments, words, situations that had led to this them she was so comfortable with

 

But that didn’t matter now.

 

All that mattered was how his hand weighted it’s warmth on the small of her back, fingers placing feather-like caresses, there where her top rode up. How his hair was damp from her shower, well his shower, but he’d taken it in her bathroom, so her shower -oh God, now she was blabbering Alec-style!- and the scent of her shampoo that wafted to her, mixed with the smell of soap and clean skin. And her closeness to his body. How people in the room looked at them and thought nothing of it because they were used to the sight, to the two of them.

 

All that mattered was how happy and safe she felt when Alec’s arm went higher to envelop her shoulders, pulling her closer so he could whisper in her ear “I love you, Max”.

 

He loved her, and she loved him. That was all that mattered.

 

***
Finito.

Comments

[dani-po.livejournal.com]

That was so sweet

[ink-drops.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I had fun writing Max like a such a girl!

Glad you liked it

[herowlness.livejournal.com]

Hah! This piece depicts such a Max thing - needing to understand when and why her world got turned upside-down by Alec, when she fell in love with him. And I love that you had them playing a game of him trying to get her to touch him and ... yeah. And that she realizes that Alec knows her much better than Logan does, and that Alec accepts her for who she is while Logan is always trying to change her into something different, "better," ... more Ordinary. Fabulous stuff.

I did have a bit of confusion over one line though.
But since that first time she saw him, Alec had managed to slide into her brain, coming to her thoughts completely unrequited.
Is "unrequited" really the right word there? To me, it means more of an "unreturned" / "not reciprocated" sort of thing, and I don't get how that would really mesh with Alec's presence in her thoughts. "Unwelcome" or "uninvited" might be better, perhaps? [I hope you don't mind the suggestion - that's just a line that had me puzzling over it for a few minutes before I continued onward, so I felt that I almost *had* to say *something* about it.]

Seriously, though, this was a lot of fun to read. I love how you depicted little snapshots of their lives as Max analyzed the various times when she might have fallen in love with Alec. A part of me wants more details about those little tidbits, but I honestly think that this is a case where less is more. This way, we the readers can fill in the blanks with whatever we'd like, which gives the story more fluidity, of a sort.

Thanks for posting!

[ink-drops.livejournal.com]

Wow, you're thorough!

Max and her over-analyzing tendencies never get old. I think Alec would do that, if nothing else just to annoy her when she realized what he'd been doing, and he would trick her alright, she' would totally buy that it was all her, sometimes she can be so naivë , don't you think?

Huh, well if it interferes with the reading then I guess I should edit that then. Thanks for pointing it out! ::gives cookies::

Awww thank you! I didn't wanna get over descriptive, but I did think at some point it was sorta lacking in explanations, and felt the sudden urge to make it better, make it more, but decided against. I'm glad I did!