Readers dearest! I'm BAAAAAACK!! After several weeks out of action. Aren't you glad to see me? (beams)

What, not even the tiniest bit?

Right, anyway. OK, you know I said I was going to give you an update of HIOP at some point in the near future? Yeah, I totally lied.

Well, no, I didn't. But the next chapter is proving very, very difficult, so I figured you could have this one instead. I'm sure you're all delighted about that, aren't you?

Oh, come on, at least try to look happy.

So, this is mostly a filler chapter, and I'm far from entirely happy with it, but this is your lot, people. I've spent over six months battling with this chapter - on top, of course, of my A-Levels and AEAs and university applications (because I'm insane and I'm applying this year rather than last year, because of my gap year, and oh, it's all so flipping confusing!) and the rest of it - and frankly, it's not going to get any better if I keep trying to improve it. So here, have a chapter.

All of my other stories are being slowly chipped away at, including my Supernatural crossover, and, yes, the 'Chalet School' crossover, which is coming along at a nice pace and should really only be read by the mentally impaired - like MEEEE!! - because... well, yeah. It's an Alex Rider/Chalet School crossover, let's not kid ourselves that it was ever going to be anything even approaching sane. Attempt Chapter 10 needed some very extensive re-working, but I'm hoping - hoping, not promising! - to get it up in the next weeek or so. HIOP7 (or is it 8? I just write the chapters, I don't count them...) is probably going to be delayed because that paintballing scene is a BITCH, but I'll grit my teeth, shut my eyes, and write the damn thing at some point. A-Levels are now over, but I start my internship this time next week, so... no promises yet.

Now that I've bored you all sufficiently, on to the story, I think! Credit, love and kudos go as usual to the great and wonderful Von, who encouraged me through this chapter and patted me on the back when I cried that it was "too darn difficult, WHY am I writing this?!", and to the sweet and lovely xaritomene, who helped me through my A-Levels with revision and chocolate.

DISCLAIMER: The Tenth Doctor is regenerating at the moment. David Tennant might be leaving Doctor Who. This might appear to have no bearing whatsoever on a totally unrelated Alex Rider fanfiction, but I tell you, until I'm certain that he will be back, I refuse to own anything! I wear sack-cloth and ashes! Not even the Alex Rider book rights could tempt me away from my vow of protest-poverty, I tell you.

Not that they were mine to start with. Meh, details.

And, after the unnecessarily long Author's Note From Hell, I give you - In Loco Parentis, Chapter 17. My baby, all grown up...

Previously

“You remember, about a week ago, a teacher of mine – um – talked to me?”

Wolf glanced up at him from the potato he was busy mashing into a pulp. “About what?”

“About you, um… abusing me?”

“Oh!” Wolf looked momentarily taken aback, then faintly amused. “Yeah?”

“They want you to go in and talk to them.”

Wolf paused, looking across at him, then shrugged. “OK. When do they want to see me?”

Alex frowned a little. “They want you to contact them. Or they want to contact you, at least…”

“Best if I contact them first. Then I don’t look like I’ve got something to hide.” Wolf grunted, forking up some more of the casserole. “I’ll mention it at work tomorrow, see what MI6 command think of it.”

Alex looked back down at his own meal, willing himself to hide his nervousness. “So – what’ll happen if I get, um…” He had to fight down the blush, and couldn’t think of anything other than the ‘soap-opera’ phrase for it, “You know, taken away?” Thankfully, he managed to bite back the ‘from you’ which wanted to tag itself on to the end of that little outburst.

Wolf shot him a sharp look. “Seriously, Cub, don’t worry about it.” He said, quietly, and Alex got the impression that his not-quite guardian was trying to be reassuring without quite knowing how to go about it. “They’re not going to take you away. You’ve got MI6 on your side – if that’s not bringing out the big guns, I don’t know what is.”

Alex nodded, and tried to be reassured by that. It wasn’t easy.

