The next ten minutes (look at how I try)

Dark Angel oneshot, Max/Alec

Disclaimer: I own nothing even slightly related to this show or these characters. I love 'em a whole lot though.

Warnings: Rated M for SMUT and probably some bad language too. And, er, angst? Do we warn about angst?

Behold the drabbliest of drabbles...

'You know I'm not him,' the X5 murmured into Max's skin, words giving way to grunts of pleasure as the curvaceous, fearless leader of the Transgenic Nation latched onto the pulse point on his neck with her teeth and tongue. 'It's not me that you love,' he persisted. 'Not me you want to be touching now. I'm just a substitute for your precious boyfriend.'

'Shut up,' Max said, none too gently. 'I'm here with you now, aren't I?' She ran a hand almost roughly through the soldier's dark blond hair, tugging his face so that she could stare into those gorgeous hazel eyes she knew so well. Eyes that had also belonged to her unit brother, Ben, before Max had closed them forever. The Manticore clones were perfect, but she could always tell by the eyes…

Max bit her lip and looked away, concentrating on the feeling of the tight, corded arm and shoulder muscles of the man poised above her. Lithe and trim, these X5 units were built for stealth and seduction. The world's best assassins and, possibly, the world's best lovers, Max thought idly, as the touch of his fingers stoked fire between her legs.

'You're only with me because you can't be with him,' her part cat all male partner growled low in his throat, rolling them over so that Max was straddling him and she was forced to take the lead. 'I may be a lot of things, Max, but I'm not stupid. You do remember how Manticore tricked my model out with a borderline genius IQ, right?' He groaned in an unbearably sexy, achingly familiar way, as she dragged herself teasingly along the hard length of him. God, she knew this body so well, knew exactly what to do to make him lose control. 'I'm your… ahhhh, second in command, most definitely. Your friend… maybe. Clearly- ahhh, Jesus!... your go-to fuck buddy. But I'm not the man you love, Max.' They both knew that his protestations were puffs of air. As usual, he wouldn't be able to resist her.

Joylessly, Max smirked and leaned down to bite a path along his neck and shoulder.

'So what'cha sayin', pretty boy?' Max breathed hotly in his ear, as her tongue flicked a feather light path round the shell of it. 'Are you in?' she grinned suggestively and ground her hips for emphasis, 'Or out?'

'Oh, I'm in,' he replied instantly. 'I just… I'm just saying you need to deal with what we're really doing here.'

Her blunt nails raked down his sweat-sheened chest, through the dusting of fine blond hair, and Max had to smile at the reaction it provoked from her partner. Sitting up, he spun them again so that he was soon pressing Max into the mattress on the floor of his Terminal City executive office suite turned apartment. Max quickly wrapped her legs around his waist, straining to get him where she wanted.

He hesitated, poised and barely nudging her slick opening with the end of his cock.

'I'm not him,' he said again, in a strangled whisper.

'I know,' Max said, pulling his head down for a soul crushing kiss. Sweaty foreheads rested together, she reached around and grabbed his ass- the same one she had secretly enjoyed watching on those long-ago but indelibly memorised Jam Pony bike runs- and encouraged him to enter her.

'I know,' Max repeated, and, like every time, he nearly died at the grief in her voice as it cracked and tore. 'You're not him. Just, please, let me have this though, just for a moment.'

Then he did move, acquiescing as always, knowing he would do whatever he could to help her. He could be her lieutenant; occasionally Max would even let him be a friend. Some nights though, she just needed him to fuck the pain away for a little while, give her a break from the relentless agony of her enduring love for a man she could never touch again.

'Don't you dare say his name when you come,' he gritted out as he pounded mercilessly into her, but Max wasn't listening anymore. She was completely lost in a fairytale bubble where there was nothing except Alec's warmth all over her, his musky, catty smell filling her lungs and his weight comforting as he moved inside her. He tasted like salt and cheap liquor on her tongue, his hands were big and strong as he grabbed her ankles and hooked her knees over his shoulders for deeper access. Alec's love-making had always been with the self-assurance of a tomcat who knew damn well the effect he was having on his bed mate.

