Oh, Spaghetti!
by
Kel
Disclaimer: The usual disclaimer for Dark Angel applies. I don't own it and don't gain profit from anything related to it.
Author's Note: This is an old fic I wrote for a competition at The Broken World forum (sorrow(dot)hyperboards(dot)com). The challenge was to write a fic with the following conditions:
2000 - 5000 words, shipper-less, G - PG-13, any genre
Include these three quotes: "Did anybody else just go to a scary visual place?" "Let's play Pin The Blame On The Idiot Who Got Us Into This Mess. I blame you. Can you guess why?" "He/she/they hurt me. Burn him/her/them."
Include these three conditions: The word 'toothbrush' is used three times. Alec and Logan cook something together but it goes wrong, so they each blame the other one throughout the rest of the story. Out of nowhere, one of the characters (preferably White) breaks out into song and is smacked about the head by another character (preferably Sketchy).
A sharp loud knock sounded through the wooden door. Max groaned and rolled onto her stomach, burying her head underneath her pillow.
"Max! Maa-aax! I know you're in there; I CAN HEAR YOU BREATHE!"
Max groaned, and rolled onto her back again. It was no use trying to drown out that annoying voice. "Then you can hear this," she grumbled. "Go the hell away, or the last thing you hear will be your own thick skull hitting the floor!"
There was silence. Max would have crossed her fingers, but she was too tired and drained at the moment. She wanted to sleep. For once in her life, all she needed to do right now was sleep, and all she wanted to do was sleep. Shark DNA be damned.
Cheery whistling suddenly filled the apartment, too clear to be muffled by a locked door. Damn thief skills. Max vowed to herself that one day, when she wasn't sicker than Normal's relatives at a family reunion, she would break every one of Alec's damn lock picking fingers. Then his toes, then his lock pick. Just in case. Oh, and then she'd tear the mouth off him. Give the boy a hairpin even, and he'd probably have the energy to pick a lock with his mouth, though perhaps not the patience. Now here was an idea: if she ever got her hands on one of those damn elusive Manticore lab techs, she'd have him whip up some transgenic strength liquid ritalin along with the cure for her and Logan's virus. Then she's modify one of Mole's shotguns and steal some streamlined syringes. . . .
"Hey Max, Logan wants us to– whoa!" Alec walked into her bedroom as he spoke, and was struck by an image of a sweaty, bed-ridden Max, her eyes fiery with anger. Alec grinned with appreciation. "Forgetting someone?" he drawled cockily.
"Alec! You–" Max broke out into a fit of coughs. When she finally stilled, she noticed Alec backing away, his hands in the air. "What the hell are you–"
"Whatever you've got, I don't want it!" Alec defended himself, still backing away.
"Shut up and make me some damn tea," Max hissed.
Alec rolled his eyes. "Gee, Max, would you like some tea?" he asked; his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Just go!" Max ordered.
"Fine, fine. Don't get your panties in a bunch. . . ." Alec walked out to the kitchen. Moments later he poked his head back in the room. "By the way, Logan wants us to do an EO mission, that's why I came over."
"Tea. Now."
"I'm not saying 'yes, ma'am.'"
"Go!"
He went. Max thanked God, the Blue Lady, the Buddha, Ra, and every other damn deity she could think of.
Alec started whistling again. "Dammit!" Max exclaimed. The phone began to ring. "Get that!" she ordered Alec.
"I'm busy!" he called back.
"Arrggghhh!" Max groaned. She got to her feet and stumbled tiredly to the phone. "Please be a lab tech, please be a lab tech, please be a lab tech . . ." she chanted on her way. She picked up. "What?"
"Uh . . . hi Max. Something wrong?"
"Logan? Hi. I'm sick. Alec's annoying. No mission." Max hung up. "Where's that tea?" she bellowed, then doubled over in another fit of coughing.
"It's on the way," Alec called back.
"Well hurry it up!" Max ordered between coughs.
Ten minutes later, Max's tea had come and gone and she was complaining again. Hey, the girl was sick as a dog, she had every right this time! "I'm hungry!" she grumbled.
"Then eat something!" Alec replied.
"Make me something."
"Make you something? Are you kidding?"
"Did I laugh? Did I smile? Do I look like I'm smiling to you? Make me something to eat!" Max ordered, a little more forcefully this time. "Well, what are you-" Max began coughing again. "Unnhh," she groaned.
Alec rolled his eyes, and made his way back to the kitchen. "I have no idea why I'm even- Hey, how did you get sick anyway?"
"Ugh, delivering packages on an incredibly cold rainy day, all day, since I had to do overtime, because someone decided not to show up to work yesterday. And then, like an idiot, Sketchy decided he wanted to cook dinner for everyone."
