Work Text:
Max strode into his living room, where Miranda was sitting on the sofa bathed in evening sunlight, staring at the wall in front of her and furiously jiggling her leg. He put the two glasses he was holding in one hand down on the coffee table with a clink, followed by the bowl of olives he’d grasped in his other hand, then the bottle of wine that was tucked not entirely safely under his arm. With his hands free, he removed the corkscrew from his mouth and went to sit on the other end of the sofa from Miranda, who was now tapping her fingers on the cushion beside her and biting her lip. He opened the bottle and poured out two large glasses of tinto. Sliding one along the table, he addressed his pensive partner.
“Ok, what are you anxious about? Still thinking about the case?” he asked as he waved his hand to draw her attention to the drink before her.
Miranda slowly tore her fixed gaze away from the picture frame she had been looking right through and turned to face him. Her brow furrowed. “How did you know?”
“Your leg,” he explained, pointing. “And your hand, and your lip. You were practically vibrating.”
Embarrassment clouded Miranda’s features. “Oh, I didn’t realise. Sorry,” she said quietly, looking down at her knees.
Max grinned. “It's fine,” he assured her. “I know it’s just one of your autistic things. Doesn’t bother me.” He gave a shrug, trying to show her she could be herself around him without worrying or feeling judged.
Miranda’s head jerked back in confusion and she scrunched up her face. “One of my what?” she queried incredulously.
“You know, an autistic thing…?” Max supplied. He searched the recesses of his brain for the word he was after. “Stimming, isn’t it? Is that right?”
“Max, I’m not autistic,” Miranda scoffed. She shook her head slightly and reached forward to pick up her wine glass.
Max tilted his head as he absorbed this. “Oh. Oh, right. Never mind,” he replied lightly, grabbing his own drink. He took a mouthful, aerating it over his tongue and teeth, risking a telling off for being such an insufferable wine snob again.
Miranda shuddered at the noise he was making, but chose to ignore it and carry on with correcting his error instead. “I mean, yeah, I can be shy, and sometimes I come across a bit cold or rude—”
“And you don’t like lots of noise, and you can be scarily organised and focused,” Max chipped in. “And you’re fussy about food, except any type of salt and vinegar crisps. Oh, and cheddar cheese, even though it’s not exactly the most exciting kind there is.”
Miranda narrowed her eyes at the slight against her beloved cheddar, but moved on since she couldn’t be bothered having the cheese debate with him again. “Yes, I don’t usually like eye contact, but I can do it, and I have a good memory, and I spot patterns and details other people don’t, but I’m not autistic,” Miranda finished decisively, and just a touch defensively. She thought she knew who she was pretty well by now, and what he was suggesting didn’t come into her considered view of herself.
“Ok,” Max answered and turned his attention fully to the wine and olives. Tonight was a night for getting happily tipsy and snacking, not for arguing about developmental disorders.
The two friends sat in silence as they drank their wine and nibbled the pimiento-stuffed olives, Miranda lost in thought about what Max had just said to her, and Max fantasising about his idyllic retirement to a bodega in Binissalem, where he would spend his days amongst the vines, and his evenings amongst his wine and whatever local food specialities he’d got his hands on in the market.
After a few minutes of reflection, Miranda suddenly interrupted the quiet by plonking her glass down on the table and burying her head in her hands with a loud sigh, elbows propped on her knees. She had wondered before, a few years back, whether she might be autistic, but so many of the websites she had pored over had listed enough traits that she didn’t have, or experiences that didn’t resonate with her, that she’d dismissed the suspicion and put it completely out of her mind. Now, though, she was slowly remembering that one or two of the sites had mentioned how the signs could be different in women and girls, especially the further they’d got through life and the better they’d become at learning to fit in with their neurotypical peers. More of what she’d read in those sections had seemed familiar, but the lack of consensus from other sources at the time had put her off. Could there really be something in what Max had casually assumed, she found herself asking. The answer was a little daunting, but maybe she should confront it now that she had a second, unsolicited opinion.
She looked up, tucked her hair behind her ears and fell back against the sofa wearily. “Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Oh, my god. I’m autistic. I think. Am I? Am I autistic?” She looked questioningly at Max, demanding the truth that he somehow seemed to have arrived at before her.
