Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel or any of the recognizable characters or places. So no owning Jondy or Alec, though that'd be fun! ^_^ Season Two would've been very different, though... ^_~

Something Different

You're more than a lover
There could never be another
To make me feel the way you do
Oh we just get closer
I fall in love all over
Everytime I look at you
I don't know where I'd be
Without you here with me
Life with you makes perfect sense
You're my best friend
You're my best friend, oh yeah.

-"My Best Friend" by Tim McGraw

"Stop bleeding everywhere."

"Oh, sorry, didn't mean to die all over your clothes. Next time I'll just bleed out on the floor if that's easier. You know, I bet you always wanted a red carpet. It'd match nicely with the rest of the decor."

Jondy gave a vindictive tug on the stitches, pulling a couple of them out at once. "Melodramatic. And it'd clash with my green motif."

"Vicious, and no, it wouldn't. I don't think," Alec replied, refusing to acknowledge that it hurt when she pulled like that.

He glanced over at Jondy out of the corners of his eyes. The petite X5 was bent over his shoulder, her focus on the sluggishly bleeding gunshot wound in his shoulder. It had been a souvenir received from Max's need to give Gill Girl and Gill Guy a Disney ending, and it had only been made worse by Asha's good-natured but torturous attempts to fix it. After downing the meds Asha had forced on him and escaping before she could play nurse anymore, he'd retreated to the apartment he was currently sharing with Jondy.

Jondy had been about to head out to work at one of her many bar jobs (it was The Rocky Bottom tonight), but after spotting the hole in his jacket and the blood stains, she had practically thrown him in a chair and ripped off his clothes to get a look at the wound. Normally he wouldn't have minded the attention from the X5 female, and he had started to get the idea that she was in heat, which would have been completely awesome. The completely awesome possibility turned into a nightmare when she started tearing the stitches out of his shoulder, causing him agony while she complained about how Asha had screwed them up.

He rested his arms on the back of the chair and frowned as she moved her fingertips along another stitch. "Aren't medics supposed to be nice to their patients?"

"Not when their patients let someone completely incompetent stitch them up, therefore forcing said medic to go back and undo a mess and redo an entire stitch-job." She yanked and another stitch came out. "Geez, did she think she was sewing a button? This is ridiculous."

"Don't take it out on me," Alec said, "I didn't know she was going to use me as a practice dummy."

"Poor baby," Jondy snorted, but the next tug was a little gentler. "You know you would've been better off stitching yourself up or just leaving it alone." She suddenly laughed and stopped pulling out the stitches for a moment, her hand resting on his shoulder. "She's hot, isn't she?"

Alec grinned. "She's not hard on the eyes."

"Don't be cliché," she said, starting to pick at another stitch. That had to be the last one, right? "It lowers you."

"Give me a break, Jonds," Alec replied, "It's not like I compared her to a summer's day or said she has eyes like sunsets."

Jondy put the remains of the original stitches down on the table. "Or breasts like watermelons?"

"More like cantaloupes," he said, smiling at the memory. "Nice, firm cantaloupes."

Jondy snickered. "And did you have to feel the cantaloupes to make sure they were ripe before you bought them?"

"No. Asha's hung up on Logan, who's hung up on Max, who's still hung up on him but pretending she doesn't care." Alec snorted and rested his chin on his folded arms. "It's weird, but whatever; I think it's an Ordinary thing. I'm just saying that if I can console Asha when she's feeling low about being second choice to Max, I still luck out from it."

"As long as you don't 'console' her here. You can do whatever you want in your room besides sex up unwitting women. There're sucky motels for that." Jondy reached over and plucked a new needle off the table; it glinted silver before it disappeared into his skin, followed by the thick black thread. Jondy obviously had a lot of experience with stitching people up since it hurt a lot less than when Asha had tried. Or maybe that was the drugs finally taking effect…

"Wouldn't," he replied, focusing on the clock on the wall to distance himself from the little jabs of pain. He grinned lazily at her. "My roommate might get pissy about it."

He felt the heel of her hand land gently on the side of his head, a playful bat. "Very pissy. Now, shut up, I'm going to do this right." She trailed off into complaining about how Asha had tried to mutilate him and leaned in close, her leg pressed against his thigh, her jeans rubbing against his, and her hand on his shoulder.