"But OC's not home sick," Alec observed.
"Yeah, she had the sense to cancel at the last minute. She claimed she had 'better people' to do."
"And you actually ate something Sketchy cooked?"
"Yes, Alec. I ate something Sketchy cooked. Now shut the hell up and make me food."
Alec frantically searched his hairline for his eyebrow, which he appeared to have lost in there. Rubbing his forehead vigorously, he managed to retrieve it.
There was a loud knock on the door. "Max? Max, are you in there? Are you alright?" Logan's voice floated through the door.
"Get that," Max ordered Alec.
"But Max," Alec protested, fluttering his eyelashes innocently, "I'm cooking."
There was a splintering crash as Logan kicked the door in. He marched over to Alec, and taking him completely by surprise, somehow managed to push him away from the kitchen. "Get away from the cooking utensils!" Logan yelled. "I will not let you poison her!"
Alec sighed and rolled his eyes. "You cook then."
Logan pondered this for a moment. "I always cook," he said.
"Then you should have no problem doing it again," Alec said.
Logan shook his head. "I'm tired of cooking," he declared.
"I'M HUNGRY!" Max yelled. "BOTH OF YOU COOK!"
Original Cindy stepped into the ruined doorway just in time to hear those words. "Boo?" she gasped. "You suicidal?"
"BOTH!" Max roared, very lioness-like. It was quite frightening. Everyone else in the room cowered back. She glared between Alec and Logan, just short of having lazer beams shooting out of her eyes. "Spaghetti. Now." She spun on her heel and marched into her bedroom. "Wake me when it's done!" she ordered.
Original Cindy still stood shocked in the doorway, and Logan and Alec were shooting each other wary predatory glares. Alec flicked his eyes along Logan's profile, and his eyes narrowed further. "I'm genetically enhanced, and you're doing the noodles."
Logan growled.
"I don't hear cooking!" Max's voice drifted out from her room.
The two chefs to be began their chore.
"Have fun boys," Original Cindy tossed over her shoulder as she left. "OC's got a hot date with a fine lickety-boo to get to."
As he lifted a large pot out from the cupboards, a look of confusion crossed Logan's features. "What did she come home for then? She didn't do anything,"
Alec rolled his eyes. "We needed a fourth party to question Max's mental stability, and we needed to come across the information that she's got a hot date. Man, you're clueless."
"Shut up."
"That's Max's line."
Sure enough, "Shut up and cook!"
"Told ya."
Several minutes into Logan and Alec's culinary process, someone came to the door. A knock was attempted but was unsuccessful, because of the lack of standing door. "Um, okay. Hello?" the masculine voice sounded from the doorway.
"Sssh!" both cooks chastised. "She's trying to sleep," Logan informed the visitor.
"But I'm Zack, she'll wake up to see me, won't she?"
"Well, she just might wake up to viciously murder you for waking her . . ." Alec theorized.
Zack shrugged and entered anyway. He slung his massive traveling bag to the floor and flopped down onto a chair at the kitchen table. "Whatcha cookin'?"
"Max's spaghetti."
"The both of you? She suicidal?"
"Hmm, that's what OC asked," Logan said.
"Yeah, I'm beginning to suspect there might be some truth," Alec mused. He shrugged and went back to making the spaghetti sauce.
"Either of you guys got a toothbrush I could borrow?" Zack asked suddenly. "I forgot mine at the farm, haven't had it in three days."
Logan and Alec shook their heads. "Remind me not to kiss you," Logan joked.
Alec cringed. "Did anyone else just go to a scary visual place?"
Zack raised his hand. "Unpleasant on an infinitesimal number of levels."
Alec stepped back from the sauce. "Okay Logan. Dump it in."
Logan carefully and meticulously mixed the noodles and the sauce together. Once he was satisfied with the result, he picked up a fork and moved to taste the concoction. "Uh uh," Alec said, placing his hand on the fork and taking it from Logan. "Me first." He tasted it.
Logan gave him a questioning look. "Mmm," Alec said quickly. He clenched his jaw tightly shut as he swallowed and gestured for Logan to taste the spaghetti. Logan did, and immediately spit it across the room to splatter all over the fridge.
"Why didn't you tell me it was disgusting?" he demanded, spitting ferociously into the sink.
"That's what you get for sabotaging the food!" Alec hissed, and took off to the bathroom, making use of the nearest toothbrush.
The aftertaste of the horrid food caused Logan's face to twist into a tortured grimace. He looked around frantically for something to stop his face from melting, and spied a bottle of vodka in Zack's open bag. He snatched it up quickly and tore it open, downing it in one shot.
Zack looked amazed. "Wow, Logan. Didn't think you had it in ya." He pointed to the so-called 'spaghetti' stained fridge. "I suggest you guys clean that up before Max or OC see it."
