sooo sorry this is so late! i had no free time to write this week thanks to my father. grr...

thanks to:

HarbringerLady and

Shiitake Mushrooms In A Jar

for adding my story to alerts!

DISCLAIMER: disclaimed. nuff said.

The next few weeks went by normally. No one mentioned the three words Alex had said so casually, for the first time, to Shelley in the infirmary and he was glad. He didn't want to let the soldiers see him blush.

But on their third week there, Alex and Shelley were called into the sergeant's office.

"Whatever it was, I didn't do it." Shelley had said as soon as she walked into the office.

She saw who was inside and froze, grin dying on her lips.

Alex saw Shelley freeze and wondered what was happening. He looked over her shoulder.

"What do you want?" he said coldly as he stared at Blunt and his deputy, Mrs. Jones.

"The new era of Scorpia has put a price on your heads. As well as most of the other criminal organizations that you have ever worked against. That includes the Chinese Triads and the Italian Mafia as well as individual criminals. Your safety is almost nonexistent and everywhere you go is now on red alert for attacks."

"So what are you gonna do about it? If you're gonna do anything that is."

Mrs. Jones looked insulted.

She could have fooled me, if I didn't already know that MI6 didn't give two shits about me.

"Of course we are! You're our best agents! We can't have you in danger! We have agents stationed-"

Before she could finish, a loud explosion was heard and the walls and ceilings collapsed around them. Alex tackled Shelley and kept his body on top of her to keep her safe from flying debris as soon as he heard the explosion. He looked up as the dust cleared and noticed that no one was hurt, though everyone was unconscious besides him and Shelley. As he stood up, he realized that they were surrounded.

Shit.

The units heard a loud explosion rock through the camp. They ran outside and noticed a column of smoke rising up from the office building. K-unit started to run towards where they knew Alex and Shelley were. But the voice of a unit leader stopped them.

"K-unit if we go in now, we could very well be walking into a trap. We need to plan this out."

Wolf heard the voice of reason and told his men to back off. They went back down and plotted with the other units.

"We'll case the area surrounding where the office building was. We have to find out four things: our enemy's numbers, the number of hostages they've taken, and the casualties of both sides."

"Ready men? Let's move!"

"Hello Alex. My name is Jonathon Ambrose. I am the new director of the New Era," said a man dressed in a blinding white metallic body suit.

"Nice to meet you Johnny." Alex said, keeping up the charade of civility. Abruptly his voice turned to ice.

"Now it would be even nicer to see you leave. But you're not going until you get what you want now are you. So why don't you tell me what that is so that we can get to the part where I beat the shit out of you and your…err…minions," he said.

Jonathon made an invisible gesture and suddenly Alex felt to buff hand grab his biceps. He felt two more men go towards Shelley, pick her up from where she was watching and drag her over to Alex.

"Manners, Alex. And I'm not one of those many idiots you killed. I'm not gonna tell you all my plans just so that you can destroy them. No, I'm just gonna take what I need and go." So saying, he once again made an invisible gesture and the men started to drag Shelley towards the middle of the compound, where Alex noticed, there was a helicopter waiting.

"Make a move and I shoot her," he said to Alex.

"Make a move and I shoot him," he continued, saying almost the exact same thing to Shelley.

Alex stood and watched as the thugs let go of him. They turned their backs and almost immediately, Alex knocked them out without a sound.

He watched the remaining 8 men make a single file line behind Jonathon. He met Shelley's eyes and made a plan. He mimed himself knocking out the only guy that was behind Shelley and her two guards and her knocking out the guards. Then he put his hands to his lips, signaling that they should be as quiet as possible.

Shelley nodded at Alex, disguising the move as a sneeze.

Damn these men have a hard grip! I'm starting to lose feeling in my arms! Shelley thought.

Suddenly she felt, rather than saw Alex spring into action. Immediately, she twisted out of the thugs' grip and knocked one of them out, while Alex, having already knocked out his first man, helped knock out the other thug.

