A/N: Okay, so a lot of you asked for a continuation for this story. I don't know how well that request works for you usually, but you guys have actually convinced me to write more! I wasn't going to continue with it, but then I started thinking about it. And then I moved from thinking about it to writing the second chapter in my head… so I caved. Don't expect too much, because I didn't have any plot in mind for this in the beginning. But it's a nice, refreshing change from my other story and I'm thinking one more chapter after this.

Chapter 2

The ride home was long and tedious. Twice Alec felt Max's arms slip from his waist as she teetered dangerously on the back of the motorcycle, and twice he'd had to steer the bike one-handed while he reached back and pulled her upright again. By the time they had reached her apartment, her head was resting on the center of his back and she seemed to have dropped all pretense of strength.

"Max," He said, as gently as he knew how, which still sounded a little gruff. He shrugged his shoulders slightly, hoping to jar her out of her state. There was silence for a few seconds, and then he felt her stir behind him. He could almost feel her preparing to be tough again.

"Took you long enough," She bit out, but the weak quiver in her voice made the usually biting remark fall flat.

He shrugged again and threw his leg over the seat, not really wanting to join in on her attempt at their usual sarcasm. She waited a minute more with the intense air of one preparing herself, and then stepped off the bike and placed her weight on her injured leg. It crumpled beneath her.

Alec managed to catch her before she hit the ground, and he pulled her upright as best as he could under the circumstances—those being that she was fighting him every step of the way.

"Let go of me!" She growled, but again the effect was diminished by the way she gripped his forearms tightly to keep herself standing.

It was clear that the adrenaline was wearing off, and that Max was feeling the full extent of her wound. He didn't begrudge her that; the knife had sliced straight through skin and muscle and might have possibly nicked the bone. But she was lucky, in a sense, that the attacker hadn't hit her peripheral artery—she would have been dead within minutes if he had.

Still, Alec knew it hurt like hell. He was sure it had hurt when he'd cauterized and bandaged it, and it was definitely stinging like a bitch now. He just wanted her to stop fighting him so much; she was only making it more difficult for them both. Alec had no idea what to do with the injured female as it was, without the resistance on her part.

Sure, he understood how to pull her out of a funk and get her moving, and he did indulge in a little pig-headed pride at the fact that Logan couldn't say the same. The Ordinary spent too much time worrying about Max to realize that she hated being coddled and responded much more easily to sarcasm. But when it came to actually taking care of her—well, there he was at a loss. He wondered if Logan would have known what to do.

"Max," He said, a little more sharply then he meant to. She was now standing next to her ninja, gripping the seat with white-knuckled fingers. She didn't answer or look at him at all, and he was starting to get frustrated. "Max! Can we get moving, here? This night's dragged on hours longer than you said it would, I had to go see Logan, and now I'm stuck here waiting for you to get your pretty ass upstairs. So can you, you know, stop standing around and get on with it?"

He'd meant to shock her and pull her out of the pain the way he had at the Penthouse, but he could see from the widening of her eyes and the barest flicker of hurt that he'd gone a little too far. He had half a mind to apologize, something he rarely did, but the emotion in her gaze had disappeared and was replaced with anger before he could force the words out.

"No one asked you to take me home. You volunteered." She snarled, and he imagined that she would have put her hands on her hips if she had been able to stand unaided.

"Fine," He bit out, not exactly angry but not used to taking her scathing remarks without adding one of his own, either. "And now I'm volunteering to help you up the stairs. So come on."

She stayed silent, which he took as a sign of assent, but she didn't move. "You need help, don't you?" He asked, and he couldn't help the undercurrent of smugness that floated through his tone.

"No."

He withheld a sigh and counted to ten before he spoke again. He was tired of going around in circles while Max pretended to be alright. "It was my fault, right? I'm in your debt. Don't waste it, sweetheart; it'll never happen again."

He'd pushed the right button, he could tell by the way her eyes narrowed. She stood for a second more, and then beckoned him over with an impatient wave of her hand. He released an overdramatic and long-suffering sigh, and then cleared the distance between them.

She braced herself on his arm, both hands clinging to him as she struggled to step forward on the wounded leg. He moved to put an arm around her, but stopped short at the fierce glare she sent his way and resisted the urge to sigh again.

"Don't count on it," She said, finally answering his earlier statement. "I'm sure you'll do something stupid and I'll have to bail your ass out of trouble again."