Logan looked at the fridge and grimaced once more.
It wasn't long before he and Alec were bickering again, this time combining their efforts to scrub the fridge clean. Alec had a bottle of dish liquid and Logan a bottle of Windex, and each of them were kneeling on the floor armed with a toothbrush. Logan sighed with frustration as he once again encountered a spot that just didn't want to come clean. "Let's play Pin the Blame on the Idiot Who Got Us Into This Mess," he growled. "I blame you. Can you guess why?"
"Because it's your fault. Only an idiot would blame me," Alec countered. "Those noodles were like floppy sticks."
"Sure. Coated in a thick layer of sewer sludge."
"You've tasted sewer sludge?"
"Just shut up and scrub."
Alec muttered something that Logan couldn't hear.
Zack, lying on the couch, laughed. I'll enjoy making you eat that toothbrush later. This was better than TV!
Since this plotline is chock full of sudden entries, a foot kicked through the empty space that used to be the door. It's owner stumbled and fell awkwardly onto the downed door. He was on his feet in an instant, his gun recovered from the floor. "Where's 452?" White growled, aiming at the head of the hostage he'd brought along.
Max chose this moment of all moments to start mumbling loudly inside her room. White began to speak to her. "Found this bozo getting drunk and whistling at girls. Don't worry 452, he readily stated that 'Max was hotter' than all of them." He gestured for the poor, drunken Sketchy to enter the apartment.
Max didn't exit her room. Zack had risen from the couch, and was trying to get her attention by knocking on her bedroom . . . curtain . . . in a rather crazed manner. She still didn't come out.
White glanced over at Alec and Logan, who had yet to move from their position, kneeling in front of the fridge with toothbrushes. "What the hell are you two love birds doing?"
Zack shuddered. "Egh. . . . There's that scary visual place again."
Alec grimaced. "Only you would even allow the picture into your brain. That's disgusting on so many more levels than even the," he shuddered, "first one. I mean, the guy sabotages spaghetti!"
All eyes in the room, aside from Max and Alec's, shot Logan a disgusted and incredulous look. Alec donned his best 'I'm-innocent-and-he-should-be-murdered' look.
"It was his fault," Logan muttered lamely.
"Was not."
"But anyway," Sketchy said, moving on and all but ignoring the gun pointed at his head, "you guys did hug that one time. . . ."
Alec shot Sketchy a glare designed and well put to use melting asphalt like lazer beams. "Do the words 'freaky hypnotizing chick' mean nothing to you?"
"Ghetto superstar . . . that is what you are . . . coming from afar . . ." All eyes snapped to the owner of the incredibly off-key tune.Jaws dropped, flies buzzed around, and crickets chirped as everyone stared at the ghastly figure who was dancing around like a maniac, headphones over ears. Max, in bright pink sweat pants and an extremely over-sized t-shirt which hung halfway down her thighs.
After a moment's confusion and slight fear, White's head started bopping along to the beat he couldn't hear. "Hey, that's a good song," he commented. "Run away with me . . . to another place . . ." he sung along, and before long his hips were gyrating to the tune.
Before anyone realized what had happened, a hand blurred forward and struck him across the head. A hand that was attached to an arm, which was . . . the hand bone's connected to the. arm bone, the arm bone's connected to the. shoulder bone, the shoulder bone's connected to the. neck bone, the neck bone's connected to the. head bone, the head bone's connected to the. Sketchy bone, the Sketchy bone's obviously not connected to the. brain bone. . . .
"If you're going to sing while holding people at gunpoint, at least sing something with a hint of testosterone!" Sketchy chastised.
White pondered this for a moment. "Hmm," he pondered. He rubbed his chin, then scratched his scalp with his gun. "Like this?" He cleared his throat, and began to sing again. "They're Pinky and the Brain. They're Pinky and the Brain. One is a genius, the other's insane. They're laboratory mice, their genes have been spliced. They're Pinky, they're Pinky and the Brain, Brain . . ." White began to dance around once more, whilst singing about the mice whose aim was to take over the world. His gun was waving around through the air, though it appeared he was either not going to use it, or reverted back to an age when he didn't yet know how to do it. Like, 5 or something. . . . Despite the complete lack of threat, no one around him moved. Frankly, they were witnessing a rather frightening and mentally scarring sight.
Having had quite enough, Sketchy of all people, reached out and snatched the gun from him. He swung it through the air and pistol whipped White in the skull, joining the collective sigh of relief as the crazy freakish beast collapsed to the floor.
