Alex came home from school feeling a whole lot better about his life. He had handed in all the work that he had done and was sufficiently caught up in four out of his six classes. So when the teacher was talking now, in those classes, he actually understood what was going on.

It also kept him awake even though his eyes would droop every few minutes, because he could participate and follow along.

When he got to Wolf's apartment at about four, after spending some time with Tom, he was surprised to see that Wolf was home. He had expected him to still be at work, but maybe he ran out of paperwork now that he was just at a desk job.

Not only was Wolf home, but he had brought the whole pack. The whole freaking pack of four other men. Ben, Eagle, Snake, and a new guy, he assumed was Cobra, were all spread about the living room doing random things. It was has nightmare come to life.

As soon as Alex opened the door all five of them turned to look at him with varying expressions. It was extremely unnerving as Alex just stood in the door way. He walked into towards the hall where his bedroom was with all the eyes following him, but he ignored them. He headed straight to his room to do the little homework he got that day, as he would save the two classes catch up work for the middle of the night. It only took him twenty minutes to finish that night's work.

Now he had a dilemma: he had nothing to do in his room. Funnily, this problem rectified itself as two minutes later Ben knocked on his semi-open door and stood in the doorframe.

"Alex I have to talk to you," Ben started very seriously, not in his good humor nature. Alex waved him to sit on his bed while Alex swirled around on his desk chair to face him.

"Yes?" Alex prompted, curious where this discussion would go.

"You need to tell Snake about the bullet wound," Ben put out bluntly. He wasn't tiptoeing around the subject today.

"Why?" Alex stated confused, but he was sort of happy, "That means you didn't tell them?"

"No, I figured you wouldn't want me to and I wanted to be a good friend," Ben said sincerely looking at Alex with a serious expression.

"Ben, that means a lot to me, but why do I have to tell him?" Alex said feeling good, but still he refused to share his secrets.

"He is the medic; he needs to know anything about your health." Ben stated clearly and it was a marvelous argument. It stumped Alex into a silence for a few minutes while he thought of all the possibilities. If he refused, Ben would probably tell Snake anyway because he was convinced it was all for Alex's own good. He figured it was better to tell Snake himself on his own terms.

"Alright," Alex said finally, giving in. Ben looked a little relieved. He got up any left the room and a few seconds later Snake walked in and closed the door behind him. He took Ben's vacated seat on the bed as Alex was still facing the bed.

"Ben tells me you have something to tell me." Snake started as Alex didn't look like he was going to say anything.

"Only if you promise to not tell anyone else," Alex said. If he had to tell, he would make conditions for his information. He didn't really know how trustworthy these guys were, but this was a good test for Snake.

"I promise Cub," Snake said, without much hesitation. He figured it was medically relevant as he was the one Alex was telling and Snake would do anything to get medical information; he would kill for it.

"I was shot." Alex said bluntly.

"WHAT!!!"

*

The living room was in a state of confusion, well more like the men were.

First Ben excused himself to go talk to Alex about something he said was "confidential" which they figured was something Alex refused to tell them during their interrogations. He came back out a little later and went straight to Snake who was sitting in the recliner. He bent down and whispered something into Snake's ear as the other stared. Snake got this weird expression and his face, then got up and made his way down the hall. They could distinctly hear him close the door behind him when he went into Alex's room.

They then all turned to look at Ben who was reclining in Snake's vacated chair. He was grinning broadly as the three left in the room stared at his curiously as they had no idea what was going on.

Then from down the hall they heard Snake's voice exclaim, "WHAT!!" and snapped their heads around.

Ben had the good grace to burst out laughing. He was sitting in the chair hysterically laughing at everybody. Snake's reaction was better than he thought.

Wolf got up and made his way down the hall to see what the hell was going on after that little outburst. He knocked on the door and just got a "Go away," from Snake, so he made his way back into the living room. They were thoroughly confused so they turned to Ben for answers.

*

"What? Why? Where? When? Why didn't you tell me right away?" Snake spat off right away without pausing to let Alex answer.

"I'm fine now," Alex said trying to calm him while answering none of his questions. It really wasn't that important anymore.

"Show me," Snake demanded. He really was scary when he was playing the medic and Alex only thought of refusing for a second before Snake's expression told him he shouldn't. So he went to pull off his shirt. And as he did so he saw Snake's horrified expression as he learned the general vicinity of the wound.

Alex had multiple scars along his torso but none were as bad as the one over his heart. Snake's eyes were naturally drawn to it as he looked Alex over. This time Snake didn't make any exclamation because he was too shocked to even react. He stared at the bullet scar on Alex's left shoulder about where his heart was.

"Explain." Snake demanded after he could finally move again. He went towards Alex and grabbed Alex's shoulder looking at the scar. Alex heaved a sigh and started to tell answer Snake's previous questions.

"I can't really tell you who or why but it happened about seven weeks ago." Alex explained. Snake met his eye and looked shocked, again.