It was half memory and half raw, new sensation as he plunged his tongue inside her mouth, tangling with hers in erotic manoeuvres that mimicked the purposeful strokes below as he worked within her. Nearly whimpering with the indulgent sensory overload, Max abandoned herself utterly to her lover's touch as he drove her expertly to the very edge of ecstasy. The feel of his rippling shoulder muscles, the softness of his feverish skin and the scrape of his five o clock shadow as his jaw grazed along her throat combined to almost push her over the brink, but it was that tiny half-gasp half-moan of pleasure catching in his breath- so completely, undeniably Alec- that set off the fluttering, clenching, shuddering waves of her orgasm. 'Oh, God, Alec,' Max near enough cried out, as she lost herself to the powerful, consuming pleasure her beautifully engineered lover was still extorting from her body. The feel of her contracting around him brought him right with her, exhaling something like a growl, as he trembled and finally spilled his hot seed inside of her.

Sweating and sated, the pair collapsed in a tangle of limbs on the mattress, Max not bothering to attend to the sticky mess he had left between her legs. She closed her eyes and waited for the strongest moments of the afterglow to inevitably fade; for the empty, cloying black pit of despair inside her to seize back total control again. When it did, she stayed still as he disentangled himself, not moving until the soft thud of a damp washcloth landed on her stomach.

Opening her eyes, she almost flinched when she met those hazel ones staring right back at her. Yeah, the clones were genetically perfect copies, but she could always tell by the eyes…

'I told you not to say his name,' Jake- X5-495- told her, darkly. Max had been sleeping with him for nearly two months now, but lately he seemed to be getting grouchier.

Not even bothering to pretend an apology, Max took the washcloth and turned away to clean herself up. Jake's low-riding jeans were back on by the time she had stood back up.

'Thanks for… just, thanks, Jake,' Max said with a wink, as she tugged on her panties, bra, and her usual uniform of a form-fitting pair of black pants, dark t-shirt and comfy boots.

'Max,' X5-495 said lowly, grabbing Max's arm as she started for the door. He quickly let her go at the icy glare she threw his way. 'Hey, okay.' He held his arms up in mock-surrender. 'This is wrong, Max. You know I respect you, but you've got issues. Banging your dead boyfriend's clone is just asking for a world of pain. Sometimes,' Jake sighed and scratched his head in the exact way Alec used to do, 'sometimes I think I should leave Seattle. It would be easier for you if I had never come here.'

Something like pain flashed in Max's eyes, but the leader of the Transgenic Nation didn't flinch as she pulled X5-495 in for a hard, bruising kiss.

'You're not him,' she said, when she pulled away. 'You speak like him, move like him, even fuck like him, but you're not Alec. Stay or go: we're all free now, soldier. Sure, you're a big help to me here in TC, but I can live without you.'

Hurting words dispensed, Max made once again for the door.

'And 494?' Jake's – God, Alec's- husky voice stopped her, one foot over the threshold. Max faced Alec's last surviving Manticore clone and raised a quizzical brow. 'Can you live without him? Can you live just for all of the rest of us?'

X5-452, 494's designated breeding partner, best friend and almost wife, wasn't sure if she knew how to answer that. She wasn't sure about a lot of things since anti-transgenic activists had rigged a homemade bomb on Mole's van that had blown Alec, the lizard man, two X6's and Max's heart into a million tiny pieces.

It had happened on a routine supply run, of all things. Max couldn't remember if she'd told Alec that day that she loved him. She remembered hitting him upside the head for being late to the morning briefing. She remembered rebuffing his attempts to seduce her in her office afterwards, because she was still pissed about the meeting. She remembered whispering as she dashed past him an hour later, on her way to mediate an X7 squabble in the kid's training centre, that she promised to make it worth his while that evening if he brought her a piece of fresh fruit back from the supply run. But telling the man who was everything to her in the whole crazy world, the man that she had secretly agreed to marry three days before, that she loved him? That, she could not remember doing.

She didn't kiss him goodbye either. Something about wanting to keep things professional in the workplace. The last thing she'd said to him was about a piece of goddam fruit, whispered hot against his ear from behind him as he was checking his weapons for the run, and Alec had smirked, looked over his shoulder with a reply on his lips, but Max's whirlwind had already blown past him.

Max turned away, but Jake knew there were tears shining in those fierce, passionate, constantly bereaved eyes.

'I've survived the last eight months, two weeks, three days and seven hours, knowing that the love of my life is dead,' Max whispered, without meeting his eyes. 'No promises Jake, but I'm shooting for the next ten minutes.'

The (bitter) end

A/N: I'm think about writing a proper M/A story once I've finished my current WIPs. This was kind of a tester. A dark, evil, angsty tester. The proper one would be less with the character death. Obviously. You kind of need M and A for M/A. Er, except..here. Ah, me. Review? :-)