...and again it's BIRTHDAY date! 🎈

As a gift to Logan Cale and the spirit of Dark Angel, here is my birthday story for this year. The poor Logan is a little bit imbalanced before the party can start.

As always with Dark Angel fics, all charakters belong to their owners and I don't plan to make any profit out of it.

Then, as a second treat, I want to inform you, that I created a Community for all Logan Cale's birthday fics.

Here is the link: community/Logan-Cale-s-birthday-fic-s/130401/

Enjoy and cheers!

Far

the surprise

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Penthouse, Fogle Towers, 7th of November

Logan tried to concentrate. He really thoroughly tried, but it seemed to be impossible to get at least a short period of peace to fulfill his duties - in this case writing a paragraph of an article - IN HIS OWN APARTMENT!

While thinking this, Logan turned his head to shoot an angry glimpse through the open door toward Max and Bling who were chattering a mile a minute in the adjacent room, still too soft for him to hear the exact words they said, but definitively too loud for him to be able to concentrate. He chuntered and quarrelled a good while, not able to put any sensible phrase down. Then his grudge became too big. Logan sighed deeply, loosened the brakes of his wheelchair and moved to close the sliding door.

As Logan approached with his angry-looking face and gruffly anger bearing movements of his wheels, Max and Bling fell sheepishly silent at once. They exchanged a look, which Logan didn't escape.

Impatiently he tossed the words towards them: „Can I please have the peace to work IN MY OWN APARTMENT?"

They froze and stared at him, looking suspiciously guilty.

Bling took the initiative by responding with an additional calming hand gesture: „Sure, sure, you're the boss, boss…" His eyes sparkled with a mischievous glint as he spoke.

Logan watched them both sharply, intrigued by their unnormal behaviour, then couldn't help to grin upon the quote of ‚back to the future'…at least, his humour was peaked a little bit by this, and there's nothing better for work or getting things done than good humour.

After a few moments of further silent scrutinizing without any big revelations, Logan muttered „whatever…", closed the sliding door and turned his wheelchair noisy on the wooden floor to head back to his desk. At least he had to try to get something done. Perhaps he could just switch to something else, which was not so liable to disturbance. For instance, the local police network needed badly a fine computer hack, so he could dig out the informations he needed for another case.

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Penthouse, Fogle Towers, 10th of November - in the late morning

As Bling and Max came in, Logan was on the telephone. That was good for their purposes. In fact, they had especially waited for Logan to start telephoning a good while in the stairwell, until Max could hear through the apartment door that Logan started to talk. As they knew his habits of investigation, they could rely on his telephone call to whoever in the late morning.

Now Logan was safely distracted and they could quickly usher in a couple of boxes, he didn't pay too much attention to in that instance. Bling and Max put the boxes into the guest room. They had luckily managed to get the heavy boxes - of about 30 kilograms each - into the house without too much soaking from the bad weather outside. Then they closed the chamber door by key and quickly and silently started to unbox and construct. It was as if they had always worked together. Bling was astonished how easy and uncomplicated working with Max was. Like this, they had finished their task in about half an hour, then both stood still and in awe beside the nice apparatus.

It was a dream of stainfree steel and black hard plastic elements. THE body trainer! In the middle was a cushioned leather seat, around which hung a number of bows and straps with weights at the ends, all adjustable - and highly stylish. There were possibilities to train on the sides or over head in all thinkable angles. They knew that Logan would love to train in it all kinds of muscles in his upper body parts, especially his arms and pecs.

After their moment of quiet appreciation, Max and Bling silently slipped off the guest room, Bling locked it by key and took the key with him. Then - after Max made sure that Logan was still distracted enough, they left the flat - Max smilingly waved towards him a short goodbye. Logan reciprocated distractedly and waved back, while continuing to telephone. Apparently, he didn't become suspicious, at least not until that point. Logan was apparently deeply involved in his telephone conversation and typed quickly into his computer while holding the telephone with his neck and shoulder. Max was glad. All went so smoothly. This time Logan really deserved a good surprise and everything seemed to be developing as planned. With a light heart, she said goodbye to Bling at the parking lot, fetched her motorbike and drove off to Jam Pony.

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Penthouse, Fogle Towers, a couple of hours later - in the afternoon

Logan glanced outside his big glass window where he treated himself to a nice smelling warm pot of coffee. He tried to relax, since he really earned this break. All morning he had been on the telephone, hacking into databases to gain informations and finally he had found the missing link in his case. What he found was a bombshell, and he was quite sure that there could not be a lot people around who knew these details as well. Therefore Logan was satisfied, and it showed that in the end hard work had its benefits. Logan smiled to himself dreamily as he watched the shadow on the adjacent building wander further on as time passed. For a moment he emptied his mind, just felt good and dwelled.