"How can you be alright? It's still painful right?" Snake continued with his questions. As he did so he moved his hand over the scar which somehow sent a little twinge of pain through his shoulder. He tense a little involuntarily as he didn't want Snake to see.

"It's not that bad," Alex said shrugging underneath Snake's hands. But Snake had seen the little pain that Alex had experienced and withdrew his hands. His mood changed as he took a step back, into anger and frustration.

"Why didn't anybody tell me?" Snake said, and Alex realized these emotions were not directed at him. "At least do you have any PT…or meds?"

"They gave me some painkillers, but I haven't really taken any…"Alex said trailing off at Snake's disapproving look. "Can we go eat something, I'm hungry." Alex said trying to end the silence and escape as quickly as possible.

"No, we need to talk about this," Snake said refusing to let Alex off the hook. "You need to tell me if anything ever happens. You should take the meds but I won't force feed them to you, but you should get some PT. If any complications come up you tell me right away. No 'it's not important' crap, alright. Do I make myself clear?" Snake finished with a dead serious look that said he was taking this very seriously.

"I got it," Alex said looking Snake in the eye. He cared that Snake cared enough to help. He really hadn't gotten this type of medical attention from MI6, so it was nice. But he still didn't think it was such a big deal. Even though it gave him some pain, he was able to work through it and it didn't restrain his normal activities. He was able to live almost normally.

Snake nodded his approval and stepped towards the door. "Come on, we're discussing dinner." Alex followed Snake out as they made their way to the living room. All eyes looked at them as the entered. Snake seeming to be unaffected, smiled and asked, "So what's for dinner?"

"We don't know. What's going on?" Wolf asked suspiciously, looking between his charge and his team mate.

"Oh nothing," Snake replied innocently, "Alex and I are just hungry." The three men who didn't know what was going on all looked like he was crazy and were annoyed by all the evasion. They had not been successful in getting any answers out of Ben, as he claimed it wasn't "his secret to tell" but they all figured it was medically relevant as it WAS Snake that Alex had talked too. And from Snake's reaction it had not been good news.

"I'll cook," Alex mumbled and moved into the kitchen to get out of the spotlight and keep himself busy. He didn't want to explain it again in the same day. So Alex spent his time busying himself with all the dinner preparations. They were having lasagna tonight.

Once he had left the room, he could clearly hear K-Unit talking about him. Seriously, and they were supposed to be SAS. Alex barely had to try to overhear them, but from their conversation, it didn't seem like they realized he was listening.

"Fox or Snake, you better tell us what that was about," Wolf growled and demanded. He was fed up with the evasion the last few days; since Alex had been there. He needed some answers before his head imploded.

"I can't tell you. Classified," Ben said ridding himself of all blame. None of them would push him to go against orders, so their focus turned towards Snake.

"I promised," Snake said. Everybody snorted at his somewhat lame excuse. He sounded extremely immature.

"That is probably the worst argument ever. So juvenile." Eagle said, in an ironic sort of way. Because he was SO mature.

"But it isn't," Snake replied wisely, but was only met with confused looks. So he explained, "Cub obviously doesn't trust us very much. If I went against my promise now it would just make his case stronger and you'd never get any information. Plus it's only medically relevant so it's irrelevant to you guys."

"Aw darn," Eagle said, "That really was a good argument." Everybody laughed at him.

"But what about me," Wolf said, "The kid's living here. Shouldn't I know what I'm dealing with?" Again another good argument but Snake didn't budge.

"Then ask him yourself," Snake said, "He seems like a reasonable kid."

"Did I tell you about his nightmares?" Wolf said, remembering the previous night's events. "I found him thrashing around at two in the morning, and then he took a shower and didn't go back to bed. He did homework for four hours."

Snake looked pensive at the new information and didn't make any sort of reply. Alex really was a very unique and interesting kid.

"And I haven't been able to get any answers about them out of him," Wolf continued, "He's very stubborn when he sets his mind to it."

"The only reason he told Snake was because I told him to," Ben interjected, "The higher ups said it was okay for me to tell Snake" He said as they all wondered why he would go against orders but it seemed he hadn't. "I told Alex, either he tells Snake or I do."

"And Snakey had to go and promise," Eagle said sarcastically and mocking Snake's actions.

"Hey, I don't regret what I did," Snake defended.

Alex really was proud of Snake that he kept his word and didn't tell the others. It meant a lot to him to learn that he could trust Snake to some extent along with Ben.

He set about finishing cooking dinner and getting some plates out. Apparently, the guys heard and figured dinner was almost ready, to they came in as Alex pulled the lasagna out of the oven.

They got their food and settled in the living room. At this point Alex became aware of the new presence in the room, witnessing everything that went on today. His name was Cobra.

AN: I said I would only post one chapter a day but I wrote this one also and had to post it. And I wrote it instead of doing homework, which I still have to do and it's 9:30 at night. And I still have to stop myself from writing another chapter. Cobra? Yeah I don't really know what I'm going to do with him yet. But it's going to be in the next chapter.