DISCLAIMER: Please see all earlier chapters.

HARD TO BELIEVE that this has been on-going for over a year, now, as friends (and hurricanes) came and went. A few of you have stayed through it all, and I truly appreciate it; several more have picked up the story along the way and I'm grateful you've joined us. Only a few more chapters to go...

AND DON'T FORGET to visit "Blah Blah Woof Woof," the Max-Logan forum here on FFN. It's a good place to communicate with several of the FFN authors and even suggest input for future stories! From the "Forums" link on most FFN pages, go to TV Shows/Dark Angel/Blah Blah Woof Woof.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON: February 11, 2020; 12:51 p.m.
SECTOR 9; Fogle Towers. Lobby.

"...Max"

She'd heard him come into the lobby, of course. Even if she hadn't recognized the hushed tread, she wouldn't have been surprised that, given his behavior of a couple hours before, Bling still would be nearby – he might seem unflappable and calm to everyone else, but over the months, Max saw his unwavering dedication and commitment to Logan, and knew that there was no one on the planet, probably herself included, who would know better than Bling the torment Logan put himself through when it came to matters of his physical changes and his own assessment of his worth, these days. It figured that Bling's throwing the two of them together, as he had, might have worried even the stalwart therapist. She straightened and turned, looking him in the eye, waiting, giving nothing away. He had gone further out on a limb this time than she'd ever seen him go, and Max reflected that it was just another risk he was willing to take for Logan's sake, a different sort than usual, maybe, but a risk, all the same. Trust Bling to give so much... trust Logan to inspire such loyalty...

"Max; wait..." Bling came near, grimacing a bit from the quick dive out of his car at the sight of her, and his jog inside to catch her before she left. He searched her face for a sign of how things had gone. No upset or clear anger, he noted carefully, but not much more. "Is he okay?"

She nodded, noncommital. "He's okay."

"Good," He felt a bit of relief, but then thought to add quickly, "are you?'

Max wavered only a moment before she relented, understanding the man's sense of concern for every aspect of Logan Cale's being, and appreciating not only his allegiance, but reassured at the reminder that Bling would move heaven and earth to keep Logan safe and healthy, in all aspects of his life. She smirked, "I am, too – thanks for asking."

Her humored sarcasm let Bling believe, for the moment, that the show-down had not gone too badly. "Are either of you still talking to me?" he tried.

She smiled ruefully and shook her head, pushing past the therapist as she clapped him softly on his good shoulder and reached over to grab the handles of her bicycle. "I'm always good, Bling; you know that. Go upstairs and see Logan. He's the one we both have to worry about."

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON: February 11, 2020; 12:54 p.m.
SECTOR 9; Fogle Towers. Inside.

Max had barely made it to the lobby doors before Bling was on the elevator, swiping his pass key to the penthouse, not entirely sure what he'd find. He felt certain that Max wouldn't leave Logan if he were upset or still rattled, but she hadn't exactly assured him that Logan was happy with things – or even that matters were discussed. Certainly there hadn't been time for them to discuss anything – let alone do anything – about their feelings for each other...

Of course, if Max had changed her mind from what she said the night before ... if he'd read them wrong and misjudged how each of them felt ... if Logan had clammed up and said nothing at all ... or, worse, if he'd spilled his soul and she had just turned him down flat and had bounced on back to work...

With each floor, Bling became increasingly apprehensive. As long as I didn't make things worse, at least... he hoped. If I can find a way to make right anything I set in motion that went wrong, for them...

Bling crossed the entrance from elevator to front door in one large step; his hand flew over the security pad, keyed the lock and reset the system in a blur. Drawing a deep, steadying breath to prepare for whatever might be ahead, Bling walked purposefully down the silent hall past empty training room ... empty computer room ... empty kitchen ... He found Logan where he least wanted to find him, back to the hall, staring out the window, a sure sign that things were not rosy. He paused, for once at a loss to know what to say, and decided that, in the circumstances, saying nothing was the best approach. He continued on into the room to sit perched on the arm of the couch, looking at the man he had promised to protect and support ... to help heal. His charge looked a little ragged, now. He waited...

Long moments of silence passed; Logan seemed to be unaffected by his presence. Then, finally, Logan drew a deep breath ... and spoke. "Bling ... did anyone ever tell me that I'd been shot?"

The question hit the therapist completely out of the blue, and left him trying to read from it what was at work in Cale's mind – depression? Denial? Anger? Before he could decide, however, Logan spoke again.

