Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They fight. Of course they fight.

They fight because Nasir has lived most of his life on his own, and Agron loves him so much he can’t help but hover. They fight on the job, when Agron shoves Nasir out of the way of a knife-wielding body-guard and it’s only his reflexes and Nasir’s somewhat terrifying hand-to-hand combat skills that help him avoid a switch-blade to the gut.

Agron grew up in a family where they got loudly and explosively angry, threw shit and shouted themselves hoarse, and then made up in time to watch television or play rugby together after dinner that night.

When Nasir gets angry, he turns inward, goes deathly quiet, and disappears for a couple days. He always comes back, usually in the dead of night with a smile like a knife-edge on his lips, and a body eager for Agron’s hands. In the morning, the front page news usually reports the theft of some priceless piece of art and Nasir just laughs when Agron gapes at the headlines, and tugs him back to bed.

The point is, though, that Nasir always comes back. And Agron is always there to welcome him home, to cook him food, and then burn said food by dragging Nasir into their bed and forgetting that he’d turned the stove on until the smoke alarm goes off.

And that, he concludes, slightly frantically, over the phone to Duro, is why this time is different. Because it’s been over a week – a week and two days, Agron could list how many hours, not that he’s counting – and Nasir isn’t back.

And they hadn’t fought before he left, not really. They had argued sleepily over what to watch on TV while they ate their pad thai and decompressed from the most recent mission, but Agron had let Nasir win, and they had watched The Great British Bake-Off instead of Die Hard. He hadn’t even complained that much, mostly because they left the takeout cartons and the television behind halfway through the episode and migrated to their bedroom instead.

And Agron had woken up the next morning, pleasantly sore and mildly sticky, and Nasir was gone. He didn’t start panicking until mid-afternoon, because Nasir did that sometimes. He was a habitually early riser, and he could be up and go for a run and return with coffee before Agron had hit snooze on his alarm. Except this time was different. Because by mid-afternoon, when Agron had showered, cleaned the apartment, and eaten the rest of the takeout for lunch, Nasir still wasn’t back. And he wasn’t back that night, or the night after. And now it had been over a week, and Agron was panicking.

“Not to sound callous,” Duro says, his voice tinny and not at all reassuring over the phone, “but if he was killed while stealing a fucking Michelangelo or something, it would be on the news and we would know. And if he was captured and beaten senseless by the mob and is being held in a concrete block somewhere in Russia, we would also know, because Pietros would have called and told you, and you would have flown to Russia and ripped everyone responsible apart with your bare hands.”

“Your bedside manner needs work,” Agron hisses, his fingers making the plastic phone case creak with the strain.

“Agron. You need to calm the fuck down, alright? He’s okay. Probably. He’s either under deep cover, and he’ll be back once he’s done stealing the Mona Lisa, or he’s still pissed at you, and he’ll be back when he fucking feels like it.”

“I told you,” Agron spits, “we didn’t fight. It’s different this time. It’s like he meant to be back soon and instead he’s been gone for over a week.”

Duro sighs, a metallic rush of noise down the line. “Okay,” he says, wearily. “Okay. If you really, truly think that some shit went down, Auctus and I will break cover, and we will fly to London for you. Tell me what you need.”

Agron opens his mouth to tell his younger brother to fuck everything else and come help him find Nasir, when there is the unmistakable sound of a key turning the wrong way in the lock. He freezes, and his gun is in his hand, safety off and trained at the door in between one breath and the next.

“Someone at the door,” he murmurs to Duro. “I’ll call you back.”

The key clicks in the lock, and it swings open abruptly, like someone has pushed all their weight against it in exhaustion. Agron tenses, and then exhales, very, very slowly, when he sees that it’s Nasir. He looks like shit, with tangled hair, and huge, dark circles under his eyes. He looks thinner than he did when he left, and he has his own gun out, pointed lazily at the floor as if he’s too tired to aim. There is a splash of what looks like dried blood on his side, and Agron tenses all over again, his heart thumping furiously inside his chest.

“Where the hell have you been?” He asks, setting his gun down on the couch and moving to Nasir’s side. “Are you hurt?”

“Not my blood,” Nasir says quietly. Agron stops a meter away from him, and watches him.

Nasir looks exhausted, but there is tension radiating off of him, like he’s about to snap and break in to messy pieces right in front of Agron’s eyes. His fingers twitch and there’s a loud click as he turns the safety back on and then a thump as he drops his gun on the floor. He won’t look Agron in the eye, and he takes a deep, shuddering breath, like his ribs are broken.

Agron’s hands itch with the urge to touch and make sure that he’s not battered, not bloody anywhere, but he waits, because Nasir needs space sometimes, and he’s learning, or, at least, he’s trying to learn to let him have it. He waits until Nasir takes another breath that breaks in half over a sob, and turns to look at him with thinned lips and eyes full of tears. His arms are open before Nasir falls against his chest, and he holds on until Nasir stops shaking.

Nasir dries his eyes efficiently when he’s done, straightens his own shoulders and steps back a little bit.

“I need a bath,” he says, spine rigid and strong once more, “and I’m starving. Will you cook me something?”

Agron nods, places large hands around his neck carefully and kisses him until Nasir’s cheeks look a little less pale.

“I could make some of that French onion soup you like,” he says, quietly, and Nasir smiles and nods, his fingers twisting creases into Agron’s shirt for a while before he seems to force himself to step away and move to the bathroom and their claw foot tub.

Agron lets him go, gathers himself and moves to the kitchen, only turning when Nasir calls his name from the door to the bathroom.

“I love you,” Nasir says, quietly, and the words warm Agron’s chest the way only Nasir can.

“I love you too,” he says. “Go take a bath.”

Nasir ducks his head to hide the blush he gets every time Agron tells him he loves him, and goes.

Agron starts the soup, slicing onions and grating gruyere, listening to the noises from the bathroom. Nasir has left the door to the bathroom open, which he does sometimes when he wants Agron to join him, or when he needs to be reassured that although he’s making himself vulnerable, there is still someone in the vicinity who can protect him if they’re attacked. The water runs, and Agron starts to cook the onions, concentrating on the way they soften and turn brown. There is silence from the bathroom and he reaches blindly for a bottle of white wine to add to the soup.

He makes croutons from a loaf of nearly stale bread, rubbing the pieces of bread with garlic and topping them with cheese, listening for the soft splashes that mean that Nasir hasn’t fallen asleep in the tub and drowned.

He likes French onion soup because Nasir loves French onion soup, even more than he loves the sushi they get from the exclusive little Japanese restaurant near Paddington. He likes the soup because it’s warm and hearty, and because it makes their entire flat smell like heaven. When it’s nearly ready, and simmering gently on the hob, he walks into the bathroom and presses soft kisses to Nasir’s shoulders, getting in the way by virtue of being too tall and too clingy while Nasir tries to dry his hair and put his shirt on. Actually, it’s not his shirt – it’s one of Agron’s, a blue one with the neck stretched out so much it hangs off of one of Nasir’s shoulders.

He smiles at Agron in the mirror as he ties his hair up neatly, and tugs at the collar of the shirt. He looks a little better already – less brittle, and less pale. Agron kisses the back of his neck because it always makes him shiver, and then stoops down to gather the bloodied shirt Nasir had folded neatly and dispose of it.

But Nasir grips his arm, and takes the shirt from him, his hands stuttering over the blood-stain.

“Don’t,” he says. “Not yet.”

Nasir’s quiet again when they move into the kitchen and Agron spoons the soup into two bowls. He eats like he hasn’t in a couple of days, bent over his food, and Agron eats his own much more slowly and watches the shirt slide down Nasir’s shoulder. He gets up to get seconds for Nasir without being asked, and Nasir eats the second bowl of soup much slower, smiling like he’s savouring every mouthful.

When the soup is done, Agron stands up to make coffee, smiling internally over how domestic they’ve become, despite the switchblades taped beneath the sink and the guns in the linen closet and the Rothko in the spare room he’s not supposed to know about.

Nasir trails his spoon lazily around the inside of his bowl and watches him. The bloody shirt from earlier is on one of the chairs at the kitchen table, and he runs his fingers around the edge of the bloodstain when Agron comes back to the table with the coffee.

“Her name was Chadara,” he says suddenly, his hands determinedly steady as he puts cream and sugar in his coffee. “She was like a sister to me.”

Agron looks at the bloody shirt and Nasir’s falsely steady hands. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and Nasir smiles crookedly and looks up at him.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” he says, and puts his hands down on the table to hide the way they’ve started to tremble. “I think it’s time that you knew.”

Chapter Text

“Chadara,” Nasir begins slowly, holding her name in his mouth like a prayer. “Chadara was like my little sister when I was on the streets. She was my blood, just not by birth. But, it... You’ve gotta be tough, right? When you’re a kid, and you’re on the street – trusting anybody is dangerous, and caring about somebody?” He shakes his head and looks deep into his coffee. “You don’t do that shit, because it’s another mouth to feed, another back to watch, and it’s hard enough keeping your own head above water, let alone someone else’s.”

