Eight Crazy Nights Five, part one
giandujakiss: Dark Angel Max/Alec ... oh any first time will do! Notes: Ok, so I have read maybe 2 stories in the fandom and I still know this has been done before. But
giandujakiss was kind enough to beta anyway! NC-17.
Max was busy enough that she didn’t notice the first symptoms, except that then she was panting after half the people she had to order around that day, which interfered with the more typical and more necessary yelling. So by the end of the morning it was pretty obvious.
What was not obvious was what the hell she was supposed to do about it. Her little city-state couldn’t wait for her to sweat it out, if she could even get far enough away from every mutant with male chromosomes to do so, and that was plenty unlikely in the first place given that she could hardly go ten minutes between crises, or decisions that were not crises but had seemed like it to whoever had wanted Max to make the decision.
She’d just have to grit her teeth and hold back. Just because that had never worked before didn’t mean it was hopeless now. After all, she had more responsibility now, more reason to keep it locked down.
By the time Alec grabbed her and dragged her into the ammo storage room, she was practically ready to mount him in public.
“You’re in heat,” he said, closing the door and leaning up against it. Sure, he didn’t think about her screwed-up biology quite the same way as a normal guy would, but he had to know how much she hated it. God, it burned that he even knew what was going on with her. Even if it was obvious, she still felt like he’d snuck into her bedroom and gone through her underwear.
“I can still kick your ass,” she promised. No way. The fact that he’d even think about taking advantage like this-
Alec shrugged. The little twist to his mouth that she ordinarily despised, because he didn’t take anything seriously, was so cute she wanted to lick it off his face. Max bit her lip hard enough to taste blood.
“I’ve got a suggestion,” he said, holding his hands up in a way that was probably supposed to be unthreatening but really just made her stare at them, thinking about what his fingers could be doing-cupping-argh!
“I’ll bet you do,” she said, and told herself to kick him in the balls again.
He snorted, though there was something off about it, deliberately casual. “I’m not that crazy,” he said. “I mean, I have a suggestion: Peter, the X5 who came in last week. I could go talk to him. He’s discreet, he’s loyal, and he’s got the cat DNA-he’ll know it’s not a thing.”
She opened her mouth to say no, and then reconsidered. She needed it bad; Logan was out of the picture for so many reasons; and Alec wasn’t wrong about Peter. If Alec brought him to her, she wouldn’t risk any public humiliation.
“What do you want?” she asked suspiciously, before the hormones could overtake the last of her sanity.
Alec widened his eyes innocently, which she could’ve told him was the wrong way to play it. “Other than for you to not tank our little republic here with a public freakout over your biology? Which, by the way, is far less crappy than the average mutant here, although definitely more troublesome than my excellent genetic makeup? Nothing. Just, you’ll be a lot better as our Fearless Leader if you’re not humping or moping indiscriminately, and left by yourself those seem to be the two choices.”
“Remember the ass-kicking thing?” she asked, making a fist. It felt good. Maybe a serious smackdown, then transitioning into-oh God focus! Where was OC when Max really needed her to drag Max away?
“Let me get Peter,” he said.
Because it was that or jump Alec himself, she nodded.
As it turned out, Peter was exactly what the (Manticore) doctor ordered: he didn’t talk and he didn’t assume that it meant anything, just scratched her itch and walked on out. If she’d been interested in him in any ordinary way, she’d have been insulted, but given the givens he was perfect. Having him show up like a pizza she’d ordered had even helped her feel a little more in control, not like she’d snapped and grabbed the nearest warm body.
A week later, she managed to force herself to find Alec and say thanks. He’d been out on a supply run, and she caught him while he was finishing up the inventory, slowly counting cans of beans as he slumped against a crate, keeping his weight off his right leg.
“Hey,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Her heart was beating doubletime, and if he made a single joke she was going to put him in the damned cans. But he’d done what he said he would and she kinda owed him for that.
“Hey.” He didn’t look up, and she waited until he wrote down a number so that he wouldn’t have an excuse to bitch her out for making him lose count.
“I just wanted to say … that was a good idea you had.”
