A/N: Thanks for all your great reviews. :) You keep a girl's heart light. :) Here is, as promised, the second part of fifteen. Hope you all enjoy. :)
There are very mild spoilers for second season in this, but only up to Some Assembly Required, and most of them are only vague allusions to past events.
I welcome all reviews, both here and by email, so please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you're thinking. I can't improve my writing if I don't know what people want to see. :P
They're not mine, I just borrow them sometimes and mutate their inner voices. What can I say? It's fun. But Cameron will always own the good stuff. :P
Towards The Sunset
Part Two: Hanging Around
By: Danae Bowen
Email: logansfox@rogers.com
Not surprisingly, by the time Max got to the demolished building and glanced around, a group of at least a hundred people had gathered, preventing her ability to scan out the guilty parties. For a moment she concentrated on the crowd, her sensitive hearing picking up single conversations trying to learn anything that would help her, but there was nothing. As far as Max could tell, the people responsible were long gone. Perhaps even before they hit the detonator.
She sighed, deciding that scanning the crowd would be useless, so instead she slipped beyond the sector cops and fire fighters and disappeared behind a large wall of rubble. Cautiously, Max picked her way through the chaos, searching for any clue as to what had happened. When it came down to trouble in Seattle, especially striking so close to her home, Max didn't trust the sector cops to find the culprits. She'd rather have her hands on any clues possible and there was only one man Max trusted to be entirely honest.
Still, trusting someone with clues and finding clues were entirely different problems. Not willing to run the risk of being caught, Max returned to the crowd, hanging back until the group had thinned and the police and fire people began to return to their bases. Thankfully, with the dilapidation in the neighborhood, the building had been long since abandoned. Max knew for a fact there had been a raid on the building two days before, sector cops coming in and pulling out the people that illegally resided within. At the time she'd thought little of it, but as the thought struck her while she was standing in the dwindling crowd, she turned to peer at her own building.
It occurred to her then that her own building hadn't been raided. Her brow furrowed in thought as she forced herself to think back to the last time they'd been checked in on by the sector police. It hadn't been since the day Logan made a point of defending her territory. She glanced back to the building in a pile, and cocked her head. The job looked to be professional. Surrounding buildings hadn't been harmed by falling debris, so the explosives had obviously been placed at pre-scouted weak points in the building structure. So what was the point?
With a deep frown, Max eased out of the now tiny crowd and swiftly lifted a passing cop's identification. Sector 7. With a shrug, Max slipped back across the road to her place, and quickly brought her bike out to the streets. She gunned the engine, allowing the powerful machine to purr between her legs, before she began to follow the police back to their station. If any information was available, she'd no doubt that it would still be hard copy and much easier to slide off someone's desk.
*****
Logan entered his penthouse silently and made his way directly towards his computer room. In an instant the machines were humming quietly as they began to boot and Logan settled into his chair. He wasn't sure quite yet what it was he was looking for. If the explosion had been any regular terrorist attack, he was positive one of his contacts would have let him know earlier that it had been in the making. Besides, why would someone want to blow up an abandoned building?
He shook his head, taking a moment to run his fingers through his hair. The coincidence of this happening close enough to affect Max's home disturbed him. Thoughts of Manticore, or White, or even an escapee searching to call out Max ran through his mind, and left him pulling off his glasses to lightly rub his temples. He and Max had faced a lot of issues over the past two years, but none of them had ever really struck so close to home. Well, with the exception of Zack, and to tell the truth, he was an anomaly.
Logan quickly scanned for messages from any of his contacts, finding useful information in other endeavors, but nothing regarding the unceremonious destruction of a building in Max's sector. The lack of information worried Logan more than the act itself. Usually his informants had information on everything in the city either before or instants after it went down; to be greeted with silence made the entire mess that much more suspicious.
Shrugging, Logan typed up a query letter and dropped feelers out with his most common informants. If any of them knew anything, Logan felt sure they'd come through for him. Eyes Only took care of his informants at all times; if it was at all possible, they'd not let him down.