Still with her eyes closed and her headphones on, Max danced about until she was practically leaning against a very delighted Sketchy. She didn't realize this fact, unfortunate as it was for her. ". . . that is what you are . . . coming from afar . . ." she still sang. She was smiling like crazy, and opened her eyes. ". . . reaching for the— HOLY SHIT!" She jumped a mile and scrambled backwards frantically. She tripped on White's limp form and cracked her head painfully off of the wall. She collapsed onto the pile White had unknowingly started.
"Max!" Logan exclaimed. He tried to rush over to check on her, but Alec's hand on his arm stopped him.
"Two things, Saboteur. One, virus. Two, let her be knocked out. It gives us more time to scrub the fridge so she won't kill us too much."
Logan thought about it. They were good points. Very good points. He nodded, grasped his toothbrush, and resumed scrubbing for his life. Alec joined him.
"So . . ." Sketchy said. "Zack, hi! What are you doing here?"
Zack shrugged. "Dunno. By the ways of the canonized universe, I should either be on a farm feeding the horses or milking the cows or something, or I should be trying to kill Logan. I have no idea why I'm here. . . ."
There was a bright flash and lightning struck from the ceiling, coursing through Zack and causing him to momentary flail about like White when he had been dancing. Then the lighting disappeared, and Zack resumed his normal posture, aside from a couple of embarrassing muscle spasms in his arms and a lovely tic in his right eye muscles. Sketchy didn't enjoy the way Zack continually winked at him. "I know!" Zack proclaimed. "I mysteriously got my memory back and realized by miracle that Max is my sister, I don't love her that way, and I don't want to kill Logan. So I came back to . . . uh . . . make peace."
"That's it?" Sketchy asked skeptically.
"Yup. That's it."
"Okay then," Sketchy responded. "What should we do with him?" he pointed at White, on the floor.
Zack thought about it for a moment. He looked at White, then around the apartment, then winked at Sketchy. He looked back at White, then around the apartment, then winked at Sketchy. He looked at White again, then back to the apartment, then winked at Sketchy. Having been CO of his unit for all his life, Zack knew how to make the tough decisions. He shoved Max's limp form off of White, and dragged him across the room by his tie. Then he opened the window, and unceremoniously tossed White out.
There was a satisfying thud as White hit the ground. "But won't he just come back up and try to kill Max?" Sketchy wondered. "He knows where she lives now."
Zack thought about that for another moment. A lightbulb lit up above his head, and he winked at Sketchy again.
"Could you stop doing that?"
"It's the tic, I just got hit by lightning, remember?"
"And now you've got all the extra energy, hence your ability to light a lightbulb?"
"Exactly." Moving on, and winking again, Zack moved towards Max and grabbed up her CD walkman. He opened it, took out the CD, then tossed it frisbee style out the window. "There," Zack said. "With any luck, he'll forget what went down today, then listen to the CD, remember, and we won't need to kill him; he'll take care of it for us."
Sketchy nodded his agreement. It was very likely. A good plan.
Original Cindy arrived in the doorway once more. "Stupid son of a-"
"OC? What happened to your hot date?" Sketchy asked.
"Girl cancelled! Kept muttering something about 'pairings' and 'shipper-neutral'. . . . OC don't know what the hell she was on about. . . ." She noticed Max on the floor, and rushed over to her. "Is this how you take care of mah boo! Max? Max, you aiight?"
Max mumbled, "They hurt me. . . . Burn them."
"You mean verbally or physically?" Original Cindy asked frantically, but Max had already drifted back to unconsciousness. Original Cindy turned a frosty glare on Alec and Logan. It had to be their fault, they were the idiots who were supposed to be taking care of her. Frosty glare . . . frosty . . . frosty . . . frosty . . . . . . warming up. "Ah well. OC can't obey orders if she don't know what they are."
"I'm hungry," Sketchy piped up suddenly.
"He's sounding a little less rational and normal," Logan observed.
"Yeah, Sketchy always turns logical when he's drunk. Didn't you notice? And then he reverts back to idiot form," Alec informed him. "Now scrub, bitch."
Logan scrubbed meekly.
"I'm still hungry!" Sketchy repeated.
"Well, don't ask Logan to cook," Alec warned him.
"And if Alec tries, stab him with a toothbrush," Logan pitched in.
"Both o' y'all! Get back to your scrubbin'!" Original Cindy ordered. "Sketchy. Go get yourself some pizza wit' yo' barely existent cash. "And bring some back here; once these two fools get that fridge clean, the kitchen is closed."
Sketchy saluted and left.
"Zack. Grab your toothbrush and make yourself useful."
"But I left it at the farm, and there are none left!"
Original Cindy's brow furrowed in confusion. She grabbed Alec by the wrist, studying the toothbrush in his hand. There was a squiggle of gold nail polish along it. Her eyes widened with shock and anger. "What the HELL ARE YOU DOING TO MAH TOOTHBRUSH!"
End. Finally.