Alec’s head swung up too fast for a regular human’s. “Sorry, say that again? No, really, say that again. I wanna hear it a couple more times.”
Max rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Just, thanks.”
She expected more in the way of teasing, but Alec only rolled the pen across the clipboard with his thumb. “No big.” After a second, he cleared his throat. “I could, you know, keep an eye out, for when you cycle again.”
She considered it. Alec was stupidly popular with the residents, especially the Manticore refugees. He was reckless and too willing to sacrifice somebody else for the safety of the group, but he was also pretty good at sizing up newcomers, figuring out where they’d fit in. “I need loyal, discreet, and no drama. You think you can handle that?”
He snorted. “I can handle a lot more than that, Max. But you got it.”
“And no repeats,” she said. Whatever Alec might think, that way lay drama.
“No repeats,” he agreed. “Now, can I get back to my exciting can-counting so that I know when I have to risk my life for salad again?”
****
Six times, it worked. Alec had ended up mostly in charge of the money, which was … almost poetic; though he was a little too inclined towards stupid schemes with improbable payoffs, he could stretch a dollar so far it was never the same shape afterwards. So he told her what they could afford to build and how much they’d have to steal to do it, and he saw her practically every day so they could stay coordinated.
It got so that Max kind of forgot most of his earlier shenanigans-he was a boy, she had to grant him some immaturity-and Joshua persisted in hanging out with him, which let Alec play the wise and worldly guide to Joshua’s ingenue, which was always good for a few laughs. Alec even went to the-services, she guess she had to call them, that Joshua held, and somehow Joshua had become the moral authority for their little colony. Max didn’t bother him with most of the gory details of running the place, but it never hurt to have him remind the group that they were family by choice. And it mattered that Max and Alec sat in the front, listening hard, when Joshua was talking; this place couldn’t just be run by the X5s.
As a result of their constant proximity, Alec was able to catch the signs of heat pretty quick (better than even chance that he could smell it, what with those Manticore-enhanced senses, but that topped the list of things Max didn’t want to know), and each time he delivered something fitting her requirements to her quarters.
There was another boy with feline DNA, a lizard-type, a couple of psy-ops guys, and then a really sweet fellow with not much in the way of external nose or ears but some very fun erogenous zones. If she’d been a regular girl, she might have even tried for something more extended with the last one. But instead she sent him off with breakfast and a smile, and as far as she could tell nobody was paying any attention.
Unfortunately, right after that, the roof fell in: literally, the biggest building in Terminal City, where they had all the offices and the school and most of the food stores, collapsed. First there was the nightmare of the rescue (only three lost in the end, miraculously), and then the nightmare of reconfiguring survival without half the supplies, and then the waking nightmare of finding out that the disaster had been the work of saboteurs. There was no time to rest, much less to think about relationships or the lack thereof (though she did find people getting busy in the oddest places; something about the ever-looming threat of death seemed to trigger the urge).
The months slipped by like weeks, until she was walking through the new HQ as she stripped off her jacket, wondering how it had gotten so hot when they barely had the steam working.
Alec had faceplanted on a pile of papers, twisted in a way that was going to make even a transgenic wake up with a backache, mouth open just enough that he looked like he was about to kiss somebody’s signature. Like almost everybody, he’d lost weight. His muscles stood out through the thin slate-green henley he was wearing, and his bar code was almost obscured by the uncut fringe of his hair.
Max came up behind him, and he didn’t twitch. She could see three small holes in the back of his shirt, right beneath the collar, and a faded gray T-shirt underneath. She reached out and trailed her index finger across the exposed skin under his bar code.
“Wha--!” That brought him awake, bolting upright with the paper still spit-glued to his cheek, pawing at it and blinking frantically.
Max chortled. “Guess we know who not to put on sentry duty.”
Alec’s mouth worked as his sleep flush changed to something more embarrassed. She pushed the papers out of her way and hitched herself up on the table, her calf knocking against his thigh. “… Yeah,” Alec said at last, still shaking his head. “I was just-the teachers want more computers, and I try to say no, but then-”
Max nodded. There was a smear of ink across Alec’s cheek, and his freckles stood out on his winter-pale skin. His eyelashes were really long, she thought.
