A/N: "Frosting" was too hard to write, but I hope this is a fun and funny read at the very least.
Summary: Max is having a very bad night.
FROSTING
Max stood at the top of the Space Needle and breathed in the fresh air and smiled. It was exactly midnight.
It was a new day. A new year. A new—her beeper went off breaking her train of thought, and Max frowned. She grabbed the sling of her backpack where her pager was conveniently attached to and glanced at the glowing green numbers that flashed through the screen.
She smiled as she recognized the ten digits on the screen.
Within minutes she was punching in the numbers on a payphone just below the Space Needle.
"Yo, me hittin' you back."
"Thank God, Max," sighed Original Cindy, obvious relief in her voice.
Max frowned. "What is it? Everything gravy?"
There was a slight pause fit enough for two heartbeats before Cindy replied. "Aiight, here's the dealio: there's this lickity-boo, see, and she is foine as all of God's creatures, with legs up to here and eyes like moonshine. But then there's this dawg, and boy is he a d-o-double-g-dawg, and he's showin' off for this lickity-boo, only she's mine. I mean, he's putting the touch on my boo and I'm 'bout to put on the shake down and slap him for the little bi—"
"Uh, Cindy…why'd you hit me up?" asked Max, impatiently tapping the phone booth with her black riding gloves.
"Er…well, Boo, there's this package, aiight, and it's s'posed to be in the hands of some foo in Sector Eight…only, I never got to bring it and I can't leave my lickity-boo now—"
"…so you were hoping that I could pick it up from Jam Pony and bring the package back home to its waiting mommy in Sector Eight?" drawled Max with a roll of her eyes. "Girl, you lucky I got your back."
"You my boo!"
"All right," she sighed. "Consider it done. But you owe me a pitcher."
But Max was pretty sure OC missed that last part considering the way she heard the other girl screech at the top of her lungs at some poor boy before leaving her to a lonely dial tone. With a grimace, she hung up the telephone. At least picking up a package from Jam Pony and making a quick delivery wasn't going to take up the rest of her night.
Max parked her baby a block away from Jam Pony. It was closed by now, which meant that she'd have to break into the one place she actually tried to spend as little of her time as possible. She rolled her eyes at the irony.
She came around the side of the building and eyed the fire escape. The ladder ended between the second floor and the roof of the building. With a quick glance of the area to check for hover drones, Max leapt the sixteen feet to reach the ladder. Her fingers grabbed the bottom rung and she swung herself up onto the landing with a loud clang.
She crouched and allowed everything to settle before she moved again. She was glad that Normal always left one window up in the top cracked open for "airflow". She pulled the window open and slipped inside.
Easy peasy.
Once inside, Max rummaged through the packages that were meant for OC to deliver that day. She found the only box that was marked Sector Eight on it, and she smiled, pleased at her own work.
Piece of cake.
Suddenly, she felt a prickling in the back of her neck. If Spiderman had his Spidey sense thing, Max had that prickling-in-the-back-of-her-neck-as-a-sign-that-something-was-wrong thing. She peeked from behind Normal's counter and saw beams of lights moving around just outside of Jam Pony. Then she heard the lock being broken and the door was kicked in.
Max ducked under the counter and cursed quietly to herself. So much for a piece of cake. This was a good reminder that some people choke on cake.
She heard footsteps—she counted five—filing in quickly into Jam Pony. Their flashlights scanned the room. He heard them whispering about ripping open the packages and stealing their contents. Two sets of footsteps went upstairs. Two other sets headed for the locker area. Which left one person to walk into the caged package area which was Normal's office.
Max knew that she could probably kick this guy's ass and sneak away before the other four got wise.
She could.
She grimaced knowing full well that she couldn't. It wasn't like she cared about Normal or anything. It wasn't like she was saving Jam Pony for him. Nope. She was saving her job, that's what it was.
She popped up from behind the desk and gave the guy a brilliant smile. He turned and pointed a gun at her. Max quickly disarmed him by jumping over the counter and kicking it away and knocking him down in one single movement. She hovered over him and smiled cattily, "You got a nice package," she grinned, before punching him hard enough to knock him out.
She heard two sets of footsteps running back from the locker area and she rolled away quickly. She grabbed a bike wheel and threw it Frisbee style at one of the guys, "Heads up! Special delivery!" she called with a little laugh, just as it hit the guy in the head, knocking him over.
The other guy stood frozen in shock.
"That better not be my cherry chapstick in your hands, you creep!" she growled before throwing a spinning hook kick at him. "I mean, what kind of guy steals chapstick? That's just bent." she muttered under her breath.
"What's going on down there?"
Max stood in front of the staircase and placed her hands on her hips saucily, "We're cookin' curry," she drawled.
He just stood there in shock and Max threw her hands in the air, "Are you just gonna stand there all day and make me wait or what?"
But before the other guy could reply, the other one tripped on the stairs behind him and they both fell at her feet, unconscious. "Two million years of human evolution and this is what we get: you morons."
