C is for Cold

[parallax23]

COLD

 

It was a dark winter morning when Alec entered his office for the daily grind. They had been trying to conserve energy, so the heat was running at a bare minimum to prevent hypothermia. He rubbed his hands together. Just great.

He sat down at the desk he had left last night at some ungodly hour and woken up at the crack of dawn to return to. It was too early for work. He decided to take a sitting position that was more appropriate for that time of day, so he leaned back on the hind legs of the chair and utilized the desk as a footrest. Paperwork was not his area of expertise. Nor had he ever hoped to master that art. When he was doing his back alley deals, they were fewer and easier to keep track of since it was just him and nothing was ever long term. People’s lives didn’t depend on it.

Now that he was de facto treasurer of Terminal City and Second in Command, he had to keep track of too many little things that eventually turned into too many scraps of paper. And it wasn’t the kind of paper that he liked, which was the cold, hard cash that he hadn’t actually seen much of since the Siege began. No jobs in Terminal City paid, except in survival value. All supplies were acquired through heists and thievery, and then rationed out to the populace at large. Cash wasn’t money inside the gates, it was just useless paper that couldn’t buy anything. Not food, not heat, not freedom.

Hadn’t he planned on leaving this place as soon as he could after Max’s little speech a couple of months ago?

Right, like that was going to happen. Between the thermal scanners and having his face plastered across every TV and computer screen in America, pegging him as one of the leaders of the transgenics, he could just slip right through the angry mobs and police barricades and blend right in.

Once again, his life proved that somebody up there hated him. And here on Earth, Max had become the divine tool of dishing it out and delivering the really bad punch lines.

Alec thought of ways to make his life suck less as he reclined in the flimsy chair that came with the dirty room to match. He made a mental note to steal and entire shipment of laptops in the near future. That would make his job easier. Plus the endless supply mischief the internet could provide was also very enticing. No Macs though. Logan used them and they screamed urban hipster. Instead he would nab a bunch of upscale PCs and have Dix hook them all up with Linux, which just screamed renegade intellectual with a glamorous exterior. True X5 fashion.

He further cursed his luck when his sensitive ears picked up the early morning serenade in front of his door. The song of Max and Logan.

“I can’t believe you’re making such a big deal out of this,” snapped Max’s voice.

Maybe I should’ve taken an office in the basement, thought Alec annoyedly. The sound of the generator and the boiling heat would be better than listening to this day in, day out.

“I’m not making a big deal out of anything. I just want to make sure everything’s all right with you. That you’re not working yourself too hard. Is that so wrong?” Logan insisted in a tone that could be taken as patronizing to a fiercely independent transgenic.

“Everything is all right,” Max shot back. “I can take care of myself.”

Suddenly the door to his office flew open and immediately slammed shut in the same motion. He wasn’t sure if it was the residual force that the door gave as it was closed or the unexpectedness of seeing Max appear so quickly in his office that caused him to lose his feline balance of the chair and fall backwards. Of course, he managed to land on his head.

“Ow,” Alec hissed as he tried to regain his composure and get off the floor.

“Alec?” asked Max’s voice.

He reluctantly peeked above the desk. “No, it’s Larry the magical finance elf.”

“What’re you doing under your desk?” inquired Max, crossing her arms in front of her with a suspicious expression on her face. Evidently, she hadn’t noticed that he’d fallen and the sound probably registered as collateral noise from the door. Then a horrified look made it’s way across her face. “Oh god, there’s a girl under there with you, isn’t there?”

“I wish… And even if there was she’d have died of fright by now thanks to your graceful entrance,” Alec told her as he stood and picked his chair up. “What do you want anyway?”

“Are the plans for the heist ready to go?”

“Oh no, I have until tomorrow to hand those in. So you can take your Logan issues and beat on someone else today,” he answered.

Max glared at him. “I don’t have Logan issues.”

“Normally, I wouldn’t care. But you’ve got your ‘I can’t smack Logan because I’ll kill him but Alec’s available’ look on. Spare me, okay?”

