By: Baloo
Chapter 3
Disclaimer: Dark Angel and its characters belong to Cameron, Eglee, and Fox.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: (AU) He was sent to capture and bring in the rogue, 452, but unforeseen complications changed everything. Feline DNA... pheromones... residual feelings? What’s a genetically engineered supersoldier to do? And what are two of them to do, together?
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“Jackass! Complete and utter jerk!”
Those were the first words out of Max’s mouth after her overnight visitor left her apartment. Actually, the door hadn’t quite closed behind him at the time, and what with his enhanced transgenic hearing and all, he should have heard anyway. Hopefully.
She was still seething and muttering obscenities while steadily wearing down a path in the small living room when Kendra came sailing through the front door. The other woman stopped as she observed the scene, arms crossing under her chest, mild amusement flickering across her face.
“Doctor Gorgeous is gone, I take it.”
Max shot her a look of confusion mingled with unveiled resentment and rage. “Doctor?” There was no need to question the ‘Gorgeous’ part.
“Yeah, well,” her roommate smirked, “what with the way he had his tongue jammed down your throat last night at the Crash, I figured he was checking out your tonsils.”
That earned a slight snort. If that were the case, they must have gone to med school together – she’d done her part too. “Yeah, he’s gone.” She paused in her pacing and gave her friend a cursory once-over. “And where have you been?”
Kendra stifled a yawn and pulled off her coat, tossing it over the back of the nearby couch. “I spent the night at Original Cindy’s. I figured you could use the privacy, and I could use the sleep.”
“Then why do you look dead on your feet?”
“Because,” she yawned again, covering her mouth with one hand, “you weren’t the only one who got lucky last night, so I still didn’t get any sleep.” Kendra shook her head in wry amusement. “Whatever that girl does, she sure does it well – the noise factor there was almost as bad as it would’ve been down here.”
“Hey,” Max protested, placing her hands on her hips and momentarily forgetting her worries over the aftermath of the previous night’s events, “I’m not that loud.”
Kendra gave her an incredulous look. “Max, not only could you wake up the dead, you’d probably also make ‘em blush.” Then she shrugged, “But that’s okay – a girl’s gotta get her enjoyment too. Especially when that girl gets it as rarely as you do.”
“So I don’t like to give it up easy,” Max cocked her head to one side. “What’s wrong with that?”
Kendra laughed, heading toward the kitchen to brew up a pot of coffee. “Honey, it’s not that you don’t give it up easy – you just give it up rarely.”
“Rare but easy,” Max surmised, following her, “So basically, the gates stay closed most of the time, but when the carnival does roll around once or twice a year, anyone can get in.” Zoo would have been more appropriate than carnival, but she would have had a hard time explaining that one to Kendra. Besides, it didn’t really work with the analogy.
Setting down the water on the stove, Kendra switched the little gas flame on. “I wouldn’t say anyone – you do seem to have very discriminating tastes when it comes to your men. Take, for instance, last night’s flavor,” she sent a sly grin in her friend’s direction, “Can you say, ‘yummy’?”
Max gave a noncommittal grunt and glanced away. “Yeah, well, I won’t be going back for seconds.” Okay, she’d already had her ‘seconds’, and thirds, and… never mind.
Eyebrows rising slightly, Kendra replied, “What’s the matter? Looked better from behind the glass window than it was up front?” Though she couldn’t see how that was possible – no one could have faked the blatant sexual appeal Max’s mystery man had exuded last night during that brief opportunity she’d had to observe him in action. If they weren’t such good friends, she would have resented her that score. Okay, she still resented her, but in a good, friendly, healthy, not-gonna-try-to-kill-you-or-anything kind of way.
“No,” Max answered, her tone somewhat regretful, “it was actually even better up front.”
“Then what?” she puzzled. Max after a night of lovin’ was usually a happy, easy to get along with Max – hot steamy sex always chased the bitch away, albeit temporarily. But then understanding suddenly dawned in Kendra’s mind, replacing the earlier confusion. She set her hands on the counter and leaned forward, asking sympathetically, “Didn’t leave behind a forwarding address?”
Forwarding address – no, though she did have the last known location of residence, which did her no good whatsoever. “Not exactly,” Max muttered, studying her hands idly.
“Some method by which to get back in contact?”
“No…”
“Ah,” Kendra nodded. “And I think I finally see the reason for the ranting and raving episode that was going on in here earlier.”
“That’s not the problem,” Max glowered. She didn’t fail to notice the incredulous look on her roommate’s face. “It’s not! In fact, I’m quite glad there won’t be any repeat performances” – liar! – “and I can only hope I’ll never have to see his face again” – because if you did, you’d be all over him again, only this time there’d be no heat to blame it on – “so you can just forget what you’re thinking.”
Kendra knew well enough not to push her when she was like this – their years of frienship aside, life and limbs could be at stake. Instead, she tried another approach, “So, then, what is the problem?”
Hmm, he was sent from a secret government-funded military organization to capture me and take me back to the one place I’d rather die than return to, and now he’s decided not to go through with his mission because he’d afraid of what might become of him if he does. And oh, he went and abandoned me after giving me this little ‘heads up’. That enough?
To be fair, he had warned her of the dangers of remaining in Seattle. “If I found you,” he’d said, “what makes you think they won’t too? Especially when they come looking for me – and I haven’t been too concerned with covering my trail while I was tracking you down.”
Her response had been, of course, the standard, “Screw you, I’ve done fine on my own for the past ten years. Now get the hell out of my apartment.”
So, technically, he hadn’t abandoned her – merely followed through on her instructions.
Of course, she probably would have been more open to his side of things if they’d parted on different terms. His hand on the doorknob, he’d turned to give her one last look – a sweeping glance, intimately perusing her from head to toe – a smug grin on his face, as if he were mentally revisiting the events of the previous night right then and there. She’d suppressed the shiver that had threatened to betray her internal response to his piercing gaze, but still felt as if he’d somehow seen right through her. “Goodbye, Max,” he’d drawled in that deep voice that seemed to hit just the right spot with her sensitive ears, his eyes sparkling with unrequited amusement.
“Alec,” she’d sneered, but that’d only served to widen his grin.
But since she couldn’t tell Kendra any of this – because then she would have to explain just why a soldier from a secret government-funded military organization would be sent to after her – she said nothing. Ah, the dilemma of possessing a secret identity.
Kendra, however, took Max’s silence as affirmation of her own suspicions. “Right,” she nodded, completely oblivious to the truth of the matter. “Look, Max, there’s one thing you have to remember about men – they are scum. Oh, not all of them,” she acknowledged with a slight wave of her hand, “but the majority are. Enough so that it’s not even worth talking about those few rare individuals who fall outside the generalization. All they care about is banging the gong, and once they’ve done that – see ya.”
Despite herself, Max laughed. “You spend one night at OC’s and you come back sounding like you’ve been converted. Something happen last night that you’re not telling me about?”
Kendra gave her a sort of bittersweet smile, shaking her head. “Nah. I’m still batting for the home team. Because with all their faults and inadequacies, and all those stupid things they do, say, think… there is one thing – a trait, if you are to be so generous as to call it that – that they do possess to make up for it all.”
“Yeah?” Max inquired, “What’s that?”
“A penis.”