It didn't take long for her to tie them up. She placed a giant bow on them. "Just like a birthday present," she murmured.
She was finally basking in the warmth of her bath. A well-deserved bath, if she did say so herself. She closed her eyes and prepared to let the relaxing warm waters take her to happy dreamland.
Suddenly, the phone rang, jarring her awake. She grabbed the phone which she had placed next to her bath tub. "This better be global."
"Max, I got a lead on the Turrow case," said Logan, without preamble.
"Mm-hmm."
"I need you to help me get those papers—where are you?"
"I was in heaven, but you're bringing me back down to earth with this whole urgent tone thing."
"Max, this is important."
"Yeah, so is me enjoyin' my bath."
"Max, this is really urgent. Young girls' lives are on the line here."
Max sighed heavily into the phone. "Logan, relax. I'll get it done." She hung up on the phone and all but threw it away. Then she slipped underneath the warm, scented water. Sometimes, she wished she could just catch a break. But given the givens, she knew that in the greater scheme of things, those little girls really did need some saving.
She got out of the bath and got ready to go out and save the world.
"The lead turned out to be a bust," said Logan, wheeling around to face her in his wheelchair.
Max threw a thick envelope of files onto Logan's desk. "What?" she scowled. "Are you telling me that I spent two hours hanging upside down outside the sector police to grab these files for nothing!"
"Well, not nothing per se…"
"Ugh!" she seethed. "You know, next time you send me on a half-assed scheme to save the world, maybe you should double check your sources first!"
"Look, Max—"
"Don't 'look, Max,' me," she growled. "I had better things to do than get a crick in my neck and almost dislocating my shoulder tonight. Not to mention this massive headache I'm now feeling from hanging upside down for that long."
Logan looked appropriately contrite, and Max crossed her arms across her chest expectantly.
"Well?"
"What?"
Max threw her hands up in the air. "Never mind. Forget it. Whatever!" she growled before she stormed out of the penthouse.
And to think all she had wanted was two little words from him.
She flew down the streets of Seattle, letting the lights blur past her. If there was one thing that could make her feel better, it was this feeling of freedom.
She felt a smile tugging at her lips as the wind blew through her hair.
Suddenly an unexpected roadblock forced her to a literal screeching halt. Nothing could wipe the smile off her face faster than that. She rolled her eyes in annoyance before flipping her glasses up over her hair. "What can I do you for, Officer?" she smiled her sultriest smile.
"Sector checkpoint." He replied gruffly, not looking her directly in the eye.
Max looked around briefly and frowned. "There aren't supposed to be checkpoints around here."
"This one's special."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah, so you're gonna have to get off this bike and pick it up from the pound tomorrow."
"What?" she cried. "C'mon, Officer, how's a girl gonna get home at this time of night?"
"You wanna get home, you figure it out."
Max briefly entertained the idea of kicking ass right there. Briefly. Because she knew that where there were sector checkpoints there were hover drones and there were cameras.
While it would feel nice for a moment, she'd regret it later.
With a groan she relinquished her beloved motorcycle to the Sector Police.
She watched carefully as one of them added her beloved Ninja onto a list. "Motorcycle," he murmured.
She frowned heavily at him. "That's a Ninja 650 for you. Black. Like my mood, thanks to you."
"Yeah, yeah," he waved her off as he walked away with his clipboard and his partner rolled her baby away.
Max frowned. Tonight was definitely not her night, which was ironic because it really should have been her night.
It took an hour for her to get across town with some strategic blurring and some sly hitch hiking. One long miserable hour.
She trudged up the stairs to her apartment slowly. It had been a long, long, miserable night.
She opened the door to her apartment and stopped. That tingly sense was back. She almost groaned out loud. It would just be icing on the cake if someone had also broken into her apartment tonight too.
She pushed the door open as quietly as she could and crept inside, picking the specific spots on the floor that she knew from long experience that did not creak. She came around the corner and stopped short.
She couldn't help it.
Her face crumbled and she actually felt tears suddenly blurring her vision. Icing on the cake, indeed.
Right there on the table was a single cupcake with an unlit candle planted in the center and a card that said, "Happy Birthday" in bright red letters propped up next to it.
Sprawled on the couch was a sleeping Alec.
She crept slowly forwarded and picked up the cupcake. She plucked off the candle and started nibbling on the frosting. She licked her lips in delighted surprise. It was the real thing. In this economy, Alec somehow managed to get her real frosting.
She felt a warmth start to spread from the vicinity of her heart as she looked at his sleeping face. Maybe today wasn't going to be such a bad day after all.
"Happy Birthday to me," she whispered as she settled onto the couch next to Alec.
She pretended not to notice how he seemed to huddle closer to her. It was her birthday, he remembered, she had a cupcake with cream cheese frosting. Nothing could ruin the day now.
"Happy Birthday, Maxie," he murmured sleepily, and she allowed him to pull her into a haphazard, sleepy hug on the couch.
Things could only get better from there.
END.