jam_pony_fic

Title: A Thousand Miles
Author:

tartanshell
Pairing: Max/Logan
Word Count: 1,450
Rating: R (sexual content)
Spoilers: Through early season two. (This is set early/mid s2.)
Author's notes: Written for Enigmaatic in the August '07

jam_pony_fic ficathon. Her prompt was: Max and Logan's first time having sex. Enigmaatic, I hope you like this!
Summary: Funny how a few sectors away can seem like a long-distance phone call.

Feedback and concrit are always welcome.

A Thousand Miles

I called her last night. It was stupid, everything considered. I shouldn't have.

I had to. And there are a lot of reasons why, but they all come down to the same thing. She's Max. It's that simple. I had to.

Since we found out about the virus, I can feel it, this distance she's putting between us. Feel the space getting bigger every day, and I wonder if she's thinking what I'm thinking--that sooner or later, probably sooner, we'll be too far to ever get back. Wonder if we already are. I wonder if she hopes we are.

And sometimes--God. Sometimes I think back to that night a few months ago. It was our anniversary, sort of. She'd just bared her soul to me, and instead of being her knight in shining armor (shining exo, whatever), I ended up on my ass, sprawled on the floor, legs twitching until I shut the exo off. (And I don't know which was more humiliating--my impression of a malfunctioning puppet or the dead stillness that followed once the strings were cut.) I shoved her hand away, and it should have been one of the worst moments of my life. It was, for a second.

And then Max knelt beside me, and I was ready to lash out, to snap and tell her to just go away, when she looked at me. It wasn't her words, though what she said helped. It was just--she looked at me, and she smiled. And she saw me. Saw who I was. And in that moment, instead of being pissed at myself and taking it out on her, I looked right back. I should've known better, but for just a minute, there, I thought everything would be okay.

Everything wasn't. Isn't. That night seems like a lifetime and a thousand miles ago, now, but I've been trying to get back ever since.

That's why I called her last night. Different anniversary, this time, and she probably doesn't remember, but yesterday was a year since the first time we kissed. Calling seemed like a good idea at the time, maybe because it was really late. And I was tired, and sitting in my apartment watching the rain alone--I mean, there's only so long you can sit and rub your thumbs along the handrims of your chair before you go nuts. Pressing the speed-dial button on my cell seemed like a better use of my thumb. And time. And, yeah, it's possible that scotch may have figured in.

Sit around alone enough, and you start doing some stupid things. Like the one I did. We talked for a few minutes about nothing important, I said something and she laughed, and in that instant, hearing her sound like nothing was wrong, for a change, I just...I don't know. It felt like we really saw each other again. So, I said it. The words were out before I had a chance to think about them.

"So, uh, what are you wearing right now?"

Dead, stunned silence, and I thought she was going to hang up. But then, I swear, I could hear her smiling. "A red tank top. And underwear. And...nothing else." Max was practically purring. "Why do you wanna know?"

Once I recovered from the minor heart attack she'd just given me, I sat back in the chair and grinned into the phone. "Oh, just wondering. Because, if I wanted to, you know, take your clothes off...helps to know what I'm dealing with."

Another pause, and I closed my eyes and pictured her expression as she hesitated. Lowered eyelashes, then glancing up at me, uncertain and seductive all at once. I heard her inhale before she spoke. "You first," she said. "What're you wearing?"

We stopped--well, I stopped both of us--for a second to iron out the details. Made sure we both wanted to do this. Figured out how it was going to work. Then I told her what I was wearing. I described how I was unbuttoning my shirt, which was true. How I was slowly, sexily taking off my pants, which wasn't.

I told her how I wanted to take her hand and pull her close, onto my lap. How my hands would slide under her tank top, over her abs, up to cup her breasts. I told her what my thumbs would do there, and her breath caught. I thought about the contrast between my calluses and her silky skin, and had to clear my throat.

I pulled her top off, slowly, then ran my palm along her side, down her thigh. Back up, and then I tilted my face and met her eyes as my fingers hooked past the elastic of her underwear. I turned my hand, not caring about the awkward angle, and cupped between her legs, then slowly, gently, started doing all the things she was asking me to do.

She moaned into the phone and told me how she wanted to grind her hips against me and feel me getting hard. Wanted to lean down and kiss me. I told her I'd kiss back and grab her ass and squeeze it as I got more and more turned on. I told her I was already hard for her.

Max's voice was a low, throaty whisper that should have gone straight to my dick. She told me what she wanted to do to me, right then. How she wanted to pull us both onto the floor and get on top and kiss me, her hair falling into my face and driving me crazy in a good way, how she wanted to grab my shoulders, run her hands over my pecs, squeeze my hips with her thighs and ride me until we were both sweaty and screaming.

She said she was touching herself. Told me how wet she was, exactly what she was doing with her fingers. I never knew before then that you could hear pure sex in someone's voice. I said I was hard, that I had one hand gripping myself and the other one clutching the phone, both palms sweaty. Told her my hand was moving in a rhythm like I wanted her to be on me, that I wanted to be inside her right that second.

We were talking over one another at that point, but she didn't care. I'd always thought Max would be loud, and maybe she would in bed, but this was all quiet moans and broken, throaty words and panting and shaky gasps. She whispered my name when she came. Then, a second later, she breathed a laugh, and I could hear, in just that one sound, how the space between us was gone.

She said she was tired, and I could hear sleep--and still, sex--thickening her voice. We talked for a minute about nothing. Said we'd see each other soon. Another pause. She thanked me, but I was the one who said I was kissing her goodnight. I was the one who said I loved her.

Dead silence, for a second, before we said goodbye and hung up. I set the phone, slowly, precisely, on my still-fully-dressed lap before I leaned forward and put my elbows on thighs that couldn't feel them (couldn't feel her) and buried my face in my hands and sat there, shaking and turned on (and not turned on, not where it mattered).

After awhile, I poured another drink and sat there until the sky turned gray. I thought about all the ways the things she wanted to do weren't possible. All the lies I'd just told her, and how the truth had freaked her out. I tried to come to terms with the idea that I'd just had amazing phone sex with the most beautiful woman on the planet, and my hand hadn't once touched my dick. Wouldn't have mattered if it had.

That evening, our first anniversary, Max said it wasn't about me being able to walk or not. Even without the exo, it isn't to me, either, anymore. Not as much. Now there's the virus, and it's not being able to touch--the not being able to have sex part--that I'm having a problem with.

Last night, I thought--I hoped--I could fix it. Thought, for a minute, that I had. Then I said what I said, and that distance came crashing back, and now? I don't know.

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And honestly? That's kind of what I'm worried about.