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Chapter Text

His mind and body burned.

Burned like his skin where it touched the other man’s.

Like his lips whenever they kissed the other ones.

Like his eyes now they could at last gaze at the body on top of him again. All thoughts of rationalism and caution had melted away. All worry and premonition had boiled into nothingness and was swept away by the rush of his blood.

What remained was nought, but the vision of the boy on top him, body naked, sweat on his skin – the sweat of both of them! Any hurt or frailty he had felt in the last months was now past, all doubts and fears meaningless. His fingertips trailed across the young man’s body like those of a blind man trying to read. Feeling him again, touching him again: Akihito – it was like being reborn. Like those last 6 month – the five of not knowing and the one of not waking – had simply faded away. Time had stopped for them in that warehouse and only started to tick, tick, tick now once more.

Asami stared up into the other’s eyes, into that smile engulfing him as if it turned into the very meaning why the universe did even exist.

It vanished in an instant. Akihito straightened up.

“Byebye, Asami-san”, he said.

Lights from the city outside shimmered in the blade of the knife, lifted up high. It cut through everything.

Blackness and crimson drowned the world in an instant. White noise became the only sound.

For an eternity.

For a split second.

He was hurt and weak, but his instincts, his training had been too good.

When the room shifted back to reality, he found himself standing, one knee propped on the bed, one foot on the floor. The rug felt rough under his toes. That was the first he realized. Then came the chill of the air conditioning hitting his naked, sweat covered body, followed by his ragged breathing and constricted throat. The hurt in his leg was back next, exactly where it had been for months now, and the pinching and aching of his still healing wounds. The bluntest pain however was the last: the deep cut on the back of his wrist, where the knife had hit him.

It lay on the bed now, a scarlet flower painted around it onto the sheets, but no hand holding it anymore. Asami grabbed it and flung it across the room, far out of reach. That had been instinct as well.

On then did he turn his eyes onto the young man sitting on the floor between the edge of the bed and the wall below the windows, leaning against one of the nightstands.

His slim chest was heaving – maybe from the sex, maybe from agitation, maybe in fury. His eyes that gleamed up at Asami exclaimed that it was the latter.

“What?!”, was the only thing the man could find any strength to utter yet. His heart was beating against his rips and punching his lungs. It thrust the blood up into his brain so violently that it lit up the edges of his vision in crimson flashes.

“What the fuck?!”

“Fuck you!”, Akihito barked in reply so loud his voice echoed back from the large windows and made the obligatory cheap copy of art in the large frame above the bed quiver. “You should die!”

“What is up with you?”, Asami hissed back. He shot down and grabbed the other by his arm, pulling him up to look into his eyes, but Akihito clawed at him. Fingernails scraped across his face and drew blood somewhere. He let go and the boy fell back to the floor with an angry howl.

“I will kill you!”, he spat from down there, and as if to prove his words true, he pushed himself up and threw himself at the man much taller than him.

Asami grabbed him again, at both upper arms now. He gave him a hard shove so that Akihito’s head was flung backwards fiercely.

He howled again, half in pain, half in anger.

“I will kill you! You dirty bastard!”, he screamed the moment Asami tried to speak to him.

“Akihito!”, he called out nonetheless, pushing the attacked down to the floor another time, but an instant later he was back up and had to be caught again, to hinder him in his outburst of violence.

“My name is not Akihito”, the boy yelled. “My name is Arata, you fucking bastard!”

Fingers tore at the flesh of the man, wherever they could reach it, feet and knees kicked at him, but little did Asami care for all of that.

In the dimness of the hotel room, he could see only little of Akihito’s eyes, but what he could observe of them… in them made his heart suddenly stop, made his blood curdle in coldness and made all light around wither away.

Chapter Text

‘Wow! This escalated quickly’, he would say to himself, he mused… but since he had known that the evening would not end pleasantly, he had to fake astonishment and dismay instead…

Oh well, that was not really true in fact. He was indeed pretty dismayed because there had been a tiny bit of hope in him that Asami Ryuichi would eventually get killed while fucking that slut…

It had not worked out sadly, and now Alec had to get back to feigning the worried ex-brother-in-arms – not that that was hard for him to accomplish. He was an extraordinarily good actor and had been for all his life. It seemed to come naturally to him. He always found the best way to trick people, the right dose to make them believe him.

Asami Ryuichi was not immune to be won over by him. Nor was his brother Maxim. If both men had anything else in common apart from the same father, then it was that they were pretty bad at reading people most of the time.

They were capable of sensing fear and doubt and lies and unloyalty when it came to business. But empathy or emotions seemed to be closed books to them. In that they differed from Alec. They both felt and suffered, worried and sympathized, disliked and loathed, they simply did not get it whenever liabilities like those were directed at them. Alec on the other hand realized those impairments from others towards him at once, and he used them to his advantage to the fullest always. He just did not have any of that himself. He did not give a fuck about anybody in the world.

To him, this was all a game. As Shakespeare had it: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’. Right now, Alec was playing them all very well – as usually.

He had been in and out of Maxim Asami’s mansion in Croatia for months, without even once meeting the injury stricken Ryuichi, who was confined to his bed most of the time. The moment they had finally met had just been a coincidence – of course! But in fact, he had shown up at the perfect instant. He had stepped in the very second he had gotten his cue. The stage had been set; all the supporting cast been pushed into place. Lights! Curtains! Alec!

He had accompanied the Japanese, who still needed crutches to walk, to Warsaw where they had been told Takaba Akihito had been found and taken into protective custody.

“Takaba who?”, Maxim had asked. He had some vague idea of what his younger half-brother had been up to in Japan, but he had not mingled with facts and had not mind the details. The name of a lover or whatever anybody would call the young man, had never been of any interest to him. Those relationships had never lasted with Ryuichi anyway. He took someone to bed and tossed him or her out the next day. Why even care?

He had not even realized how much that Takaba person meant to his brother, when a gun had been pulled on him. Alec on the other hand had known right away – firstly because he understood human emotions when they crossed his paths, even though he perceived them as a weakness. But also, he had known about the relationship between the two Japanese for far, far longer than that.

Maxim had been blind as usual, had simply shrugged and had allowed his brother to leave.

Alec on the other hand had felt compelled to accompany Ryuichi. They had been comrades once. And now his friend from years back was injured and in distress. He could not just let him set out onto his journey alone.

With his hands he rubbed his well-tanned face now in the hotel room.

“Holy shit!”, he whispered in bewilderment.

The boy who had been brainwashed by his very own brother for months lay on the bed. Asami had wound a bedlinen tightly around him – it looked like the cocoon of a caterpillar. Maybe in a few days Takaba Akihito would turn into a butterfly if they left him like this…

Around the white cloth Asami had dragged one of those far too large bathrobes and had pulled the belt around to keep the boy caught and unmoving in there like it was a straitjacket.

He seemed asleep… or unconscious, and there was a bruise blooming in blue on one of his cheeks.

‘Nice work!’, Alec thought to himself, grinning on the inside, while his face remained shocked and irritated.

Breathing out aloud, he turned around to the tall, Japanese man, who sat in a chair of the large hotel room. Asami had put on his trousers and pulled his shirt around his shoulders without buttoning it. Now he stared off into nowhere in the gloomy room.

“Will you tell me what happened?”, Alec asked, and his voice made the other man jump. With dark eyes Asami looked up, then grabbed his lighter and cigarettes and lit himself one.

Alec did not bother to tell him that this was a non-smoking room.

Only minutes ago, he had been in his own chamber just a few doors up the corridor, lying on his bed, pretending to read, while he was actually waiting patiently.

It had all been a set-up meticulously orchestrated by his own hand – yes, yes, yes with some bit of help by his brother Aaron. Bastard and cunt reunited; Takaba believing he was actually somebody else by the name of Arata who had been abducted, raped and brainwashed by Asami; vengeance was supposed to be exacted…

Ah well, Alec had not really believed that the boy would succeed to kill the great Asami Ryuichi. His brother had warned him as well that this plan was likely to fail. But one had dreams of course!

In the end it did not matter. He never had only one plan. And this way he might even be able to see the Japanese bastard fall apart piece by piece while he tried to get back his once-upon-a-time-lover. And then they had those videos of Aaron fucking little Akihito and of the boy moaning and begging for more. Having Ryuichi simply die by the blade of a knife might in the end have not felt really satisfying. So,… in a way Alec was quite happy it had turned out like this.

Now, he would have so much more fun!

“I don’t fucking know”, Asami growled in answer. His gaze was stuck on the sleeping – or knocked out – youngster on the bed. “He attacked me with a knife. I think he wanted to kill me. He said ‘byebye’.”

His eyes became even grimmer. When he drew from his cigarette the tiny flame was the only light reflected in them: one tiny fleck of crimson.

“He said his name is… Arata.”

Alec flinched heavily. “So, it is not Akihito?”

The other man looked up at him, scorn shining in those once golden eyes now.

“Of course, he is Akihito. Do you think I would not have realized it was somebody else, when I fucked him?”

“No details, please”, Alec begged, raising both hands as to shield himself. He let them sink disheartened at once. But this was his favorite character to play: Alec who’d make a stupid joke at the wrong time. Oh, what a charming, dorky guy!

“This must be…”, he started to talk, but broke off, then only shook his head in disbelieve and helplessness.

“What now?”, he had to add after what felt like minutes, because Asami had once again gone back to just stare through the room. He had called Alec over after he had gotten the little brat under control. “Come here, right now!”, Ryuichi had snarled into his mobile phone and hung up.

After jabbing the rest of the cigarette into an empty coffee mug, the Japanese leaned forward unto his knees and let his head fall. He shrugged with his shoulders once but distinctly.

“I… I will talk to him. It must be some…”, he broke off, looked up at the boy on the bed and only shook his head. Even in the dusk of the room Alec could see the confusion, despair and worry on that face which was usually stoic and cold.

“…some misunderstanding”, he added to the words of the other with an encouraging smile. “It has to be. He’s… just confused or something.”

“Yeah”, Asami gnarled… and it was obvious that he did not believe the solution to be that simple.

“I’ll take him back to Japan as soon as possible, and…”

Alec interrupted right away: “Is that wise?”, he did not even flinch when the Japanese looked at him in anger and suspicion. “From all your brother told me, from all I gathered myself you might still be hunted. No one knows what happened at the hospital. No one has any idea of where those Chernobog guys have run off to. They chased you out of your own apartment, Ryuichi”, his voice was urging and full of exasperation, he knew… and it was supposed to sound like that.

He took a step forward, one of his hands shot up as if he wanted to place it on the man’s shoulder, but then dared not to do it. Instead, he shook his head once again, bit his lip, looked at the boy in worry. ‘Nice!’, he thought. When he could feel his heartbeat adjust to the emotions he faked, when even the hair of his neck stood up to support him, then he knew he was beyond convincing.

“It is too dangerous. Don’t go there. Take him…”, next he fell silent and rubbed his eyes with his fingers, showing off how bad he felt about even wording what was the best solution.

Asami Ryuichi blinked slowly in anger and understanding.

He had been safe at his family home in Croatia for five months and that though he was the big fish. Akihito was a nobody. No one would come searching because of him. If anybody wanted to take a closer look at that mansion, then it would only be to get Ryuichi, this prince of the Japanese underworld. But not anybody had in all that time. Because no one knew whom that place belonged to. And if they did, they would not meddle with that family.

“Fuck!”, Asami spat out and closed his eyes.

Chapter Text

There was a hand that held on to his upper arm. He realized it was there even before he was all awake, and long before the dream – whatever it might have been – had completely dispelled. He was not yet sure, that he was not partly sleeping anymore. The hand, the fingers placed there, he felt, nonetheless. And the more reality pushed in and shoved sleep and dream aside, the more aware he became of the weight and the warmth.

He turned his head just a tiny bit to look to his side.

For whatever reason, he mostly woke up lying on his back. And the man next to him seemed to tend to sleep on his side. That made it also so much easier for him to reach out and grab a hold on anything near… like somebody else resting in the same hotel bed as himself.

Fei Long drew in the first, conscious breath of the morning. Early light pushed in through the windows which’s curtains had not been drawn close. To care about things like that never crossed their minds, when they came here. They met to fuck. Nothing more.

At least not in Fei Long’s book.

For the other… a different story probably. He was not sure…

The man was ‘walking talking flirtation’. But if he was like that always whenever he met anyone he liked… or if he knew some restraint… or if he even liked only a few people, Fei Long could not tell.

Sleeping now, next to him, with his stupid, impudent mouth shut for once, his long lashes resting, his golden curls spilling onto the cushion, he was very handsome.

There was something about him, indeed… about Mikhail Arbatov. Every pretty girl in the world would be on him, whenever he just winked at her. And the man knew this. His ego was enormous. His believe in his own sex-appeal cosmic.

He was nice to touch, nice to be touched by, nice to look at and nice to fuck.

There needn’t be anything else, Fei Long was sure. Never had he needed anything more, anyway. It could go on like this or just stop, and he would not mind either…

The short beeping of his mobile phone snatched him from his thoughts. When he switched the device to ‘private’ only calls and messages diverted from one special telephone number could get through to him – and the number of people who might know that combination he could count on two hands.

He sat up looking around for wherever he might have left the phone on the evening, shaking off that warm hand when he did so. It wandered over the sheets for a moment, searching and not finding, then the Russian stirred and sighed while waking up.

Fei Long had not much attention for that. He stepped out of the bed, took his phone from the pocket of his suit’s jacket – which still hung on the backrest of some chair – and then climbed back between the warm and soft linen, away from the soft chill of the air conditioning. It was June and had been pretty humid and warm for days, therefore the suite’s unit was even at night fighting the heat - and of course also because the room’s inhabitants had done their utmost to get the room’s temperature up only hours ago.

Once he unlocked the screen with an 8-digit-pin there was a short message showing giving an address abroad, nothing else. That message came from a number not saved in his address book. He had been about to delete the text, when a second transmission arrived, a voice message this time.

Turning the volume pretty low, he listened to it. It was not even 20 seconds long, then it stopped.

In puzzlement he removed the phone from his ear and stared at it, waiting if there was something more to come. Anything perhaps, that might explain what was going on. But there wasn’t.

He startled, when warm fingers caressed the back of one of his naked arms.

“Good morning”, Mikhail whispered. He only blinked a few times, when Fei Long looked over to him, then he closed his eyes again. It seemed like he was about to drift back to sleep right away. His hand slowly sank down onto the mattress.

It was best to just let him sleep, Fei Long thought. There needn’t be any apologies for him leaving, nor any explanations or excuses. This was about sex and nothing more. When they were finished, sometimes Fei Long stayed, sometimes he didn’t. Baishe HQ was only a few hundred meters away luckily. He could just walk home at any time… if he felt able to walk of course. But sometimes he did not even want to – because it was chilly outside, or dark, or raining, or…

Still, he should get out of the bedding now, put on his clothes, get out and home, while the morning was still fresh and the city not as busy as it would get at rush hour. But for some strange reason he could not find himself moving. He just sat there, warmed and covered by the duvet on which the pale, golden sunlight shimmered. The only noise audible in the suite was the quiet humming of the air conditioning and the soft breathing of the blonde man next to him. Of the city far below nothing could be heard.

“Can you drive on the right side of the road?”, he suddenly asked into the near silence.

Mikhail jolted from sleep. Snapping to attention he lifted his head from the pillow and stared at the other man on the bed. It took him a moment to realize that there was no threat looming nearby.

“Eh… what?”, he asked with a perplexed smile.

“Can you drive a car on the right side of the road?”, Fei Long asked again. He was looking down at the man who lay just at an arm-length away.

“Uhm… yes, of course.”

“Are you free to go to Croatia tomorrow?”

Now Mikhail propped himself up on one elbow. He blinked once more several times as if it helped him comprehend the question. Then he tugged his eyebrows together gazing at the Chinese.

“Is this going to be some vacation for the two of us?”, he asked, putting on a stupid smile and forcing some childish hopefulness into his voice, yet Fei Long knew him good enough to know that both were fake. Even if they had only met to sleep with each other, Mikhail was clever enough to realize when something was amiss, and Fei Long knew that he was no master at disguising from others if he was worried. And right now, he was.

“No”, he answered, then he turned the volume of his phone up and let the voice message play again.

It was Asami’s low baritone that filled the room, and his few words let the smile on the Russian’s face disappear.

There was not much of an explanation. The message was short and concise and without any embellishment. From what was said Fei Long could just have deleted it right away. It sounded a lot like it was an instruction or even a command, instead of a request.

What had made his heart feel heavy and his skin feel cold even between the warm bedding was the voice with which all of that was said.

He had heard it before. One time speaking to Akihito about eleven months ago on the deck of a Casino Ship. And even before that, many years in the past, right before a bullet had nearly ripped his life from his chest.

Chapter Text

It was past nightfall when the giant cast-iron gates swung open. Alec was driving. He had announced their arrival via phone when he had turned the car into the narrow road that led up through the hills near the city of Dubrovnik.

On the backseat, Asami stared off into the darkness of the car, ignoring the beautiful view of the illuminated old city, which they had passed by on their war here, and of the night shimmering on the Adriatic Sea. Akihito lay in his arms, cold out by some sleeping potion Alec had gotten them. When he had been awake, he had been all anger and hate and aggression.

His name was Arata, he had insisted, no matter what Asami had done. Even when he had kissed him, had pulled him close, had held him in his embrace, he had not changed his opinion… he had not remembered.

In his eyes there had been nothing but spite and loathing and the will to murder. The glow and love once in there were gone, and Asami grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut at the mere thought.

He pulled the frail body close to his own, felt the warmth of it as if nothing had changed. But it had. Someone had taken Akihito from him and he would get him back. He just did not know how.

For two days he had argued with the young man, had tried to convince him and talk him back to his senses. Nothing of that had worked. Nothing had made the slightest impression.

“You brainwashed me!”, Akihito, no, Arata had spat at him. “You raped me! You will pay for it!”, had been the words he had yelled most frequently, and in the back of the car, where his chest was about to collapse to squeeze the life out of him, Asami had to admit that there was some truth in it.

No matter if from information or imagination Arata’s impression on him had sprout, he had in fact brainwashed Akihito in a way… at least at the beginning. He had raped him. More than once. He had told Akihito, that he liked it, and had used the reaction of the boy’s body as proof for his words, no matter how often the other had begged him to stop, no matter how loudly he had shouted “No!”.

And even though in the end Akihito had fallen in love with him, the beginning of all of that could not be erased.

‘You brainwashed me. You raped me. You will pay for it’, Asami heard the words repeat in his mind over and over again. It was true – he had done all that and now he paid for it with a price that felt like his heart was slowly torn to shreds. It was only fair, he thought. And he would have been fine with it, no matter how much it would make him suffer, if only it was not Akihito who was actually paying the price for it.

He forced his eyes shut again, fighting nightmarish ideas pushing into his mind of what could have been done to the other to influence his mind like this. It was unthinkable. He’d rather his heart stop and the lights of his life just faded away instead of imagining what Akihito might have been through those past months… And for what reason? Just to hurt Asami? Or was there more?

The stopping of the car tore him from his thoughts, and he was glad about it.

With Akihito in his arms, he stepped outside and walked up the broad stairs to the main portal. Maxim was standing there clothed in a thick robe he had pulled above his pajama’s. He looked tired and annoyed at the same time.

“What is the meaning of all of this, Ryuichi?”, he tried to confront his brother, but the other just walked past him and entered the mansion, so Maxim followed. “First you tell me to send you a private jet without giving any explanations. Now you show up here without any notice. And who is that? What is going on?”

Asami had walked into the very room in which he had lain for nearly half a year, and placed Akihito down on the large bed. One of the cats had been sleeping upon it, and, despite all the adoration they had had for the injured man before, she hissed at the unconscious boy, ruffled her fur, then ran off and out of the room.

Ignoring the questions of his brother and the sheepish, helpless attempts by Alec to give some kind of explanation at least, Asami sat down on the edge of the bed. Gently he caressed Akihito’s cheek with the back of his hand. The boy’s skin was as cold to his touch as it had never been before. Yet he looked so very much the same. Even if he was slimmer, frailer, even if his hair was straggly and unkempt, if dark marks had formed beneath his eyes and a bruise was healing on the side of his face – at one point, Asami had had to hit him to stop another attempt at murder. Despite all of that it was him without any doubt. Several times Alec had asked, his voice hushed and unsure, if not Asami might have nonetheless mistaken the boy.

Maybe some enemy, probably Chernobog, had just found a young man who looked as much alike as ever imagined possible. And they had done whatever they could to even make the resemblance stronger. Then they had told the honeytrap what to do and had send him off to lure Asami in to get killed.

When he had proposed this solution, Alec had changed from one foot onto the other, hand kneaded his fingers, had gnawed at his lower lip and had all in all looked as stupid as hopeful. But Asami could never have mistaken Akihito for anybody else.

He had touched his skin, he had breathed in his scent, he had felt his body in his arms and his warmth seeping into the other’s. Only his eyes had been different back then in the hotel, he had admitted later, but on that evening he had thought that it had just been because of all the dread and fear Akihito had been going through.

Now he knew that those eyes belonged to Arata, whoever that was, but the body still was Akihito’s and he had to be somewhere inside.

“Ryuichi!”, Maxim hardly ever raised his voice, but annoyance got the better of him. The younger brother looked up, his eyes sharp and dangerous.

“What?”, he bellowed and both other men took a step back.

“Who is that? What is he doing here? What is going on?”

Asami wrinkled his nose and pressed out his breath in a loud wheeze of vexation. Then he explained: Who Akihito was… or had been. Not in detail, only that they had been living together as a couple. That he was ‘the One’ - maybe even someone as reclusive and misanthropic as Maxim was able to understand that.

Then he narrated what had happened in Poland – how him and Alec had found Akihito at the Warsaw police by the information relayed to them from Fei Long via Kirishima. How they had picked him up and had went back to their hotel. How Akihito had been scared and oblivious to what had happened to him. After that he skipped a large bit that right now, he did not want to remember himself. He wanted Akihito back in his arms. The real one! The one who wanted to be there, not someone in his body who just pretended…

With the little information they had been able to get out of the boy he ended. It was hardly anything: His name was Arata, he had been trying to bring Asami down, and had been caught doing so. Then Asami had raped and brainwashed him into believing he was Akihito and that he was the man’s toy to fuck whenever he wanted.

That was it.

Maxim looked down upon the sleeping youth with shock in his face when Asami had finished.

But whatever compassion might have been there vanished quickly. Maxim turned onto his younger brother again: “But what is he doing here? What are you doing here?”

It was Alec who stepped in now. “Where else, Maxim?”, he asked and pulled his shoulders far up to his ears. “Ryuichi has been save here because of you. Because of who your family is and because hardly anybody even knows of this place. He can’t go home like this. He doesn’t fully know what the situation in Japan is right now. This is the safest place for both of them. I am sorry, but I convinced him to come here.”

They kept arguing for a while, but in a strange way their voices quieted down slowly. Asami stopped listing to them and turned back to the boy on the bed. Again, he stroked his cheek tenderly, then brushed some of his hair out of his face.

Akihito had to be somewhere in there! Hidden away in some save place, maybe in the boy’s mind, maybe in his heart. And with it would be hidden the love for Asami.

He only needed to find it… it was so easy to say that, but how to actually do it.

Here, they were safe, that was true – at least for as long as his father did not care to show up. Then there would be complications. Yet for all Asami knew the old man was very likely at some banquet with Russian oligarchs or Arabian sheiks. He might as well be sitting on some tree in a rainforest or in a lighthouse in Antarctica. This place he had not visited in years.

Ignoring the presence of the two men, Asami leaned down to kiss Akihito’s lips.

“Come back to me”, he whispered, sat up and waited. But there was no reaction.

He would get him back. No matter the cost. Yet he might be needing help, he realized, and he did not trust Alec nor his brother.

Names popped up in his mind but were swept away like flies by a lazy hand. Only one remained and never even quivered.

He needed help… and with this… with Akihito for some cruel reason there was only one he could trust.

Chapter Text

There was something bound tightly around his arms, fixing them to his upper body. It didn’t feel rough, nor did it hurt, but it forced him to push the thick blanked away with his feet. It seemed to be something like a silk scarf, or anything as soft and still strong as that. He wriggled fiercely, turned and rotated, cursed and hissed, but in the end, he fell down onto the mattress without any result. The bonding was too well done.

