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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: R
Pairing: M. Torres/S. Ramos, Giuly/Deco
Feedback: Good lines, typos, etc.
Disclaimer: This is absolutely fiction and not real and I don’t know these people at all. Any resemblance to any real-life record company is completely accidental.
Notes: Titled after the song by KT Tunstall. Thanks to lilianna76 for the Gourcuff info.
Summary: Everything’s all cool and groovy with the French gangsters, right up to when it’s not. Also, Sergio goes on retrieval, and what does this have to do with record labels? *shrugs*
***
Yoann lowered his newspaper a little and scanned the street again. It was well past noon and the restaurant door said that they were open for lunch, but so far there wasn’t a single—no, here came a car. But not shiny enough, he decided. Also, no self-respecting man of enterprise would drive something as orange as Holland. So he went back to reading something about a hot new Argentine starlet…who wasn’t bad, but who definitely could use some gelling tips.
A couple minutes later, the sound of revving engines made him look up again, but this one just spat out a bunch of giggling women in highly expensive suits. Nice, but again, not what he was looking for. And not even possible arm ornamentation, since those heels were far too sensible to belong to—
He thought he dropped his paper when he was yanked backwards, but then something was shoved over his face that crackled, and it smelled of newsprint and tasted absolutely awful, like overripe—and right, yes, hands pinning him down and invading his privacy. Of course Yoann had been struggling out of instinct, but he was admittedly slow. It’d been a long trip. He didn’t travel well. He—he bit down on the newspaper as someone wrenched his shoulder hard, then couldn’t help gagging at the taste. The hands up his shirt paused, then disappeared.
One dizzying spin later, he found himself in the back of a van that he was absolutely certain hadn’t been anywhere near him, his hands cuffed behind his back. It was pitch-dark except for the flashlight with which somebody was attempting to blind him. “Who—”
“You’re French!” said somebody French, in French. Provençal accent.
“Of course I’m French! I’m—wait, are you with Giuly?” Yoann’s eyes were hurting too much from the flashlight, so he began to duck his head, only to have it wrenched back up. He hissed and the finger and thumb only dug in harder on either side of his jaw, so he made himself stop. His wrists hurt, and he could feel something soaking into his trousers from the van floor, and this was just totally ridiculous. “I thought you were expecting me.”
Nobody said anything, though the hand let go of him. He worked his jaw, grimacing as the blood flooded back so he could bruise up, and squinted as best he could into the light. His eyes were adjusting and—and it didn’t really do a lot of good, since he didn’t recognize any of them. He shifted a little to get his weight off his wrists and his heel hit something that clanged loudly; he winced, they didn’t. The silence suddenly became unnerving.
“Are you?” Yoann asked. When they didn’t react, he started to reach for his wallet and was harshly reminded of the handcuffs. “Look, my right pocket—my wallet, there’s my license and also a card from Christian Gourcuff—”
Two of them looked at each other, and then somebody yanked a cloth bag over Yoann’s head.
* * *
Sergio stared at the doorway. When he’d kicked it, it’d been mostly for show and he hadn’t actually expected anything to happen, much less for the whole door to wham down, hinges clattering like mad on the way. One of them even still had two of its screws in it: they’d just ripped straight out, with no splintering. “God, that’s cheap.”
Something banged inside the trailer, and then a muffled voice came from the direction that Sergio guessed was the bedroom. Oh, right. Why he was here.
Deep breath, and then Sergio braced himself on either side of the doorway. “’Nando! Get your ass out here! Finals are over and you’ve got to goddamn talk to me now!”
“Why?”
Sergio blinked, then jerked his hands in towards his chest and his head down. Then he realized he couldn’t actually hide like that, and also that hey, he was the pissed-off one here, and turned around.
Fernando stood in front of him. Shirt on but tails untucked, feet in sandals, and hair falling at natural angles to either side of his face: the man had clearly just woken up. Steaming cup in one hand, with the lid still on: not caffeinated yet. Expression: aggravated. “Sergio, what the hell are you—”
“Is this your trailer?” Sergio interrupted. He jiggled nervously on one foot till Fernando, glancing repeatedly at his coffee, distractedly nodded, and then sighed in relief. And grabbed the other man while he was at it, and began to drag them inside the trailer, only to yelp and shove them right back out when a woman screamed. “Fuck! Are you sure?”
“I—yeah, that’s my…” Fernando frowned and craned his head back and forth. He was trying to look past Sergio’s shoulder, and when Sergio realized what he was doing and moved to block him, kept bobbing his head for a couple seconds longer before getting that that was pointless. Really, really not caffeinated. “…my…my door? My girlfriend?”
“’Nando! What’s—the door! And who is—Sergio?”
Sergio turned around, recognized Ollala and remembered he wasn’t decaffeinated. He grabbed Fernando and ran like hell.
Several minutes later, he couldn’t hear Ollala’s screaming any more and they were in the middle of…of…Sergio couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he kept thinking of Gladiator and that one day of history class where they’d had a hot substitute so he’d actually stayed awake for the educational film clips. Lots of pillars and dusty-looking stuff, and not really any furniture around, though he looked hard before finally settling for standing. He rumpled his hair a little, then glanced at Fernando. “Um. So…hey, ‘Nando. How’s it going?”
The other man blinked at him slowly and mechanically, and that went on for so long that Sergio began thinking he might’ve broken his cousin. Then Fernando frowned, flicked the plastic lid off his cup and abruptly downed the whole thing. He hissed and pinched the bridge of his nose, bowing his head again. Breathed in. “…Sergio. You’re here. You—you kicked in my door! And you’re here! What the hell are you—”
“Well, finals are over and somebody had to come tell you you’re being a fucking prick,” Sergio snapped. His hair fell into his face and he pushed it back, only to have his headband come off with his hands. He absently flipped the stupid thing, glowering at the other man. “It’s been fucking months. Aren’t you satisfied by now?”
Fernando frowned back, eyes narrowing slightly. “About what? Oh…José?”
It was that little pause that got to Sergio. Normally he didn’t think of himself as an angry kind of guy, and he did try to get along with people because God knew that he was always ending up in shit he didn’t mean to, so he knew first impressions were deceiving. But he and Fernando and José had all known each other from childhood, because they were family, and—and it was just fucking enraging, the way Fernando could pretend he didn’t know exactly why Sergio was here. Like he hadn’t thought about it at all, when back home they’d been pulling out their hair and living with it and just—he was just such a fucking asshole.