With a sigh, Logan pushed away from the desk and made his way into the kitchen. If Max was going to be dropping by soon, it would serve him well to have dinner prepared in advance. His girl was always in some stage of starvation, peeking into the fridge, lifting fruit, or looking down right pathetic if he didn't have something cooking when she arrived. He chuckled and shook his head; Max was a species all in herself; he'd never quite understand what her body did with the high caloric intake of her diet, but it served him well to cave in. He'd learned in the past that not feeding Max was a dangerous, albeit interesting, habit in which he'd ought not indulge.
Logan had spent a fortune on the preparations for dinner. Originally, it was meant to be their celebratory dinner for the cure of the virus, so he'd spared no expense. Although, it was difficult to find exactly what he'd wanted on the market, he did have his ways. All in all, Logan took out the two perfect steaks, setting them to the side while beginning to prepare the vegetables. They were to have filet mignon with mushrooms, herb and garlic mashed potatoes, cream corn, and a special Cale family recipe gravy. He set aside his favorite pre-pulse red wine, one he'd put away for the day he and Max finally came to their senses, and glanced at the clock.
An hour had passed since he'd left Max's; presumably she was to arrive within the following hour. Knowing Max well, however, Logan took his time with the preparations. He took long minutes rinsing the extremely hard to find mushrooms, cleaning them one at a time, before removing their stems and chopping them into the perfect size. Next he peeled the potatoes, taking care that each potato was relatively the same size for even cooking. He dropped them into the water, setting the heat low so that the potatoes would cook slowly. No need to rush Max; once the vegetables were ready, their steaks would take no more than ten minutes to finish. When the corn was set to cook, and the potatoes were boiling, Logan glanced up at the clock once again. Forty minutes had passed while he was taking his time, and Max was due at any moment. Very carefully, Logan began to heat a tablespoon of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter in a pan, waiting for the butter to melt nicely before dropping in the mushrooms and beginning the sauté. When no more than three or four minutes had passed, he removed the mushrooms and set them to the side.
The question now became, should he wait for some confirmation from Max that she'd be on time, or should he risk beginning to heat the steaks? He frowned and bit his lip, leaning slightly against the counter. Silently he counted off the minutes, waiting until five minutes before Max should be arriving before deciding to continue with his preparations. Even if she were a few minutes late, the steaks would stay warm and fresh. He hoped.
Dropping the filet mignon into the pan the mushrooms had vacated, his eyes flicked over to check on the potatoes. //Perfect.// Pulling the pot off the burner, he drained the water and began the process of mashing, always keeping his eyes on the very expensive steaks.
When the steaks were ready, at that perfect place where they just began to sweat juice, Logan removed them from the heat, and set them with the mushrooms. The last steps were to cream the corn, and make his special gravy. Again his eyes flickered to the clock. //Okay, she's only five minutes late, we can work with this.//
When another ten minutes had passed and all the food was prepared, Logan began to get nervous. //What could she be doing?//
*****
Max groaned as the blood rushed to her brain, her body beginning to ache as she hung upside down outside a window at the sector 7 station. It figured, the one night she had an in and out mission, and the cops had to hang around the station. She had begun to lose track of time, and little black lines were beginning to strike across her vision. All in all, Max was getting annoyed.
When at last the sector police found something better to do than hang around their desks, Max sighed with relief and silently lowered herself through the window. Judging by the volume of voices, she knew she only had minutes to find the hard copy of the investigation before the cops returned. Quickly, she began shuffling through papers on desks, searching for a case file with the right address on it. When the first four desks turned up nothing and the voices grew louder in the hallway, Max's hands curled into fists and she had to force herself to remain calm.