Nasir sighs, and rubs at his eyes. He looks tired again, but healthier than he did when he first stumbled through the door. Agron shifts, slides one foot between Nasir’s and drags it against his calf. Nasir smiles, a tired little one that settles in the corner of his lips and soothes the creases in his forehead.

"I don't trust easily," he says, quietly, and out of the corner of his mouth, like he's not sure if he wants Agron to hear.

"You trust me," Agron says, knocking their ankles together, gently, and Nasir smiles, but doesn't meet his eyes.

"Yeah, I do," he says, soft, like it still surprises him. "Took me a while, though." He knots his fingers, and taps them against the table top.

“I cared about Chadara,” he continues, after another minute, “even though I shouldn’t have, because I just couldn’t help myself. She was about my age, and she had all this blonde, blonde hair that looked like it might have come outta a bottle it was so bright. She didn’t ever really talk about how she ended up on the street, but it was obvious she’d come from money. She wasn’t too good at saving, you know, and she was always hungry, and I’d always catch her staring after nice things in shops, things we’d never be able to afford. She didn’t know her way around the world, but made me laugh like no one else did, so I looked after her.”

He shrugs, and Agron just smiles, because it took chasing Nasir across the world for him to understand that Nasir has the biggest heart of anyone he’s ever met. The only reason he runs is because he’s scared of getting that big heart broken.

“I used to steal things for her,” Nasir says quietly. “Little things, shit she didn’t need, shit that wouldn’t fill an empty stomach or keep you warm at night, but would make her smile. Jewelry, clothes, sometimes, lipsticks from department store counters.” He shrugs again. “She never looked like she belonged on the streets, and she was so pretty she never had to fight for a meal or somewhere to sleep. When we got older she’d put on her stolen clothes and doll herself up and walk into a fancy bar and find some rich man to take her home. I tried to look out for her, but it was harder then, and they’d take her on trips across the world and I wouldn’t see her for months at a time. I hadn’t seen her for years when she contacted me this time. We fought, the last time I saw her, and said a lot of things we shouldn’t, and she went off to Greece with some man she’d met, and I didn’t hear from her for years.”

“She contacted you?” Agron asks, and Nasir nods, sighing heavily and tipping his head back against the wall.

“Out of nowhere, called me on a burner phone one morning about a week ago. Said she was in London, said she was in trouble and she managed to give me an address before the call was cut off.” He straightens and looks at Agron, guilt clouding his expression.

“I didn’t mean to be away for so long,” he says, quietly. “I thought I’d go in, get her away from some rich, drunk bastard and get her somewhere safe by that night. But it didn’t quite work out like that.”

“You were in London all week?” Agron asks, frowning, and Nasir shakes his head.

“Berlin for a day,” he sighs. “I went to the address she gave me and there was no one there. I thought it might have been a trick, but… she was scared. On the phone, she sounded terrified. And Chadara, she was like a ray of goddamn sunshine, and she was never scared. Not once, not ever. She walked through life like nothing could touch her, and it used to drive me crazy, but I knew there was something wrong because she sounded scared. Really, truly scared.”

“So you went rushing off to rescue her,” Agron says, sliding his foot against Nasir’s.

“I was going to call you when I got back to London,” Nasir says, looking at him and then quickly away. “I was, really, but then I got shot at and lost my phone chasing the asshole down.”

Agron sits up straight, something cold racing down his spine. “You got shot at,” he says flatly, and Nasir reaches across the table for him, tangling their fingers and giving Agron his hands to squeeze in the place of a trigger.

“They missed,” he promises, and then sighs at the look on Agron’s face. “Agron. Agron, I’m fine.”

“What about the guy who shot at you?” Agron growls, and Nasir smirks.

“Taken care of,” he says flippantly, and then flicks at Agron’s fingers when he grunts. “I can take care of myself, you know. I took care of myself for a long time before you showed up.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Agron says and he stands to clear away the coffee cups from their table when Nasir smiles and settles back in his chair, his eyes drooping closed. He dumps the cups in the sink and pushes his hands into Nasir’s hair, smiling when he slumps forward, relaxed in a way he only ever gets in their home.

“Come on,” he murmurs, kneading Nasir’s shoulders, “come to bed. You must be exhausted.”

“Don’t you want to hear more about the man who tried to shoot me?” Nasir asks, casting a look at Agron over his shoulder as he moves around the kitchen, moving the pots and plates from dinner into the sink.

“I want to hear more about how you chased him down and killed him,” Agron says, smiling easily, and Nasir leans into his shoulder as he moves them back towards their bedroom.

“Do you ever think that this is not how relationships are supposed to work?” Nasir asks, once they’re safe inside the bedroom.

“What do you mean?” Agron asks, watching Nasir move slowly around their room, stripping off his shirt and pants in favour of bare skin and briefs, exhaustion stripping his usual, easy grace from his limbs.

“You know what I mean,” Nasir says, climbing into the bed and shoving the covers down to his feet.

And Agron does know. Because there is a balled up shirt stained with blood draped over one of their kitchen chairs, and at least two handguns concealed in their bedroom, possibly more. Nasir’s fingers are dexterous because of his skill with lock-picking, and when Agron isn’t playing the housewife – making soup and cleaning their home and loving Nasir in it – he kills people for a living. Bad people, men who deserve nothing more than that bullet to the heart, but still.

“It’s ours, though,” he says, sliding into bed and burying his nose in the soft tumble of Nasir’s hair at the back of his neck. “And it’s good. It works.”

Nasir hums in agreement, and tucks a warm hand around one of Agron’s shoulders. He’s a little bruised from his week away, small patches of purple against tanned skin, and thin; drawn. Agron has plans to keep him in bed and feed him good food – takeaway for when they’re lazy, and crusty bread from that bakery they both like in Paddington, but there’s a tension, a thrumming energy beneath Nasir’s skin that means that they’re not actually going to be staying in bed for quite as long as he would hope.

“You’re going after them again, aren’t you?” He asks, his words muffled in the smooth skin of Nasir’s back.

There’s a beat, and then: “Yes.”

Agron nods, shifts, and waits for Nasir to turn until they’re facing each other. Nasir looks… guilty, almost, the way he always does when he stops to study the way Agron looks at him.

“I’m coming with you,” Agron says, and a smile flashes across Nasir’s face, bright and all-encompassing. He fights with it, but it takes over, settles into the corners of his mouth and wipes the lines from his face.

“I thought you might,” Nasir says, and reaches over to turn the light off and hide how wide his smile has grown.

Chapter Text

Nasir falls asleep shortly after he turns the light out, dropping into a deep, motionless slumber that’s more telling of his exhaustion than any dark circles.

Agron keeps a hand on his chest, pressing him lightly to the bed, and counting his heartbeats.

+

It took months for them to adjust to sleeping beside one another.

Agron had always been a light sleeper, out of necessity, because of his profession, and because he was an older brother with a younger brother prone to mischief, but Nasir was able to snap from asleep to fighting fit in a fraction of a second.

One of the first nights they shared a bed, Agron draped an arm around Nasir’s waist and quickly found himself in a chokehold.
They stuck to opposite sides of the bed, after that, but still managed to startle each other awake when they jerked and lashed out in reaction to bad dreams.

Agron slept on the sofa for a week after Nasir gave him a black eye and he retaliated with a sharp punch to the ribs before waking up fully and realizing that he wasn’t really under attack. They’d ended up on either side of the bedroom, nursing their injuries and watching each other warily. Nasir’s hair was loose, and he’d stared at Agron through it, his eyes deep and shadowed.

Agron’s self-imposed exile on the sofa was in direct reaction to that hunted look in Nasir’s eyes. He’d learned the hard way not to push.

At the end of an exhausting, irritable week, where Nasir disappeared for hours each day, returning late at night full of the same nervous, shifting energy, and Agron spent his days wandering aimlessly around posh furniture stores, glaring at sofas and banquettes and frightening sales people, Nasir came to Agron.

The sofa in the first apartment they bought together was upholstered in some kind of horrifically stiff leather with brass buttons, and was not really suited for sitting or lying down on. It was too short for Agron’s legs, and smelled like the antique shop they’d found it in. He’d spent most of the week sleeping in various and contorted positions, and waking up with strained muscles and a stiff neck. It was better, though, than hurting Nasir while he slept. Here, sleeping fitfully and uncomfortably, there was no danger of hurting anyone but himself.

He’d put the TV on before curling up on the sofa, and watch the late night programming on the cooking channels with the volume on low. Nasir would pull the door to the bedroom closed with a click, and Agron would grit his teeth and convince himself that he could hear Nasir shifting peacefully in the sheets.

Nasir broke the stalemate with dark shadows under his eyes. They’d finished dinner, vindaloo takeaway from the Indian curry place around the corner because Agron was too tired to cook, and Agron was just sliding down the couch in front of the television, reaching blindly for the enormous knitted blanket he’d bought on sale at a home-goods store to make the couch marginally more comfortable.

His neck had twinged, as he’d stretched himself out and then folded himself back up again until he fit, and Nasir had glowered and exhaled sharply.

“When are you going to stop being such a stubborn son of a bitch and come back to bed?” He snapped and Agron had cracked an eye open to look at him, standing in the bedroom door with folded arms.

