Late Night Shift - Chance

[chance]

Chance finished off the cigarette and flicked it out into the alley. He pushed away from the wall and slid his hands into his pockets. His head dropped back as he looked up at the sky. "I would have set up an account for you in New York. We could have worked a deal so that you could pay me back, have some of it have been for your birthday or Christmas." What bothered him the most was the fact that she didn't think he'd understood about not taking charity, even from someone you were supposed to be close to.

Slowly he looked at her. "Don't work too hard. I don't want to be having to come up with a eulogy before you hit thirty." A brow arched as he watched her and let that sink in. At her comment about helping his dad he just shrugged. "Same thing I've always done for him, I can just do it a bit more often now." Chance reached up and tucked her hair behind one of her ears. "Just don't work yourself into an early grave. Sometimes, you have to learn to let go and realize you don't always have control."

[Echo]

Maya sighed as he told her he would have set up an account for her. Money, that seemed to be something her was very fluent in. While Maya appreciated how he tried to spoil her and take care of her she didn't like handouts. It was uncomfortable for her to just take something. Even on their first date - eventhough it was a non date date - she learned how giving he was with his money. She wasn't used to the attention that he gave her and felt that she didn't deserve it. At first she thought it was some game he was playing with her, but she was instantly proved wrong. He was the first good thing in her life. Then she had to screw it up by letting her old paranoid self prevent her from trusting him when she needed someone.

"Chance I wouldn't have taken anything from it if you had. I like working, it keeps me busy." she said stepping closer to him. Maya didn't have the energy to lip read from a distance. Maybe he did have a point. She was stretching herself thin, but what else did she have to do? Saving the world from the Big Bad Mutant Apocalypse was a main concern, but so far the Hellions hadn't formulated an exact plan for that.

Maya's eyes widened as Chance dared to reach for her. She froze, unsure as to whether he would strike her; she looked down to avoid his gaze. Her heart skipped as she felt him move a piece of her hair behind her left ear. However she did catch what he had said. Sometimes, you have to learn to let go and realize you don't always have control. he said to her. Maya pursed her lips together. Despite the her dislike in his message, Maya was scared to admit it was true. She didn't have the control and upper hand she wanted to have.

"I don't know how to... to give up." she admitted.

[chance]

A brow went up and shook his head at her comment. "You wouldn't have had to stop working. It would have just been there if you needed it. There's a difference between keeping busy and burying yourself. Even I know when to slow down. You don't get it do you? You don't have a healing factor, you put too much strain on yourself, physically or emotionally, and what's going to happen if you are on a mission and your body finally tells you to fuck off?" Didn't she see that he was worried about her? Probably not, she probably just sees it as him trying to control her, when that's the last thing he wants to do.

"I've noticed. You equate letting go with failure." The words came out a bit bitterly and his facial expression matched. She never was his, not fully, not the way he was with her. He had no problems slowing down and not spoiling her, because she didn't always like it. But she couldn't give herself to him completely, because then she'd be relinquishing control. It stung when he finally figured it out, and it took her leaving to drive it home.

[Echo]

Maya pressed her lips together as she watched him getting frustrated at her response. She didn't realize that she was running on only four hours of sleep a day? She didn't get that every muscle in her body wanted to turn to jelly the minute she sat down? Yeah she understood that she was stretching herself thin and that she wasn't gifted with a healing power. Now what she didn't understand was why he cared? Maya had broken his heart, made him feel like shit. She was the bitch that ran away. Maya was sure that he wouldn't care about her beyond her being alive or dead.

"I'm tired. I've been tired for a long time now. And I want to stop, but when I do I can't stop thinking about what I did to you. " she said "The thing I don't understand is why you'd even want to talk with me right now. I'd thought the way we left things in your room you'd never want to see me again. " Maya resented the look he gave her but knew it to be true. She couldn't change who she.

[chance]

Chance just stood there blinking at her. Honestly, she had to ask that question. He shook his head and took a couple of steps back and lit up another cigarette. "You really think I could just stop giving a shit? I spent two years trying to get over the thought that you were dead. You really had to ask me that question? I thought you knew me better than that." Had he really been that wrong about her? Did she honestly think he'd say he loved her and then wouldn't feel anything? What kind of person did she take him for?

