Title: What Goes Up Must Come Down

Summary: Transgenic DNA is better, stronger and stranger. Alec's pretty sure he knows what's going on, it's happened once before. But this time he doesn't have the luxury of being isolated in PsyOps-I seriously just used the words 'luxury' and 'PsyOps' in the same sentence, my B.-and nearly mauls a girl in the bathroom of Crash.

So what's a genetically empowered, hormone flooded, inhibition impaired X5 to do to pass the time while his testosterone levels normalize? And who is going to stick around to make sure his delicate state doesn't get him into any trouble? I'll give you one guess.

Rating: This chapter is comparatively tame. T?

AN: Not nearly as long as last chapter, that's probably a good thing. :P I didn't so much as read through after I wrote this out so APOLOGIES for typos and such! I might go back through and proofread and clean things up, I just was worried I'd take another million years to post this if I waited. Please review, even if it's just to say that it sucks. I can handle it and if not, there's always ice cream.

CHAPTER THREE | The Babysitter's Club

It wasn't that he was out of control with lust, although the pull to go hunting for an easy lay was definitely there and getting stronger. It was different from X5 females in heat, he wasn't drunk on pheromones with the single minded goal to procreate, he was simply flooded with testosterone. In this state there were two things he wanted to do, fight and/or fuck and sadly he couldn't do either.

[Who let the dogs out? WHO? WHO?-]

Alec fished out his cell phone.

"Hey Josh-" he answered, but before he could tack on a comment poking fun at Joshua's canine characteristics, per usual, raucous shouting and shuffling on the other line gave him pause. "Josh?" he sat up a little straighter, giving the call his full attention.

"GRRRRRRWWLL."

"JOSHUA?!" Alec barked out with alarm. He had never heard Joshua growl like that.

"Medium Fella?" Joshua finally answered, but his voice was strained and he sounded distracted.

"Are you in trouble? Where are you?" Alec stood and headed towards his boots, his body hummed with energy. He was too dangerous in this state, but he quickly rationalized that emergency trumped caution.

"Alec, lots of fights. Friends fighting frien-GRRRR-NO Biggs!"

Alec held the phone away from his sensitive ears as the shouting and scuffling intensified. He picked up his shoes and blurred to the couch where he sit to put them on.

"Little Fellow, no! Get Alec."

Alec's ears perked up at the mention of Max and he waited patiently as he heard the shuffle of the phone changing hands.

"Alec?" she asked with audible uncertainty. She sounded exactly as she had in the police truck when the authorities were closing in on their S1W rescue operation.

It was only the second time Alec had heard Max use that tone, which wasn't surprising seeing as Max would rather suffer in silence than admit vulnerability or ask for help. It wasn't until the safety of others was on the line that she relinquished.

"Max, where are you?" Alec asked as evenly as he could muster, communicating that he was prepared to take charge and back her up. The highly ranked, extensively trained soldier, knew what she needed to hear.

"Something's going on. I think White got to us somehow-"

"White's there? Tell me where you are."

Alec headed towards the door, oblivious to the fact that he was shirtless, having thrown off his shirt during the particularly enthusiastic masturbatory session he just finished.

"GRRRRR. Max, GO! Little Fella making it worse." Joshua shouted from somewhere in the background before a fresh round of noisey fighting broke out.

"MAX!" Alec said, his voice dropping to a throaty growl. "Tell me what the fuck is going on."

"Hold on," she replied.

Alec heard her breathing quicken and become more audible as the noise in the background fell away. It appeared she was taking Joshua's advice.

"I'm at T.C.-"

"White's at T.C.?! I'm on my way."

"NO, no. White's not here. Everyone's just going bat-shit crazy."

"Who's everyone? You think White did something?"

"Biggs, and a bunch of other guys from Oak Street. They're tearing eachother apart and I can't even figure out what the hell anyone's fighting over. Alec, it doesn't even make sense," she paused, "I don't know what to do."

Alec stood taller in response to the returned vulnerability in Max' voice. Three times.

"Is it just the guys?" he cleared his throat, "Just the X5 guys?" he clarified.

"Uh, yeah, as far as I can tell," she replied. "Wait, no, I did see one X6 throwing some punches."

"Was it Rolf?"

"...Yeah. How did you know?"

"That little dirtbag." Alec said, not without affection.