Then suddenly a thought struck him, it merged up to the surface of his consciousness. A thought he had unknowingly suppressed all day: What the heck did Max and Bling do this morning? They have been there, they rummaged something in another room and then they left without a word. This added up to the strange behaviour lately. Logan felt excluded in a way he couldn't quite grasp, as he thought about it. His cozy feeling vanished and slipped away like fine sand. After pondering a while, he had the sudden urge to verify for himself what they had done in the other room.

Logan put aside his coffe mug and started deftly off into the hallway, until he stopped in front of the door to the guest room. He pushed the door handle - to no avail. The moment Logan detected that the door was locked, his anger swoll up again. This was HIS apartment! They had no right to just lock up a room without telling him! Agitatedly, he spun back as fast as he could to his desk and grabbed his telephone. He paged Max and then called Bling's number but couldn't reach him directly. Logan knew that he couldn't tolerate this, now they had spun it a winding too far with him, but he would teach them to treat him like that, as soon as he would get an opportunity!

.

Penthouse, Fogle Towers, next day - early morning

Logan woke up with a start. He startled quite a bit. Something had touched him in his face. The next second, as he opened his eyes, he saw Max sitting at his bedside, smiling at him. Shaking the sleepiness out of his head, he slowly stemmed himself up into a half-sitting position, looking curiously at her. Max was sitting totally quiet at his bedside and said „Good morning birthday man!" She grinned all over her face, and leaned towards him to kiss him, not waiting for a reaction beforehand.

Logan was a little bit overwhelmed, and far too sleepy to already have a clear thought. Technically he was still angry at Max. But under those conditions...

With a dulled mind he gave into the kiss and let go of all other considerations, except for one: Yes, she was right, today was his birthday, how could he forget this? On the other hand, he didn't really had a chance to wake up properly before, right?

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Penthouse, Fogle Towers, 11th of November, late morning

After Logan did his morning routine and put on some clothes while Max prepared breakfast with the items she especially brought - as good as she could, they settled on the breakfast table. Logan thought that Max's trials in the household indeed did improve lately. And breakfast was something possible to do for Max, he found it sweet how much effort she laid into it. Just as Logan was in the middle of his breakfast with a steaming mug of good smelling coffee, the doorbell rang. Max indicated Logan to keep eating, she stood up and hurried to open the door. But Logan interrupted his meal, cleaned his mouth and fingers to follow her suit towards the door. On halfway they met, and it was Bling, coming into the flat, directly saying „Happy birthday, Logan!"

Logan looked from one to another, the anger from the day before climbing up his throat, he was not sure if this was a good moment to talk about it, but just as he had made up his mind, Max made eye contact to Bling and asked: „Shall we?"

Bling nodded, rummaged in his trouser's pocket to produce a key and hold it up in the air. And this key - it was not just any key, it was the key to his guest room! Logan furrowed his brows. Now what?

But Max and Bling were already on their way to the guest room. They stopped in front of the door, looked at each other, glanced at the now extremely curious Logan, then Max began to speak:

„Dear Logan, Bling and I thought long about what we could offer you to this year's birthday. Finally we came up with this. We hope you'll like it. If not, please say it directly, so we can change it. Happy birthday!"

With these words, Bling turned the key, Max and Bling stepped aside and made a showing gesture like it used to be in tv shows at pre-pulse times, and gave free the view upon an apparatus. Logan's jaw dropped. Wow. Just wow. This was a real exercising machine! There was a seat and everything around it seemed to be adjustable. Logan draw automatically nearer. He touched the stainless steel and nobel looking black leather. It felt fantastic!

Logan felt a little bit embarrassed. He had been so angry, and now it turned out, that everything they did had been for his benefit. Incredulous Logan glanced from Bing to Max and back.

Finally he stammered: „But how ….. how could you afford it? I mean, where did you find such a thing?"

Max and Bling exchanged glances once again - they had sworn to each other, not to tell Logan that Max gained the necessary money from a piece of gemstone she had fenced that had remained from the times she had worked as a burglar. The risk that Logan didn't want to use a machine if he knew it was funded by this was too big. Sometimes, Logan's moral views were really impractical.

Therefore, Bling simply answered: „It mustn't concern you how we got it. Just use it and enjoy it, that is the best reward you can give us." And with his broad grin he erased any further possible discussion.