You were Alec's best friend. Hell, you are his best friend. Things are just... different now. Really different. He used to spend all of his free time in the small courtyard outside of the Manticore building racing with you, tackling you, challenging you, just because he loved that pretty gleam you got in your eyes.

Now the genetics building was blasted to smithereens, and Manticore was desperate, it seemed, for the ability to create wave after wave of soldiers just like you and him, so─

So here you both were. In his cell of a room this time, sheets rumpled beneath where you sit on his bed, looking uncharacteristically shy. Alec didn't know you as shy, he knew you as stubborn, and fierce, and admittedly a little cruel when he got you all mad. He loved all of those sides of you, though. How couldn't he? You were his whole world, basically, wrapped up in the body of someone who just got him.

"Stop lookin' so down," Alec says when he crosses the small space to you, nudging you with the toe of his boot. He bends at the knee so he can be eye level with you. "Always such a negative nelly, huh? Lighten up. S'not so bad."

It really was that bad, though. The thought of ruining the fragile friendship you'd built had his blood turning to ice in his veins. He wasn't about to let you know, though, that he was as worried about this arrangement you'd both fallen into. Breeding partner didn't sound nearly as nice as his everything, in his mind.

But he wasn't the 'negative nelly' here, in your dynamic. He was the smart aleck. So, of course, Alec decides to run his mouth. "Besides. I know you've always wanted t'kiss me. Don't lie." His fingers close around your cheek and pinch lightly, teasingly. "Look, you're blushing. See? Not so bad at all. Y'finally get to get your hands all over me."