“You fucking selfish shit,” Sergio finally managed to get out. He tried for a couple seconds to get the rest of the words boiling in his head out, but finally had to give up. He threw up his hands and turned around, then stalked off. “Well, fuck it, you don’t want to be family, we don’t want you to be family.”
* * *
“So, they’ve got radioactive hydrogen in them, but it’s got a short…” Andriy gestured a little, trying to come up with the right word “…doesn’t last long, right? As long as they get it out of the body fast, and it—goes into water. So the sensible thing to do obviously is to get drunk and dehydrate faster. Piss it out.”
The vendors were finally delivering good produce, on time, and matching the order forms. It had taken them far too long and used up far too many cricket bats than Lilian really preferred, but at least it was done now. He lowered the clipboard and waved the deliverymen on into the kitchen. “That is not sensible. And these were nuclear scientists?”
“Medically it is. Scientifically it is. You need to change all the water in your body quickly, you get drunk.” After another moment, Andriy grinned and kicked back against the doorway, so only his face was peeping past the jamb. He took another bite of whatever tidbit the cooks had given him this morning. “And also, this sums up the Russian mentality. Expediency washed down with whatever’s at hand.”
“You’re Ukrainian.” One of the deliverymen handed Lilian the receiving form and he checked it over, then signed off on it and detached the fat envelope that was hidden beneath it. He gave the form back and the man began to walk off, so Lilian clucked warningly. After the man had scrambled back, Lilian flipped open the envelope just enough to let his thumb run over the cash inside. It all felt right, and these were known men so their home addresses were on file, so he nodded for them to go.
Andriy snorted as he twisted out of the deliverymen’s way. He started to put his head out the door, but then backed off as the dairy truck pulled up to make its drop. “Same damn thing, even now. So anyway, when do we talk about the—”
“—after I deal with these.” Lilian frowned and raised his head, noticing some movement just behind the truck, but then relaxed when he saw that it was just Gaël. He flipped the page on his clipboard to the dairy invoice. “Ludo is not expected here today, so there’s no hurry. Also, Philippe needs an emergency check-up.”
“Which end?” Andriy mumbled. He finished chewing that mouthful, then looked up. Then he shrugged, rolling his eyes. “Is it the blond, or that one with the soulful brown eyes?”
Dairy seemed all right so far, though Lilian missed seeing a few boxes because he had to get out of Philippe’s way as the man ran back out while dragging a large empty crate. Lilian looked back down the alley, where he noted that Sébastien had pulled his van all the way in and was now standing by the back having a nervous smoke. “The Italian with the horrible hair.”
“Ah. Brown-eyes. I’ll do my best, but if the bite-marks are really deep, then I’m no plastic surgeon…hmm.” Andriy had been around long enough to know what normal looked like, and so he watched along with Lilian as Philippe and Sébastien began to argue around the crate, waving their hands and ducking their heads and frequently glancing back at them. “Or maybe you want that to wait.”
Usually Lilian was satisfied with his colleagues. Sometimes, however, he did wish Ludo would hire a few more….mature…types. And Andriy, even if he was not the paper-boy he’d initially appeared to be, did not qualify as that. “Possibly.”
After telling the deliverymen to hurry up, Lilian dealt with the forms and then walked casually down to the van. By the time he’d gotten there, the dairy truck was pulling out of the other end of the alley and Gaël and Sébastien had noticed he was coming. Gaël had taken a couple steps back, but then had set his shoulders and come forward again, while Sébastien just fidgeted.
“What’s the matter?” Lilian asked.
“Er—”
“There’s a…” Sébastien jerked his head towards the van’s back doors, one of which was ajar so Lilian could hear a rhythmic thumping. “Er. Well.”
Lilian looked up and down the alley, rubbed his left temple, and then pulled out his cell-phone. While he was texting security to beef it up for a couple minutes, he nodded to the crate. “All right, bring it inside and I will take a look.”
Ten minutes later, Andriy still apparently was working on that one breadstick, and Lilian had just distracted himself from the necessity of killing his colleagues for brainlessness by wondering whether that meant he needed to have a discussion with the baker again. Then Andriy handed him a bottle and Lilian absently looked at the label. Then again, and then he handed it back. “I am not planning to sleep for at least several more hours.”
“Oh, no, for him,” Andriy said, pointing with his chin.
The man in question glowered back at them from his chair, but the effect was ruined by the fact that his torn shirt-collar was rubbing against the underside of his chin and it clearly bothered him, to the point that he kept ducking his head to try and get away from it. “I am Yoann Gourcuff. I have identification. I am an expected messenger.”
“He does have all the papers, but the thing is, the last message said not to expect anybody,” Philippe muttered in Italian. “And also, he didn’t just come straight in. He was just standing across the street with a paper, looking shifty—”
“I was not looking shifty! I was just trying to figure out if anybody was actually inside!” Gourcuff protested. He was beginning to look slightly more frightened than offended. “Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but you’ve heard of my father. Haven’t you?”
Philippe grimaced, then ducked his head and hit his own forehead before Lilian could. “Shit. Sorry.”
“Who the hell stands around hiding behind a newspaper?” Sébastien demanded. “And how do we know that that’s good identification? Obviously something funny is going on, after all.”
“So we were driving back and he looked suspi—” Philippe wilted under Lilian’s glare “—all right, Sébastien just thought he was that uppity shit who snitched Sébastien’s Rolex in the men’s toilet at the Ventre last Saturday, and we grabbed him. But then he said he’s Gourcuff’s kid.”
“Because I am Gourcuff’s kid!”
Andriy thoughtfully crunched the last bit of his breadstick. “I don’t do DNA work.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” Lilian muttered. He pushed Philippe aside, then hit Sébastien on the back of the head as he crossed the room. Initially the other man had an affronted look on his face, but when he realized it’d been Lilian, he quickly turned apologetic and slid out of the way.
Lilian stopped a few feet in front of Gourcuff, who kept up his chin but whose cuffs rattled slightly as he shifted uneasily around, rolling his shoulders. He started to talk, but then clammed up and just stared when Lilian grabbed his chin. Then he let out a startled noise and tried to pull his head away, but Lilian had a good grip and only had to jerk once before Gourcuff stopped. After waiting a moment and getting no more resistance, Lilian ran one thumb over the man’s eyelid, then turned it over. Nothing came off, but there were the new waterproof—Lilian licked his thumb and repeated the gesture, taking into account the way Gourcuff hitched up while sucking in a breath.
