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Sasha arrives at the restaurant nearly twenty minutes before their “date” is supposed to begin. He arrives alone and bypasses the host stand, weaving between the crowd in the low light of the restaurant until he finds an empty space at the bar, and he takes the time to look around at the crowd while he waits for the bartender to come down to take his order.
Even though he arrived alone, he can see one of his own teammates down the bar, a drink in hand, talking to one of the bartenders. Sasha knows Zhenya, knows that he’s there to be Sasha’s backup if anything goes wrong. He’s doing great cover flirting with the bartender.
He gets a drink eventually, turns around and leans back against the bar, looking out at the restaurant. He catches sight of someone else familiar, another of his team’s operatives, sitting at a table near the doors. Dima is positioned with his back to the wall, able to watch without looking too much like he’s watching, while he has a conversation with the girl sitting at the table with him.
He’s sipping his drink when his mark enters, a sleek black suit and crisp white shirt and blonde hair curling around his ears. He smiles and chats with the guys at the host’s stand, almost like they know each other. Sasha pushes off the bar and heads toward the host’s stand, glass in hand.
“Sasha,” he says brightly, extending his hand to the mark to shake.
“Nick,” the mark says.
“Follow me, please,” the host says. He weaves them through the restaurant, taking them up a set of stairs before he seats them. It’s not the seating Sasha would have wanted, because it’s up the back of the restaurant and far from the doors, so Sasha can’t make a quick getaway - and he’ll need to.
“Enjoy,” the host says, as he walks away.
Nick orders wine, and Sasha orders another drink. Their waiter fumbles through explaining specials - and apologizes for being new - and later, Sasha will realize that that should have tipped him off that something was wrong. It should have been in quick, and he has backup. He should have been in and out, quick and easy.
It does not go as planned.
They’re finishing their meals, and Sasha’s laying the charm on thick - it’s what he’s good at. They’ll finish dinner, maybe order dessert, then he’ll walk Nick out - it will be easy to drop him and slip into a waiting car before anyone realizes what has happened. He gets a burst of static in his earpiece, and something unintelligible - Zhenya at the bar, he thinks, but he can’t be sure. From his vantage point, he can see that there’s only one bartender behind the bar now, and that it’s not the dark haired one Zhenya had been flirting with. He can’t see Zhenya anymore at all. He can’t see Dima from where he’s sitting, but he hears quiet chatter filtering through his earpiece as Dima speaks quickly - the last thing he hears is “get out.”
Sasha moves to stand up, but it’s too late. He feels something cold press against the back of his neck.
“I wouldn’t,” Nick says casually, leaning back in his seat. He holds his wine glass in one hand, staring at Sasha. Sasha realizes that it’s the waiter that’s standing behind him - the waiter who didn’t know the specials and who spilled wine when he poured. “Why did you think this would be easy, Alex? Did you bother to find anything out about me before you came in here?”
“You’re businessman,” Sasha says, swallowing. “The file - “
“Was wrong,” Nick says. “You have no more backup, you know. You’re alone here, now.”
“Zhenya and Dima dead?” Sasha asks.
“Not yet,” Nick says. “If you cooperate.”
“What do you want?” Sasha asks him.
“Come with us,” Nick says. “Before people start to wonder what we’re doing. Get up slowly. Any sudden moves, and you don’t walk out of here.”
“Really? In front of all these people?” Sasha asks him.
“In front of all these people,” Nick says. He smiles, or smirks, his mouth quirking up at the corner, but not at Sasha - at the waiter behind him, still holding the barrel of a gun against the back of Sasha’s neck, the metal leaching warmth from Sasha’s skin. “We should go.”
Nick rises, and Sasha moves careful, slow, keeping his hands visible, making sure that no one has any reason to pull a trigger on him. Nick leads him down the stairs to the front of the restaurant, and stops to make a joke with the host. The host laughs, and Sasha feels a sharp sting in the back of his neck. The waiter nudges him forward, and Nick takes his arm, walking him out into the night.
The gun moves away from him and neither the waiter nor the host follow, but as they step out into the night air, Sasha’s vision goes blurry, and he realizes the sharp pain he felt was them drugging him. His legs start to wobble, and Nick wraps an arm around his waist.
