NB: For those who have posted reviews - I still get them in my email notifications so thank you for your comments (seerow and darkjewelledassassin, your last ones made me laugh, thank you!) but they aren't showing up for some reason. I've contacted support so we'll see what happens. As for the story, I was thinking of leaving it here rather than run with something that might be a bit flimsy, but let me know what you think. Thank you again for following along!

Chapter 6

The next morning arrived far too quickly for Max's liking. He took his time, but he still managed to finish the frequency disruptor in just two hours. He and Alex had shown it to Piper who had immediately wanted to try it out. She was disappointed when Max said she wasn't allowed to use it, her bottom lip sticking out in a pout that had always worked on her mother. Max and Alex weren't as susceptible to the puppy dog eyes however, so the machine was packed away without being turned on.

The three unlikely companions gathered in the living room just after eleven o'clock so that Max could explain to Piper that Alex had to leave. This was what he'd been dreading. Piper's face remained inscrutable throughout their talk.

'Listen Piper,' Max began heavily, 'now that we've finished building the frequency disruptor, Alex has to go back to work. She won't be staying with us anymore.'

'I'll come and visit,' Alex said hurriedly when Piper looked down at her shoes.

'Aren't you going to stay for lunch?' Piper asked without looking up.

'I'm sorry Pip, but I have to get Max's new invention back. It's going to help a lot of people you know.'

'Can't you go to work and then come back for dinner?' She pleaded.

Piper loved it when Alex called her Pip and it only made her that much more determined to convince Alex to stay. Even though she'd never had a father before, this week had made Piper feel like she had a family again. She felt safe and reasonably happy. Her heart still ached terribly when she thought of her mother, but having Max and Alex around was enough.

Alex looked up at Max helplessly, unsure of what to say. He just shrugged his shoulders and nodded. Where was the harm in one last meal together?

'Alright,' Alex relented, forcing a smile onto her face. 'I'll come back for dinner.'

'Yes!' Piper cried, practically tackling Alex in an enthusiastic hug. Max was just starting to feel a little jealous when Piper let go of Alex, turned and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. He hugged her fiercely to him, locking eyes with Alex. They shared a sobering look that cemented Alex's opinion of Maxwell Lord. He was a new man. Piper's appearance in his life had brought out a love in him that Alex hadn't thought he was capable of. She supposed it just goes to show that you don't really know anyone until you've seen them at their most vulnerable.

She contemplated the strange family dynamic all the way back to the DEO. It struck her that Hank and Kara still had no idea of the truth. It wasn't her place to say anything so she began fabricating stories about her extended stay at the Lord household. They were received without much suspicion as Hank was just happy that Max had complied and had finished building the frequency disruptor so quickly. There had been a communications jam yesterday that had most definitely been a deliberate act of sabotage so he was chomping at the bit to stop whatever villainous plot was at work.

Alex couldn't help but think about how far removed the ongoing altercations with the Fort Rozz prisoners were from watching Max make pancakes. Having a family was a completely different world, one that she hadn't thought she'd needed, but after sort of being part of one for the last week there was a hollow feeling inside of her that made her wonder if she was missing something.

They weren't thoughts that she wanted to dwell on so she pushed them aside and became Agent Danvers again, directing the troops at the DEO as they worked to uncover the location of the signal. After six hours of searching, planning and preparing, Hank sent out a tactical team to investigate. Alex wasn't required for the mission as Hank had determined it to be non-threatening – a.k.a. not alien – so she requested the night off. With permission granted, she made her way back to Max's house.

Piper opened the front door after three knocks and pulled on Alex's hand, leading her towards the kitchen. The hallway was filled with the wonderful smells of cooking that made Alex's stomach rumble. Piper giggled at the noise.

'Max is making pasta,' she informed Alex happily.

They entered the kitchen to find Max working away at the stove, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up past his elbows. Piper jumped up onto a seat at the counter and Alex followed suit.

'Just in time Agent…I mean, Alex.'

Alex raised an eyebrow at Max's slip. Old habits die hard.

'Whatever that is, it smells delicious,' Alex said without missing a beat.

'Yeah well, I guess I still haven't found something I'm not good at.' He winked at her and she rolled her eyes, but Piper laughed. Some things would never change.

'Did the frequency disruptor work?' Piper interjected.

'It did,' Alex replied cautiously. 'It stopped all the bad signals and now we know where they were coming from.'

'Where?'

Alex almost sighed in exasperation. She was trying to subtly let Max know where the mission stood, but Piper's unquenchable curiosity was making it difficult.

