Author: Dana Leigh
Email: [email protected]
Content/Rating: Pure Max/Liz; R just in case. Just smoochies, but still... :-D
Distribution: Ask me first, please.
Spoilers: The Toy House.
Disclaimer: Sadly, not mine. Max and Liz are borrowed from the powers that be. Liz has been returned, Max will be returned a little later. <G>
Feedback: Of course!!!
Summary: This is a continuation of Max and Liz's scene in the Crashdown. It ended so abruptly it literally made me jump.
Author's Notes: The first three lines of dialogue (above the ~~~~~~ thingie) are transcribed directly from the show. The rest is mine.
Leaning
"Max, just take a psych class, because you *are*
controlling."
"Hey, I am who I am. I've got a lot going on, and I'm trying
to make things work!"
"Max, you know what your problem is? You put everything on
yourself...on your own shoulders. Maybe you should have some
faith in the people around you."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Max held her gaze for several long seconds before bowing his head
slightly and staring at the floor. "Maybe you're
right..."
"No 'maybe' about it; I'm right. Max, the people you care
about are stronger than you think...we're not going to break if
you start leaning on us."
He looked up at her quickly. "We're'? You said..."
"Yeah, I'm including myself in that, Max."
"Oh."
Liz watched in amusement as Max ducked his head again and began
kicking out a scuff mark on the floor, all the while trying to
hide the grin that played over his lips. Those lips...//Bad Liz!
Don't go there!// She watched him for a few moments more with a
shy smile of her own, then forced herself to ask him what she'd
been wondering since he had tapped on the glass door.
"Max...I'm getting the feeling that you didn't just come
here to give my non-relationship with Kyle your blessing. What's
wrong?"
He sighed heavily, realizing that he'd been hoping all along that
she would sense something else was amiss. "I just...I needed
to talk to you, and I know I have no right to do this..."
She interrupted him. "No right? To do what?"
"To come here and just unload on you. I mean, I said I
needed to take a step back, and I've been trying really hard to
keep my distance from you, but now...Liz, everything's spinning
out of control, and I...I need you."
Liz managed to control herself, even after his husky words, until
she saw tears glistening in his eyes. Without thinking, she
stepped forward and plastered herself against him, somehow
knowing that he desperately needed the physical contact.
He let out another heavy sigh and dropped his head to rest on her
shoulder, letting a few tears escape into her fluffy red sweater.
He held her close to him, so tightly he expected her to protest,
but she only tightened her own grip on him in response. An
involuntary smile flitted across his face
as she ran a hand through his hair and across the back of his
neck, rocking him gently from side to side. He closed his eyes
and let out another, happier sigh as he snuggled into the crook
of her neck.
Liz felt him begin to relax against her, but she didn't stop
ruffling his silky dark hair, nor could she bring herself to pull
away from him just yet. Finally, and with great reluctance, she
eased away from him until she could look into his eyes. She saw
that he was misinterpreting her retreat, and she
quickly reassured him.
"Max, as much as I wish I could, I can't solve your problems
by just holding you in my arms. Why don't you come upstairs with
me, and we can sit down and get comfortable, and you can tell me
what you're so upset about and what I can do to help, okay?"
A half smile lifted one side of Max's mouth. "You're asking
me to lean on you."
"Yup. I am. Deal with it." She told him firmly, and his
half-smile turned into a full-fledged one.
She walked around him and quickly re-locked the door, then turned
to face him. At his inquisitive look, she blushed slightly.
"I just thought...no interruptions, you know? Besides, I'm
done down here."
"Won't your parents..."
"Oh, they're not here."
"They...they're not?"
Liz choked back a giggle. //Is he nervous about being alone with
me???//
"They had this restaurant convention to go to in
Albuquerque, so they won't be back 'til day after tomorrow. Why,
Max Evans..." She suddenly adopted a Southern drawl.
"Are you afraid to be alone with little ol' me?"
He flashed a grin at her and copied her accent. "No,
ma'am!"
She took his hand in hers and guided him to the back of the
Crashdown, flipping out the lights as they went. When they
arrived in her living room, Max tugged her to a stop.
"Um...speaking of parents...I should prob'ly call my mom...I
kinda didn't go home after school today and she'll be
worried."
Liz nodded. "Okay, phone's over there. Do you want to just
tell her that we're working on a project for biology
together?"
"Good idea." Max shucked his coat and walked to the
phone, oblivious to her admiration of how his jeans were hugging
his backside.
She gave herself a mental shake and walked into the kitchen to
make cocoa while he called his mother.
"Hi, Mom...it's Max. Yeah...no, I'm at Liz's. Well, we have
this biology project to work on...no, I don't know how long it'll
take."