After catching his breath for a moment, he managed to sit up. He had been placed on some giant canopy bed with a bunch of pillows around him as if someone had wanted to make sure he would not fall out. The room was very large, the coffered ceiling far up. Lattice windows were set into wainscoted walls and framed by thick curtains. There were lamps everywhere but not one was lit, because it was bright day outside and the sun shone down onto some beautiful Mediterranean garden. It looked very different from the view Arata had had when squinting through the gaps in the shutters of the Warsaw apartment.

For a moment, his heart started to race at the thought that he might have been saved and taken here to protect him. But as quickly as the warmth of the idea flooded into him, the quickly it trailed away and left him shivering. No, he would not be bound like this if he wasn’t a prisoner! The silk scarf embracing him might be a gentle chain, but it jailed him, nonetheless. Very likely the man who had once brainwashed him into believing he was ‘Takaba Akihito’ was just trying to play tricks on his mind again. Had he put rough ropes around him or handcuffs onto his wrists, Arata would have had proof that he was the enemy. Instead of pushing him into a cell, he had placed him on this bed, as if he could still hoodwink him.

‘He cannot!’, Arata swore to himself. He climbed out of the bed onto somewhat shaky legs and started to walk through the room in search of anything with which he might be able to free himself. After a while he realized that it was pointless. Even though there was a bed this room looked more like a museum’s exhibition to him than a bedroom. All the doors and drawers in the cabinets, wardrobes and tables were locked and no keys to be found – though even if he had been able to open them, he would not have been astounded to find them empty.

Momentarily he considered to just try and walk out of the door, if it was unlocked, or to shove open a window and climb out. But there was no hope of getting anywhere far if he was still bound like this. He could not even grab the door handle with his arms tied to his body.

But he had to get out of here. He had to kill that bastard. That he had promised to Aaron.

A framed picture caught his eye. It showed some drawing of an ancient roman city, but that was not what he was interested in. He pushed his forehead against the side of the canvas. It slid off the hook, crushed down onto a cabinet beneath and the glass shattered into several pieces. With his bare feet he flipped the frame and tossed it away, then he got down onto his knees, searched for the largest, sharpest shard and grabbed it with one of his restricted hands. He felt the glass cut him, but it could not be very deep. In any case, he did not care about it right now.

Letting himself fall back onto his heels he pushed the shard up against the silk, tearing it apart. Even though he scratched his skin through the clothes into which he had been put, he did not stop, and inch by inch he freed himself more.

At the end he could rip the fabric off from himself. Using the piece of broken glass again, he cut off a scrap to bandage his slightly bleeding hand, and another to wrap around what he had decided to be the grip of the weapon.

Only then did he walk up to the windows but found himself to be on the second floor. This way was probably the more dangerous exit to attempt, yet the only way to get out of the building without presumably having to sneak past other people. With both hands he grabbed the handle and pulled the window’s wing open. Warm air, a soft breeze and the smell of the near sea pushed past him into the room and got sucked out of it the next moment, when Arata heard the door open behind him. He spun around on the spot, not letting go of the handle.

That man stepped inside: Asami Ryuichi. He wore a white shirt and black trousers – and an expression on his face somewhere between worry and irritation.

“Are you planning to go somewhere, Akihito?”

“I’m not Akihito”, the prisoner spat back. There was a sudden burning inside his stomach. He grabbed the shard which he had placed on the cabinet next to him to prepare his escape and pointed it at the tall man.

“Yes, you are. You are my Akihito”, Asami answered, his voice deep and forced. “I don’t know what has been done to you. I don’t know what lies you have been told. But you belong to me. You and I belong together. You are my Akihito.”

“HA!”, he shouted a laugh back. “I do not belong to anybody. I am not yours! You raped me! You brainwashed me. I am not your Akihito. I am not any Akihito at all. And I will make you pay for what you did to me and anybody else.”

“Put that thing away”, Asami retorted instead of giving any answer. His eyes had caught onto the shard in the other’s hand and had become a bit darker.

“No! I will cut your throat with this!”, Arata shot back grinning.

The man took some steps towards him, spreading his large hands as if he wanted to show that he had come unarmed. In the midst of the room he stopped, glaring at the younger one.

“You are Akihito! I swear to you, you are. Tell me what they did to you. Talk to me! Please!”, he pleaded now. It would almost sound genuine if Arata did not know it to be well-phrased and acted lies.

“No!”, he wailed, then threw himself forwards, wielding the shard like a knife. Even through the silk it cut into his palm now, but he ignored it – and the blood dripping from his hand within an instant. He had to kill the bastard!

“Just die!”, he hissed, his breath like a dragon’s flame.

Asami jumped aside but he was slow, his legs seemed not to want to adhere to what their master asked of them. He stumbled against the bed, when Arata had already turned towards him. With all his might he ripped the shard of glass through the air, tearing it to shreds if only he could. One time he sliced across the man’s arm, who gnarled at that and dived away. Drops of blood trailed behind him.

“I will kill you!”, Arata screamed from the top of his lungs. It made the windows tremble and the stranger – a man with blond hair and glasses and a shocked expression on his face - who had just stepped into the room freeze.

“Akihito, stop!”, Asami bellowed. He tried to grab the attacker’s arm, but Arata lunged away. A second time he drew his crystal weapon across the other’s body – now his chest, and he felt fabric and skin tear beneath the blade.

“Argh!”, his victim groaned and fell down onto one knee. But he pushed himself up before Arata could drag down the knife a second time.

“You bastard!”, he exclaimed in anger, when suddenly his wrist was caught in an iron grip. Instinctively, squeezed the shard with his hand so hard, it cut deep into his own flesh. He screamed in agony and the glass fell from his hand.

Tears burst into his eyes, white lightning brimmed into his ears and made him deaf for a moment in which Asami Ryuichi shouted at him. The man grabbed him at the shoulders with his giant hands and shook him back and forth. While doing so he leaned forward to stare into Arata’s eyes, just like a snake that wanted to hypnotize its prey. But the words he spoke and wanted to put to use in his new attempt at brainwashing never reached the other’s mind.

“No!”, the younger man cried out and with all his might tore himself away. He lashed forward, throwing his fists against the blood-stained chest of the tall man. Asami stumbled backwards, losing his balance, about to fall.

‘Now, the shard!’, Arata found himself thinking as clearly as he had never done before. He would ram it into the man’s throat and would watch him claw at the sharp edges and cut his finger’s deeply while his blood already spilled out of him.

But he never got to crouch down and find it. Suddenly the other was back up, he caught the younger, smaller man around his upper body so tightly that all air was pressed out of Arata’s lungs. He struggled and kicked but only for seconds. Then he was all out of breath. Only weak curses and useless attempts at wiggling free of the jailing embrace followed after that while he found himself to be carried out into the hallway and some steps across it. Asami threw him down there and he hit the floor hard, clambering onto it as if he was trying to climb up a wall to get away from danger.

With the dizziness of near suffocation still taking its toll on him he only faintly heard rummaging and shattering behind him. The man seemed occupied. So Arata tried to get onto his feet again, though momentarily he was not sure where up and down were. He had just managed, when he was caught again, this time around both upper arms. With muscle-tearing force he was dragged backwards and shoved into a small room – a walk-in-closet it seemed. There were some shelves above him and those hooks into which one could fix a coat rack, but there were no clothes, no shoes, no boxes… nothing. Not even a light. Then the door was thrown shut behind him and he was caught in darkness.

Just like he had been for months before…

Chapter Text

“Think we can talk now?”, his brother roared at the locked door. Fury had been a problem for Ryuichi already when he had been a child. Yet for years his tantrums and stubbornness had been ignored by their father and any of the many tutors they had been left with in their lives. After a while - it had been known - he would calm down and until then he would be told to stay in his room.  Whatever he decided to smash there, was understood to be his belonging anyway. Then he had hit puberty and his physical abilities had drawn level with his obstinacy. At that point their father had decided that enough was enough. He had sent the younger of his two sons off with several of his men. Where they had gone, Maxim had never learned, for Ryuichi had not known himself. All his brother had been able to tell was that they had spent nearly three weeks in some derelict building somewhere in a cold forest. He had been hungry and thirsty and beaten bloody for days.

When he had been brought home, there had been bruises and cuts and scratches all over his body. They had healed, yes, but gone with them was also the hot-headedness. Maybe it had not been extinguished, but Ryuichi had learned to control it. That was all his father had required of him. The old man did not care how his sons felt inside. He had not bothered whether his rage would have made the younger of his two children sick on the inside or if he would be intimidated by his father for the rest of his life. All that had counted to him was the outcome. That way it had always been.

But Maxim knew that that fury was still in there, kept carefully hidden away, locked and sealed, yet sometimes it would break loose. Right now, with the boy stomping his feet against the door of the walk-in-closet, it was burning in his very eyes and made his breath ragged and voice forced.

“Die!”, the boy screamed from behind the solid oakwood, which was all that kept prisoner from goaler.

“I am sick of this!”, Ryuichi proved his brother’s thoughts the next moment. “I need you to tell me what happened. I don’t even care if you want to believe you are somebody else. Just tell me the fuck what happened to you!” His voice echoed back from the door and across the walls.

“Ryuichi”, Maxim tried quietly but was not heard… or simply ignored.

When his brother had been taken away all those years ago it had been in the middle of the night. For two days he had not dared to enquire where he had gone to – and then he had only allowed himself to phrase that question to his father as if Ryuichi had gone on his own volition.

“It’s none of your business”, had been the short answer.

“When will he be back?”, Maxim had asked, though he felt how his heart had just dropped to his feet. He had been 15 back then and his future as the heir to the family’s organization had already been taken away from him – because of some accident.

“Who said he’ll be back?” his father had replied without raising his voice. He had sounded as if he talked about the weather.

That back then had been the first time their father had thrown Ryuichi onto the battlefield – one he had created himself. Later he tossed him onto another one by forcing him to join “Tilphousia”, a private military firm he had his own hands in – well, a mercenary army was the more fitting description. They had fought drug-runners in Peru, fundamentalists in Iraq and so-called liberation-fronts in Sudan and Mali. Ryuichi had been hardly 19, when he had left, 24 when he had come back. At that point their father had thought that he had won. Instead, his son had run off and for years they had had to search for him – and when they had finally found him, he had been a made man. Someone not easily tangled with, not even for Richard Seiko Asami.

Now… that seemed to be in the past. At this moment, his brother looked on the verge of breaking apart. His hair was unkempt, his clothes were crumpled, the bandage on his arm had bled through and very like had the one around his chest. The boy had managed to cut him quite well with that little glass blade. For the rest of the last evening, for the night and this morning the walk-in-closet had been used a cell for the young man allegedly called Akihito … or Arata.

Maxim just didn’t know. It was not that he did not believe his brother, but how would he be able to tell if there was not some truth in what the other kept exclaiming with so much certainty.

Maybe it was Akihito and he had been abducted from the hospital and brainwashed to turn against the man he had loved – maybe it was Arata, whom his brother had brainwashed… and raped. Maxim was aware that he himself was not a good authority on understanding sex-life – no matter whether in general or that of his brother – but he knew Ryuichi to be somewhat aggressive and oppressive when he wanted something or someone. There had been girls complaining about him when he had been a youth… boys later. It had all been shrugged away by their father and there had never been any official reports or criminal charges. Therefore, it had not been likely that anything really bad had happened. Yet even later, when they had watched him from afar, there had never been a lasting relationship, only short time lovers who seemed to get tossed away rather harshly after having been used to fulfill some sexual needs.

How the hell had Maxim been supposed to realize that this young man was different? Damn! As a matter of fact, he had not known about the boy at all. There had been word about some toy boy of his brother’s – that’s what he had been called – but never had Maxim believed that this Akihito might have been more than a short-time distraction for Ryuichi. When he had ordered Alec to get his brother from the hospital in Hong Kong, he had never thought about retrieving the other as well – he had not even bothered to find out if the boy had been anywhere near, because there had not gotten any hint to him that this might be the case.

The outcome of this lack of information, of Akihito being left behind, was dreadful.

But it still did not mean that Maxim could decide between the two stories he was told. He could not choose whether he believed Ryuichi or Arata, because there was too much knowledge missing and too many contradictions. And his brother never even once opposed the claim that he had raped the other. That in itself seemed like a giveaway to Maxim that some parts of the boy’s version at least were true.

Bang Bang Bang!, the feet of the boy trampled against the door again and it shuddered. From the other side, Ryuichi smashed his fist against it, then grit his teeth to hiss the pain out through.

“Ryuichi!”, Maxim tried louder, and it made his brother turn on him.

“What the fuck do you want?”

For a second Maxim paused, waiting until the other caught his breath. “This is not helping. You need to find another way.”

“What fucking other way is there?”, the dark-haired shot back.

Yes, that was a good question. Maxim could not answer it. All he knew was that Ryuichi’s desperate pleas and frustration and fury were not doing him any good. In the evening he had dragged the boy from the room to have dinner with him. His brother had basically carried him down into the dining hall, while the young man was kicking and wiggling in his arms and cursing all the way. He had sat him down there, had grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to argue him into being quiet and talk to him. It had presumably been Ryuichi’s idea of creating a safe, pleasant environment for the other. It had not worked.

For a minute the young man had become calm, then he had grabbed one of the golden knifes and had thrown himself at the other. Still aching from the attack with the shard and not yet fully healed from the injuries he had received months back, Ryuichi had only managed to jump away and get the table between them. He had been trying to calm the other down again with words and invocations. But the young man had just turned around and sprung from one of the large windows of the first floor. He had run across the gardens, trying to find a way out, chased by Ryuichi whose legs were still hurting and weak. Then he had tried to climb across the fence and had skewered one of his arms on the spikes of the cast iron. He had been lucky in that! Other’s had been known to die from trying to climb such fences.

Ryuichi had delivered him down, had wrapped the bleeding arm with the hem of his shirt, had tried to sooth the other, and had then nearly been pierced himself with the golden knife onto which the boy had managed to hold on, despite everything. Tumbling backwards he had gotten out of reach and had then had to witness how Arata had dragged the knife across his wrist. It was lucky that these garnishing of cutlery were only supposed to be used for appetizers. He had hardly gotten far, when Alec had caught up with them and had ripped the knife from his hand.

This morning had not been much better. With his right hand still bandaged due to the many cuts the shard had dealt him and his left wrist and arm bound by more dressing, the boy had still grabbed the plate on which Ryuichi had brought him a sandwich as a breakfast. He had smashed the porcelain against the doorframe and had once more tried to use a large shard as a weapon. That time his brother had not had any other choice but to slap him in the face and rip the self-made knife from the fuming and wailing prisoner.

Curses had echoed through the hallway for long minutes after that, and Ryuichi had just slumped down next to the newly locked door, looking lost and devastated.

This fresh attempt was not helping again. For a few words his brother had tried to sound reasonable, speaking the name ‘Akihito’ softly, asking if he was okey… but the answer “Go die!” had rung through the door and had infuriated him anew.

Maxim did not know what to do or how to help. His brother punched the door another time, then smashed his forehead against the wood. It made the older one flinch and stir, but he could not put a hand onto the other’s shoulder to give comfort. He could not hug him as normal people might have done. That sort of relationship had never been theirs… or at least it had not been for more than 25 years. There had been a time once but is seemed long lost.

Now Ryuichi had been in their family’s home together with him for about five months but they were not any nearer. His brother had felt like a prisoner all the time, with the phone lines cut and any medication obviously containing some drug to keep him mellow and subdued. Yes, Maxim had ordered all that, but it had been for the better. Hadn’t it?

And he was not good at touching anyway. He was a man who was content with satisfying his mind and his senses. He liked to watch, and taste and smell and listen, but he did not like any corporal closeness at most times – with anybody.

“Maybe… we”, Maxim began. He let his hands wander down along the tweed of his waistcoat, thinking. “… I could call a psychiatrist, Ryuichi. Maybe that would help.”

His brother laughed out loud at this, fuming in rage still. Without lifting his forehead from the wood, he turned his head slightly to behold the other man with dangerous eyes. “Why don’t you just go watch some of your porn videos and leave me in peace?”, he hissed.

“They’re not porn!”, Maxim objected appalled, but his protest was drowned by a voice shouting up at them from the staircase.

“Ryuichi, Sir, there is a car at the gate. A visitor for you.”

“Let it in!”, his brother shouted back. He pushed himself away from the wall and hurried towards the stairs.

“What is this now?”, Maxim exclaimed and ran after him as quickly as he could. Ryuichi had been injured months back and had not yet fully recovered. The older one, on the other hand, had been injured 27 years ago and would never have one day without pain anymore.

“A guest”, his brother shot back without turning or slowing down.

“What is going on, Ryuichi? First you can’t wait to get out of here, then you request me to send in the jet, you show up here unannounced and now you are inviting guests to my home?”

“It’s my home as well, isn’t it?”, Ryuichi suddenly reared on him. He had stopped halfway down the stairs, glared up at the older sibling for a moment, then hurried on down and towards the main doors.

Chapter Text

He had been twice before in Dubrovnik. Once as a young child and he remembered vividly jumping from rocks into the sparkling blue waters. A second time with some girl he had fancied for a short while, and then not anymore. In the end despite all her beauty she had turned to be rather ugly.

Such disappointment the man on the passenger seat had until now spared Mikhail. ‘Maybe that is because he is not a human, but a dragon’, he thought to himself, steering the silver Mercedes GLE he had rent at the airport up into the hills. A smile however did not manage to form on his face at the thought.

Fei Long was wearing slim sunglasses and had turned the window shades down, but he frowned nonetheless, and Mikhail knew that it had nothing to do with the bright, hot summer day. He had seen that severe worry on the other man’s face before, in the warehouse in Macao about half a year ago – while they had been searching for Asami and his lover. Back then Mikhail had felt an urge searing through his body to wrap his arms around the Chinese but there had not been any possibility he would have gotten away with it.

The one moment in which Fei Long had probably allowed him to do so, he had missed: On top of said warehouse, right after he had thanked Fei Long for coming to his rescue, even if the other insisted that he had only followed Mikhail and Yuri by mistake. There had been something in the Chinese’ eyes… uncertainty, need, fear, kinship… he had never found out. The sound of the returning chopper had broken the spell of those amethyst eyes staring into his own blue – and there had not been another chance.

Little had he known back then that some weeks later Fei Long would come to him in that bar. Never had he expected what would happen that night and several after.

He had been allowed to kiss and touch and hold… and fuck. And with that he was forced to be content.

Though it was not enough and would never be, he knew, and swallowed the thought, and also the pain that glowed in his chest like a white, cruel flame.

He was like an astronaut desperate to head out into the galaxy, yet he was only shown pictures of the night sky instead. It was enough to keep him on the leash, to keep him dreaming, hunting like an addict, but it was never enough to satisfy him. Never enough to heal the hurt in his heart.

For less than a moment he had thought that this might become some kind of nice holiday. Then he had heard the voice message sent by Asami Ryuichi.

Now he was not sure why he was even here. The Japanese had told Fei Long to come alone. As if the dragon of Baishe could just hop onto the next connecting flight to Dubrovnik, then jump into a taxi. As if he would!

But there had been a hundred other men he could have brought. Or that one guy, Yoh. Instead, Mikhail was here, wondering. Probably Fei Long did just not want any of his Baishe men to know what was going on or upon whose request he had left Hong Kong on such a short notice. Maybe Yoh, who might have been his first choice, had not been around. That man did not belong to the organization anymore. He was a friend, was the explanation Mikhail had gotten when he had enquired about him with Fei Long. So … possibly he was just the easiest replacement.

Or… the only one Fei Long trusted in this? The only one he wanted around in this… which seemed to be something very close to his heart – and hurting him a lot.

“There”, the Chinese said quietly, shifting a bit in his seat. Mikhail had wanted to rent a convertible, but Fei Long had objected. Too much sun, too much dust, too much wind… he had not given an explanation, but the Russian had not felt the need to argue anyway. Or rather, he had not wanted to quarrel with the other who had seemed pensive and upset all the time. Fei Long had not been unfriendly or snappy – as he sometimes turned when he was annoyed or displeased – just very, very quiet. And never once did that frown lift, never once did his eyes brighten up.

Now he stared ahead where the narrow road led past a high, long wall of crème colored stone. Tall sycamores and cedars could be seen behind it and the roof of a monumental mansion.

“You have reached your destination”, the voice of the navigation system told them factually, when Mikhail stopped the large car next to some intercom in front of a black cast-iron gate.

He let the window slide down, pressed the button, then waited. A voice suddenly shot out of the speaker, clear but not friendly. It bellowed in Croatian at them and Mikhail just answered back in Russian that they had been invited by Asami Ryuichi.

There was a pause, then the gate swung open and he drove on.

He realized that Fei Long stared at him and it made him smile.

“He did not speak Russian”, the Chinese commented.

“No, he spoke Croatian. I only got a bit of it. But he at least got a bit of what I said in Russian as well.”

“Those languages are not very much alike. Let’s hope he doesn’t think you just insulted his mother.”

The answer made Mikhail snicker. It were the first somewhat serene words he had heard from the other since he had had sex with him two nights ago in a hotel in Hong Kong. That had been before the phone call. He looked over to Fei Long grinning, but the expression on the other’s face made the smile peel from his own visage quickly.

“Are you alright?”, he asked, not expecting an answer.

But nonetheless, Fei Long replied: “No. I am not.”

Right now, he looked more worried than ever before.

“Listen…”, Mikhail started, but broke off right away. He did not have the other’s attention anymore, because atop a broad staircase from a dark portal in the midst of the mansion Asami Ryuichi had appeared.

With a sigh, Mikhail stopped the car in front of the steps, and watched the Japanese approach, just as Fei Long did. The man seemed a bit wobbly on his legs.

Suddenly the Chinese moved. He grabbed the doorhandle and pulled it to step outside, but Asami caught the frame and pushed the door shut again. Then he tore open the one of the backseat, slumped inside and, pulling the door close behind him with a loud thud, he slipped through to the middle of the bench.

Both Mikhail and Fei Long turned towards the center to look back to their sudden guest. Asami appeared to the Russian as if he had not slept for a month. There were dark marks beneath the Japanese’s eyes. His cheeks seemed hollowed; his lower lip had been chewed on a lot. Unkempt and mat looked his black hair, tired and lackluster his golden eyes. Around his left upper arm, which was barely covered by the sleeve of a polo shirt, a bandage had been wound tightly and some smears of blood had made their way through.

Asami Ryuichi seemed to be less than a shadow of his former self, and the even increasing look of worry on Fei Long’s face proved to Mikhail that it was not only him perceiving all of this. Yes, they both had not seen the man for several months and when he had been abducted from the hospital he had not been in good shape. But now,… his whole being seemed greyish and exhausted.

Still, he leaned forward and gave Fei Long a stern look, before regarding the car’s driver for a second - and another. He flinched slowly, then turned back to the other, his eyes narrow and sharp.

“What the fuck is he doing here? I told you to come alone!”

“And how was I supposed to get here? I don’t have a driver’s license. You know that”, Fei Long snapped back immediately, his worry suddenly drowned by annoyance.

“How ‘bout you got one?”, Asami snarled.

“Then I would still not have come alone. I do not do ‘travelling alone’. I am not some idle Japanese businessman with the leisure to do something as stupid and risky as that.” Though Mikhail was rather happy of the two men bickering and about the expression on Fei Long’s face changing for once, he felt the need to interfere.

“I think this is about something more important than me driving the car?”, he asked, looking from one to the other. Asami glowered at him as if he wanted to burn him with his eyes. But even if they would have been capable of that until months ago with nearly anybody, this had never worked with Mikhail. He was just not afraid of the Japanese. And right now, there really was nothing scary left about the man.

And obviously the other understood. Asami let his head sink, while he rested one hand on each of the two backrests in front of him. They did not speak for a while and it was Fei Long who finally broke the silence.

“How is he?”, he asked very quietly. Not looking up, the man behind just shook his head.

“Not good. He does not remember who he is. He thinks I brainwashed him. He’s aggressive. He has tried to hurt himself and to run away even at the risk of getting himself killed. I had to lock him into a walk-in-closet where he can’t do anything stupid.”

“You locked him in?”, Fei Long gasped in shock, while Mikhail felt his own stomach jolt.

The tune of reproach in the Chinese’s voice made the Japanese look up angrily.

“What else were I supposed to do? It’s a small, clean room. No window to climb out off. I put a dozen pillows in there and took out everything else so he can’t do anything to get himself hurt.”

“You can’t put anybody who had been brainwashed into a cell!”, Fei Long exclaimed in horror. His fingers dug deeply into the backrest of his chair. “If that is what was done to him, then he was very likely left in cells like that for days or weeks or months. You can’t do that.”

“How would you know?”, Asami yelled back, but there was little confidence in his eyes. He just looked defeated and forlorn.

