Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Chen.”

“What.” Eddy answers, mimicking the condescending tone currently gracing his earpiece.

“You know what. What’s your position?”

“You know what.” Eddy parrots, rolling his eyes. “Nah I’m not doing it. Fuck you.”

“Fuck off, its a job. I’m at the end of my shift and I can’t get my shit done without you holding up your end.”

“She’s a kid, not a job Dom. She’s at Maestoso and her politician-parents don’t bend? She’s dead -immediately dead. They’ll even send a video of the whole thing to Mummy and Daddy along with another death-threat.” Eddy spits, eyeing the end of the alleyway that he’s currently crouched in.

“You’re not paid to think about shit.”

“She’s twelve”

“You’re not paid-”

“Fuck off Dom- I’ll be paid to clean up this whole fucking mess when it goes south, like we all know it will-

“Christ, Chen, just get the target and-”

“I’m not doing it are you fucking deaf?”

“...”

“Well what the fuck am I supposed to tell the bastards then?” The other man finally spits, and Eddy rolls his eyes.

“Whatever you fucking want, and tell them that I’ve said I won’t mess with kids. It’s their own fucking fault. Get someone else.”

“Right, right, because they’ll love that” Eddy can practically hear the steam pouring out of the other agent’s ears.

“Yeah and tell them to kiss my arse while you're at it.”

“Your funeral, dickwad” The call disconnects and Eddy stands with a bitter laugh, stretching his shoulders.

What a bitch of a day.

He scowls as he pulls a sweater over his gear, shoving his earpiece deep into his pocket and runs a hand through his hair, trying to neaten up the sweaty mop in the darkened window opposite him.

Brett mentioned the other day that Eddy should get a headband to keep his hair tamed while he was at work, and to be fair, it was starting to get in his eyes.

Eddy considers it as he stares at himself. Could be cute.

Could just get his hair cut again.

He shakes himself a little and walks toward the busy street. They need eggs at home. And more coffee.

The sun is beginning to set, flushing gold and rosy pink through the silhouetted buildings. Brett should have finished up with his last student for the evening now.

Brett always had wanted to keep playing, keep teaching, even when they were younger, both fresh out of the con with a world of endless possibility at their feet. And so he did, and had filled their apartments with music and colour ever since. It was almost enough to save Eddy the heartbreak he’d faced when his own playing had taken a back seat for the sake of his…career.

Eddy smiled ruefully. Maybe he would ask if they could play a duet tonight. Navara perhaps?

He’d like that.

******

Eddy gets home without dropping the two take-away containers of ramen balanced poorly on his carton of eggs, and realises as he walks up the stairs to their apartment that he forgot the coffee beans.

Instant coffee it was. Not that Brett would drink it, but there was always tea for him.

Eddy stops in the hallway.

Their front door is open.

Eddy slowly puts the ramen and the eggs down.

“...Brett?” Eddy calls out, chest tight and stomach feeling like it might drop out of him all together. “Brett, you there?”

Nothing.

Eddy swears and pulls the pistol from its holster sitting snug against his ribs.

Not like this.

Brett’s phone is on the kitchen bench, Eddy’s last text showing on its screen.
The rice cooker is flashing orange and Eddy pulls the plug out of the powerpoint as he sweeps slowly and silently through the flat.

Not him.

The apartment is largely in order, the furniture just how he and Brett had arranged it when they’d moved here just over five years ago now. Eddy keeps moving, methodically checking through each space until there’s only one room left. He steels himself, breathes in and out once, and pushes open the door with his foot.

The window in the practice room is open, sheets of music feathering to the ground in the draft.

Brett’s violin is on the ground.

Eddy spots the bow next. The stick is broken, splintering where it’s snapped just above the grip.

Someone might as well have ripped out his heart and shoved it back down his throat. Eddy has to steady himself, reaching blindly for the wall beside him. This isn’t what is supposed to happen.

The contract explicitly says this is not. Supposed. To happen.