Alex pulled out his gun and Shelley did the same. Both of them used the weapons to knock out all the men. Just as he was about to board the chopper, Jonathon turned around.

Shocked, he looked at his fallen men. Suddenly, a gun hit him on the temple and he was knocked unconscious.

"Is it just me or do these 'villians' get more and more pathetic every time we see them?" Alex asked.

Alex and Shelley looked at the fallen body of the Scorpia director.

"Mommy?" they heard Jonathon say before Alex knocked him unconscious again.

"Nope it's definitely not just you, Alex." Shelley said, staring at Jonathon, with disbelief.

Shelley looked up and noticed that there were soldiers running toward them up the hill.

"Hey, the others are coming. We should probably start looking over the unconscious adults in there."

"Yeah," Alex said, looking up. "That would probably be a good idea." He sighed and walked over to the rubble and the unconscious bodies. He leaned down and checked their vitals.

The units arrived at the scene to see Alex and Shelley had already apprehended all the attackers. They decided to find what information they could off of the bodies and the helicopter. Snake saw Alex tending to the sergeant and the MI6 visitors and ran up to help, hoping that none of them, including Alex were gravely injured.

Shelley watched Alex walk over to the unconscious people. She looked up and saw Wolf walking towards her.

"What happened?"
She quickly explained the situation and started to help the units look for information, knowing that sometimes, information is the best weapon against your enemies.

Snake ran up to Alex, face pale.

"Are they dead?"

"No just unconscious. All of them took some heavy blows to the head."

"Shit. Okay we're flying them all to St. Dominic's in London. I think you should go with them just in case, Alex."

"Okay Snake. But I have one favor to ask you."

"Yeah?"

"Don't tell Shelley until after I leave. And try to stop her from following me. I know her; she won't stay here even if it's safer. And Scorpia will be after us, especially since we just captured they're director again. I need K-Unit to keep her safe."

"Promise, Cub. Although the keeping her from following you part of that will be reallllly hard." Wolf said walking up, having obviously heard the conversation.

"And another thing Cub. We found some papers in the helicopter. Turns out that you didn't capture the director. This guy is the director's son."

"Great. Now we have an angry father who just happens to be the director of a terrorist organization after us." Alex said in a fake cheerful voice.

"This will be so much fun."

Alex was in a helicopter next to the three unconscious bodies. They were three thousand feet off the ground. Suddenly he heard a loud thunk from outside the helicopter. It sounded like something hitting the underbelly. He walked over to the entrance and looked down. Suddenly, a fist came at him at lightning speed and hit him in the nose. Alex fell to the ground, dazed. The person flipped off of the helicopter's landing bars and into the body.

"Seriously Alex? Again?" Shelley asked.

"How did you even get here?" Alex asked looking up at her disoriented.

"That is not important right now. I told you Alex. We're partners. We keep EACH OTHER safe. You are NOT going to do all the work on your own. I'm a spy too! You're not my Daddy so stop treating me like a little girl! I can keep myself safe and I don't need you to assign me bloody BODYGUARDS!" Shelley said angrily voice getting louder with each word.

"FOR GODS SAKE ALEX STOP MAKING THESE DECISIONS FOR ME! IF I WANT TO GO TO ST. DOMINIC'S WITH YOU THEN I WILL! SURE AT CAMP IM SAFE BUT I NEED YOU SAFE WITH ME! YOU CANT JUST RUN OFF LIKE THAT-"

"I was hardly running off. And don't shout so much, you are louder than I was in that video we made for the units' training," Alex muttered interrupting.

Shelley continued as if he hadn't spoken. The only indication that she had heard him speak was the lowering of her voice to normal decibels again.

"-and I can't have anything happen to you any more than you can have them happen to me."

Alex looked at her guiltily.

"Shelley, I'm sorry. But this was my fail safe plan for keeping you safe. I should've known you would have found a way to follow me though. K-unit is a group of imbeciles." He said muttering that last sentence to himself.