Wolf took another mouthful of casserole, and chewed, thoughtfully. “So, apart from that, how was the rest of your day?”

Alex shrugged, spearing a piece of chicken, and swirling it idly through the rice. “Not bad. Weird, though… most people were actually sympathetic, you know?”

“Well, that’s a good thing, right?”

The blond boy paused, then shook his head, decisively. “No, not really. I think I preferred it when they just ignored me.”

Wolf actually cracked a grin at that. “I can see your point. Just…it’s not healthy, you know? You’re not always going to be an ostracized loner-”

“Oh, thank you.” Alex muttered under his breath, but from the way Wolf’s lips twitched, he caught it.

“-and you might as well get used to interacting with people properly.” He finished, and Alex nodded, carefully.

“Sure. I just wish they wouldn’t be so – clingy, you know?”

“Yeah.” Wolf agreed, fervently, and Alex could tell he was speaking from experience.

They ate in silence for a couple more minutes, before Wolf spoke up again. Hastily swallowing some chicken, he took a quick sip of water, saying,

“Oh, by the way – the high-ups contacted me again today, about you going down to Credenhill…”

“Credenhill?”

“Administrative HQ.” Wolf told him, dismissively. “You were supposed to go up there last weekend, to talk to them about Bear, remember?” Alex thought back for a moment, then nodded, slowly – he did vaguely remember something like that. “They still want to see you about it, get your testimony.” He paused, almost delicately, for a moment or two. “Is that, um – OK, with you?”

“Yeah…” Alex nodded again, but kept his eyes on his mostly-empty plate. “Yeah, that’s fine.” He paused, prodding idly at a piece of chicken on his plate. “So, um – when would I be going up?”

“Well, because you couldn’t go last Saturday, and you’ve got your physio this Saturday, Command’s agreed to let you give your testimony this Sunday. I figured, we could catch the train from Euston Sunday morning, and be there for nine, or something like that. Sound alright?”

“Yeah, sounds fine.” Alex nodded, finally placing his fork neatly next to his knife, and looking at Wolf’s empty plate. “You done?”

“I’ll get it.” His guardian grabbed the two plates, scraped the leftovers off into the bin, and dunked them both into the sink. “D’you want anything else?”

“I’ll have an apple.” Alex told him, absently, and Wolf lobbed one at his head from the bowl of fruit Alex had put pointedly on the side-counter a couple of weeks ago. Alex caught it with a glare, to which his guardian responded with a wholly unrepentant smile.

The whole scene was almost domestic, which, Alex decided, took their relationship to new and exciting levels of weird.

“So, this testimony.” He started, awkwardly. “What will I have to, y’know – do?”

Wolf shrugged, biting into his own apple. “Nothing much.” He said, rather indistinctly round a mouthful of fruit. Swallowing, he continued, “It won’t be any more taxing than being debriefed. They’ve already got our testimonies, as well, so yours is just so they can dot the i’s and cross the t’s. They’re not going to be trying to catch you out, don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah.” Alex nodded, slowly, fiddling with the stalk of his apple. “Yeah. It’s just…” he paused, thinking it through before saying anything out loud in front of Wolf. “Bear… he’s part of their – your – organisation. They’re not going to want to discredit him just for me…”

“I thought we dealt with this.” Wolf muttered, frowning down at his apple for a moment and carefully avoiding eye-contact with his ward. Finally, he shrugged, and started, slowly, “Look, Cub… there’s only one thing more dangerous than a highly-trained guy with violent tendencies, and that’s a highly-trained guy with violent tendencies running around in a war zone with some of his countries most destructive weapons at his disposal, you know? If anything, they’re going to be grateful you found it out for them. They’re not gonna be thrilled about the way you found it out, but they’re not going to be getting angry that you dared to get the shit kicked out of you by one of their soldiers and they have to find a replacement.”

“I guess.” Alex agreed, taking a rather unwilling bite of his apple. It didn’t look as appetising as a couple of seconds ago.