Eddy stumbles to the bathroom and sticks his head under the shower, turning it on as cold as it will go. Standing there, gasping for breath, a plan begins to form.

*****

“Hiya, this is Ray Chen.”

“They’ve got Brett.”

Ray sucks in a breath and sets down his coffee cup. “Eddy…how-”

“I refused a target, Ray. She was only a kid, and they’ve taken Brett.”

“Shit.”

“I’m going to get him. And I’m sending you a USB with a fuckton of data that I want you to get to the media.”

“Christ Eddy, are you alright?”

“No but I’m going to fix it.”

Ray swears under his breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay…The USB?”

“I’ve had it for the last year- just in case. They don’t know about it.”

“Is it…?”

“Yup. I wouldn’t look at it if I were you.”

“Right.”

Ray hears the distinct sound of metal on metal through the phone and swallows hard.

“I worked my arse off for years for that fucking contract Ray, and they’ve broken it the second I refuse, on the grounds that are written into the fucking thing. I’m sick of it - I’m so sick of this bullshit.”

“I’m so sorry Ed”

Ray hears Eddy swear and grimaces.

“I’m going to fix it. I’m going to get him back.”

“I know you are.” Ray says hoarsely.

“Get that USB to your team yeah? And watch your back.” Eddy sounds distant, voice cold on the other end of the line.

Ray closes his eyes. “You better come out of it alive okay?”

Eddy chuckles darkly through the phone. “We’ll see.”

The line goes dead and Ray leans back in his chair. His hands are shaking where they grip the table

“Fuck.”

Chapter Text

Turns out the benefit of having worked for Maestoso for more than a decade isn’t a promotion or an increase in permissible independence, but being trusted with incidental knowledge… such as the floorplan for example - which rooms connect the ventilation system, the location of switch boards and security cameras that line the hallways…

(...access to the system mainframe - they weren’t aware of that slip-up though).

The thing is, Eddy knows that he’s walking directly into a trap laid specifically by Maestoso for him, that Brett’s safety is being dangled in front of him like bait on a live-wire.

He also knows that Brett is their only bargaining chip if they want to keep Eddy as an agent.
And to be honest, Eddy has been about as crucial as a nervous system when it comes to actually getting shit done with this place. He’s forced endless debate into deliberate choice, erased evidence and executed countless missions over the course of his ‘employment’. He’s been trained, trained others, and updated the training to keep ground staff working as safely and efficiently as possible.

If he wasn’t so useful, Eddy would have been chairing the board of directors years ago.

If he wasn’t so useful, he could have gotten out years ago.

Anyway.

Logically, Brett is tied to a chair in one of the interrogation rooms on the fourth floor and they’ve stationed 3-4 soldiers inside with him, and another 3 or so rotations sweeping the hallways at 8 minute intervals.

Eddy is surprised that he’s managed to make it undetected through the vents with this much gear, and thanks his past self for not having pushed harder for motion sensors when Maestro was tightening up its lockdown procedure.

He takes a moment to breathe in, and out, before dropping quietly into Corridor Blue-4 and pulling an AR-15 from where it’s strapped across his chest, silencer and shroud preemptively mounted in place.

He’s got 3 minutes before the next rotation is due past, and Eddy closes his eyes, counting the seconds, one by one.

He wonders briefly if the soldiers had been told the motive behind their station, if they knew they’d been volunteered as obstacles.

Eddy hears footsteps in the distance and opens his eyes. Regret and resolve bleed into a sigh, and he squares his shoulders.

The soldiers’ split second transitions from shock, to recognition, and then to panic could have been studied in a media class.

Eddy checks his watch as he pulls the bodies into a corner hidden from cameras and takes the key-card from the pocket of the man who’d been at the front of the patrol. Andre.

Eddy grimaces and slides the corpse’s eyelids shut.

