Chapter 11: Alex changes his wardrobe (and Crushes part 2!)

By: PastryFudger

There comes a time when any poor soul will crack under pressure. Well, pressure being career meetings with terrorists.

For Alex, this came in the idea of fashion. He arrived at school with makeup and new piercings, and then stick-and-poke tattoos, and then a new haircut, and along the way, his school uniform slowly became more and more of disarray of cloth and pins. He would roll his sleeves up, never had a tie, and soon was wearing just the blazer over different shirts and pants of his choice. He mostly seemed to be a huge middle finger to the staff, but they took offense in the wrong ways.

"Alex… please don't tell me that's a cheap polyester shirt." Jet and Doctor Three happened upon him in the hallway, and he just frowned at them.

"What do you care?"

"I can always support healthy self-expression," Three stated, and Alex stifled a laugh. "But this fashion is horrendously made. If you wish to dress like this, dress well."

"That's not the point of it," Alex replied but was easily pulled out of the conversation by the bell. "Oh, would you look at that, class! Bye!"

He couldn't shake the feeling that he was going to get bitten in the ass for something. He didn't know what, but he knew it was happening.

Alex woke up like any other day, at about four in the morning, heading for a shower, brushing his teeth, and then opening his wardrobe to pick something to wear.

The only issue was, nothing in his wardrobe was the same. His darkest clothing was a royal blue turtleneck, and many button-up shirts were light grey. Everything else, however, was finely pressed and either adjacent to his uniform or was one of the three new uniforms hanging innocently on the rack.

"You're fucking kidding me."

He quickly started to rummage through the closet for any hint of his original clothes, but found nothing, and cursed thorough terrorist organizations. Even his small bits of jewelry were missing, which was rather annoying as he hadn't yet gotten to wear all of them. His shoes had even been replaced with some bullshit custom made stuff, and as he wandered back towards the bathroom, his makeup had been replaced as well.

"You've got to be fucking joking!"

Alex arrived at school late, having had to fuck up the uniform on his own, and it was hardly enough for his preferences. He didn't even go to class, marching right into the teachers' lounge, where Ross was avoiding teaching.

"Hey, there you are, we were almost about to dispatch a team to pick you up-"

Alex marched up and grabbed the man by his shirt collar. "What the fuck did you assholes do to my wardrobe?!"

"Woah, hey, calm down-"

After a short intermission of angry teen shouting and well-meaning terrorist dragging, everyone important was seated in D'Arc's office for probably the fiftieth time by now. Alex looked and felt every bit the fuming child he was.

"You assholes better have a good reason to replace my entire wardrobe."

"We are not going to let you walk around looking like you just threw your clothing in a grinder," Gordon snapped back. "You can dress well, so you should."

"Or, consider this, I wear what I want to wear!"

"Not in this line of work!"

"Who said I was joining your line of work?!"

Gordon almost looked hurt. Almost. Alex didn't take the time to care, though, and yelled at the rest of the group.

"And why do they fit me? Which of you fuckers drugged and measured me again?"

"Walker did," Jet said with a shrug.

"This is the fifteenth time! I've had enough of this bullshit! It's creepy!"

He was standing now, trying to intimidate them, but he was still short and tiny and Gordon bit back a comment on him being like a growling puppy.

"Just ask me my size like normal people! It's not that hard!"

"Would you even answer honestly?"

"If it meant you didn't drug and measure me, yes!" Alex fought the urge to stomp his foot, but he was truly pissed. "I even bought that wardrobe with my own damn money, and it's all just gone. What did you even do with it?"

Nile winced. "Uh. I can send you the ashes if you'd like?"

"Not to mention you replaced my clothing with some bullshit nerd clothing. I don't dress like that."

"Yes, you do! You were wearing immense amounts of black, just like Yassen!"

"Yeah, and Yassen is a nerd goth! I'm more of a jock goth! There's a difference in style!"

"I don't know what that means. Yassen, what does that mean?"

Yassen shrugged. "I don't keep up with that sort of stuff."

"Yassen, you're fucking useless, get out of here."

Yassen threw a knife at Ross, and D'Arc caught it with a disapproving look and pointed at the sign on the wall that stated 'NO KNIVES IN SCHOOL (You know who you are)', before turning to Alex and addressing him.

"Regardless, Alex, we will be expecting you to dress properly in school. Outside of school, you are free to go out and get arrested for public indecency all you like. Here, however, you are our student."

"I barely get any time out of school to do what I want-"

"That is not my problem, Alex."

This time, Alex did end up stomping his foot, and more. If D'Arc had to get entirely new office furniture, well, that was nobody's business but his and Alex's budding arson issue.

With his stupid wardrobe back to supposed "normal", Alex found himself getting more and more annoyed day by day. What was worse, his wardrobe change made him appear somewhat more approachable than before. Turns out, even if you have the type of facial expression to make children cry, if you didn't look like some sort of punk asshole then you would get asked out. A lot.