“I’m being a stubborn son of a bitch?”

“I know I’m not…” Nasir had started and then floundered, exhaling again through his nose in a sharp rush, and looked away.

Agron, pushing his tiredness to the corners of his mind, kicked the blanket to the floor and sat up. “You’re not what?” He asked.

“I’m not an ideal sleeping partner,” Nasir said, stiffly, and something in his tone stopped the dirty joke on the tip of Agron’s tongue. “And… I’m sorry for trying to strangle you in my sleep and for punching you in the face. It’s… I’m…” He stopped, huffed, and turned big eyes on Agron. “I’m not used to sleeping next to anyone. Turns out I’m not very good at it.”

Agron rubbed a hand across his face, and looked up at Nasir, who was hanging on to the doorjamb with a mixture of defiance and nerves. “The only reason I’ve been sleeping out here,” he said slowly, “is because last time we tried to sleep next to each other, I socked you in the ribs.”

“I tried to choke you out,” Nasir said calmly, after a moment. “That’s worse.”

“I’m heavier than you, I could hurt you without meaning to.”

“I gave you a black eye,” Nasir snapped, “I have hurt you without meaning to.”

“I bruised your ribs,” Agron countered, standing up to argue.

“I taped a knife to the bed frame!” Nasir shouted at him, striding forward.

“I’ve got a gun in my bedside table!” Agron shouted back, and they both startled apart when someone thumped on the floor below and shouted something unintelligible.

Sagging, Agron sighed and sat back down on the couch, rubbing his hand across his eyes. “Fuck. We’re gonna get kicked out and they’re not going to give us our security deposit back.”

“I haven’t been sleeping,” Nasir said, quietly, dropping down beside Agron.

“Yeah,” Agron muttered, “me neither.”

Nasir was silent for a minute, before he took a breath and said: “I loosened the latches on the windows in the bedroom, and I’ve been climbing out at night.”

Agron stared. “We’re on the tenth floor.”

Nasir shrugged. “There are easy handholds, all the way down.”

Agron stared at him until he fidgeted, before sighing and confessing: “I think I pulled a muscle in my back sleeping on the couch. And I’ve been spending all of my time in furniture stores.”

“I know,” Nasir said quietly. “I’ve been following you.”

Agron huffed out a laugh, and shook his head. “We may be too fucked up to live together.” Nasir’s shoulders pulled tight, and Agron clamped a hand on his thigh to keep him in place. “That doesn’t mean we’re not going to try, though,” he said, and then stood, pulling Nasir towards the bedroom. “Come on, I’m exhausted.”

They spent the night on opposite sides of the bed. At dawn, Nasir startled awake and kicked at Agron, who caught his ankle where it had tangled in the sheets and held it until Nasir was fully awake, panting and wide-eyed.

“I…” he began, but Agron just squeezed his ankle gently and released it, grinning.

“You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that to kick me out of bed.”

+

Nasir shifts, sighing in his sleep and bringing a palm up to join Agron’s on his chest. Smiling softly, Agron ducks his head to kiss Nasir’s collarbone, and resumes his watch. Nasir is beautiful when he sleeps: his face relaxed and gentle. When he remembers, he braids his hair before bed, but Agron likes it best when he forgets to do so, and falls asleep with it loose.

At the moment, Nasir is warm and solid under Agron’s hands, and Agron lets his gaze slip away from scanning for activity outside of their bedroom window for just a moment, to map the lines of Nasir’s body with quick, sure glances. He looks slimmer than he did a week ago, and pale. There’s a scrape on the heel of one of his palms, continued on the underside of his fore-arm, and a handful of small cuts on his ankles and wrists. Nothing that time and rest won’t heal.

Agron remembers, unwittingly, the way he’d looked at the door earlier that evening, splashed with dried blood and weary. His stomach swoops unpleasantly, and he grits his teeth against the rush of fury he feels. He would give just about anything to keep Nasir safe and happy with plenty of homemade food, illegally liberated artwork, and perfectly balanced throwing knives, and the fact that anyone had the gall to hurt someone Nasir was close to makes him furious.

Towards dawn, when Agron’s eyes are feeling heavy, and the sky over London is lightening slowly along the rim of rooftops they can see out of their bedroom window, Nasir tenses in Agron’s arms.

Agron blinks, and Nasir bucks wildly, all wiry strength and panicked energy and rolls out of his arms, hands going on instinct for the weapons that remain concealed beneath their bedframe.

Agron dodges a punch and catches Nasir’s fist in mid-air, wrapping his fingers around it and drawing it to his mouth for a kiss.

“Nasir,” he says, softly, “baby.”

Nasir’s free hand comes swinging wildly towards him, and he sees the moment Nasir wakes up enough to realize what’s happening. His eyes widen and he deflects his blow, missing Agron’s side by centimeters.

They sit for a moment, breathing heavily, and Agron keeps steady pressure around Nasir’s fist, willing him to calm down and breathe.

“Shit,” Nasir says finally. “Fuck, shit. Sorry, I…. sorry.”

He wriggles his hand a little, and Agron lets him go, and watches quietly as Nasir examines the blade in his other hand. He sighs and throws it without looking, burying it in the far wall of their bedroom.

“Hey now,” Agron says placidly. “Duro and I worked really fucking hard to plaster that wall.”

Nasir snorts, then rubs the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m kinda fucked up right now,” he says, and he doesn’t meet Agron’s eyes when he looks up, frowning instead at the knife buried hilt-deep in their bedroom wall. “I told you it was a bad idea, when we first met, remember? Getting attached to people. It makes you vulnerable. I mean…” He sighs and pulls at a loose strand of hair, “we’re always vulnerable, we work in a dangerous world. But when you get attached, there are people besides you that could get hurt, and if they get hurt you get hurt. You know what I mean?”

Agron nods, “Doesn’t mean getting attached isn’t worth it.”

Nasir smiles softly and walks his fingers across the tangled sheets to Agron’s hand. “I know that now.” He squeezes Agron’s hand, and Agron clings to the sensation of Nasir being there, alive and solid, and fighting. “Sorry about the plaster.”

“I’m sorry about Chadara,” Agron says quietly, and Nasir grimaces.

“Yeah,” he mutters, “me too.”

“What can I do to help?” Agron asks, and Nasir smiles at him, crookedly.

“You could help me kill a man. Maybe a couple of men. Slowly, and painfully. And then breakfast. You could cook me breakfast.”

Agron cups a hand around the back of Nasir’s head, rubs his fingers through his tangled hair and pulls him in until he can kiss the sour taste from his mouth.

“I can do breakfast right now,” he says, “and then we can call Pietros and see what we can do about killing a man.”

Nasir grins, and darts in to steal another kiss.

Chapter Text

Pietros and Barca live in Camden Town, in the roof of a warehouse that looks like it should be condemned. Agron and Nasir have to cross Camden Lock to get there, and they duck into various bustling stalls in the market to make sure they’re not being followed.

Nasir lets Agron lead, following him silently into and out of curry stalls, past tattooed vendors selling offensive t-shirts and plastic hair extensions, and through two vintage shops crowded with sour-smelling clothes. They duck behind the back of a pub that’s swarming with tourists, and into a dank alley that ends in a crumbling brick wall that comes to a barbed-wire peak some feet above Agron’s head.

Agron quirks his eyebrow at the wall, and laces his fingers together to give Nasir a foothold.

Nasir rolls his eyes, shoves Agron’s shoulder until he’s out of the way and takes a running leap at the wall, kicking off of a broken slab of brick that juts out from the wall at waist height.

Swinging upwards, he catches hold of a rusted fire escape that’s dangling from a boarded-up window to the side of the wall and swings himself over the barbed wire. He lands near silently on the other side and Agron sighs.

“Show-off,” he calls, hauling himself up and over the wall, with much less grace than Nasir did. He trips when he gets to the other side, sliding in some rank mud that’s collected in the alley on the other side of the wall, and the fire escape rattles noisily when he lets go of it.

“Not a word,” he says, pointing at Nasir, and strides off down the second alleyway. Nasir is quite obviously laughing at him behind his back, but it’s better than being hollow-eyed and exhausted, so he allows it.

The alley behind the wall they’ve vaulted over is not much nicer than the one before. It smells, like rubbish and damp, and ends in a wall of over-lapping corrugated steel, the back-side of a warehouse that looks as if it’s been abandoned for years.

When they reach the steel wall, Agron looks up, squints into the shadowed eaves of the warehouse until his eyes catch a tell-tale glint of a camera lens (something he only ever sees because Pietros has seen him first), and salutes at it.

Nasir, already tense behind him, looks up abruptly at the motion, squints in the direction of the camouflaged camera, and makes a soft noise of comprehension. Agron takes his hand, squeezes it, and pulls back one of the layers of steel, tugging until there’s enough room for Nasir to squeeze through, and for him to follow.

They pause for a moment for their eyes to adjust, and for Nasir to register the security features in the burned out inside of the warehouse. Dust, trailing through rays of light let in by gaps in the warehouse siding, makes criss-crossing lines of motion sensors stand out momentarily, before disappearing into the gloom.