Still no dark smear on Lilian’s thumbpad, and Gourcuff was blinking his eyes as if he was surprised to still have them. The lashes appeared natural as well. “Hmm. Well, I need to make a call to confirm this. Till then—”
“Look, can I just give you the message? Then you can go call or whatever, I have to wait for a reply anyway, but—ow.” Gourcuff winced as Lilian dug nails into the sides of his jaw. He took a shaky breath, swallowed hard, and then stared up with a little more humility. “Or is there any other way I could expedite this? I—I’ve heard a lot about your operation from my father, and I want you to know I only hold the highest respect for it.”
After a long, long look at him, Lilian twisted his hand out from under the man’s chin. He began to wipe it on his thigh, but then remembered where they were and went over to the counter. He was only starting to look when a box of sanitary wipes was pushed in front of him.
When he looked up, Andriy was pulling on a pair of latex gloves and sighing. “So how—” he started, French still rough coming off his tongue.
“Wait, aren’t you supposed to look at Philippe?” Sébastien ignored Mexès’ sudden hiss at him. “I can just do it.”
“Sébastien, your mistake here was…over-enthusiasm. I would not suggest repeating it.” Lilian waited till the other man had blushed and ducked behind Philippe before putting his hand over his face. “Full cavity-check. Have some respect, as if he’s who he says he is, then he’s a friend. But be thorough,” he told Andriy in Italian. Then he reconsidered. “But you don’t—”
“Oh, believe me, I know the difference between respectful and overly hospitable. I’m Ukrainian, not French.” Andriy smiled a little carelessly at the look Lilian gave him, then nodded towards Gourcuff, who finally thought to pull his knees together so his reactions weren’t…grossly obvious. “So this is the French mentality, no?”
After another moment, Lilian refrained from taking the box of wipes with him, and instead just dragged a disappointed Sébastien out with him. Philippe he had to leave behind, as Andriy’s personality decidedly did not contain a sufficiently aggressive element should anything unexpected happen, but he…well, Shevchenko was bitter enough. He’d be able to take whatever he saw, and anyway Lilian had his hands full already.
It wasn’t that he disagreed with his boss’ training methods and preferences—in fact, he did see the advantages in loyalties and predictable weaknesses. But occasionally Lilian truly, in the most heartfelt way, wished that he worked with more vanilla. And not only when he took a turn at the pastry station.
* * *
Much to his surprise, Sergio got all the way back to the youth hostel—actually, it wasn’t to his surprise. Well, fine, it was, but only in the worst way, he thought as he slammed his things back into his duffel bag. Okay, he wasn’t the master manipulator that Cesc was, but even he knew that after this long, the chances of Fernando being sensible weren’t that great. But even so, he’d thought that the man at least would have…have acted like they were related.
Wham—thump.
Sergio jerked forward over the bed, then slapped down his hands on the mattress to keep from falling over. He paused, listening hard, and when he made out the cursing he…well, he really wasn’t Cesc. He stood there for a bit, thinking, and then said to hell with it and finished throwing his stuff together. Then he straightened up, threw his duffel bag over his back, and headed for the hallway.
Just outside the door, Fernando was slowly picking himself up. He shook his head, noticed Sergio and shook his head again. Then he grimaced, one hand pressed to the side of his face, and pushed his shoulder up the wall. When he was halfway standing, he stopped and grabbed at his foot with his other hand. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“Home.” There was a pretty big crack in the lower part of the door, but the hinges looked like they’d hold for at least a few more minutes, and Sergio didn’t see anybody else around. He’d already paid, so if he just got out soon, he’d be okay. “Man, talk about a couple days’ wasted vacation.”
“No, you’re not—Sergio, goddamn it, you kicked in my door, and then you drag me off and—and what the hell are you doing here?” Fernando snapped. He’d shaved and dressed and done his hair, but other than that, he didn’t look too awake. “Wait. You said…did you say something about…about…”
Sergio looked up, then down. Then he turned on his heel, wondering what he was still doing here. “Oh, my God, you can’t even say his name.”
“Hey, look, it’s a lot more—”
“He’s your fucking cousin! He’s family! What, he goes out with one guy and that’s all—”
“He did not go out with ‘one guy,’” Fernando snapped, and then snapped upright while he was at it. He gave the door a backheeled kick as he did, then jumped away as the wood splintered a little. Fernando shot the door a panicked glance, but then looked up at Sergio so that all melted away. “Sergio, look, you were out fucking around and you don’t—he was this…this broken thing. Thing. He wasn’t even—he didn’t even seem like a person, okay? He just was so…gone. And it was all because of that asshole, and then José goes back to him anyway. And I do care about him, you ass, but I just can’t—if they don’t want help, then you can’t do anything for them.”
And with that, Fernando offered up what was probably a genuinely pained expression, with helplessly gesturing hands that even went back to ruin the teased waterfall on Fernando’s head. The other man mumbled a little more, walking around in a little circle, before stopping and looking at Sergio like he was supposed to get that. Which Sergio did, and for a moment Sergio kind of felt for Fernando.
He got over it. Okay, he wasn’t used to thinking hard about much, but it’d been so many months that even he’d had to think this one through. “That’s bullshit, ‘Nando. It’s bullshit and you know it. Look, José’s not some…some alcoholic or whatever. He had some problems and he had a bad hook-up, but you know what, he worked through it. And fine, he’s still with this Dutch guy but he came back and made up with his parents and you know what? He’s even working again. He’s getting paid to help starlets relocate from South America. So, you know, he’s fine. Maybe not the way you wanted him to end up fine, but he is.”
“Yeah, well, then why are you here? If it’s all good and everything, then why bother me about it? After all, it’s not like I know what I’m talking about, according to you,” Fernando hissed back. He jerked his hands in front of him, like he was strangling some invisible man, and then he abruptly threw them up. “Why bother?”
“Because you’re still family, too. Even when you’re being a dick.” Sergio paused, then ran his hand through his hair. So this part, the whole dramatic speech thing, he hadn’t really thought through, but so far it seemed to be going fine. “’Nando. He really misses—hell, I really miss you. And what’s with that, anyway? José pisses you off so you’re going to hate all of us?”