Two desks later, Max's fingers curled around the file containing whatever information the cops had uncovered from the explosion. Max lifted her eyebrow in an act of non-amusement as she took in exactly how thin the file was. Obviously while she spent two hours hanging upside down waiting for this, the sector cops did their usual amount of investigation: nothing. She sighed, reached out the window, and took hold of the rope she'd left hanging for her moment of escape.
Stuffing the file down the front of her cat suit, Max gripped onto the rope with both hands and scaled quickly to the roof, grateful her presence had gone as yet unnoticed. She gathered her gear and made her way to the ground in silence. Her bike had her back at her building in a short amount of time, and finally Max was able to climb the stairs to her apartment. Once inside, she sighed and began to peel herself out of the cat suit, dropping the file to the kitchen counter as she passed it by.
Half way out of the tight leather pants, Max's eyes trailed to her clock, mercifully undisrupted by the days events, and she sighed. She'd missed her two-hour promise to Logan by almost thirty minutes. She still needed to grab a shower and change before heading to the penthouse, not to mention wanting a chance to flip through the file. Max chewed her lower lip as she peered at the phone with trepidation.
//It's just Logan. As long as I call, he won't care if I'm late.//
Still, her fingers dialed his number slowly.
"Max?"
She rolled her eyes as she caught the tinge of worry in his voice. "Yeah, it's me."
"You were supposed to be here a half hour ago, where are you?"
She shrugged even though the gesture was lost over the phone. "Got hung up getting some info we need. Gotta take a quick shower then I'll head over. Cool?"
She heard the hesitation before he answered her, his voice betraying a sense of defeat. "Yeah, take your time."
Max frowned, sitting on her bed, curling her legs up beneath her. "Logan, is something wrong?"
Again the hesitation. "No. Look, I'll see you when you get here. Just let yourself in."
"Yeah. I always do." She paused. "Logan..." She heard the click of the receiver and then only a dial tone met her ears. "Whatever."
Her steps were heavy as she made her way to the bathroom, stripping out of her remaining clothing. As she jumped into the shower, wincing at the cool temperature of the water, Max refused to admit she was hurt by Logan's strange behavior. Three hours before, he'd been all over her, wanting to risk his life just for the chance to brush away her hair. She wondered quietly what had changed while she'd been gone, but brushed it off.
"Chill, Max. Men're idiots. Whatever bug's up his ass'll probably crawl out 'fore you even get there."
Her voice in the tiny bathroom did little to comfort her suddenly on edge nerves. She was under enough emotional stress trying to figure out exactly what she wanted to do about their suddenly virus free relationship, she didn't need Logan's mood swings making things worse.
****
Logan hung up the phone and sighed. He realized that he hadn't done a very good job hiding his disappointment, especially when it was Max to whom he'd try to lie. She always seemed to pick up on his emotions, even over the telephone.
Still, he turned to look at his specially prepared, overly expensive dinner, and closed his hands into fists. Twice now Max had managed to ruin a surprise to which he'd looked forward to treating her. Oh, dinner would still be here when she arrived in an hour. It'd be a little too dry for Logan's tastes, but he knew Max would hardly notice. She'd breeze into the penthouse, have dinner, and when he tried to get close, she'd go abruptly business like. He could actually see the events of the next few hours unfolding in his mind's eye.
He shook his head and set his dinner in the oven to reheat as once again he began waiting for Max to arrive. He knew that even with the virus gone, in the time they'd been separated by it Max had managed to rebuild some of her walls. Perhaps, he figured, being late was her subconscious way of distancing them once again.
"What're you doing to yourself, Logan?" He poured himself a glass of wine and leaned against the island in his kitchen.
He'd no doubt that he'd forgive her for tonight within moments of her arrival. His heart just wasn't strong enough to withstand her sweet smile or her beautiful dark eyes. All she'd have to do is pull her lip between her teeth and his world would be right once more, but damnit, they were going to have a hard enough time working things out on an emotional level without her adding to their problems by putting things off.
"What is it with women anyway?" he asked his clock as he took one final glance at the time. With no answers seemingly forth coming, Logan shrugged and moved to the living room. What was he getting himself into?