“Impressive,” Nasir mutters, turning on the spot, his eyes flicking quickly over the inside of the warehouse. “Where do they live?”

“Up top,” Agron says, and points, to the middle of the warehouse where the hulking shapes of rusted machinery hide a surprisingly elegant spiral staircase, that can only be seen at certain angles. There’s a sound that isn’t so much a sound as an absence of noise in the already quiet warehouse, and Agron takes a minute to glance around, be sure the motion sensors have been turned off before offering his arm to Nasir. “Shall we?”

They climb the staircase – matte black metal, intricately designed, because Pietros has a not-so-secret passion for interior design, and Barca can’t deny him anything – two floors up, and straight into a concrete foyer with a single, wooden door, that opens before Agron can even raise his hand to knock.

Pietros, half-naked and with a mug of coffee in hand, puts a fist on his hip and raises an eyebrow. “What time do you call this?”

“It’s half twelve, Pietros,” Agron sighs, pushing him gently out of the way and leading Nasir inside. “And this is an emergency.”

Pietros takes a long sip of coffee, eyeing Nasir steadily over the rim of the mug. “Excellent,” he says finally, turning on his heel and striding off into the cavernous apartment at the top of the warehouse, “I love emergencies.”

Nasir, his eyebrows up at his hairline, turns to Agron and says: “I didn’t realize he was so young.”

“Pietros is a prodigy,” Agron says, shrugging. “An incredibly illegal prodigy with a sweet-tooth the size of a planet. Come on, it smells like Barca’s cooking.”

The top of the warehouse manages to be both sparse and luxurious at the same time. The floors are all concrete, covered at random in shaggy rugs. The furniture itself seems to have been chosen and displayed at random. There are beautiful leather sofas beside lumpy armchairs with a terrible, paisley upholstery Agron is sure Pietros picked out for the sole purpose of annoying visitors.

There are bookshelves here and there, all stuffed with books and papers and knick-knacks from around the world – Agron has to pull Nasir away from a framed collection of beautifully engraved daggers that’s resting on one – along with art, none of it hung. Ducking around an enormous marble statue, and pulling Nasir with him, and away from what Agron has never been able to tell is a real Monet or not, they find Barca, wearing an apron over his bare chest, and flipping bacon.

“Hungry?” He calls, turning towards them with a wide, welcoming smile.

This little corner of the warehouse has always been Agron’s favourite. The bed is hidden behind a pair of antique bamboo screens, and they have a small, free-standing kitchen with a large table, and a big, plushy couch that Pietros is currently curled up on, tapping away on a tablet. His computers are behind the couch, close to a dozen monitors running code and news sites from around the world, or video feed.

Nasir settles on the couch beside Pietros when prompted, while Agron sits on a chair at the table and says: “Starving.”

Barca, who had quit culinary school to become Pietro’s bodyguard and husband after a legendary meeting that began outside of Le Cordon Bleu, and ended on the run from the gendarmes through Paris, moves with tender precision in their kitchen as he plates eggs, bacon, fried bread, and intricately cut fruit for four.

“There’s coffee, if anyone wants,” he says, while handing around plates, and pours Agron a cup without looking for his nod.

Pietros and Nasir join them at the table to eat, Pietros tucking his tablet next to a glass of orange juice, his eyes flicking across it frequently, although he relents when Barca lays a large hand on his shoulder. They don’t wear rings, but there’s a slim black line tattooed around both of their ring fingers, visible only if you’re really looking for it.

The food is, as always, delicious, and they’ve only just finished when Pietros speaks up, looking at Nasir once more, and says: “So what’s this all about, then?”

Nasir tightens his hands around the knife he was using to butter his toast, and then forcibly unclenches his fingers.

“Someone killed an old friend of mine,” he says, quietly, and Barca’s mouth tightens into a grimace. “I need to know who they are.”

“So you can kill them,” Pietros says blithely, adding a heaping spoonful of sugar to yet another cup of coffee.

Nasir nods, picking up his knife and twirling it once between tanned, clever fingers. “So I can kill them.”

“So this is about the disappearance and suspected murder of Chadara Schoepke, then?” Pietros asks and Nasir fumbles with his knife, letting it clatter down onto his plate.

“What?”

“I keep tabs on all of my friends,” Pietros says, shrugging. “This came up.” He looks around the table, and shrugs again. “There were shots fired in South London a day ago or so,” he recites. “I looked into it, because bullets over London are something that’s always going to ping on my radar. All I could find was some shitty CCTV footage, of a masked shooter who was shot by someone who looked rather familiar.”

Curling his fingers into a gun, he points straight at Nasir. “I recognize your face from when I was helping Agron chase you across the world. You’re AWOL a lot of the time, because it turns out that you are infuriatingly good at staying away from cameras when you want to be. But I did some digging, and found some information on a new case without any leads. It’s got the German police stumped. They’ve marked Chadara Schoepke as ‘missing, presumed dead,’ but I assume you’ll be able to shed some more light on the situation?”

Beneath the table, Nasir reaches out blindly for Agron’s hand, and clings to it when he finds it. He’s shaking, slightly, but when Agron looks over, it’s with suppressed rage, rather than grief.

“The police are fucking incompetent,” Nasir spits. “They didn’t spare her the time of day when she came to them to tell them she thought she was being followed.”

“So she called you, right? And you went to help?” Pietros steeples his fingers and regards Nasir the way one regards a chess game, his eyes sharp. Agron forgets, sometimes, just how brilliant Pietros really is.

“I spent five days slumming it with all of the underground contacts I’d ever made in London to get her here safely. And then when I went to pick her up there was someone waiting for her, and they killed her.”

“One of your contacts is a double agent,” Pietros says, his fingers flying over the tablet.

“Was,” Nasir corrects him coldly, and Pietro’s fingers still on the tablet. He taps at something, winces and nods.

“Was, then. But the shooter is dead? I watched you chase him down and shoot him yourself. So what’s the worry?”

“It’s not just a lone gunman,” Agron says, and Barca nods his agreement.

“It sounds like someone’s pulling strings,” he says, standing to gather the plates together. “This girl is harmless, there’s no reason to follow and kill her so ostentatiously beyond making a point. She’s just a pawn.”

“She’s one of the only friends I’ve ever had,” Nasir grits out. “Show some respect.” Agron squeezes his hand beneath the table, and Nasir squeezes back so hard he can feel the bones in his wrist shift beneath the skin.

“I meant no disrespect,” Barca says, his eyes big and kind. Agron is sure he hasn’t missed how tightly Nasir is gripping his hand beneath the table. “But it does sound like someone targeted Chadara to get to you. I’m sorry.”

The look on Nasir’s face is painful for even Agron to look at, and he pushes his chair (plastic, over-designed) closer to be able to cup a hand around Nasir’s shoulders and press a kiss into his hair.

Barca clears his throat and takes the plates over to the sink, turning his back as he begins washing them, to allow Nasir some space to mourn. Pietros returns to his tablet, and becomes absorbed in whatever he’s doing on it, while Nasir presses his face into Agron’s neck and breathes deeply, trusting in his breath and the familiarity of the position to ground him.

Beside them, some five minutes later, Pietros makes a small, triumphant sound.

“There was another man at the scene,” he says, spinning his tablet in a controlled arc towards them.

The picture is grainy, shot from a distance and in the middle of the night. Pietros fast forwards frame by frame, pointing when a shadow in the corner of the picture coalesces into something more. A shadowy figure with a gun trained on the action, watches from the sidelines as the blur Agron knows is Nasir bends over a figure slumped on the ground and then darts off into the darkness, chasing another blur of a figure, this one carrying an automatic rifle.

When the others are gone, murky in the shadows on the film, the final man steps momentarily into the light of a streetlamp, watching them impassively. Pietros freezes the video and zooms in with steady fingers, cropping in on the man’s face, which is an unintelligible blur of pixels.

“Give me ten minutes and I’ll have it crystal-clear,” Pietros says, and Nasir nods, his eyes on the tablet as Pietros spins it back and bends over it.

For a minute, everything is quiet, except for the soft sounds of Barca washing the dishes a few steps away, and Pietros’ concentrated humming as he studies the picture and makes tweaks.

Agron doesn’t realize that it’s too quiet until it is, until Pietros’ head snaps up, his expression wild.

The moment seems to fracture: Pietros twists frantically to look at his wall of computers, Barca takes a single step away from the sink, kitchen knife in one hand, reaching for Pietros with the other, Nasir goes tense and lifts his head from Agron’s shoulder… and the entire far end of the warehouse goes up in flames in an explosion that tears all of the air from Agron’s lungs and throws them all to the floor.

Chapter Text

Agron blinks hard, his eyes stinging with the flash of light from the blast.

The air is thick with fine dust, and the horrific, wrenching sounds of falling metal and concrete. There’s heat on his face, and when he manages to focus his eyes on what used to be the end of the warehouse, all he can see is that it’s on fire. Someone touches his shoulder and he twists, preparing to fight them off, relaxing when he sees that it’s just Nasir, who has already struggled up to his knees.