Fernando…stared. Did some flippy motions with his hands, looking increasingly frustrated, and then suddenly tossed back his head to exhale angrily at the ceiling, like he meant to kill something with his morning breath. “It’s complicated, damn it.”
“Or maybe you’re just pigheaded,” Sergio blurted. Then he reconsidered, and then he decided that for once, his mouth running away with itself had produced something half-intelligent. “You were mad. Fine. We all were mad. But you’re not mad now. You’re just being an asshole. And I just—I came down here to say that, because everybody’s said a lot to you but I don’t think anybody said that, and somebody had to. And also because I miss you—José misses you, we miss you. We’ll be really happy if you decide to talk to us again. But if you don’t…look, ‘Nando. We’re gonna pick ourselves up and get going. People heal.”
“I know,” Fernando said. It was hard to read his tone: definitely angry, but there was something else to it, too. Maybe bitter, maybe sad, maybe stubborn. Maybe just plain he needed more coffee.
He didn’t go on, or make any move towards or away from Sergio, even when Sergio took a step back. So Sergio took another one, and at that, Fernando lifted his chin a little and pressed his fists into his hips. It reminded Sergio of when they were kids, and how Fernando always had told people off for José, and for a moment Sergio stopped where he was, chest aching a little.
But he waited, and Fernando still didn’t do anything, and well, Sergio wasn’t made for standing still. His toes started to itch so he scuffed his foot against the floor, and then he had to swing his leg back and forth, and then he sort of swung himself half-around. Though he thought he heard something, so he paused again. But it turned out to be nothing.
And Sergio’s chest hurt, but so did his shoulder where the duffel strap dug into it, and his stomach because he hadn’t actually had breakfast, but had gone straight to see Fernando. Which maybe was all sort of inappropriate, but it was living, and he…he shrugged and took a step, and it wasn’t that hard, to be honest. He didn’t like it at all, but he could live with it.
“You know, nobody says you’ve got to be okay with it all. Most of us aren’t…aren’t really sure about this guy yet. But José seems to be doing fine with him, and his life’s his life. He was always going to have to put that together for himself,” Sergio added. He took another step away. “Anyway, all I think José wants is to be able to hang out with you again.”
Another step, and Sergio was at a turn in the hall. He waited a moment longer, then felt his shoulders sink a little as nothing came after him. But then he took a breath and swung out his leg, and in another minute he was in the lobby, looking at all the other travelers wandering in and out, and he remembered that he was supposed to be on his vacation.
Pretty shitty so far, Sergio thought. He bit his lip, then shook his head and a bright flash caught his eye. He blinked hard, then looked again. Then he went over in a hurry.
“You fucker,” Miguel said, and smacked the side of Sergio’s head. He waited for Sergio to yelp, then glowered over crossed arms. “Okay, I accept your apology for leaving a voicemail when you were already on the fucking train. You see your cousin yet?”
“Yeah, but he…he’s just…look, it’s been a sucky morning,” Sergio finally said. Lame.
Though weirdly enough, it looked like Miguel was softening up. His arms loosened and his mouth bent out of its frown, and then he sort of reached for Sergio while pretending he was just going to adjust the jacket slung over his shoulder. Then he made a face and rolled his eyes. “Oh…never mind. Okay, let’s go get breakfast and fuck.”
Sergio stared.
“That always makes you feel better, doesn’t it? And then we can find something better to do, since we’re here and all.” Miguel shifted back a little, rubbing at his upper arms, and then hunched a little defensively. “Well?”
“Well, I say, lead the way,” Sergio said, grin slowly spreading over his face. “Hey, I think you’re great, you know.”
Well, that was lame too, and Miguel snorted in agreement with the little voice in Sergio’s head. But he was sort of smiling too, and he let Sergio drape an arm over his shoulders as they walked off. Sometimes the thought really did count.
* * *
“Clean,” Andriy said. He slouched further down the wall and examined his nails, then picked under one with his thumbnail. Then he looked up, saw Lilian’s expression and rolled his eyes. “And I am, too. I know hygiene, all right? Better than—”
“Do not even begin that thought.” Lilian put his hand on the knob and turned it, but then let go just after he’d opened it, so that the door stayed mostly in the frame.
Inside somebody hissed, then cursed so Philippe apologized for something. Which would make Yoann the curser, and he confirmed that a moment later. “Ow. Look, I’m cooperating, do you have to be so rough?”
“Hey, sorry. We’re just being careful.” Pause, and then a little lower: “And Sheva’s sort of a jerk. If it makes you feel better, he’s like that to everybody. Or here…this feel better?”
After a moment, Yoann affirmed that it did, his voice considerably more breathy. “You know, it’s not—I don’t mind rough, necessarily. In the right…setting. But really, I want…I want you to know…I’m not dangerous. Your boss, he doesn’t seem so convinced, so…you have any tips on that?”
Andriy’s spoken French still was very fragmented, but he could understand quite well and he was half-grinning again. If it’d been after-hours, that gleam in his eye would’ve been due to vodka. “So, also, I have to ask about your training methods. I’ve been wondering for a while.”
Lilian pulled the door shut, and loudly enough for the men inside to hear. Then he turned to Andriy. “He’s cleared.”
The other man blinked. He rubbed at his cheek, then looked at Lilian again. “So…what, I have to check Philippe now?”
“You didn’t yet?”
“No. Trying to examine thoroughly a wriggling French brat for concealed weapons takes time,” Andriy said, tucking in his chin. He coughed into his hand, rubbed the side of his face again, and then rolled his eyes. “Look. Would you want to spend your whole day taking samples from that end of—”
“No. Just…have the results when Ludo asks for them. I may need Philippe now, though,” Lilian muttered. He put his hand back on the knob, took a deep breath, and went inside.
He’d forgotten about scuffing his foot to provide the customary half-minute warning, and sometimes, he was reminded as he watched Philippe scramble off Gourcuff, that was not a courtesy but a mutual preservation measure. Of course, in this situation he did have to keep watch due to other security concerns, but that was certainly not an excuse, or even a justification. It was a…very, very irritating explanation, Lilian decided.
Once Philippe was up, Lilian tossed the man the keys to the cuffs, then nodded towards Gourcuff. “Your story has been confirmed.”
“About time,” Gourcuff muttered under his breath, while he was mostly blocked by Philippe’s shoulder. The moment Philippe stepped away from him, he assumed a much more demure expression, staying seated as he rubbed his wrists. “So, the message—”
“Sorry about that. We’ve—it’s been a little jumpy around here,” Philippe said.