He had managed to keep his piercings, and the tattoos were lucky to stay as well, so he wasn't entirely unchanged from before, but with the uniform back to plain people somehow thought he was becoming a 'respectable member of the community' or something.

It was irritatingly like some sort of rom-com when Alex found a love letter in his bag, which was from someone anonymous, commenting about how his shoulders 'look so good in that jacket' and he sighed with annoyance. Then he got another letter, this time on his desk, and then someone was leaving gifts in his things, and Alex was torn between figuring out if this was some sort of elaborate prank and letting it continue because there was something hilarious about how Yassen reacted to seeing his gifts.

"You're too young for these kinds of things," Yassen said, disapproving of the entire thing. "This could be something bad, as well. Someone could be slipping you poisons, or a bomb, and-"

"Just say you think I'm some weird baby that will never be old enough to marry until I'm thirty or something," Alex interrupted.

"You shouldn't marry in the first place, this line of work is-"

"Right, right, what's next, you buy me a chastity belt?"

Yassen glared at him flatly. "Maybe I should let you have those clothes back from before. Built-in birth control."

Alex decided not to mention that this person seemed to like his old style, even if the school uniform was also apparently fine.

Ross, on the other hand, found the whole thing weirdly adorable and was always trying to guess who it was without actually using any of his espionage skills to figure it out.

"Maybe it's that girl from your chemistry class! The one always making eyes at you!"

"... Which girl is that?"

"C'mon, kid, you know I can't just tell you. Figure it out on your own. You've got the skills."

Alex did have the skills. It was the fact that he had the skills and still hadn't even noticed this shit that was kind of weird. Regardless, he finally managed to catch the perpetrator in the act.

It was Maddison Banks, a girl who was most definitely not in his chemistry class. She was taller than him, and on one of the sports teams though he couldn't remember which. They only knew each other in passing, and it was a bit surprising to see her slipping a note onto his desk.

"Alex!" she exclaimed, as he walked up, a bit dumbfounded.

"Maddison," he replied. "Uh. Fancy seeing you here…?"

She snorted. "That's one way to put it. Guess the cat's out of the bag now, innit?"

"Yeah," he replied, and he awkwardly shifted his weight.

"Do you want me to stop? You seemed pretty amused by all my letters and gifts."

Alex shrugged. "I'm not sure, honestly? I was half expecting a guy deep in the closet with some of your comments."

She nodded and bit her lip, letting a small pause go between them before she asked, "Do you wanna go on a date, maybe?"

A date. Huh. Hadn't gone on one of those in a while. He could only imagine how much of a mess that would be. Yassen would probably chaperone and Ross and Jet would spy from the bushes like dumbasses while Three suddenly replaced the head chef at the restaurant even if it was a shitty chain.

More work for them.

"Sure, why not."

Maddison gave him a sharp smirk that could cut glass with pure attitude alone and scribbled something on the note she had been about to give him. "Here's my number. Wear that choker you used to wear all the time. It was cute."

Alex flushed a bit at the word cute concerning him, but took the offered piece of paper, committing the number to memory, and continued about the rest of his day with an oddly warm feeling in his belly for the first time in months.

The date went well, for all intents and purposes. Alex managed to bribe Ross into distracting Yassen, and Maddison was fun to be around. She caught on that he didn't have a normal life, what with the weird teachers all paying ridiculous amounts of attention to him, and she made fun of the same things as he did in the shitty movie they saw.

They may have had a war concerning food, in that they kept stealing food from each other's plates, but he was genuinely smiling for the first time in weeks, and it was nice.

"That was nice," Maddison said, dropping him off (she had insisted).

"It was," he replied. "I'm not… I wouldn't be opposed to a second date."

She just laughed. "Maybe. We are nearing graduation, and your 'teachers' are likely to drive you into the ground with that, from what I've seen. Text me when they aren't breathing down your neck, yeah?" Then she kissed him on the cheek.

"Yeah, that, uh, that sounds good," Alex mumbled, feeling his ears heat up.

He went inside, and Jack grilled him immediately for details, and he gave them gladly, unaware that outside, Maddison stopped in an alleyway.

"You people are weirdly obsessed with him, you know that?" she said, and Jet shrugged.

"He's a good kid. Don't go yanking him around, or I will kill you."

"Is that something he has to worry about often?"

"Pardon?"

"Being killed. Does he have to worry about that?"

Jet leveled the girl before her with a calculating stare. "Are you going to do something about it?"

"Are you?"

"We're giving him the skills necessary to survive."

"Then teach me as well," Maddison demanded, walking up to Jet. "I want to learn."

"This isn't a decision to be made lightly," Jet warned.

"Then I'll prove it."

There was a pregnant pause, but Maddison did not let it deter her. Seems Alex attracted someone worth interest.

"There is no giving up, girl. If you give up, I kill you myself."

Maddison still did not falter in her stance, but her eyes did shine with some fear. Not perfectly trained, no, not trained by any means, but she had guts, and that was more than many. Perhaps there would be a benefit to this girl in more ways than one.