Wolf shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and Alex knew that, given the choice between having this conversation and having his nails pulled out one by one with no anaesthesia, the man would take the nail-pulling without a second thought. “Cub, you’ve read the papers over the past year or so, you know about the whole thing with the soldiers and the Iraqi hostages they tortured. Imagine how much worse that’d be if it was some kids. Bear obviously had a thing about kids – something twisted in his head. Basically, we can’t afford to have a guy around who’s that kind of dangerous, you understand?”

That was a reason Alex could accept. “Yeah.” He nodded, and Wolf let it go with an expression of naked relief on his face. Alex almost cracked a smile on seeing it.

The next morning, Friday, Alex suffered through double Maths with Robinson giving him sympathetic looks and particularly easy questions, telling him that he shouldn’t worry too much about his homework if ‘other factors were making things difficult for him’. He was almost relieved to escape the classroom in favour of his next class of the day, Spanish.

To his horror, though, his Spanish teacher gave him exactly the same attitude, and the same continued after break, in History and English. By the time their lunch break came round, he was ready to kill someone. MI6 would probably smooth the whole thing over, anyway, and Mr. Robinson’s neck was looking so tempting at the moment…

“They think your guardian’s beating you?” Tom asked, wide-eyed and incredulous when Alex gave him a potted version of the whole thing that lunch break. “That’s what you were talking about when you were going on about ‘living arrangements’ yesterday?”

“Yeah.” Alex nodded, taking a bite of his wholly uninspiring peanut-butter sandwich. Wolf had made a half-hearted attempt at making his lunch that morning, since Alex had overslept, and he’d ended up with a pathetic-looking sandwich and half a carrot. It really wasn’t doing much to improve his mood. “And they’re insisting he come in and talk to them.”

“So, remind me, how did you get the bruises?”

He shrugged. “Friend of Wolf’s. Well, colleague. He, er… didn’t like kids.”

“And he’s going to prison, right?”

“He will do. Eventually.”

Tom frowned. “Why ‘eventually’?”

“They’ve got to catch him first.” Alex told him, and gave up on his peanut butter sandwich, moving on to the carrot.

“Oh, you do meet the most exciting people, don’t you, Al…”

Double Chemistry that afternoon almost saw Alex try to blow up his science schools for the second time after the sixth time his teacher asked him whether he felt ‘confident enough in himself’ to do the practical. He couldn’t help but fume inwardly over why all the teachers couldn’t just get over it and get on with their jobs. He was preparing for his GCSEs, surely the last thing they should be doing was encouraging him not to work – especially given his track record!

In Alex’s considered opinion, the entire situation sucked.

He managed to avoid being called in to Mr. Bray’s office again that day after school, making good his escape by practically dragging Tom out of the school playground and onto the Tube. They’d decided it would be simpler for Tom just to come straight back to Wolf’s after school – since Alex had forgotten to ask his guardian last night about Tom coming over, and had had no time to do it this morning, he figured it would be a better idea to ask before the man went out with Gloria rather than wait and inform him after the fact.

Wolf didn’t seem like the sort of man who’d respond well to that sort of tactic.

By the time Wolf got back at five thirty, Alex and Tom had been back for just under an hour and half, but neither of them had dared to do anything more than sit in the kitchen and drink tea. Tom was still wary about being in the home of a ‘real live SAS soldier’, and Alex didn’t want to get comfortable only for Wolf to chuck his friend out. Not to mention the last thing he wanted to do was make Wolf feel like he was taking him for granted. Not now.

Wolf gave him a quick ‘greeting’ grunt as he walked into the kitchen, and didn’t even mention Tom’s presence – though Alex noticed that his friend was in danger of becoming a little starry-eyed again at meeting what Alex was sure the other boy thought of as a bona fide hero. Given that this was Wolf, though, no comment was as good as consent, so Alex figured they were good to go.