Interestingly enough, Gourcuff looked first startled and then faintly irritated. His head twitched towards the other man, but then he purposely set his shoulders and looked up at Lilian. “Domenech isn’t dead.”
Philippe made a sharp hissing noise, so Gourcuff glanced at him again. As nice as it was to see Gourcuff had a sense of duty, Lilian was inclined to write up that second look to youthful inexperience: Gourcuff seemed more annoyed than anything else, as if he thought he wasn’t being taken seriously again. He would be too young to have had firsthand experience—Philippe was as well, but he’d heard the stories from enough veterans. He knew nobody invoked that name unless it was to be taken seriously.
“I wish you’d let me just get that out first before you went off and did all this…checking,” Gourcuff added, gesturing about himself. He pushed his right wrist against his thigh a few times, then primly pulled his suit-jacket into place over his shoulders, as it’d gotten a bit rumpled. “Obviously this is hot news. And why weren’t you expecting me, anyway? We did call ahead and do all the—”
“Because you didn’t talk to anyone who was with us.” Lilian sensed Philippe looking at him and flicked his hand towards the door. He moved aside to let the other man pass, then waved curtly for Gourcuff to get up.
The other man did very slowly, staring so hard at Lilian that he tripped a little as he got off the chair, forgetting that his foot was hooked around one of the legs. He did catch the chair before it fell over and set it upright before he hurried across the room. By then, Lilian was at the door, so Gourcuff looked a little silly craning his head up at nothing. He only looked irritated at that for a moment before he adjusted and slid after Lilian. “But wait, then that means—”
“We should have listened to your message first,” Lilian conceded. He looked up towards the end of the hall, where Sébastien was having a rapidfire conversation while trying to gesture some sort of translation to Lilian. “We’ve lost an hour on our end. When did you speak to this—”
“Yesterday. Around five in the evening.” Gourcuff kept himself slightly behind and to Lilian’s left, occasionally peeking curiously into various doors—he flinched as Lilian grabbed one and shut it hard, then flicked a glance at Lilian. “But then who did I talk to?”
“You tell me.” Lilian paused at the next door. Immediately after he’d knocked on it, it swung wide open and a pair of semiautomatics was held out to him. He took them, tucked them under his coat and into his waistband at his back, and then gave Gourcuff a push. With the way the man was trying to look inside, it didn’t take all that much. “We should have taken your message, but you should know better than to rely on one call to set up a meeting. So tell me who it was, and I may find some respect for you as well as your father.”
The door slammed shut from the inside just as Gourcuff was twisting around, so Lilian only saw about a third of the young man’s agonized, outraged expression. Which was plenty, and—Lilian stopped, then sighed.
“What? I just want to know if I need to set up the surgery or not,” Andriy said. He had lost his suit-jacket, and one of his shirt-cuffs was already rolled up. The other was only unbuttoned and it flapped as he lifted his arm, revealing some…questionable scars over the wrist’s back and underside. He fiddled with his ear, then put his hand down so Lilian got a glimpse of the black earbud. “Also, here still okay, or should I be thinking about relocating to somewhere safer?”
“Safer?”
Andriy poked at his earphone again. His expression was irritated, and yet there was something faintly incongruous in the rest of him, in the withdrawn stance of his shoulders and the way he wouldn’t directly look at Lilian. He glanced down the hall, and for a moment Lilian didn’t know whether the man was checking to see if anyone would stop him from…from getting more aggressive or from running.
“I get paid to doctor. I don’t get paid to fight,” Andriy finally muttered, voice tight. His accent came through his Italian just then as strongly as it did with his French.
“So it says on the accountbooks.” One of the guns slipped a little and Lilian reached back to adjust it. “Here will be fine. Ludo is not anywhere nearby, so I doubt you’ll be concerned much. As for surgery—better to wait for a call. We will not be very near either.”
Interestingly enough, Andriy didn’t seem particularly comforted. But he didn’t raise any objections, or ask any more questions. Instead he withdrew, going backwards a step and then turning while still prodding at his ear. He went off muttering to himself—in Russian, it seemed.
Still, the man would keep, considering how slowly he was walking and the fact that he was still rolling up his sleeves. So Lilian proceeded down the hall, meaning to get a proper shoulder holster for his guns. Then he would try and raise Ludo again, and if he couldn’t make contact, he would simply have to drive out.
* * *
“It’s just…I don’t understand how he can act like that. It’s like we mean absolutely nothing to him,” Sergio said. “Like we’re Styrofoam cups, you know?”
Miguel grunted, then groaned and lifted his head from Sergio’s shoulder. He stared blearily down at Sergio, rumpling his sweaty mussed hair with one hand. “Uh, no. Don’t see it.”
“Cups? You know, that you throw away ‘cause they’re not worth the effort of putting in the trashcan? Except even then, some cop who’s lost his nightstick up his ass always catches you and writes you a fucking citation for littering, and then…get it? Oh, for God’s sake.” The hammock swayed a little as Sergio let his head fall back, making certain body parts shift and realign and finally Sergio had to grab Miguel’s thigh and hitch up his own hips a bit to get comfortable again. Not that Miguel seemed to mind, given how he dropped his head back on Sergio’s chest. “Aren’t you supposed to be smarter than me?”
“Everybody’s supposed to be smarter than you,” Miguel mumbled. “Even José, even though the only way he can do math is if you tell it to him like an accounting problem.”
Sergio hit him. Barely a tap, so Sergio felt totally fine about ignoring Miguel’s yelp. The whole body-arch and clench was a good bit harder to get through, but it was still early enough for Sergio to just let his blessed-out muscles ride the movement. “Okay, but seriously.”
“Seriously, I get the metaphor, okay? I just…don’t know why you wanna go thinking about your asshole cousin when your dick is still up my ass.” The last few words dragged a little, and so did Miguel’s mouth down Sergio’s shoulder. Miguel lifted himself a bit, pushed his knees up along Sergio’s ribs, and then settled again with a little huffy breath. “I—fuck, I mean, I know it sucks, but…goddamn it, Sergio, why are we talking about this now?”
