"I'm sick of this, you know? He thinks he's got the right to kid around – make us pull his weight while he goofs off or runs one of his stupid little scams. It's not fair and it sure as hell ain't gonna keep goin' like this, 'cause I'm gonna kid around too. I'm gonna do some finger-painting on that pretty little face of his. Give him some nice, colourful handprints. Red and yellow and green and purple and brown and-"
"Boo!" Cindy interjected into Max's tirade, putting a restraining hand on the pissed off X5's arm, "Can't you just say black and blue and leave it at that? You're startin' to scare me, girl."
"I was getting there. I know what colours bruises come in; I've seen enough of them. I just wanted to point out that this little encounter is going to be very long, very painful, and very, very fun. I swear I am never, ever going to cover Alec's skinny ass again." Max sighed in frustration. "You gonna come enjoy the show?" she asked, pulling away from O.C.'s hold, "I'll leave the tickets at will call." She swung her leg gracefully over her bike and pushed off, leaving Cindy in her less-than-proverbial dust before she even got an answer. Cindy stared after her angry friend, eyebrows raised, until Max rounded the corner. Deciding she felt sorrier for Alec for having to face up to Max than she felt annoyed at him for ditching work and sticking them with his shift again, Cindy mounted her bike and raced off on Max's tail.
Max slowed down to let Cindy catch up when she heard her follow. "I didn't think you'd pass up entertainment of the man-beating variety."
"Hey! Men might be dogs, but you don't see me buying tickets to the dogfights," Cindy protested breathlessly, "Call me an animal rights activist; I'm just makin' sure you don't kill your boy."
"Nah," Max chuckled, "I'm just gonna shake him around a bit, maybe get us a share from whatever he managed to scam. He owes it to us. And he's so not my boy."
"Whatever, Boo. Thought you only took lunch money from the big bullies."
"Yeah, but they've got chickens at the farmer's market and I figure that's cause enough for an exception. Girl needs her protein."
Cindy rolled her eyes but didn't spare breath on a reply. Keeping up with Max was hard work when she had somewhere she wanted to be. Instead of chatting, they rode the rest of the way to Alec's apartment building in silence, punctuated only by Cindy's panting breaths. "Geez, boo," she finally puffed, "Think you could slow down for us mere mortals? Original Cindy don't got no fancy feline DNA."
"Sorry, O.C.," she said, smiling as she slowed down, "Just remember it's good for you. Besides, we're already here." They rounded a corner and put their bikes down at the back of the shabby, run-down building.
"Alec lives in Sector 5? I always thought he was more of a Sector 4 kind of guy."
"Nah, that's just where he runs his scams. He wouldn't be as stupid as to live there." Max paused for a moment, looking up from the pole she'd been locking her bike to. "On second thought, he probably would be that stupid, but the Steelheads run around down there and they like him even less than I do."
"Why you always ridin' on Alec's smarts, boo? He's got a membership to the Fabulous Feline Club just like you, right? So he's gotta be halfway there."
"I don't know. Maybe I'm just trying to excuse him for being such a big ass. It's one thing to be an ignorant asshole, but he's X5. We're supposed to be better. It's like he's a personal insult or something, like he reinforces Manticore's ideas about what's good and what's bad and I don't like that. He's arrogant, selfish, and he gets the job done any way he can, including by making my life a misery. He can't just be normal, so what right does he have to barge in on my nice, normal life?"
"Boo, you're-" Max put her finger to Cindy's lips to cut her off before she could defend His Royal Jerk-ness.
"It doesn't matter. Just come on," she said, hauling her still breathless friend up the stairs, "And be quiet, I want to hear if he's in there." Rolling her eyes for the umpteenth time that day, Cindy refrained from replying and followed Max's creeping step up the stairs. She didn't think it would help much though; the rotting wooden stairs creaked and cracked under even the smallest amount of pressure. Oh, yeah, nice place, Alec.