He asked Tom to go to his room, telling him he was just going to wash out their used mugs and he’d be there in a second, and raised one eyebrow at Wolf when his friend had left the kitchen. Wolf shrugged.

“It’s fine, Cub. I can’t exactly order that you never see anyone, can I?”

“No, it’s just, you said, at the beginning-”

Wolf shifted a little, and looked away, down at the mug of coffee he was cradling in his hands for warmth as he leant against the kitchen counter. “Yeah. A lot of what I said then was bollocks, OK?” he said, gruffly, and Alex knew that was as close to an apology as he’d get, and nodded, a little uncomfortably. “You might want to warn your friend, though.” Wolf told him, after a slight pause, during which Alex put their mugs into the dishwasher. “The rest of the unit found out that I was going out and thought they’d come round to keep you company.”

Alex stared at him sickly. “Oh god.”

Tom seemed on the verge of having a full-on hero-worshipping attack on hearing that an entire SAS unit was coming round that night, and that he was really going to get to meet them, and Alex could only hope that K-unit decided to be gentle with his friend. Having been on the receiving end of one too many of Eagle’s too-incisive comments, he could only imagine how harsh such a comment would seem to a teenager whose parents were going through a messy divorce.

The whole thing could get nasty very easily, and what was supposed to have been a relaxing Friday night with a friend was fast turning into a diplomatic mission. Inwardly, listening to Tom’s determinedly light chatter, Alex sighed. It would have been nice to catch a break, for once.

Wolf forced himself into a suit, and Alex smothered a grin. Had Tom not been there, he might have made some comment about the whole situation, something about how Gloria could get him into a suit when even MI6 couldn’t manage it – but he refrained. Wolf wouldn’t thank him for it, after all.

His guardian was just on the point of leaving when the rest of K-Unit arrived, and gave them some hurried orders by way of greeting – “don’t burn the place down, don’t beat Cub up, try not to use up too much electricity” – and ran for the door.

K-Unit watched him go in slightly-bemused silence. “I swear, that girlfriend of his scares him more than Iraqi insurgents.” Eagle said, after a pause.

“I can understand that.” Alex muttered, and gave the man a quick, awkward grin when he looked across at him. Alex had been watching the entire scene from the doorway of the kitchen, and Eagle now grinned at him in delight.

“Cub!” He crowed, cheerfully. “How are you?”

Alex took a hasty step backwards. “I’m just fine, thank you.” he said, quickly.

“You cooking tonight?” Fox interjected hopefully, and Alex crossed his arms over his chest, frowning at them.

“You only love me for my cooking.” He informed them, and Snake chuckled.

“No, we don’t love you at all, Cub.” Eagle told him, kindly. “We put up with you for your cooking.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you suck in this kind of situation?” Fox asked, elbowing his team-mate hard. “Now we’ll never get dinner out of him.”

Alex almost laughed at the whole thing, but stopped, remembering Tom in the kitchen. “Um – my friend’s here.” He said, then winced. He’d meant to be a little less blunt than that. “He’s… just in the kitchen.”

Eagle and Fox stopped their half-hearted by-play in favour of raising an eyebrow each, inquisitively. Snake nodded, slowly. “You want us to play nice?” he asked, quietly, and Alex nodded.

“Well, you’d better leave now, Neal.” Fox muttered, and received a quick slap upside the head.

“What’s his name?”

“Come through and I’ll introduce you…”

The introduction went off about as well as Alex could reasonably expected – Tom, thankfully, managed to tone down the dewy-eyed hero-worshipping, and acted relatively normally around the rest of K-Unit; apparently, that particular attitude was confined to Wolf only, however weird that might be – and K-Unit accepted his friend with equanimity, if not with interest. Surprisingly, Fox was the best with the other boy, drawing him into conversation and at least seeming interested in the answers he was getting; Alex put it down to the nephews Eagle had mentioned earlier that week. As far as he could tell, the questions were innocuous enough, and after listening in for a few seconds, he mentally slapped himself for being silly and paranoid, and turned away.