"...because ... for a long time, I don't think I knew. I mean ... I think I suspected it, from the beginning, but had no memory of it. A few days later, Sam said something about bullets removed versus bullet fragments left in, so he came close. And it wasn't like it made any difference, how I ended up the way I was..." His voice was detached, neutral... quiet. "But ... there was actually a very long time I can't say that I really knew..."

Bling was at a complete loss now. Still, Logan seemed ready to talk, a fact that made him cautiously hopeful, a hope to which he clung as he sat by, merely listening...

"Kind of like all this ... I mean, Sam certainly tried to lay it all out, early, the permanence of it all." Logan continued, his brow drawn, his manner, introspective. "But I hadn't heard it yet, Bling ... I haven't let myself hear it. Deep down, I've been so sure, if I just keep working, if I ignore it, it will go away, and one of these days I'll wake up and it will have gotten better, and everything healed up, just fine. You've been working to keep things toned and functional, too, just in case, so maybe you think so, too." Logan continued to stare out the window, eyes focused on scenes beyond the therapist's imagination, and even smirked, humorlessly, "after all, it happened once, with the transfusions ... who's to say there isn't another miracle waiting around the corner? " He allowed a soft snort, again, still no humor there, only self-deprecation. "I've never even used the word 'paralysis' and it's been, what, a year?" Logan's face was haunted, distant. "Think I'm ever gonna wake up?"

Uncertain where Logan was headed, Bling tried a soft entrance. "I'd thought maybe once you started playing ball with the other guys, spent time with some people who had similar injuries..."

"Nah." Logan shook his head immediately, still staring at unknown images out the window. "Don't forget there are other guys on the team, and visitors like Tony – they get out of their chairs when the game's over. Just waiting my turn." He sighed, and finally looked up at the concerned expression on his therapist's face. "I've been afraid to admit it all, Bling, afraid to acknowledge the permanence or the reality of this being my life..." He sighed, dropping his eyes to his lap, first, before raising them to again stare out the window. "I wasn't sure I could live with the implications. Even when I'd reference it, made it sound like I was facing things... it was always in euphemism: 'the chair...' 'the injury...' 'the shooting...' Never Logan Cale, paraplegic... Logan Cale, T-8 complete." He shook his head and snorted, another mirthless sound of disgust. "Hell, you weren't suspicious when I wouldn't even put a 'disabled' parking pass in my car?"

Bling couldn't take any more suspense. "Logan ... what's all this about? Something that happened here, with Max?"

Logan seemed to come back to earth slightly; at the question, he looked back to Bling, wavered a moment, and looked away again, at the floor in front of him. Long moments ticked by as he seemed to weigh the question, until he finally laughed softly, again – but this time, less bitterly, more in a surprised irony. "Yeah." He gazed back out the window, but this time his expression had softened, and his thoughts – of Max, Bling was sure – allowed his brow to clear and his taut jaw to relax. "I guess ... even if I haven't been able to accept my reality – Max just told me she has. She made it clear that she knows what works and what doesn't, what adjustments are necessary and what's different now." He shook his head, the ease of her acceptance still moving him. "She recited the textbook implications ... and made me tell her how textbook applied – or didn't apply – to me."

Bling frowned, still not sure what Max's knowledge meant for them as a couple – or what her apparent bluntness did for Logan. "She wasn't here all that long," he tried. Logan's only response to that was to nod, and remain silent, lost in his own thoughts. Bling prodded, "If she could 'accept your reality,' as you put it – that's what you wanted, wasn't it, for her to understand the changes? That's why you wanted me to talk to her..." His words were met by another nod, and another silence. No harm done yet, Bling hoped... so went on, "did she leave the door open, for the two of you to move on to a relationship?"

At the question, Logan looked up to Bling once again, and started to register the concern he saw there, realizing through his thoughts of Max why Bling would be so worried about the outcome of his gamble, throwing them together as he had. This time he responded, still looking the man in the eye. "All she had to say about any of it – the discussion of my torn up nervous system, the facts of life associated with a severed spinal cord, all the trimmings – was essentially, 'Okay, what's done is done; it's been discussed, decks cleared. Now let's get on with the fact that we're man and woman, and ignore all the rest.'" Finally, the ghost of a smile crossing the handsome face, Logan shrugged, "If she can do it ... with her stubbornness, insisting that it's nothing major to get in the way of starting a relationship ... maybe I can, too."