Alec's door wasn't in any better condition than his stairs and Max tried to remember if the place had been this decrepit when Brain had lived there. It probably had, but she'd never noticed. Anything to do with Alec just seemed to make a bigger impression, but Max put that down to do with Brain's innate inconspicuousness. It's not like she would notice that Alec was living in a rats' nest because she actually cared where he was living. She didn't care about Alec at all. He was an ass.
She pressed her ear to the door for a minute and frowned. Maybe Alec had heard them coming up that infernal staircase and was pretending not to be home, but she didn't hear anything. It was still too early for him to be out partying; Max had practically shot out of Jam Pony to make sure of that. She bludgeoned the door with her fist.
"Hey, Alec! Open up!" she called. Listening carefully, she thought she might have heard him groan inside, but no one came to the door and this wasn't the only apartment on the floor, so the noise might have come from somewhere else.
"Dammit, Alec! If you're in there and you make me kick down this door to get to you I'm gonna make your voice go so high you'll sound like a little girl with pigtails and pink hair ribbons."
There was still no answer. Max shot a look back at Cindy, who shrugged. "What an ass," Max muttered under her breath. Oh well, she decided, if he was out they'd just have to wait for him to get back and she definitely didn't feel like waiting around in the hallway. The wallpaper was peeling.
She aimed a kick against the door by the door latch, to break the wood around the lock, but the wood was so old that it splintered under the pressure and her leg just punched a hole in the door. There was one more thing to go on her list of the day's annoyances. Sticking her tongue out indignantly at the offending door, she pulled her leg out of the hole, brushed pieces of splintered wood off her new pants, and reached through to unlock the door from the inside. Stupid Alec.
"Ladies first," she said, opening the door and motioning O.C. through. The apartment sure looked empty enough. Practically growling, Max slammed the door behind her with a loud crack and froze as she heard another groan follow the noise. It was definitely in this apartment.
"Alec?" she called, still half annoyed but now half worried as well. Cindy stepped cautiously into Alec's bedroom.
"He's in here!" she called back and Max appeared over her shoulder.
"Yeah, I'm fuckin' in here," Alec's strained, muttered voice answered her, "Keep it down, would ya?"
He sounded pretty pathetic, but then, he looked pretty pathetic. The supposedly superior X5 was lying curled in on himself on the floor beside his bed with the duvet pulled down and clasped hard to his chest, leaving the mattress bare. His hair was damp with sweat, sticking to his corpse-pale face, and he had an arm thrown over his eyes which he was obviously not intent on moving, since he didn't look up when he spoke. So much for "superior", Max thought, Alec couldn't have gone two rounds with a kitten.
"What, boo? You got a hangover?"
Alec laughed under his breath at Cindy's question. "Yeah, I wish," he said, a shudder running through his body.
Max sighed, noticing the overturned bottle of tryptophan behind the night stand. "You idiot," she muttered, though her voice lacked the conviction it had had before. Seizures weren't any fun and she knew it. In fact, they almost made her want to cut the guy some slack. "I hope you know we had to work twice the runs we usually do just to cover your ass because you couldn't be bothered to take your goddamned tryptophan when you should have. Have you been down here all day?"
Alec nodded hesitantly and Max shot him a small smile of sympathy, though he didn't see it. She reached down to pull him up onto the bed. "Come on," she instructed.
She tugged hard on the arm Alec held fast around his chest, but he pulled away, with a noise that sounded distinctly like 'Argh.' "Christ, Max, don't touch me. Just leave me alone."
"Look, Mr. High and Mighty, in case you hadn't noticed I'm kind of miffed at you right now, but, being the nice, caring girl I am, I'm trying to help you. Do you want to get on that bed or not? 'Cause it's a hell of a lot more comfortable than the floor."
"Not. Go away."
"What's your dealio? I'm helping you, okay?" She reached down and pulled him up, duvet and all, ignoring his muffled protests as she shoved him onto the mattress. "Don't be such a sissy."