'Just some old building in the city. We sent an electrician over to fix it.'

Piper seemed satisfied with that answer and Max jumped in before she could ask any more questions.

'Could you set the table please Piper?' He asked. She nodded enthusiastically and went about her job. Max left the boiling pot on the stove to sidle closer to Alex. 'What are we really up against here?' He murmured.

'Not alien,' Alex whispered back. 'Tac team should have it under control.'

Max nodded shortly, slightly relieved that they didn't have to deal with another alien threat right now. With an unspoken agreement to talk more about it later, dinner was served alongside cheerful chatter about Piper's new toy. Max had bought her a telescope.

'You can see so many stars!' She exclaimed past a mouthful of pasta. 'And Max said he'd show me which ones are planets.'

'That's great,' Alex smiled.

'You know there used to be nine planets?' Piper continued. 'But then they decided that Pluto was too small to be a planet so now there's only eight.'

'Poor Pluto!' Alex exclaimed, catching Max's grin at her moment of silliness.

'Max?' Piper asked. 'If Pluto's not a planet, what is it now?'

'It's called a dwarf planet,' Max replied, trying not to laugh. 'So instead of being with the big, major planets like Earth and Mars, now it's part of a different group of little planets that aren't as important.'

'Oh.'

And that was the end of the cosmology discussion for the evening. Piper showed Alex her telescope after dinner, insisting that she look through it to find the moon. Her nightly ritual of a movie before bed continued when Max brought Netflix up for her in the main living room. By now, Piper was an expert at using Netflix so he left her to own devices and showed Alex into his smaller living area.

'So,' Max began as he collapsed onto the two-seater couch, 'if the signals weren't coming from an alien source, what did Hank think they were?'

'They were coming from that television station that shut down last month,' Alex explained, tucking her legs underneath her. 'Hank thinks it's probably just the old employees trying to get back at the other stations since both CatCo and KPJT had outages over the last two days.'

'I bet Hank's bored. No aliens? What's the point?' He threw up his hands jokingly.

'Preventing another mess, that's the point,' Alex chided, shooting Max a serious look.

They were forced to sit a lot closer together on this couch because of its size compared to the one in the main living room. Alex's knees were basically resting on Max's thigh, his shoulder barely a hand's length away from hers.

'Mess isn't always bad,' he murmured.

Alex was about to retort when she realised he wasn't talking about the DEO anymore. He had a faraway look in his eyes that made him look younger all of a sudden. Calmer.

'Max?' Alex said softly. He turned his face back towards her. 'I'm glad I got to meet Piper.'

'I didn't know you were so good with kids, Agent Danvers,' Max smiled.

'I could say the same about you.'

The room was dimly lit by two lamps on the mantelpiece. The faint noise of the television floated in from the door behind the couch, but other than that there was nothing but comfortable, cosy silence.

Max had an odd thought, fought with it and then decided to act on it anyway. He shuffled to the side, leaning towards Alex. She watched him carefully as he rested a hand on the side of her leg and inched his face closer to hers. Every instinct screamed for her to move away and she very nearly said, 'What are you doing?' But she didn't. In the moments before Max closed the distance completely, Alex pictured him in the kitchen making pancakes and smiling at his daughter. It was a bizarre thing to have jumped into her head, but that image made up her mind. She didn't move away.

Max kissed her lightly, her lips parting from the gentle pressure. His heart fluttered at the sensation of her fingers intertwining themselves with his. The kiss was slow and long and just when he was about to pull away and touch his forehead against Alex's, she kissed him again, drawing his mouth back to hers.

He let out a deep, contented sigh when they broke apart. The walls that he'd spent years building up were gone. Alex breathed in and out slowly contemplating what she'd just allowed to happen. When Hank had assigned her to fetch Max a week ago she'd expected days of egotistical remarks and low key flirting that she really didn't want. Instead she'd spent a week with a caring, out-of-his-depth Max that needed her. There was a part of her that liked being needed in a way that didn't involve gun toting and interrogation.

'I don't suppose you'd consider staying another night?' Max murmured.

'You think Piper's not ready?' She whispered back.

'I wasn't asking for her.'

The smallest of smiles twitched at the corners of Alex's lips as she tilted Max's chin with a finger and kissed him gently.

'You better not snore,' she muttered in his ear before rising from the couch and stalking away to watch the end of the movie with Piper.

Max watched her go with a pounding heart. When he finally managed to follow her, he found Piper cuddled up to Alex on the couch watching Big Hero 6. It was a sight that he could most definitely get used to.