Alec grunted, but otherwise left her statement unanswered as they walked through the rundown door that led to her apartment building. This time, with no comfortable, plush elevator to ride in, the journey was much more difficult. Max's place was only a few flights up, but it took them a good half an hour to get to her apartment. If she'd have just let Alec carry her, they could have made it there in a minute flat. But of course, she hadn't been fond of the idea when he had mentioned it to her.

Alec was feeling the beginnings of fatigue, which signified that the adrenaline and caffeine he'd chugged earlier were also wearing off. It was now six o'clock in the morning, and he would have liked nothing better to sink into his ratty, lumpy mattress and sleep for a week. Because, unlike Max, whose shark DNA only let her sleep a few hours a week, Alec actually needed some shut-eye.

They were three steps away from Max's landing when she let go of him and staggered into the wall, a look of blind panic passing over her face.

"Max?" He stepped toward her, his hand outstretched, but she ignored him and slid down the wall, frantically clutching at her leg.

"Hurts." She shoved the word through her lips as if speaking was painful. Her clenched jaws muffled her speech again as she said, almost hysterically, "Alec, it hurts!"

He stood for a fraction of a second, completely and totally baffled. He had never seen Max react like this to anything. He had never had to take care of her the way she seemed to need right now—even if she didn't want him to be the one doing the caring.

In the next second, however, Manticore instinct took over. He leaned next to her and waited until her frenzied eyes looked into his.

"Max," He said slowly, clearly, remembering how many times one of his unit-mates had had to talk him through an injury, how many times he had done it for them. "You have to relax, okay? Deep, even breaths. You've got to calm down. You hear me? Calm down." He continued talking lowly, giving instructions until she seemed to get a better grip of herself. Gradually, her shoulders slumped and her hands relaxed and retreated from her thigh.

"Okay?" He asked.

She nodded without looking at him, her fingers wrapping around each other distractedly. He held out a hand to help her up, and she did look at him then—he could tell she was debating whether or not to argue.

He released a relieved breath when she took his hand without complaint, and he helped her hobble the rest of the way to her apartment.

"There's a fifty-fifty shot that O.C's home," Max said, her voice slightly hoarser than usual but otherwise normal.

Alec felt a sense of foreboding as he inserted her keys and opened the door; Original Cindy would be after his ass for letting this happen to Max. Not that it was really his fault anyway. Totally unfair.

But as they stepped in, Alec immediately sensed that the apartment was blissfully empty. No sounds drifted out from any of the rooms and he would have been able to smell O.C if she'd been present. Woman used a lot of hair-care products.

Max seemed to have sensed it too, if the relaxing of her shoulders was anything to go by. Alec started to guide Max toward the couch, but she slapped his hands away and made the last few steps on her own. She collapsed onto the shaggy old thing, looking completely and utterly spent.

"Even shark DNA has its limits," He commented wryly, now feeling a little awkward. He had gotten her to her apartment, so he was pretty much free to go. But how could he just leave her like this? Didn't friends do something… more?

She shot him what would have been a disgusted look had she been on top of her game, and Alec grinned in response. Then she flinched again at what he thought was another stinging ache through her leg, and Alec thought of something.

"Painkillers," He said, somewhat abruptly. "Do you have any?"

She looked at him in surprise and then nodded slowly, looking as if she was trying to pull herself together enough to focus. "In the bathroom. Snagged them from Harbor Lights."

His jaw clenched slightly, but he went and grabbed them for her, noticing a few other medicine bottles surrounding the container of painkillers. He rattled the pills around in the bottle and then shook his head as he walked back out to her.

"You've only got a few in here," He said, pulling off the cap and handing the lot to her. She swallowed them dry, looking grateful, and he thought that it was perhaps the second time tonight that she'd shown that particular emotion. The first time had been that smile when he'd handed her the plate of food, and it had rendered him speechless for a moment.

Not an easy thing to do.

"Hey," She grumbled, shooting him an annoyed look. "You try dealing with a bullet hole in your gut and see how many painkillers you take. Especially since these are pretty useless to us and our freaky metabolisms as it is."

He grit his teeth together again at the mention of Max being shot. He really hated the reminder, especially since he hadn't found out about the incident from Max. Not like he'd care, or anything, that she'd almost died.

"Alec?"