Max smiled kindly at her. “I thought you knew.”
Miranda looked past him to the window, needing to free herself of the distraction of eye contact to think properly. “I can’t be, can I? How could I not know? Wouldn’t someone have noticed before now if I was?”
Max shrugged. “Lots of girls go undiagnosed, especially if they’re doing well at school. Like eighty percent or something aren’t diagnosed by adulthood, I think?”
“How do you know this?” Miranda asked, eyeing him suspiciously. “This seems like a lot more autism knowledge than most people have.”
Max grinned, exceedingly pleased that he’d remembered the figure from that study he’d glanced over a while back. “I looked this stuff up when I figured out you were.”
“So you've known for a while…?” Miranda ventured. It was unsettling to her that he seemed to know something so integral to who she was, when she hadn’t had a clue. If he’d known from the start that raised a lot of questions, like who else had spotted it and when, and what that had made them think of her.
“Yeah, not straight away, but for quite a while. There was this one afternoon when you wouldn’t let me hug you again, then you went off at me for eating smelly food and playing annoying music, and then you ranted on about crime statistics in extreme detail.” He raised his palms, his mouth turned up in amusement.
Miranda gave a slightly tense smile. “Sounds like me.”
Max nodded. “Classic you. Anyway, I suddenly realised that it might all add up to autism, so I did a bit of reading, you know, to check my theory and to see if I could do anything to help you. That’s why I’ve been asking if I can hug you and not pushing it, and not trying to get you to eat sobrasada.” He shot a wink at his dazed compañera.
“Why did nobody tell me?!” she cried back at him, shaking herself free of her initial confusion and into mild anger.
Max put up his hands. “I thought you knew!” he protested again. “Maybe other people did too, or they didn’t figure it out either? Maybe just thought you were a bit awkward and different or something?” He winced, knowing he should’ve worded that better. Too late.
Miranda rolled her eyes as she folded her arms across her body. “Great. This is just great. What do I do now?!” She squeezed her fingertips into the flesh of her arms, making red crescent-shaped nail marks, as unaware of employing this coping mechanism as she had been with the others she’d used earlier on that evening.
Max took a gulp of his wine, rolling it around in his mouth as he thought. He had some experience in this area and was reasonably satisfied with the outcome he’d had, but he knew that he and Miranda had different approaches to life. “Get formally diagnosed?” he suggested. “Do you want that? Might help you?”
Miranda sighed and stared back at the wall for a moment as she considered the possibility. “I think I want to know if I really am or not,” she agreed slowly. “I don’t like the idea of saying I’m autistic without it being properly backed up by experts.”
Max smiled; she wanted hard facts, just as he’d suspected. “You could start with some online tests, just to see, and then go from there?” he proposed. A useful memory popped up and he grabbed his phone from the edge of the table. “I found a good website that has a few, actually. I’ll send it to you.” He tapped away at the screen, keen to help his bewildered friend out.
Miranda settled herself in the corner of the sofa and quietly worked her way through two of the tests on her phone, pausing frequently to think the questions through and re-examine various things throughout her life that she now realised were very likely signs of the condition. Re-examining herself and trying to think of behaviours and traits she had that might be pertinent to the questionnaires was more tiring than she’d expected, and she found herself unconsciously rubbing her forehead in weariness. Still, she wanted to get whatever answers she could tonight, so she forced her way through the questions, trying to answer honestly, but all the time aware that the accuracy of the results might not be reliable if she really had been hiding her true nature even from herself for all these years.
Eventually, Miranda looked up at Max with a flat expression. “High likelihood of autism, high level of masking,” she informed him in an even voice. “Huh.”
Max smiled his encouragement over his wine glass, which was almost empty by now. “How do you feel about it all?” he probed gently. “If you can manage to talk about feelings, that is,” he added jokingly as he watched her sit forward to reach her own glass.
Miranda took a large swallow of her tinto, then cleared her throat. “Like I’m having an existential crisis, and it’s a huge shock, but also it totally makes sense…? And also I’m angry that school and my parents never noticed, because maybe there was support I could’ve had? I don’t know. This is… huge.” She threw her hand up for emphasis.
Tilting his head, Max gave her an understanding look. “Well, I’m here for you, whatever you want to do about it, or if you just want to talk.”