“Oh no,” he says blandly, as Sasha’s legs start to buckle. Someone must give them a concerned look, because the next thing Sasha hears is “oh, no, he’s just had a bit too much to drink. Our Uber will be here soon.”
Someone is helping from Sasha’s other side, and he turns slightly to see the waiter, out of his white shirt and wearing a sport coat with his hair falling across his face, looking for all the world like he was never inside waiting tables. His hands grip Sasha’s arm too tightly, and he says, “oh look, there’s the car - no, we’re fine, thanks.”
Sasha’s in the back seat of a car he doesn’t recognize, barely able to lift his head up off Nick’s shoulder. The waiter is a blurry figure in the passenger seat, another guy unknown in the driver’s seat. Sasha knows that he should keep his eyes open, try to see where they’re taking him, but it’s too much.
His eyes slide shut and he sleeps, his head leaned against Nick’s shoulder.
When he wakes up, he’s sitting up, arms and legs tied, a crick in his neck from his head lolling to the side while he was unconscious. Zhenya is tied next to him, his head tilted forward, still seemingly unconscious. He hopes that Dima and his partner made their escape, because he doesn’t see them, at least not in the room they’re in.
“I thought you were going to give us away,” Sasha can hear someone saying. Nick, he thinks. Maybe. “I can’t believe you spilled the wine. And you were supposed to know the specials.”
“You wanted someone who was good with a weapon,” comes another voice, one Sasha thinks belongs to the guy who had been the waiter. “If you wanted someone who was good at waiting tables, you should have taken Willy.”
“You know he can’t do anything like flirting when Willy’s around,” says yet another voice, one that Sasha doesn’t recognize says. “He gets all flustered, because he doesn’t want Willy to know how bad he is at flirting.”
“Because you’re so great at it,” Nick shoots back.
“I got the job done,” the third guy says, his voice smug. They come into the room then, Nick and the waiter, and what turns out to be the bartender Zhenya had been flirting with. Nick is in the middle of giving the bartender the finger and getting a laugh for his efforts.
Nick walks over, and Sasha looks up at him, takes in the way he’s dressed, dark clothes, shirt sleeves rolled at the elbow, a gun at his hip. Sasha wishes he hadn’t been the job, that Sasha hadn’t been hired to kill him. Sasha had enjoyed their date, and Sasha does think he’s handsome.
Unfortunate that he’s now got Sasha tied up.
“I know you were hired to kill me,” Nick says without preamble. “And I know who hired you.”
“He say you’re terrible person,” Zhenya says, finally lifting his head. Sasha hadn’t realized that Zhenya was even awake. The bartender sits on the edge of a table, and Zhenya watches him. They watch each other, actually, and Sasha wonders exactly how the bartender got the takedown. Zhenya licks his lips, and Sasha decides he doesn’t want to know.
“That’s really relative,” Nick says. “Since he’s trying to pay someone to kill me. And then what does that make you.”
“Also terrible,” Zhenya says. He grins then.
“So what you want instead?” Sasha says.
“You go back,” Nick says. “I could take care of it myself, but why would I when, face it, you kind of owe me for trying to kill me. Take my contract instead, then come back to me.”
“And what do I get? It was pretty good money,” Sasha says.
“Money,” Nick says. “And whatever else you want.” This time, it’s Nick who licks his lips. “I think we could have a good time together.”
Sasha laughs.
Sasha wakes up and stretches, arching his back and hanging his feet off the very end of the bed. The balcony doors are open, and the sun is spilling across the floor. Sasha can hear Nick’s voice carrying, faintly, from outside.
He spread-eagles out on the bed and closes his eyes again, thinking about breakfast. He’s not sure what time it is. The mattress dips as Nick comes back and stretches out, half on top of him, heavy and warm from the sun, his t-shirt soft against Sasha’s skin.
“I get out of bed to take one phone call and you take up all the space,” Nick says.
“You weren’t using it,” Sasha says. Nick presses his mouth against the skin of Sasha’s neck. “Too busy ordering people dead.”
“Not this morning,” Nick says. “Not yet.”
“Mm,” Sasha says. “Will you order breakfast? Then we can go poolside and actually act like we’re on vacation.”
“Anything you want,” Nick says, and laughs softly before rolling off of Sasha and the bed, reaching out for Sasha’s hands to tug him to his feet.