A/N: Enjoy :)

The alarm clock blared annoyingly loud in the small bedroom, startling Alex out of yet another bad dream. They weren't bad enough to be called nightmares, or coherent enough for that matter, just flashes of people and places he had been on various missions. Though he was still grateful to escape them for another day.

Yawning loudly, Alex sat up and scratched his tousled blonde hair idly before looking around the room and had a momentary stab of panic as he tried to figure out where the hell he was. As the memories came back, he sighed and dragged himself out of the bed, stumbling blearily out of the room and narrowly missing the top of the stairway.

'Stupid place to put it,' he grumbled to himself, 'Anyone could fall and break their neck.'

Pottering around the tiny kitchen, he made himself and cup of tea and had just put it to his lips, heedless of the thick steam ensuing from it, when a loud "SHIT!" echoed through the apartment.

'Wolf's up,' Alex observed drily as the loud sound of a body falling out of bed reached his ears, accompanied moments later by the door wrenching open with a bang and heavy footsteps making their way towards the kitchen.

Seconds later the soldier marched into the room, a thunderous scowl set on his face. As he caught sight of Alex, however, he did a double take and the glare quickly morphed into shock, then recognition, then something vaguely resembling embarrassment. It was all rather amusing, really.

"Morning," the teenager said, trying to break the elder man out of his stupor as he hovered in the doorway of his own kitchen uncertainly, as if weary of entering.

It seemed to work as the man moved further into the room, reaching for the refrigerator and withdrawing a bottle of full-fat milk. "Morning," he muttered.

Alex moved out of the way as Wolf set about making himself some coffee; he knew all too well from experience that Wolf was not a morning person. His new guardian surprised him, however, by breaking the silence, "Good sleep?"

A series of memories that he would rather forget shot through his mind. Stifling them, he said, "Uh – yeah, fine. Yours?"

Wolf shrugged, "All right."

Alex nodded and finished his tea. As he did so, he felt a strange sensation creeping over him, like an instinct. Glancing up surreptitiously, he was surprised to see Wolf's eyes locked on him, dressed in his overlarge blue sleeping shirt and his grey boxers. He simply stood and stared, his eyes glossed over, as if a hundred miles away and yet still aware of the present. After a few moments of the intense, but unfocused gaze on his, Alex began to feel extremely uncomfortable. Fidgeting slightly, he said the first thing that came to mind, not registering how suicidal it may have been, "What was the racket in your room a few moments ago?"

Wolf snapped out of his daze and the dark look came back onto his face. After glowering at the boy for a little while, he saw fit to answer, "Overslept."

A look of abject horror came over his face as he spun on his heel to look at the wall clock above the cooker. "Ah, crap!"

Dumping his mug into the sink so hard Alex was amazed it didn't shatter, the soldier shot sprinted out of the room and all but dived back into his bedroom. Shaking his head in bewilderment at the man's antics, Alex placed his own mug into the sink, far more gently than Wolf had his and strolled at a sedate pace to his bedroom where he donned his school uniform and picked up his bag before hopping into the bathroom for the customary morning ritual of hygiene. As he emerged, he heard several severe curse words and lots of noisy thuds coming from the room. Raising an eyebrow silently at the wooden door, he headed for the stairs.

As he reached the first step, the door to Wolf's room flung open to slam on the wall besides it and the man in question charged out. Logic, if he had time to think about it, would've told Alex that he was perfectly safe. Unfortunately, Alex's instincts, finely honed over several extremely dangerous missions, did not heed logic and told him to prepare himself for danger. He spun around to confront his "attacker" at a blinding speed, but he was off-balance as one foot was still in the hallway and the other had already descended on the first stair.

Gravity took over and he began to fall down backwards, a hand scrabbling at the banister in a futile attempt to regain his footing. At the last second, Wolf, seeing what was about t happen, reached out and quickly wrapped his muscular arm around the smaller males waist and lifting him clean off the stairs and back into the hallway, squashed against his torso.

Wolf cursed himself inside his head, realising his startled his ward into nearly breaking his neck or worse. He felt Alex's chest moving against his side and he realised the boy was trying to regain the breath that had whooshed out of him when he slipped. Looking down at the boy he was still cradling, he was surprised to see his deep brown eyes staring up at him in something like wonder. For a very long moment they both stood there, Wolf's arm held protectively around the teenager, Alex's hand fisted in the white dress shirt the soldier had put on in his room.

Alex broke the silence, "Thanks," he breathed shakily.

Adverting his eyes as he felt his cheeks begin to grow hot, the man released his hold on his ward, muttering, "Your welcome. Be more careful in future, all right?"