“Because I was thinking about it! Look, I can’t help it if I kind of think more seriously after sex.” Which had always been really weird and Sergio still wasn’t sure what to make of it, but sometimes it could be useful. But still, he didn’t think Cesc had it all right when he said that it was because all the hormones got used up so Sergio actually had to use his brain. If that was right, then Sergio should’ve been able to get honors grades on every exam just by getting a blowjob in the janitor’s closet right before, and he knew that that didn’t work. “And I did just see him.”
Snort from Miguel, who began to nibble at Sergio’s collarbone. Sergio absently put his hand on the other man’s head, then started to twist Miguel’s hair around his thumb. Something creaked rather loudly above him and he craned his head about to check the hammock peg, but that still looked pretty secure, so he settled back into place. And it was a nice place, way nice for something Miguel had rustled up with a few calls to various friends.
“So how was he?” A last lick at Sergio’s neck, and then Miguel awkwardly propped himself up on his elbows, having to bend to fit the curve of the hammock. His hair flopped into his eyes and he tossed his head, then put up a hand when the head-toss didn’t work. “Well, if you’re going to think about him, then you might as well get it all out of your system.”
“Hey, just because I’m thinking about him doesn’t mean the sex was bad. Or that I’m thinking about…I’m not Cesc, okay? Though yeah, yeah, they aren’t that closely related.” And Miguel didn’t care, as shown by his blank expression, and that was just months and months of Cesc getting all touchy about Raúl making Sergio’s mouth move. He grimaced and shook his head, then started to sit up. Then froze, hissing, and stayed that way till Miguel’s eyes were no longer rolling back into his head and the other man could support himself. “Just—I don’t want to write off ‘Nando. Yeah, I know, it’s just me being stupid and wishing for the impossible, but I don’t see why it can’t go—not back to how it was, but to something better than…than this. Something where we can all talk to each other. You know?”
“Yeah, actually,” Miguel said after a moment. He glanced off to the side, pushing his hand down on the top of his head, and then turned back as he pulled his hand away. But he only met Sergio’s eyes for a second before he looked down, oddly moody. Usually he was about as laidback as Sergio—kind of why he’d pulled ahead of Gago, who could be really sullen sometimes. “It looks different to me, too…used to, whenever Raúl needed a break, ‘Nando would come up and deal with Cesc with him. Get José to lighten up, too—José does that fine now, I guess, but Cesc’s always running off on business and José’s never really around either, and I see you, but we’re screwing. Sometimes it’s just like I lost a favorite café. You know, you don’t go for a while and then you go to visit but it’s been turned into a quickie-mart or something.”
To be honest, Sergio didn’t know. He hadn’t really considered how it’d look to somebody outside of the family, since most of the time it seemed like they were all going off in different directions anyway and all that did hold them together was family. Then again, Miguel had known them all for ages—almost qualified as family himself, except Sergio really wasn’t like Cesc and thinking like that kind of put him off his rhythm. And he liked the rhythm he had with Miguel. It was nice and easy, and with all of that it wasn’t really that shallow. Miguel had figured out where he was going, and all he’d said to the voicemail was that he had one last thing to deal with before he could go on vacation.
“I mean, it happens. People grow up—Cesc obviously was never going to hang around. And it’s kind of a good thing, because God, you just want to strangle him sometimes, and then…well, I never really got José. He’s…no, I didn’t see the breakdown coming either, but he was always way too quiet for your family.” Then Miguel kept his mouth open, as if he meant to go on, but he was ducking his head too much. And blushing, for some weird reason, and finally he just shrugged and bent down to nuzzle at Sergio’s jaw. “Never mind.”
“Hey, no…that was…um…” That was important, what Miguel had just said, and Sergio had known exactly why and how.
And he had been planning to say so, but propping himself up moved stuff too much and he lost that thought, and so finally he was half-sitting with Miguel attentively looking at him and he had nothing. Except well, they were naked, it was warm and sunny, and his dick was recovering its enthusiasm for being deeply seated in Miguel’s lovely tight ass. Sergio experimentally pressed his hips up, watched Miguel’s eyes widen and then go hazy, and figured that this might be a half-decent substitute.
The hammock made sitting really hard, so Sergio let himself fall back and the thing began to sway. Miguel had been moving forward with him, but the swinging made the other man twist sideways a little and that—that was kind of interesting. Hurt, sort of, because—but Sergio got hold of Miguel’s hips, balancing him so the tweak wasn’t as bad, and then Miguel kept tweaking because he was squirming, but in a good way, and also he was sucking at Sergio’s neck. Slow and soft, his mouth the same temperature as the sun filtering down to them through the grimy skylight glass.
It was really a nice loft for an art student, Sergio vaguely thought. Then he moved his hands lower on Miguel’s hips, his fingertips sliding onto the man’s buttocks, and—
“Sergio!”
“Gyah—oh, mother of God,” Sergio hissed, flopping back. His knees jerked up as well so at least one of them thumped Miguel pretty badly, smashing the other man’s head into Sergio’s shoulder. Sergio wheezed out an apology and tried to pull Miguel back and—okay, no, wrong way, that really fucking hurt. “Fuck. Ow. Wait, don’t…fuck.”
“Sergio?”
Something slapped at Sergio’s right hand, then pinned it. Then Miguel somehow got himself up—and up, and they both grimaced at that. Shit, they were a lot stickier than Sergio had realized.
Miguel hooked his free hand into the hammock webbing over Sergio’s left shoulder, then stared down at Sergio with one eye screwed nearly shut. It probably wasn’t all from the physical pain, given the exasperation in his other eye. “Listen, also, I care enough about the rest of your cousins to want to break their fucking necks when they—”
“Er, no, don’t do that,” Sergio muttered, wriggling over. He maneuvered his leg under Miguel and then out the other side while Miguel was still making faces.
And then the fucking hammock dumped him on the floor instead of letting him swing gracefully onto his feet. He rolled over, groaning and clutching at his shins, dimly hearing Miguel’s tone change from irritated to concerned. Then to irritated again, only it seemed like the other man was farther away, or…or maybe talking to somebody else. Who might own the legs against which Sergio had just bumped.
Sergio looked up. Fernando had his hand tightly pressed over his eyes. “Sergio, for the love of God. I saw plenty of that the summer you dated that nudist.”
“So you should be used to it, and—and how the hell did you track me down? Are you turning into Cesc?” Sergio snapped. He scooted back, then got onto his hands and knees. Some grit had somehow gotten into his groin and he scratched it off, then wiped his hand on the outside of his hip as he stood up. And then he made a face right back at Fernando. “Look, you come barging in here, then you should—”
“You broke my girlfriend’s door! That was a company trailer!”