“Because…”, Fei Long started, broke off, bit his lip, but then continued: “… because Yan did that to me a few times. When I was about eleven, twelve. When I did not do what he wanted. When I did not behave as he wanted. He locked me into a storage room for hours, sometimes even for a day, until I consented to whatever he wanted off me.”

“He’s right”, Mikhail added quietly. “I had my fair share of that as well. And I have seen other people brainwashed often enough. You need to get him out of that wardrobe. Put him into a bedroom or whatever, keep him under surveillance, but you can’t put him alone into some cell.”

When his eyes wandered to the Chinese, he realized that Fei Long was staring at him now, in both surprise… and shock. He blinked when the blue eyes met his, then looked away.

“Whatever!”, the Japanese tried to bark, but his voice was broken and weak. He sat up and gazed out of the car somewhere into the distance of the beautiful gardens. There were several trees in bloom, laden with white petals that had gathered on the sandy paths of the property like snow. It was a really nice place, Mikhail thought, looking around, but fathomed that the golden sun and the clear blue sky biased his perception a bit. The house which threw just a bit of its shadow their way due to noontime looked somewhat bleak and empty, like there was no real life in it. Like it was some kind of paper dummy or empty shell.

Yet there was a man atop the stairs now, watching them, even though he ought to not be able to see much through the tinted windows.

“Where actually are we?”, Mikhail dared to asked, leaning forward a bit to get a better view at the building.

Asami shrugged from wherever his thoughts had taken him off to.

“My family home”, he answered growling. For a split second there was a dreadfully sad smile on his face, but it was gone too soon. Nonetheless, it made Mikhail’s heart jump a beat. It seemed like all three of them did not have a particularly happy upbringing.

With a deep sigh, Asami dragged his hand across his face, before he got out of the car.

Something strange happened then: Outside he stood up straight, looked at the man atop the stairs, then grabbed the front door handle like a perfectly trained gentleman. He opened the door with an elegant bow, before he offered his hand to the man on the passenger seat. Fei Long was so perplexed he even took it, to allow himself to be helped outside.

The other man had in the meantime come down those stairs. He did not look happy… He also looked a lot like an older, blonde version of Asami.

Chapter Text

Asami had not really expected Fei Long to actually take his hand, and therefore was not surprised that the Chinese snatched his fingers away the second he had stood up. There was puzzlement on his face, which seemed as if he did not know himself why he had even accepted the gesture.

His expression of confusion was only topped by the one on Maxim’s face, when he approached. With a gaze that flitted back and forth from his younger brother to the Chinese, the car, the driver who was getting out now as well, Maxim started to nod in politeness. All that motion however made it seem like his head was not fixed well to his neck.

“I need you to explain, Ryuichi”, he stated quietly, still trying to maintain grace and courtesy facing his sudden and unexpected guests.

“First things first”, Asami answered in glee. “This is my half-brother Maxim”, he flicked one lazy thumb at the older, then raised his palm towards the man next to him. “And this is Fei Long Liu.”

It was hard to say, which of both looked more bewildered. Fei Long blinked a few times with his long lashes and his eyes became as round as Asami had not seen them for seven years. But then the spell was broken. He jerked, then extended his hand to greet the other man – western style. Maxim meanwhile just googled at the other, unmoving for a long moment. Even when he grabbed the other man’s hand, he seemed to do so because of pure instinct. Only after that he suddenly turned pale, spun around to his younger brother and grabbed him at the arm.

“Please excuse us”, Maxim smiled at Fei Long, hissing the apology through his teeth as politely as he could. He dragged Asami away for a few steps, then turned his back to his guests.

“Is this a joke? Are you playing some game on me? You can’t bring the head of Baishe here! Are you mad?”

Asami seized his brother’s hand and tore it off his arm with a defiant grin. “You said to find another way. You thought about getting help”, he snarled at the other, then turned back around towards the car and Maxim did have no choice but to do so himself. In an instant his most hospitable smile formed on his lips and he nodded towards Fei Long, who still stood there, beholding the two men, who had so many facial features in common.

“Ah yes!”, Asami suddenly exclaimed, pointing beyond the car. “And that is Mikhail Arbatov.”

“Hey!”, the Russian said and raised one hand to wave at them. He had put on an annoying smile, which usually only stung Asami, but at this very moment, he was really pleased to see it.

His brother wheezed at his side, as if he desperately needed to take a break.

Asami led the man he had asked to come here – and the other one who had come along for whatever reason – into a living room which provided a bar, several wing chairs and a fireplace that seemed somewhat out of place in regard of the usual temperatures of Dubrovnik. His brother trailed along after them, accepted the glass of red wine Asami pushed into his hand without any objections and sipped on it right away.

Maxim seemed rather shocked, and Asami wished he could enjoy it. But there was no delight in him, nor was there any real wish inside him apart from the one to have Akihito back in his arms.

When a burning suddenly blazed through his chest, he swallowed a large gulp of wine to drown it. It hardly helped, but for the moment it had to suffice.

“I am sorry if we are imposing”, Fei Long turned towards Maxim. The other wanted to reply something, but Asami interrupted.

“No need to apologize. You are here on my invitation. This is my home as well. Maxim only tends to forget that, whenever it suits him.”

Both the Chinese and the Russian looked away, while the brothers stared at each other. Maxim was not someone easily subdued in an argument, but he did not tend to quarrel in the presence of others. His brother used this to his advantage.

Silence fell for several moments, in which Fei Long regarded the redness of the wine and Mikhail marveled at the collection of incredibly expensive Whiskies and Rums.

“So…”, it was the Chinese who finally broke the quiet. “… would you tell me what happened?” Slowly he seemed to overcome his bewilderment. Now he looked up at Asami with those dark eyes that always appeared to him reproachful and arrogant.

After downing the rest of his drink in one quick go – because he knew he needed it – Asami nodded. “Yes, I will. Come on!”

The Chinese got up to follow, yet when the other two men moved as well, the one leading the way threw a lazy gesture at them.

“You two stay here. You can talk about maintaining blonde hair or whatever. We’ll be back.”

He took Fei Long to the very bedroom in which he had lain for months… and then Akihito. No. Arata.

His heart felt like it got pierced. Maybe that knife had found its mark, nonetheless.

“Is this place where you have been for all that time?”, Fei Long asked, after he took one long look around. He could not be any bit more correct than that.

Therefore, Asami answered with a growl: “This house. This very room. Maxim switched off the phones. I tried each and every I could find. I even stole some mobile phones from his staff only to find out that he had made sure those were limited to only allow national calls. I tried to get out a few times, I tried to argue with his staff, I even called the Police. But I am still not fully healed until today. I can’t run, I can’t climb fences, and no one was interested in what I had to say.”

The Chinese tilted his had to one side. There was a smile tugging on his lips. “You must have felt completely powerless.”

“Let’s just say it’s not a pleasant experience to wake up in a hospital knowing nothing about what was going on, then getting dragged off to some prison for months of doubts and inactions, to-“

“Don’t you dare lecture me on any of that!”, Fei Long shot at him. The snarl of his answer already icy on his tongue, Asami whirled around, but then paused. The other seemed to shiver slightly. With a tight grip he held on to the glass in his fingers.

The Japanese laughed hollowly. There it was again: the reproach, the resent.

That all had happened seven years ago, he insisted to himself, yet there was another voice inside him always, and as usual it edged in to whisper at him: ‘but it was your fault! Your doing! Your responsibly!’

He silenced it with a loud exhale.

“I had expected you to bring Yoh”, he changed the subject. “I think Akihito kind of liked him. Maybe he’d be able to get through to him… I mean, after all Akihito will probably not be too happy to see you.”

They were bickering again, when there was so much more important to do. But right now, there was so much anger inside him, he needed to get rid of some of it. It had nothing to do with the Chinese, no, but he was here right now, at this place, while Asami’s heart tried to burst its way out of his chest, to leave him bleeding and empty. He had to get rid of all that fury, before he stepped in front of Akihito again. Or else, he did not know what might happen. He had hit him before… in the hotel room to save himself. And also the other day to subdue him. But that way he was sure he was only making it worse.

Then also he felt helpless and drained and set up and at the end of his knowledge. The only thing that he still remembered was this white burning rage – and his love. But the latter seemed either lost or threatened by him not being able to control himself. He had to get rid of all this malice inside him. Therefore, he had tried to vent it on Maxim in the last days, but that one had just retreated whenever he had been able to. Fei Long on the other hand would stand his ground for much longer and against much harsher words.

Now his eyes were narrowed and fixated Asami sharply. “Well, he fell in love with one rapist. I don’t think my chances are too bad.”

“Huh!”, Asami laughed. “But why exactly didn’t you bring Yoh? I was told he had been with you in that car that Chernobog crashed off the road to catch you. I had not thought it would be that easy to kidnap the dragon of Baishe.”

Fei Long now smiled as well. His eyes turned darker still.

“At least I did not get knocked out by way of a cup of tea… But if you really need to know, Yoh was not there, when I received your message. And even if he had been, I would not have brought him along because he is a friend. I did not want to push onto him the awkwardness of showing you how in the end he decided to stay by my side, not yours.”

Clearer and more arrogant the smile became. Fei Long drank the last sip of wine, then placed the glass with gentle fingers onto a fine, polished cabinet. His words were true in a way, Asami had to admit. He had offered to save Yoh and keep him save from Fei Long’s revenge after the man had betrayed the head of Baishe. Yoh however had declined. What had happened after that, Asami did not know. But for some reason, the man had survived his former master’s usual wrath and quest for vengeance. He had even made it back into his good graces – not as a subordinate thought it seemed.

Yet nothing in those words was what made Asami grin maliciously now.

“So Yoh was not there, when you got the message? And when was that? 5am? 6am? Something like that? Are you telling me, that Mikhail was there?”

Fei Long flinched severely and some redness shot into his cheeks. It sprung from the wine certainly but not in the usual, direct manner. Even if the Chinese was still easily impaired by alcohol, there had not been any tint before. Yet it seemed like the drink made his usual façade of impenetrability and cold brittle.

“He…”, he started but took too long to get on with the sentence.

“Did you allow him to fuck you after all?”

Fei Long stepped backwards a tiny bit. Despite the tint on his cheeks, he lowered his head and stared at Asami out of dark, angry eyes.

“I…”

“You kept him hanging for so long and then you just decided to spread your legs for him after all?”

A hiss, like the dragon was about to spread his fire, but still needed to concentrate to find the right dose. And there certainly was one, thus Asami had to be quick.

“Have you finally turned into the whore your brother wanted you to be?”

There he had him.

Fei Long looked up. For a second his whole body seemed to tense, then whatever anger or arrogance had been there was simply swept away. As if a sudden gust of storm had just torn all the leaves from a dying tree.

For what felt like a minute he simply stared at Asami, his eyes wide and round once again. Like they had been seven years ago… lost and despaired.

Suddenly Asami remembered the feel of his fine, silk like hair between his fingers and the coldness of the window’s glass which was the only thing shielding both of them from the air in the height above the city. He remembered how black those strands had seemed compared to his skin, and how crimson his blood had been on his fingers. He also remembered that kiss and the bitter knowledge that had come later which had told him that he should never – never! – have played with anyone as broken as that.

There was no answer, now. Whatever had crossed Fei Long’s mind before, whatever attack or defense he had been preparing, it crumbled away. He just stood there for another long moment, motionless except for that hardly discernable shiver that still rocked his body. His lips trembled but at no point did it seem like he wanted to say anything.

Finally, he spun around, ran for the door and grabbed the handle.

“Please stay!”, Asami cried out.

He had won, hadn’t he? He wanted to convince himself of that. They had dueled with words and he had won. What did it matter that he had brought a gun to a swordfight? What did it matter that he had asked Fei Long to come here in the first place? A win was a win was a win, right?

Gasping he clapped his hands before his face, so hard it hurt.

“Please don’t go!”, he spoke again, whispering now but his breath was so hot, it burned across his lips. He shook his head behind his hands and for a while he just listened.

The handle remained unmoved; no steps followed.

When he managed to finally look up, Fei Long still stood there, his back turned towards the Japanese.

He should just go, Asami found himself thinking. He had any right to. Seven years back Asami had brought chaos and destruction into his life, for profit and ambition. That had been the start of it. Toh had called him in to do a job as he had done so many times before: play a rich kid! And he had played him with all the tricks he had known. Only that this rich kid had been a shattered doll from the start, searching for anybody who might care only a tiny bit in an empty, hurting world. When Asami had realized all that, it had been too late. When he had admitted to himself, that he had not just played it all but that he cared indeed, he had already failed. In the end he had not even had the courage to stay. He had run! Run from the job he had screwed up to save the boy he had been supposed to manipulate, run from the consequences, run from the memory.

His had been the easy way out.

Fei Long however had not been able to run or close a door.

But he could now. He could just open the door, walk outside, close it behind himself. Get into the car with Mikhail, fly back to Hong Kong, forget it all. Forget him and Akihito.

“Please!”, Asami hissed again. There was no one else in the world he could rely on. Akihito’s friends were morons who knew nothing of their circumstances, and even if he would want to call them here, he would just pull them into danger, from which Akihito wanted to shield them. Yoh might have been able to help, yet Akihito had not been in contact with him. No!… he had written to Fei Long only: The one who had held him captive for weeks, who had raped him… but of that Asami was just as guilty.

In the end Akihito had forgiven them both. He had written emails to Fei Long for nearly half a year, complaining about his job, talking about the weather, asking about Tao. And sometimes the Chinese had texted back, with short sentences and unskilled attempts at small talk. And Akihito had fallen in love with Asami… or hadn’t he?

Had it all just been a dream? A hope shattered in a warehouse in Macao… or in the following months…?

No! He could not believe that.

Akihito had to be somewhere in there. He only had to find him.

And if there was one person in the world of whom he knew that he cared about Akihito extensively… and that he knew did care about him himself despite all he had done to not deserve it – than it was Fei Long.

“Please stay!”, he whispered again.

“Fine”, the other answered.  

Chapter Text

What difference did it make that this prison was full of cushions to comfort him or that ever so often he was asked to step outside to talk with his goaler? It was a cell after all! A dark, cramped space from which he could not flee. What an irony that he had been put into this by the very man who kept claiming that he loved him.

‘He will try to brainwash you again’, Aaron had said and Arata had promised him that he would not allow that.

No, he would not! Of this he was certain. Aaron had been the only one who had treated him gently, and he could not disappoint him. He could not ever break a promise given to him.

Closing his eyes to trick himself into believing that the darkness in the cell was just the night in their Warsaw apartment, he tried to remember those few weeks they had been together.

But again and again, other pictures tried to edge in.

He knew it were all lies! It were all those illusions he had been made to believe into once. Still, they had not been fully overwritten. Still, he had to fight them to stay true to his word and to himself.

Sometimes he even hid his eyes between his hands as if to increase the darkness but turn it into one of his own doing. The lack of light in the walk-in-closed had been forced upon him by others, but that one behind his eyelids and his hands was of his very own volition.

In that he felt it was easier to control the images flitting through his mind. But it was hard, nonetheless.

The worst was when he was somewhere between sleeping and waking. Then those illusions got mixed up and so did the emotions they brought with them.

Then he sometimes saw himself in the arms of the Japanese, craving his touch and warmth, cuddling up to him as if only there he would ever be safe. And those big hands would keep him protected and guard him from all the harm in the world. They would not allow anybody to hurt him, to push him into a cell, to leave him in darkness. But all of that was a lie, he knew once he was waking. If that man had wanted to protect him, then why had he been in that cell of concrete and steel for months, and why was he in this one of pillows and wood now?

Other times he felt Aaron’s hands caressing his back, while they lay on the bed in that old apartment. He had wanted to be there, that he knew, and he wanted to be there now as well. Nothing more than that! But then the shadows in the apartment seemed to spread and to draw near and that darkness felt so very much like the one in his months long prison.

When he woke from that nightmare, he would push his hands in front of his face again and hide his eyes and clench his teeth to seek for the truth that needed to be somewhere inside him. If he only could feel purely enough, untaintedly, he knew he could chase those shadows away forever. Whatever lies he had been told, whatever illusions he had been fed would be undone and he would find verity finally. All questions would be answered, all doubts dissolved, all attempts of messing with his mind would not find any ground to spout on anymore.

Sometimes deliverance seemed so close by, as if it had snug up to him and was about to kiss his neck, but when he turned to see it or reached out to touch it, it just dispersed. He wanted to run after it, lunge himself at it to catch it, but he did not know how.

And then the darkness of the cell was back – not the one of this warm, soft, clean walk-in-closet, but of the one of concrete and cold and hurt and fear – and it made his limbs yield and his mind forsake, and whatever hope of finding the truth within was lost.

There was a quiet rattle on the door, as if somebody was tapping his knuckles against it faintly.

“Akihito?”, the Japanese’s voice was heard through. It sounded rough, like it had all those past days, but a bit more restrained.

With a stomp against the wall, the boy inside the closet answered: “Don’t call me that!”

There was a pause, then a feeble noise… like a sigh.

“Can we please just talk? I will let you out, we will go over to the bedroom. Can we please just talk?”

Arata did not even feel like answering. It wasn’t as if he had any say into when the door between him and his freedom would be opened, and he did not feel like making any concessions towards the man who had imprisoned him, lied to him, … raped him.

Yet being outside at least might give him some chance to flee – or to fulfill his task and get his revenge. He would try that for as long as it took, he promised to himself anew, but remained silent there where he sat. If he spat back some remark the man might just give up again…

And eventually Asami opened the door without ever receiving an answer to his question. Arata blinked into the dimmed light of the vast and exquisitely decorated hallway. The man offered him a hand, but he did not take it. Without any help he demonstratedly fought himself up onto shaky, aching legs.

Slowly Asami stepped backwards a bit, as if to signal that he meant no harm. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a while – and as if he was fighting with himself. Maybe with his fury, maybe with his lust, maybe with his disappointment about not getting what he wanted. His jaws were clenched so hard, that some muscles in his neck tensed. His hands were tugged into tight fists at his sides. As if it was a hard struggle for him, he opened one hand and raised it cautiously to point towards the door of the bedroom.

“Please”, he spoke, and his voice did somewhat break in the midst of that short word.

A sudden shudder raced down Arata’s back. He had shrugged it away before he had even started to wonder where it had come from.

One, two steps he took out of the walk-in-closed, let his gaze wander through the hallway in which they were alone. The next second he just jumped aside and started to run. But his legs where still numb. He stumbled, pushed himself up, took the next leap, then he was caught from behind around his upper body. The embrace of the man squeezed him so hard, he was sure his arms were bruising. He felt his breath being pushed from his lungs. Without much effort he was lifted from the ground, so he started to kick and to wriggle and twist in his captor’s grasp. He tried to curse him yet there was just no air left for any exclaims.

Into the bedroom he was carried and tossed unto the bed, on which he bounced several times, still kicking and punching around wherever his limbs managed to hit. Only that Asami had already withdrawn. With a loud bang the door to the room was thrown shut, and the turning of the key in the lock Arata heard even through the ruckus he now made.

“Let me go!”, he bellowed at his goaler, when he kneeled on the bed to have a good look at that bastard. “Leave me alone! Let me go! Don’t you think you have done enough to me? I am not yours! You used me! Let me go!”

Asami just stood there, watching him, while he hid the key in a pocket of his trousers.

“We need to talk!”, he spoke slowly and pointedly once Arata was out of air. “Just talk to us!”

“I don’t want to -“, the boy began exclaiming at the top of his lungs, while his mind was digesting the other’s words. He stopped midsentence, when he registered that they were not alone. There was another man there – and not one of the two blondes, Arata had seen before.

This one was Asian as well, smaller and leaner than Asami, with long black hair.

For a second the boy on the bed froze, his fingers clawed at the sheets. In the next moment the world tumbled. Someone seemed to have opened a window to allow a flock of angry birds inside. They shot at him, croaked at him, tossed pictures at him, that all made no sense. Too fast did they rush in on him, too quickly were they gone. There was some memory in that, but was it good? Bad? Real? That last was the most important question! Was it real? And would whatever feelings he would experience from remembering be genuine or just the result of more tricks, more lies, more illusions forced into his mind?

Though he was staring ahead, the room was suddenly gone. Now there was a ship and a sting on his shoulder, strong hands lifting him up, golden eyes beholding him with so much worry it hurt. There was the taste of Bourbon in his mouth with someone else’s lips onto his. There was the sound of a gun’s silencer, the click of a lock shot out of the door and hitting the ground, a warm body pressing onto his, arms holding him in their embrace throughout the night. There was a black car following him, followed by him, he sitting inside of it, he running from it, running towards it. Someone playing with his tie, someone playing with his body. His own voice begging the other to stop, begging the other for more. Him fleeing so many times and always coming back. He not wanting to get hurt, he not wanting Asami to get hurt, he not wanting the other Asian to get hurt. There were names and faces and eyes and hands touching him, a crying child yelling at him. Golden eyes turning towards him, warmth flooding in no matter how cold that crumbling warehouse around was, a smile on those lips, some words spoken to him… Then the cell’s darkness wrapped around him, pulled him away into oblivion and chased off all that had just tried to reach out for him.

When he opened his eyes, he lay on the bed panting. He had rolled himself up tightly, knees pulled to his chest, arms wrapped around, head hidden. The mattress shivered from the heavy tremble of his body; cold sweat covered his skin beneath his clothes.

Whatever those men had done to him, he gathered, it had been as good as torture. His heartbeat raced throughout his whole being so heavily it hurt, his scull would burst any second.

“Akihito!”, a desperate voice called him.

Tender fingers touched him, but he slapped them away, unlocking himself from his own embrace.

“My name is Arata!”, he shouted at those golden eyes staring at him in shock.

He did not know what had just happened to him, he did not know what those men had done, but his mind had saved him, he was sure. Now he remembered clearly the cold, dark cell and the only man who had ever been gentle to him: Aaron.

That was all he could feel now.

Chapter Text

“What the fuck!”, Alec exclaimed and almost hit the brakes of the Aston Martin sharply. There was an unfamiliar car parked between all those convertibles and vans and limousines which Maxim never used and therefore allowed him to drive. But this one did not belong here. The license plate and sticker on the rear window marked it as belonging to some car rental.

‘Visitors?’ What an utterly disturbing idea! Maxim never had any visitors. Ok… every odd year he would invite come incredibly expensive escort lady, usually from France or Japan or Romania. But they would be picked up with his biggest limousine by his best Chauffeur. And he always made sure he was alone at home at those times, save for a small handful of staff that was extremely good at making it seem like they were not really there at all.

At the entrance to the parking lot which was hid beyond the gardens by a row of plane trees, he stopped the car and stared at the Mercedes parked there in midst of all those other vehicles he knew well. It was certainly an expensive rent, therein he was sure. But who? And why?

The solution hit him rather quickly: Ryuichi had called on someone. Backup, probably. Maybe that guy Kirishima, with whom he had been on the phone. But was that likely, he began to think? From all he knew Asami’s firsthand man was very busy at this moment to keep his master’s businesses from falling apart, while Alec was – by way of middlemen and middlemiddlemen and middlemiddlemiddlemen – secretly pulling all the straws to make sure it would slip from his hands no matter how hard he tried.

But who then?

He felt annoyance creeping in. For half a day he had been gone, and what did he get from it? All his support, all his encouragement and help: had it been for nothing? It was not that he cared about the man appreciating his efforts, no! The problem was, if Ryuichi did not rely on him and him alone, if he did not trust and turn to him with whatever thought struck his head, then he was by far less easy to control.

Until now it had worked out so well! Alec had stepped in there, met the man, gained his trust, had been welcomed to accompany him, had been there in the man’s very first seconds of figuring out that there might be a problem with Akihito – and if that was not a bonding experience then Alec did not know what was! He had been the one to suggest coming here, had been nothing but helping and supportive and would have been until he saw the other crumble and fall apart finally, while he lost both the boy he loved and the life he had created for himself.

Yet now?

He felt like he should earnestly hit something or someone. But he did never allow futile emotions like that to get into his way. With a gentle foot he let the convertible sped on and parked a minute later, next to the unknown rental car.

Taking the provisions with him for which he had gone for half a day, he walked over to the house, amiably greeting the security guard who hid in the garden nearly as well as if he had never been born. Then he entered the mansion. It was silent inside and already quite dark as dusk had set in outside.

For some moments he listened whether he would hear something and was rewarded with a faint “leave me alone!” from far away up the large, marble staircase.

‘Ah!’, he thought. ‘So little Arata is still bad tempered.’

