The best kind of trophy - Yautja x Reader

Chapter 5: Way to go, Max

"Look alive, sunshine!"

Max groaned out one of the most miserable sounds known to men. She curled into a fetal position and buried her face in the cushions while someone tried to shake her awake incessantly.

Her head was filled with brain-melting pain as, on top of her self-induced hangover, the memories of the passed day came flooding in and made her wish she had neither finished off the bottle of whisky by herself, nor watched the recordings until the buttcrack of dawn.

"What time is it?" she managed to croak out eventually as the hand kept rattling her awake mercilessly.

"About seven A.M. Come one now, up and at 'em soldier! Work starts at eight."

"Fuck you. It's too early," muttered Max.

Matthew was the embodiment of a morning person. Witnessing him being in a good mood, despite herself feeling like she was about to keel over, annoyed the daylights out of her. The last thing a hot mess like herself needed was being bombarded with saccharine positivity in the morning. She'd rather snort some coffee powder, be doom and gloom, and wallow in self-pity until the caffeine kicked in.

"I brought coffee" offered Matt.

"Okay, maybe I was too harsh."

She heard her joints crack as she sat up and scooted over so that Matthew could sit down beside her.

Max took the big coffee-cup from his hands with gratitude and downed half of it in one fell swoop in an attempt to accelerate the reanimation of her addled mind.

A hum of surprise and delight left her lips as her friend placed a Tupperware container filled with waffles in her lap.

"Did Allison make those? Holy hell, that woman's an angel!"

"You know what she's like. She also asked me to invite you for dinner tonight, and to let you know that attendance is mandatory" said Matthew as he failed to hide a satisfied expression that men only displayed when talking about a beloved.

Max didn't have time to feel vicarious happiness for her friend's wonderful relationship as the past day's events dawned on her with might akin to a punch in the gut.

Despite being drunk and horrified, she had managed to observe an oddity on those recordings.

She acknowledged the invitation with a nod and sprung from the couch, almost plopping back down again as her sore spine protested against such spontaneous movement.

"I watched the videos," she started and made her way towards the hallway leading to his office as she absentmindedly chewed on one of the waffles "-and, I know this sounds weird, but-"

"How about you finish that coffee, have a shower and then we go over yesterday's incident before opening a new can of worms. I know you go haywire in the mornings." Suggested Matthew as he grabbed her by the back of her shirt in order to keep her from hurrying off.

She huffed in annoyance.

All things considered; Max had found that the alien was awfully calm. She felt silly thinking about it, for the countless personnel that had found themselves at the receiving end of a smack-down would gladly argue otherwise. Yet when analyzing the video-footage, Max had realized that none of it was unprovoked. He had only lashed out on when either boundaries were crossed, or when he found himself challenged.

Which meant that he wasn't desperate.

-Which meant that he knew something they didn't –

If she were so much as suggest such a thing, which was still a theory at best since Max could very well be wrong in her assessment, she knew that her superiors would get very desperate and very scared. And that could get very dangerous for the imprisoned alien.