Worked Out

Author's Note: This is just a little something I felt like getting out...I really like the idea of Alex and Marissa ending up together sometime in the future, married and happy. I don't know. Hope you guys like this. If you don't, let me know, k? Thanks.

Disclaimer: I definitely don't own Alex or Marissa, though I wouldn't mind having either of them wink wink .

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I open my eyes, becoming aware immediately of the warm body next to me in bed. Looking over at the woman beside me, I smile at the sight of the same beautiful face I have been waking up to since I was eighteen years old. It's been twelve years already.

I reach up and trace my sleeping wife's eyebrow gently, following the delicate arch to its end and letting my finger slide down the side of her beautiful face...and I think back to our first year together. Often, when I have a quiet moment to just look at the amazing woman that I love, I find myself thinking back to that first year of our relationship. Difficult as it had been, it had changed my life permanently. Changed me permanently, and for the better.

Things hadn't always been easy, hadn't always been good--but she always had. And I will maintain that until the day that I die. My wife has always been good and always been just what I needed, even when we were just friends. It had seemed so easy for us to slip from friends to lovers, but when we did things weren't so easy anymore. A sigh escapes my lips as I remember those first few weeks. The turmoil, the pain, the love...things had been so jumbled, so confusing. But it had all worked out in the end for us, we were together and we were happy.

But this particular morning, I can't help but think back to when I had awoken next to Marissa Cooper the morning after making love to her for the first time. Our first time...

------------Flashback------------

"Make love to me, Alex," Marissa breathed, kissing the side of my face repeatedly. Dazed and completely willing to do anything Marissa asked of me, I pushed thebrunette's hair away from her eyes and kissed her passionately as we fell back onto her bed.

"Are you sure about this?" I asked her, needing to know that I wasn't rushing things with this incredibly gorgeous Newport socialite-to-be. I had pulled away enough to look into her blue-green eyes, and all I saw there was passion, love...and that was more than enough for me. Marissa nodded, her hands framing my face. As her fingers caressed the skin of my cheeks and chin, she just looked me in the eyes and tried to catch her breath.

"I've never been more sure about anything. Please, I need you," she pleaded almost breathlessly. Tears almost came to my eyes but I forced them away, instead kissing Marissa deeply, letting her relax back onto the bed and cradling her head in my hands as I kissed her.

The next morning, it was raining.

When I opened my eyes, I experienced that trademarked moment of panic that you almost always experience when waking up in an unfamiliar place...then I realized that I was in Marissa's bedroom. A smile crept across my lips and I couldn't help the butterflies that fluttered in my stomach as I remembered the night before. For someone that had never been with another girl before, Marissa had been incredible--soft and beautiful and even confident at times. But maybe that confidence was just because she knew exactly what effect she had on me. I'm not sure...all that I can be sure of is that no one had ever tasted or felt as wonderful as she did, and I have not tasted or felt another person like that since then.

It took me a few minutes to get to the point where I could stop staring at the ceiling, thinking about how I had gotten into the bed of the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. When I could finally function, I became aware of the arm draped over me, of the head resting on my outstretched arm. Finally I looked over at her, and my breath literally left my chest...Had I really made love to this gorgeous girl the night before?

Yes, I had. She had wanted me to, asked me to, and when I finally had she had loved it. It was the best sex I had ever had, which was saying a lot then. And it confused me--was I falling in love with this girl? It sure seemed like it, but we had only been dating for a couple of weeks. And Alex Kelly is not a girl that falls in love easily.

But it was different with her. And I knew that as I lie there beside her, watching her beautiful face relaxed in sleep and the slight smile that played across her perfect lips. I decided then and there that I wanted to watch her sleep like that every morning, that I wanted to be the one that watched her wake up and the one that made love to her...but did I want that forever? I wasn't even sure that I believed in forever or happy endings or anything like that, but Marissa Cooper made me want to.

I can't honestly say how long I lie there just watching her sleep, but when she finally awoke, I had never seen anything more beautiful than the first time her eyes opened after a good night's sleep. They were the most amazing color of blue-gray, altered from the blue-green that they were normally. I had just watched her, slack-jawed, unable to look away and completely unwilling to as she woke herself up slowly, stretching a little bit but never moving away from me.

When she turned those gorgeous eyes on me, my heart almost leapt out of my chest.

"Morning," she murmured, that slight smile that had been on her lips in sleep growing as she took in the position we were in. We were naked, tangled up in the sheets of her bed and tangled up in each other--our legs intwined with each others and her arm over my waist. I smiled back at her, as soon as I regained control of my facial muscles.

"Morning. How'd you sleep?" I asked her. Her smile grew to incredible proportions, and she moved slightly so she was lying on her stomach, her chin resting on my chest. As she looked up at me, I swear to God she was telling me with her eyes that she was in love with me, even then, but I didn't call her on it.

"I slept great...last night was amazing," she said, tracing her finger over my bare hip. Biting back a gasp at the contact, I nodded.

"Yeah...it was. You were amazing," I told her, looking her in the eyes and trying to convey exactly how I was feeling. She met my gaze, understood what I was trying to tell her, and when she did she leant up and kissed me softly. It was a slow, soft, beautiful kiss not unlike the first one we had ever shared, and as I kissed her I made sure to pour all my heart into it--every ounce of feeling and every emotion I was feeling went into that kiss, and as she pulled away she looked slightly dazed.

