fredbassett

Title : Complicated, Part 7 of 8
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Alex Rider
Rating : 15
Characters : Alex/Yassen
Word Count: 24,400
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Against his better judgement, Alex agrees to do a job for MI6. A nice, simple job that doesn’t include power-crazed billionaires. Just righting a wrong that affects tens of thousands of teenagers. What could possibly go wrong? Then things get complicated. They always do where Alex is concerned.

What U up to Alexx?

Isolating. I’m fine don’t worry he added quickly but he’d barely pressed send on the second part of the WhatsApp message before Jack’s face filled his phone screen with an incoming voice call.

He snatched the phone up from the work surface. “Hey!”

“You OK?”

“Fine, honest.”

“Alexxx…” She drew his name out the way she’d always done when he’d tried to pull the wool over her eyes as a kid.

“I look fine, don’t I?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen you look worse. But you need a proper haircut. Whoever did that one needs a law suit for damages,”

“Oi!”

“OK, you look fine. So why you isolating?”

“Been in contact with someone with the virus. Just a precaution. It’s been a week and I’m fine.”

“Bored?”

“Nah, not yet. Been reading.”

And looking after the man who’d killed Ian. The man who was currently asleep in what had been Ian’s bed after coughing himself sick at the end of the afternoon.

The tea he’d just finished drinking curdled in Alex’s stomach. He couldn’t tell Jack. He just couldn’t. She wouldn’t understand and he couldn’t expect her to.

Reality hit him with the force of a boot to the guts. He couldn’t tell her. That said it all. He turned away from the phone as bile rose in his throat and he spewed violently into the sink.

“Alex, you said you were OK!”

He coughed, spat and heaved again. What the fucking hell had he been thinking? He’d been so bloody blindsided by learning that Yassen was still alive and then consumed by his desperate desire to learn more about his father that emotion had driven just about everything else out of his head. And then he’d fallen for Yassen. He’d fallen for the man who’d murdered his uncle. And he couldn’t tell Jack. Especially when it didn’t make sense even to him. And if he couldn’t tell the person he’d been closest to for 15 years, what did that say about what he’d been doing?

“Alex, talk to me!”

He pulled off a sheet of kitchen roll and wiped his mouth. “Sorry. Think I had a dodgy takeaway last night.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing. Just something I’ve eaten, h…” Alex bit off the rest of the word honestly. There was nothing honest about hiding the fact that he’d spent the last couple of days making out with his uncle’s killer. A man on the wanted list of every intelligence and law enforcement agency in the world, except possibly MI6.

A bout of heavy coughing from upstairs told him that Yassen was awake. Alex’s stomach clenched painfully. He didn’t want Jack to hear the coughing. He couldn’t explain and he didn’t want to tell any more lies. There had been enough of those in his life already.

“Need to go, Jack. I’ll message later, OK? Loo!” So much for no more lies. That resolution had lasted about a microsecond. He made an apologetic grimace and cut the call.

Alex splashed cold water on his face and ran the tap to clear the mess in the sink. The yellow slime circled the plughole and disappeared. He just wished he could deal with the mess his life had become quite so easily.

Upstairs, Yassen’s coughing carried on unabated.

He’d had a suspicion the previous night that Yassen’s breathing had deteriorated and he’d started to get concerned about the possibility of an infection on top of the virus. And this morning his temperature had been high again.

Alex picked his phone up again and WhatsApped Jack a sticker of disconsolate fox with comically droopy ears. At least that wasn’t a lie.

She replied with a gif of two slugs jumping up and hugging each other.

All the warm feelings of the past week had twisted themselves into cold, writhing snakes in his stomach. A Facebook status of ‘it’s complicated’ didn’t quite do justice to having a contract killer in his spare bedroom. A contract killer that he’d been snuggling up to and reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to. The same contract killer he’d been making hot drinks and meals for and generally tucking up in bed. It’s complicated was definitely a fucking understatement. Quite possibly the fucking understatement of the fucking century.

Alex hauled open the patio door and plonked himself down on the step, hunched over with his head pillowed on his knees as he tried to shut out the sound of Yassen’s wheezing coughs. His head unobligingly played him a showreel with memories of the police bringing the news of Ian’s death running on a loop, interspersed with images of Ian’s funeral. Ian, the man who’d taken him in as a baby and brought him up.