End Part Two: Hanging Around
There are very mild spoilers for second season in this, but only up to Some Assembly Required, and most of them are only vague allusions to past events.
I welcome all reviews, both here and by email, so please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you're thinking. I can't improve my writing if I don't know what people want to see. :P
They're not mine, I just borrow them sometimes and mutate their inner voices. What can I say? It's fun. But Cameron will always own the good stuff. :P
Towards The Sunset
Part Two: Hanging Around
By: Danae Bowen
Email: logansfox@rogers.com
Not surprisingly, by the time Max got to the demolished building and glanced around, a group of at least a hundred people had gathered, preventing her ability to scan out the guilty parties. For a moment she concentrated on the crowd, her sensitive hearing picking up single conversations trying to learn anything that would help her, but there was nothing. As far as Max could tell, the people responsible were long gone. Perhaps even before they hit the detonator.
She sighed, deciding that scanning the crowd would be useless, so instead she slipped beyond the sector cops and fire fighters and disappeared behind a large wall of rubble. Cautiously, Max picked her way through the chaos, searching for any clue as to what had happened. When it came down to trouble in Seattle, especially striking so close to her home, Max didn't trust the sector cops to find the culprits. She'd rather have her hands on any clues possible and there was only one man Max trusted to be entirely honest.
Still, trusting someone with clues and finding clues were entirely different problems. Not willing to run the risk of being caught, Max returned to the crowd, hanging back until the group had thinned and the police and fire people began to return to their bases. Thankfully, with the dilapidation in the neighborhood, the building had been long since abandoned. Max knew for a fact there had been a raid on the building two days before, sector cops coming in and pulling out the people that illegally resided within. At the time she'd thought little of it, but as the thought struck her while she was standing in the dwindling crowd, she turned to peer at her own building.
It occurred to her then that her own building hadn't been raided. Her brow furrowed in thought as she forced herself to think back to the last time they'd been checked in on by the sector police. It hadn't been since the day Logan made a point of defending her territory. She glanced back to the building in a pile, and cocked her head. The job looked to be professional. Surrounding buildings hadn't been harmed by falling debris, so the explosives had obviously been placed at pre-scouted weak points in the building structure. So what was the point?
With a deep frown, Max eased out of the now tiny crowd and swiftly lifted a passing cop's identification. Sector 7. With a shrug, Max slipped back across the road to her place, and quickly brought her bike out to the streets. She gunned the engine, allowing the powerful machine to purr between her legs, before she began to follow the police back to their station. If any information was available, she'd no doubt that it would still be hard copy and much easier to slide off someone's desk.
*****
Logan entered his penthouse silently and made his way directly towards his computer room. In an instant the machines were humming quietly as they began to boot and Logan settled into his chair. He wasn't sure quite yet what it was he was looking for. If the explosion had been any regular terrorist attack, he was positive one of his contacts would have let him know earlier that it had been in the making. Besides, why would someone want to blow up an abandoned building?
He shook his head, taking a moment to run his fingers through his hair. The coincidence of this happening close enough to affect Max's home disturbed him. Thoughts of Manticore, or White, or even an escapee searching to call out Max ran through his mind, and left him pulling off his glasses to lightly rub his temples. He and Max had faced a lot of issues over the past two years, but none of them had ever really struck so close to home. Well, with the exception of Zack, and to tell the truth, he was an anomaly.
Logan quickly scanned for messages from any of his contacts, finding useful information in other endeavors, but nothing regarding the unceremonious destruction of a building in Max's sector. The lack of information worried Logan more than the act itself. Usually his informants had information on everything in the city either before or instants after it went down; to be greeted with silence made the entire mess that much more suspicious.
Shrugging, Logan typed up a query letter and dropped feelers out with his most common informants. If any of them knew anything, Logan felt sure they'd come through for him. Eyes Only took care of his informants at all times; if it was at all possible, they'd not let him down.