"Umm, Max?" Cindy interjected, given pause by Alec's obvious distress. "Remember that part about not killing him? He's really hurtin'."
Max looked down at Alec's quivering form. His lips were parted, one bloodied because he'd bit it to keep from crying out when she'd moved him, and he was panting, trying to ease the pain of breathing by taking shallow breaths. "It's his own fault," she replied, nonchalant, "He was probably fucking some whore when the seizures started building so he didn't take his trytophan when he should have. They wouldn't have been so bad if he had and he wouldn't be all cramped up and whining about it."
"Easy for you to say," Alec breathed indignantly, "You're a bloody nightcrawler."
"A what?"
"A nightcrawler. As in made to work nights, needs half the sleep the rest of us do, metabolism not quite so screwed up nightcrawler."
"So I don't need to sleep. Jondy didn't either. What's the big dealio? I get seizures too, buster, I know how they work."
"Then you know I have a monster headache right now and your squawking isn't gonna help." Alec reached down and pulled the covers over his head. "Leave me alone, Max."
"No, that's cheating. You don't get to tell half a story."
Alec groaned. Could the day get any worse? He'd spent all day jerking around on the floor getting himself all bruised up, his muscles were cramping from the spasms, he had a headache straight out of hell, now he was finally coming out of it, and, instead of letting him rest, Max wanted to discuss the strategic advantages afforded by her less fucked up physique. She probably just wanted to rub it in that he was weak. Flawed. Defective. Well, at least he wasn't a bitch.
Pulling in on himself, Alec reached down to massage still spasming leg muscles, but Max's hand stopped him. She sat down at the end of the bed, pushed the covers off Alec's legs, and started massaging them herself. "O.C.? Can you get the blinds?"
Cindy smiled and complied. Coming back, she plopped herself down on the bed beside Alec and pulled the covers all the way off, revealing his body clad only in boxers. "Hey!" he objected, "You ladies do realize this is sexual assault, right?" Max swatted his leg in annoyance. Cindy just cuffed him lightly upside the head and started lazily rubbing his back, like she did for Max sometimes after Max's 'Manticore Moments'. "Mind you," he said, "I don't suppose you can rape the willing."
Now it was Max's turn to say "Hey!" though she punctuated the remark with a slap that made Alec cringe. "I have a boyfriend and an escort, so don't get any ideas."
"And don't go gettin' no ideas 'bout Original Cindy either 'cause Original Cindy likes her girls pretty."
Alec snorted but submitting to Max and Cindy's ministrations, pressing his hand hard against his forehead to dull the pain throbbing between his eyes. Even if it was a major assault on his privacy and his pride, this whole massage therapy thing was really kind of nice, despite the slight kink factor. "See?" Max asked pointedly, "Helping. Now spill. What's with the nightcrawler thing? Don't you think if I was one I'd know?"
"You ditched before we started getting specialized training. What would you expect? It's just like they never told us that not all those pills we were popping were steroids or vitamins until they started us off on deep cover missions and we couldn't count on having a constant supply of Manticore's finest. Need to know."
"Well, it's not like it was impossible to find out. Our group, we had our ears open. We spied as much on them as they spied on us, trying to find the safest way out. We figured out pretty fast that our brains were buggy, that they don't make serotonin."
"They don't make enough serotonin," Alec corrected, "If we couldn't make serotonin we'd pretty much be dead. We just don't make enough of it 'cause we're all pumped up." He almost laughed at the irony. Manticore's pumped up super soldier was out of commission because he was a pumped up super soldier. It was something of a vicious cycle, that. "Manticore increased our levels of sensory input and made us hyper aware, always alert, on edge. I think they figured that if we were born with that level of awareness it wouldn't be a big deal, but I guess they were wrong 'cause we've got crazy levels of adrenaline, for one. Our serotonin gets used up metabolizing the stress hormones, so we end up needing way more than normal people. Normal people get enough tryptophan from their food to make sure they have all the serotonin they need."