There’s a fine cut over Nasir’s eyebrow, that’s tracking blood down the curve of his cheek, and Agron presses callused fingers against his face softly, wiping off the blood, before pulling away from him at yet another sharp clatter, this one from right behind them.

It’s just Pietros, though, who has ducked behind his wall of computers and is frantically tugging at wires. Agron hauls himself to his feet, and pulls Nasir with him, steadying himself against the table until the room stops spinning. Nasir goes for the kitchen, pulling knives and other sharp objects out of drawers to arm himself, while Agron turns slowly, scanning the perimeter for exits.

There’s footsteps, and he hefts up the nearest block of fallen concrete to throw at their attacker, letting it drop when it turns out to be Barca, heading back to them at a light run with a rucksack and two handguns. He passes one gun to Agron, along with a spare clip, and gestures to the mostly unharmed front of the warehouse.

“There’s a way out just up there,” he says, “looks undamaged. Police are closing in, so we need to move.”

“Is there anyone out there?” Nasir asks, considering a corkscrew he's pulled from a kitchen drawer.

“Four men around the back, I’m unsure about the front.”

“Two men,” Pietros says. He’s tugging a hard drive out from within its tangle of wires with one hand and typing rapidly with the other, staring at what must be video feed on his tablet. “On the roof of the brick building to the southwest.”

“Armed?” Agron asks, already moving forward to take up a shielded position at the window. Behind him, Pietros scoffs and does something that causes a fistful of bright electric sparks.

“Obviously.”

Barca steps up behind Agron, screwing a sight onto a rifle, and Agron raises the handgun he’s holding, using the butt of it to shatter the glass in one of the windows. The shots are expected, and they whistle by, embedding themselves in the concrete near Barca and Pietros' bedroom. Barca nods at Agron, who angles his body to snap off a couple of shots, enough that Barca can swing into place, fall startlingly still and squeeze the trigger, twice.

“Got ‘em.” He unsnaps the pieces of the rifles with easy grace, and tucks them into his rucksack, which is full of more weapons, as well as a knitted sweater Agron recognizes as Pietros’, and the sharp edges of picture frames.

Agron’s chest aches for them, suddenly, as Barca strides to an untouched corner of the warehouse and kicks a sheet of metal siding loose, revealing a slim, covered ladder. This warehouse has been their home for years, and it’s obvious that they both love it here. And now it’s half destroyed, police and sharpshooters are closing in, and they’re running blind. They’ll never be able to come back to this place.

Barca hauls Pietros to his feet, and urges him towards their escape route.

“I just need one more minute,” Pietros mutters. He’s still pulling out harddrives, and piling them into Barca’s bag. “These fuckers aren’t getting anything from me.”

There’s an enormous crash in the far end of the warehouse, like half of the metal siding has fallen off. When things settle, they can hear more gunfire, and sirens, closer than before.

“We don’t have a minute,” Barca growls, but he pauses long enough for Pietros to pull the handgun from his hip and fire a round of unerringly placed shots into the computer bank.

“Okay,” he says, turning on his heel, and taking the sweater from Barca’s rucksack, pulling it on over his bare chest and struggling to zip the rucksack closed over the computer gear he’d stuffed inside. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”

Barca is the first one down the ladder, followed by Pietros and Nasir. Agron brings up the rear, sliding swiftly down to yet another alley.

Barca leads the way to the street, which is filling up quickly with passerby who heard the explosion and stopped to investigate. They move quickly and efficiently away from the smoking mass of warehouse, through crowds that only get larger as they reach the market. It seems like half of the city is there – either trying to see what the explosion was, or trying to get away. Police cars come screaming in from all angles, and Agron has to duck past a handful of police officers with stern looks on their faces, who are doing their best to direct traffic.

There’s a light touch on his elbow, and it’s Barca, who’s acquired a baseball cap, probably stolen from a market stall, and hiding his dreadlocks. He presses a slip of paper into Agron’s palm, and he and Pietros slide by Agron and Nasir, heading in the opposite direction.

“Split up,” Barca murmurs out of the corner of his mouth as they go, his eyes far away from Agron’s, as if they’re strangers passing on the street. “Meet us here.”

Agron tilts his chin to acknowledge him, and wraps his fingers around Nasir’s, drawing him in the opposite direction. They flit silently through the over-crowded street until they can duck down one that is not quite so mobbed. The traffic is jammed, and being slowly directed so that the requisite emergency vehicles and news vans can make their way by.

They keep walking, turning corners and doubling back frequently to make sure that they’re not being followed. They head for the busy part of London, places where they can hide among packs of tourists and shoppers, where every corner of the street is lit by glowing light.

They stop at Tottenham Court Road to rest their legs. Nasir ducks into one of the high street stores lining the busy street for a moment and steps out with two sweaters in a bag. He pulls one over his dust-streaked vest as they stroll away from the drone of the stores’ alarm system. Agron rips the tag off of the larger sweater with his teeth and pulls it on, following Nasir down a less busy street.

They end up in a tiny café near the center of London, drinking thick coffee and sitting in silence. Agron spends most of his energy trying not to think about whether or not their home has been attacked, too, and the rest of it studying the scrap of paper Barca handed him.

“Have you memorized it?” Nasir asks after a while, pushing his spoon through the murky dregs of his coffee. He tilts his head at the paper when Agron looks at him.

“Yeah, it’s just coordinates.”

“We should destroy it.”

Agron hums and folds the paper into the smallest shape he can. “Are you thinking about home?” He asks quietly, and Nasir huffs, pushing his coffee away from him.

“Right now, all I can think about is how I’m the reason Barca and Pietros will never be able to go home.”

Agron looks at him, studies the tired lines around his eyes and sighs, reaching across the table to wrap his fingers around Nasir’s wrist. “That’s not your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have gone to them.” Nasir tugs his hand out of Agron’s grasp and scrapes his hair away from his face into a tight knot at the back of his head. The cut over his eye has scabbed over, and he rubs distractedly at it, then drums his fingers on the table and picks up the butter knife the café had left with their plate settings, testing its weight and running his fingers along the dull edge.

“I shouldn’t have come back,” He says roughly, pushing his chair back from the table. “I should have done this on my own. I didn’t mean for anyone else to get hurt.”

Agron reaches for him, but he’s already up and out of the door, disappearing into the street. Agron scrapes his chair back across the cheap tiled floor of the café. He throws some money onto the table to pay for their coffees and heads out.

He catches sight of Nasir’s back, vanishing around a corner up ahead and ambles after him, stuffing his hands in his pockets and runs his fingers over the tiny piece of paper Barca gave him, before fishing it out and tearing it into neat strips. He drops half of the strips down a drain, and the other half in a rubbish bin as he passes. When he turns the corner, Nasir is waiting for him, frowning at the crawling lines of traffic.

Agron presses his back against the empty storefront Nasir is standing in front of, and waits. It takes nearly ten minutes of Nasir fuming silently beside him before he grunts and kicks at the pavement.

“You’re not going anywhere, are you.” It’s not a question, and Agron shrugs at him.

“We’re in this together,” he says, clasping Nasir’s hand lightly. “All of us.”

Nasir fills up his lungs with a deep breath and exhales slowly, his anger deflating as he breathes. “Okay,” he says finally, “fine. Where are going?”

“Somewhere we can steal a car,” Agron says, thinking back to the coordinates Barca had handed him, “and then the Cotswolds, of all places.”

+

Agron lets Nasir break into the car, to work some of the restless energy out of his system. Night had fallen around them as they walked to a shadier part of the city, and is punctuated by the honks of horns and the occasional siren. If he squints in the direction of Camden, Agron can almost see an orange glow on the horizon, and he wonders if the warehouse is still burning.

They’d stopped as they walked to purchase a burner phone loaded with a cheap SIM card, and a bag of greasy junk food from a chip shop for the drive. When the car roars to life beneath Nasir’s hands he slides in and kicks open the passenger door for Agron, speeding off before Agron’s even has a chance to put on his seatbelt.

Agron settles back into his seat, digs a burger from the paper bag and a map from the glove compartment of their stolen ride, and puts his feet up on the dash, spreading the map out over his lap as he does so, to direct Nasir out of the tangled streets of the city.

The fear that they’re being watched that has built up between his shoulders as they walked away from the explosion lessens as they drive out of London. Agron chews his burger and hands Nasir the bag of food when he reaches out for it, blindly. He breathes, puts a hand on Nasir's thigh when he's finished eating, and holds on, watching the road flit by outside, and breathing deeply.

They’re on their way to somewhere safe, he reminds himself. Somewhere where Pietros’ clever fingers will figure out what the hell is going on.

Chapter Text

They take the M4 out of London, eating burgers and stopping once for two steaming cups of coffee at a petrol station. Agron goes inside for the coffee, squinting in the fluorescent glare and paying for the petrol with a credit card tied to a rarely-used alias, just in case.

Nasir is leaning up against the car when he walks back over, smoking a slim cigarette. He rarely smokes anymore, saving the habit for bars and stressful occasions, and he looks at Agron through the haze of smoke and grinds the cigarette out beneath the heel of his boot. Agron passes him a cup of coffee and pushes him up against the cold, metal side of the car, kissing the taste of smoke from of his mouth.