Alec’s eyes widened. “Crap! Max, I-I fucked up. I forgot.”
“Forgot what?” she asked, wondering whether she’d be able to feel the freckles if she touched them.
“You’re in heat,” he said, and leaned back so that they weren’t in contact any more, running a hand through his hair as he closed his eyes. Oh, yeah, heat, she thought, wanting to put her hands where his had already been. “I-I wasn’t thinking, there’s one guy but he’s out on a mission. I know you don’t want repeats but maybe-”
She swung her legs up and around, so that they were bracketing him in his chair. She could feel the X5 heat of him through her pants. “Why go through the hassle?”
“Max,” he said, and it meant no, even with the automatic flare of heat in his eyes.
“I’m not gonna beat you up for taking advantage of me,” she said, and slithered down until she was all the way in his lap. His face still had creases from where it had been pressed against the papers, but he smelled great.
“I know you won’t,” he said, not cocky like she’d have expected. “But I don’t qualify.”
She remembered their long-ago conversation about her standards, and there definitely had been a time when she wouldn’t have trusted him enough. But now she’d caught kids he’d tossed from a burning building into her arms, and she’d seen him come back from dozens of missions where he could’ve easily just kept on going, making his own life someplace safer and alone. “I know you’re loyal,” she said, “and it doesn’t get much more discreet than doing this for me for two years, so what’s the hang-up?” She rocked her hips, and they both gasped.
Alec’s lips tightened, and he put his hands on her ass, but only to lift her off as he pushed back and stood up, turning away from her.
“I told you, I don’t qualify.”
It was hard to remember through the surge of lust that was making her tremble, but-“You think you’d be able to give me drama?”
Alec went still, like he’d heard movement on the perimeter, and then he spun around. “You know what, you’re right,” he snapped, resentment in his tone she hadn’t heard since they were just escaped from Manticore together. She didn’t get it, but the cat in her was more interested in the way he advanced on her, hands going to his waist so he could pull off his shirts. “This is the least I can do,” he said as his head emerged from the tangled fabric, “since I didn’t do my job, and if I let you go off and find someone else there might be dr--”
She cut him off by sticking her tongue in his mouth. He picked her up, enhanced muscles lifting her easily, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, already enjoying all the warm skin he’d bared as he moved them back to the table, leaning down over her as she ran her hands all over his back.
She was scrabbling at his belt when he pulled back. “Wait,” he said and she made a frustrated little whimper. “Discreet, right. We should go-elsewhere.”
He even put his henley back on, which was more commitment to discretion than she would have demanded, which itself was probably proof enough that for once Alec was thinking more long-term.
Max’s room, a reclaimed windowless office with a solid door, was near enough that she didn’t get too handsy on the way. This time of night, no one was around to watch them go in together. And she didn’t worry about the mess (relative mess: no more hospital corners for her, and Manticore didn’t let you have actual stuff so even sparsely decorated rooms tended to look crowded to her) because it was just Alec, and because he’d been here dozens of times for conversations that didn’t need to be overheard. Max shook her head, pushing all her worries aside; they’d found the latest set of traitors and they’d survive whatever came next just the same. Tonight was for pure physical recreation.
“C’mon,” she said as soon as the door closed behind her, “get naked.”
Alec smirked but obeyed. She sighed with exasperation and want, examining him. There was so much to choose from, not least the already-hard dick. Any other time, she would have been amused at how easy he was.
He got on the bed without being told, lying back and watching as she pulled off her top, then her jeans. Her underwear was plain black, same as it was every day, but she knew she looked good as she knee-walked up his body. She was already so wet. But Alec ought to work for it, right?
And he did, curling himself up so that he could grab her ass and bring his mouth between her legs, his tongue working over her panties, tasting her. “Harder,” she told him. His eyes never left her face as he gave her just what she wanted.