“You ditched everybody worse than José did! At least he kept in touch!”
At that point, Sergio could fully straighten up. He did so he could look Fernando in the eye, and Fernando looked right back, apparently over his naked-body issue. Nobody said anything for maybe fifty seconds.
It actually took the second creak to make Sergio look over, and he noticed that Fernando kept staring a little longer before he looked as well. Miguel blinked, then threw up his hands and waved them in a surrendering gesture as he climbed out of the hammock. Which didn’t drop him, Sergio thought a little sourly.
“So…I’m gonna go get our pants. Back in…whenever I don’t hear yelling anymore,” Miguel said. For all his earlier bravado, he sounded a little unsure of himself and couldn’t seem to make up his mind which of them he was talking to. His head kept swinging back and forth between them, though when he finally turned, he glanced at Sergio last.
“You two are…seriously?” Fernando adjusted his stance a little, sliding his hands into his pockets.
Sergio opened his mouth, then shut it. He pulled at his hair till it was mostly out of his eyes. “Okay, fuck off. You don’t give a shit anyway, so you don’t have a—”
“I was just—never mind. Damn it.” Though the curse wasn’t for Sergio, since at that point Fernando had his face in his hand again. He rubbed at his temples with his forefinger and thumb, then dragged his fingers down so the skin stretched, briefly flashing the red undersides of his lower eyelids. Then he dropped the hand and sighed. “I…look, I might’ve followed you from the, uh, hostel. And can we just talk for a second?”
“Didn’t we do that earlier? Oh, wait, no. We didn’t. Because you’re a dumbass,” Sergio said. “It’s been like, three hours since I left there. What the hell were you doing the whole time, just standing around in the lobby trying to work up some balls?”
“Hey, I work. I had to call Olalla, and then my boss, and…well, yeah.” Fernando abruptly glanced away, then looked back at Sergio. For just a second, and then he dropped his head and hunched up his shoulders. “I stood around and tried to figure out what I was going to say after blowing you off for months, then being sort of an asshole again. But I couldn’t really come up with anything, and I know you get things over with fast and I wanted to catch you—”
Sergio put up his hand. When Fernando stopped talking, Sergio rubbed at the side of his forehead. “Wait. So you want to apologize, so you barge in during a good—moment with Miguel, and then insult my stamina?”
“Um. No.” The look on Fernando’s face could best be described as “bug-eyed.” He swallowed a few times. “I hadn’t had my coffee yet. Okay, I have now, but back then I hadn’t.”
Sergio stared at him.
“I’m sorry!” Fernando suddenly burst out, his arms flapping to either side of himself. Then one arm swung back and he clutched at his hair, still bug-eyed but in a completely different, kind of scary way. “I’m sorry, all right? You surprised the shit out of me by showing up, and also I haven’t been thinking about it all and it’s been—been—I was really goddamn mad, all right? I still am, actually. But I haven’t thought about it—I just kind of let it go and then you showed up, and I started really thinking about things again, and…and can we just talk about this? Can I know that you’re not going to throw me out?”
“Are you—are you going to stop babbling and make sense if I do?” Sergio asked, blinking hard. He hadn’t seen Fernando this worked up since…since never, to be honest. When Fernando got upset, he didn’t babble or throw a fit. He just tended to walk off and then come back when he felt better, if he was feeling like talking about it. If not, he just…well, didn’t come back. “Whatever. Okay, fine.”
Fernando choked a little in shutting up, then looked hard at Sergio. It was like he was almost offended how easy that was. “Seriously?”
“’Nando, I didn’t come here to hate on you. I can do that just fine back home, and I don’t have Miguel getting pissy at me into the bargain. I came to talk. And okay, you took a while, but whatever. You wanna talk, that’s why I’m here,” Sergio said.
“Oh.” The other man looked around a bit, his hands moving awkwardly in the air, and then shrugged. “Well. Thank you.”
Then again, it wasn’t like Sergio knew where to go from here either. Except it was kind of breezy…and he was still naked, and Miguel was clearly not coming back with their clothes. He looked around, spotted a sheet sticking out of the hammock and pulled that to him, wrapping it about his waist. Then he looked for some chairs or something, but aside from the hammock and the dodgy sketches tacked all over the walls, there really wasn’t much. But they couldn’t really stand around forever, so after a moment, Sergio did the only logical thing and sat down on the floor. “All right. So…”
Fernando had been gazing at the sketches, his lip curling like he’d just noticed them, but at that he jerked around to face Sergio again. Or where Sergio had been, anyway. After adjusting the angle of his gaze, Fernando started to say what sounded like an objection; he was dressed pretty nicely. But then he bit that off, looked at Sergio again, and just sat down. He took a second to straighten one twisted trouser-cuff.
“So,” he said.
* * *
Deco settled back against the headboard, shrugging. “Look, I cleared my entire day. And that takes some doing, since Cristiano is leaving for Portugal next week. The least you could do is turn off that damn phone when you’re fucking me.”
Ludo stared at him. Perfectly still, just sitting between Deco’s legs, expression blankly unreadable. Stance wasn’t any more helpful of a clue, except that whatever Ludo was feeling, he wasn’t at all unsure about it and in a way that was making Deco’s skin prickle. And Deco did not consider himself deficient in the least when it came to confidence, and really didn’t appreciate being shown otherwise, and goddamn it, if Ludo didn’t do something Deco would have to hit him.
Thankfully, Ludo abruptly jerked his hands up under Deco’s knees, rammed forward and by the time Deco had finished gasping, was laughing against Deco’s throat, his teeth scraping slightly in time with the movement of his hips. His hands continued to roam as well, sliding up Deco’s thighs and onto Deco’s stomach, teasing at the muscles there. “Oh, sorry, were you feeling neglected?”
“Feeling--offended--fucking unprofessional—” Deco dug his fingers into the mattress and pressed his head back into the board, hearing it creak. His vision was already going blurry, and it was—well, it was the second time. First one had been in the car, him just turning off the ignition and suddenly Ludo had had his head in Deco’s lap, and God, but the man just knew where all of Deco’s weak spots were now.
