Between The Lines -- Chapter 5
Aug. 3rd, 2009 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
parallax235: FINGERS
Breaking into the hospital that night had been so easy, Max was almost disappointed.
It had taken Max a few moments to navigate the archaic file systems that seemed to be from the ancient days of MS-DOS. Then she had to wade through seventeen ‘Tomas Ledesmas’ before she came across the one she was looking for. He seemed to be the right age and was the second one to die at that particular hospital that year.
A few keystrokes gave Max an address.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Alec demanded in the dark as she tried to sneak back into their hotel room. With her night vision, she could see that he was lying on the bed and his hair seemed tussled like he had been sleeping. He had probably only woken up just to annoy her.
She decided to flip on the lights since he was up anyway. Her eyes stung for a bit as they tried to adjust, but the groan from Alec made it all worth it.
“It’s 4:21am or 0421 hours,” Max informed him after glancing down at her watch.
“Find what you were looking for?”
“What do you care?”
“I take that as a maybe. Look, this whole “strike” business has left me with a lot more free time, so if you need any help I’ll be around… being bored. And you know what happens when I get bored,” Alec chattered on as Max went into the bathroom to change out of the nurse’s scrubs she’d stolen. “You don’t have to be so modest! It’s nothing I probably haven’t seen before!”
“Get bent!” she bellowed through the locked door.
“You know, I was serious. Not about the changing part but the helping you out part,” he called back. The door to the bathroom swung open and Max was donning a light blue tank top and gray sweats.
“I thought you said this whole mission was all phony sentimentality,” she shot back as she leaned in the doorway.
“It is. But every now and again I’m a sucker for it. That and I watched ‘Finding Nemo’ while you were out.”
Max grinned at the thought of Alec hanging out in a seedy hotel room at night watching a Pixar movie.
“So if I don’t let you come along there will be a spree of pet shop break-ins where you liberate all the aquarium fish into the bay?”
“Don’t forget the turtles,” he added, keeping his gaze on her as she sat down at the edge of the bed.
Not for the first time since they met, Alec was amazed how she could look so tempting in something so mundane. The idea of throwing caution into the wind and just seeing how she would react to him grabbing and kissing her was not lost on him. He was always curious to see how far they’d get before she came to her senses and tried to kill him. It might almost have been worth it to find out…
Max noticed that his gaze was lingering and was looking at him strangely. He needed a cover and fast, so he reached out and ran his fingers across the back of her neck where the dull lines of her returning barcode were.
“You need a touch up,” Alec said as he felt her pulse quicken slightly under his touch. “Want to do it here or when we get back home?”
“It can wait,” Max said, pushing away his hand. “I got an address for her deceased father that I want to check out tomorrow. You in?”
“Of course.”
She got off the bed and moved over to her bag. After some tumbling, she pulled out the envelope containing her mother’s picture. It was a little strange to share something so private with Alec, but she had no choice if he would be helping her. She went back over to the bed and handed the picture to him.
“Martina Emilia Ledesma,” Max said. “That’s who we’re looking for. Just age the picture twenty years.”
If she had been expecting him to make some snide remark, she was in for a disappointment. Alec took every aspect of the picture into his eidetic memory, then handed it back to her. “Cute. Now it makes me wonder if my surrogate was hot too. Maybe a down on her luck model?”
“You’re disgusting, you know that?” Max cringed.
Alec shrugged. Then he felt her fingers tracing the lines of his barcode. The touch was surprisingly light and almost gentle.
“We both need a touch up when we get back,” she said, retracting her hand quickly.
But he was quicker. He grabbed her arm to stop her from getting off the bed.
“The fold out couch has a couple of loose springs, so I’ll let you have half the bed if you want,” he told her, still holding onto her arm. “Or you can have me patch you up in the morning. Your call.”
“And you’ll keep your pervy hands to yourself?” Max demanded, pulling out of his grip.
“Only if you keep your sexually repressed ones away from me,” he replied coldly.
He had hit a nerve with that line. And they both knew it.
“I’d rather sleep on the couch than run the risk of letting you stay that close to me. I could catch something,” Max shot back.