The first orgasm was easy, and nowhere near enough. Alec pushed her panties to the side and dived in, thumbs teasing on the inside of her thighs. His tongue was even better without the barrier of cotton, hot and pointed and pressing just where she needed it. Finally, a purpose for that mouth. She groaned, but the angle was bad, and she rolled over, bringing him with her. They fought the panties off, his hands interfering with hers as they both tried to get the job done, and then he shoved his head back right where she wanted it, using his fingers on her clit to help out.
He sucked at her with a pressure just the right side of painful, and she closed her thighs around him, enjoying the feathery sensation of his hair against her skin.
She could feel her body tensing, readying, and she put her hands over her head, grabbing at the metal bedframe. It groaned and gave some under her clenched fingers, but blessedly didn’t collapse. And then she wasn’t thinking at all, launched and flying, head arched back against the pillows as Alec brought her off again.
Max let her thighs fall open enough to release him. Alec raised his head. His lips were puffy and slick, and he crawled up her body, stopping to suck at a nipple through her bra until she grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him the rest of the way.
He tasted like her, salty and something else, something that no human she’d found ever matched, almost metallic.
When she pushed him away, he looked adorably confused, hair all mussed and skin flushed. “Now,” she ordered, and he dove for his pants, conveniently dropped right next to the bed. Even through the haze of desire, she had to wonder just how often Alec randomly got lucky-but knowing Alec, it was often enough that she couldn’t even make fun of him for carrying around condoms, especially not when that was working out fine for her.
Three months was a long time, and Alec pushed into her steadily enough that she felt the slow stretch and made a noise (definitely not a whine) until he was inside her all the way, bracing himself on his forearms so that he wasn’t resting all his weight on her. Damn, he was just-really well put together. Her congratulations to the designers, definitely. She wrapped her legs around his waist, heels digging into his thighs just under his ass, and let her hands wander everywhere they could reach on his back, feeling the muscles there bunch as he set up a good rhythm. His nose brushed hers, not kissing, panting in the same air.
“This…good?” he ground out. His eyes were wide open, pupils blown, watching her.
Since he was asking, she pulled down, forcing them into full contact, which made a better angle. “Harder,” she gasped. He complied, not speeding up, but putting his whole body into the thrusts. X5 strength and precision, repurposed. Max thought about what Herbal used to say, make love, not war, and grinned into Alec’s shoulder, turning into a gasp when he hit her just right.
She wrapped her hands around his biceps, enjoying the solidness of the muscle, and rocked up into him. He licked just below her ear, shockingly good, and the sound she made encouraged him to do it some more, adding in nibbles along her jaw and down her neck. “Use your teeth,” she got out as her hips sped up involuntarily. He did, sharpness just shy of what would be required to bruise her-he would’ve been tearing the skin of a normal, scarring maybe, but Max wouldn’t even be marked tomorrow.
Her back arched as she came again, nearly pushing him off, but Alec dug his knees into the bed and shoved back in counterpoint, losing the rhythm as he went for his own orgasm, groaning it out while the aftershocks were still rumbling through her. He was heavy on her, a comforting pressure from her thighs to her shoulders. She tilted her hips up to rub against him some more, and he made a soft sound, not quite a protest, then carefully raised himself up, grabbing for the condom as he went.
She let him roll over, settling next to her, and half-turned on her side so that she could put her hand on his chest, tracing the lines of muscle there. “How long until you can go again?” she asked.
Alec laughed up at the ceiling. “Really?”
“Like you’re not jealous,” she said, and put her hand on his dick, still flushed and shiny, her fingers sliding easily up and down, the foreskin bunching and puckering as she tugged up. Boys, she thought again: so funny, and so much fun. Alec wheezed but didn’t make a further protest as they both watched her work.
Fortunately for his ego and her wants, he didn’t take that long at all.
****
Except that the next day was weird, which was an unexpected betrayal. She hadn’t said anything when Alec pulled his clothes on and booked at oh-dark-thirty, even though he had to know she wasn’t asleep. There’d been a hiccup in his step when he was about to open the door, but he didn’t turn his head towards the bed.