And Ludo had his bad habits, but wasting time certainly wasn’t among them. The moment he realized he had the perfect angle, he seized Deco’s hips and just went at it, driving mercilessly as Deco clawed and twisted. Too much, too much—too much, and Deco was coming again already and he was annoyed and wrung-out, and he just ended up snarling weakly as Ludo let him fall back. His head banged the wall a little hard and he winced, then slid down the headboard. Then winced again as Ludo pulled out, and then damn near screamed as a hot tongue tracked up his thigh. The come there hadn’t even cooled.
“Unprofessional? Anderson, I’m hurt.” Long, dragging suck up the inside of Deco’s thigh as he climbed up the pillows, and then Ludo rubbed his stubbly cheek over the spot, teasingly scratching the skin. “I like to think we’re past strictly business.”
Deco couldn’t help rolling his eyes. Partly because Ludo’s mouth was incredibly nimble and good, but also partly because—because sometimes he really, seriously couldn’t believe it was somebody like Giuly. For fuck’s sake, the man was insane. And couture suits aside, had the about as much class as—as some street brat who’d made it good, and probably that was exactly what he was, and God, sometimes Deco really didn’t give a shit.
Except when Ludo wasn’t mouthing his balls. For a couple seconds Deco just gasped and blinked blindly, trying to unearth himself from the flood of sensation that had been crashing through him. Then he raised his head.
“That’s not my phone,” Ludo said. He added a little “tsk” at the end, then grinned widely and nuzzled Deco’s leg, so Deco’s hand jammed itself into a pillow instead of getting at the beeping PDA on the nightstand. “Though I forgive you, of course.”
“Very understanding of you,” Deco mumbled, reluctantly wriggling free. As Ludo sat back, Deco hurried up his crawling and snatched up the damn PDA, then nearly jumped the few meters to the bathroom. He shut the door as he checked who it was, then let out a silent groan. Of all the…well, if Cristiano was voluntarily calling him, then he supposed it had to be an emergency. And if it was the kind of emergency where he had to go do something, he was going to kill that brat, he decided as he thumbed to take the call. “What did you do now?”
Cristiano’s pout could’ve been heard even if Deco had had the PDA on mute. *Why do you always assume the worst about me?*
Because the last time, Cristiano had put Kahn’s biggest French star in the hospital overnight with a concussion, Deco thought. And considered actually saying as well, but in the end the need to get this call over and done with as quickly as consider was much, much greater than any pleasure he’d get from humiliating Cristiano. “What is it?”
*Oh, for…* Long, put-upon sigh. *So if you’re going to be unavailable for an entire day, do you think you could actually tell somebody where my shit is first? I’ve got the equipment people in Lisbon calling me, asking about when the amps are getting shipped and I don’t know when you scheduled that.*
“Heinze does,” Deco said absently, slightly distracted by a noise in the other room. He glanced at the door, then gingerly moved to sit on the toilet so it’d be less likely Ludo could hear him, if he was being that loud. “He’s your assistant. That sort of thing is why you have an assistant.”
After a considerable silence, Cristiano muttered something nasty under his breath. *Oh. Well, you’re talking to me now, so can you just tell me?*
“I’m busy. Look, it’s not that hard to ask him, and the amps haven’t been shipped yet so I think you can wait the five minutes it’ll take for him to get back with your coffee.” A throbbing was already starting behind Deco’s eyes and he ducked his head so he could rub at his temples. Goddamn it, he didn’t know why he bothered having sex if he was just going to get this irritated right afterward. “What? Is there a problem?”
*…we might be fighting,* Cristiano said after a moment. With extreme reluctance, and for good reason, because good God, he wanted to be a power player and then he turned around and was the inexperienced kid he really was. *He was a—never mind.*
“No, I do mind. I let you have him because you said you could handle him. If you can’t do that, then—no, this has nothing to do with your goddamn personal development, Cris. This is just plain efficiency. If he doesn’t do anything, then I don’t get paid enough to have to worry about him on top of everything else. I am interested in managing a star, not a circus—”
Somebody shouted in the next room. Deco looked up, frowning, and then a sharp, hot pain took him in the shoulder.
* * *
Cristiano stared at the phone in his hand. Honestly, the first thought that went through his mind was Not again, and—and he was not naturally a nasty person. He wasn’t Lehmann, wouldn’t wish that sort of thing on people over his morning coffee, and he just…he just could not believe his life sometimes.
Well, at least he had practice with this, was his second thought. And that was nasty, and deliberately so, but then, it looked like this was one of those times that he had to be that. He was—he gave himself a really hard shake, then fumbled in his jeans for his other cell-phone, the one he used for personal calls. He cursed as it almost squirted out through his fingers, then flipped it open and dialed. And redialed, as he hit the wrong number the first time. As that phone rang, he put his first one to his other ear. “Deco?”
Nothing—no, wait, somebody was breathing. Harsh and fast, and then the phone screeched as the line went dead. Grimacing, Cristiano tossed that from him, then flinched as somebody came onto the other phone.
*Who is this?* Fàbregas asked again.
“Cris. This is my—you save this number and I’ll kill you. But look, never mind. I got—you need to get Lehmann. Deco got shot, I think.” A muffled click made Cristiano jump and he landed a little off so he staggered. Then he turned around, steadying himself against the wall, and saw that it was Gaby. A huge wave of relief went through him before he remembered he was still mad at the man, except…okay, Cristiano was still relieved. And goddamn it, he did need Gaby. “Also, I’m pretty sure he was with Giuly, and Lehmann should care about that even if he doesn’t care that my fucking agent got shot.”
Gaby stumbled, then snapped up his head to stare wide-eyed at Cristiano. He put out a hand, then snatched it back. Then put it out again, and came the rest of the way over when Cristiano waved for him to.
*…holy shit,* Fàbregas mumbled. *Oh…um, I don’t know where Jens is…*
“Then find out, goddamn it! I don’t want a dead agent! You don’t want a dead agent! Do you—look, they find him with a known gangster and what do you—”
*No, no, I know! I’m working on it! I’ll get back to you in five, okay? Okay, bye.*
And that Spanish shit actually hung up on him. Cristiano gaped at the phone, belatedly realized what he was doing, and then looked up.
“I could probably find him faster,” Gaby said a little nervously. He swallowed hard. “I mean Deco. If you meant Deco.”
“Yeah,” Cristiano replied after a moment. He pushed himself off the wall and actually wobbled a moment. Weird, he thought, and the dizziness passed as soon as it’d come. He straightened up. “Yeah, I meant him. I…thanks, Gaby. Now let’s go.”
***