ALAN - An Alan Rickman fanfic

Chapter 22 - The Bigger Picture

I'm so excited to be bringing you this chapter earlier than I aimed to! I've had this scene in my head for a while and couldn't wait to get it down, especially after leaving you hanging on a cliffhanger in the last one!

So, how did Alan react to Ava's confession? Read on to find out... *holds breath*

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Less than a millisecond was all it took for me to realise what I'd said. My eyes stray from Alan's, pressing closed as if doing so may rewind time or erase my untimely confession, but this is real life and words are irreversible.

"I...I take that back, I'm sorry, I mean, I...I just..."

"Ava..." Alan says, calmly with his arms around my nude body. "That's not what this is about. Tell me what's on your mind. Tell me."

I nod, my head down, but he tilts it to look at him. "Why don't you go and take a shower, make sense of your thoughts and we'll talk."

.......................

Did I really say those things and during sex too? Oh God. The hot water douses my body as I stare through the shower tiles. I find myself in imaginary scenarios, pretending it didn't happen, and another where Alan punished me, fucking me until I couldn't breathe. I gasp, my eyes flitting open when I hear a knock at the door.

"Avahh..." Alan calls, "Towel's outside..."

"Thank you."

Strange. Alan never puts it outside - he always comes into the bathroom and puts it on the rack for me to warm up. Why didn't he want to come in? My gut twists uncomfortably.

Half an hour later I enter the living room to see Alan walk in wearing grey sweatpants and a white baggy t-shirt carrying two mugs of steaming coffee. I adore seeing him dressed this way - suits or casuals, I don't think I could possibly choose. He looks effortlessly handsome.

"Here..." he hands me a large mug with a gentle smile and sits down next to me.

I curl my legs beneath myself and take a deep breath, tucking back my dark curls.

"I'm sorry, Alan. I don't know what all of that talk was about when I...when I wanted you to...when I asked you to...you know..." My eyes close embarrassingly with a sigh.

"Why do you think I stopped. Wasn't like you at all."

For a moment, all is silent. I don't want him to know why I said it, any of it - for him to punish me, to hurt me or why I told him I loved him. It feels twisted, messed up, untimely. After tonight, I craved a release as vitally as oxygen, I just never expected to get so tied up in my emotions to blurt out such things.

It wasn't easy to open up and expose family dramas, but once I did, I couldn't stop.

"Amelia said that I was the reason my family was in bits, the reason my father left and that I only thought about myself..." Before Alan can say anything, I admit, "It's true though, I guess I have only thought about myself..."

He listened with intent, his head slightly cocked, his brows lowered as he pieced together my complications.

"The truth is, I had to think about myself because nobody else was going to. I didn't abandon them, they abandoned me. They abandoned me when I was growing up, long before I left and took care of myself."

I feel a rising lump in my throat, stalling conversation.

"Take your time."

I told him everything - how dad and I had been so close growing up until Mum became so deep in the medical field that she wanted to open her own surgery and how she became consumed by money and success and swallowed Dad up in the process.