“I’m glad I’ve got you,” Miranda said in a small voice, unable to look at him in her vulnerability. A horrible thought struck her out of nowhere: was she a freak, or a burden? She’d gone through life thinking she was just a bit of an outsider, but now… “Does— does everyone think I’m this total weirdo? Am I embarrassing to be around? Or really difficult? Are you all just putting up with me because you have to?”
Max looked horrified. “Of course not! You can be a bit uptight maybe, sure, and sometimes incredibly frustrating. But who isn’t annoying occasionally? You make it pretty clear when I irritate you,” he smirked.
“Which is often,” Miranda informed him, blunt in her teasing as usual.
Max poked his tongue out at her. “Don’t forget you have all these great qualities, like, uhh, attention to detail, not giving up when everyone else has, your memory, umm, your strong sense of justice, your compassion — even if you don’t know how to express it…” He smiled softly. “Doesn’t matter if you don’t want to be friends with everyone you meet, long as you want to be friends with me.”
Miranda smiled back at him, feeling a little bit better about herself, though she knew there’d be some soul-searching to come later on. “It’s not like I can be choosy — there’s hardly a big queue of people waiting to be my friend.” There was no amount of praise or reassurance that could ever prevent her habitual self-deprecation.
Ignoring the probably-unintended disrespect about him as a friend, Max decided it was time to reveal something about himself now. “You know, we’ve done that classic neurodivergent thing of making friends with other neurodivergents. Like we’re in a little club.”
Miranda’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re neurodivergent?” She’d never heard him mention it, and neither had it ever occurred to her that he might be. Clearly, she had a lot to learn.
“I never got all the way with an official diagnosis, but yeah, when I was a kid it was pretty clear I had ADHD,” Max shared openly. “My school figured out what helped me, so that was all I needed. I was pretty lucky. And some things I grew out of a bit — like I don’t fidget anywhere near as much these days.”
“What are the other signs then?” Miranda asked, sipping her wine as she prepared to find out more about her friend.
Max rubbed his temple as he tried to recall what she was asking; he’d lived with the knowledge so long that he didn’t think about it too much on a day-to-day basis now. “Uhh, disorganisation, rushing in without thinking things through, umm, not liking to be quiet and still too often, zoning out sometimes, ooh, special interests, uhh, and concentration problems, especially if something’s even a bit boring…” he listed off on his fingers, taking his time to come up with all the points.
Miranda regarded him indulgently. “Ahhh, so that explains the messy desk, the rubbish plans, the obsession with food, the leaving reports to the last minute… It all makes sense now!” She chuckled. It was nice that they could share something so personal with each other, and that they were both outsiders, in a way. From fairly early on in their partnership, she’d found that Max had got her more than most other people did, and now she understood why.
“Yeah, I’ve just got a different type of weird brain to yours,” Max laughed. “Luckily, our weird brains complement each other. We can stick together, compañera.”
Miranda suddenly felt a huge rush of warmth towards Max. How supportive he was, how caring, and how trustworthy. All of this feeling, along with the exhaustion she was beginning to experience, left her wanting something quite out of character. “Max, this is going to sound odd from me,” she started hesitantly, “but can I— can I have a hug?” She looked across at him with uncertainty, almost not believing what she was asking. “I… I think tonight might be one of the few times I really need one.”
It took a second for Max to register that she, Miranda Blake, was giving him permission — no, specifically asking him — to hug her. A soppy grin arranged itself on his face. “Oh, wow!” he breathed. “That’s always going to be a ‘yes’ from me! I’m honoured. And thrilled, to be honest.”
Miranda’s lips curled up shyly. “You’re sort of a, a safe person for me now, I suppose?”
“I love that!” Max beamed. “Come here then. And just tell me when you’ve had enough and I’ll stop.”
He opened his arms wide, pausing for a moment to push his wine further onto the table when he noticed he’d nearly sent it flying. He waved his hands to encourage Miranda to come to him. When she had shuffled into the seat beside him and slightly awkwardly leaned into his chest and shoulder, he wrapped his arms around her, on top of the world. He nuzzled his face against her hair, then carefully pulled them both back into the corner of the sofa, making sure they were comfortable. They stayed like this, wordlessly embracing, for longer than either of them had expected, feeling each other’s soft touches providing what they had been missing.