"Are you saying you know what's going on?" she asked suspiciously. "If this...this melee," she stuttered, searching for the right word, "is the by-product of one of your hairbrained schemes going sideways-"

"Max, no I-" Alec tried unsuccessfully to interrupt her tirade.

"-Alec, I swear to god-if I got called away from a meeting on a 911-"

"Huh. Yeah, 'meeting,'" he couldn't help air-quoting with his free hand, as he thought back to seeing Max and Logan at Crash earlier. Even the oblique reference to Logan had him curling the air-quotes into a tight fist that he barely stopped himself from unleashing on the living room wall.

Max either didn't hear him, or ignored his interjections, "-because you set up some crooked gambling ring or fight club or...or whatever the hell you get up to in your spare time, I will kick your ass in so hard, you'll grow boobs."

"Max, shut up," he rarely, if ever, took that tone with her.

It wasn't a whiny request, it wasn't an annoyed retort, it was a command, and Max shut up.

"White didn't do this and I definitely didn't do this, it's just another fun present courtesy of Mommy Manticore."

"Manticore? What do you mean?" Max asked skeptically.

"It's a by-product of the male X5 cocktail and probably some of the later X-series, most of them are just too young to be expressing."

"Huh?" Max asked.

Alec could practically hear her head tilting with confusion.

"Max, I don't make a habit of discussing women's troubles," he couldn't help but smirk when he said that, "but I'm assuming you're all too familiar with the X5 female estrus cycle?"

He waited for her response, but none came.

"Max?"

"...So they're in heat?" she replied, finally.

"It's not heat, exactly, and there's a lot less research on it since it only happened a few times at Manticore."

"So what is it?"

"Honestly, I don't know," he shrugged and scratched the back of his head thoughtfully, "it could be elephant DNA or wolf, or just a random product of our supercharged recombinant DNA. It's actually kind of interest-"

"NO, dumbass," Max interrupted impatiently, "I mean, what's going to happen? What should I do?"

Alec wanted to antagonize her for calling him a dumbass, but the effect the testosterone surplus was having on his libido stopped him from locking an already closed door.

"If it's only some of the X5s and Rolf, my advice is to get the transhumans-these guys are overloaded on testosterone so you're going to really need the muscle-and have them break up the fights and get everyone isolated into separate places around T.C. to wait it out. Keep the women away, and anything else that might insight competition, until they're isolated and secured. Keep humans away altogether, because they're probably not going to be in a place to hold back in any physical capacity, if you know what I mean."

"Ugh, White would have a field day if he found out about this. The media's already succeeded in making transgenics synonymous with monsters, can you imagine if one of us accidentally beat a civilian to death?"

"I can see the headline now," Alec answered solemnly, "Mutant Super Soldier Mauls Woman with His Super Penis."

"That's not funny, Alec."

"I'm not laughing."

"I hate talking to you on the phone because I can't smack you."

"And I hate talking to you on the phone 'cause I can't stare at your boobs. We all have our crosses to bear, Max."

"Go fuck yourself Alec," she growled.

"I actually just did and I probably will again after this call. You have a surprisingly sexy phone voice. Can you do me favor and hold your tongue and say 'A wand to chuck all ache's off'?"

"You're such a pig, I can't believe I asked you for help."

"Max, for all we know, there could be a little pig in all of us."

"Good bye Alec."

"WAIT Max! Wait-wait-wait."

She didn't respond but the line hadn't cut out either.

"...Max?"

"I'm here, WHAT?!" She huffed.

"Get out of T.C., I don't want you around all those guys."

"You don't-wait, what?" Max asked incredulously. "Since when does what you want matter to me?"

"It's not about what I want." He ran a hand through his hair, self-consciously. "Max, you know I don't baby you. I know you can take care of yourself, so just think of this as me supplying you with mission intel. As a single female, if you go back in there you're just going to add gasoline to the fire and people are going to get hurt."

Her silence this time was a good sign.

"Get somewhere that's a safe distance away. I'm going to hang up and get ahold of one of the transhumans in command and let them know what to do."

She was still silent and he knew he just had to reassure her now.

"Max, it's okay to sit this one out, let me handle this. I'll have Mole or Dix give you a status update once they've organized themselves, so hold onto Joshua's phone."

"Are you coming?" Max asked, quietly.

"I can't." He had a strange feeling like he was letting her down, even though he was doing the opposite of that. "It's best for everyone that I stay in my apartment."