"And we get pills, 'cause we're just cool like that." Max stopped kneading Alec's legs, covering him up with the duvet and scooting back to join Cindy, leaning against the pillows.
"Yeah," Alec acknowledged, grimacing as he pushed himself back to lie against the pillows himself. "You have it easy though, Maxie, and I'm not whining, I'm just tellin' ya. I'd give anything to be a nightcrawler. 'Improved recuperative capabilities' and all." He said it like he was reading the '25 less sugar' tag off a cereal box, which, Max supposed, he sort of was. They were products. They were manufactured. Hell, they even had barcodes.
"That's why you don't need to sleep," Alec continued, "And why your seizures aren't as bad. Your body's constantly restoring itself. Its chemical balance isn't quite as messed up." He paused. "You really didn't know that?"
"No. Skipped that class. Sorry."
"I figured you were gonna rub it in."
"Hey! Helping here, remember? I resent-"
"…resemble…"
"-that." Max glared at the prone X5 for inserting 'resemble' into her sentence. "I'm not that much of a bitch, okay? At least not when you're not."
"Okay," Alec sighed, "Did you two miss the memo or something? Because you've both just about called me a girl and I figured that having just seen me practically naked you might have noticed that I'm really kind of not."
"It ain't that noticeable, sugah." Cindy told him, tone set to disappoint. Boys and their toys, she thought, rolling her eyes.
Alec groaned softly and sank further down into the pillows. "You just don't appreciate me for who I am."
"Oh, quit your whining, smart ass," Max said, not unkindly. "And yeah, that time it really was whining, without me rubbing anything in. So there."
Alec bit his tongue to avoid capitalizing on the possible implications of that comment; his bruises really didn't need any more company. "I don't know, I just figured… 493 must have had these things pretty bad, right?" He pulled his hand away from his aching head for just about the first time since they'd found him to look across Cindy over to Max. "'Cause I was lucky. My seizures started showing up right after they figured out how to medicate, right after the kids with the seizures stopped disappearing, and they were always pretty bad. Worse than most of the others'. If you want to know what made Ben crazy, I've got an idea."
"Manticore made Ben crazy," Max seethed, voice growing sharp as the subject got touchy, "And the kids that disappeared? Manticore butchered them. I saw them do it."
"I figured," Alec replied, all too casual. "Whatever. I didn't mean anything by that, Max. Go back to not-bitch mode, okay? I could come to like it." Max didn't respond and Alec shifted his gaze uncomfortably, looking at the window to avoid looking at her face. The sun was starting to set, leaving the slits between the blinds grey and the room dark enough that Alec could look around without the light making his head throb. "What time is it?" he asked.
Max looked up too. "Getting late," she answered. "Hey O.C., you wanna go to Crash?"
Cindy blinked. "Sure, boo," she said, "But are we gonna leave him alone?"
"That's what he's wanted to begin with, isn't it?" Max asked, petulant. "Come on," she said, getting up and leaving the room. Cindy shrugged and followed, inching across the mattress, sliding off the end, and padded to the doorway.
She turned back at the threshold. "You gonna be aiight, boo?"
"Always," Alec answered, with a grin that was probably supposed to be charming but still looked too strained against his pale face.
"Okay," Cindy drawled. "See ya tomorrow. And you better be there or Max is gonna rip your head off and I ain't cleanin' up no blood."
"See you," Alec replied, offering a little wave of his hand at Cindy's retreating back. He sunk back thankfully into the pillows, pulling the duvet up to his chin and bringing his hand back to rest heavily against his temples.
Max's voice flew back to him, even as he was thanking his lucky stars the invaders from Venus were finally gone. "Hey Alec? You're gonna need a new door." The door opened and closed again and Alec sighed.
"Bitch."