They finish their drive in silence, sipping their bitter petrol station coffee, and listening to the low hum of the radio. Agron pulls the road map out again when they turn off the main road, and he follows it as best he can as Nasir drives, through slim, tree-lined roads, and past sleepy villages that are utterly still this late at night.

It’s serene and beautiful, and it makes Agron a little twitchy as they near the coordinates Barca had passed to him.

“I was expecting a bunker,” Nasir mutters as they follow signs for Malmesbury. “Not Downton fucking Abbey.”

Agron hums in agreement and checks the map. They drive through the town, which is picturesque even in the dead of night, and out past it into fields, separated neatly by crumbling stone walls and hedges. This far into the country, the homes are few and far between, and the coordinates take them up a long, patchy gravel drive to a big house. The house seems to have fallen into disrepair, but there are lights on.

Nasir parks their stolen car beneath a tall beech tree, and follows Agron up the drive to the front door, which is jerked open before they even reach it by Pietros. He’s wearing the same clothes as he was wearing earlier, and he’s jittering in a way that means he’s been drinking coffee and hacking government mainframes for the past few hours.

He points an excited finger at Nasir, and declares: “Someone is trying to kill you!”

Agron rolls his eyes, places a palm securely in the middle of Pietros’ chest and pushes him backwards, into the house. Most of the lights are off inside, for security, or because they’re broken, and the furniture is draped with dusty white sheets.

“Such a great getaway spot, right?” Pietros says, grinning widely over his shoulder as he spins on his heel and leads them into the dark middle of the house. “It’s owned by some titled lord who has so many manor homes he never remembers to come visit this one.”

Behind Agron, Nasir makes a small, appreciative noise, taking in the threadbare tapestries on the walls of the high-ceilinged room Pietros is leading them through, and slides a hand into Agron’s palm.

“Sixteenth century,” he murmurs, his eyes tracing the intricate weaving. “Not bad.”

Agron squeezes his hand, and Nasir squeezes back after a minute, and then holds on, hard.

Barca is in the back of the house, on the ground floor, in a room with enough windows to set up a surveillance space, and strong enough features to make it defensible. He’s got a small camp stove set up, alongside a rifle and some binoculars. There are blankets heaped on the ground beside an enormous oak table, and a wild tangle of wires that seem to be hooked up to the various hard drives that Pietros pulled from the warehouse earlier that morning.

Agron’s heart clenches in his chest for a minute, as Pietros leaves them to press a kiss to the curve of Barca’s jaw and then sets himself up in front of the wires, his tablet and a smartphone buzzing with information. They were happy in their home this morning, bare-foot and sleep-rumpled and sharing breakfast with friends.

He steps away from Nasir to clap a hand around Barca’s warm shoulder and offer some silent comfort. Barca has never been a man of many words, and he reaches up to touch Agron’s hand softly before returning to his task – staring intently at grainy surveillance footage of the grounds.

“Need a hand with anything?” He asks, and Barca glances up to smile at him and shake his head.

“Pietros is almost done going through his contact list,” Barca says. “You’ll want to hear what he has to say about it.”

“Who is he contacting?” Agron asks, glancing back over at Pietros, who’s tapping frantically away at his tablet.

Barca looks up from his surveillance again, and his eyes are sad when he looks at Agron. “Everyone.”

It feels cold all of a sudden, and something twists in Agron’s stomach. He joins Nasir, who is sitting at the table and twisting his hands nervously against the heavy wood, pushes their chairs close together and reaches for a hand.

It takes another half hour of Barca’s calm vigilance, and Pietro’s increasingly manic tapping before Pietros makes a sharp, satisfied sound, and sets his tablet down.

“Right,” he says, clapping his hands. “Debrief.” He pushes himself up, stretches his arms high above his head and then swings a chair around at the head of the table and sits on it backwards, pillowing his chin on his arms.

“I’ve been checking in with my contact network,” he says, once Barca has joined them. “I think that they didn’t know you two were with us when they targeted the warehouse this morning. It was too big, too splashy. It was meant to send a message, not kill us. If they had known you were there they would have broken in and made it a real fight. The explosion was just to smoke us out.”

He sits up and drums his fingers rapidly on the tabletop, tracing his thought process on the wood for them. “As soon as we got out, I started contacting people. My contact network is your contact network,” Pietros says, pointing at Nasir. “Give or take a few art specialists – you’ve gotta get me the name of that art dealer in Argentina, by the way, I’ve always wanted to own a Michelangelo – so I just went down the list.”

The chill in Agron’s bones intensifies and Nasir squeezes his thigh under the table.

“I didn’t even think about anyone else,” Nasir mutters. “I just thought it was us.” He presses his hands against his face for a moment before dragging them through his hair. “Shit. Fuck, Agron, all your friends -.”

“Present and accounted for, with one exception.” Pietros chimes in. He lifts his hands to tick them off.

“Lugo fought off his attackers single-handedly, is currently lying low in Vienna, nursing a sprained wrist, and will be heading to a safe house in Eisenstadt in the morning. Saxa, beautiful ferocious warrior bitch that she is, set part of Prague on fire and stole a diplomat’s car. She’ll be fine.”

“Pietros,” Agron says quietly. “Who was the exception?”

Pietros barrels on: “Spartacus and Mira are in Italy. They spent most of the day leading the carabineri on a merry chase through Naples, and are free of the city and heading for Florence as we speak. They’ll get out of the country by boat, and head for a safe house in Greece. In Mykonos, the lucky bastards.”

“Pietros.” Agron’s heart is seizing up in his chest, and Nasir has gone terribly still beside him.

“Crixus!” Pietros says, far too loud in the otherwise silent space. “Crixus and Naevia had a close call in Belfast – car bomb, nasty piece of work – but they made it out okay. They’re going to cross the border and head for Cork. They have contacts there who can offer them protection.”

“Pietros.” It’s Barca this time, and Pietros’ manic finger-tapping falls still at the sound of his voice. “Tell them.”

Pietros sucks in a long breath and lets it out noisily.

“Duro,” he says, and Agron squeezes his eyes shut. “I can’t find anything on Duro and Auctus.” He flattens his hands against the table and keeps talking, rapid-fire. “Last I heard, they were in Florida, preparing to make their way up North. The trail goes cold in North Carolina, but that doesn’t mean anything. I could just be looking in the wrong places. I mean,” he spreads his hands shakily, “I’m good, but Auctus is a stone-cold professional. Special ops experience, Eagle scout, all of that. He’s the best when it comes to going off-grid. And Duro can be subtle if he tries.”

Nasir stirs at Agron’s side. “He’s right,” he murmurs. “Auctus has back-up plans for his back-up plans. He’s got safe houses around the country, and knows how to get himself out of tricky situations. They’ll be okay.”

Agron takes a deep breath to steady himself, pushing down the terrified, hysterical laughter that he can feel creeping up in his chest.

“Chicago,” he says finally. “Did you try Chicago?”

Pietros frowns. “It wasn’t anywhere near where their projected route would have taken them -.” He begins and Agron bites out a laugh and shakes his head.

“I need your phone. Give me your phone.”

Agron’s hands are shaking too badly to get a grip on the slippery plastic case of the smartphone. Nasir takes it from him calmly, and slides his fingers through Agron’s.

“Who am I calling?” He asks, softly, and Agron closes his eyes to lean his forehead against Nasir’s warm shoulder, breathing in slowly.

“Giancarlo’s Pizzeria,” he says, a rueful smile kicking up one corner of his mouth. “Best deep dish in Chicago.”

The enormity of what has happened hasn’t truly hit him yet. He’s focusing instead on the memory of sitting with Duro in a hospital, glaring at his brothers’ bruises and broken arm and bullet graze and Auctus, who had promised to keep Duro safe.

“You’re a dick,” Agron had said, “If you’re gonna be undercover and get your idiot ass shot then we need some way of getting in touch before the bad things happen. Or right after the bad things happen, not a week and a half later when your bones are already nearly set enough for me to break them again.”

Duro had blinked at him placidly from beneath a healed over scrape on his forehead. “I have some ideas about that, actually,” he’d said, and they’d gotten pizza delivered to his hospital room while he discussed it.

Now, Agron breathes carefully as Nasir pulls up the location and phone number of the pizza place. He’s very carefully not thinking about anything but the precise way Nasir types on the phone’s touchscreen.

“The one on south State street,” he says, nudging Nasir’s fingers to the right option. “That one, there. Ask for a meat-lovers special with extra pineapple.”

Nasir puts the mobile on speakerphone, and lets it ring in the stillness in their stolen safe house. Agron’s mind is working against his will, calculating the time difference, the time it would take to get from wherever Duro and Auctus had been – New England, or somewhere warm… they’d always liked New Orleans – to Chicago, calculating anything other than what he was going to do if no one picked up the phone.

Someone picked up the phone. Someone with an unfamiliar Chicago accent, heavy on the vowels.

Agron breathes slowly, the way he would if someone had hit him hard enough to crush his ribs in, careful to not get too much air into his lungs for fear of cracking something. Beside him, Nasir hesitates and then asks for the meat-lovers special with extra pineapple, his eyes on Agron.

