Author's Note: Thanks to those who have left their feedback, :) I'm really hoping the inspiration to write will stick around and allow me to finish the WIPs I have out there (yeah I say this all the time - usually as I begin a new fic). But seriously, daughter number two is going to be born in three months, and although I wrote my largest volume of fan fiction while sleep deprived, this is going to be a whole new hands on level of sleep and sanity deprivation which will leave little care or co-ordination for typing (thinking, eating, breathing…) Ironically, baby daddy just went out the other day and bought us a new computer. I tried to advise him we will soon have no time to LOOK at the computer let alone fire it up, but that's men for ya. Can't reason with 'em. Can't stick a paper bag over their head and call them Alec.
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She Asked For It - Chapter Two
by Sorrow
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The day following Alec and Max's exchange of pleasantries, Alec ran through the morning routine of shower, shave and breakfast, all the while aware that his Max/Logan/Alec love triangle dilemma was still number one priority on his mind. A disturbing thought, considering he had to mission it into greater Seattle that day for supplies. In which case, his number one priority should be getting laid, staying alive, and making it safely back to Terminal City with the booty. In that order.
Patting his face dry with the morning shave done, Alec wandered into the decaying kitchen he shared with Max, pulled out the camp cooker and set about organizing a good old-fashioned bacon and egg fry up. Minus the bacon, because such a luxury was all but non-existent even for Alec's contacts in this post-pulse world. And, he realised as he pulled the six pack of eggs out of the pantry, minus the eggs. Because each one had Max's name written on it in black marker pen.
Perplexed, Alec returned the eggs to the pantry and grabbed a lonely box of cereal. MAX sprawled across the packet caused him to snatch his hand away as if burnt. He spied half a loaf of bread in a plastic bag. Seizing it, he reached with his other hand for a mini jar of peanut butter and banged them down onto the kitchen bench. Black writing left him curling his fist in frustration. Both items had a familiar, and at this point much hated, name scrawled across them. As an added bonus, the bread bag had been marked to indicate how many slices were remaining.
"MAX!" Alec charged through the little apartment and burst into the bedroom which adjoined the lounge. "What's with this?" He demanded, pulling the blankets back from Max's sleeping form and waving the bread bag before her.
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Max shook her head and peered groggily at the object in question. "Bread?" She offered hopefully.
"No, what's with THIS?" Alec thrust the bag back towards her face and pointed out the name scribbled across the bag.
"Hmm let's see. M - A - X… Alec, I thought you could spell?" Max's lips twitched with stifled glee as she made effort to push the item away and roll towards the wall.
"Is this your cute way of getting revenge on me? By staking out everything in this damn place as your own? God, I'm surprised my shaving cream didn't have your name on it!"
"Well actually, if you'd been paying more attention…"
"Don't ya think it's just a bit childish Max? I have as much right to what's here as you do, you know."
"DO you now Alec?" Max sat up, her eyes fiery. "Maybe I'm just trying to remind you of all the favours I've been doing YOU lately, huh? Letting you stay here in the apartment I'd cleared out for myself. Letting you sponge off me - "
"Sponge off you?!"
"Yes Alec! Sponge off me! You're like a boy in a perpetual state of puberty! Eating everything in the pantry like you own it all, whining like a little kid when you can't get your own way with the TV channels, using up all the limited hot water and leaving god-knows-what kind of hair in the plughole…"
Alec stared like a stunned mullet, bug-eyed and mouth gaping at Max's tirade. Finally as her 'mwaap mwaap mwaaps' wound down, he rubbed a finger in his ear as if to clear it out and said, "come on Max, you're just pissed because I won't play your game anymore."
She puffed. "Am not."
Frowning in disbelief, Alec stood and began to deliver his comeback, when he was interrupted by the creak of the front door opening.
"Hello? Hey it's me Max. You awake?"
Alec shook his head against his hands and laughed dryly. "Oh, this is fantastic." Then, seized by a sudden inspiration, he peeled off his t-shirt and flung it onto the floor, his jeans following quick suite.
"Alec!" Max hissed, aghast. "What the hell are you doing?"
"We're in here Logan!" Alec yelled as he roughly shoved Max along the mattress and jumped into bed beside her. Footsteps creaked against the floorboards as Alec pulled the blankets to his torso, grabbed the hands that were trying frantically to push him from the bed, and held them firmly around his waist.
The footsteps hesitated outside the bedroom door. "Can I come in?" The voice cracked, apprehensive.
"Yeah sure, we'd barely gotten started." Alec grinned as it became Max's turn to gape in horror.
Logan stepped into the room, his eyes registering hurt and barely-disguised shock as they fell upon what appeared to be a gloating, satisfied Alec, lying alongside an awkward and embarrassed Max. Caught no doubt, in the act.
"What can we do for you buddy?" Alec chipped up, ignoring the fingers which dug sharply against his flesh. Was she actually growling beneath her breath?
"Well actually, I came to speak to Max. About eh, well she asked me to come see her this morning. Last night that is." Logan glared at Max, a red flush of humiliation making it's way across his face from neck up. "You had something to say to me, Max?"
Logan laughed without humour and shook his head. "But it's okay, I get it. You're with Alec. You know, you didn't need to go this far to prove your point." His gazed passed from one X5 to the other. "I could've thought of a kinder way to tell me I was wrong."
Spinning on his heel, Logan almost collided into the bedroom door in his haste to exit the room. In a few short strides he was closing the front door behind him, leaving stunned silence in his wake.
Of course, the silence was short lived.
"You idiot!" Max wrenched her hands from Alec's grasp and shoved him to the floor with one great heave before smashing a pillow down over his head. "You stupid thoughtless idiot!"
Cowering against her enraged pillow assault, Alec scrambled away and snatched up his jeans and t-shirt, backing towards the door in the process.
Flinging the pillow across the room, Max leapt from the bed and slammed the door shut before Alec had a chance to make a break for it. Eyes blazing in anger, she shoved him against the frame and continued to shove at him as she launched her tirade. "What the hell did ya have to go and do that for? I told you last night I'd tell him the truth! Why do you think he turned up here so early? How the hell am I s'posed to fix this now?"
Realising that in his effort to get one back at Max, he'd essentially cocked up his own chance at freeing himself from her, Alec did the one thing he knew to do in such a situation; adapted the perfect expression of egotism for which he was named, teamed with a nonchalant shrug. "Well what can I say Max? You asked for it."
With that, he took her firmly by the shoulders and pushed her back towards the bed, then calmly made his exit from the room. Only stopping to wince at his own foolishness once he'd shut the door behind him.
Of course she'd asked for this. She'd brought it all on herself by using him as her scapegoat in the first place. And although Logan's sudden arrival this morning had offered Alec the perfect chance to patch up the old damaged ego she'd inflicted upon him these last few days, he'd now been escorted with his own lesson in humility - and figuratively shot himself in the foot in the process.
You started this. He thought as he glared at the graffitied peanut butter jar left out on the bench. Although at this point, he wasn't sure who the accusation was directed at. Either way, someone was going to have to finish it. But would his ego really allow him to be the one to do it?