Maestoso would ‘honour’ the man by fitting his name under countless others that lined the wall in the staff cafeteria. An effective way to reduce one’s appetite.
Expensive flowers (that never lasted more than a day or two) would be sent to be placed on his empty casket.

His colleagues would not speak of him again.

Eddy stands and turns, key-card in hand and makes his way anticlockwise through the corridors.

He knows Brett is near. He knows that, but his heart starts to race when he hears faint voices, hears the familiar lilt that he could have recognised even in death. Pain and adrenaline force their way quicker and quicker through his veins, his chest, his mind, ringing alarms instante in his ears.
Brett had been the most important person in Eddy’s life since he’d met him in maths class as a kid, dark hair stuck to his forehead and long enough to cover the tops of his ears. It hadn’t taken long before Brett had become his competition, his drive to do better, play better, be better.
Then Brett was his second half and Eddy had quickly gotten used to being asked where the other man was when he was out by himself. Sure, they’d both taken years to realise how they each felt towards the other, and then a couple more years after that to realise how the other felt in return. Just more time to truly know him right?
And Brett knew all of Eddy, had seen him as naked and vulnerable and bare as could be, just as he knew all of Brett.

Eddy loved Brett like he loved music, as easily as breathing, and as reverently as the night loved the stars. Loving Brett felt like feeling sun on his skin after a long winter, like finding north when he was lost beyond comprehension.

Brett was his lifeline, smoothed out his knotted conscious, held him tight when he woke up covered in sweat and breathing heavily in the early hours of the morning.

If things had been different all those years ago, Eddy would have given up everything to start a new life with Brett. They could have started something completely new, made classical music approachable and interesting and accessible. Brett had approached him with this crazy idea about starting a Youtube channel based entirely around classical music and violin and comedy, and Eddy had been so taken with the idea that he had started researching the price of video cameras and lighting equipment that same afternoon.

If only Eddy hadn’t naively signed a contract riddled with false promises and legalese, and double negatives that wove words into strange figure-eights and switch-backs, if only he hadn’t put their life on pause for the sake of an ‘easy’, stable income…

(Eddy had been searching for the perfect ring since he’d pocketed that USB, heavy with evidence last year. He was thinking burnished silver.)

He hears a shout and knows it’s him, feels his pulse jump, and thinks that if he had to die to get Brett out and safe, he would do it in that same heartbeat.

And as he crashes into the room where he knows Brett is, he sees the black eye.

He sees the white teeth bared in a snarl and that god-awful red, sliding down the left side of his face.

It’s so close to instant, the way that same red descends like fog across his field of vision and it’s got his brain pinpointing to seething, feral, bloodrage.

It’s got him slamming the butt of his pistol between the eyes of the first guy, losing two rounds to the spot where the skull cracks as the man falls backward.

Got him shooting out the legs of the second guy, planting a foot in the centre of his chest and snapping his neck with practised ease, cutting off a pathetic scream for backup.

Eddy’s head snaps to the right and he turns, left eye watering, to see a guard fumbling for his pistol, knuckles red. Eddy puts two bullets through his neck before he can draw the gun.

Brett has the fourth guard pressed into the ground, leg of that fucking chair pressing into the guy’s neck and through his jugular as Eddy turns, the sound like screwing up an empty can.

Brett spits and Eddy empties his magazine mid-stride, fast and dirty.

And then he’s dropping to his knees, hacking through the rope around Brett’s ankles, wrists, through the fabric cutting into his cheeks, and then he’s being pulled up and he’s kissing him.

And Brett tastes like iron and salt and heat, and Eddy hates it. He hates it and he’s never been so relieved in his life.

“Fucking Christ,” He gasps into Brett’s mouth and the other man hums his agreement, “I’ll kill them Brett, Sweetheart, I’ll fucking kill them.”

“I knew you would come.” Brett says gently. Eddy feels his hands shake as he wipes at the blood caked across the other man’s forehead.

A shout echoes in though the open door and it’s got Brett pushing on Eddy’s shoulders, got Eddy reaching for the rifle strapped across his back and kicking a prettied-up semiautomatic toward the other man.

