InsaneJournal

Maybe Tonight (George Michael/Maeby, R)
Title: Maybe Tonight
Pairing: George Michael/Maeby (Arrested Development)
Rating: R
Word Count: 2548
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Arrested Development belongs to Mitchell Hurwitz and the FOX Network.
Summary: Something very special is going to happen tonight. Maybe.
Notes: So, this is my Yuletide fic, the one I slaved over, cried over, agonized over. I'm really happy with the fic, actually, and with the reaction I got from my recipient, agate, and from the fandom in general. (Who knew there was such a big AD following?)


Maeby is drunk. There's really no other word for it. George Michael can't quite take it all in, so he just stands with the door of his apartment flung wide, and he starts at her shoes (muddy—it must be raining again) and works his way up (trying not to let his gaze linger too long on her breasts, even though they're right there for anyone to see, and she probably should've worn a jacket over that low-cut, tiny shirt, especially if it really is raining). Her face is flushed, her hair frizzy with the humidity, and she just laughs and waits for George Michael to finish his assessment of her state.

"Can I come in now?" she asks, and without waiting for a response, she pushes past him, trailing the scent of her perfume behind her, intermingled with the aroma of alcohol. She sprawls on his sofa, closes her eyes, kicks off her muddy shoes (George Michael tries not to cringe as mud spatters onto the rug) and sighs.

"Much better," she proclaims, and George Michael shuts the door behind him.

"What, why, why, um…are you here?" he finally manages, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs to dry them. He's not a kid anymore, and his cousin shouldn't still have this effect on him. He tries to swallow, but his throat is dry. He tears his eyes from Maeby, who is braiding her hair over her shoulder in an attempt to tame it, and walks into the kitchen without waiting for a response to his initial question.

"Water?" he calls out, and he fills a glass from the tap, gulping it, splashing half of it down his front. "Dammit," he whispers, dabbing it up with a paper towel.

"That sounds really great, actually," Maeby calls back, and George Michael takes down another glass and fills it for her, plopping in a few ice cubes as an afterthought. As he hands it to her, his cell phone rings, and he jumps, spilling the water over Maeby's hand and his own.

"Shit," says Maeby, and George Michael nods frantically.

"Shit," he responds, half-aloud, and he runs to the kitchen to grab his phone and more paper towels.

"I'm not here," Maeby whispers, shaking her head, her unfastened braid coming undone as George Michael thrusts the paper towels at her.

He nods and flips open his phone. It's a male voice, unfamiliar, and George Michael wrinkles his nose. But it's a wrong number, and George Michael slumps onto the sofa beside Maeby (not too close, but close enough that he can smell her).

"Why—why are you 'not here'?"

Maeby pushes her face forward and wrinkles her nose in imitation of George Michael and laughs. "Because I don't want anyone to know I'm here," she says slowly, as if she were talking to a child.

"Right—right—but why?" Her face is still too close and George Michael can hardly breathe for remembering the last time they were this close, the last time her lips were parted so very near to his.

"Because," Maeby answers, and she pauses, kicking off her shoes. "I didn't mean to be quite this drunk," she says after a moment, "But the wine had been sitting out for a while, and you know it turns to alcohol when it does that."

George Michael doesn't know a lot about wine, but he's pretty sure this isn't entirely accurate.

"Where did you hear that?" he asks, saving the more important question, which won't quite form on his tongue.

"Gangee, I think," Maeby answers. "Woman knows her alcohol. I thought I drank it fast enough, but I guess not." She hauls herself up on the sofa, tucking her feet under her, and drapes an arm along the back cushions, her fingers dangling too close to George Michael's neck. If he just leaned his head back a little…but no, uh-uh, he's not going to take advantage of her when she's like this. Not that that stops the hairs on the back of his neck from standing up.

He shivers.

"Anyway," she continues, "I didn't mean to get so drunk. Just wanted, you know, liquid courage. Which is a really stupid phrase, actually, now that I've said it."

George Michael nods. It definitely is a stupid phrase. He tries hard not to plunge forward and ask why she decided to get drunk in the first place. The answer might really suck. And he's enjoying the proximity of her hand to his neck too much to screw things up.

"I think I heard it from your dad. Okay, anyway. Are you glad I'm here?"

