There's a problem with one of the patrols, Max is busy and annoyed, and so she sends Alec to check it out. He comes back four hours later with a cut on one cheekbone, looking insufferably pleased with himself.
"What?" Max doesn't really care, but if she doesn't ask he'll just drop hints and hang around bothering her until she does.
Alec grins, which has to be painful, and says, "I've got White."
The news is almost worth listening to him congratulate himself for the next ten minutes. Eventually he gets around to explaining; how the patrol he went to check on ran into White and several familiars, how a freak accident involving a slippery sidewalk and a signpost left White unconscious. Alec doesn't even try to take credit for it; he's laughing too hard. Nobody really cares how it came about; they have White: they win this round.
Max isn't sure what to do with him, so she decides to ignore him. She has him put under guard in a building she never visits: she doesn't want to have to look at him.
But she can't forget that he's there. He keeps popping up in her mind at the most inopportune moments. She can't get him out of her head, even locked up he's still driving her crazy.
Four days after Alec brought him in, Max goes down to the basement storage where they've been keeping him. The current guard is an X-6 named Jazz, he smiles in greeting when she comes around the corner.
"Hey, boss." His face is bright and eager. He's just a kid.
"Hey, Jazz," she says, "sorry you drew this duty."
"Oh, that's alright, ma'am-Max." He fumbles a little but remembers her dislike of being called "ma'am" just in time. "It's not hard; he doesn't really do much."
Despite herself, Max is curious.
"What does he do?"
Jazz shrugs, "Doesn't sleep, paces sometimes, works out, mostly."
"Works out?" She's picturing White in his three hundred dollar suits, the image doesn't quite compute.
"Yes ma'-Max. All the time."
For some reason this makes her opinion of White rise a little, but she's not sure why, and she shoves it into the back of her mind.
"I'm gonna talk to him for a minute."
"Yes, Max. Uhh, should I step away?"
Max smiles at him, "Want a lunch break, soldier?"
Her smile broadens when he blushes, "Go get something to eat, I can handle him."
If only, she thinks.
White is doing fingertip pull-ups from a pipe near the low ceiling when Max steps into the bare concrete room. It's hot and humid in this building, something to do with a flawed boiler system, and White is shirtless and barefoot. It makes him look less like a federal agent, and more like a person. Without the suit he seems more human.
Without the suit she can see his body. White is slender, but every inch is muscled and toned and there isn't an ounce of fat on him. In spite of her mental protests, Max lets her eyes roam over his corded arms, down over his chiseled shoulders and chest to the very faint line of hair that runs down his stomach and disappears into his…
Max snaps her mind away from that particular train of thought, disgusted with herself.
White must have heard her outside, heard her come in, because when she doesn't say anything for a long moment, he says, without opening his eyes, "Did you want something 452? Or did you just come down for the show?"
"I want lots of things," she snaps at him, feeling defensive and not knowing why. "World peace, decent television service, half an hour of peace and quiet, things like that."
White drops from the pipe and lands lightly on his feet. "Half an hour of peace isn't why you came down here. What is it 452, finally decide what to do with me?" His voice is as caustic and nasty as ever, usually it makes her want to smack him, but now it makes her feel a little calmer.
"You know what I want, White. Are you gonna cooperate, and maybe get outta here in one piece?"
He walks toward her slowly, smirking. The temperature and the workout have left his bare chest shiny with perspiration; it's very distracting.
"You want me to translate you," he says. The smirk is really starting to bother her.
"Well, yeah. If you were covered in runes wouldn't you want to know what they said?" Sarcasm notwithstanding, Max is feeling pretty serious now: the runes have been on her mind a lot, lately.
White shakes his head. "What they say isn't the important part, 452. It's what they signify that you should be worrying about."
"So what do they signify?" Max would never admit it, but he's getting to her, his smirks and cryptic hints and the six-pack definition of his abdomen… she shakes her head sharply, where did that thought come from?
White shakes his head, "Oh no, 452. It's not gonna be that easy." Smiling, he turns his back on her and strolls casually toward the other side of the room.
Max is too shaken by her decidedly strange response to him to pursue the subject. "Fine," she says, "rot here, then."
She turns sharply on her heel and stomps back toward the door. His voice stops her with her hand on the latch.
"452?"
She turns back. White is back in the middle of the room, doing push ups on his knuckles, back straight, shoulders square, his legs crossed at the ankles. The muscles in his back ripple and shift with the rhythmic motion. Max feels her mouth go dry and hates herself for it.
Without looking up he says, "They'll come for me in force, eventually. You don't want that."
She knows this, and it's on the tip of her tongue to say something sharp, but then he switches to diamond push ups with his hands together in front of him, and watching his muscles shift takes her breath away completely. She backs out of the room as quickly as she can get the door open.
Once out in the hall she notices that Jazz isn't back yet, she can't leave White unguarded, so she waits. She leans against the door, trying not to listen to him breathe, and wonders if she's coming down with something. She makes a mental note to let White go as soon as possible. What the runes say no longer seems very important. She'll tell the others she just wanted to get him away from her.
The truth is she wants him close to her, very close. If she sends him away maybe she'll be able to keep denying it.
Maybe she'll come to her senses.