Bling felt relief wash over him, leaving him feeling strangely depleted. Must be the shoulder, the surgery, he told himself, just adding to all this. "I'm glad to know Max is as comfortable with things as she'd seemed." Bling managed an even tone. "She never seemed to be cowed or awkward with any of it."

"No, I guess not," Logan murmured. "I suppose I missed that while I was busy being awkward, myself."

But more remained between them, and Bling knew that yet again, in just a very few days, he'd skirted the limits of his friendship with Logan for a second time, and knew he had to offer an apology that might not be accepted... "Logan... look..." His tone interrupted the other man's musings. "What I did earlier today – damn, my actions over these past few days – haven't been the best, have they? I just ... I saw an opening to push the two of you closer, and hoped that you were so close already that maybe you could get past the last hurdles and admit the feelings you have for each other. I think I let my 'cleverness' get in the way of my usually better sense. I hope nothing was difficult or awkward because of it."

Logan's eyebrow went up and suddenly, he fixed Bling with a look of disbelief that was so completely Logan – so completely humored, pretending-to-be-cranky Logan – that Bling knew it couldn't have been too bad, after all. "You hope that 'nothing was difficult or awkward because of it'...?" he repeated, his reaction only partially in jest. "Well, gee, Bling, I don't know why you'd think that it might have been the case..." Sarcasm dripped from the air amid the humor.

"Poor choice of words. Must be this very recent surgery and wound..." Bling tried a half-hearted ploy for pity, but then added, in clear seriousness, "but the sentiment's the same. I know it's been awkward for you both, to act on your feelings ... the last thing I was going for was to set things further back."

Logan looked long at the man who had pulled him through the hardest moments of his life, and who had helped him both professionally and emotionally more than even Max had, if that were possible. He pursed his lips, not wanting to make this any easier for the therapist, just as a bit of pay-back for the dramatic methods he decided to use to bring him together with Max. After several moments, unblinking, Logan said, "when I realized what you were up to – at that moment, I thought, finally, finally, Bling is wrong about something."

Bling looked back at the neutral features, hoping he knew his answer from the way things had been said, but not quite ready to trust that such abrupt interference could be so readily forgiven. Drawing a long, calming breath, he tipped his chin up to ask, "Was I?"

Logan wavered, not dropping the gaze, not giving anything away until he finally spoke, with a soft laugh of hopeless surrender. "No." As he did, he telegraphed more of the emotions parading through his thoughts: his continuing amazement with Max, his self-conscious self-awareness and his newly-emerging vow to get past his long-held denial ... and the stubborn allegiance and concern he saw that this man – his friend – held for him, to risk his wrath for his own good.

Logan actually saw Bling relax as he spoke. ""Good," he admitted, "because at that moment ... I thought, too, maybe ... 'finally' ... I was wrong."

At that, Logan's face actually lit up in delighted surprise. "...but... you were wrong?" The lame old joke was offered as an olive branch, with a wide, suddenly cocky smile on the scruffy features.

Bling laughed at that, shaking his head. "I suppose I was. And, I suppose, if I had to be wrong, I'm glad it was about that." He considered his charge for another moment, and asked, "but all that you said, when I came in, about not being told you were shot – not admitting to the permanence of it all. What was all that? I'm not so sure that sounded as if you're as happy now with the way things are as you want me to believe."

Logan looked back out the window, but this time, just to gather his thoughts, to consider all it had meant. "When you came in ... I'd been thinking it over, the denial and all, and decided that I've been more afraid of falling apart, emotionally, than anything ... after all, I've been at this a year, I've probably seen the majority of the roadblocks it will present, haven't I? And this has been some week for coming face to face with reality: first, Tony shows up, and takes it all pretty well in stride... and then Max..." his voice trailed, as he remembered. "Pretty powerful stuff" he admitted, looking back to Bling.

The therapist nodded, moved at the words and what they meant for Logan, that step toward acceptance he'd been fighting so long. But there was one, last hurdle. "So you're okay – really, okay – not only with Max, this morning, and where things are for you with her, and with yourself – but with what I did?"

Logan's smile softened into a long-suffering, amused look. "I shouldn't be, should I?" he lectured, pausing dramatically before he relented. "I'm fine, Bling. How can I not appreciate your intentions, at least?" He cast a disapproving look toward the man's immobile arm and said, "But don't even dream of my covering you with Sandra any more. In fact, if you don't head back home in about two minutes, I'm likely just to call her myself and out you."

"I thought you just said were okay with me." But the words were spoken with a quietly amused, appreciative smile. Bling knew he'd asked a lot of his friend in the past days, and suspected Logan felt more bruising and pummeling from his emotions over the week than he had the physical confrontation out at the Quay.