And then he looked anywhere but at her during the morning meeting, which was particularly awkward when they had to discuss where they were going to get the money for the antibiotics the med team needed. With increasing annoyance, Max observed three of her lieutenants look back and forth between the two of them like they were watching a tennis game. Anybody who didn’t think they were fighting by the end of the meeting would’ve noticed when Alec lit out like his ass was on fire as soon as Max stood up.
She knew Alec didn’t have any of the normal hangups, not even the ones she’d picked up out on her own in the world. He’d been at Manticore too long to think about sex the way a regular human would, which should’ve at least meant that he wouldn’t be all judgey.
OC didn’t pick up her phone; either that or the lines were down again. Max missed her fiercely, for all that Max knew what she’d say, which was something about the unreliability of males in general and Alec in particular.
She checked in with Joshua, who was just finishing up teaching a pottery class. The studio was wall-to-wall shelves covered with pots and glazes, and behind them were layers of drawings from Joshua’s other students. The room smelled like earth and turpentine, and Joshua looked completely at home even though he was only a couple of inches from the ceiling. “Hey,” she said after Joshua patted the last straggler on the back and sent her on her way, holding a little blue blob that was either supposed to be a vase or a duck.
“Hey, little fella!” Joshua smiled. The cat in her no longer even saw it as a threat. “How’s it hanging?”
She grinned back; even if she got nothing but Joshua’s sunshine out of the visit, that would be more than enough. “You seen Alec?”
Joshua shook his head. “He was supposed to come this morning. Is he okay?”
Max sighed. “Damned if I can tell.”
“Alec works hard,” Joshua said quickly, defending his friend. She felt a surge of affection for Joshua, who had more reason than any X5 to be bitter but never was. No wonder he was their homegrown Dalai Lama.
“I know he does,” she reassured him, leaning back against a shelf after a quick evaluation of its structural stability. “I just-I want to talk to him.”
“Why?”
Much as she loved Joshua, she was never going to have this conversation with him. “Nothing much. I don’t even know.”
“If you don’t know, how will he?”
She couldn’t stand still any more, striding across the room to look at a clay sculpture that was either a man on a horse or a sea monster. “He’s the one acting all weird! Look, just-if you see him, tell him I was here, okay?”
“Sure, Max,” Joshua said, still bewildered.
She knew how he felt.
****
Four days later, she managed to track Alec down in the armory. There were a couple of empty crates on the floor, and he had five semiautos spread out on a cloth on the table, plus one disassembled in front of him. His shoulders tensed further when she stepped into the room.
“Long time no see,” she said.
Alec didn’t turn on his stool. His hands moved with practiced, unconscious grace, putting the piece back together. “Figured you might not want me around.”
Yeah, right. “I don’t have a problem. At least, I didn’t think I did.”
“Of course not,” Alec said. Argh, he could be so annoying! It was worse because she knew that he could also be a stand-up guy, when he tried. Max considered punching him just to make him look at her, but he was holding live ammo.
“Okay,” she said, and got up close enough that he had plenty of warning before she put her hand on his shoulder and tugged him around. “Clearly I’m not the one with the problem. Is this how you treat all the girls you hook up with? ‘Cause on behalf of the rest of them, I’m about ready to kick your ass.”
He laughed angrily, almost sneering, still not meeting her eyes. “Nice, Max. See, I thought this wasn’t supposed to be anything like hooking up. Far as I’m concerned, it never happened.”
“If it never happened, why are you so angry?” she asked, wondering why Manticore hadn’t engineered the stupid out of boys.
“I’m not angry,” Alec said, jamming the clip so hard into the gun that Max could hear the squeak of abused metal. He looked down at the gun with an expression of betrayal that was almost funny, but Max was pretty sure that laughing would be a mistake at the moment. Alec blew out a breath, stilled for a moment, and then tried again, this time giving the weapon the consideration it deserved. “Look, Max, you’ve never played any games with me. I’m trying to do what you want. I’m just … it would really help if you’d back off and let me handle it. Because I can, okay?”
“Handle what?” Max demanded, half a second from smacking him upside the head. It was like they were having two different conversations, and hers made no sense.