It remembered him of something. Placing his cargo onto a wardrobe, he fished out his mobile phone. There had been several messages today always alarming him with the same beep he only used for one contact… and whenever he got time to look up what had been sent to him, he only found the notice ‘message deleted’.

Maybe it had been full moon, he found himself wondering, and therefore everyone was suddenly behaving out of place. ‘Roro’, was the name of the contact. Yet his brother hardly ever wrote to him… today however he had sent him six messages all in all, and then he had deleted them leaving his twin with nothing but the information that whatever had once been sent to him was now lost in the space between Warsaw and Dubrovnik.

‘What the fuck do you want?’, he typed into the app, then sent the message away.

In fact, he thought that he knew the answer already. His brother seemed to have taken a rather inconvenient liking to that boy Akihito. Probably he wanted to know what was going on there – so far out of his own reach – but did not dare to really ask in the end. Or he did just not want his brother to know. As if Alec was that stupid!

He even laughed out shortly into the empty hallway. It made a door being opened a moment later, because obviously he had been loud enough. Out of the nearest living room – a really nice gentlemen’s chamber with world-class drinks and a large fireplace – Maxim stepped, looking disgruntled and annoyed.

“Ah! It’s you”, he murmured, then looked up the staircase.

“Do you have any visitors I should know about?”, Alec asked walking into the light of the room in which Maxim still stood. He gazed around to see who had imposed on their solitude here and found one of those stupid cats on the lap of a man…

A man…

“What the fuck are you doing here?”, he shot at that guy, dropping his jar.

Mikhail Arbatov looked up at him in surprise but recovered quickly. He put up his stupid grin.

“I’m indulging a cat”, he answered, swirling his fingers through the fur of the white feline.

Maxim spun around back and forth between both of them.

“You know each other?”, he exclaimed, leveling his voice down from complete irritation to friendly astonishment while he spoke.

“Sadly”, Mikhail answered back, still grinning, still playing with the cat.

“What’s he doing here?”, Alec hissed at the man next to him.

“He’s… uh”, Maxim started, then shrugged, then turned towards the stairs. Someone was walking down, but Alec was still fixating the other Russian.

“He is with me”, a soft, deep voice answered behind his back.

Blue eyes sparkled at Alec in that moment so intensely he felt like he was about to throw up. He had met Mikhail Arbatov several times before. Hell, there had been a time when they had been something like pals… bros… what was that called today? ‘Wiener Cousins’ was probably the best word for it. They had been hunting girls together when they had been young, they had been pulling deals together, they had even killed together. That had been long before Alec had joined ‘Tilphousia’ and had met Ryuichi, though. And after that Alec had done his utmost to seem like a contract go-to-man-for-everything, who did not have any stakes of his own. He had crossed paths with Mikhail a few more times afterwards, when the other had become the head of his bratva, and Alec had felt the need to keep away from that person that knew just too much about him. Not about his past, however… that was not the problem. But about his character.

Seeing him here, where the work of months of meticulous planning and dire pursuit was about to fruition, made Alec’s guts fill with spitefulness and infamy. He smiled nonetheless, then turned benevolently towards whoever else had just answered his question.

It was an Asian who stepped down those gloomy stairs just like Cleopatra would have done. On the last one that person stopped to be still able to look down on Maxim and Alec, who were obviously a bit taller.

“Are you Alec?”

“Uh…”, he answered, only understanding thanks to that deep voice that this was a man. In the dimness of the staircase with his slender figure, long hair and graceful movements, Alec had almost taken him to be a woman.

“Yes”, he tossed out the moment he caught himself, putting on his loveliest smile.

The other seemed unabashed by it. “Asami asks if you brought what he asked for. And if you did, if you would bring it up to him”, the young man recited, his voice remaining factually and businesslike.

“Uh…”, again. “Yes”, he added. Ryuichi had questioned him to get some stuff and provisions, and Alec had. That had been the goddamn reason why he had not been here the whole day. That had been the reason why he now felt like a laggard trying to catch all the loose ends. He stared at the young man atop the lowest step, then forced his lovely smile to broaden and extended his hand towards the other.

“Well, hello and enchanté! I had not expected to meet old acquaintances like Mikhail upon my return, or good friends of good friends.”

Unmoving the Asian looked at him for some seconds. The usual everyman would be wrapped around Alec’s finger by now. He had tested that often enough. His smile, his eyes, the way he spoke. He just seemed like the kind of character you wanted to trust and never expected to betray you.

To win Maxim over had been some hard work though, yes. The man was a recluse and Alec had had to work for him for a long while until he had found the right measure to gain his friendship. Ryuichi on the other hand had been a companion of old days and had just slid into his grasp because he had needed someone to support him. Mikhail then had been a friend once and would never be again – therefore that one guest would definitely be lost to his charms. Yet this new one, there was still hope, he thought to himself and felt like his eyes became even warmer, his smile even sincerer.

Finally, the other man took his hand to shake it with a strong, dry shake. He let go right away.

“Fei Long”, he answered, then threw a short look beyond Alec into the Gentleman’s room where Mikhail still sat with the cat. He nodded towards the other, then just turned around and walked upstairs again without squandering another look upon Maxim or Alec.

Chapter Text

He turned around for the probably 100^th time. Of course he could claim that the birds chirping outside were the culprit which kept him from falling asleep again, or the light of the early dawn which was hardly hindered though the curtains were very thick. But that would have been lies. The only thing that kept him awake was his restless mind.

Finally, he got up, dressed and stepped outside of the bedroom which had been offered to him by Maxim. For a moment he listened to the silence of the guesthouse’s hallway, then he walked over to the room some doors down. Even though the master of the house had not appeared happy about his unexpected visitors, he had given him and Mikhail the two biggest, most luxurious chambers which both had a large balcony and own bathroom.

In front of the other door, he stopped. He touched the wood with his fingertips while he listened for any movement or noise inside. Yet there was none. Which was not really surprising. It was only short past 5 in the morning and Mikhail had proven to him to be far better in sleeping several times before.

He should just go… yet his fingertips remained on the door a little longer. Mikhail would not mind if he just entered… if he just snug beneath the sheets…

With his hair flicking behind him he spun around and hurried outside. The guesthouse was connected to the mansion with a row of arcades that passed a beautiful fountain where birds were having a bath and did not care about the man walking past with quiet steps.

Once inside, the silence and dimness of the large villa wrapped around him. This place seemed little like being a home to anybody. There were no private pictures or personal items anywhere. Everything looked like someone had wanted to recreate living without putting any life in it. All the rooms were beautifully furnished and decorated in warm colors, but it felt sterile and arid, nonetheless.

After the little information Fei Long had been able to catch in one evening, the mansion and grounds still belonged to Asami’s father, who was furthermore still the head of their family’s organization – and it bugged Fei Long that he had never learned about any of that. Maxim dealt with most of the businesses from afar and had moved into the house in which he had lived in as a child, yet it seemed like he did not dare to change much about that place. Just as if he was still a guest himself.

It made Fei Long wonder how he would feel if once he sat foot back into his childhood home. He had not done so, since his father had died there. Today he paid for the house to be preserved, though he did not want to go there.

On the steps upstairs he halted for a moment and tried to imagine how it would be if he walked through his old home… He shook the thought away before it managed to make him feel cold, then hurried further up.

There was a cat in front of the bedroom door behind which both Asami and Akihito would most likely be. She tried to push the little cat flap open with her head, but it did not move. Then she noticed the approaching man. She ran up, greeting him with little meows, and cuddled around his legs.

“Good morning”, Fei Long spoke softly. There was a tiny bell beneath the cat’s neck that rang almost inaudibly. She followed him onwards and tried the cat flap again, yet it seemed to be blocked.

Cautiously the man turned the handle and pushed open the door. With another ‘meow’ just like it meant ‘thanks!’, the cat flit inside.

The curtains had not been drawn in the evening because they had decided to not allow darkness to engulf the room fully. There was some lighting in the garden at night and the sky had been clear, the moon bright. Now the morning sun stood on this side of the building and bathed the chamber with golden light.

Akihito lay on the bed, cuddled up between many sheets and blankets as if he had been cold – which was unlikely because it was rather warm these days. Only his head amongst the thick pillows could be seen, and one foot: The one onto which Asami had fixed the handcuffs.

That blonde guy… Alec had brought it along with a lot of other stuff. Though there was some plush around the metal shackle – like you saw it on those replicas people used for their sex play – the cuffs were indeed real ones. They had been fixed to a massive chain that ran from the boy’s leg to one of the bedposts. That however was the only bonding on him now.

In the evening Asami and Fei Long had tried to reason with him, had tried to talk to him, but Akihito had not – no, that was wrongly phrased! Arata had not wanted to speak to them. Either he had been angry, cursing them, shouting at them, had demanded to be set free or for both of them just drop dead, or he had been hiding beneath the pillows or pressing his hands onto his ears.

That all had been after he had gradually recovered from the panic attack… or whatever else it had been he’d been haunted by when looking at Fei Long for the first time.

Watching the boy now, as he slept, breathing slowly, Fei Long could not help but feel guilty. Maybe Arata had just been scared, or there had been some memories or doubts that had rushed to his mind that the brainwashing he had obviously gone through had drowned out quickly.

But then again, maybe it was more than that? He had not seen Akihito awake for nearly a year. Yes, the young man had started to send him emails at some point, he had even turned to Fei Long for help from the temple, yet… all that had been from afar. And the latter had only happened when there had been no other way left for the boy to get in touch with Asami.

So, there was the possibility that it had not been Arata scared nor the brainwashing trying to suppress reality, but that it had been Akihito deep inside who had got frightened.

Fei Long clenched his hands into fists.

The guilt did not stop there. He had tried to get Asami and Akihito to safety and had failed. He had wanted to protect them, but they had both been taken away. What did it matter that Asami’s own men had not been able to guard their master or that all the men he had stationed at the hospital had been drugged by sleeping gas? In the end it had been his responsibility, his failure! He could not shake that thought, no matter how often Yoh or Mikhail had told that there had been nothing he could have done.

He had promised to himself to protect them, yet had not done so.

A year ago, there had been so much rage in him and so much hurt about watching them both leave together while he remained behind, alone once more. He had struggled hard to cope with all of that. He had confronted his demons when he had faced Yan in Taiwan and had managed to overcome the misery, the love and his past.

They belonged together – Asami and Akihito – he had decided. Even though it still hurt… because…

He closed his eyes for a moment.

… because he loved them both.

But that was why he needed them to be together. That was how they belonged and maybe… if he helped with that… he would find deliverance for himself.

He had tried and would go on doing so. However, right now it seemed harder than ever before.

They were even in the same room: Akihito sleeping on the bed, Asami on a mattress he had dragged over from one of the other rooms; yet still they could not be further apart.

With a low sigh he opened his eyes. There was no telling that the person sleeping between the sheets was someone else than the Japanese photographer. Akihito had to be somewhere in there. They just had to find him.

A low groan came from the mattress on the floor and Fei Long stirred.

“Who long have you been there?”, Asami asked. He tried to shove the cat away which was keen on rubbing her head on his chest.

“A few minutes”, the Chinese answered as quietly as possible.

“No need to whisper”, the other answered, sat up and flinched when the cat jumped unto his lap to lie down there. “I had to give him a sedative shot some hours ago. He tried to lift up the bed to get the chain free from the bedpost.”

For some seconds Fei Long just stared at the other man. They both together would be hardly able to lift the monstrosity. Akihito would never be capable to even just push it up the tiniest bit.

There was a doctor’s kit splayed on one of the low cabinets. That, Alec had brought as well. In fact, it seemed like he had plundered an ambulance car. There were bandages, dressings and band aids, several different types of syringes, tubes and ampules and equipment to administer IV’s.

Giving the cat a push, Asami stood up. He still seemed a bit clumsily doing so, and had had to confess the evening before that apart from the new injuries his infuriated lover had dealt him, some of his old ones had not healed fully yet. One of the bullets that had hit him in the back had come quite close to his spine and the fall had caused more damage, not to mention that both his legs had been broken several times and that he had been confined to his bed for months.

Fei Long felt his fists clench again. He did not know what to think about Maxim. That man seemed in some way as sterile as the house in which he dwelled. Like there was very little life in him. He was polite but curt, courteous in offering two men he did not know nor had expected his hospitality but seemed to dodge them and only watch them from afar as if he believed they would misbehave any second now.

Also… that man had stolen Asami away from his watch, and even though Fei Long tried to give Maxim the benefit of assuming he had only wanted to protect his brother, it was hard to do so. For one, he did not feel like making excuses for others, especially not when he did not know them. And secondly it did not seem like Asami himself was happy about any of this.

Oh well, true, he would never have shown any ease to find himself guarded by Baishe men or protected by Fei Long. Yet he had claimed that he had come here with Akihito because it was the one place, he thought to be safe in… and it did not feel like that to the Chinese.

Not because he did not know that house or the grounds or the city, or the man who owned the place and his surfer-boy-lookalike friend Alec – but because Asami moved around the place as if he expected treachery to snug up at him behind every corner.

Some while later there was a knock on the door and breakfast was brought in for Asami and Akihito by one of the women of the staff, who were all very talented at keeping out of sight. That was yet another thing that struck Fei Long as strange about Maxim and his way of living.

He left the two Japanese alone - Akihito still sleeping – and followed the woman down to the kitchen to find a breakfast for himself. He was not particularly hungry, because the dinner Maxim had had prepared for his guests had been scrumptious and abundant. At the vast table in the dining hall they had sat, eating in silence: Maxim at the head of the table, barely looking up and obviously uninterested in hearing how good the food was or how thankful his guests were for his hospitality; Alec some seats down to Maxim’s side, as if even with the man he knew best here, the master of the house did not want any proximity. Mikhail had sat across the table from the Chinese. He had been disgruntled ever since Fei Long had followed Asami up to the bedroom, and Fei Long was not sure if most of that sprung from the obvious animosity between him and the well-tanned guy who tried to pretend he was French, when he was indeed Russian as well. Or if there was more to it. There probably was, he had thought back then, but had not felt like addressing it while they were not alone. Yet after the dinner Mikhail had gone to bed early, still taciturn and somewhat dismissive.

Asami had not come down for dinner at all.

The young woman of the staff seemed pretty surprised that Fei Long insisted on just coming with her to the kitchen instead of requesting that breakfast was brought to him. But he was not feeling benevolent or anything... he just wanted a better look around.

And found all those places he came to visit that way to not be any more filled with vividness. Nowhere were there any pictures that showed a family member or a snapshot from a holiday, there were no souvenirs, no personal items… nothing.

Many of the rooms however were locked, therefore Fei Long decided to feel allowed to enter those which weren’t.

The only that caught his attention because it was not just another living room with seats and couches and a fireplace and pretty cabinets, was the library. Though that was an understatement.

Just like the one in his father’s house this was spread over two storeys with a catwalk along the shelves upstairs. There was a glass ceiling and giant windows that reached from the floor all the way up. This one was however so much bigger than the one he remembered from his childhood and knew to be still there in the mansion in the hills above Hong Kong.

Yet it was not the books that really caught his attention but the collection of art that hung in between, some framed in brass or gold frames, others sheltered by a plate of glass that had been fixed in front just like one saw it in some museums.

The collection spun over centuries and styles. There was a medieval triptych on the far eastern corner of the hall, a gleaming piece of art deco in a showcase in the middle of it and some modern art pieces in the far west. The one he finally got stuck in front of was a late 18^th century painting of oil on canvas. One that he knew very well… It was pretty dark but the bodies on it seemed to shimmer from some distant sunlight that shown down onto them.

“If you stare long enough at some canvas people will assume that you actually know something about art, don’t they?”, a voice echoed through the hall. It was Maxim’s, Fei Long knew without even turning to look at the man. He sounded… annoyed, and probably a bit spiteful that he had finally caught one of his guests at being naughty.

The Chinese just remained as he was, his hands folded behind his back, his eyes taking in the beautiful picture. Usually, he did not allow anybody to talk to him like that, but he was in the man’s home… and he wanted to know if in anger or supposed superiority he would slip something that was worthy to be found out.

With measured steps the other man approached, his gaze fixed upon the Chinese. Only when he stood still an armlength away, half a head taller than Fei Long, did he answer the accusation: “It’s Pierre Paul Prud’hon’s ‘L'Amour séduit l'Innocence’. As far as I knew this was supposed to be in some National Gallery. But this is the real one. It’s not fake, is it?”

Even now, he did not look at the other. Maxim exhaled sharply, but then fell silent, and Fei Long felt the man’s eyes burn into his skin… yet, from what he thought he could make out, the other did not really seem angry now.

“Only the curator knows”, Maxim spoke again suddenly and there was some hiss in his voice. As if he wanted to whisper while convincing himself at the same time that he didn’t have to. “The visitors will never find out. They will see the copy there and will assume it is the genuine one, just as you see this one here and believe it to be the real.”

“Well, am I correct?”, Fei Long asked. The morning sun which shone in through the window made the women in the pictures gleam. There was a naked one in the front with wings on her back and a bow of flowers in her hair. She was ‘love’ and had laid an arm around the other girl next to her. That one was still dressed and smiled tenderly, while some small boyish angel pulled her along grabbing her skirt. ‘Innocence’ was the one led by the others, ‘pleasure’ the little child that would not let go. In the shadows behind a darkhaired woman who was leaning her head into her hand followed them – she was ‘remorse’.

“You are correct”, Maxim answered and now his voice sounded kind and quiet. “Maybe you do have an eye for art after all?”

Fei Long shrugged slowly. Still the man beheld him intently, while he kept his own eyes on the canvas. “Benefits of a classical education. I always preferred Prud’hon over David, but neither their contemporaries did, nor does posterity. I admire the way he works with the light in his pictures. Sadly, my favorite is hung at a bad spot in the Louvre. It’s above one of the archways and when the sun shines in through the window above, then you can hardly see anything on that artwork because the light is reflected by the dark painting.”

“’La justice et la vengeance divine poursuivant le crime’. Isn’t it odd for a man of your profession to enjoy a work with that message: ‘Justice and divine vengeance pursuing crime’?”

Again, Fei Long shrugged. He frowned for a short moment, then smiled. “No. I think it is a good way of staying sane.”

Silence fell for a few moments in which he marveled at the details of the forest that was entrapped in the shadows of the picture, while the other man still stood there, still only a few steps away, still watching him.

“Usually, I do not allow strangers to behold my collection”, Maxim said factually but in almost a whisper.

“Usually, I do not allow others to stare at me”, Fei Long answered and finally turned to look up at the blond man. There was much resemblance with his brother, except for the eyes which were not Asian, and the color of his irises and hair. There also were a few more wrinkles.

But Asami had never looked at him that way – that he was capable to preclude. However, what it was that those eyes were expressing he did not know. Asami had cared about him, had been worried about him back then, seven years ago, but there had been so much annoyance and arrogance in his gaze at most times that it felt hard now to remember how the kinder expressions had appeared. Mikhail never beheld him in any way close to that neither. In his eyes there was usually longing and kindness and warmth… Fei Long pushed those thoughts away, concentrating on the man now opposite him.

Maxim had not even flinched when he had turned towards him. He still stared, hardly blinking, his eyes unmoving.

“You are very beautiful”, he hummed slowly.

“Thank you”, Fei Long answered just as quietly. There was no longing in those eyes, no need, no desire, … no love. But warmth indeed, and maybe something like… reverence.

“Would you allow me to touch your cheek?”, the man asked, unmoving.

Fei Long found himself staring back for a couple of seconds. Then he took the man’s hand, which felt dry and warm and unpersonal. He raised it to his own face, moved one of the fingers and brushed it across his own skin.

Maxim blinked slowly while he followed his fingertip’s trail closely. As easy as he had found his wish fulfilled as easy did he let go, but he stared still…

… until he suddenly looked up in surprise. The motion was so quick, so different from anything before, that Fei Long followed it unintentionally, looking upstairs to the catwalk of the library’s upper floor. One of the doors was opened, and Mikhail stood there, leaning with both hands on the railing, watching them. The moment he was spotted, he spun around and marched outside.

“I am sorry”, Maxim whispered, and looked as if that was true, when Fei Long turned to him again.

‘Why?’, he wanted to answer. ‘Nothing happened’, ‘this is meaningless’… but he knew by his own accelerated heartbeat that all that was not true. There had not happened anything that Mikhail would not have been allowed to witness if he had stood right here next to him, or was he wrong in that? And… if Mikhail had not seen it all? If he was making up a story of his own imagination…

What should he even care?! It had been the Russian’s own choice to come along. There had been no promises, no agreement, just that stupid deal and that had been undone months ago!

And yet Fei Long found in himself a strange urge: to run after the other man.

“I think you should go”, Maxim said.

Chapter Text

“Meet me at the Panorama Restaurant and Bar, tomorrow, 11am. Early lunch. Bring those pictures now you’re here anyway.”, he had typed into his mobile phone the evening before. It had of course just been a suspicion and he had never received an answer… and yet he was very sure that the other would turn up though he had no right to be even in the same country.

He leaned onto the silver railing beneath which the slope down the hill was very steep. The old town of Dubrovnik with its grey fortifications and red roofs lay in the deep just below him, burned by the early summer sun though it was still an hour until noon. Behind all that: nothing but the blue of the sky and the Adriatic Sea.

In the shade provided by a white umbrella, he sat up, disturbed by a family who had settled nearby. Americans, Australians, something like that. Their English sounded broad and unrefined, and the youngest of the children, a blonde boy of maybe eight years, suddenly started to shout for ‘Apple juice!’. They had just ordered, and the waiter nearly stumbled in surprise on his way back to the building in which the kitchen and service area where housed. But the father of the group just shooed him away with a patronizing wave of the hand.

“Apple juice! Apple juice!”, the boy cried again and again with a high, grinding voice, while his parents had an unperturbed chat and the other two children stared into their mobile phones.

For a while Alec mused about pulling out his gun and just shoot the kid. That would make his day for certain! He could even imagine himself getting up, walking over showing his prettiest smile. The mother as well as the eldest child who was a girl of about fourteen years would both look up and some rosy tint would show on their cheeks because that good looking guy had noticed them. The husband would likely feel a stinge of jealousy right away, yet that blonde, smiling person? He could just not be somebody unpleasant? No, this guy was very likely really rich and might invite them for lunch or even onto his Yacht.

At the table Alec would stop, blink down at the boy smilingly and then he would…

Aaron dragged his chair across the terrace stones to take a seat.

With a sigh his twin sat up and his daydreams were gone. A waiter was there quickly, yet Aaron only ordered a black coffee. Nothing else.

“No lunch? No late breakfast?”, Alec grinned at him benevolently. His sparkly eyes were met by pale ones that glowered at him across the table.

“No”, the other snarled.

“Apple juice!”, finally the kid got what he wanted, then exclaimed that he needed a straw. When he got that as well, he sucked in the filling of his glass in one long draw.

Alec was hoping he would just burst.

Sadly, he didn’t.

“I’m not gonna ask you what you’re doing here, because I can imagine. I think you’ve fallen a bit hard for that kid when I think about the fact that he’s not gonna live…”

“There’s no reason to harm him.”

Aaron still glowered at him and even kept a straight face when he sipped on the far too hot coffee he was handed soon. That was the way his brother was: Always keeping a straight face. It would not even affect him if Alec pulled his fucking brain out to dissect it here on the table. Never ever would Aaron admit any kind of feelings to him.

Nonetheless, Alec knew himself to be spot-on with his assessment.

“I don’t think that’s gonna be my decision in the end. Right now, he’s in a bedroom with a pink fluffy handcuff around his ancle and a really nasty mood. You did a decent job there, Roro.”

He thought about that expression for a moment, then started to laugh. ‘Decent’? That was no good word actually. No… that job had been anything but decent. Yet it had worked like a charm and still did.

The only thing that made Alec’s edginess grow by the minute was the presence of those other two. There were several complications that might spring from either of both men being there.

Ryuichi alone with his dread and terror and helplessness had been such a nice token in his hand. He would have been able to play the Japanese just like he had fixed him onto some strings. He would be able to pull on them and Ryuichi would dance to his every order. In the end Alec would see him lose everything, his businesses, his lover, his former life – and once he handed him over as he was supposed to, he would finally also see him lose his freedom.

All he had to do for that was keep Arata in the head of the other boy and Ryuichi in despair for a little longer. Interference he did not want and had not expected. Surely, Maxim was worried about his brother, but Alec could not imagine both men joining hands.