"'Okay,' maybe. But messing with Sandra is above and beyond."

Bling took a long look at his employer, his friend, and grudgingly acknowledged to himself that Cale still looked better than he had – well, since he'd been shot, even with his "shock treatment" with Max. With a sigh, Bling went for broke in the honesty department. "I don't know how comfortable I am, leaving you here to brood some more, what with your deciding to come face to face with reality this morning." He shrugged. "Logan, you've been through a lot..."

Logan's eyebrows flickered up and he nodded, looking as sage as his trainer. "I have been," he agreed. "But all this, today, was a lot easier to take than some of the old stuff... and I'm still here, after all of that," he shrugged. At the look of concern that still clouded Bling's eyes, Logan offered a smile as open and truthful as any Bling had seen. "C'mon, Bling, think about it," he urged. "Not an hour ago Max was here, telling me to get over myself and realize that she's a woman, and I'm a man... and we're ready to see if there's a relationship to be had." The amazement on his face reflected the surprise he still felt, now that he'd spoken about it out loud. "If either of us think I've been through a lot up 'til now – I suspect there's even a lot more ahead..."

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON: February 11, 2020; 6:58 p.m.
SECTOR 9; Fogle Towers. Penthouse.

As Logan reached over to light the candles on the table, their rising glow sparkling over the three place settings there, he smiled to hear the door open and his security system reset with smooth efficiency. Leaning back, he turned to see the easy amble of Max as she came toward him, her own mouth curving up in a warm smile for him. "Smells awfully good in here. Why didn't you get all this Italian cooking going a long time ago?"

He shrugged, knowing his own wide smile was one that he must have worn back in junior high school, when he felt as new and as shy and as hopeful as he did now, with Max in front of him. She was a rare beauty tonight; she'd gone home to change into slim black pants and a soft, ivory sweater that warmed her glowing face, touched by the sure hand of Original Cindy's subtle make-up and sparkling gold earrings. Earrings, he marveled. "Just didn't think of it, I guess," he managed.

"You'll have to start making up for lost time." She teased, dropping her eyelids a little, knowing exactly the effect it would have on Logan. It did, but his thoughts were even more taken with the fact that she would flirt with him like this than how absolutely stunning she looked while doing it...

"I think that can be arranged," he grinned. He decided, then and there, that he was going to like this new, "get on with it" policy Max suggested...

"Tony's not back yet," she observed. So he was right, Logan reflected, she'd listened first to see if he was alone before she came in. He had a hunch that if she'd heard Tony, she might not have let herself in so readily...

"He called from the car a few minutes ago – he'll be here any time now."

She nodded. "Anything I can do?"

"No, it's pretty well all under control," he smiled again. "You can start with some wine, if you like."

"I will if you will." His reply was the dimpled, smirky smile he sometimes showed her and as he turned to go back into the kitchen, she had to kick herself to move to follow him. "You know, I'm serious, Logan. Just dinner and I'm outa here, so you two can have some time to talk before Tony goes back. You don't know for sure he won't get called back downtown tomorrow."

He continued on into the kitchen and managed to nod, appearing serious, as he lifted the wine he'd left in a carafe on the counter to breathe, and poured a glass to offer her. "Just dinner." He repeated. "That's too bad. With some substitutions and adjusting, I think I managed a credible tiramisu."

Her eyes grew in anticipation; she smiled slowly. "I want to know what that is," she tried.

"Yes, you do." He poured himself a glass of wine and chuckled, "it's a dessert, Max."

"Tiramisu," she repeated, rolling the name on her tongue as if it was the cake itself. Logan wasn't sure he could watch much more without wanting to 'get on with' everything at that very moment. "Well, if you insist..."

"I do," he laughed. "And I'm sure Tony will, too."

"Then that means two servings," she pronounced, happily. "Dinner, dessert..."

"And coffee with the dessert..."

"And coffee..." she quieted a little, and urged. "Even dessert isn't as important as your time with your cousin, Logan. I can have tiramisu another time..."

"And I can have both," he promised her. "You, with dinner and dessert; Tony, with a talk afterward. Plenty of time for it all, Max."

Max looked at the sparkling green eyes which held her with such warmth and care, she felt her breath catch for a moment, and she smiled with the thought that they'd finally knocked down the walls between them, holding them back for so long. "As long as you do," she whispered, "because I suspect I'll be around for dessert pretty regularly, whenever you say..."

...to be continued...