“I don’t want to let go,” Max murmured into Miranda’s ear when he thought it had been long enough that his luck was surely about to run out.
“Then don’t,” she replied simply.
In that intimate moment, Miranda was feeling so close to Max, and so seen and supported by him that she wasn’t overwhelmed at all by this particular hug. Was it just because it had been her idea, or was there something more going on, she wondered. She’d thought she’d buried her attraction to him long ago, but now, here in his arms, listening to his heart beat, it dawned on her that it had not only persisted, but grown into a deep love. Maybe she could find a way to express her gratitude and her devotion to him somehow, while she was in the mood to be bold enough.
Waiting briefly while she built up her courage, Miranda then angled her head up to plant a soft, slow kiss on Max’s cheek. When she removed her lips, she said nothing. It felt like time had stopped and nothing else mattered outside of this room, this sofa, this embrace. She didn’t quite know where that kiss had come from, but she didn’t regret it — it felt right. She feathered the ghost of another against the base of his neck, smelling the comforting scent of his aftershave as she did so. Maybe tonight would end up being life-changing in more than one way, she thought.
Max had grown still as a statue as he’d felt Miranda’s mouth against his skin. Now that she’d taken it away again, he was left with an overwhelming excitement, but also rather a lot of confusion. He didn’t know what was happening here. He knew what he’d like to happen, and he’d played out various versions of it in his head over the months since he’d become first single, and then gradually aware of his growing feelings towards Miranda. But did she want the same thing, or were those meant to be friendly thank-you sorts of kisses and nothing more?
He pulled his head back to look at her, needing to know how to interpret her rare, but welcome physical affection. Miranda lifted herself as he did so, meeting his gaze. She stared straight into his eyes, not flinching or trying to dart away. Max broke the contact after a couple of seconds, flitting down to look at the lips that had caused his puzzlement. He looked back up, feeling his heart thumping hard and fast in his chest. He noticed that Miranda’s cheeks had flushed and she seemed to be breathing quickly, as if she was just as excited as he was. Unexpectedly, she too looked at his lips. Returning to hold his gaze again, she gave the tiniest of nods, but something about the set of her face said that there was no doubt in her mind.
Oh, Max thought. Oh. It’s actually really finally happening, at long last.
He decided that now was definitely the time for impulsivity and for rushing in without thinking himself out of it; what if he never got another chance? He moved his face eagerly towards Miranda’s, his heart almost bursting with joy. Only as he was mere millimetres from kissing her back, did he remember that he really should be absolutely certain that he was doing the right thing.
“Sure?” he whispered, searching her eyes for the confirmation he wanted so badly to find. “It’s been a difficult evening, so I’d understand if—”
“Sure,” she said with a quiet firmness that allowed for no misunderstanding.
Max took a shaky breath and resumed his heart-fluttering progress. He closed his eyes as his lips met hers at last, wanting to focus on feeling every tiny touch of this tender first kiss. It was as if he could hardly breathe for wanting this, and wanting her. His mouth was dry from a combination of nerves and the tannins of the wine he’d consumed; he hoped that wouldn’t affect his performance. This was too important to not give it his all.
Miranda responded eagerly to his advances, glad she had made the first baby-step towards this moment. Nervously, she moved her hand on to Max’s chest, both to support herself as she leaned into him and to allow her fingers to curl through the gaps into his shirt and stroke the soft skin inside. His racing heartbeat drummed into her palm as she parted her lips to touch her tongue to his.
Delighted, Max slipped his hand up and under Miranda’s top to rest it on her bare waist. He felt her shiver before continuing the kiss with an intense passion he’d previously only ever seen from her in his imagination. He hoped he’d be on the receiving end of it again, over and over, for the rest of his days. He put his other hand on her back, gently pushing her into him, feeling her body mould to his, a perfect fit.
After several minutes of getting to know each other better, they slowly came up for air, faces shining gleefully. Miranda rested her forehead against Max’s, her nose touching his as they smiled at each other, overjoyed and giggling in the sinking sun’s golden rays.
“What a night of revelations,” Max said wondrously, his blue eyes dancing.
“And I wouldn't change any of it,” Miranda assured him, before moving her lips confidently back to their new home.