y o u . o n l y . h i d e [v.red, red, sinister red]
by bulletproof (bulletproof_android@yahoo.com)
characters owned by cameron/eglee productions. song by björk.
PART 3
They'd been living together for a week now and were slowly settling into a routine: he would cook, she would clean, and thrice weekly, Max would lead him through a PT workout she had conjured up herself, quickly dubbing it the 'If you don't I'll whoop your ass' workout.
Throughout the week, they had co-existed amicably enough, but mornings, it seemed, were another matter. Logan was not a morning person and Max had found this out shortly after she had jogged into his room, bouncing off the walls and suggesting they go for a morning stroll in the park. She'd gotten a pillow in her face as an answer.
Thereafter, Max had learned to make as little noise around the apartment as possible in the morning, so as not to wake her grumpy roommate, but this morning, she didn't seem to care.
"What's this?" she demanded, bursting into his room and throwing a folder onto his bed.
"Good morning to you too, Max." He grumbled, blearily eying the folder, "Have you been going through my files?"
"I was *organising* your files, and excuse me for taking an active interest...whatever! This isn't about that. This is about you being stupid enough to even *think* that I'd *consider* helping that worthless, slimy, good-for-nothing..."
"Who?" Logan interrupted her tirade.
"Bruno Anselmo!"
He groaned, "I was wondering how to break that to you. Bruno's the only witness left alive who can-"
"I know," she snapped, "I read the files."
"Then you'll know how important this is. The *Mayor*, Max. I've been wanting to bring him down for months."
Logan sat up, rubbing a hand over his face and the bed sheet fell away to settle on his lap. Max gulped as her gaze raked over his bare, toned upper-body, the line of the sheet and her line of thought riding dangerously low on his hips. The line that might or might not have been concealing the edge of his boxers. Her resolve almost crumbled at the sight, at the thought of being that close to Logan while he was this naked.
Almost.
"No way, no how, Logan. I am not lifting a *finger* for that scumbag." She maintained, trying to keep her voice as hard as possible.
Logan, however, noted the little diversion her gaze took, the slight wavering in her tone, and quirked a smile, turning on the charm, "Oh, well maybe I can play witness protector and you can be waiting for me at home with fettuccine bosciala and grilled salmon with Cale's special sauce."
Max regarded him analytically, "The fettuccine *and* the salmon?"
"Your favourites." He assured and reminded her.
"And does dessert come with this package?" she asked critically, hoping to add more to her end of the bargain before she committed to anything.
"Anything your heart desires." He drawled, letting each syllable roll longingly over his tongue, allowing her to interpret the innuendo at will.
She leaned down on the bed, retrieving the file and coming face to face with Logan in the process, "I'm gonna take you up on that."
Max lingered in her position, lingered in the heat of his unhindered gaze, in the scent that spiced his naked skin, in the residual warmth of his cocoon of sleep.
"Must say," she grinned saucily, almost whispering against his lips, "you're a lot less grumpy today than you are other mornings."
A sexy smirk tugged at Logan's lips as he returned the favour, "Well, if you're willing to wake me up this way *every* morning..."
They remained frozen to each other while inside they were chaos, souls crashing, stomach-butterflies quaking, hearts racing, racing racing...
And then, thought stopped.
Did they *actually* just say that?
"I should get to work."
"You should be at work."
Their lines ran parallel as both scrambled back to a safe distance, back to safe topics that didn't involve dessert and after dinner activities and eat, drink, man, woman...
Oh God.
"Right," Max stumbled, making vague gestures at the door, "so I'll just-"
"Go." He interjected, a plea, an imperative.
She nodded shakily, turning around in a daze and heading to the door.
"I'll call you," Logan called after her, cringing at how desperate it sounded, covering with, "a-about Bruno."
"Yeah." She replied, hand on the door, clinging onto it like a lifeline. Max shared one last confused look with Logan and slammed the door behind her.
Logan fell back on the bed, pulling a pillow over his head and groaning into it. The sexual tension in this apartment was killing him!
* * * * *
"You'd better come up with some damn good dessert, Logan Cale." Max snarled into the phone, glaring daggers at the bathroom door yet grateful for the barrier, *any* barrier, it provided against the man who was just behind it.
Logan chuckled, knowing her tone and her temper all too well, "Ready to place an order?"
Max growled, "You'll be lucky if I don't eat you alive for this. That man is driving me insane!"
He sighed in sympathy, trying to appease her, "One more day and Bruno Anselmo is gone from you forever, I promise. In the meantime, just don't kill him, OK?"
"I'm not making any promises," Max warned, "If he does one more..."
She trailed off, leaving Logan hanging on the other line, "Max?", as he heard the sounds of a door being broken down and a short expletive from her mouth, "Max is everything-"
"Logan, I'm gonna haveta call you back."
The line went dead.
"Damnit!" Logan cursed, slamming the phone down on his desk as irrational panic ripped through him. Max could take care of herself, he knew, but it didn't stop him from worrying about her safety, especially when he was helpless to do anything but watch and wait and hope she got out of it alive.