Ian, who’d lied to him all his life and trained him to be a spy.

The snakes in his guts continued to tie themselves in enthusiastic knots. He was glad they were enjoying themselves, because he fucking well wasn’t.

Alex had spent eight years believing Yassen Gregorovitch was dead, that the killer had bled out in his arms. He’d vowed to kill Yassen, but the assassin had given his life for him. Eight years carrying that emotional baggage around with him. Yeah, complicated. Then the man had stepped back into his life and brought another massive construct of lies crashing down around his ears.

Fuck Alan Blunt and Tulip Jones and their devious fucking minds.

He couldn’t fucking handle this.

The coughing had finally given way to painful wheezing. Every time Alex had been cautiously optimistic that the virus was losing its hold on Yassen, it had slammed back with a vengeance.

Alex held out another half an hour before his resolve broke and he turned the kettle on, making a mint tea with honey and lemon and taking it upstairs. Yassen was propped up in bed, shivering and sweating, his eyes heavily lidded and an unpleasant grey tint suffusing his skin. He’d definitely taken a turn for the worse.

He looked up as Alex put the tea down on the bedside table along with a packet of paracetamol.

“Alex?” Uncertainty clouded Yassen’s eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“You murdered my uncle.” Alex’s voice sounded hollow, even to his own ears.

Uncertainty gave way to confusion. “Alex? What’s happened?”

“Jack just called. I had to lie to her. That’s what’s happened. How the fuck could I tell her that the man who killed Ian in cold blood was upstairs in the bed he used to sleep in? How the fuck could I tell her that I’ve been sleeping in that same bed with a fucking contract killer? How, Yassen? How could I fucking tell her that?” His voice had risen, and Alex didn’t fucking care. It was his house and he’d shout if he wanted to.

“I don’t know,” Yassen said softly. “I can’t answer that.”

The warm light in his eyes that Alex had become so familiar with faded and died and he watched as the all-too-familiar blank expression settled back into place and Yassen’s defences slammed back into place.

Alex turned on his heel and stalked out, fists clenched, not trusting himself to be close to Yassen.

“I’m sorry, Alex. I really am.” Yassen’s words failed to melt the ice that had formed in the pit of Alex’s stomach, even though they were ones he’d never expected to hear.

After pouring himself an unwisely large whisky, Alex slammed into his own bedroom, grabbed his iPod and stuffed the earbuds in, turning up the volume high enough to drown out Yassen’s coughing.

Several restless hours - and two more large whiskies - later, he exchanged the earbuds for the yellow earplugs Smithers had sent him and finally fell asleep.

****

The sound of rain hammering against the bedroom window pulled Alex out of a sleep plagued by nightmares. He’d spent most of the night being pursued by giant jellyfish, crocodiles, bulls, snakes and assorted other creatures with a bad attitude and clear grudge against him. To make matters worse, he still felt guilty about the snake.

The silence from down the corridor persisted even after Alex pulled the squishy plugs out of his ears, although the rainstorm got louder, and he heard a rumble of thunder in the distance.

The bedside clock read told him it was 4.50am.

Memories of the previous evening flooded back. Alex groaned and pulled the duvet over his head. He wanted to stay asleep. Even snakes with an accusing expression were better than trying to disentangle the rest of the shit swirling around in his head. And talking of swirling around, the whisky had turned to acid in his guts and he desperately needed something to drink that didn’t contain alcohol. Drinking on an empty stomach was a bad idea at the best of times, and last night hadn’t been the best of times by a very wide margin.

A bottle of cold fizzy water helped settle his stomach and a couple of paracetamol would help the dull ache in his head. Alex had spent long enough stuffing the tablets down Yassen to acknowledge that they did actually do some good.

Yassen.

Alex sighed heavily and resisted the desire to punch the wall. He hadn’t heard any coughing in the time he’d been awake, but he had left the man alone for a long time and despite the festering mess of Alex’s feelings, he didn’t want to discover the assassin had coughed himself to death in Alex’s spare room.

The spare room that turned out to be very silent, and very, very empty.

“You fucking idiot!” Alex wasn’t entirely sure whether his words were directed at himself, Yassen, or both of them.