"Quit thinking about what happened, start thinking about your own welfare. I already thought you dead once, I don't want it to be for real. You live at the mansion, you don't pay rent, utilities, or even food if you don't want to. You work for room and board there, as much as you do a pay check. It's not charity, it's a boarding school. You don't need three jobs, or even two. You just want them because you don't know what else to do. Ever think to take the time and find out?"

[Echo]

" Yeah I figured you wouldn't want to talk to me again. Why did I ask you? I didn't know the answer myself. I saw the way you looked at me when you opened your door. You wanted to hurt me like I hurt you, I know that look Chance." she tried to explain. She wanted to say she didn't know him as well as she thought. He had always been an open book for her, but she always thought there had to be a flaw in his character. But however direct that was, it was just childish to say. Maya watched as he took a few steps back from her. Leave it to her to look for an imperfection in something that was perfectly fine.

Maya cringed when Chance told her she only had this job was because she didn't know what to do. This reality was a hard slap in the face for her. Something within her gut told her that he meant well in what he was saying, but she still felt the sting of his words. Maya had always known what she wanted. When she was little it was to get into Julliard, at the Academy it was to improve her mutant abilities and fighting skills. Now what did she want? "I already took five years to figure things out for myself, I don't need anymore time. " she said firmly. "I'm right where I want to be, minus the late shift at this bar." Right here, she meant attempting to work things out with Chance, working at the Academy and living in Boston.

[chance]

"Do you have to work at it, or is it really this natural for you, to assume the worst and look for it? You don't know me as well as I thought you did. Yes, there is a part of me that would love to see you fall apart, down on your knees and crying. But that's only a small part. If I had really wanted you out of my life, I sure the hell wouldn't have let you in the room and given you chance to explain. I'd have told you to go to hell and never come back. But you don't know me as well as I thought you did. Apparently, you didn't let me get to know you either." He spoke slowly so that she could understand what he was saying. It wasn't until she had stopped by his room that he realized, she held back from him. When it came to how he felt about her, he was always open and honest, she hadn't even ever said that she loved him. It should have been a clue, he supposed.

The young man just shook his head and chuckled. "The Maya I knew, didn't runaway or hide. She took the challenges she was given and ran head long into them." He realizes now that what he took as unspoiled, wasn't quite what he had thought it was. He just thought that she didn't want him to think he had to spoil her. Now he knew, she didn't want him to. She'd rejected him on so many levels when she didn't come to him for help, he had to seriously wonder why he still cared. But he had loved her and he wasn't one to use those words lightly. Well, he used to not be that way, now he might say them to get what he wanted. Mainly because he realized they didn't meant anything to anyone anymore, especially the woman in front of him.

[Echo]

"We were teenagers, part of the struggle is finding out who we are. Five years down the road I guess we don't know each other as much as we thought. The Chance I knew didn't smoke or run through women like water. " she said after he'd finished. She could tell that he didn't like the person standing in front of him, but her former self. Maya had always been able to read people by their body language. Being deaf did have some advantages, she was able to focus better on things like how someone oriented themselves or how they reacted to others. Despite that, she was just realizing that she was very mistrustful. She was right to not take rides from strangers, but she couldn't even force herself to believe that he ever loved her. Love to Maya was a word that men used to string their women along, something used as a last resort to be forgive or taken back. She didn't know that he actually meant what he said- she could have asked questions but didn't. That was why she never told him she loved him.

" I've always looked for the worst, its a bad habit. I'm working on it, alright. And I've always distanced myself from the others. I tried to open up to you, I did. Now I'm trying to again. But honestly am I wasting my breath?" she said a bit anxiously. " I don't want you to hate me, I was relieved when you didn't tell me to fuck off. I truly thought you would have and prepared myself for that. Thats what I do, I prepare myself for the worst. I'm still that same girl. I never thought coming back would be easy, but it was the right thing to do."

[chance]

Chance nodded, she had a point. He hadn't been like this as a teenager. "True enough. But then I'd never realized how fucked up being in love with someone could be either. You know it's ironic. If you think about it, I was the woman in the relationship and you were the guy. How messed up is that?" The young man gave a bit of a shrug. "You push people away, and run away to cope. This is how I apparently cope with emotional distress." He leaned down so that she could see his lips and whispered softly. "Since I'm still doing it, shouldn't that tell you something?" That being said he backed up until his back hit the wall and just watched her.