“Get that guy’s gear on and stay behind me.”

Brett scrambles as Eddy steps into the corridor, training his sights down the corridor.

Realistically, Maestoso should now be in lock-down. Unfortunately for them, Eddy had disabled the communications channel on his way up to the fourth floor, so the board of directors was likely still in the conference room two floors down and waiting for the alert that Eddy had taken the bait.

Eddy shoots out the legs of the soldiers that appear around the far corner and finishes the job with practised ease as he strides quickly towards them.

He can hear Brett breathing heavily behind him and grimaces. Brett knew what Eddy’s work entailed but he hadn’t witnessed it before, and Eddy hoped sincerely that this would be the first and last day Brett would ever have to see anything of the sort.

They make their way back to the vents and Eddy gives Brett a boost before hoisting himself into the ceiling, dragging their gear behind him.

They’re silent as they move, bar the murmured directions Eddy gives as they go. Eddy almost thinks that if someone were to put their ear to the wall, they would hear his heart hammering against his ribs and into the metal of the ventilation system.

They reach the ground floor and Eddy pulls Brett into a dark storage room, locking the door behind them.

“You have a plan.” Brett whispers, his words sounding like they’re trying to reassure themselves.

“I do.” Eddy replies, stripping off his bulletproof vest and thigh-pads.

Brett hesitantly follows his lead, his face tight.

Eddy watches Brett for a moment and wonders at the trust this man holds in him to willingly discard his only protective equipment without Eddy even having to ask.

He pulls Brett into his arms as soon as the last of the gear is tucked away behind under a shelf, and breathes into his hair.

Brett mumbles his name and holds tight to the back of Eddy’s shirt.

Eddy breathes in, and out, pushes a small button on the little grey remote in his pocket, and covers Brett’s ears.

****

Ray Chen instantly sits forward in his chair as the 6o’clock news interrupts the shitty reality show he’d been trying desperately to pay attention to.

A “Breaking” headline scrolls across the screen as a young woman in a white blazer looks into the camera. The scene behind her looks nothing short of dystopian.

Through the flashing red and blue lights, smoke billows from a building as flames burn furiously through broken windows, licking up the external brickwork. Workers in full protective suits are ferrying long and heavy black bags from inside and laying them out, lined up side by side on the pavement.

It looks like the second floor had caved in on itself, and the woman says that a “freak electrical incident” has caused an explosion, destroying large parts of the building and starting multiple fires throughout.

Employees stumble out of the rubble of the ground floor, looking like ants in the view of the press cameras as fire trucks spray water futilely toward the flames.

The woman states that the building had been home to a “mercenary-like” corporation, and that evidence had been anonymously provided to authorities, condemning the company of committing multiple, horrendous crimes, moments before the explosion had taken place.

The words don’t register as Ray searches frantically through the clips until he sees two small figures hunched into each other as they limp from beneath the smoke, coughing. Paramedics seem to rush them, ushering them to an ambulance and Ray sits back, swallowing hard.

He didn’t look at the files on the USB but the way the headlines are spilling across the internet like a flood are enough to give him an idea of their contents.

And with the fire presumably burning away the rest of the evidence, that USB would be all that was left of Maestoso.

Eddy the stupid, reckless genius.

Ash starts to fall across the reporter’s face on the TV, and Ray thinks that it looks almost like snow.

The following day, he gets a text from Eddy.

Thank you for everything.

Ray just shakes his head and replies:

You’re fucking insane.

They don’t talk about it again.

Brett and Eddy start a new company called TwoSet Violin.

Ray features in a couple of their videos.

Brett wears a dark silver ring on his left hand and Eddy appears softer, smiles easily.

Ray thinks they both look happier.

Eddy’s hearing in his right ear isn’t as good as it used to be. It doesn’t impact his perfect pitch.

Brett convinces Eddy to play again, and the first duet they play together is Navara.