"Wow," she breathed, looking at me with half-lidded eyes. I nodded, unable to come up with anything to say in that moment.

After a long moment of silence, just looking at each other, Marissa kissed me lightly again and got out of bed, leaving me lying there watching her beautiful naked body move. She was truly the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen, and as I watched her I remembered that. Nothing I had ever seen could simultaneously turn me on and turn me to mush and make my breath hitch all at the same time, but she could. She did. She still does.

I didn't know why she had gotten up--I would have been content to stay in bed with her all day. But instead of getting dressed like I had expected her to, she came over to the side of the bed I was in and reached a slender hand out to me. I took it uncertainly, let her help me up. As I came out from under the sheets, her eyes dropped to my body and for a second she had the same look in her eyes that she had the night before, just before she had pleaded with me to make love to her. She looked back up at me, our eyes locked, and smiled.

"My mom's going to come looking for me soon...I thought we should shower and head downstairs," she said, pulling me slowly by the hand toward her en-suite bathroom. I raised an eyebrow and let her pull me toward the shower.

"We should shower? That's mighty bold of you, How do you know I want to shower with you?" I asked playfully, so she knew I was kidding. A sly grin crossed her lips as she reached behind her and turned the shower on, and she chewed on her lower lip lightly as steam filled the room.

"Because you haven't been able to take your eyes off me all morning," she said, pulling me closer by my hand. I grinned, amused that she had caught me, and shrugged.

"What can I say?" I asked her, leaning in closer to her, "You...are...gorgeous," I breathed, kissing her neck between words. Her hand found its way to the back of my neck, pulling me closer to her, and she gasped quietly as I began kissing my way up her neck to her jawline.

"Come on," she breathed, tugging me into the shower with her.

Needless to say, that was the best shower that I ever had.

------------End Flashback------------

Later on that day, Marissa had told her mother about our relationship...had moved out of the mansion and into my apartment. She had come into my apartment and kissed me and told me that she had told her mother, then we had made love for the better part of the afternoon. It became kind of a natural thing for us, the intimacy in our relationship picked up quickly and escalated beyond anything I'd ever experienced. I was in love with her, and I had fallen hard and fast. And that's the way that I've stayed ever since then.

She's still sleeping, and as I look at the clock I understand why. It's only ten minutes to eight, and she didn't sleep all that well last night. I can't help myself as I lean toward her, kissing her nose lightly and caressing her cheek with a barely-there touch.

That first night together had been fantastic, those first few months were great...but then things started happening between us that I wish hadn't happened. There were misunderstandings, miscommunications, and finally there was a breakup. Yeah...even though I knew that I was in love with her I left her standing on Newport beach with Ryan and all the other rich snobs she went to school with. Just walked away with my skeezy ex-con friends and didn't look back, even though I wanted to desperately.

When I had gotten into my Jeep that night to drive back to the apartment, I realized that there was no way that I could stay in Newport. No way. Not after her, not after Marissa. I didn't want a damn thing to do with that place after having and losing her, so I went home, packed my things, and left that very night. But where was I to go? Home had been where Marissa was, and I suddenly found myself very much without a girlfriend and very much without a home.

Determined not to fall back into anything with Jody, I went, not to LA, but south to Laguna Beach. Laguna was really no different than Newport, a rich place with spoilt rich kids that loved going to the club I ended up working at. They watched the live indie bands that came around, they drank their smuggled-in liquor, they made out and got into fights. They were Newport with different faces. They were Newport minus Marissa, which made them substantially less thrilling. They weren't the same. It wasn't the same. I went on autopilot, pouring drinks and doing paperwork and playing manager of Aqua, a well-established nightclub and hotspot for the rich kids in the area.

But things were never as good as they had been before...the sun never shone quite as brightly, the waves were never quite as good, I could never smile quite as genuinely. I made friends there, one good one in particular that I was very glad to have met.

Her name was Britt, and she was my assistant manager at Aqua. She was a great girl, about twenty when I met her, and she was the only person that I met in Laguna that accepted me with no questions asked. Only a year younger than me, she acted ten years more mature. Britt had been through a lot of things in her life--things similar to what I had been through with my parents and my sexuality and things like that. She was a lesbian, had been cast out by her parents when she was eighteen, and lived on her own in a small apartment on the beach. We ended up hanging out quite a lot, surfing and talking and drinking...she was a great friend.

When I told Britt about Marissa, she had been sympathetic. Of course she had been through something similar, and of course she understood. She let my cry on her shoulder and sack out on her couch when I was too drunk to drive home. She stopped me when I started drinking just a little bit too much, helped me when I needed out of a situation where a girl or guy just wouldn't take a hint and leave me alone. Britt and I got as close as Marissa and Summer had always been, which was great because I really needed it at that point in my life.

But nothing romantic ever happened between us--I was still in love with Marissa and she was crazy about our friend Lori, who also worked at the club. Besides, we were much too similar to ever have been together. We were great friends, and we still are.

We were such great friends, in fact, that when Marissa came into the club one afternoon looking for me, Britt was hesitant to let her know I was even there. She knew the pain I had been through, the things that had happened between Marissa and I, and my friend was torn between letting this girl back into my life or turning her away. But, knowing me as well as she always has, she led Marissa to my office, where I was doing paperwork.

I'll never forget that day...