Liz's eyebrows drew together in worry as she heard Max's tone
becoming somewhat desperate.
"Well, I may just end up going straight to school from
Liz's...it's a big project. No, I'm not avoiding you, Mom...can't
we talk about this tomorrow? Mom, please..."
At that point, Liz entered the room holding two steaming cups of
cocoa in her hands. Catching Max's gaze, she winked at him and
spoke loudly. "Max, can you come help me with this?"
His shoulders slumped in relief. "That was Liz, Mom, I've
gotta go...yeah, I'll see you tomorrow. Yes, I promise.
Bye." He hung up the phone and turned to face Liz.
"Thanks...she was starting the third degree again." He
accepted the mug she handed to him and sat down on the couch.
"Umm...I
guess I should have asked you if I could stay here before I
called Mom. I can sleep on the couch, or I can go home, if you'd
rather I didn't stay."
Liz shed her sweater and sat sideways on the couch beside him,
her legs tucked under her and her knees brushing his thigh. She
gave him one of her patented don't-be-ridiculous looks. "Of
course you can stay here, Max, any time you need to, and this
couch is horribly uncomfortable to sleep on.
You can sleep with me...I...I mean, we could..."
Embarrassed, Liz's voice trailed off.
"We could share the bed?"
"Yeah...if you want to."
"I want to."
Liz could feel her cheeks heating under his steady gaze. She made
an effort to get the conversation into safer waters. "Max,
why would your mom be giving you the third degree? What's going
on?"
"Well, it started with the kitchen fire..."
"The WHAT? Max, are you okay?" Her eyes swept over him,
searching for any visible signs of injury.
"I'm fine, really. Mom was closer to the fire than I was,
and..."
Liz watched him steadily as he gazed blankly into the room and
filled her in on the fire, Valenti's insinuations, and his
mother's growing suspicions.
"...so she knows I did *something*, she just doesn't know
what. And there's this videotape of me when I was a kid...I
healed this bird's broken wing, and Mom found it when she was
watching old tapes this week, so now she has all these questions,
and I'm just....scared." He glanced at Liz for the first
time since he began the story and found her warm brown eyes
gazing at him intently. //I feel better just having told her all
that...why is that?//
"What are you scared of?"
Unable to take his eyes from hers, he answered without thinking.
"That I'm going to lose all of them, and then I'll be
alone."
"All of who, Max?"
He took a deep breath, and then the words just poured out of him.
"I feel like...like Michael and Isabel are playing
tug-of-war with me, and sometimes I think if I side with one of
them, it'll mean losing the other. They just drive me crazy
sometimes, the way they go back and forth between forcing me to
make the decisions and then not listening to me when I do.
Sometimes it's like they have a different set of rules for
themselves than they do for me...Isabel goes out on dates almost
every weekend, and for a while Michael was pulling Maria into the
eraser room or wherever any chance he got, and if Maria hadn't
started getting 'intense', as he says, I really doubt he would
have put a stop to it. I go out to dinner with you, and instantly
there's this huge controversy. And now...with Mom asking all
these questions, it's just causing this huge rift between the
three of us, and I can't stand that. Michael is convinced that
all adults are the enemy, and Isabel wants to tell Mom the truth
about us, like *now*, and I don't know which one of them is
right."
Liz leaned forward to get his attention again. "But what
about you? What do you want to do?"
"I don't know...but I think...I don't want to tell
her."
"Why not?"
"I just...I don't want her to know."
"Why did you tell me?"
Max stared at her in shock. "Wh...what?"
"Why is it that you wanted me to know about your secret, but
you're so freaked out about telling your mom?" she asked
softly.
He couldn't hold her steady gaze anymore. "Because...it'll
change things."
Liz smiled sadly as she remembered him saying something very
similar to her under very different circumstances. "Change
things how? Max?"
As he remained silent, a horrifying thought occurred to her. She
began shaking her head in denial as his fears became clearer.
"You don't...you can't seriously believe that your mom won't
love you anymore if she knows the truth about you!"
Max suddenly became intensely interested in a snag in the couch
fabric, brushing his fingertips over it repeatedly. Just when Liz
had given up on him answering her, he spoke in a voice that
somehow sounded very young and frightened.
"Maybe I do."
When he dared to glance up at her, he saw she was shaking her
head at him again.
"You couldn't be more wrong."
Max stood suddenly and began to pace in front of the couch.
"I wish I could believe that, but I can't take the risk! How
an I tell her that her two nice, *normal* children not only have
all these weird powers, but that we aren't even human? Of course
it'll make a difference...how could it
not?"
"It didn't to me."
He stopped dead in his tracks and faced her. "...Liz?"