Damn. It sucked that Jondy had a longstanding no-sex-with-roommates policy along with that new no-sex-with-unwitting-women rule.

The clock on the wall was slowly getting fuzzy, and his mouth felt like he was sucking on a cotton ball. Jondy hummed a couple bars from a song he didn't know while she worked, quickly tying off the new stitches. Alec drew his forefinger along the leg of the chair and zoned out, letting his mind wander.

It had been a couple months since he had moved in with Jondy, and he still didn't have her figured out. He understood most women pretty quickly, which was why he was able to walk out of a bar with whatever girl on his arm whenever he wanted to.

The majority of girls knew what they wanted in a guy and hunted for him in the bars and clubs of the city. They wanted the charmer or the nice guy or the bad boy or the brooding loner or the asshole, and Alec, well, he could be them all. He could play all the parts, he knew all the right lines, the way to stand, to sit, to smirk or glower, whichever, whatever they needed, and if he did it right, they just came up to him and basically threw themselves into his arms.

Some girls, like Asha for example, wanted someone they couldn't have. They were going after the married guys or the taken guys or the ones their best friends had their eyes on. Those girls were desperate. They didn't want to be, but they just couldn't help themselves. You show them attention, just a little, and they started pretending you were like Mr. Unreachable, that you were almost as good as he was, and even if you weren't, yeah, well, at least they could make the other guy jealous. Girls like that were easy to pick up because they just wanted someone.

Other women hated him. It seemed to be one or the other: they either ended up going home with him or they despised that they had to breathe the same air as him. He was pretty sure from the words they had flung at him that they thought his entire attitude was "repulsive" and "disgusting," and he thought he was "God's," "the gods's," "the goddess'" (they took their pick) gift to women. Max was Evidence A that this type of girl existed.

Then there were the taken ones, but Alec wasn't worried about those. He didn't go after other guys' girls. Unless they were really hot…but no, even then, too much work.

See, most girls were easy to understand.

Jondy wasn't.

She was something different, something he hadn't encountered before following her home that night back in September. She was…he didn't know how to put it. She just accepted him, from the very beginning.

Her psycho brother's clone?

Whatever.

Who tried to kill her sister?

Don't worry about it.

And who happens to be an all around amoral person?

Well, no big deal, but maybe we could work on it.

She had just taken him for what he was and didn't complain about how he was arrogant or fall for his suave looks and Manticore-issue charm or yell at him for being smart with her. She…Jondy was his friend that happened to be a girl. Not a battle buddy or a chick at a club or a one night stand, but a friend, someone who he could share a beer with and not make real passes at or eat popcorn with and trash-talk C-list movies that came on the cable they stole from their neighbors.

Maybe that's why he hadn't made a move on her yet. Yeah, he'd flirted with her and teased her like he did with almost anything that had double X's for sex chromosomes but nothing serious; he never really went after her. No matter how much he liked the way her hair smelled in the morning when she walked past him to go make toast or how she made him snicker when she tried to look angry at him for longer than a few moments. He didn't know what she would do if he actually invited her into his bedroom. He didn't want to ruin what they had.

"Alec." Jondy squeezed his upper arm. "You okay?"

Alec yawned and looked up at her. She was sort of fuzzy, like the clock. "You mean besides the hole in my shoulder? Yeah, of course."

"Well, your shoulder's on its way to making a speedy, non-mangled recovery now, which is what I was trying to tell you, but you were daydreaming. Hope it was interesting." She hurried about, picking up the mess that patching him up had made. As she closed up the first aid kit, she put an orange pill bottle out on the counter top. "I know you don't really need them, but you can take three of those to dull the pain."

Alec stood up and moved the chair back to the kitchen table, sort of wondering where she had thrown his shirt and sort of wondering how she would look with her shirt off. Mmm… "Is that okay?"

"Is what okay?" She glanced up at the clock and missed through her teeth. "Man, I am so late, Landon's going to kill me. Have you seen my jacket?"

"Couch," Alec said automatically, remembering where she had thrown it when she took it off. While Jondy went to get her jacket, he picked up the pill bottle. "Does this go with other painkillers?"

Jondy stopped putting on her coat and stared at him. "Alec, seriously, are you doing drugs?"

"Hey, you're the one trying to overdose me," he said, putting the pill bottle back down. He looked around, yawning. "Where'd you put my shirt?"