Ryuichi was too angry with the older for basically keeping him in a prison for months without any contact to the outside world, while Akihito had been stolen from the hospital in which by Maxim’s neglect he had been left behind. And Maxim did not understand his brother’s emotions for that boy nor would he have the slightest idea of how to help if he did. Furthermore, there was always some animosity between the two of them. They had been strangers for years, the one running from his oppressive family, the other just placed as the master of the organization as a placeholder until the younger returned.

Alec would have played them off against each other and would have been the one triumphant in the end.

But now… he shot a look over to the blonde boy and it was a surprise that the child did not just drop dead from that.

Now… there were two others! Of course, he knew who Fei Long Liu was, by rumors and reputation, but he had never met him. Nor did he know anything about his character off from the tales around him being the fierce ‘Dragon of Baishe’. He surely did not really look like a grim, deadly creature from a fairytale…

And Mikhail was a problem. He certainly knew Alec too well. Knew what he was capable of and that his smiles and sparkly eyes were masquerade.

“Now, have you brought what I asked you for?”, he returned to gaze at his twin.

Aaron was twirling the white porcelain cup in his fingers. The coffee he had already emptied.

There was a really dark shadow on his eyes, when he looked up without raising his head.

“I need you to promise me something first”, he spoke quietly and hoarsely.

‘Hear! Hear!’, Alec thought to make fun of this situation. They never had any talk like this. Even so he could not keep himself from stirring on the chair uncomfortably.

“What?”, he asked, dragging the word very long.

Aaron sat up and raised his head a bit. The steep sunlight fell into his bright, grey eyes but he did not even blink.

“When this is over, they don’t need the boy anymore…”, he broke off and bit his lip as if he thought that he had already spoken enough.

And maybe he had. It was true! Once Ryuichi was broken and brittle, once all his power in Japan was drained, once he bowed his head and accepted what had been his adjudged function since the day his brother had fallen from his horse and had hurt his spine so badly, he needed strong medications to get through the day… once all of that was archived, there was no use left for Ryuichi’s little cuntboy. Alec did not expect the kid to be kept alive after that, for it knew too much to be let go and was not important enough to remain a hostage. Yeah… but maybe he could ask if he could have the boy then. Or his brother.

“You want him? For yourself?”, he asked his twin, raising one eyebrow not even knowing if he looked warily, dismissively or with pity at the other.

“If he is not needed anymore, where is the hurt? Let me have him. It’s the only thing I’ve ever asked of you. It’s the only thing I ever will.”

Aaron spoke slowly and coldly. His eyes were fixed upon Alec’s, unwavering and adamant.

“I’ll ask. That’s all I can promise you”, was his answer, then he extended his hand across the table, waiting for something to be placed in it.

His brother nodded. With a clink he sat down the cup, before he handed over a small, brown envelope.

Alec took it yet placed it onto the table instead of tugging it away. He brought forward a pen and shoved it into the other’s fingers.

“Please, I need you to write something on there for me.” His own hand wright Maxim would recognize right away. Therefore, someone else needed to put the letters onto the cover.

“What?”, Aaron asked.

“To M. Arbatov”, Alec answered, leaning back into his chair and grinning contently.

Time to cause some discord!

Chapter Text

His bonds were not long enough for Akihito to lean his back against the headboard of the bed – because Asami had dreadful visions of what somebody who felt like hurting himself might be able to do with a long chain.

Therefore, at breakfast the boy had slid from the bed on the opposite side, where the older man sitting on his mattress could not see him. And there he remained, only looking up once when he announced meekly that he had to use the toilet, and another time when he was handed lunch on a tray hours later.

The thought of just moving over there had crossed Asami’s mind several times, but in the end he had stayed here. Otherwise, the boy would just have snuck onto the opposite side of the bed, if he really wanted to keep out of the other’s sight. They could have turned that into a game, but it would not have been a happy one.

 The evening before had passed in silence mainly after both Asami and Fei Long had given up their attempt to argue with the third. They needed to wait until Akihito… Arata decided to talk to them himself.

In the midst of the night, presumably believing the older man to be so fast asleep he would not wake up, the prisoner had tried to loosen his chains. First by tearing at them, then by trying to lift the bed just so much that he could pull the metal links out from around the bedpost. That however had not even been the point at which Asami had finally interfered, even though he had told Fei Long so. Pretending to be asleep he had watched the other through one a hardly opened eye for a while longer. Then Akihito had sat down next to the bed, had stomped his free foot against the frame and had started pulling so hard on the shackle around his ankle that he had forgotten to breath.

“Stop it!”, Asami had begged, sitting up. Akihito had fallen over backwards, panting, coughing and wheezing for air, but when the older man had tried to pick him up to comfort him, he had slammed his fists around in defense.

Then Asami had taken the syringe with the sedative from the doctor’s kit.

“Why don’t you just let me go?”, the boy’s voice now on the next day suddenly called from behind the bed.

“I can’t”, Asami answered factually.

“Why not… If I really was your lover… as soon as I remember, if will come back. I promise. Why wouldn’t I?”

He rubbed his hands across his face and shook his head even though the boy could not see any of that. The voice of the other sounded pensive and calm now, and not aggressive anymore.

“If what you say is true, if you and I…”, Asami could hear him swallow hard even from the distance and with the massive bed between them. “If that is all true, then I will come back to you. I promise! I do!”

“I can’t”, he repeated, louder, fiercer now. “Whoever did this to you wanted you to kill me. But you did not manage that. If I let you go, and they get you, I don’t know what they will do. I will not allow anybody to lay hands on you again.”

“But if they don’t… I mean, I know… where to go. To whom. He would not hurt me. And if I’ll remember, then I will come back. Of course, I would!”, now there was pleading in Akihito’s voice.

“I can’t! I might never see you again. You might be hurt again. You might be killed. I will not ever let you go again.”

“So, you do keep me against my will!”, now the boy shouted. He sprung unto his feet and tossed the tray with the empty glass and plate and the cutlery across the bed towards Asami. Not any of the projectiles came even close.

“I am keeping you here to protect you. If you only talked with me. If you told me what they did to you I could explain”, he attempted to reason, forcing himself to remain calm and controlled, but it was hard. “This is the safest place I know right now. I brought you to Croatia because here they will not find us. They have not found me for five months and they will…”

He broke off when he realized how panicked those eyes stared at him all of a sudden.

“Croatia!”, Akihito hissed. “That is… how far away from Warsaw are we?”

Asami twitched. “Why?”

“How far?!”, the boy yelled. He seemed to fall over, then grabbed the curtains of the canopy bed to steady himself.

“I don’t know… 700miles maybe? By air.”

“You bastard!”

Akihito slapped his hands onto his eyes so hard the clap echoed in the room. The bared his teeth and breathed sharply across them. “Why? I am not yours! You have no right! I don’t belong to you!”

He stared to cry and to tremble with his sobs. Asami stepped up. He wanted to wrap his arms around him, he wanted to hold him, to embrace him. Wanted to feel Akihito’s warmth, his fingers on his skin. He would be able to take his tears if they really were his, but these weren’t. And he could not just pull him into his arms. For this boy Arata he did not feel anything. If he was a matryoshka doll and he could recover Akihito if he just smashed the outer shell then he would do so, right away.

“Come back to me, Akihito”, he begged in a whisper, feeling for the first time since very long a burning in the corner of his eyes.

“Come back to me, please!”

“I am not yours!”, the other cried, his voice a desperate plea, tears streaming down his face from behind his hands. “Here Aaron will never find me!”

“Aaron?”, he repeated the name. The burn in his eyes was gone in an instant. Iciness spread out through his body.

Aaron…

His hand shot up, ready to grab the boy around the shoulder. He would have hurt him he knew and still did not know how to stop himself from the motion.

A knock on the door saved him.

Asami found himself frozen to the spot, the boy just a step away, sobbing quietly into his hands.

“Yes?”, he barked at the entrance and spun around. His heart razed while an irony sting pierced through his veins.

The door was opened slowly, cautiously by Alec, who smiled apologetic. With a rash movement Arata climbed between the sheets and hid beneath the many pillows.

“Ah sorry”, Alec said. His eyes beheld the boy for a moment, appearing worried and thoughtful. He bit his lower lip, then nodded towards Asami and stepped inside.

“I brought some sweets”, he explained the disturbance. “Sorry, if I chose a bad moment.”

“Doesn’t matter”, Asami growled. He had to fight hard against his own chest to control his breathing. The air wanted to explode out of his throat in fury.

Shrugging and with obvious unease the other man carried a silver tray and placed it on one of the tables. On it lay an assortment of pastries, cakes and cookies next to a bowl of deep pink strawberries.

“I just thought… uh… you both could use a break. Some cheering up?”

He stepped from one foot onto the other, then he pulled his shoulders up to his ears again. “I’m sorry I can’t do anything more.”

Asami kneaded the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb.

“Mh… not your fault”, he hardly managed to voice.

“I’ll leave you two alone then?”, Alec smiled haplessly, turned around but stopped at the door. “Oh uhm… I have no idea where Maxim is. He sometimes vanishes in his private rooms and does not come out for a day or two. There was some mail. I just pushed the envelopes beneath the tray there. I mean… you’re also the master of this house… or you can just leave them there and I give them to Maxim whenever I see him again.”

There was no answer and finally the man left.

Asami remained where he had wandered off to. He leaned against one of the cabinets, arms crossed in front of his chest, watching the fake-Akihito which hid between the cushions once more.

‘Aaron’, he repeated that name in his mind again and again and again.

“Do you think someone like you could kill me?”, he had asked the blonde, scarred man, while he held him in his grasp, his gun at his cheek, the steps of other Chernobog scum drawing near. They had raised their rifles, they had taken aim, yet Asami was hiding behind the other.

“Shit… Aaron…”, one of them had cursed. Aaron…

“It’s fine”, had been the answer. “Shoot!” And they had.

Asami had felt how the bullets had hit the other’s body, his torso, his arms. He had leapt away and had hid, letting go of the Russian. But had the man been dead? Or had he been carrying a bulletproof vest that had ended saving his life?

He did not know…

It might be some completely different ‘Aaron’ of course. But his guts told him that it wasn’t.

The only way to find out was through that boy on the bed, who now played to be asleep or had indeed cried himself into unconsciousness.

Asami stepped over to the platter of sweets. He had no interest into any of them. Sugar was not to his liking. He would just leave it to the other.

The mail tugged underneath he took instead. It were several letters in envelopes, some thick, some thin, all from abroad. Only one of them all caught his eye, however. This one was brown and smaller. He pulled it from within the batch and stared at it for long seconds.

‘To M. Arbatov’, it said. And it was not even sealed. There was only a paper clip keeping it shut.

‘Don’t!’, he found some voice inside him demand, but tore the clip off, nonetheless. Into his hands he emptied the envelope, catching the small cards falling out… No. Not cards… photographs in very good quality.

With Akihito on them… on a bed… naked… with another man.

Chapter Text

There was a tap on the door, short and loud. Then silence. He did not answer at once. On the table in front of him lay his suitcase. It was a small one he usually took with him if he was traveling for not longer than a week, and right now he was storing back into it the few items he had taken out in the less than 24hours he had been here.

Holding one of his shirts, he stared at the door, waiting. There was no call from the other side, nor was it simply opened.

After a few moments there was another tap, loud and short again.

“Yeah!”, he gnarled, and finally the door was pushed open.

It was Fei Long – not that he had expected anybody else. Right away he returned to packing his belongings, while the Chinese man stepped up to him.

“What are you doing?”, he asked plainly and quietly.

“I’m leaving”, Mikhail answered, his voice harsh, his eyes fixed on that shirt he tried to rub any wrinkles out with his fingers.

“Why?”, the next stupid question. Fei Long looked up to him from a step away with a puzzled look.

Mikhail pushed his breath out through his nose in fury.

“Are you angry?”, and another question.

“Yes, I am angry!”, he answered through gritted teeth, not looking at the other.

“Good”, Fei Long retorted. His finger suddenly reached for the top buttons of Mikhail’s shirt. The Russian flinched, then turned to the other.

There was a dark spark in the smaller man’s eyes. Just like the one which had been there months ago in a bar in Hong Kong. So that was what the Chinese had come for!

Mikhail spun aside and grabbed the other’s throat with one hand, gripping hard right away, feeling muscles and sinews straining. Fei Long choked and seized his arm, but right now he needed to do more than that to get those fingers off his neck.

There was a burst of sharp, red evilness flaming in Mikhail’s chest and all he wanted to do at this moment was hurt. He dragged the smaller man some steps forward, while he tossed his suitcase away. Then he pushed Fei Long backwards against and half onto the table, leaning in until his teeth were inches from tearing into the other’s skin.

“Why am I here?”, he hissed at him and felt his own hot breath reflected on Fei Long’s face. “To drive your car? To fuck you when your bored? To make Asami jealous? Or his brother?”

A frail noise managed to flee from Fei Long’s throat but that was all. His amethyst eyes staring up into Mikhail’s were widened and started to redden, his face was turning pale, while he still tried to rip that large hand of his throat. But suddenly he stopped, and his fingers just rested on the other’s arm.

‘Just a bit longer’, Mikhail knew… ‘just a bit. And I will never feel so hurt ever again!’

He let go with a leap backwards and shoved his hands in front of his face.

“Why the fuck am I here?”, he hissed again. He did not expect an answer, hearing how hard the other fought for his breath for about a minute. Fei Long were supposed to just leave, Mikhail would get into the car, would get back to the airport, find himself some connecting flight back to Hong Kong… and-

“I am sorry”, Fei Long spoke, his voice a straining croak.

“I never made you any promises, did I?”, he added after a while. With a laugh that was more a grunt, Mikhail looked up. The Chinese still half sat on the table. His hands were clutched around the curve of the tabletop as if he need the support to remain there.

“No, you didn’t. You never fucking did anything for me, or… whatever”, Mikhail spat. He felt like his head was burning now. He might have a fever he thought. If only his heart did not feel so cold.

“I don’t know what you want from me”, the other man brought up next, his voice trailing away at the end. He stared at the floor now. It was very pretty with tiny wood inlays.

Mikhail laughed again, loud and angrily. “How stupid are you?”, he jested in spite.

At that Fei Long looked up, but not annoyed or offended as he would usually if anybody dared to speak to him like that. He seemed confused. Then he looked away.

With another dry huff of laugh, Mikhail strolled over to his suitcase, picked it up from the floor and threw it onto the bed. Most contents had spilled out and he would have to repack again. Or… he decided to just smash everything in there.

“I don’t want you to go”, the whisper made him freeze. For an instant he was not sure if he had really heard or if his mind was trying to trick him. It seemed to him like he was an addict already and he would not have been astounded to discover that now even his brain conspired against him together with his heart.

He clipped his eyes to the tapestry above the bed, to keep himself from turning around.

‘Just leave!’, he implored in his mind. As a matter of fact, he was not sure if he was talking to Fei Long to get out of the room, or to himself to set his plan of getting home into motion. ‘Just fucking leave!’

“You could have… anyone.”

Fei Long’s voice was so quiet now if only Mikhail breathed out too loud, he would not hear it.

“Why… me?”

‘Don’t turn around. Tell him to fuck off!’, that voice breathed in anger, yet it felt foreign to him. As if someone else was talking to him. As if he wanted to convince himself of something not one fiber of his whole being wished for.

Slowly, fighting his own mind and body, he turned around. Fei Long still stood there, still had his hands clutched around the curve of the tabletop, still looked away. Only one thing had changed: There was some silvery line on his cheek. The light shimmered in it. The trail of a tear.

He pulled his shoulders up to his ears then let them sink again without turning back towards the Russian. “You could have anyone. You just need to snap you fingers and they will line up. Why me?” A sudden shudder ran down his body. “I cannot make you any promises, because there will always be Baishe. I cannot give you any hopes about happiness or anything even remotely close to that… And I…”, he broke off when the next tear ran down following the silvery line from before. “…whenever I trust I am betrayed. Whenever I believe I am tossed away. I only ever once loved in my whole life and that… still hurts.”

Fei Long closed his eyes. Squeezed them shut really. His fingers clawed at the tabletop so angrily they turned white.

And Mikhail watched, his heartbeat slow now, for whatever reason. Maybe because he understood. Ryuichi Asami had been that man. Fei Long had loved him and it still hurt. He had believed in him and had been tossed away, he had trusted him and had been betrayed.

“I am not Asami”, Mikhail said, his voice echoing in the room from all the strength he found in himself suddenly. “I do not care who you are. I do not care who you have been at some other point of your life.”

Fei Long finally looked up at that. His eyes were dark and full of tears, his lips trembled, but slowly he calmed down, while he stared into the blue of those other irises.

“I did not want to go alone”, he finally answered the question Mikhail had asked him minutes before. “I did not want to go with anybody else. Because I know you won’t betray me. You won’t let anybody hurt me. And…”, he drew a deep breath, then looked away. For a moment… and another… in which his eyes seemed to stare off somewhere into the distance. Mikhail did not move in all that time. He just watched, he just waited. In the end, Fei Long turned towards him again. “And... because I believe in you.”

“What did I see in that library?”, Mikhail had to ask, even if he crushed the mood with it. He needed to know.

Fei Long sighed and shook his head a tiny bit. “He… told me that I was beautiful and asked me whether I would allow him to touch my cheek.”

“Do you fancy him?” Oh, he knew his voice sounded harsh now, but he could not help it. He needed to have these answers and could not give Fei Long the upper hand by phasing them as if they could be dismissed.

“No”, was the reply. Short and strong. But the other did not let it stand by that. “I do not fancy Asami neither. He belongs to Akihito, and Akihito belongs to him. I need them to be together. I need to help and protect them to… make amends. They belong together. I love them both. But I do not love Asami like that anymore. I have not in a long while.”

He turned his head to look at the floor again and some black strands fell in front of his eyes. “I don’t… like him half as much as I like you”, he whispered, then flinched and moved his head even further away, as if he wanted to hide behind his hair.

“If you want to leave, you can of course go. I will not hold it against you. I understand.”

“I don’t want to go”, Mikhail croaked before he knew it.

Fei Long looked up. There was some tiny bit of rosy tint left on his cheeks from his words before. Yet now he looked up at Mikhail with sad eyes and smiled, nonetheless. It was honestly heartbreaking to see him like that, and the Russian had to endure some stinging in his chest.

“I don’t want you to go”, the other said. “Please stay, Mikhail.”

There were about ten steps between them, wide and cold, and Mikhail realized he did not endure that space any longer. He walked over, stopping right in front of the other man who still half sat on the table and therefore was even smaller than his actual height.

He looked down upon the other, still remembering the hurt though. He could not just give in like that…

“Why did you take his hand to guide his finger?”

“Because I wanted to decide how long and exactly where he touched me.”

Fei Long looked up to him, his long, black lashes still heavy from the tears.

“You don’t like to be touched, do you?”

Usually no one was allowed to even come near the dragon of Baishe. Seeing him was more honor than most people deserved.

“No. I don’t like others to touch me.”

“No one?”, Mikhail asked leaning down a tiny bit.

“Only you”, Fei Long whispered back. It might be lies. Sweet, evil lies. But there was something in the way he stared up at the other.

Mikhail had been prepared to realize that the other man was just trying to prove a point or to wrap him around his finger once more, but there was nothing in those eyes that looked anywhere near trickery or pretense. Fei Long seemed defeated and scared and submissive as Mikhail had never seen him in all those years he had known the man, first from afar, then gradually stepping closer. And he did not want to see him like that.

“One promise I need from you”, he whispered, leaning down so close his lips almost touched the other’s.

Fei Long just made a noise to inquire what that promise was.

“Promise: Only me.”

The Chinese could just raise his head a tiny bit, could grab his collar, could pull the Russian close. The moment their lips would meet, Mikhail knew that he would forget about anything. He would not demand any promises anymore. He would even forget about all of this before. He would forget the jealousy and the hurt. That was the easy way out and Fei Long knew it for sure.

Yet he did not do any of that.

“Only you”, Fei Long answered. And said it again. Louder. “Only you!”

Then Mikhail caught his lips with his own and grabbed his head within his hands so that the Chinese could not turn away. Not that he even tried.

Chapter Text

He gazed at the tip of his index finger for a while. Those little rings on there. So tiny. So unique. That very finger had touched the Chinese’s skin. It was all he had wanted. Not because there had been any need of physical closeness. Not because of any longing. Those kinds of basic human instincts hardly every had any influence on his mind. No… he had wanted to touch for a very different reason: To realize the other was real and to ensure himself that he had been there in reality. It was not just wishful thinking.

If he had not been given that permission, he might have eternally doubted his memory. No matter how vivid.

‘Fei Long Liu’, that name spelled trouble if the wrong person found out he was here. And Maxim knew he should warn the man. But then he might leave, and he did not know if he wanted that.

Also – or even more – it seemed his brother needed that man’s help.

So, if he warned that one to better depart right away, would Ryuichi leave as well?

Could he just not keep silent about it all and allow them to stay here, protected and save for a little longer?

He hoped so. For he did not want his brother to disappear once again. He had been gone for years in which Maxim had only watched him from afar, worried and cut off from the other’s life. Nor did he want the Chinese to leave.

But why? Alec would ask a question like that. But all Alec understood was sexual tension and longing and … maybe even love as it was taught by Hollywood Movies. All those alleged emotions did not ever sway Maxim.

He did not long, he did not crave sexual stimulant. He did not seek love. He did not understand it anyway.

But he comprehended beauty, maybe more than any other man in the world. And no matter if one feared the man, despised him, hated him, even wanted to see him dead, one would have to be blind to not ascertain how beautiful Fei Long Liu was.

With the memory of the touch still vivid in his mind he walked down the hallways of those parts of the giant mansion he kept to himself. No one was allowed to enter. If he needed someone of the staff, he called for them, and if he wanted to grant any visitor access, he would ask him to follow his every step and to not even throw a glance sideways.

Into one small chamber he stepped, that he had unlocked before with a key he hadn’t used in well about a year. With the lights he also switched on the equipment stationed here: A notebook and a strange keyboard with an odd shape and keys that were only marked with colored dots but not with letters. On the desk there was also a large black box with many cables and wires attached to it: it was a NAS with several hard drives in it that kept his files and backupped and rebackupped them all the time.

He sat down in front of the notebook after he had closed the door behind him. With gentle fingers he flipped the device open, started it, waited for the inquiry of his password and typed it in slowly and deliberately. He opened only one program which provided him with a list – just some numbers that would not mean anything to anybody. But he knew what hid behind each of them.

There and then he paused.

“You should not”, he spoke out to himself aloud. Whenever he had used this system the person he had spied upon had known about it. He invited them to spend some days with him, to take his beautiful horses for a ride, to swim in the blue of the Adriatic Sea, to eat in the most fabulous restaurants the country had to offer, or any city they could reach with his Yacht within a day. When he paid them, he made sure they knew exactly for what they came: for them to spend time with, for him to marvel at them, and for them to spend their nights in his guesthouse, where he would watch them like he was with them in that very bedroom.

He paid them very well and beyond any measure, but that was not the reason why all of them always agreed right away to meet with him again. Never would he allow himself to disrespect them. Never would he do anything without their consent. When he watched them with his notebook, they knew about that. And if there was one of them at whom he wanted to marvel directly, then he asked them to give him that permission. Always they did and never ever did he tell them what to do. He just sat there and beheld them and allowed them to decide on anything they felt like doing to themselves or to him.

But now… he scrolled down the list of cameras and chose one in the first of the only two occupied bedrooms in his guesthouse. The room popped up on his screen… empty.

He scrolled on and chose the camera in the other room.

Slowly he exhaled when the interior of that chamber appeared before him.

The camera had a fisheye lens so he could see the whole of the room at once, but that also meant the edges of the picture were a bit distorted. The two men however were in the middle of the perceived area.

The Chinese lay half on the table. Half because only his shoulders, his head and the top of his back still had any support from the furniture. One hand he had raised beyond his head where he clambered onto the edge of the tabletop to avoid being pulled off completely. And he obviously had to fight for that purchase.

Mikhail Arbatov had dragged him nearly off the table, with one of those long legs on his broad shoulders, the other in the hollow of his elbow. His fingers dug deep into the hips of the other man who lay there sprawled wide and holding onto one of the Russian’s wrists with his other hand. The blonde man was still fully dressed. Only his manhood protruded from his opened fly whenever he wrenched his hips backwards. Quickly and without any restraint he always shoved forward again, burying himself deep without the other, who was completely naked – his shirt and trousers lay on the floor.

Maxim closed his eyes for a moment. He should leave them alone. He had no right to watch them. But he did not find the courage to turn away. Instead, he switched on the sound… and then he heard them.

His eyes fixed on the moving picture in front, his ears on the tone relayed to him by the speakers.