She maintained her cross-armed, no nonsense stance.

“Just because you’re the one running this freak show and I decided to hang around doesn’t mean I want to hear it. Get out.”

“We can work on the plans together now so I don’t have to review them later,” she said in a tone that made it sound more like an order than a suggestion.

Alec wasn’t sure what to do. Physically throwing her out of the office was tempting. Then he realized that she was hiding from Logan, who was probably still outside the door. Logan refused to set foot in Alec’s office or waste anything more than casual civility on him since he and Max were back to being ‘not like that.’ The annoying quasi-couple would probably go back to bickering in front of his door if Max went out there, which Alec didn’t look forward to. Plus she’d be even bitchier when critiquing his plans after being chewed out by Logan.

He walked over to the closet on the other side of the room that he used to store the maps of Terminal City, Seattle’s sewer systems, and the like which the transgenics had acquired in their time on the outside. They were all stored in neatly marked cylinders, which had been done by Dalton one day when he was bored. Alec found the kid handy, especially when his office needed a good cleaning. As Alec was looking through them, he heard Max grumble and decided to take his time finding those particular building plans. Or at least that was what he thought until he heard the noise again. It was her stomach growling.

“There’s a plastic container of mac and cheese in my drawer from last night,” Alec said without looking at her. “Eat it or throw it out. Josh packed it for me and I forgot about it.”

He found the cylinder he was looking for and walked over to her.

Max opened the drawer and found a plastic food container with a napkin and plastic fork beside it.

“You sure you don’t want to heat that up?” Alec asked as he unrolled the blueprints across the desk.

She ignored him and began devouring the macaroni from last night’s dinner at the mess hall which she had also missed. She must have been hungrier than he thought, because it was the instant kind that tasted good when it was fresh but tasted like raw dough after it had gone cold and she still ate it. Cold. It was either that she was that hungry or she really didn’t want to go out to the kitchenette to use the microwave, and then she would have to run into Logan who was probably still lurking around.

Now the cat in him was starting to get curious.

“It’s fine,” was Max’s mumbled reply before she spooned in another mouthful.

“Logan’s pasta not hitting the spot anymore?”

“Thought you didn’t want to hear it.”

“Don’t want to. But I’ll listen anyway because it’s distracting you. And if you’re distracted, there’s a higher probability of me getting shot on this heist.”

“Whatever. I didn’t have dinner last night, okay? I got caught up here and forgot Logan was making dinner for me. Then we started arguing over how the whole thing had gone cold while he waited for me. I didn’t even get breakfast because we started arguing again this morning if you didn’t notice.”

“Some things are better colder.” Then he stuck his fingers in the container and took a bit of macaroni to shove in his mouth. He made a disgusted face. “This is not one of them.”

Max couldn’t help grinning at the expression on his face. “Yeah.”

“Seriously, I could heat that up for you,” he offered.

Max thought about it for a moment. “Fine. Maybe it won’t taste as bad then.”

Alec nodded.

He leaned closer to her with his hand stretched out to take the remaining macaroni from her. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but his hand brushed over hers. Her hands were cold. His hands were warm and his touch warmed her skin.

She was almost sure that it scorched her skin and had left a mark.

She could feel the warmth running from that spot to all over the rest of her. His right hand covered hers and he didn’t dare to move it. No, he moved his other hand. His heated touch found its way to her face.

Her blood changed its flow. It became quicker, thicker, so fluid she could feel every vein and artery from her head to her toe. She felt warmer inside.

Her breath was caught in her throat at this realization.

He exhaled and a warm breath brushed against her face. His face was getting closer, or was she the one moving towards him? His heat burned with longing to become one with hers.

Was it a moment? Was it minutes or hours that they spent feverishly devouring, savoring, inhaling each other in a desperate attempt to drive out the cold?

The stale macaroni had been long forgotten. And Alec’s desk finally found a better use.

The only thing they wanted to taste was hot and unheeding. It burned their mouths and they gasped for breath only to want more.

Nothing else mattered.

Time had frozen for them.