"They are not imbeciles Alex. Don't be rude."

"Sorry, sorry! But seriously, how the hell did you get onto a helicopter that is currently three thousand feet in the air!"

"Simple. Stole Blunt's ride. It's obviously been modified by Smithers as it was remarkably fast. I pushed the speedometer to over 200! Anyway, you were flying over the highway and I still have a couple gadgets with me from previous missions. I used the belt grappling hook with a four thousand feet reach and shot the underside of the helicopter. Then I waited a couple seconds for you to come check put the noise, as I knew you would and clocked your nose the way you deserved."

"Which bloody hurt Shell. Seriously I think you sprained my nose."

"You deserved it for acting like an 'imbecile'," she replied, crossing her arms.

Alex could hear the air quotes as she said it. He walked over to her small, glaring, tense body and wrapped his arm around her. He felt the stiffness leave her body.

"I love you. And I'm sorry for acting like an 'imbecile'," he whispered in her ear. She shivered at his words but didn't say anything.

Shelley loved the way Alex's strong lean arms wrapped around her. They circled her waist so softly. And the way he whispered those words made tingles go down her spine, causing her to shiver involuntarily. Her head fit perfectly on his chest. He was a head taller than her.

Suddenly, Shelley felt him leave. She looked up just in time to see a flitting glimpse of sadness and pain on his face before it was replaced by a guarded smile that didn't convince her one bit. She sat down in the seat next to him.

"What happened Alex?"

"Nothing. Just thinking," he couldn't keep from adding. It wasn't nothing and he couldn't completely lie to her. It felt wrong.

"It's not nothing Alex. I know when something is really bothering you but I can't help you if you don't tell me what it is."

Suddenly Alex couldn't take it.

He whispered. "You never say it back. I feel like you do sometimes but then I look at you. Why would someone like you feel like that about me? I'm just a whole lot of trouble and I annoy the hell out of you. You…you're…you're just…perfect. You can't feel like that about an idiot like me." He said the whole thing in a whispered voice looking anywhere but in her eyes. That is until he said that last sentence. And he was shocked to see that she had a look on her face he had never seen before. It was a look mixed with shock, incredulousness, anger and pain. But suddenly amusement took over.

"Aleeeeeex…" she stretched the second syllable of his name. "Are you feeling insecure?" she asked him teasingly. She was trying to get a rise out of him, but it didn't work. Alex just looked at her.

"Alex you really are a dolt! You have got to be kidding me! You really don't know that I love you?" Shelley said incredulously.

Alex looked down and blushed. He looked like such a cute little boy that Shelley couldn't resist. She got up, plopped down in Alex's lap, where his arms automatically wrapped around her waist, and hugged him around the shoulders, giving him a kiss on his head. She put her head on his shoulder and turned her head inwards. She kissed him on the neck and she felt him shiver just like she had.

"I love you too." She said chuckling.

He put his head on hers and she felt him smile.

"That sounds really nice." He said.

"Fine, I'll say it again: I love you."

He picked his head up, turned her head so it was facing him and kissed her hard on the lips. Then his lips became gentler and the kiss, tender. She sighed against his lips. Alex leaned back, pulling her with him. She yawned and Alex kissed her forehead.

"You're tired, love. Go to sleep."

"You are gonna have numb legs if I fall asleep on your lap. Let me just-"she said, starting to get up.

Alex tightened his grip on her.

"No. you stay here."

"But-"he covered her mouth with his hand.

"Stay here. Sleep." He commanded. She licked his hand.

"Sheeell! That's so immature. Just go to sleep already! Please?'

She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Fine." She said leaning against him. "But if your legs go numb, don't wake me up or I'll punch you in the face again."

"Deal," he said.

"Love you Alex" she whispered voice slurred with sleep.

"Love you too Shell." He answered. But she had already fallen asleep.

sooo? how was it? please review i want to know!

~C.J.