"OH," she said with understanding, "...are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine Max. Don't worry about me. Just get out of there before I feel the need to come over and, I don't know, defend your honor or something equally embarrassing. I'm gonna go call command, okay?"

"K."

He was about to hang up when he heard her winding up to say something else.

"Is that why you growled at me at Crash earlier?"

Alec's mouth opened before he could figure out what to say and then he grinned, "Oh Max, Max, Max."

And to Max' shock, Alec broke out in song.

" And all the boys dreamed that they'd be your partner,

They'd be your partner, aaaand…

You're so vain, you probably thought that growl was about you,

You're sooo vain, I bet you thought that growl was about you,

Don't you? Don't youuuu? "

"I have no idea why I haven't hung up on you yet."

"I do. It's because I'm not the only one who gets turned on by-"

She hung up.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

"Why can't we just let them kill each other? I don't see the big tragedy in that?"

"...Is that Mole grumbling in the background?" Alec asked with a chuckle.

"Yeah," Dix replied, "no offense but he didn't think highly of the X-series to begin with so you can imagine how thrilled he is to lend a hand."

"Dix, unless we were a shotgun or a Cuban cigar, none of us had a chance to begin with."

"You're not wrong." Mole replied.

"Am I on speaker phone?"

"Uh, yeah. I figured it was more efficient this way." Dix explained.

"Hey Mole, did I ever tell you about my contact that has a direct line to some real primo-level Cubans?"

"The fact that you're only telling me this now isn't doing you any favors."

"I guess I'll have to see what I can do to make it up to you."

"Excuse me if I don't hold my breath, Goldilocks," he muttered, but without even a hint of his usual bite.

Alec smiled and then refocused on the job at hand.

"So Dix, just to clarify where we are, you guys have everyone who's affected pinned down and you're just waiting on a few teams of X6s to line up places for all of them."

"Some are restrained, others were tranqued and are sleeping like baby kitties. And all the X6 teams are in now, they're marking up the spots they found on our T.C. schematics. Some of the spots are good to go, others need some upkeep. We'll start taking out the live ones to our ready-to-go spots and set them up with one of our guys."

"...got shot seven-no, no, nine times in the fucking desert and lived just so I can come here and babysit some fucking X-Series pussies…fuck this..." Mole grumbled.

"Another team will start working on the fixes the other spots need and as those become ready, we'll carry out the sleepy ones. Again, someone from our squad will be with them at all times. We're working up a schedule right now. We've got other X-series focused on supply runs. An X8 lifted some caution tape off a crime scene so we're going to put that up so that people know what areas to avoid until this is all over."

"Dix, when you're ready to run for president, let me know."

Dix laughed bashfully.

"Make sure you keep Max updated, I don't want her to get impatient and do something stupid."

"Who are you calling stupid?!"

"Is that Max?!" Alec growled. "Are you fucking kidding me? Max-"

"Max isn't here!" Dix assured him immediately.

"Oh please, Dix, I know Max' voice."

"We have her on videocom right now. I promise, she's closer to you than she is to us."

"Well good." Alec said, completely ignoring Max, even though he knew she could hear him. "I just have one more thing and then I'll get out of your hair, I'm sure Max is giving you enough grief for the both of us."

"She's no picnic, that's for sure." Mole interjected.

"Tell me about it," Alec replied gleefully. He ignored Max' scoffs and continued, "as much as I don't want to do this, add me to the schedule. Better safe than sorry. Just make it easy and send me Joshua."

"I'll see what I can do," Dix said.

"Oh and write these things down for him to bring: the box of videos I leant him, snacks, the booze Mole set aside for me, and a big ole' bottle of lotion."

"Ha! Might as well throw in a box of tissues," Mole teased.

"Oh good one! Thanks for looking out for me, brother," Alec replied without skipping a beat. "Dix, write down tissues, the soft kind."

Alec heard a snort that he was sure belonged to Max.

"You got it, Boss."

"Thanks, Man. Over and out," Alec said and then hung up.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

After a long jerk off session in the shower, Alec was able to take a much welcomed nap on the couch.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been sleeping for when he heard someone at his door.

He stood up, completely alert. It should have been Joshua, but his senses weren't identifying the large humanoid canine and when he heard the tell tale sounds of someone working his lock he blurred to the door and threw it open.

"Why on Earth would you come here?" He asked, eyeing a startled Max, crouched in front of his door, lock picking tools in hand.

AN: This is where I'll leave you for now. Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think! Happy Holidays!

xS