They had sex, yes, indeed. But for him it was something different. Something that he would never be able to explain to anybody. He did not care what that man’s name was, where he came from, where he would go to next. That he was the head of Baishe and was here now, that might become a problem, but that had nothing to do with what he felt at this moment.

All he saw was the probably most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes upon baring himself to be used by some man in the rawest way possible. And that man did use him. He took all that was offered and made it his own.

And this disclosure, this… epiphany made Maxim’s heart race in a way it had not for very long. Aeons probably.

He closed his eyes again, listened to the moans, to the breathing of the two men. He felt the air catch in his lungs like a hot iron had sealed his throat shut. He felt the heat permeate throughout his body, spreading even into the farthest most lifeless parts.

To behold once more he opened his eyes in the end and before his mind was filled by white, pure light, he imagined for a second to be that blonde man. And to be granted what he was allowed to do.

Breathing sharply, he came to minutes later. At some point he had clapped the notebook shut and with that it had gone into hibernation. There was no video anymore, no sound.

Maxim lifted himself up. He pulled a handkerchief from one of his pockets and wiped his hand on it to get rid of the proof of his indecency, and of him being alive and breathing and bleeding and feeling after all.

Only when he had recovered, he pulled the notebook open again. Everything the cameras saw was saved to the hard drives for one week and then overwritten. But no one was supposed to see what he had just witnessed. This was a secret. A sweet, aching treasure that he would not share with anybody and wanted erased, therefore. Eve would have done so if only she had had the chance in the Garden of Eden.

When the video was showing again, the blond man lay atop of the other, whom he had pushed back unto the table. The Chinese’s arms pulled the Russian closed, and maybe they whispered to one another, yet Maxim did not want to know. This was their secret. He did not deserve to know.

So, he switched the video off by just clicking onto the next best number in the list. It was one of the hallways, empty and vast. In the menu showing his files he searched for the one that he never wanted anybody to see, when a motion caught his attention. He snapped back up to stare at the screen.

His brother was marching down the corridor, his fists swinging, a piece of paper grabbed hard in one of them. He seemed furious… No!… more than that! Lethal!

Chapter Text

He brushed his lips across Mikhail’s cheek while the other lay heavily on top of him, trying to catch his breath. It was uncomfortable like this actually, but he did not want to move. His arms pulled the other close, rejecting to ever let go.

But at some point, he had to. The other lifted himself up just a slight bit and gazed down upon him. Mikhail smiled at him from inches away, then kissed him again.

There was something warm in his heart that didn’t have anything to do with the sex or the exertion. It felt more like the cold, hard glimmer that had nested in there had for once dissolved…

Fei Long swallowed hard, when the other man already stood up and therefore did not notice it. With weak limbs he followed, pulling himself upwards to sit on the table once more.

The Russian had stored away his cock behind the fly of his jeans, then grabbed the other man’s shirt off the ground and helped Fei Long back into it, though that was pretty unnecessary. All the buttons had been torn from their threads anyway.

“You need to stop ripping my shirts apart”, he whispered to the blonde one, who just shook his head with a broad smile.

“Never. I’ll just buy you some new ones.”

“That’s very lavish, isn’t it?”

Mikhail rolled his eyes as if he didn’t even know what that word meant.

He knelt down next, grabbed Fei Long’s trousers and helped him back into them, pushing them up inch by inch onto his long legs, until he could finally pull up the fly and close the button.

Fei Long’s hands reach for those golden curls and brushed through them tenderly. Not getting back on his feet Mikhail looked up at him.

“I am sorry”, the Chinese whispered. “I am sorry if I hurt you. I don’t mean to.”

The Russian blinked slowly and drew in a deep breath.

“That’s good to know”, he answered, still staring up and obviously enjoying those fingers twirling through his hair.

“You said I was stupid, and I guess I am –“

“I did not say you are stupid. I asked you if you were?”, the one on his knees interrupted at once.

“Um… then the answer is yes, I guess”, Fei Long admitted. He lifted his shoulders a tiny bit and let them sink again. It was all a lie however in some way. No, he was not really stupid. He understood what Mikhail felt for him and why he turned to the Russian whenever he craved some warmth or some hands that were not afraid to handle him yet would not really hurt him… He was just scared. Scared of admitting to any of it. Scared of being tossed away and betrayed again.

But those blue eyes shining up at him right now… If they could ever betray him, then there was definitely no reason to spend another second in this world anymore.

It was stupid to think that way. There it was yet again: Stupid!

It was stupid to rely on anybody as much as that. He had before and he had found nothing but despair… and nearly his own death.

However, this very likely was the last hurdle, and the last chance. He had assumed before that the world held nothing for him and if Mikhail betrayed him then that believe would be finally proven true. But what if Mikhail didn’t? What if his doubts with his own existence had in the end led him straight into the arms of the one man who would never allow him to be hurt again?

Slightly he brushed across the other man’s cheeks with his fingers. Then he could not resist anymore. He got down onto his knees and kissed the Russian. He threw his arms around him and pulled him close, and before long he was lying on his back, with Mikhail on top of him once more.

“A bit too soon, maybe?”, Mikhail asked with a tiny mischievous grin on his face.

Fei Long shrugged, yet his hand wandered along the other man’s abs which he could feel distinctly through his shirt, down until he found his crotch. Beneath his jeans, he was already nearly fully erect. That much to ‘too soon’!

“I don’t think so”, Fei Long answered back, giving the thick form sheltered from his touch by the firm fabric a gentle squeeze. Mikhail breathed out a sharp moan.

“You… are… a maniac”, he whispered, then kissed the Chinese again. He did not get any farther.

With a bang the door was thrown open. Both of them looked up, when Asami already marched inside. Fei Long raised his arms because for a second he though the Japanese would just trample over him. Mikhail who was clearly in a better position to do so gathered himself up from the ground within a second, the other however never had a chance to. When Fei Long tried to sit up, Asami stepped onto his hair that lay spread across the floor.

“Ah!”, the Chinese exclaimed and grabbed the assaulting foot’s ankle. Asami did not seem perturbed by that. He flung something at Mikhail. Something brown first, that the Russian caught, then many white pieces of paper which scattered all around.

“What the fuck is this?”, the Japanese bellowed, ignoring the fingers that clawed at his leg.

Mikhail turned the brown thing in his hand then tossed it back at the other man. “What should I know?”, he snarled back.

“Your name is on there”, Asami spelled out very slow and coldly.

The Russian shrugged. “Give me a pencil and I add your name as well. And your Mom’s if you’d like that. Now move your fucking foot.”

“Asami!”, Fei Long shrieked. It was a vain attempt of course. The Japanese knew exactly what he was doing. At the constant pull on his hair really started to hurt.

“Those pictures. What is that?”, fury burned icily cold on the man’s lips when he spoke. It wasn’t much that Fei Long could discern of him from down here, but he saw those shaking fists and he saw that tremble of rage that occupied the whole body.

“I have no fucking idea. Why don’t you tell me?”, Mikhail answered. He stood there a tiny bit hunched, as if he prepared himself for defense or even to attack. He might be seeing something in Asami’s eyes that was hidden from Fei Long’s position. His fingers still clawed at the leg trapping him, yet all he got out of it was some twitching of the muscles and sinews.

“Get off me!”, he shouted up, and was still not noticed.

“That was in the mail. It says, ‘to M. Arbatov’”, Asami explained, his voice straining on the edge of screaming.

“No one knows I am here, Asami”, Mikhail tried to argue. “Except for the people in this building. Now get off him!” Each of the last words he spoke very pointedly. Instead of adhering the obvious threat in the Russian’s voice, Asami took a step forward and placed his free foot onto Fei Long’s shoulder.

That was a mistake.

With a movement as quick as lightning the Chinese threw his legs into the air, hooked one around the Japanese’s knees and wrenched them forward. Asami lost his balance right away - maybe because he was still injured, maybe he had not expected the man on the ground to attack, maybe because all his senses were occupied with his fury. He tumbled backwards and hit the ground with both elbows slamming onto the parquet.

Fei Long rolled off him and away until he knew no sudden kick or fist would be able to reach him before he saw it coming. Yet once he sat there, beholding the raging Japanese, he felt himself freeze. He had seen him looking somewhat close to this once before, but that had been through some camera. In absolute frenzy Asami had shot a man, had emptied his gun into him even though the other had been dead with the first bullet. Back then it had been because of Mikhail… and now?

His finger found one of the little, white cards on the ground and he picked it up and turned it around. It was a picture of Akihito sprawled across the lap of a man, riding his… It seemed very much like a snapshot from a video that had been paused at the very second the boy had climaxed. His eyes were closed, his reddened face turned towards the camera, his mouth open in a silent moan, cum shooting out onto his own chest.

In his fist Fei Long squashed the photograph.

Hissing out his breath like a furnace Asami was getting back onto his feet. His eyes weren’t golden anymore but seemed nearly black. His face was as pale as his lips, his fingers clawed into his palms. In all that rage however, he looked to Fei Long more than just a man infuriated by doubt, disappointment and jealousy. He seemed utterly lost. Like he was grabbling for purchase on the edge of an abyss… and an abyss it had all been, no? In the warehouse he and Akihito had fallen from one of the top floors, had nearly died inside the crumbling building, had yet fought each of them to stay alive, to get back to the other. But what had they gotten out of it?

Akihito was still down there, in the darkness and dust, searching for a way out. And right now, Asami seemed to slip down as well. Only that there was no telling that down in the pit they would ever find each other.

“Asami”, Fei Long tried, looking up to him from the ground.

“Shut up!”, the Japanese bellowed at him, then rounded on Mikhail again. “Explain this to me!”

Mikhail just shrugged in complete rejection. “How am I supposed to? I have nothing to do with this.”

Slowly Fei Long started to get up. Even though he had pushed himself away from the man he had thrown of his feet, he was still not all out of his reach and he did not want to antagonize him. Halfway up, Mikhail reached for him and helped him onto his feet.

“Who is that…”, Asami started anew, then broke off. He bit his lower lip hard and wheezed his breath out sharply through his nose. His whole body was shaking with his wrath. “…who is that Aa…ron?”

Again, Mikhail just shrugged. “I don’t know any Aaron.”

“The guy with the scar?”, Fei Long whispered out. It was a sudden intuition. He was not really sure, but… hadn’t he heard Yuri Arbatov speak that name?

“Huh?”, Mikhail looked at him, while Asami caught his breath in his throat.

“The one on the cargo ship”, was the reply by the Chinese. He pointed with his index at his forehead then dragged a slow line down across his left eye and cheek. “With a scar across his face. They talked in Russian, him and… Yuri. I think the other called him ‘Aaron’ at some point.”

Asami lowered his head but still he stared at both other men. Where his eyes had seemed dark before they now were gleaming red.

“You know him?”, he shot.

“I don’t know him”, Fei Long answered in honest surprise about that nonsensical suspicion.

“He is with Chernobog. He was the one who beat me up. I saw him on that ship and-“, another intuition… or rather a memory flashing into his mind: “Ah! He was at the warehouse as well. The one that shot at you and then ran off. Right before we split.”

Asami seemed to not even have listened. He turned to Mikhail again, shouting “Do you?”, so loud Fei Long flinched from the noise.

“I didn’t even know his fucking name! Asami, pull yourself together! I have nothing to do with this.”

“Your man was with him! Yuri! You have been involved in this far too deeply. Who is that Aaron? What the fuck does he want from me? And why the fuck does Akihito want to go back to him?”, the Japanese yelled back at the top of his lungs, his voice straining and booming around the room. He lunged for the floor next, picked up some of the pictures and tossed them at Mikhail, one by one, approaching with heavy steps.

“What should I know? I have no idea what’s going on!”, Mikhail bellowed back. He shrugged away from the small photographs as if he did not even want to be touched by them.

“Don’t be fucking stupid, Asami. No one knows I am here. Why would-“

He did not get to end the sentence, because the Japanese jumped at him. He grabbed Mikhail at the collar of his shirt and yanked him forward nearly off his feet. The Russian grabbed the other’s hand, twisted it hard and tore it from his clothes by ripping the fabric as well.

For a few moments they struggled. Then Fei Long tried to get in between, even though it seemed that one could easily be incinerated by the heat emanating around Asami.

“Stop this!”, he cried out in Japanese, when he attempted to shove the two taller men apart from each other. He had better measures indeed, but he did not want to hurt either of them.

Suddenly Asami seemed to duck away, as if he wanted to dodge a punch that never came. He threw himself forward the next second, thrusting shoulder-first against Mikhail he knocked the blonde man off his feet and made him stumble backwards for several meters before he hit the ground.

There was some Russian curses, but right away Mikhail started to gather himself up again.

“Are you really that fucking daft? Whoever sent that is certainly really happy with us fighting. It’s only to make you mad and jealous, you moron!”, he yelled at the Japanese, his own face reddened and angry now.

“It that so?”, Asami hissed, then all of a sudden smiled.

Cautiously Fei Long took a step backwards from him. He had been on his way over to Mikhail anyway. Yet he did not get far. Asami reached behind his back and produced his gun, raising it up to make everyone around see it. Then he grabbed a fistful of the Chinese’s hair at the back of his head and pulled him close, pressing his mouth hard onto the other.

Fei Long gasped in surprised and Asami shoved his tongue in right away. Memories flooded his mind, seven years old, of lips pushed onto his, of the taste of the man, of hands holding him down and his own struggle to get away. Back then he had not really fought. He had been too confused, and in a way… he had wanted it without knowing so.

But now he did not, and neither did Asami, he was certain.

He tore at the other man’s clothes, dug his fingers hard into his arms, even searching for the wound that still was covered by a bandage there. Yet all that got him was Asami exhaling sharply into his mouth and pulling him in even tighter. It hurt like hell. Not only at the back of his head where that fist ripped at his hair or where those unrelenting lips squeezed onto his, but much deeper than that. He did not want Asami to do this, because he knew he didn’t want it. He did not want Mikhail to witness it, yet in the corner of his eye, he could still see the gun erected, one finger at the trigger – the reason why he was not able to interfere.

With an ear shattering “Argh!”, the Japanese suddenly pulled away, sipping on the blood seeping out of his lower lip, and Fei Long swallowed the iron taste. He had bitten the other man very hard.

It did get him a moments freedom to take a step back, but the fist in his hair did not let go. Asami jabbed him against the table, smashing his face down so hard on the smooth, polished top that Fei Long exclaimed in pain.

“Let him go!”, he heard Mikhail plea in a scream, while he could not see anything momentarily. There was some loud ringing in his head which was being pressed fiercely onto the table.

Then suddenly the pressure from above was gone. The fingers flexed in his hair a few times but gradually became weaker, then the body that had already leaned onto him backed off. Woozily Fei Long pushed himself up and looked behind him.

Asami had slipped from his own feet and had been caught by Alec who slowly lowered him down onto the floor. The Japanese’s eyes blinked at Fei Long several times in confusion … and more than that. Worry? Apology? Fear? Then he passed out.

Maxim stood only a few steps away, the empty sedative shot still in his hand, the needle tiny yet so effective.

Chapter Text

“What the actual fuck?!”, Alec exclaimed when he bedded down Ryuichi on the floor. The man’s eyes blinked for one last time, then he fell unconscious. How cute he looked once that expression of rage vanished!

Alec had been reading and sipping coffee in an armchair in one of the living rooms. This one was just a few steps away from the door which led out beneath the arcades that connected the main building to the guesthouse. From there he had been able to hear some very far away muffled noises but had ignored them. If anybody would have asked why he had not reacted to the chaos so close by, he would have just looked up astounded.

‘What?’, he would have asked baffled. He had been so lost in his book he really had not noticed anything!

And in fact, he had not gotten up until he had seen Maxim hurry along the hallway. For a man whose back had been broken several times and had never fully healed, he had been very quick. Much faster than Alec had ever seen him before. He had known right away that Maxim had used his little cameras to spy on his guests. Very likely he had witnessed the first act of Ryuichi’s exacted fury from his tiny chamber of indecency, and now felt the need to interfere.

Alec was happy about it. He had counted on it!

“Maxim?”, he had called after the man he worked for in surprise, then had gotten up when there had not been an answer. He had followed outside and into the guesthouse where the noises of struggle and rage were brimming all around.

“What is going on?”, he had called uneasily after the other man, who never stopped. Maxim had rushed in, his steps as usually light and weak, but therefore so much better at sneaking up. Unnoticed he had pushed the syringe into his brother’s upper arm.

The rest had been Ryuichi stumbling backwards, losing his balance and being caught by Alec. His gun dropped to the floor; the safety had not been switched off.

“What is going on?”, Alec now asked again, his voice a tiny bit too loud because he was oh so worried.

The reaction from anybody else took a while. Maxim still stood there, syringe in his hand, a blank stare on his face while he looked down unto his brother. Fei Long leaned against the table, shivering. His hair was a mess, his shirt torn open at the front.

‘Oh, you filthy boy!’, Alec thought to himself about Ryuichi, imagining what he might have missed. The photographs lay scattered across the floor, the brown envelope in their midst clearly showing the name ‘M. Arbatov’. The Japanese seemed to have lashed out in rage and jealousy, pulling his gun and trying to fuck the Chinese in front of the man he had brought along for the visit in Dubrovnik.

‘Interesting!’, Alec thought while nothing of his contemplations showed on his face. He stood up, taking the gun with him and emptying the bullets. Slowly he shook his head, beholding the whole situation.

Fei Long was still catching his breath. He twitched heavily when Mikhail stepped up and placed a hand on his shoulder, yet once he realized who it was, he grabbed that hand with his own fingers and squeezed it.

‘How cute!’

“Would you please put him onto the bed?”, Maxim asked, speaking slowly and obviously distraught. He was not able to carry anything heavier than a book. Finally, he put the syringe away.

Fei Long wanted to move, but the hand on his shoulder kept him from it. Instead, Mikhail kneeled down to grab Ryuichi’s shins, while Alec grabbed him beneath the armpits. Carefully they carried him over on the bed.

The Chinese picked up the pictures in the meantime, flicking them around to show only their white back before he ever had the chance to have a glance at them. He shoved them back into the brown envelope and tossed that onto the next table as if he wanted to get his hands clean off it.

“What is that?”, Maxim asked, speaking slowly and pensive. “What happened here?”

It was Fei Long who tried to explain: “Asami received that envelope. He did not tell us how. It says, ‘To M. Arbatov’ on the front.”

Maxim looked over to Mikhail for only a short moment in which the Russian just glowered back.

“It contains photographs of Akihito having sex with someone else.”

The older of the Asami brothers folded his hands in front of his stomach. Alec knew instinctively that he was thinking hard, and that those fingers now were excessively cold.

“Why would anybody send you those pictures, Mr. Arbatov?”, he asked without raising his voice or putting any suggestion or accusation into it. He sounded perfectly factually.

Mikhail shrugged heavily and Alec imagined that he had done so several times before, faced by the rage of Alpha-male Asami. “I don’t know”, he answered with a deep sigh and obvious resignation seeping in.

“Nobody knows he is here, Maxim”, Fei Long added. He looked up at the taller man, and Maxim looked back for a second… for another… and even longer.

Alec did not like what he saw one bit.

Eventually Maxim had to tear his gaze away from the other man’s face. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers, then sighed deeply, shiveringly, before he turned to watch his brother, who just lay there, breathing slowly, sleeping deeply.

“I would ask of all of you to retire to your rooms now for the rest of the afternoon. I will invite you for dinner in the evening. But until then…”

“I am sorry”, Fei Long injected. “What about Akihito?”

“I have already sent a guard to his room. The man will stay in the hallway and will keep the door slightly opened to know if anything happens inside. But he will not bother the young man. And I will not allow anybody near him until Ryuichi has explained.” With a very earnest expression he turned to look at the Chinese once more. “I hope you understand?”

Fei Long nodded. “I do. Thank you.”

“Ryuichi will be out for some hours. I’d prefer to just let him rest here?”, Maxim went on to express his decisions. He turned towards Mikhail at the end of his question who shrugged another time. “It is your home.”

That assessment Maxim confirmed with a slow nod. “I will have another guestroom made ready for you.”

“Mr. Arbatov can stay in my room”, Fei Long injected again.

The other blinked at him, and so did Mikhail.

“I… will then have a room prepared for you?”, Maxim suggested, yet Fei Long shook his head.

“Mr. Arbatov can stay in my room with me.” He spoke every of those words so distinctly that even someone as daft and ignorant as Maxim had to get the gist of them when thinking them over… Yet it felt to Alec that he got the meaning a little bit too quickly.

After all, it seemed the master of the house had indeed been spying on his guests, yet not on his brother at that point. It was hard for Alec to keep a straight face now.

“So, I guess when we start to discuss what happened here once Ryuichi is awake, it will be the word of both of you against his?”, he asked a bit meekly. He pushed his hands down the pockets of his pants to express his uneasiness about the whole situation. Obviously, he was just worried about his old friend. That was natural, wasn’t it?

“I am sorry?”, the Chinese turned towards him. He had dragged the loose sides of his shirt close in front of his chest and kept it like that with one hand.

“I mean…”, Alec twisted his mouth a bit to play uncertainty and discomfort. “I mean you are obviously not neutral but will uh… make excuses for Mikhail. You might be even in on this all.”

Something changed in the eyes of the other man. He seemed so fragile with his torn shirt and tangled hair and that tiny bruise gaining color on his cheekbone. He was also the smallest in the room, the youngest, the leanest. But those eyes in which Maxim had nearly drowned in moment before now turned icily cold.

“Isn’t it time for you to have another sunbath?”, Fei Long spoke brusquely.

“Please!”, Maxim interrupted. He held out a hand towards the door, veering towards Alec, who sighed in resignation, then walked outside.

Yet there he waited. A moment later Mikhail and Fei Long stepped outside as well and closed the door behind them, already turning to walk over to the other bedroom. They might not have realized he was still there, leaning against the wall.

“Hey!”, he spoke to them without raising his voice. They had done him a favor in closing the door and he did not want to lose it by being too noisily.

“My cock is well-tanned as well. Just in case you want something else stuck up your ass tonight.”

With a grin he pushed himself off from the wall, when Mikhail took one leap towards him. Fei Long caught the other man’s arm and held him back. And Alec marched off and away from them.

About this Maxim would probably not hear. There were no cameras in the hallway that might have caught the exchange and it would be the other two men’s word against his own.  And hadn’t he always been a polite and good-natured friend?

But if he walked over to play a bit with Akihito that would very likely be found out. The man Maxim had placed as a guard there might tell, as much as the boy himself.

Therefore, he stopped half along the way he had already embarked on without thinking.

No, this he could not do. For now, it seemed he needed to play by Maxim’s rules to not gain his mistrust or anger. He needed to wait once again, no matter how much he hated that.

He had been waiting for months while Ryuichi lay in his bed, while Aaron did his work. He had been waiting before that even longer, while Chernobog pinched the Japanese to jump out of every hideout he had dug himself into. Finally, there was some action – and he loved the drama! – but he could not rush it. It had to all work out by its own pace and he could just edge it on a tiny bit here and there.

So: Waiting again! He accepted the thought pretty quickly and set off to walk to his room as Maxim had asked of him.

The ringing of his phone made him stop. He took it out of his pocket expecting some of those beautiful but stupid girls to call whom he sometimes fucked. Or maybe even Aaron. But it was none of them.

‘R.S.A.’, stood written as the contact’s name. He pressed the green button to accept the call which was not easy as his fingers were suddenly stiff.

“Yes?”, he spoke, the word barely leaving his lips.

“I think you might be overstepping your boundaries a bit”, the deep voice spoke on the other end and Alec felt his throat become dry.

Chapter Text

He sat on the edge of the bed for a long while, just like he had before in those days when Ryuichi had still been sedated so his injuries would heal better and his attempts at fleeing would not hurt him furthermore. It had been a different room of course, but what did it matter?

Like back then he stared out of the window, waiting for night to slowly fall in the gardens, which never turned fully dark because of many lamps illuminating it.

Often, he could not sleep well – a side-effect of some of the drugs he used to take to forget about his aching back – and then he would wander around outside, listen to the noises of the world which never fully rested.

From some places in his garden, he could spot the Adriatic Sea, and everywhere he could smell it. Swimming was one of the very few sports he could still do, but when there was any danger of waves or the water too cold, he had to forgo that little joy. The Ocean or the Sea anywhere had therefore been mostly off limits for him.

Now he listened mostly to the breathing of his younger brother. Ryuichi had lost some weight, in the last days especially. Not knowing what had happened had been cruel on him, yet, finding out and being then confronted with his own helplessness, that was something new.