“So? Food?” Eagle asked, hopefully.

Alex considered it for a moment or two, then shook his head, firmly. If he cooked, he’d have to give Eagle something to do before the man broke something – whilst he knew from experience that the man was frighteningly efficient when on-duty and in what Alex privately termed ‘mission-focus’, he also knew that Eagle could be frighteningly dim when off-duty. All-in-all, it just wasn’t worth it. The image of Eagle trying to cook was the stuff of nightmares. “We’ll get a couple of pizzas, or something.” He said, firmly, and Eagle sighed.

“Aw, man. And I was so looking forward to some home-cooking.”

“You want home-cooking, go to your grandmother.” Alex sniped back. “What do I look like, a soup kitchen?”

Eagle tried to make with the puppy-eyes. “My gran’s dead, Cub.” He said, softly.

Alex shrugged, knowing that Eagle was putting it on – the man would never have parted with such personal information if it was true. Not to him, at least. “And, with you as a grandson, it probably came as a relief.” He returned, with a shrug. “Margarita or pepperoni?”

Eagle grinned. “You are one mean kid, has anyone ever told you that?”

Alex simply shrugged. “Well, we’ve all got to play to our strengths.” He pointed out, calmly, and turned away. “Maybe margarita and pepperoni.” He mused, and Eagle heaved a put-upon sigh.

“Well, if we’re not getting any of the good stuff out of you, the least you can do is order a decent pizza. C’mon, it’s gotta be Hawaiian or nothing.”

“Tom hates Hawaiian.” Alex returned, flatly.

“He can have the other pizza.” Eagle shrugged.

“Fine. Phone?”

Twenty minutes later, sat in the sitting room with two pizzas and the television on, Alex was going through what he was absolutely sure was the most uncomfortable night of his life. Had it been just him and Tom, everything would have been fine; if it had just been him and the rest of K-Unit, everything would have been equally fine. A mix of the two was apparently fatal.

Fox had long since run out of questions to ask, and Tom was too embarrassed, or too nervous, to ask any back himself. Alex himself found himself asking questions which were as innocuous as possible, just to keep some sort of conversation going; Snake was particularly good at bouncing his questions back, so they ended up with some kind of a conversation going. In desperation, Alex started in on football teams, and found, to his relief, that that was a subject on which everyone had an opinion. He relaxed for a few minutes, while Eagle and Tom discussed the relative value of playing Peter Crouch – whoever that was – in Liverpool games, and whether Fernando Torres was really a ‘good buy’ or not. Alex had once been a passionate supporter of Chelsea, but with the death of his uncle and everything with MI6, that had fallen by the wayside. For the moment, he was content just to listen to everyone else talk.

It was odd, having these two very different sides of his life meet like this, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he liked it. Tom was the friend who managed to bridge the gap for him, just a little, but it was strange enough for K-Unit to be helping with his homework and for him to be bringing his school problems home to Wolf without having a meal juggling his friend and his – well, not colleagues, exactly, but… people from ‘work’. It didn’t help that the only other time he’d seen K-Unit around children was at the Brecon Beacons when they’d been so unpleasant to him; he didn’t feel he could be faulted for feeling nervous about their reaction to Tom.

It was true that their attitude to Tom was subtly different to their attitude to him, but he couldn’t pinpoint in what way it was different, so he brushed that aside for the moment. The football conversation had lagged, and someone had to start up another topic.

Tom left about an hour later, and Alex got up to see him go.

“I’m really sorry about that.” He said, awkwardly, in the hallway. “I didn’t know they were going to be here.”

Tom shook his head with a small smile. “It’s not your fault, I know you weren’t expecting them. You should have seen the look on your face half the time, though! What did you think they were going to do, eat me?”

“You have no idea.” Alex muttered, and Tom chuckled.