Two minutes later, he’d worked out that Yassen had left with nothing more than the clothes he’d been wearing when they’d first run in to each other. He’d not even taken a bloody anorak, despite the fact that it had clearly been pissing down for hours. Alex presumed Yassen had credit cards, cash passport and everything else the well-prepared hit man needed in the slim belt pouch he’d been wearing, but he hadn’t asked and Yassen hadn’t volunteered the information. His mobile and the ultra slim, ultra fast charger had also gone, and Alex realised he didn’t even know his number.

Alex very much doubted that any taxi driver with half an ounce of self-preservation would have given anyone in Yassen’s state of heath a ride anywhere, but he couldn’t rule it out, and if that was the case, he had sod all chance of finding him again. Alex cursed a blue streak in the air, quickly scrolling through his contacts and punching his finger onto the screen with more force than strictly necessary.

Smithers answered in four rings, sounding concerned. “Alex?”

“Yes, I do know what time it is. I need you to check CCTV in the area and find Yassen.”

“What’s happened, dear boy?”

“The idiot’s buggered off. It’s hammering down out there, and he’s not fit to be out of bed. He’s still coughing his bloody guts up and I think he might have a lung infection. Can you check CCTV and Uber?”

“That wasn’t entirely what I meant but leave it with me.”

Alex grabbed a fleece jacket and his waterproof, pulled on his running shoes and stormed out of the front door. The rain bounced off the pavement and standing water shimmered in the glow of the streetlamps. He had no idea how long Yassen had been gone and whatever he was about to do was almost certainly a fucking fool’s errand. If the world foremost assassin wasn’t capable of vanishing without trace in a capital city, then it was probably time for the man to hang up his sniper rifle and take up stamp collecting. But then this particular assassin had several broken ribs, a buggered knee, a bad dose of Covid-19 and possible pneumonia. The stubborn sod hadn’t even taken the bloody knee brace. Alex was going to fucking kill him when – if – he caught up with him.

Unless Yassen had rented somewhere in London, which didn’t believe to be the case, he would either have to find somewhere to stay locally or leave the country. The chances of any hotel taking in someone in his state in the middle of the night were unlikely, to say the least, and with such obvious symptoms of covid, being allowed on a plane was equally unlikely. That left Eurostar as his best option, but to get to St Pancras from Chelsea would involve a minimum of three buses and would rely on the drivers being willing to take on a covid-spreading passenger. In the middle of the night, he’d stand out like a sore thumb. A wheezing, coughing sore thumb that looked about as healthy as a third-rate scientist’s attempt to regenerate a long dead corpse.

Alex’s phone rang before he had even decided on a direction.

“CCTV picked up what I think was Gregorovich crossing Albert Bridge towards Battersea at 2.34am. I’m trying to track him from there.”

“Thanks, Smithers. Call me if you get anything else.”

“Be careful, dear boy. If Gregorovich doesn’t want to be found …”

“He won’t hurt me.” A heartbeat later, Alex amended that to, “He won’t kill me.”

With his phone still in his hand, Alex started off at a steady pace towards Albert Bridge, the scene of his father’s supposed death at the hands of MI6. He should have guessed Yassen would have taken that route.

Four thousand low energy LED bulbs meant that the bridge could be seen for miles around. At this time of the morning in the middle of a rainstorm there was no one about and only a few cars crossing the river, headlights still on and wipers at full speed. A low growl of thunder from the south was quickly followed by a lightning flash that split the clouds, reinforcing Alex’s concerns. The furthest Yassen had walked in the past week had been to and from the ensuite in the bedroom, and he’d barely reached the stage of managing that unaided. Even getting as far as the bridge must have taken every reserve of strength he possessed.

Alex’s ability to put one foot in front of the other came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the bridge and he stood stock still staring down at the dark water swirling beneath the pillars. What if Yassen hadn’t intended to walk further than the middle of the bridge?

His thumbs flew over his phone screen, WhatsApping Smithers the question whereabouts on the bridge was he?

The reply was almost instantaneous. South side. Picked up again just past the first entrance to the park. Walking - limping, I should say - south.

Relief rushed through Alex in a warm tide and he turned away from the siren call of the Thames and headed south at a fast run.

He was going to find Yassen whether the stupid fucker wanted to be found or not.

He’d figure the rest out later.

Probably.