If Maxim had allowed any hard feelings to thrive in his chest, then maybe he would declare this to be a strike of atonement after all: to see his brother forlorn and deprived of his power and wisdom.

‘Justice and divine vengeance pursuing crime’, was the name of Pierre Paul Prud’hon’s painting which’s spot in the Louvre Fei Long had mourned. The very same powers might have swept down upon his brother to judge him for his deeds and life – that was a thought someone hating him might be capable of. It swooped through Maxim’s mind for a moment, then it had passed, never to return.

He had not once in his life been envious of Ryuichi. He had never been angry with him or sought revenge.  What had dispossessed him of becoming the next master of their organization had not been the other’s fault, even if he had been the trigger.

Still today there were beautiful horses in his stables, and he paid excellent trainer to work with him. But not because he would ever sit on one of them again. He just still loved to marvel at them, and never would he have allowed for his own proud and lovely mare to be shot, if he had been consulted back then.

Their father however did not ask or confer with them. He had never cared. Both of them had had to function, and after the accident Maxim had not been able to anymore.

It had been a day as lovely as this one had been, but he knew by experience that dreadful things could happen on them as well.

It has been all sunshine, chirping birds and sparkly water in the fountains when his mother had cut her wrists in a bathroom he had never ever entered again after that. Back then he had been seven.

And it had been gleaming blue sky and white and pink blossoms everywhere when his brother had attempted to ride a black stallion which was the only horse that had made it out of a fire only weeks ago.

Their father had given the trainers one months to make the stud recover. If they weren’t successful, he would just shoot it, no matter that it had cost him a fortune once.

Ryuichi had beseeched him when time was running out, yet their father had not listened. He had never. So, the boy had tried to prove that the stallion had become pliable again.

There had been no saddle, but the bridles were still on the black, beautiful head of the creature because it had fought against anybody trying to take them off. Ryuichi had climbed onto the low walls of the stables and had jumped onto the horse’s back.

When the shouts and screams had reached Maxim, he had been sitting on his own mare, a sorrel Friesian sport horse, yet before he had been able to understand what was going on, he had seen: his small brother on top of the giant, black stallion’s back, holding on for dear life, more on the mane than on the reins, and the steed was running at top speed.

Maxim had kicked the sides of the Friesian and had rushed after them, off from the grounds, through the hillside beyond the city, kicking and spurring his horse onwards relentlessly, faster and faster until the animal was fuming below him, and he was out of breath himself. Finally, they had caught up. He had leaned over, had grabbed the bridles which had ripped open his palm and fingers to the bone and had nearly torn off his arm. But he had not let go. Pulling hard on his reigns he had slowed down his own horse and had – with a strength that no one had ever been able to explain how he had found it – stopped the furious stallion as well. Ryuichi had slipped down by instinct and had landed on the dusty soil scared into rigidity with wide eyes. Then Maxim had let go of the black steed, but it had gotten its revenge: It had shied and reared up, and the Friesian had reacted accordingly, with the young rider still on top. Maxim had clung to the rains, to no avail. On the dry uneven hillside, the sorrel mare had lost its footing, had tumbled over backwards and had crashed down onto him.

The doctors had said after that again and again how lucky he was to be still alive, when he lay in bed, unable to move his legs, unable to feel anything below his navel. But back then he had not believed them to be right. And he had mourned his beloved mare.

It had taken him courage and pain and years of training to walk again as he had once before. On crutches he had been quickly because indeed he had had the luck of his spine not snapping completely. But the hurt and agony had never fully gone again.

And the child who had been his brother before even though they had never been allowed to play and had not had the same mother, had become more estranged from him by the day. First, he had not been allowed to see Maxim, allegedly because he needed his rest. Then he had been sent off to private schools and his father’s battlefields, while Maxim had remained behind.

‘Helpless, and deprived of his power and wisdom’, he knew very well how that felt, but never had he blamed his brother and never had he wished anything like that on him.

In the semi darkness of the guestroom, Maxim took a deep breath.

This was their father’s doing, he knew.

For years they had been watching Ryuichi from afar, while the old man had been occupied with other businesses. Then the second half of his 7^th decade on the planet had started and suddenly he had reflected that he needed his hair to return home.

Many months ago, there had been an attack on his brother’s apartment in Tokyo. After that Maxim had lost his trace. He had called their father to inform him – who had just told him that everything was alright, then he had hung up.

About five months ago there all of a sudden had been a trace, relayed to him from his father. Ryuichi was in Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong and Maxim was to pick him up, take him home and keep him there.

Of what had happened in the months before he had not been given an explanation, except for the vague claim that his brother had gotten into problems with some Russian criminal organization. Akihito, the young man with whom he had lived in his apartment before, had never been mentioned.

Maxim had simply not known how important he was. He had left him behind unwittingly, and this was the result.

Slowly, his brother was being undone by Akihito being taken away from him even though his was physically in reach.

As if someone had opened a window and some chill had dived inside, Maxim suddenly sat up straight. A sharp ache shot up through his spine, but he ignored it.

“Are you blind?”, he asked himself into the stillness of the room.

About a week ago he had told his brother that the hospital had been attacked right after Ryuichi had been retrieved. He had been there about a month without any incident Maxim had found out about after.

‘Immediately after I retrieved you’, he had said.

He did not believe in coincidence. Alec had been sent by him to get his brother. Alec who had been working for their father long before he had managed his way into Maxim’s good graces. Alec, who had been living at this place for about a year but had not hit upon Ryuichi once in those months he had been here until the very time Akihito had been found and taken in by the Warsaw Police. Alec, who had sprung right away to accompany his brother and who had then convinced him to return here. Alec, who pretended to be French, but was Russian.

Alec… who knew that Mikhail Arbatov was a guest in this house.

Chapter Text

Once the door was closed behind them, Mikhail seemed about to punch it. He had already squeezed his hand to a fist, had drawn his arm back, then Fei Long reach up to let his fingers caress his cheek.

Flinching the taller man turned to look at him.

“Are you alight?”, Fei Long asked. It made Mikhail laugh, but there was no joy in that tune. He swallowed hard next and then misery ran over his face like someone had put a mask onto it.

“Am I?... Are you alright?”

Fei Long blinked up to him, his fingers still stroking the blonde man’s cheek. Minutes ago, his head had hurt intensively, his heartbeat had been about to tear open his chest. He could still feel where Asami had grabbed his hair and where with his cheek he had been smashed onto the table. There would be a bruise soon surely. But none of that hurt anymore and not even his pulse was accelerated now.

“I am fine”, he spoke softly.

“He…”, Mikhail began, broke off, tried a few more time, then just hid his face behind his hands, pushing the Chinese’s finger away doing so. It happened sometimes that he looked really young. Maybe because of his golden curls or his glowing, blue eyes, or because of those blond, long lashes. Fei Long could not tell.

Right now, Mikhail looked younger than he had ever seen him before.

“Let us leave, please”, he whispered, when he finally looked up again, but once his gaze met Fei Long’s the expression of misery only grew.

“You can’t want to stay… after… after this.”

“Mikhail”, Fei Long tried, but the man spun around and marched away. He stomped through the bedroom, up and down, left and right, either swinging his fists and shivering with anger, or clapping his hands in front of his face and shaking his head.

There were some Russian curses uttered beneath his breath, some almost inaudible pleas that Fei Long really did not fully catch. He walked over to the other man at one point, grabbed his arm and stopped his marching by standing his ground and not allowing to be dragged on for only one step.

“You know Asami long and well enough to understand that that was not him”, Fei Long explained and he did so in Russian even if he was not sure if all the words, he had chosen were the best expressions to explain. Mikhail stood there, halted in motion, looking down on him, trembling still. He licked his own lips, then shook his head yet again.

“Mikhail. You know him well enough. I cannot leave him like this. Not with Akihito still being trapped in that… in his own mind.”

“You can’t be serious!”, the Russian growled at him. He did not seem angry at all now, only devastated. Fei Long stepped closer, not letting go of the other man’s arm.

“You said yourself that someone will be very happy about us fighting. He wanted that reaction from Asami and he got it. It was not me; it was not you. I do not believe that Maxim would have done this… so, if it is not one of the staff…”

“Alec”, Mikhail said coolly. There was the anger again, a deep, dark, shimmer in his eyes. It chased a chill down Fei Long’s spine. He moved closer in and pulled the blonde man’s arm around his waist.

“Alec… very likely. But why, what for? If he knows anything about this, he might also know what happened to Akihito. We need to find out, if Asami can’t.”

Mikhail tugged him closer, until Fei Long felt the fabric of his torn t-shirt against his own naked skin between the hems of his shirt.

“I can’t leave them. Not now, not like this”, the Chinese whispered.

“One promise”, Mikhail murmured back, leaning in until his mouth brushed across the back of the smaller man’s nose.

“That would be a second promise then”, Fei Long answered, looking up until his lips nearly connected with the other’s.

“I know… but promise me: if he does not apologize to you and to me, then I may kick his sorry ass until he can’t walk for a week.”

A tiny smile tug on the edge of Fei Long’s mouth. There was nothing much to be cheerful about right now but seeing the mask of misery lift from Mikhail’s face and that wondrous sparkle return to his eyes was enough to make his heart sing at the moment.

“I promise, and I will help”, he answered.

He had fallen asleep he only realized when there was a knock on the door. And he was not the only one, for Mikhail shrugged as well. At some point they had laid down on the bed, staring at the ceiling, until Fei Long had rolled over and had done something he had never before: He had rested his head on the Russian’s shoulder, had listened to his heartbeat, had allowed him to stroke his hair with his fingers, had closed his eyes…

“Yes?”, he answered to whomever was out there, when they had both sat up.

It was Maxim looking tired, lifeless and absentmindedly.

“He is awake. He asked for you. I will have dinner prepared for in one hour. Please come to see me in the dining hall then. We need to talk.”

With that he nodded slowly and was gone.

Fei Long let his legs slide from the bed to sit on the edge. He had put on a new shirt and had brushed his hair before they had laid down here. Now there were wrinkles in his clothes and his hair had become unkempt again because of the fingers which had played with it. He stroked through it with his own to untangle it a bit.

Then he turned around to Mikhail who was some kind of light source in the dusky room. They had not switched on any lamp and the only brightness now falling inside came from the illuminations in the gardens above which darkness was spreading quickly now. The golden curls and blue eyes of the Russian were however still shimmering with a light of their own.

“I should come with you”, Mikhail attempted, though he did not sound as if he expected to find any consent.

“No”, Fei Long answered firmly but without cruelty. “But if you would wait in front of the door, I would feel a bit better.”

To that Mikhail nodded.

He entered the other bedroom only moments later and found it in likewise darkness as the former. No lamp had been lit and the only light that managed to get into the room climbed in from the gardens. Yet his eyes were accustomed to the dusk well enough already, that he realized right away that Asami was nowhere to be seen.

The room looked as perfectly as if it had not even been used. Only the sheets proved that someone had been in here before. And for some strange reason, Fei Long knew that someone still was.

With quiet steps he walked past the bed to the only part of the room he could not see from the door, and there he found him: Asami sat in the corner between nightstand and wall. He had pushed his knees up, had bedded his forearms onto them – hands hanging freely… weakly – and his head had sunk forward. Some light from the window above grazed him and made him look thin and feeble and grey.

“Asami”, Fei Long spoke in a hush, then the other man looked up. As if he had little control about his neck, he let his head bang backwards against the wall and leaned it onto that, as if he needed the support to be able to look up at the other. His eyes were… there was nothing golden left in them. They were hollow caves of the color of frost with dark orbs in their midst. They were reddened and his lids seemed so heavy, he had to struggle to keep them open.

But he fought to, looking up at the other man, and his throat tensed and moved until a sigh for air managed to get out and he let his head fall down again.

“I am sorry”, he croaked.

The sight of the man sitting there was one that was calling for pity, but all that Fei Long suddenly felt was anger. He leapt forward, crushed down onto his own knees in front of the other and grabbed his chin with the cruel fingers of the trainer fighter he was. There was no resistance when he shoved Asami’s head upwards to look at him, straight in the eye.

“Stop that, you stupid bastard!”, he shouted at the other, aware that it made Mikhail throw open the door and rush to where he instinctively knew was the only place they could hide. There he stopped, realizing that nothing bad was happening, and not interfering.

Hurt was written clear on Asami’s face from the iron grip on his chin – hurt that was a physical one for once, not one of his heart.

“Look at me!”, Fei Long hissed and felt his voice burn on the skin of the other because he was so close. Even though the Japanese’s eyes gazed into his direction, he didn’t think that they were really beholding him. They seemed to look somewhat through him, and he would not have it.

With a jerk on the other’s head, his grip became even fiercer. “Look at me!”, he roared.

Asami rolled his eyes, closed them for a moment and when he opened them again, he finally truly looked at the Chinese man in front of him.

“If you give up now, it is not you who loses. It is Akihito!”, Fei Long yelled at him, his usually mild and polite Japanese for once hard and rude. Mikhail might not understand the words, but he surely got the meaning. “If you dare to allow yourself to go to seed, I will take him with me. I don’t care what he calls himself. I will have my fun with him, nonetheless. You hear me?”

There he let go of the other man’s chin, grabbed the collar of his shirt instead and after yanking him forward he gave him a hard push. The back of Asami’s head hit the wall so violently, that Fei Long heard how Mikhail gritted his teeth behind him.

“Didn’t you tell me once how anybody who made a fool of you would pay dearly for it? Didn’t you mock me for having no ambition, or are you asking for my pity now, looking like that?”

He knocked Asami’s head against the wall a third time, a fourth time. There was so much anger in him right now, he really just wanted to start slapping him and never stop.

Not once did the Japanese fight back. He only closed his eyes, he cut this breath when the pain seared through his body, and he looked back at Fei Long when he started to curse at him again, taking in every single word.

“He’s gone”, he whispered at some point and then Fei Long did finally smack him with his flat hand onto his cheek. Asami’s head spun sideways and his body almost sank that way, too, but he caught himself.

“Those pictures…”, he mumbled as if they were the poison that had finally drained all strength and will out of him and meant his death.

“- are lies!”, Fei Long exclaimed. “That is not Akihito! He would never do that to you. He loves you. And here you sit and allow others to tear you two from each other. How dare you give up just because you’re hurt? Akihito would never. Kirishima told me that you left Akihito behind at the warehouse. That he was to wait. But he did not. He walked in there, not afraid of the consequences. He wanted to be with you, to protect you, no matter what that meant. No matter how dangerous!”

Asami’s face was torn to a grimace of despair and sorrow right now. But slowly, while he bit on his lip where Fei Long had hurt him hours before to free himself from that fake kiss, and sucked of the new drops of blood, slowly his expression changed.

He grabbed his own knees and bore his fingers into them, he squeezed his eyes shut and bared his teeth, halting his breath until his skin turned pale and his forehead red. Then he wheezed the air out, sounding very much like he was about to burst.

Fei Long seized him by the collar again and yanked him up so that he would look into his eyes once more, and Asami did, blinking angrily a few times, then his pupils fixed on the other.

“Don’t tell me how hard months of not knowing are; months of inability to do anything. Don’t dare to tell me, because I know. Don’t talk to me about losing whom you love, because I know. But Akihito is still here, and he needs you to help him out of there. And then everyone who has played you and harmed him will pay dearly, that I swear to you as the ‘Dragon of Baishe’.”

Another hard exhale, Asami’s breath fiery and brutal. Then the gold slowly turned back, even if there was some wetness in those eyes that Fei Long had never believed possible. A single tear ran down Asami’s cheek, hidden from Mikhail’s view because the Chinese was in the way. And Fei Long was glad that no one else saw it. For a short moment it glistened in the light from the gardens, then it was gone.

“Don’t deserve you”, the Japanese croaked nearly inaudibly. His voice seemed to come from faraway, the words hardly made his lips twitch.

“And I don’t deserve him”, Fei Long answered back. He moved his head so little that only the man right in front would be able to discern it at all. With it he pointed towards Mikhail who still stood there in silence behind them.

“That means he’s the best of us three, and I don’t think you’ll want to leave that standing?”

Asami closed his eyes again, then sighed, then nodded and there was now in fact a tiny smile showing on his lips. Still, he looked haggard and frail, but at least the gold of his eyes was back. And as long as it was, he would be fighting.

“Now I need you to be the man, who is deserving of Akihito”, Fei Long ended. He stood up, reached down a hand and Asami grabbed it to allow himself to be pulled up and onto his legs.

Chapter Text

He had been born in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor to parents of Japanese ancestry but American citizenship. They had been ‘Sansei’ already – the children of parents that had themselves been born and raised in the United States, and same as so many others like them, who had been living along the Pacific Coast they had been incarcerated in one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s concentration camps.

There Richard had seen the light of day for the first time and it had very likely been a grim one in between high walls and wood barracks and miles of barb wire. Yet where others had gone to seed his family had managed to prosper even further.

His father had sometimes laughed about the irony how so many innocent men and women had met the same fate as him, who had indeed been a criminal for so long.

Those camps had been erected because of the sudden fear of the Americans of Japanese spies, yet Richard’s father might have betrayed the USA in one moment and then Japan in the next. He had never had any loyalties except to his own family.

After the end of World War II, they had resettled to Mexico first, to Peru, then Brazil. They had dealt in drugs and trafficking of people mainly, and whenever they moved the houses became bigger, the security stricter, their affluence increased.

Then suddenly there had been a caesura. The old man, Richard’s father, had died, and within one week all his sons had been murdered. All seemed to be lost and all trace of the family vanished.

Yet Richard Seiko Asami was still alive. He had disposed of his younger brothers in one quick stroke and had taken all the money, all the wisdom and connections with him to the old word. To Europe and Africa.

He had prospered from dictators and make-believe-monarchies, from the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Chinese Economic reforms. He had smuggled Plutonium into Russia and Iran; tanks and even planes from American and British Airbases into the hands of paramilitaries; chemical weapons for Muammar al-Gaddafi, Assad and into the Gaza Strip, and had delivered heads of spies and hostages to whomever had paid best.

In all of that, he had remained a shadow. He had men who worked for him, who had men that worked for them, who had… and on and on it went.

Now he was one of the most influential men in the world, only that no one knew him.

If there was a winner’s podium of the most powerful and richest criminals in the world, Richard would be on the highest step, yet no one would know who he was. This son Ryuichi would be on second, maybe, because he was well connected, yet… he was not that rich, not that powerful in the end. So maybe he would indeed be tossed down to third. And right now, he was on the verge of losing even that.

Mikhail Arbatov, as long as he remained at the head of his fickle and hard to control Bratva, was on second definitely, almost ascending up to the first. Where Fei Long Liu stood, as long as he managed to wear that mask other’s perceived as the ‘Dragon of Baishe’.

Richard however did not even care about such trophies and podiums. He only ever cared for what he respected and allowed to be a part of his narrow world. And right now, in his world, he wanted Alec to step into a small motorboat.

Night had spread out in the old harbor of Dubrovnik yet everywhere around were tourists, for there were many Cafés and Bars and Restaurants nearby. Also, the city was beautifully illuminated, and it was the high season for people tumbling in from all over the world. No one noticed the one man standing alone at the end of the small pier. Everything in Dubrovnik was rather small…

He watched the boat approach and already knew that this was the one for him because the man steering it wore black clothes all over and did not look anything like someone who took tourists out for a tour.

The man moored the boat only lukewarmly. Then he offered a hand in a black glove to Alec and helped him inside. A moment later the rope was detached from the mooring and the motor stared again. They sped off away from the light and noise of the late evening life… into the darkness above the Adriatic Sea.

For a moment Alec thought about grabbing his phone and sending a text message to his brother. But what was there to write?

He remained unmoved and just gazed off into the distance.

Many lights bopped above sea-level because there were always innumerable ships around Croatia. One of them gradually grew and he knew that they were approaching it.

It was a silver Yacht – nearly unique between all those usually white ones; almost 40m long with fold out balconies, built by Sanlorenzo and designed by Francesco Paszkowski.

The motorboat was tiny in comparison. It stopped at the rear of the Yacht where the water shone because of lamps underneath the surface.

Without any hesitation Alec climbed out behind his driver, ascended the steep steps and followed him to whatever fate.

They walked past the windows of a saloon in which three naked women lay, entwined with each other seemingly sleeping after an exhausting day. Alec tried to keep his eyes away from them, because he did not want his mind to lose any focus, yet he was sure that at least one of them could hardly be 18.

Another flight of stairs they climbed up and onto to bridge, which was the official name of this place but did not fit it very well. There was one big, creme colored leather seat in front of a very sleek control panel that barely consisted of anything but a lever, a joystick and some buttons. Ahead there were five monitors showing information about the ship and relaying the pictures of some cameras. One of the screens wasn’t even in use and the screensaver had started to operate.

Alec was led over away from that area to the one behind where there was a large grey couch and a black glass table in the middle.

Richard sat there, wearing a suit more expensive than many people’s cars. He wasn’t drinking. He wasn’t smoking. He just beheld the man who had been led into his den with cold, golden eyes. That way medusa must have looked at her prey. Alec found himself swallowing hard and nearly gargling his tongue as well.

He sat down quickly, because his legs would not have supported him any longer.

Chapter Text

After he had heard Asami rush from the room, he had been alone for the rest of the day, save for the man who had stayed just outside the door. A few times Arata had had to call for him by resorting to the few words of English he felt sure about: He needed to go to the toilet. Though his guard had had a gruff face and had not spoken to him, he had been careful when he had put the cuffs back around his ankle and had never hurried him.

Once he was brought some tea which he drank when he finally gave in to his craving for the biscuits that Alec-man had left earlier on that silver platter. With that it had started. Arata did not know what exactly had happened, but he had noticed the Japanese’s rage even though he had still hidden behind the bed from his view. His heart had started to thumb up through his throat. He had already seen himself again in some small, grey, hard cell with his body aching from the kicks and blasts of fists…

But that had not happened. Asami had just left and no one had come to torture or scream at him.

Dinner was brought at nightfall and the guard had sat on a chair across the room to make sure he would not do anything stupid with the cutlery. Then he had been allowed to step out another time and had been given a bucket in case he needed to relieve himself in the night.

Firstly, he had felt disgusted by the idea, yet then he had slowly realized what it meant: This might be a cell and he a prisoner, yet no one hurt him here – apart from himself when he had tried to climb over the gate or to scratch his wrists open with a dull knife.

There were still some band aids on his arm, but all in all, he had been pretty lucky.

And all in all, while dusk had settled outside and he had been able to switch on one of the lights on the nightstand, he wondered if he still was: Lucky?

It only made him confused though. He sat for a long while, listening to the noise of the crickets outside that only stopped after midnight, kneading his hands into the hem of the thick blanket.

He had been in one prison and it had been dark and hurting and cold. He was in another now that was warm and soft and pretty. From both, he had not been able to run. But why? And why had he not been allowed to leave the apartment in Warsaw, neither? Had that been a cell as well?

When he fell asleep, he dreamt about himself hanging off the edge of a building. If he’d fall, he’d be dead. It was too deep! Yet he climbed down away from Asami. Fleeing from him, who stared at him from above.

Then he started running. Running for hours, maybe for days. Just straight ahead. Until there was an ocean across his path. In the black waves he knew he would not stand a chance. Still, if he wanted to go onwards and not turn back, this was the only way. He prepared to dive in, then a hand caught his, small and strong.

He slept for a while without visions coming to his minds. When they did again, he was running again, now through a burning forest, the smoke so thick it was suffocating him, the flames so hot they burned his skin. But there was a silk thread in his hand, very thin, very fine, and along it he followed, with the blaze around him closing in but never reaching, never touching, for as long as he just kept onto the string so delicate and yet so strong. Even with all his strength he would not be able to rip it in two. Not that he wanted to.

In the end the forest cleared, and he left the fire behind.

But he kept running and running and running on concrete pavement, then on sand, then on shards of glass, into a building with empty windows in which a thunderstorm raged, yet he was not afraid. He ran up the stairs and up and up towards the man he had run from before.

He woke with a heavily beating heart when dawn was already painting the room golden.

Breakfast he still had alone, had once been allowed to use the bathroom, to freshen up, relieve himself and take a shower. Now he sat on the bed again, his ankle bound to the chain, a thick bathrobe around him. The windows had been opened to allow the warm, fragrant morning air inside.

When it knocked on the door, he tensed. Even if this was a cell, for the last day it had been his, with no one to disturb him, no one to even have the chance to hurt him. With no darkness and no cold.

He did not give an answer, yet the door was slowly pushed open, nonetheless. The guard outside was nowhere to be seen now. Instead Asami stepped inside, closed the door behind him and settled himself quietly against one of the low cabinets.

