A/N: The rights to DA are not mine, and I am using these characters without permission from the owners with no intention of making a profit. If you're still reading, it would be nice if you'd holla at me, though.

-2019-

Max found him in the kitchen. If he had really wanted to be alone, he would have gone to his bedroom, where she never ventured, but no. As angry as she made him, he wanted her company desperately. You're pathetic, he reminded himself.

She had one of the candles in her hand and the dishes from dinner were stacked in her arms, as many as she could carry. She piled them on the counter without saying a word. Logan opened the dishwasher just as silently and began to load. They took fastidious turns.

He watched her, bending like a dancer to fit the glasses upside-down in their places on the wire rack. Her hair hung down in her eyes. She could never risk wearing her hair pulled back.

"Do you know what it was like, having to sit next to him?" she asked at last. "I wanted to die, and I had to pretend nothing was wrong." Her face was turned from Logan. "You can't train a child not to be afraid. We always were, all the time there, as much as we had gotten used to ... a lot of bad things. We had to pretend. I sat next to Lydecker and watched him watch that little kid on stage and I imagined I was a statue of someone brave. I can still feel that squeezing in my chest." She looked at him, her eyes dark as crushed velvet. "Like I always felt. Like I never left. The very worst thing. Like being thrown from a roof."

Logan took the salad bowl from her hands. He had never heard her talk like this before. He couldn't imagine what she had gone though in the hotel, and yet, here she was, comparing her experience to his. "It was worse for you," he said carefully. "You were very brave."

She shrugged. "Manticore shorties better raise they weight."

She always did this when things started to get too serious, tossed off something unintelligible in Jam Ponyese.

"Yes." Logan watched for her reaction, trying to anticipate whether she would snap at him. "You take risks too, you know," he reminded her. "You do dangerous things that you don't strictly have to do."

He had been scared for her, since he met her, more times than he had been scared for himself. He had felt a flash of real anger yesterday, when they crashed down together on the bed after she saved his life, because she was supposed to be out and away. He had never known that he was capable of that kind of deep-down selflessness.

Max half-turned, a hand on her hip, one of her typical back-talk poses, but when she spoke, her voice was modulated and calm. "A lot of times, you're the one who asks me to things that aren't healthy. Other times, you try and tell me not to."

"We're both adults," Logan said. "We have a professional relationship, right? We make our own decisions. Could we maybe both try to trust each other?"

"Yeah, that sounds fair. It's easy to say, anyway. I just feel like someone's gotta worry for you, sometimes. Now that you don't have --" she kicked the dishwasher door closed "-- Val. God. It seems like we spent the whole night talking about your old girlfriends."

"Tell me about Josue, then. To even things up."

"Who?"

"Your boyfriend," Logan said. "Josue." Yes, he thought. Definitely a professional interest.

"Oh, him. We weren't even like that. I mean ..." She was blushing now as she realized how that sounded. "No. We were, in a way. We did some stuff, swung low a little, maybe, but we were friends. I guess maybe he thought we were together, but ... It was just a couple months that we knew each other."

What she was trying to say, Logan thought, was that there were others. This guy was only part of her secret life, a blip on the screen. Fine. He looked up at her. "This is not what I was asking," he pointed out gently.

"Right. Josue. I don't know how old he was. Older than me. He played guitar and was a serious v-game worker -- taught me every hustle I knew. He stripped cars with his cousin, too, but that was side-salad. Josue was a small guy, and he would just blend into the wall behind him sometimes, which is a skill I could appreciate. He lived in this apartment with, like, ten other people and actually paid rent for the room, instead of bribing the cops." Max smiled at the memory. "His roommates weren't crazy about me being there, so I had to sneak in and out on the fire escape, without making it look too easy, you know? Eventually, he caught a case and got sent up to Everett, though. I never saw him again." She drummed her nails against the counter. "He was sweet to me, when he was around."

"I'm sorry. I mean, about the ..."

"What else?" Max interrupted, finished with the sad part of the story. "He was born in California, but his mother came from Peru. That was the best thing about him. The 'rents lived pretty close by -- near where I live now. They were nice, and man. The food! Articuchos, I think they were called, and papas a la huancaĆ­na. That was a potato dish."

"I've had it before," Logan said. "There used to be a Peruvian restaurant in New Haven I liked. I wonder if I could cook it. You'd like cerviche, too, if I could get the citrus."

"Don't bother," said Max. "I just eat American food now."

"Funny," Logan said. "Because most of the things I cook for you are Italian."

"Oh," said Max. "Really?"

"Curry is Indian."

"OK, I knew that.

"Gyros are -- theoretically, anyway -- Greek."

"Fine! You win!" She put her hands up in playful surrender. "You know, we have fought so much today. I don't need this."

"I know you don't," Logan said, feeling too battered to joke. He was still hurt by things she had said, but he was weighed down by guilt, too, and urgent in his sorry longing for something more from her. Quid pro quo, he thought. We each bring up things the other wants to forget. Maybe she should just leave, so he could take an OxyContin and go to bed.

"What I really would like to do is sit on your couch," Max said. "Aiight?"

Logan looked at her. "You bet," he said, without hesitation.

All business.

TBC