With a sigh, Logan pushed away from the desk and made his way into the kitchen. If Max was going to be dropping by soon, it would serve him well to have dinner prepared in advance. His girl was always in some stage of starvation, peeking into the fridge, lifting fruit, or looking down right pathetic if he didn't have something cooking when she arrived. He chuckled and shook his head; Max was a species all in herself; he'd never quite understand what her body did with the high caloric intake of her diet, but it served him well to cave in. He'd learned in the past that not feeding Max was a dangerous, albeit interesting, habit in which he'd ought not indulge.
Logan had spent a fortune on the preparations for dinner. Originally, it was meant to be their celebratory dinner for the cure of the virus, so he'd spared no expense. Although, it was difficult to find exactly what he'd wanted on the market, he did have his ways. All in all, Logan took out the two perfect steaks, setting them to the side while beginning to prepare the vegetables. They were to have filet mignon with mushrooms, herb and garlic mashed potatoes, cream corn, and a special Cale family recipe gravy. He set aside his favorite pre-pulse red wine, one he'd put away for the day he and Max finally came to their senses, and glanced at the clock.
An hour had passed since he'd left Max's; presumably she was to arrive within the following hour. Knowing Max well, however, Logan took his time with the preparations. He took long minutes rinsing the extremely hard to find mushrooms, cleaning them one at a time, before removing their stems and chopping them into the perfect size. Next he peeled the potatoes, taking care that each potato was relatively the same size for even cooking. He dropped them into the water, setting the heat low so that the potatoes would cook slowly. No need to rush Max; once the vegetables were ready, their steaks would take no more than ten minutes to finish. When the corn was set to cook, and the potatoes were boiling, Logan glanced up at the clock once again. Forty minutes had passed while he was taking his time, and Max was due at any moment. Very carefully, Logan began to heat a tablespoon of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter in a pan, waiting for the butter to melt nicely before dropping in the mushrooms and beginning the sauté. When no more than three or four minutes had passed, he removed the mushrooms and set them to the side.
The question now became, should he wait for some confirmation from Max that she'd be on time, or should he risk beginning to heat the steaks? He frowned and bit his lip, leaning slightly against the counter. Silently he counted off the minutes, waiting until five minutes before Max should be arriving before deciding to continue with his preparations. Even if she were a few minutes late, the steaks would stay warm and fresh. He hoped.
Dropping the filet mignon into the pan the mushrooms had vacated, his eyes flicked over to check on the potatoes. //Perfect.// Pulling the pot off the burner, he drained the water and began the process of mashing, always keeping his eyes on the very expensive steaks.
When the steaks were ready, at that perfect place where they just began to sweat juice, Logan removed them from the heat, and set them with the mushrooms. The last steps were to cream the corn, and make his special gravy. Again his eyes flickered to the clock. //Okay, she's only five minutes late, we can work with this.//
When another ten minutes had passed and all the food was prepared, Logan began to get nervous. //What could she be doing?//
*****
Max groaned as the blood rushed to her brain, her body beginning to ache as she hung upside down outside a window at the sector 7 station. It figured, the one night she had an in and out mission, and the cops had to hang around the station. She had begun to lose track of time, and little black lines were beginning to strike across her vision. All in all, Max was getting annoyed.
When at last the sector police found something better to do than hang around their desks, Max sighed with relief and silently lowered herself through the window. Judging by the volume of voices, she knew she only had minutes to find the hard copy of the investigation before the cops returned. Quickly, she began shuffling through papers on desks, searching for a case file with the right address on it. When the first four desks turned up nothing and the voices grew louder in the hallway, Max's hands curled into fists and she had to force herself to remain calm.
Two desks later, Max's fingers curled around the file containing whatever information the cops had uncovered from the explosion. Max lifted her eyebrow in an act of non-amusement as she took in exactly how thin the file was. Obviously while she spent two hours hanging upside down waiting for this, the sector cops did their usual amount of investigation: nothing. She sighed, reached out the window, and took hold of the rope she'd left hanging for her moment of escape.
