His Fight -- Chapter 7

Disclaimer:  The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Alec, Logan, etc.), and everything else that has to do with the show belong to their respective owners, not to me.  No money is being made off of this fic.  I only own the original characters (Brenda/X5-008, etc.).

I took off my jacket and threw it onto the couch before I sat down in an armchair, picked up the remote, and turned on the TV. Ahhh, nothing like relaxing in front of the good old boob tube after a shift on sentry duty. Not that anything happened. Hell, even the number of protestors outside of the gates have been slowly but steadily decreasing in the last couple of weeks since White and company bit the big one. Still, a four hour shift on sentry duty is a four hour shift on sentry duty, especially when the only other person that’s there with you is one of those weird X7s from back at my old facility. Try having a conversation with one of those kids even now. I turned my head when I heard a knock at the door. “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” Max said. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” I said. “The door’s not locked.” I waited for Max to enter my apartment. “Hey, there. What’s going on?”

“Not much as far as I can tell,” Max said. She shrugged. “How about from your end? How did your shift on sentry duty go?”

“Boring,” I said. “None of the ordinaries outside had the balls or sheer stupidity to try anything that would amuse me and that über- weird X7 that I was paired with still doesn’t know how to make any kind of normal conversation and I know that they know how to talk using code and regular old sign language.”

Max raised an eyebrow. “Wait a second. You actually wanted one of those guys outside of the gates to have actually tried to do something?”

“I told you, I was bored,” I said.

“You need help big time,” Max said, rolling her eyes.

“Wanna help me?” I said. I grinned at her. “What do you say?”

“I say, for the millionth time, that you need to grow up,” Max said.

“What can I say? I never get tired of hearing that voice of yours telling me that,” I said. “Come on, Max. You’ve not only pulled sentry duty before, but you’ve mostly done it at night when it would be even more boring than it just was for me. How can you stand there and tell me that you didn’t wish that something would have happened so that you wouldn’t have been bored out of your mind?”

“I will not get pulled into an insane and completely pointless conversation with you,” Max said. “Drop it, Alec.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. I got up from my chair and walked up next to her. “How about you tell me when the last time was when you were so incredibly bored that all that you wanted to do was to punch your fist through a wall, which hurts like hell by the way, or scream or just do something absolutely stupid? Tell me, Max.”

“Fine,” Max said. “I guess there’s no harm in this. The last time I was ever that bored was probably last week when I was talking with L—Laura, that X4 who had gotten in about two months ago. You know, the one who’s been helping Dix with the surveillance. I ran into her in the control room and I got roped into this long conversation with her and she was so dull it drove me crazy.”

I tried not to smile when I heard the hesitation it Max’s voice that she couldn’t quite cover up in time. Her precious boyfriend bored the hell out of her! All hail Logan Cale, King of the Boring. “Yeah, Laura does have a tendency to just ramble about the most boring things. But enough about her, why don’t you tell me why Logie bored you when you talked to him last week? Has he bored you since or was it just that one time? Personally, he bores me every—“ I didn’t finish my sentence for the usual reason it’s hard to finish a sentence around Max.

“Shut the hell up,” Max yelled as she pulled her arm back and put her hands on her hips. “I did not say or imply that Logan was the one that bored me.” Oh yeah, there’s a lie right there. I remember that they taught us how to lie through our teeth when we were about seven or eight years old, so I’m sure that you know how to do it. Damn, she must be pissed. “And not only that, but why do you have to refer to him as Logie?”

“It’s just a nickname, Max,” I said. “You don’t need to get all bent out of shape over something like that.” I looked at her, genuinely concerned. “Are you and Logan having problems?”

“I didn’t say that either,” Max said.

“Max, I’m being serious,” I said. “You guys are doing okay, right?”

“We’re doing absolutely fine,” Max said. “All things considered, I couldn’t be happier with our relationship.” I could still hear a slight hesitation in her voice, but I decided to just let it go for once. “Don’t worry, Alec. Everything’s fine.”

I nodded. “Good.” I gestured over to my kitchen. “You want anything to eat? I might have some leftovers in my fridge.”

“Nah, that’s okay. Thanks anyway, though,” Max said.

“No problem. Anytime,” I said. “So, you want to do anything? There’s actually some good stuff on TV right now. I was just watching a movie on Channel Eight.”

“Sounds good,” Max said. She grinned and practically threw herself into the chair that I had been sitting in when she had come to my apartment.

“I think not, Maxie,” I said. “I was sitting in that chair earlier.”

“You aren’t now,” Max replied. She stuck her tongue out at me.

Since she wants to play that game… “I can fix that one in a snap,” I said. I grabbed one of her arms and yanked her up and out of the chair, intending to move her aside so that I could have sat back down in my old spot. I misjudged it, though, and I ended up pulling her right against me. I felt my breath catch in my throat, along with my heartbeat. “Um…Max?”

“Yeah?” she replied. She looked up into my eyes and if I was capable of thought before, I sure kissed that possibility good-bye. I felt myself moving closer to her, almost, almost…

There was another knock at the door. “Hey, Alec, we need to go over those plans with Nick for the out-of-town job we’re going to do tomorrow night, remember?” Brenda said from the hallway. “You said that you wanted to meet down in the cafeteria in five minutes. Let’s move it or lose it.”

Max moved away from me in a split second. “Well…I’ll see you later, Alec.” She left my apartment, saying a distracted hi to Brenda as she went away.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly.

Brenda entered the apartment, holding Pete in her arms. She looked concerned. “Did I mess something up?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I really don’t.”