"Yeah. Okay." His footsteps descending down the stairs and the front door opened and closed before the elder man dared look up.

Great. This was the second morning they spent together at Wolf's flat and in the space of an hour he'd managed to gawp at him indecently, have an extremely inappropriate daydream and almost caused him to kill himself on the stairs. What a wonderful start.

XXXXX

"Bye, Al!" James called as he rode away on his bicycle, Alex briefly pausing in his walking to turn and wave to his friend. He used to walk home with Tom when he lived in his Uncle's old house with Jack, but now he was sharing a flat with Wolf, he was closer to James place, so travelled with him. He liked the company.

As he drew closer to the building, his mind wandered back to the beginning of the day when he'd made a fool of himself with the stairs. He managed to stop himself from blushing at the memory, but he still felt the embarrassment clearly. Honestly, almost falling twice with an hour? How clumsy could he be!

And then there was the Moment after. It fully deserved the capital letter in his mind, when he was pressed against Wolf in an acutely intimate fashion. Not that he wasn't grateful to Wolf for helping him, but did the man have to hold him for so long? Though, he had to admit as he thought it over, he hadn't been in any real hurry to get away. He frowned as he stared at his trainers whilst walking, recalling the tingling sensation running through his body at the contact between the two of them. That had never happened before, not with Sabina, not with anyone. It was very confusing, and then there was the knots that emerged in his stomach as Wolf stared so intensely into his eyes . . .

Scoffing to himself, he rolled his eyes to the heavens. What on earth had gotten into him? He was acting like some of the lovesick and very irritating girls who flitted around his school talking about nothing but boys. He could only imagine what Tom would say if he knew what was in Alex's head. Or Wolf for that matter. Alex blanched as the thought occurred.

'Thank God no mad genius has invented a device for telepathy yet . . .' he thought, silently praying that, if anyone did do such a thing, he wouldn't have the misfortune to run into them (though knowing his luck . . .).

A man appeared in front of him. He was perfectly ordinary to look at, brown hair, brown eyes, sleepy expression and casual clothes. But there was something about him that put Alex's senses on high alert. Perhaps it was his imagination, but though the man's face appeared bored, his eyes seemed to gleam with a hungry anticipation that made Alex's hair stand on end. As he drew closer, he saw that the stranger had a very straight back with an almost militaristic air about him as he moved something your typical civilian did not possess.

Out of the corner of his eye, Alex swore he saw someone move in the shadow of the large oak tree he had passed several paces back. Brown eyes flickering around, he noticed around flash of movement in the car park to his far left and another by the bus shelter just ahead.

Though all his instincts told him to turn and run, he had to acknowledge that this may be a false alarm and the shadows imagined or, as he thought about it deeply, MI6 agents checking up on him. He had never wanted Blunt to invade his life in that fashion more than he did at that very moment. Careful not to give his suspicions away, he frowned at his shoes once more, glancing up and around periodically, trying to project an air of irritable preoccupation as he drew almost level with the man.

"Alex Rider?"

'Damn!'

Jerking his head up, a surprised look on his face, Alex answered with a polite, "Yes? Do I know you?" as he mind worked a hundred miles an hour memorising his landscape, the route to Wolf's flat and mapping out potential escape options.

The man smiled, clearly trying to lower his guard with a false friendliness that was belied by his eyes, the hungry anticipation even more obvious than before, "No, but you do know my boss. He's an old friend of yours and he's very anxious to see you."

'Like hell he's my friend!' "You're going to have to be a little more specific; who is he?"

"Come with me and you'll find out," the enemy almost purred, attempting to look reassuring, as he seized Alex's right arm with surprising speed and strength. Prepared for just such a move, Alex twisted his wrist out of the man's grip with a self-defence move he learned in karate years ago and quickly executing a crippling lock on him. The man yelped in surprise and pain as Alex continued to apply pressure, almost forcing him to his knees, when he shouted, "Get him! Grab him now!"

'So I was right . . .' Alex thought grimly as three men burst from the edges of his peripheral vision, heading straight for him as he held their ally still with pain.

Quickly, he released his hold on the man and, as he began to stand up, his friendly mask lost in favour of an angry snarl, Alex spun on one heel to face the direction he had just come in, flicking his leg to the side and up to strike the half-crouching man in the side of his head so hard he was thrown to the concrete pavement where he made contact with a sickening crunch. As a red stain spread over the grey pathway, the heavily dazed man, still lying down, was rapidly bypassed by his sprinting companions.

Alex ran.