He glanced back at her, disliking the way he felt when she said his name like that, without the usual rancor. Just simple, questioning. He could tell why her mood had suddenly changed, too—Max was leaning back on the couch, looking a little more relaxed, and her eyes were only open a few centimeters. He wondered if the painkillers had kicked in so soon or if she was finally just losing it after all the stress.

"Yeah?"

"You looked kinda spacey. You realize you can go now, right?" There was a little bite to it, but not as much as usual. He was grateful for the reprieve.

He thought about her question and then sat down in a chair reasonably close to the couch she was lounging on. He stayed silent for a few minutes, and then surprised her when he spoke again. "I heard about what happened at Harbor Lights—O.C told me when I asked her why you hadn't been to work in a few days," He began slowly, not quite sure how to broach the subject, or why he was doing it in the first place. "Why didn't you call me?"

He hated it, the way his question had come out sounding almost hurt. Alec didn't do hurt. He hoisted a smirk onto his face and added, "I mean, it would've been nice to save your ass for a change."

She looked at him with a strange expression on her face, like she couldn't quite figure his question out. "Logan got me out of it okay," She said, and he heard the slight defensiveness behind the statement.

He snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure getting quarantined by the CDC and running into White was all just part of the plan."

There was definitely a note of anger in her eyes now. "You know what, Alec? I really don't need this right now. In case you haven't noticed, I have a huge hole in my leg."

He ran an agitated hand through his hair, making it stand on end. "No, Max, I hadn't realized that." He took a deep breath and then said, quietly, "In case you haven't noticed, I've been here the entire time."

She opened her mouth and then closed it again, and a long silence spread out between them. She didn't seem to have anything else to say, witty or otherwise, and Alec wasn't sure he wanted to try and begin another conversation with her. He could tell she was upset about being so vulnerable, but damn if he wasn't tired of fighting. Still, there was one thing he really wanted to know.

"Why'd you do it?" He asked suddenly, going against his better judgment.

She glanced at him warily. "Do what?"

"Tonight. Why'd you help Logan, Max? Last I heard, you were trying to stay away from him."

She seemed to be preparing a mocking retort when suddenly all the fight drained out of her. "I don't know," She admitted, and Alec raised his eyebrows. "He called and asked… how could I not?"

"It's pretty easy," He said, leaning back in his chair. "'No' is always an acceptable answer."

Her lips twisted. "You don't understand. Logan and me…"

"Have the woe-is-me love thing going on, I get it," He interrupted, not really wanting to hear intimate details of their relationship. Not that they had ever really been all that intimate. Hah.

She glared at him. "No, what I was going to say is, that's the way we've always done things—he calls me and I help him. It started out as a business deal, and then it sort of… became the foundation of our relationship."

He stayed silent for a while, surprised that she had actually told him. The injury and meds must have really been affecting her head, because on normal circumstances she wouldn't have answered at all. "So, what?" He said after a pause."Not going on Logan's Save-The-City trip means admitting that you two are history?"

"Oh, very subtle, Alec." She snapped, but he noticed that she didn't give him a straight answer.

The room went quiet again, although it wasn't altogether uncomfortable.

"Alec?" She said his name like that again, and he clenched his jaw together to stop the immediate reaction he felt. "Why did you do this? Come along with me. It's not like I offered you any money this time."

He froze, wishing right then that she had asked him anything else. Asked him about Manticore, about the months he'd spent in Psy Ops because of her crazy brother—anything but that.

He stayed still for a fraction of a second, and in that moment Max would have seen a glimpse of the intense struggle taking place just under the surface had she been paying attention. Then he grinned. "Nothin' better to do."

She made a disapproving sound. "You came because you were bored?"

His smile widened, "You know how much I hate that."

"Whatever."

She looked away again, settling into the couch, and the grin slid of his face. "Look, I gotta go get some sleep. You gonna be alright here?"

She waved him off with an impatient hand, and he stood up and walked toward the door. His fingers were gripping the doorknob when she spoke again.

"Thanks, Alec."

She said it very quietly, but he heard it anyway, just as she knew he would. His hand shook slightly on the doorknob as he turned back to look at her one more time. Then he opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

A/N: There's a bit more to come, I've just got to write it out. Oh, and I haven't decided where this is set in Season Two, yet. Before Hello, Goodbye, but definitely middle to late in the season, when Max doesn't hate him as much.