Title: Coming to Terms--Chapter Eleven

A/N: I'm done! Joy! Now, I can work on some of my other unfinished projects! Thank you guys for bearing with me, and reviewing every step of the way!

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"Of course I promise. Alec, last night, when you were shot, I was scared. More scared than I'll probably ever admit to you. All I could think about in that house was how much I was going to kick your ass for screwing the whole thing up. My gut reaction had been to yell at you, and then worry about the fact that you had been shot later. But then, when I got you back here, and the bleeding hadn't really stopped yet, I just kept yelling at myself. Thinking about how much of a jerk I had been for being angry at you while you had been so close to dying."

Max paused now, hoping that he would interject. When he didn't, and she had grown tired of pushing him to talk, she continued in herself.

"Look, I know this is probably hard to swallow coming from me, but you have to understand that I do care about you. Just because I'm a jerk to you doesn't mean I hate you. If I didn't care about you, I'd probably let you do anything you wanted."

Silence.

Frustrated with how he had refused to respond to anything she had to say, Max jumped from the bed an made her way to the door, pausing momentarily to stand in front of him.

"Fine, you know what Alec? I'll admit, I've been a bitch to you. But, I'm trying to apologize and you're not even acknowledging me. If this is your way of teaching me some kind of lesson, then fine. I get it. But you know what, I don't care. If you want to just go on and pretend that nothing matters, you can. But I'll be damned if I'm gonna pretend along with you. You almost died, and I was scared."

Max knew she was going to cry, and that was the last thing she had wanted him to see. But before she could run from the room, Alec had latched onto her wrist, preventing her from moving. When she turned around to face him, she saw something that she had never seen before. The look on his face was indescribable, it was almost as if the Alec she had previously known had just been a mask. The carefully guarded eyes that always sparkled were gone now, replaced with a look of wariness and regret. This was Alec, he wasn't supposed to regret anything. He was careless, did everything for himself, someone who saw emotions as a weakness.

"What do you want Alec?"

"You said you wouldn't get mad if I told you."

"I won't. But you have to tell me everything Alec."

"I will."

"I'm serious."

"I know. I'll tell you everything, just, take a seat." Turning, to face her on the bed he continued slowly, not pretending to believe her for a single second. "Max, none of this is going to be easy for me to say, I mean, I suck at all this emotional crap."

Max snorted.

"Hey, it's not like your little miss emotionally stable either, okay? Let me finish. To make a long story short, something bad happened because I tried to do something good."

Max stared.

"But you obviously want more of an answer…"

More staring.

"Right, well basically, I wanted you to come on a job or two with me."

"Yeah, I remember that little arrangement. Now, what I gotta know is why? You usually have no problem pulling your little wheelings and dealings all on your lonesome. Now all of a sudden you have to drag me into it?"

"Yeah, but it's more complicated than that. I had this idea that you might be happier if you had a little more excitement in your life, you know? It started out as simple as that. I wanted you to come on a couple of jobs with me. Simple stuff, no one gets hurt, you make a little cash, have a little fun. But as I'm sure you're more than well aware, nothing in my life ever goes as well as planned. I don't know if I just got over zealous or lost sight of my original objective, but everything got so damned messed up and I almost got myself killed. I could've gotten you killed."

"I could've handled myself, Alec."

"Yeah, but that's not the point. You told me that I had to look out for people other than myself, and I didn't. I can't do this Max, I mean I just wanted you to be happy, and then next thing I know I'm blackmailing some guy into letting me rob his place."

"The guy who shot you…"

"Yeah, listen. About that--"

"Alec, I really want to hit you right now."

And with that he had leapt from the bed, preparing to flee, only to find Max's small hand locked around his wrist.

"You said you wouldn't get mad!"

"I said I wanted to! I didn't, did I?"

"No."

Taking his hands in hers, Max forced Alec to turn and face her. He still wouldn't look her in the eyes though, instead he seemed preoccupied with their entwined hands.

"Alec you did have good intentions. I think. I mean you said you were trying to make me feel better about something, right? That's not being selfish. That's actually kind of sweet."

"Yeah?" He was looking at her now, and there was something in his eyes that had never been there before. Alec was looking for something to believe in, for someone to tell him he had done well.

"Yeah"

She could be that person.

"But I still gotta ask, why did you think you needed to do something for me? I mean, I do nothing but yell at you, and call you a screw-up, and here you want to help me?"

"I want you to be happy Max. I mean, I don't know what it is, but when you're pissed off, even if it's not at me, I feel like I need to fix it. I can take the yelling and all of that. It's probably why I'm so damn stuck on you."

'Oh shit.' Mentally he was slapping himself. In reality, he couldn't get his hands free. In fact, he could've sworn she had tightened her hold.

"You're what?"

Standing up from the bed, Alec began to pace nervously back and forth around the small room.

"Alright, you know what, you're going to figure this out eventually, I mean you have to. You're Max. So yeah, I have feelings for you that go beyond 'hey we're both from Manticore.' I sure as hell don't know how to explain them, and I definitely don't expect you to actually reciprocate them, but yeah. I can't seem to get myself to stop liking you like this, and every time I try to do something nice for you it blows up in my face and makes me look--mmmmm…"

It had taken him a moment to realize what was happening. Not in his wildest dreams had Max ever been so painless when he told her all of this. Actually, in his favorite ones, they skipped all the talking and cut straight to the more fun stuff. But here he was, and here she was too for that matter. She had kissed him. Hell she was still kissing him, and it was taking all of his willpower not to shatter this moment, demanding to know if she had hit her head at any point in the last twenty-four hours.

No, talking could come later. He had done far more than his share for one night. Right now they had far more interesting things to attend to.

Pushing her back onto the mattress, Alec cradled Max's head as she fell into softness. He honestly had no idea how it had come to this, but he was sure as hell not going to screw it up. Now that she knew everything, he would be able to make sure she was always happy. Now that she knew what he was about, he could make her whole again.

Life always had a funny way of working things out for him.

A/N 2: It's over! I am mucho happy with the fact that this story is complete. This is a major first for me. Tear.

A/N 3: I apologize for my lack of updating. I might just be the laziest person in the world. I swear I've had more than half of this chapter written for a month now. I need a nanny or something.

A/N 4: Okay, now I'm just being annoying, but thank you guys so much for reviewing this story so much. Once again thank you for all the love and patience!