The question takes George Michael off guard, and he shakes his head at first, only meaning to shake off the strangeness of it, and Maeby frowns.

"No! No, I mean—! I'm glad, of course I am. That you're here. Um." In the time it takes George Michael to think of something intelligent to say that won't hurt Maeby's feelings, she's plunged forward and kissed him on his open mouth.

George Michael makes an embarrassed, girly sort of squeak and holds perfectly still for the smallest possible moment while Maeby's wine-infused breath mingles with his own. Then, as if by some miracle, his arms move and he's got them around her and she's making a happy little moaning sound into his mouth. He trails a hand up her back and tangles it in her hair and her hand drops to the back of his neck, grasping, and he shivers again.

And he pulls out of the kiss.

He's pretty sure his face is bright red—he can feel the blush staining downwards, setting his cheeks on fire—and it doesn't help that Maeby's lips look swollen, plumper than usual, and George Michael knows he's the one that caused that.

"Okay," he says, stalling. Maeby blinks at him, her eyes slowly focussing after being closed.

"Okay?" she says, and she doesn't pull away at all. George Michael shifts under her comfortable weight and is about to try to speak again when his cell phone rings out a familiar tune.

"Uh," he says, "I—that's my dad. I should probably—"

"Mmm," Maeby says, not moving. George Michael squirms out from under her and flips open his phone.

"Dad!" he squeaks. His voice is too high, too breathy. Dammit. His dad's going to know something is up.

"George Michael, my man!" Michael Bluth says. It sounds like there's a party going on wherever Michael is, and his voice is just a touch too jovial.

"Dad, hey," George Michael replies, wary, not wanting to get into conversation or have to make excuses when his dad invites him to wherever the gathering is. Beside him on the sofa, Maeby slumps further, picking up a magazine and idly flipping through it as if she's waiting for the dentist. This unnerves George Michael more than anything she's done all night, and he stares at her hands as they turn the pages, not hearing a word his father's saying.

"Dad," George Michael says, not caring that he's interrupting, "I—I have to go. I have, ah, guests."

"What have you got, a girl there? Good for you!" His dad's voice is too encouraging, as if George Michael were still a nineteen-year-old virgin who lives with his family. Never mind that he's a twenty-three year old semi-virgin (he's uncertain whether blowjobs count, though he does list that among the best experiences of his life) who only recently stopped doing laundry at his dad's house.

"Um…" George Michael watches as Maeby licks a finger and flicks to the next page in the magazine, then repeats the motion.

He's paused too long and his dad definitely knows something's up now.

"Good for you, good for you, son," Michael says, "Anyone I know?"

"Um…" George Michael says again. Maeby casts a glance his way from underneath heavy lashes, and George Michael is spurred into action. "No. You don't know her. I really have to go. Don't want to be rude, you know, to guests." He gives a nervous little laugh that trills too high at the end and murmurs along with his dad's good-byes and promises that they'll get together on Sunday.

When finally he's flipped his phone shut, Maeby's eyelids are drooping and she's lying on her back on the sofa, the magazine discarded on the floor.

"Hey," she says, and her voice is more impossibly sultry than George Michael could ever have imagined anyone's voice could be, and maybe part of that is just that he's wanted to hear her talk like this to him since he was a kid, but still it's incredible, and Maeby hauls herself upright, pressing close, and pauses.

Her lips are right there, and he should be able to move that infinitesimal amount of space to kiss them, but he can't. The barrier of breath separates them until Maeby twitches a finger under the collar of George Michael's shirt and he jerks forward, and somehow they're kissing again and George Michael is undoing the rest of Maeby's braid, and she's unbuttoning his shirt and she's got her hand on his bare cheat and oh, god. Oh god, oh shit, oh, god. He's hard, he's harder than he's ever been in his life, and at some point she is going to realize that, he tells himself, and she's going to freak out.

Except when Maeby finishes undoing his shirt (he still hasn't made a move towards hers, though those little straps would slip off—oh god—so easily) and her hand keeps travelling downward, she doesn't freak out, not the tiniest bit. She cups the bulge in his pants and squeezes and George Michael thinks he might go through the roof.

"No," he manages, and it's a squeak, and Maeby pulls her mouth from his and laughs.