There’s a pause, long enough for Agron to push his hands against the stained wood of the dining table, and wonder how much force it would take to break it apart, before Duro, his voice tinny, but thank-fucking-god alive, says:

“Nasir, you son of a bitch, if Agron isn’t there with you, I swear to god…”

Agron exhales explosively and picks up the phone: “Duro, you fucking asshole,” he begins and there’s a rush of static from the other line as Duro shouts something that sounds like: “Don’t do that to me, you ass!”

They get in a good handful of minutes yelling at each other – out of love, and breathless relief, before Duro groans and says:

“Anyone want to tell me why the fuck we’re hiding out from a batshit Italian in my least favourite part of Chicago?”

Agron jumps a little when Pietros makes a frustrated noise at his side and reaches for the phone. “I can’t find anything,” he grumbles. “I’ve been looking all day, in between scrubbing all of the information I can find about Nasir off the internet.” He sighs, and pushes a hand through his hair. “I need a pie to stick my hands into,” he says, his shoulders slumping. “I need a foothold, or a fucking clue, just a little something to give me a hint of where to start. The internet is a vast fucking abyss, I could spend the rest of my life trawling through useless gigabytes of data. I need somewhere to focus, a fucking… an epicenter.”

“You need to sleep,” Barca says softly. “You’re mixing metaphors.”

“I need to find out who this motherfucker is before he hurts someone I’ve grown rather fond of,” Pietros spits, and Barca sighs.

“What have you got so far?” The voice, lower than his brothers’, and tinged with the hint of a Northern Irish accent, is calculating and comforting. Duro once told Agron that Auctus had become a chess grandmaster before he was fourteen years old, and he’d taken that strategic mind to the heights of the Northern Irish freedom fighters in the eighties, and from there to the U.S. Army, as a special ops consultant, before going rogue.

Auctus has spent close to eight years keeping his little brother safe, and the feeling of relief Agron gets when he hears the voice on the phone line washes over him. He slumps, listening to Pietros’ deft recitation of the facts he’s managed to cobble together and takes Nasir’s hand, rubbing his knuckles absent-mindedly.

They’re going to get through this. Their friends are alive: singed, bruised, and on the run, but alive. They’re smart, ferocious, and will stop at nothing to protect their own. They are going to get through this.

Nasir’s hand wraps calmly over his, removing it from where Agron’s hanging on to the fine bones of his wrist for dear life. Nasir gives him a smile, a secret one that he saves for their kitchen on early mornings, or their dusky bedroom on late nights and hides his grin by ducking his chin when Agron lifts the small hand to his mouth and kisses it gently.

“That’s all I’ve got,” Pietros is saying regretfully when he lets go of Nasir’s hand and returns his attention to their conversation. “It’s a lot of nothing…”

“I don’t think it is,” Auctus says from a thousand miles away, in Chicago. “The attacks are coordinated: they happened at approximately the same time across continents, and they suggest that whoever is behind them has a tremendous amount of intel and contacts. And if he doesn’t have contacts, then he’s got a lot of money. Enough to hire a dozen of the worlds’ best contract killers, and to keep it a secret from you, Pietros, which is no mean feat.”

“What are you thinking?” Pietros asks, “I’ve gone through all the likely suspects already: Yvgeni in Russia, Agniezka from Poland, Jones in England…”

“You’re thinking too small. Too black-market. My guess is the king-pin’s legitimate, but he’s got a ton of shady connections that let him pull this off. And for some reason, Nasir has showed up on his radar as someone to target.”

“How do we know it’s Nasir they’re after?” Agron asks. “For all we know it could be me.”

“Chadara is the main sign,” Pietros says, shrugging. “And Spartacus reported that he found a photograph of Nasir on one of the men they took out in Naples.” He turns big, innocent eyes on Agron. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you might pick up and head for Italy like the rage-filled wrecking ball you become whenever Nasir is threatened.”

“I think I know who it might be,” Auctus says, cutting off Agron’s indignant protests.

Auctus pauses, and then says, tentatively: “You heard of Alessandro Crassus?”

Pietros frowns, picks up his tablet from the center of the table and slides it to Nasir, who has stiffened beside Agron, his shoulders up and tense.

“Ah,” he says. “Fuck.”

Chapter Text

Nasir stands up in a single, fluid move, and walks out of the room.

Pietros gapes after him for a second, before tugging his tablet back within reach, typing excitedly. Barca raises his eyebrows at Agron, who shoves his chair back and stands up. As he goes, he can hear Barca speaking softly to both Auctus and Pietros, a calming touchstone in the middle of the crazy.

From the room they’d set up camp in, the house branches off in two directions – back to the front door through a dark corridor, or up a grand and dusty spiral staircase. Agron pauses and listens – not that he expects to hear anything, Nasir can be quiet as the grave when he wants to be – and takes the stairs.

The house has two stories, and he pauses on the threshold of the second one, straining to see in the dark. There’s another long hallway, and a handful of closed doors. He tries them one by one, slowly and methodically sweeping the quiet, empty rooms he finds behind them, and stepping loudly, so that Nasir has a better chance to hide if he really doesn’t want to be found. There are four-poster beds, hung with ghostly white sheets, threadbare sofas and moth-eaten leather chairs, a bathroom with a tiled floor and a huge, claw-foot tub, and what must have been a small library before the books were removed from the shelves.

The final door on the hallway opens onto a musty linen closet, full of moth-eaten quilts and sheets. Agron lifts up the corner of a stack of bedding dubiously and peers beneath it, jumping, and smacking his head against one of the shelves when there’s a loud clatter of wood on wood nearby, like someone’s slammed a door.

Rubbing the top of his head ruefully, he straightens and closes the linen closet door, returning to one of the bedrooms farther back along the hall. It’s still empty, but when he scans it again, he can see that one of the curtains strung around the bed is moving softly in an air current, and when he walks around the bed to examine it, he can see that there’s a trapdoor in the ceiling that’s standing the tiniest bit ajar. The ceilings of the room are easily twelve foot tall, and there’s no indication as to whatever impressive acrobatic feat Nasir might have performed to get through the trapdoor.

Agron stares up at it, sighs heavily and casts about the bedroom for a suitable ladder, landing on an ornately carved armoire, which will have to do. He puts his shoulder to it and shoves it across the room, grimacing at the terrible noise it makes as it screeches across the floor.

There’s a reason Nasir’s the cat burglar in their relationship. Agron brings the brute force, not the grace.

When it’s in place, he climbs on to the windowsill, and from there makes a lopsided jump at the armoire, catching the top and cursing as it sways alarmingly. When it’s steadied, he hauls himself on top of it, and reaches up to push the trapdoor fully open and drag himself up and through.

He finds himself in an attic full of ancient cardboard boxes and cold, pre-dawn wind. The room is pointed at the top, mirroring the peak the roof of the house comes to, and he has to duck beneath beams to get to the end of it, where there’s a window made of thick, warped glass that’s been unlatched. It leads out to relatively flat piece of roof, and Agron steps through it, keeping a careful hand on the window frame as he turns cautiously and looks for Nasir.

He’s sitting a single dip of the roof away, perched in a valley between two competing eaves of the house, with his arms crossed over his knees.

Agron joins him, dropping down to sit carefully beside him and wait.

He was never very good at being silent before he met Nasir. He had learned how to be silent for his work, keeping careful, silent vigil while waiting for a mark, but Agron came from a family of people who shouted around the dining room table to make themselves heard.

Nasir has a tendency to fall completely and utterly silent, often for hours at a time. It used to unsettle Agron, who would try to fill the unnatural silence with chatter and noise, but he’s come to appreciate the quiet.

He’s changed, since he met Nasir: he loves with a deep and intent purpose now, determined to make a home and keep it safe, even if it’s only contained within the interior of a stolen car, or the rooftop of a stolen mansion.

Nasir has changed, too, he’s become less prone to flight and more willing to let himself be loved. He still runs, every once in a while, but he always comes back, and he never seems to go very far anymore.

The day is close to dawning before Nasir speaks. Agron’s attention is focused on the pale yellow lightening of the sky above the treetops, and lingering idly on the two stolen cars sitting in the driveway and whether they should conceal them in the carriage house, and he has to shake himself to bring himself back to the present moment when Nasir speaks up.

“I always think that you’ll get tired of chasing me,” Nasir says ruefully, rubbing his palms across tired eyes.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” Agron says, and he moves close enough that he can put his head on Nasir’s shoulder and press his mouth to the warm skin beneath his jaw.

Nasir breathes out a little shakily and lets his head hang forward.

“Do you want to go in and find somewhere to sleep?” Agron asks, running his palm between Nasir’s shoulders in warm circles. “We’re safe here, we can take some time to sleep.”

Nasir shakes his head and takes two deep breaths before lifting his head up again, rolling his shoulders to shake some warmth back into them. “I think I want to watch the sunrise,” he says, “and then I want to tell you about Crassus, because you’re going to have to hear about it some time.”