"You were always waiting for me to fuck up, weren't you? Preparing for the worst isn't a bad thing, but constantly waiting for it is. You don't just prepare, you wait for it and in doing so you create it. Don't you get that?"

[Echo]

Maya kept her mouth shut when spoke. He pointed out the obvious in their past relationship. The girl never felt completely secure when she was with him, but then she felt even less at home when she was by herself. The difference was that when she was alone, it was understandable for her to be on edge and wary of everything - with him it was just being paranoid. He was right about that, by looking for something she made it so.

"I know that now. No, I wasn't waiting for you to mess up at least not subconsciously. I wanted to be with you." she said. Maya looked at him as he casually rested against the wall. The truth finally hit her, she loved him. However she wasnt' going to say that now. It wasn't the right time. It wouldn't mean anything to him anyways.

"And I know that this probably won't make things better between us right now, but if you want I don't have to live in the Academy for the time being. As you said, I 've made some money. That way we don't have to run into each other for the time being." she suggested. Maya wasn't sure how many more times she could run into him and feel 100 percent guilty for days.

[chance]

Chance had started to lightly bounce his head off the wall behind him. She frustrated the hell out of him but he loved her none the less. He just couldn't deal with a someone who kept thinking he was going to screw her over. He might have been a lot of things but he'd have never done anything to hurt her or try to control her. He understood her resistance, to a point. Since she never really shared anything personal about herself, at least not as in depth as he did, he realized he didn't know her nearly as well as he thought. To him, if he had known her as well as he thought, he would have known where she had gone all this time. But he had no idea where to even begin looking for her. It was a harsh slap in the face for him to realize that she never let him, and if she did, it was barely enough to rate more than how she liked her coffee.

"You mean consciously, at least I hope you do. If you were waiting for it subconsciously it meant you didn't realize it was happening. If you made it a conscious decision it meant that you intended for it to happen. But yeah, I know I'll stop lecturing. This is what happens when you become a TA." He let out a short chuckle and closed his eyes.

When she offered to leave the school his eyes rolled behind his lids. "Neither of us has to leave. It's our home, always has been whether you realize it or not. We don't have to avoid each other, but it's not going to be easy and we both know it. You never struck me as the type to run in the face of a little hard work, hon. You change that much?" He opened one eye and arched a brow in her direction, part of him wondering if she'd get over this, whatever it was. This wasn't the Maya he knew and he wondered how well she knew herself.

[Echo]

Maya had just realized her mistake when she spoke. Damn, she knew that she was missing a syllable when quote on quote learned that word. " Yes I'm sorry. Thats what I meant." she rubbing her finger tips on her temples. She was getting tired, however it could be cured with a few hours of sleep then she'd be ready to do it all again.

"I just thought it would be easier, thats all." she muttered. When he asked her if she had changed, she had to think about it. Maya was and had always been there for herself. Right now, however, she was just as vulnerable as a puppy. There were so many things she wanted to say at the same time, but her words couldn't express her feeling.

She was getting just as frustrated as he was. Maya looked down at the watch on her wrist and pressed her lips together. She was over due on her break, but she wanted to finished this conversation. "I was just offering in case you didn't want me there. That's all. I haven't changed that part of myself, but i was trying to make up some of the consideration I never gave you before."

[chance]

Chance looked at her, really looked at her and sighed. She was exhausted, he could tell that. She always made mistakes when she was tired. Part of him wanted to shake some sense into her, tell her she didn't need to kill herself. The girl had a place to live, food provided, she didn't work a million jobs. Maya also had someone who loved her and wanted to take care of her, but she threw that back in his face when she didn't ask him for help. Of all the things to get rejected for.

The young man pushed himself away from the wall and moved to stand in front of her. He'd probably get his ass kicked for this, but his arms went around her and he held her close. ”I know, your break is almost over. Get some rest after your shift. Don't leave the academy, but don't you dare make me have to bury you because you worked yourself into an early grave.” The words were said low, and the last bit was growled out. Chance kissed the side of her head and then turned around and walked away, letting her get back to work.