Stuffing the file down the front of her cat suit, Max gripped onto the rope with both hands and scaled quickly to the roof, grateful her presence had gone as yet unnoticed. She gathered her gear and made her way to the ground in silence. Her bike had her back at her building in a short amount of time, and finally Max was able to climb the stairs to her apartment. Once inside, she sighed and began to peel herself out of the cat suit, dropping the file to the kitchen counter as she passed it by.
Half way out of the tight leather pants, Max's eyes trailed to her clock, mercifully undisrupted by the days events, and she sighed. She'd missed her two-hour promise to Logan by almost thirty minutes. She still needed to grab a shower and change before heading to the penthouse, not to mention wanting a chance to flip through the file. Max chewed her lower lip as she peered at the phone with trepidation.
//It's just Logan. As long as I call, he won't care if I'm late.//
Still, her fingers dialed his number slowly.
"Max?"
She rolled her eyes as she caught the tinge of worry in his voice. "Yeah, it's me."
"You were supposed to be here a half hour ago, where are you?"
She shrugged even though the gesture was lost over the phone. "Got hung up getting some info we need. Gotta take a quick shower then I'll head over. Cool?"
She heard the hesitation before he answered her, his voice betraying a sense of defeat. "Yeah, take your time."
Max frowned, sitting on her bed, curling her legs up beneath her. "Logan, is something wrong?"
Again the hesitation. "No. Look, I'll see you when you get here. Just let yourself in."
"Yeah. I always do." She paused. "Logan..." She heard the click of the receiver and then only a dial tone met her ears. "Whatever."
Her steps were heavy as she made her way to the bathroom, stripping out of her remaining clothing. As she jumped into the shower, wincing at the cool temperature of the water, Max refused to admit she was hurt by Logan's strange behavior. Three hours before, he'd been all over her, wanting to risk his life just for the chance to brush away her hair. She wondered quietly what had changed while she'd been gone, but brushed it off.
"Chill, Max. Men're idiots. Whatever bug's up his ass'll probably crawl out 'fore you even get there."
Her voice in the tiny bathroom did little to comfort her suddenly on edge nerves. She was under enough emotional stress trying to figure out exactly what she wanted to do about their suddenly virus free relationship, she didn't need Logan's mood swings making things worse.
****
Logan hung up the phone and sighed. He realized that he hadn't done a very good job hiding his disappointment, especially when it was Max to whom he'd try to lie. She always seemed to pick up on his emotions, even over the telephone.
Still, he turned to look at his specially prepared, overly expensive dinner, and closed his hands into fists. Twice now Max had managed to ruin a surprise to which he'd looked forward to treating her. Oh, dinner would still be here when she arrived in an hour. It'd be a little too dry for Logan's tastes, but he knew Max would hardly notice. She'd breeze into the penthouse, have dinner, and when he tried to get close, she'd go abruptly business like. He could actually see the events of the next few hours unfolding in his mind's eye.
He shook his head and set his dinner in the oven to reheat as once again he began waiting for Max to arrive. He knew that even with the virus gone, in the time they'd been separated by it Max had managed to rebuild some of her walls. Perhaps, he figured, being late was her subconscious way of distancing them once again.
"What're you doing to yourself, Logan?" He poured himself a glass of wine and leaned against the island in his kitchen.
He'd no doubt that he'd forgive her for tonight within moments of her arrival. His heart just wasn't strong enough to withstand her sweet smile or her beautiful dark eyes. All she'd have to do is pull her lip between her teeth and his world would be right once more, but damnit, they were going to have a hard enough time working things out on an emotional level without her adding to their problems by putting things off.
"What is it with women anyway?" he asked his clock as he took one final glance at the time. With no answers seemingly forth coming, Logan shrugged and moved to the living room. What was he getting himself into?
End Part Two: Hanging Around