“Fair enough. Look, I’ll see you tomorrow, OK? I think Ben, Nat and I were going to head over to the park, kick a football around, you fancy meeting up?”

Alex gave him a lopsided grin. “Sure. Sounds good – give me a ring before you head out. Green Park, right?”

“’Course.” He grinned. “See you tomorrow, Al.”

Alex headed back to the sitting room after Tom had left, where the rest of K-Unit were pretending to be engrossed in the ten o’clock news. Eagle gave him a quick, awkward grin and said, quietly,

“Sorry ’bout that, Cub. We, er… we didn’t mean to screw anything up.”

“You didn’t.” he shrugged. “What would you have screwed up?”

“Well, we didn’t know you’d invited anyone over, or we wouldn’t have come.” Fox said, a little awkwardly. “It’s always a bit weird, having civilians meet – people like us.”

Alex quirked a rather ironical smile at the idea of not being a civilian when Snake chipped in.

“Not to mention none of us are that great with kids. Not kids we don’t know, anyway.” He said, quietly. “And being around you all this time – it’s easy to forget that you’re not…” he paused. “After being round you, it’s too easy to forget that not all kids are like you.” he said, finally.

“And we didn’t know what we could and couldn’t mention in front of him.” Fox frowned. “I mean, how many of your friends even know that you do – what you do?”

“Just Tom.” Alex admitted. “I mean, it’s not like I can go round telling everyone, you know?”

“Yeah – guess not.”

They spent the rest of the night watching the late-night re-runs of ‘Have I Got News For You’, and Alex carefully stored the lesson away. The two sides of his life should, if possible, never mix again.

Saturday saw Alex in the kitchen at eight-thirty, calmly eating a bowl of cereal, only to be joined by a severely pissed-off Wolf a few minutes later.

“Hi. Good night?” he asked, politely, and Wolf responded with an unenthused grunt, pouring himself a bowl of cereal and sitting down at the table with a definite ‘thud’. For a few moments, there was silence in the kitchen – then Alex said, tactfully, “Coffee?”

The grunt was a little more positive this time.

By nine o’clock, Wolf was almost human again, and volunteered a little – a very little – about his night with Gloria, which had apparently been less than successful.

“She just kept talking about her job.” He shrugged, holding the coffee carefully in one hand as though it was some kind of sacred object; Alex had used the biggest mug he could find, but had made sure there was still water in the kettle for when his guardian wanted more.

“What does she do?”

“She’s a hotel manager.” Wolf told him, briefly, taking a deep swig of coffee whilst Alex tried to imagine Gloria in the business of looking after people’s happiness and well-being, which proved to be next to impossible. “Just got promoted within the chain she works for – something about becoming an administrator?” he shrugged. “There’s only so much you can say about it, you know?”

Alex ruthlessly smothered his own grin. “Yeah.”

“It wasn’t like I could just leave her there.” He pointed out, rather listlessly, taking another long sip. “So I just tuned her out. And then she asked me some question, and I made up some bullshit answer, and… yeah. That was how the rest of the evening went.”

“But she had a good time?”

“She was smiling a lot.” Wolf shrugged. “So I guess she must have.”

Alex opened his mouth to say something – then shut it again, firmly. “Yeah. Guess so.”

There was a long pause, while Wolf drained his first mug of coffee, and started, unenthusiastically, on his Cheerios. Finally, the man broke the silence himself, saying rather awkwardly,

“I talked to MI6 about this thing with your school.”

“Oh?” Alex looked up from his own cereal. “What do they suggest? Who did you talk to?”

“Deputy Head.” He said, poking at his food without meeting Alex’s eyes. “Mrs. Jones?”

“Yeah. Did they say anything useful?”

“No, not really. Just said they’d ‘handle it’ so long as I did my bit.” He gave a disgusted grunt and pushed his cereal away from him like it left a nasty taste in his mouth. “From what she said, I think they’re just planning to drown the whole thing in red tape, block it so that it never goes anywhere. It might be uncomfortable for a bit, but nothing’s going to happen.” He took a vicious sip of the re-filled mug of coffee.