"Why not? Jesus, George Michael, I've wanted to do this for years."

His mouth is dry, his palms are sweaty, and Maeby is everywhere, including her hand still on his crotch, and he shifts away from her as much as he can.

"You—you're drunk," he says, as if that stopped him from letting a newly-liberal Ann suck his dick two years ago when they were shocked to discover each other in Las Vegas and had a few drinks too many together, "for old times' sake".

"Mmm," she assents, "It was the wine, I'm telling you."

"Well," he says, feeling stupid, "Yes." He extricates himself from his cousin and stands, pressing his thighs together as if that's going to do any good against the biggest hard-on he's ever had in his entire life. He offers Maeby a hand up, and she takes it, standing, and her damned touch is so electric that George Michael gets harder, if that's really possible.

"Shh," she says as he starts to speak, "Listen. I may be a little tipsy, but that's no reason not to fuck me." George Michael goes red instantly, but Maeby presses on, still holding her hand.

"I've wanted this for ages," she says, and she tugs him across the living room. He follows, unwittingly, and she pauses at the door to his bedroom.

The look she gives him there makes George Michael think that maybe this isn't such a bad idea, after all. He wants to kiss every freckle on her nose and cheeks, to lick her neck and follow the trail of freckles down, down.

He idly wonders what her nipples look like as she parts his unbuttoned shirt, pushing it from his shoulders. He catches it in one hand just before it slips to the floor. Maeby reaches behind her and turns the doorknob, stumbling into the darkened bedroom, letting go of his hand as she finds the edge of the bed and sits on it, slipping the straps of her shirt down her shoulders. The light from the hallway reflects on her skin, and George Michael swallows hard.

"Let me just—" he manages, stalling for time.

"Hm?" Maeby is pulling back the coverlet and sheets on his bed, oh god.

"B—bathroom," he says, gesturing, and she nods.

The bright light of the bathroom is like another world, one where sense intervenes and cousins aren't supposed to be taking off each others' clothes, even if they're not really cousins. George Michael takes a piss and washes his hands and face, pausing in his ablutions to sniff under his arms. He decides he smells all right, then breathes on his hand, waving it in front of his nose.

"Yuck," he says, and he brushes his teeth and tongue.

Satisfied with his oral hygiene, George Michael kicks off his shoes and socks, inspecting the spaces between his toes for lint. He has a feeling toe lint isn't very sexy.

When he can't think of anything else to do to clean himself up in preparation for the very thing he's trying hard not to think about, George Michael takes a deep breath and regards himself in the mirror. He's still on the skinny side, but if Maeby's wanted this for years, well, then he supposes that's probably all right.

"You can do this," he tells his reflection, and he steps out of the bathroom with renewed confidence.

When he reaches the bedroom, Maeby's under the covers, her clothes in a heap on the floor. Her hair is spread out across the pillow, and though most of her face is in shadow, George Michael swears he can see the faintest smile playing across her lips.

He closes the door—though, really, there's no one there to close the door against—and makes his way to the bed, sitting on the edge. After a long moment in which neither cousin speaks, George Michael puts a trembling hand on Maeby's bare shoulder.

"Hey," he says.

"Hn?" she replies. She turns a bit and lets out a sleepy sort of sigh, snuffling into the pillow.

"Are—are you asleep?" George Michael deflates a little. Why did he have to take so much time in the bathroom?

"Mmm," Maeby agrees, and George Michael nods. He takes his hand from her shoulder, though really that's the last thing he wants to do, and stands.

"Okay," he says, finally, biting his lip and stepping to the door. When he opens it, the light from the hallway spills over his cousin, and she sighs again.

There's an extra pillow and a few blankets in the hallway closet, and George Michael knows his sofa's serviceable as a bed. He thinks he probably shouldn't sleep in his bed, not with Maeby there, just in case.

In case of what, he's not exactly sure, but the safe route's always been one George Michael's been more than willing to take.

Just before he settles in for the night, George Michael pours a glass of water for his cousin, leaving it on the bedside table along with a couple of aspirin. He stands at the doorway and finally allows himself to grin.

"Okay," he says to the darkness, "Maybe not tonight. But maybe tomorrow."