Alec snorted. “Yeah.”
Max groaned in frustration. She grabbed the gun from Alec hard enough to sting his hands-he wasn’t really doing anything with it at this point anyway-and slammed it down on the table next to him. “Will you just talk to me?”
“You don’t want to hear it!” he yelled, rising as if he was going to leave the room.
She grabbed his arm, spinning him back. “Really not impressed with you stomping around like it’s my job to figure out what’s crawled up your ass. Just spit it out!”
He lashed out, catching her wrists, not hard enough to bruise, and she let him push her backwards until they were against the cabinet that held all the shotguns. “Well?” she demanded, both of them panting so loud that she couldn’t hear anything else.
Alec looked like he’d bitten down on a kumquat. “I’m gonna kiss you if you don’t say no,” he said, rough as if each word had been dragged across broken glass. “That answer your question?”
But he didn’t make a move, just leaned up against her, fingers tight around her wrists, as she stared up at him.
After a minute, during which the temperature seemed to go up ten degrees, Alec sighed and let her go. “I want a repeat, okay?” Maybe he’d been working up to it long enough that the revelation was no longer a surprise, or maybe Max had really known for a lot longer than she’d admitted it to herself.
“Nobody else did,” Max said, not quite meaning that the self-pitying way it probably sounded.
“Yeah, well,” Alec flashed a look at her, then went back to studying his hands, “they didn’t know you. You’re just this super-hot hero who needs their help for something Manticore did to you, and they all know what that’s like. But I see you every day, and it’s different.”
She didn’t know what she was feeling, but it was definitely not anywhere near her reaction to that long-ago jerk of a breeding partner.
“I’m sorry,” Max said, and Alec nodded to himself. She could see his muscles tensing to leave. “Wait! I mean, I’m sorry I didn’t listen when you tried to tell me that.” He met her eyes, startled, and she thought that the Manticore engineers had really known what they were doing when they designed the X5 physical templates. She was so used to fighting the automatic impulse to react to how attractive he was that she had forgotten, well, how attractive he was. Especially like this, all uncertain, pretty pink mouth open and waiting.
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen to us. I can’t even promise to be alive tomorrow, and you can’t promise me either. And I can’t-we can’t afford to be fighting. There’s too many people who need me, and too many people who need you.”
Alec looked confused, and heading towards pissed off. This was so unfair. Manticore never taught the skills you really needed, whether it was sewing your own curtains or talking to boys. At least there were books about sewing.
“I’m trying to say-” Oh, screw it. At least she’d get to find out how much of last time had been genetically enhanced hormones, and how much real skill. She pressed up against him and kissed him, hard, wrapping her hands around his head to keep him in place.
This time, he kissed back with equal energy, fighting for control, like they were sparring. She leaned back and he pressed forward; she put her hand on his lower back and he grabbed her leg and hitched it up so that she was grinding against his thigh.
Alec was the one to pull away, panting. “Still not the right place,” he managed. Max was busy watching his mouth and didn’t pay him much attention. “Max,” he whined when she put her hand on the tented-out front of his cargo pants.
“Fine,” she huffed. “Meet me in five.”
She turned to go, and he grabbed her wrist again, hard enough to bruise a normal human this time. “Be sure,” he said, then released her.
This was why Alec was such a comprehensively bad idea. The only thing she was sure of was that she wanted Alec now. She probably wouldn’t want to kill him tomorrow, or at least no more than usual. But she did have some truth to deal him, and it had better be enough: “One way or another,” she told him, meeting his gaze straight-on, “we’re family, okay? Genetically altered, screwed-up family. You and me, whatever happens, we’ll still be family.”
Alec smiled, small but real. “Put it that way, it sounds really whack.”
“Really whack’s what we got,” she said, shrugging, and headed towards the door.
When she looked over her shoulder, letting her hips swing a little extra, he was watching. He gave her a mock salute, then the hand signal for ‘five,’ and she went the rest of the way to her room-dodging two people who wanted to talk about long-term plans and three with complaints about the plumbing-feeling almost, kinda, happy.
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