"You're not making any sense," Jondy said. She put her right arm into her jacket and crossed back to him, pretty blue eyes meeting his. "What's the matter with you?" Reaching up, she put her fingers against his neck, feeling his pulse. Alec looked up at the ceiling, vaguely admiring the cracks that ran across it and how nice and warm Jondy's touch was. He smiled down at her. She really seemed to care. It was nice. She was nice.

"Asha gave me some pills," he said, "I think they're kicking in."

Jondy's eyes widened. "What kind of pills were they?" He looked down at her. She was very pretty. How had he ever thought she looked like her clone? "Alec!"

"I don't know, she just gave them to me," he said, shrugging, "I feel fine." He found himself being pushed backwards onto the poofy junkyard-bargain arm chair while Jondy started doing the whole medic thing.

"You're completely—" She shoved her escaping honey-colored hair back from her face, took a deep breath and jerked her attention back towards him. "Okay, fine, when did she give them to you? Do you feel numb anywhere? Does anything hurt?"

Alec shook his head and yawned again, unable to keep his mouth closed. "No, I'm just sleepy." He grabbed her hand as she tried to drag one of his eyelids up and held her still. "Jondy, calm down, they were probably just really strong opioids or something."

"Where did that woman even get those…" Jondy pulled her hands out of his and crossed her arms over her chest, obviously still upset with him. "I can't believe you just took pills like that," she said, "I mean, you're part cat and who knows what else, Alec, certain meds can kill you, and you just took them." She rubbed her forehead. "You didn't even ask her what they were?"

Alec gave her a tired smile as she chewed on her lower lip. "I didn't think she was going to try to assassinate me."

Jondy gave him a withering look. "I don't think you're dying, but, geez, try to be a little more intelligent next time. You don't really have nine lives." While she lectured him, he slumped down in the chair and rested his chin on his hand, letting her rant at him. He couldn't help but smile though. She actually cared if he was KIA or not. Awesome.

Her furrowed brow smoothed out into a bemused expression. "Come on, you can't fall asleep in the chair."

"I'm not," he said, but now that she mentioned it, this chair was really comfortable… "But I could."

"Your bed'll be comfier. And you won't get a crick in your neck." She grabbed his hands and pulled, forcing him out of the chair. He glanced down at her. She did realize that if he didn't want to do something, there was no way she could possibly physically force him to do it? All of her power was psychological and pretty much in her own head.

But, no matter who had the real power, he let Jondy drag him to his room and push him down onto the bed. For a moment, something, probably the drugs, told him to touch the stubborn, soft honey curl that was hanging near her cheek, to tell her to stay, ask her to lie down with him, just for a little while. Overcoming the drug dreams, he flopped down on his stomach, closed his eyes and sighed into his comforter.

A pillow landed on his head. "Hey. Listen."

He kept his eyes closed. "I can hear you."

"Look, you'll have to sleep the meds off," Jondy said, "They're probably just backfiring against your bio make-up, but I think you'll be fine."

"Mhmm. Own biological structure hates me. Understood."

He heard her quiet laugh even though she tried to cover it up. "If you start feeling worse, call my cell, and I'll come back from the bar, okay?"

Alec raised himself up on his elbows and looked at Jondy. "You know, she doesn't really have cantaloupes."

She smiled at him and shook her head. The curl bounced against her cheek. "Alec, go to sleep."

"They're more like grapefruits. Or mutant oranges. Cantaloupes are way too big."

"Sleep, you dork." She bent down and caught him by surprise when her lips brush his cheek before her fingers ruffled his spiky hair. She seemed confused by what she had done because she jerked up abruptly and shoved the curl back in place behind her ear before smirking at him. "You can compare breast sizes to fruit tomorrow, over breakfast, with visual aids."

"I'll need lots of fruit."

"I'll get what I can."

"Cool." He put his head down on the pillow, heavy eyes closing again. Sleep did sound good…

He listened as her boots clacked on the wooden floor as she went over to the lights. She turned them off, and his eyes adjusted automatically so he saw her in grays and whites, her hand lingering on the door.

"Good night, Alec."

"Night, Jonds."

The door closed. Maybe he'd call her in a couple hours, complain of a need for large, round fruits to soothe a 'headache.' Get her to laugh and say his name again.

Or maybe he'd just stop being stupid and stay asleep.