The sunrise isn’t the best Agron’s ever seen. It’s nice to watch the surrounding countryside come into focus, though – all ancient stone walls, endless green fields, and tiny roads – but it’s a hazy, cold morning, and the sun turns the sky light grey instead of a spectacular pink and orange. Nasir takes it all in silently beside him, utterly still. Agron doesn’t think he’s ever been somewhere so quiet, and nearly falls over when an honest-to-god rooster crows and breaks the dawn silence.

Nasir laughs softly beside him, rubbing some of the sleep from his eyes. “There’s a bunch of chickens down there,” he says, gesturing. “We’re in farm country.”

“We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere,” Agron corrects him, stretching out his stiff legs and taking deep breaths of cold morning air. “It’s safe, though, so there’s that.”

Nasir doesn’t say anything to that, just wriggles around until he can put his head on Agron’s shoulder.

“Do you want to hear about Crassus?” He asks, finally, and Agron shrugs.

“I want to put a bullet between his eyes,” he says and Nasir hums.

“Yeah,” he says, pulling himself upright once more, “me too.”

Agron watches while Nasir composes himself, arranging the cuffs of his stolen sweater around his wrists, and pressing nervous hands against his thighs.

“When I was… nineteen,” he begins, looking out over the rooftop of their borrowed safe house. “When I was nineteen I got involved with a bad crowd. I mean,” he shakes his head, as if doing so will push his thoughts into order. “A worse crowd than I had been with before,” he amends. “Before it was just teenagers from the wrong part of London, petty crime, nothing too flashy. We were all out on the streets, so we had to survive some way, but we never went after anything big, because we didn’t have the imagination, or the balls, or the know-how to be able to break the locks, avoid the security systems we’d have to avoid to get away with it.”

He takes a minute to collect himself again, and Agron thinks about the ease with which Nasir gets into and out of buildings, with priceless works of art in his hands, and wonders what changed.

“When I was nineteen I was walking down the street in London one day, and this big, black car pulled up, and a man in a suit got out and offered me three grand to go to a party with him. He said I wouldn’t have to do anything other than ‘look pretty,’” Nasir’s hands form themselves into sneering quotation marks, “And I didn’t really believe him when he said that, but it was easy money, you know? Three grand for a few hours? At that moment, even if I had to give an unsavory blowjob in the toilet at the end of the night, the money was good enough that I didn’t care.”

Agron’s heart convulses in his chest, and Nasir sighs and looks down at his hands beside him.

“I was hungry,” he says, “I was hungry, and I didn’t have anything, and this man stepped out of a car like some kind of sleazy Prince Charming and offered me a chance at a life I had only ever dreamed of. I didn’t have anything else going for me, so I said yes.”

“And that was…?” Agron begins, slowly.

“That was Crassus.” Nasir says, shortly. “He was a charming bastard when he wasn’t being an evil son of a bitch. He took me to Harrods, like he was Richard Gere in Pretty-fucking-Woman, and bought me a suit that cost about as much as a car. He paid someone to style my hair, he brought me back to his house, where he got his personal chef to make me something to eat, and then let me take my pick of bedrooms in his mansion. He watched me steal my steak knife from the table while we were eating that first night but he didn’t say anything about it.”

He sighs again, exhaling a cloud of steam in the brisk dawn air. “I went to the party with him. It was in some other mansion, owned by a friend of his. There was champagne – good champagne – and caviar on little crackers, and his friend owned a couple Picasso’s, a couple of real fucking Picasso’s, just right there on the wall with no glass or anything in front of them, no one watching them. They were beautiful.”

Nasir shrugs. “And at the end of the night, Crassus took me back to his mansion and he said he’d be willing to let me stay with him, in exchange for certain services.”

Agron pulls his fingers into a fist, and Nasir looks at him sadly before shrugging in an odd, disassociated way. “The money was good,” he says. “So I stayed.” He draws in a long breath and looks out over the countryside. “He never hurt me,” he offers. “He was cruel, and it was never a nice place to be, but he never hurt me. Not while I was under his roof.”

“But you left,” Agron says, “that’s why he’s after you, right?”

“I left years ago,” Nasir says. “It’ll be six years ago in February. I stayed with him for five months, until it got warm out again. He gave me an allowance that let me get out of his house when I wanted to. Never for very long, but it was nice to not be stuck in one place. He figured out that I liked art, so he took me to Paris, and Florence, and Milan. He took me to see the great art museums, and then took me to his friends’ houses to show me off, and let me look at their stolen art collections. I learned most of what I know about the art world from him.”

He curls his hands into a fist, and then shakes them out, a delicate, practiced movement. “I started stealing from him almost as soon as I started living with h im. He had an army of security guards, even then, but I learned to be quiet, and I was good at distracting them from what I was doing. I only stole little things at first, silver from the kitchen, cufflinks, shit that nobody would miss. He… he used to have business meetings in the house, though, and I used to listen in, and follow the men he sent to get him the things he wanted. I watched them, and I learned how to break the locks and avoid the security systems that needed to be avoided.”

“Two months before I left, I found the password to his vault and started taking bigger things, with an escape plan. I took art, sculptures, smuggled everything out of the house and sold it under different names. I learned how to rout the money through different accounts so that he wouldn’t be able to track it, how to make sure no one knew where to find me.” He smiles, a wry, self-deprecating grin. “I got good at it. And I filled up a bank account with enough money to get out of the country, off the continent and very far away from Alessandro Crassus and his twisted sense of generosity.”

“And I did it,” Nasir says, meeting Agron’s eyes and then looking away again quickly. “I got out of London through the money I’d made on the black market, selling Crassus’ already-stolen shit, and hid out in Japan for a year, and then started hopping around the continent.”

“So you stole something from him,” Agron says, slowly. “That’s why he’s after you.”

“I stole something bad,” Nasir said. “And I held on to it. I sold everything else as soon as I could find someone to take it off my hands. But there was something weird going on before I left. He was having meetings at strange hours with men who came in cars with blacked out windows. They were trading him something, something that he obviously put a lot of value on, so I stole it.”

“You stole it,” Agron says, rubbing his hands across his face. “Of course you fucking did.”

“I didn’t realize what it was at first,” Nasir says. “I just wanted to take something that would make his life difficult, but I thought I might have gotten the wrong thing. It was just a thumb drive. Before, it was always precious metals and priceless antiques. But he wanted it, and he was willing to spend a lot of money to get it, so I took it. It was the last thing I took before I left. Which was,” he laughs, unexpectedly, shaking his head. “It was a shitshow. I didn’t want him to know it was me, so I made it look like an army had raided the place and stolen the thumbdrive instead. I built a bomb -.”

“You built a bomb?” Agron splutters.

“Just a small one,” Nasir says, shrugging. “I bribed most of the staff to take the night off, and wrecked the bedrooms, like someone had been through them and turned them over. I planted the bomb near the vault, blew the doors open and made sure it looked like someone had been looking in there, before tripping all the alarms in his study and taking the thumb drive. I had my blood drawn the week before and I splashed it around the room I had been staying in, to make it look like someone had taken me, too. And then I left. After starting a small fire in his library.”

“Fucking hell,” Agron mutters.

Nasir shrugged. “I needed out. This was the best way.”

“What was on the thumb drive?”

“I didn’t even look until I was holed up in Japan weeks later,” Nasir says, “but it was bad. It was…” He squeezes his eyes closed and shakes his head sharply. “It was kids, Agron, information on kids, and they were…” He shuts his eyes again and presses his lips together. “I didn’t sell it. It’s the only thing I didn’t sell. I was too afraid of what would happen if the wrong person got their hands on it, so I hid it. I was sort of hoping he’d forget about it.”

“Like that was going to happen,” Agron mutters, and Nasir snorts gently, knocking their shoulders together.

“At the time,” he starts, slowly, “at the time I assumed that I’d spend the rest of my life running and hiding from him. I didn’t have plans to stay anywhere long enough to form attachments, never mind get a lease, or a group of friends.” He stops, abruptly, and swipes the back of his arm across his eyes. “I didn’t mean to get your friends in trouble.”

Agron smiles, presses a warm hand to Nasir’s. “They’re all too bloodthirsty for their own good,” he says. “You know they enjoy a challenge.”

“Barca and Pietros need to know,” Nasir says and Agron nods.

“So we’ll tell them. You’ll tell them. Whatever you feel like they need to know.”

Nasir nods and pushes his fingers against the rough slate roof they’re sitting on. “I’m not going to apologize,” he says, after a minute of silence. “For what I did when I lived with Crassus,” he explains, looking quickly at Agron and then away. “I wouldn’t be who I am if I didn’t have the history I have, all of it, for better or for worse.”

Agron thinks for a second, about how wildly over his head he is, here, and then he takes a breath and folds a big hand over Nasir’s fidgeting one. “For better or for worse,” he echoes. “I’m with you.”

“You’re crazy,” Nasir says.

Agron huffs out a laugh. “Nasir,” he says, grasping the smaller, clever hand, and looking out over the calm English countryside. “I once spent the better part of a year chasing you across the world after you stole all of my earthly possessions, and didn’t stop even after you threatened me with a knife in an alley. I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m crazy.”