An Alec McDowell character study. Canon compliant... or at least trying to be. Past Alec/Rachel and hints of Alec/Asha, as well as some one-sided Alec/Max, perhaps?
Alec really hated Max... Though there were times he found her attractive—how could he not? He was a guy. And he didn't buy her "all Manticore kids are siblings" schtick as much as she did—but more often than not, he despised her… and that overruled anything else between them, and probably always would.
...It was just how easily she was willing to get Logan, the man she loved (though she'd never said as much in so many words: something else that annoyed Alec) killed.
Now, Logan was an idiot and there wasn't much love lost between him and Alec… But still.
Alec, in loving Rachel before, had gone down the same road that Max was with her Ordinary now. And Alec still loved Rachel so much, that it was a literal ache in him all the time. And a day didn't go by, that Alec didn't regret his choices when it came to the Berrisfords.
And that was why Max drove Alec up a fucking wall, because if he could do it all over again and save Rachel—even if it meant never having had her in his life at all—then he would have done it in a heartbeat!
And yet Max, who thought she was so much better than him in every way possible, couldn't even do this for her precious Logan?... Or to at least throw caution to the wind, and to love like it was their last night on Earth?
It was too dangerous game that Max and Logan were playing, that could only end in tragedy. And since Alec had already been to too many friends' funerals, it just wasn't worth it.
Of course... there was a flipside to all of this, too. And one that Alec would have buried down long ago, if he hadn't been trained to look at every angle of anything: that Max's being so determined to be with Logan (in their very awkward relationship) meant that she loved him way more than he ever had Rachel.
And so Alec slept with girl after girl, trying to prove to himself that this wasn’t the case. After all, he and Rachel had never gone so far; and yet his lewdness with others proved to him that the chaste relationship he’d shared with Rachel meant more to him than anything else ever could.
…As time passed on and on—and the anti-transgenic agenda ramped up—Alec found himself going back on forth on whether or not Max and Logan were stronger than Rachel and himself had been, and thus should give it a go, or if they should just throw in the towel already
But in becoming a bit more hopeful—like Rachel had wanted him to be—Alec began cheering on Max and Logan some (maybe he even wanted them to be happy together, in this tragic and broken world?)... even ifhe was part of the reason they had broken up to begin with, admittedly, and even while all these mental scars kept him from perusing a romantic relationship with Asha ever again.