Frustrated, but powerless to do anything about it, he turned back to the television and the frozen moment, immortalised on screen, that had sealed his fate.
Watch and wait. Yeah, that was all he was good for.
* * * * *
"Hey," Max's smile drifted through the phone line with her greeting, but along with it, her weariness and worry.
"Are you okay?" Logan asked, concern softening the edges of his voice, "I've been paging you for hours."
"Yeah. Ran into some goons at the hotel."
"Is Bruno-"
"Yes," Max grimaced, "your boy's still intact. But only cos I caught the muscle chucking out the check-in boy. We're talking serious *artificially enhanced* muscle. This guy got tossed around like he was a rag doll."
"You want me to check it out?" Logan asked, already booting up the informant net.
"Well, you're the brains in this operation, I'm just here to look pretty."
Logan chuckled, hearing the mock-pout in her voice, "And since you've got your job covered, I better get started on mine. Take care okay?"
Max's voice softened in response, "Yeah. See you at the court-house."
* * * * *
"Bring it on!"
There were four of them. No, three, but it felt like...God it felt like they were everywhere at once. All three, converging on her, and there was nowhere left to run cos everywhere she turned, there was another one of them.
Max hadn't fought like this in a while. Fighting like they were brothers, equals. Yet so unequal. There were three of them and one of her and the desperation was starting to show in her imprecise movements, the unschooled kick and lash that was pure adrenaline, but the fact remained. Three of them, one of her.
The sounds of squealing tyres echoed through the basement, as a familiar Aztec rolled up on the scene, guns blazing.
Acting on pure instinct, Max clung to the last of her resources, digging deep to find the strength to overturn an attacker and pin another one to a cool facade of water with his own electrical prod.
She jumped through the back window of the car and Logan took them far away, fast away, finally turning home when he saw they weren't following.
The car stopped and she hardly blinked, hardly moved.
"Max?" Logan's voice permeated through her haze, but she showed no sign of it, just felt him lean over her, over the crack in her rib, over the bruise on her forearm.
"We're home."
Home. She remembered a time when home was a sickly word, a hollow word. Home was with her family and the genetically engineered ties that bind. They bled the same blood and after combat training, it wasn't uncommon to have Tinga's and Zach's and Ben's blood on her uniform mixed with her own. It wasn't uncommon that any one or all of them would be missing from the barracks, in the hospital, cos she had sent them there. Or that she herself would lie awake in the infirmary, wondering how she'd gotten there.
She slowly became aware of the slight pressure on her knee and hissed at the pain, trying to withdraw it but finding it locked in a firm, sure grasp.
"Welcome back," she heard Logan say as he gazed into her eyes, trying to find her there.
Max noticed that they were somehow in his apartment, sitting face to face on the vast leather expanses of one of his couches as he tended with achingly gentle fingers to her wounds. She found herself, more than anything, wishing she could remember how they had gotten here. She could only guess that he had deposited her in his lap from the backseat of his car and wheeled them both up to the top floor of his building.
"Are you okay?" he asked, drawing her face to meet his as if to say 'Are you in there?'.
Max considered the question seriously, "Yeah, I guess. It was a bit of a shock, that's all."
"Yeah," Logan echoed and with it, she could see how deeply it had affected him too, "you had me worried."
She shrugged, wincing as something inside her, the rib she had recognised as cracked earlier, made itself known again, and he was all over it, but she completed the gesture anyway, "It's not everyday that Max Guevara gets her ass whipped."
He fussed over her, lifting her shirt partially to inspect the wound site and was bandaging it in a flash. "You sure you don't want someone else to look at you? I'm not exactly a doctor."
Max shook her head gently, "It's fine. Manticore nurses couldn't have done a better job." She said, lifting her knee as if it were proof.
"You'll scar."
"I don't scar." Max flipped back instantly, rolling up her sleeve and showing him evidence to the contrary, "This? This is where Brin drew a dagger down my arm. On my stomach is where Zach steel-toe-capped me. I've got a scar down my left thigh from Krit. No one but my family marks me, Logan, and now? It feels like those goons took a piece of me...but they want more than that, don't they?"
Logan nodded grimly, "They're part of the South African Government's Red Series. Artificially enhanced, just like you. Problem is, their wiring got screwed and now they're looking to copy from Manticore homework."
"And telling them to just go away isn't going to work is it?" she heaved to what outward appearances seemed to be a tired laugh, but when she turned back to him, her eyes were shimmering, "Logan..."
"Hey," he protested softly to the fear in her eyes, drawing her to him and enveloping her in his arms.
She buried herself in his chest, lost herself to the warm oblivion she found there. This, she decided, this felt like home.
"Can I hide here?" she murmured, nuzzling into his soft shirt, listening to the beat of his heart.
And there, in home, in sanctuary, Max Guevara finally slept.
END PART 3/?
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