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Alex said, uncertainly.

“Yeah. It’s good.” Wolf agreed, dully.

Alex debated whether or not to say it for a few moments, before he bit the bullet. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I mean, isn’t that what we wanted? To make sure that this didn’t go anywhere? It’s not like you actually did anything to me, and if MI6 didn’t get involved there’s no way-”

“No, that’s fine.” Wolf interrupted. “I mean, you living here is fine, it’s not like I…” he broke off, and Alex allowed himself to feel just the slightest bit relieved that Wolf hadn’t been hoping too use this as an excuse to get rid of him. But something was obviously bothering the man, and he felt this time he might get away with pushing his luck.

“What is it, then?”

“What if it was a real problem?” Wolf burst out, finally. “What if something really was wrong? They just implied that…” he firmly shut his mouth, visibly calming himself down. “It didn’t seem like this was a one-off thing because it fitted the situation.” He said, finally, in a more controlled tone. “It seemed like – this would be a standard reaction. And if there was something wrong with your home life and your school was just trying to help rather than jumping to the wrong conclusion…” he didn’t need to spell it out any further, and turned back to his soggy Cheerios, once more refusing to meet Alex’s eyes.

Alex supposed that the logical reaction would have been to feel worried about MI6’s apparent lack of concern for his safety, but he already knew about that – had had it firmly demonstrated to him on several occasions – and he couldn’t bring himself to feel particularly worried about it. His immediate reaction was a feeling of warmth; Wolf’s admission, awkward and stilted though it had been, meant a lot.

He didn’t need to reply to it, thankfully – both of them would have been left feeling embarrassed, so it was safer simply to nod and ignore it. But he wasn’t going to forget it.

After making sure that Wolf was well-supplied with coffee, Alex headed out to Green Park, and spent a couple of hours playing a two-on-two game of football with his friends, after which they hung around the area in front of Buckingham Palace – very close to Green Park – and made fun of the tourists. For once, he was almost reluctant to leave his friends, a feeling he hadn’t had since before his uncle’s death; Tom was as fun as always, the football had been a laugh, and both Nat and Ben didn’t seem to be about to question him on anything awkward. In fact, it was almost like they had accepted him right back into the normal swing of things, and Alex appreciated that more than he could ever put into words.

On the Tube back home, Tom had shrugged off his badly-worded question with a smile. “You’ve been back at school for, what – a month and a half now? That’s got to be a record for you.” He pointed out. “It’s too long for them all just to keep ignoring you, so they’re ignoring the bits that they didn’t understand – y’know, why you disappeared and all that. Everyone just reckons you’re back on the straight and narrow.”

Alex grinned. “Right.” For a few moments, at least, life felt normal – and Alex had learned to take moments like that and treasure them.

After all, he reflected, he was going to need something to hold onto in the week to come.

And there you go. Hope you liked it! Do tell... 297 people have this on alert. I promise, if I get 297 reviews for this chapter, I'll probably have an apoplexy.

D'oh! I mean, if I get 297 reviews for this chapter, I promise an update by next week. I think I'm pretty safe promising that, don't you?

Oh! A couple of people have asked me this, and I'll clear it up here. Wolf's real name is not, NOT, James San Luca in the books - I made it up. We never find out his name in the books. He's described as being 'dark', so I figured why not make him Hispanic? Hence the name 'James san Luca'. If anyone's wondering, it's because I watched 'Pretty Woman' before starting this story, and the actress who played 'Kit de Luca' was called something 'san Giacomo', so I just combined the names.

So, yeah. 'James san Luca' was my fanon creation, not canon. I'm delighted that people like it enough to use it, though, but it's not canon. Nor is the fact that he read Chemistry at Uni. That's also me. Sorry, guys.

-amitai