“Oh come on,” Alec said, regretting that he’d played right into her little game of pushing him away. He wouldn’t let her get away that easily and make him into the bad guy on this trip. His arm snaked around her waist and he pulled her back onto the bed.
Evidently, he had put more force into it than necessary because she landed on him with a thud and was on top of him with their faces barely inches apart. Her breath became caught in her throat as they remained frozen in place, trying to figure out how to get out of this compromising position. It wasn’t like they hadn’t been physically close before, they’d been locked in a closet for hours once. What made this time so different? Right, there was a bed involved.
Alec didn’t shift at all, fearing that any false move would be his last. He cursed his stupidity. He needed her to get away from him before she could know how turned on he was getting by this whole thing. Fortunately, she was the one to roll off of him then smacked him across the head for that little stunt.
“Really, I’d rather take my chances with the couch,” Max told him as she made her way over to the couch.
Alec nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
The pull out bed squeaked as she tried to set it up. Any slight movement caused it to hiss and creek, but she could live with it. Turning off the light and finally lying down, she found herself being stabbed in the right side and there was a large sink in the middle of the mattress. Every turn and twist was announced to her chagrin. She had a good mind to throw him out of the bed and claim it for herself, but she could suffer through two hours of restless sleep where she was.
Max knew he could hear her shifting to get comfortable, but it was less about the mattress than it was about the moment that she was on top of Alec and let her guard slip. She wanted him. If she was truly honest with herself, it wasn’t the first time. After he’d started working at Jam Pony, he had become less of a nuisance to her. Then when she had told him about Ben and he understood and just held her, she had wanted him then too.
Of course, none of this meant Max was actually attracted to the guy. She wasn’t into Alec. She just missed
Deciding to push those thoughts away, her mind circled around her mother. There were so many questions she had for Martina. What was her childhood like? What got her tangled up in Manticore? How did she get away and what had she been doing since? Was she a coffee or tea person?
The morning had come quickly once Max dozed off. She was up and ready for the day before Alec even began to stir from his sleep. Since he was paying for the room, she decided to pick-up breakfast for them at the local deli.
When she got back to the room, Alec was in the shower as she laid out the bagels, coffee, and individually wrapped cakes.
“Hurry up!” Max shouted when she was almost finished with her share and he was still in the bathroom.
“Hold on! I need to be ready for going into public,” Alec called back through the door.
“Ha,” Max scoffed. “Alec, that’s never stopped you from leaving the apartment before. Why choose now?”
“Oh, really funny Max,” he shot back and opened the door to the bathroom.
He stepped out in nothing but a pair of dark jeans. He bypassed her and grabbed an olive green T-shirt from off the bed and put it on. At the same time, his nose twitched and a gleeful smile crossed his face. As he was about to pick up his share of breakfast, Max swatted his hands away.
“What gives?” he demanded.
“You’ll have to walk and eat because you took forever to get ready,” Max declared.
Alec rolled his eyes and pushed his hand into his pocket. He pulled out a set of keys and jangled them in front of her. “We’re not walking anywhere.”
“Where’d you get a car from?” Max asked suspiciously as the other X5 made a beeline for his half of breakfast.
“Do you really want to know?” Alec inquired with his mouth full of bagel.
Max thought for a moment and sighed. “Probably not.”
She took a seat on the bed as Alec hungrily tore through all the things she had bought.
She could feel how close she was to finding her mother. There was a chance Martina could even be at their destination today. It was a bit overwhelming. At the same time, she had to keep herself in check. There was also a good chance that this could all be a dead end. She wasn’t quite sure how to cope with that either.
“Okay, I’m done. Let’s get this show on the road,” Alec informed her.
Max smiled and in the blink of an eye snatched the keys from him. “If you thought I’d let you drive me anywhere, you’ve got another thing coming.”
As she walked out of the room he said, “Great. Just don’t drive us into the bay.”
Max smacked him in the back of the head. “Shut up before I dump your body in the bay.”
“Promises, promises,” he mocked as they stepped onto the street. “Do you even know which car it is?”
Seeing the lines of parked vehicles up and down the street, Max shot Alec a dirty look when he stuck out his hand to have his keys returned. She handed them back to him.
A/N: Apparently, this is what the word “soon” means in my version of the time-space continuum. I know, not much happened but the next one has more going on.