“How are you?”, he asked, when Arata had finally managed to throw a glance into his direction.

The other man looked tired, exhausted really, but not as badly as he had in the last days. If his appearance before had resulted from a sickness then it seemed he was now recovering. His hair had been kempt and laid, he had put on new clothes, even a dress shirt after he had been wearing creased and crumpled Polo-shirts for days.

Arata shrugged lightly and twisted his mouth into a pout. He was not doing badly. Actually, right now for the first time in a long while he thought that maybe the worst had passed even if he still was a prisoner. He only had to convince the Japanese to let him go. But he could take his time with that, because here he was safe for now.

He did not want to admit any of that towards that man though.

Asami sighed then rubbed one hand across his lips.

“I am sorry I was so angry the last days. I am sorry if I frightened you”, he spoke after a while and seemed to fight with the words to even phrase them. It made Arata wonder if that was because he knew them to be a lie? Or because he usually did not say these kinds of things?

He had a feeling and tossed it away, pouting even more, hunching his back and glowering at the nearest window.

“I wanted…”, Asami stopped when he had just paused for a while anyway. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. It seemed like he was trying to recall something himself, when he frowned for a moment, then nodded.

It was a strange observation, but then Arata had only turned the edge of his eye towards them an.

“I wanted to ask you: what is the last thing you remember before… you were taken from the hospital?”

The man’s voice sounded just as vague as his words.

“I don’t remember any hospital”, Arata shot back, staring out the window again.

“You were at a hospital in Hong Kong. So was I. My brother had me taken away from there. But he did not know about you. Someone else came for you after that.”

“I don’t remember!”, the boy barked. He tugged his knees to his chest and embraced them with his arms.

“Do you remember the warehouse in Macao?”

He should close the window, he thought, there was a chill coming in.

“I asked you to stay in the van. But you didn’t.”

With a hiss, Arata let his head sink forward and hid it between his arms. He tried to press his biceps against his ears so he would not hear. But this did not work well, and his chest seemed to listen for itself. There was a hollow beating in it, that craved for something to be filled inside.

“You marched in there, armed with a gun. You met Kirishima… ‘glasses secretary’.”

Asami snickered for an instant. But Arata only winced. The chill was spreading out along his spine now, the bathrobe suddenly reminded him of the torn pajama that had clung to his skin from sweat and dirt.

“No…”, he whispered.

“He told you that I had gone ahead. He told you to get back into the van. But you did not.”

The softness of the mattress slowly vanished. The light seeped from the room as if the sun was now sucking it out of there instead of bestowing it. The walls… He did not see them, because not only was he hiding his head; he was also squeezing his eyes shut now. Still, he knew: The walls were closing in.

“You went further upstairs. I had run into trap there. I thought of you at that moment, because I feared I would not make it out of there. But there you were, shouting at the men who had cornered me. You distracted them and so I could get rid of them.”

“No…”, he barely could hear his own voice now. There was a banging somewhere outside. Probably a crowbar that hit the steel door. Soon it would hit him.

“You came to save me, and you did. I had left you behind to protect you but, in the end, you were the one protecting me.”

Asami fell silent for a few moments, but his voice was far away now anyway. Somewhere at the end of a dark grey concrete corridor. The floor was hard and cold, the room narrow and dark, and he was hurting and shivering and scared. There were flashes of raging, blue light, there was noise so loud it burst his skull. He could see himself lying in his cell where he clapped his hands onto his ears.

“I said something to you then. And even if you do not remember, it is still true. I would tell you again, but these words are not for Arata. They are for Akihito.”

The crowbar was lifted above his head in the cell, ready to strike. Icy water hit him again and again.

A tear dripped onto his naked legs beneath the bathrobe and that made him flinch and look up.

Asami still stood there, leaning towards the cabinet, staring at the ground with eyes that looked like someone had melted the gold of them. He licked his lips, then he said: “I want him back. Akihito. I want him back.”

“I don’t…”, the boy answered, allowing the tears just to flow down his cheeks. “I don’t remember.” But now the cell was gone again. The bathrobe was warm, the room filled with morning light, the air smelled of flowers and the near Sea. Even though there were band aids on his arms nothing hurt. Not even the handcuff on his ankle.

And he did remember… something at least. The grey warehouse with the flashes of light inside like there was a thunderstorm raging in the rooms and corridors… a gun fight? But that had been a dream, no?

“A tummy ache”, he whispered suddenly, before he even realized it. ‘That guy has a tummy ache’, the sentence meandered through his mind and he was sure he had said it at some point. But when? And why? And why did he remember it now? It seemed meaningless.

With a twitch Asami looked up and it startled Arata out of his thoughts. The man rushed over to one of the windows and at once his whole bearing changed. He looked like a hawk suddenly, that had spotted a prey… or more likely some danger?

He whispered something but the boy on the bed did not understand. He sat up straight and stretched his neck to be able to see outside as well. There was a black van that was about to park outside. Then a second.

A shaky breath trembled from Asami’s lips, then he spun around and jumped towards the bed, pushing his hands onto the mattress to look at the other from inches away. Arata was so perplexed he didn’t even get to flinch away.

“Don’t make a noise. I will lock the door. Don’t make anybody notice you.”

He whirled around right away, marched outside, closed the door quietly and turned the key. Then he was gone.

“Why? Why are you leaving me behind?”, Arata heard his own voice ask but he had not spoken a word. It was a memory again, wasn’t it? But then… it had not even been his voice, but Akihito’s, right?

Chapter Text

He flipped the mattress with little effort… or restraint. Maxim looked at him with a frown, then turned towards Fei Long, who just shrugged slightly.

At dinner the evening before they had talked about Alec, had combined their suspicions and intuitions. How these had just added up too perfectly! The following night had been a restless one with them not knowing where the bastard had snuck off to, because he had left the mansion after their little confrontation, without telling anybody where he had gone or when he would be back.

Maxim had ordered his guardsmen to detain Alec, should he return, and to inform the master of the house right away – no matter the hour. Yet the missing one had not shown up for the whole night nor in the morning.

At breakfast they had talked to Asami, who had looked much better than the previous two days. In all his pity however, Mikhail had not really felt much sympathy for him.

Asami had been the king of his world for years without any drawbacks, because he had never allowed anything to interfere with his stubborn businessmanship. Then Akihito had stomped into his life and his heart had suddenly commanded to have a say in things. That, of course, was only natural and if Asami wanted love, then he had to live with it.

In Mikhail’s opinion it was obvious that the months of waiting, doubting and worrying had taken the edge of the once cold bastard. All his hopes had thrown themselves onto the idea of being quickly reunited with his lover and of swooping back into their happy-routine right away, as if nothing whatsoever had happened. But that had not come to pass. There was another hurdle in the way – maybe the worst Asami and Akihito had had to overcome ever. Nevertheless, none of that was any apology for him to let himself slip so excessively.

Mikhail knew very well how damn cold the world was when the one you loved was a mere armlength away, yet far beyond any permission or possibility to even just touch. He had known how that felt for years, and for Asami it had been what? Four days?

He still wished Fei Long had given the bastard a well-aimed roundhouse kick at the head. Definitely, Mikhail was not going to accept that faintly muttered apology from him. After all he had done, after all he owed to Fei Long, there had to be more than just that.

For the moment however, he would let it slip.

When they had talked to Asami at breakfast, he had long supped on one cup of coffee, even when it had to be cold already, and had listened. No matter how hard his frown had overshadowed his eyes at times he had never contradicted.

Maybe Fei Long would have been able to convince the man that the sky was pink with green dots in it at that morning. Asami had seemed like he would just accept anything the Chinese told him.

In the end however, he had put both his palms onto the polished table and had slowly looked up.

“The day I met him here for the first time, I asked him for his phone, and he did not even argue. He gave it to me right away, even though he must have known that you did not want me to have any contact to the outside world.”

He turned towards his brother, a growl in his voice and reproachful glimmer in his eyes.

Maxim answered calmly and factually: “He knew about that.”

And Asami, no matter how angry he had just seemed to be at the older, let it pass.

“He came with me to Warsaw at once. He talked me into coming back here. Was that on your order?”

Now Maxim shook his head. “No. I was surprised he wanted to go with you. And more so when you were back. I had not expected any of this.”

After breakfast Asami had took off to talk with Akihito, and the other three men had still sat there in silence, each caught in their own thoughts, until Maxim had spoken again: “I have a master key.”

The mansion was very large. Mikhail’s own villa in Macao would have fitted into it more than twice and maybe he would have felt a tiny tinge of envy if this place had not seemed like a museum that nobody wanted to visit. It was marvelously well managed of course. There was no dust anyway, no pictures hanging askew, no items dragged from one place to another and forgotten where they did not belong. Seen from above, the main complex was formed like the letter ‘u’ but with a very broad base and short arms. The guesthouse hung on one side connected by the arcades, the garages and stables on the other side. Corridors and hallways led into each other and out of another, and sometimes even ran parallel with the next. They connected rooms with staircases and small atriums.

Alec’s room lay in the western arm of the ‘u’ which was where the staff lived. It was the only part of the whole building Mikhail had seen that even though it was just as richly decorated and furnished, looked like there was in fact any life happening there.

With the master key they had unlocked the room, after Maxim had tried several times to reach the man by phone… just to ask politely and unsuspiciously where he had gone. But Alec had not answered.

Nor had he taken anything with him that looked as if he was running for good.

Maxim had searched his wardrobes and cabinets and drawers, the nightstand, the desk. As far as he could see everything was exactly where it should be, and all Alec seemed to have taken were his purse, his phone, his gun and a jacket… though it was very warm these days. Nowhere however had there been any evidence of wrongdoing.

As far as Mikhail was concerned, he would have loved to rip the mattress apart and turn the whole room inside out, even if someone had promised him solemnly that they would not find anything that way neither. He just thought it would be good sport.

“I wish I could make any sense of this”, Maxim sighed. He had taken off his glasses and rubbed his forehead.

Probably it would have been kind to phrase some like ‘It’s not your fault’ or ‘you couldn’t have known’ as an answer, but Mikhail felt his lack of sympathy for the one brother exactly mirrored by the lack towards the other. And indeed, even Fei Long did not speak any words of comfort. Maybe he had exhausted them for Asami.

“I guess he will show up, sooner or later”, Maxim took the word again when they were on their way back to the main area of the building, where Asami and Akihito were still supposed to be in that upstairs room. “Right now, I am thinking about sending some of my men out who might know some of the places Alec sometimes visits… and some of the women.”

“Are they skilled enough to not scare him into flight?”, Fei Long asked him. He looked worried again. It was true what he had said the afternoon before: if Alec had had any hand in what had happened to Akihito then he probably knew a way to reverse it. Or at least he could give them some answers that might help.

It wasn’t that Mikhail really cared about the kid, yet Fei Long did – obviously from the bottom of his heart – and also it did indeed seem quite unfair to him that the one actually punished the most was the one of the four of them least guilty of any crime. Takaba Akihito had been drawn into all of this and had become the number one ‘go to opportunity’ if anybody wanted to hurt or pressure Asami – for whatever reason.

The only thing that still did not add up for any of them – as far as they had expressed it in front of the other men around – was the question ‘why?’. Why did Alec want to harm the Japanese by using Akihito?

Their considerations on how to proceed were abruptly stopped, when they reached the entrance hall and Asami came racing down the stairs. He literally jumped down the last steps, as if he had never been hurt. Catching himself without any effort he reared around on the spot.

“Did you know?”, he hissed at his brother. There was a dangerous spark in his eyes now that Mikhail had not seen in the last days, but there was some else… like panic?

He found himself stepping closer up to Fei Long.

“What?”, Maxim gasped back.

“Did you know he was coming?”, Asami repeated, the words shooting out with his breath.

“Who?”

The answer came from the opened door. Asami seemed to have wanted to leap back into the next room, but there were guns out right away. No chance to run.

Ten men in black clothes entered, aiming and remaining quiet, until someone else stepped inside.

That one was not the tallest in the entrance hall, but he topped the four men who had been there before. The resemblance with his younger son was so blatantly that Mikhail did not need any introduction.

Though he was well likely in his sixties the old Mr. Asami was still very tall and straight. He wore a suit that fitted his lean, well-trained body to the inch. His face was broader than his son’s with round, mean cheekbones; his hair was grey, his eyes far away from anything as warm as gold could become. They were colored like frosted steel. And if the wrinkles on his face had been formed by smiles than these must have been out of spite and menace.

Silently he beheld the men his troops had at gunpoint. When he spotted the younger of his children, he suddenly indeed smiled but it did not reach his eyes. They remained cold as if they were a blade about to struck.

“My son. How kind of you to come and visit.”

Asami seemed frozen to the spot. Even his fingers looked like they were not sure if they dared to curl up into fists. He stared at his father, his lips pressed onto each other, his breathing held voluntarily.

“And to bring friends. How kind.”, the old man continued. His voice was very deep and there was something guttural in it. Like a low growl.

“Father…”, Maxim spoke. His face twitched a few times as if he tried to form some expression consciously but did not manage it. Then he took a tiny step aside, that brought him just a little bit more in between his father on the one side, and Fei Long and Mikhail on the other.

“The boy is supposed to be in the first bedroom upstairs”, the old man turned towards one of his men. “Go and have a look.” The other already moved, when his master’s hand shot up and he watched his younger son for a moment, as if he could read in him.

“You will very likely have to break open the door. Enjoy!”

Again, with a smile that looked only ominous he then turned back towards the other men.

“Father”, Maxim tried again. “They were about to leave. Um… just…”

“Just a courtesy visit”, the younger jumped in.

Steel colored eyes bore into the one, then into the other, then the man turned his head halfway back to some other of his troops.

“I am sure we have some nice empty rooms in the basement for someone to stay in for a while. Take Mr. Arbatov down there.”

The nods came when the men were already rushing forward, too quickly for Mikhail to even gather what was happening. Hands seized him a second later, grabbing his arms. He tried to throw them off, to push them away. He hit one of those bastards hard enough onto the jaw to dislocated it. The air was torn apart sharply when Fei Long kicked at one of the attackers.

Something came down in Mikhail’s neck in brute force. It turned him blind and deaf. He bit his tongue and tasted the iron flavor of his blood. His knees gave in and he smashed down onto them still held tight by punishing grips on his upper arms. A moment followed in which he was not sure if he was still conscious. Then he hissed at the throbbing pain that emanated up and down from where he had been hit with the handle of a gun.

When he could open his eyes again, he glanced upwards into a steely, unperturbed glare looking down upon him. Maxim stood further away now, as if he had fled from the fight. He had not even raised his hands because not a single gun was pointed at him. Asami had been thrown onto the stairs, his arms dragged violently onto his back, his head pushed down on a step by a knee pressing onto his shoulders. And Fei Long was only steps away, held by hands in gloves at his arms and shoulders and hair. He did not struggle anymore. It took Mikhail a long moment to figure out why – but that moment maybe only he himself perceived as that intense. It might not even have been a second. There was a gun pressed to his temple. He could feel the cold muzzle now.

Mr. Asami Senior coughed ever so slightly, as if only a speck of dust had disturbed him.

“As I said:”, he repeated, speaking slowly and unconcernedly. “Take Mr. Arbatov down to the basement. Take Mr. Liu up to my study and make sure he stays there. I will have to speak with my sons, first.”

Chapter Text

The world was paint on his fingertip.

He decided on its outlines, on its shapes, on wherever there was black or red or white or no color at all.

Humans were attached to strings and only he saw them. He moved them about, he steered them, he left them hanging and sometimes he cut them.

His sons sat in the dining hall, each staring down onto the table which was polished so well they could see their own reflection in it. In fact, they actually looked like a reflection of each other.

Maxim was blonde like his mother had been. Blue eyes, short-sighted, kind-natured but without any remorse or pity whenever the benefits of the family were concerned; forty years old and not interested in any kind of human relationship. He revered from afar, had retired to the seclusion of the mansion in Dubrovnik, and gazed at art and beauty with only his heart warmed but never his crotch.

Ryuichi was so much more like his father: fierce and unforgiving, cold eyes even if they were golden and not grey. Dark haired, dark plans.

The family’s fortune and businesses should have fallen into Maxim’s hand, and never had Richard preferred one child above the other, even if the younger was more to his liking by his nature. Fate had decided his first born to be the kinder one and thus it should therefore have been. Whatever he wished to do with his heirloom, Richard did not care about. He only had to function until the day his father died, and after that… he did not mind.

But then Maxim had broken his back. And the heritage had been placed upon the younger’s shoulders.

Ryuichi however had not wanted it. Maybe because he did not like his freedom restricted, or to play by anyone else’s rules – in that he had been like his father as well. Probably he even hadn’t wanted to pass over his brother.

Richard did not care. He had his plans and he got what he wanted.

In the dining hall he stood, considering his two boys. They thought they had a right to lives and plans of their own but for as long as he lived, they hadn’t.

He had thought that they knew this by now.

Also: hadn’t he been generous to both of them? He had left the businesses of the family in Maxim’s hands for years so he could play master of it all. And he had done so with excellent results. But never had Richard promised that he could keep his toys. Ryuichi on the other hand he had allowed to indulge in his freedom for ten years. A decade for him to become his own man, to proof to himself whatever he had found worthy of testing; to find what he esteemed as love. Time for that was over now!

“You will return to your bedrooms. Those which have been yours when you were children. You will stay there and not leave unless I call upon you”, he told them, his voice filling not only the dining hall but the whole mansion, even though he did not speak aloud. The walls reverberated his words, the windows shook from their might, the young men – no matter how powerful they were outside the walls of the gardens – dared hardly to breath.

They were afraid of him. They had always been.

But that was one of the lessons of the world. The only thing that would ever best you, was the one you were afraid of. With a phone call Maxim could kill a hundred people, just for fun. With his finger on the trigger Ryuichi would head into war and not be frightened of the prospect of his own death.

Yet with all the perils and dangers and dreads of the world they had conquered, they had never overcome their fear of him.

He knew that right at this moment and every second to follow they would imagine of how to rise up against him, of how to rebel. But there lay the difference between conscience and conditioning: to know that a spider could not harm you did not help any bit if you had an arachnophobia.

They could indulge of phantasies of how to supplant and overthrow him, could dream of themselves stomping their feet onto the ground and yelling at him. It would not serve them in any way. Because the moment they were confronted by the spider, logical thinking was suppressed by learned physical and biological functions of their brain.

Their very nature would put them down even before their father needed to raise his voice.

When he entered, the boy sat on the bed, wearing a hoodie and jeans, which seemed in the temperatures of southern Croatia very much like he had put on armor.

The handcuff which had been fixed to his ankle had been taken off and now he leaned on the headboard of the bed, hugging his own knees. A chain was not necessary anymore, now Richard and his men were here. If the boy decided to run in earnest, he would just have him shot.

An armchair had been brought in for him before, and he settled in it, flipping open a notebook and starting it up. The boy watched him doing that, though only out of the corner of his eye.

“So, what is your name right now?”, he asked him so suddenly, that the young Japanese flinched as if someone had tried to hit him.

“What?”, he exhaled.

“Your name. What name do you think you have right now?”

“A… Arata”, the answer was not convincing enough to be understood as the truth, nor to sound like a lie. Very much it seemed the boy was not really sure right now.

Richard put the notebook onto the table next to him and let the video play. It went on an hour and he had watched it once, without caring about anything that happened there. Many people would surely get aroused by what they saw on the screen. Yes, even some men who considered themselves as straight. The boy watched it for a mere minute, then asked him to stop. Later he covered his ears and hid between the sheets, to not witness his own indecency kept on film any longer. Before the end there were only whispered pleas.

But the video played on from the first second to the last, and the man who could have stopped it, did not feel anything about it. He was not interested in men. Yes, well, one could say that this boy was in indeed very pretty and if he needed to ‘handle him’ for the benefit of his family or organization – which were very much the same – he could have. He have done to him what was called sex or love, and would not have bothered about it in the slightest. But right now, nothing of that was necessary and he simply did not care.

This boy was his son’s little please and, in the video, he was being enjoyed by somebody else entirely – and he seemed to have liked it as well. That of course had just been tricks on his mind. As much as Richard held the strings on which his sons would dance, as much had the young man in front of him been played by another.

Now he would take over, and he did not care what name that boy gave himself.

“Undress”, he said with a voice as quiet and cold as a winter’s night.

“What?”

“Undress”, he said again. The boy looked up and into his eyes from across the room. There was defiance in his face and anger, but Richard just stared back, and the defenses crumbled. In the end the young man stood up, took off his clothes and stood there naked in front of him, his eyes closed and his body trembling. He very obviously tried to imagine himself to be somewhere else, with someone else. Probably with his very son, but Richard did not bother himself with thoughts like that.

“Kneel on the bed”, he ordered, and Arata or Akihito did so, keeping his eyes closed, nearly forsaking to breathe.

He stood up then, walked over, took two fingers to inspect the young man’s rear. It had not been used in a while as it looked. No, Richard did not have much knowledge of men’s backsides, but they were hardly any different from those of women.

“Put your clothes back on”, he allowed, then sat down again and watched until the other was finished and huddled himself on the bed again.

“You have not many choices from here. You will be staying in this room. If you try to run, I will have you raped by my men and then drowned in the Sea. I do not care what name you give yourself. When my son comes to you to take pleasure in you, you will play along and pretend to be Akihito. Am I understood?”

There was a sobbing, very faint. The boy hid his face between his arms, but nodded, nonetheless.

“As long as you obey, no one will hurt you. That will be your only comfort.”

With that, he left.

Chapter Text

Almost he pressed the bell button into the plastic frame. He could hear the ringing above in the tourist apartment, yet that did not make him stop. He kept pushing and pushing and pushing again, until he almost overheard the buzzing that opened the door.

He shoved it open, rushed inside, stormed up the steps and threw his brother out of the way to enter the flat he had settled in for his unplanned vacation.

“You have something to drink?”, Alec winced at him in Russian. His mind was filled with white little dots that sizzled in his brain. He thought he was about to pass out and collapsed voluntarily down on the sofa.

Aaron handed him a long drink glass full of vodka a moment later, which Alec drowned to the half with one gulp.

“Fuck!”, be bellowed then.

“Anything you feel you want to tell me?”, Aaron asked. He had sat on the low tv table and watched his brother, a malicious and gleeful grin on his face.

That expression Alec was sure he was able to ruin: “I asked for your fucking request! You better don’t expect to see your pussy-replacement ever again!”, he shouted at the other.

Indeed, Aaron’s visage became hart and icy at once. He stood up the next moment, his fingers curled into fists, and Alec was about to start to laugh, because this was the only fun he had had for a day. Then his brother’s right hit him on the temple, and he collapsed onto the sofa for real.

It took him nearly two hours to regain consciousness, and when he did his whole skull hurt like hell and his vision was a bit off. He sat up with some trouble to find his balance but managed with some help by the backrest. Then he searched the room with his unsteady look and found his brother at the small, round, plastic dining table, eating some noodle soup that only required hot water to be poured over it.

“Fuck you!”, he spat at the other, astounded how much he sounded like a Russian doing so.

“I think you fucked yourself in playing with the wrong people”, Aaron snarled back, hardly taking his attention from the noodles. “So, tell me what happened, or must I beat it out of you.”

“Yeah!”, Alec growled and spat onto the floor. “As if you can”, he added but with the glimpse his twin shot him, he knew he could. His hand reached to his back where the holster of his gun was… It still was there. But the gun was not. And for sure now he saw it on the dining table.

“Don’t test me”, Aaron stated, drinking out of the steaming pot.

Alec swung his legs off the couch and leaned down over his knees. The glass of vodka was still there, still half full and he drowned the rest of it.

“Richard is here”, he snarled after that. In the corner of his eye, he noticed that his brother was looking over. His attention had fixed after all on the other man. Alec clapped a hand onto his mouth to rub away the burning of the alcohol.

“He took that Akihito game not too greatly. He liked in a way… because he likes the outcome. But he did not like what we had planned…”, he knew that he was not explaining well, but his mind was a mess right now.

“I told him that that fucking cunt would never have managed to kill his son. Not in a thousand years. But it would have been so much fun, if Ryuichi had smashed him off him and had broken his neck doing so. Of if he had ripped the knife from his hand and had pushed it the cunt’s chest again and again.” He made a fist in the air and moved it forth and backwards fiercely with bared teeth as if he was indeed committing a murder by knife right now.

“And he said: ‘Yes, all very well. That would have been nice, but what if…?’ And I said: ‘there haven’t been any what ‘if’s’’. That stupid fucking little whore would never have been able to kill his fucking son! But if Ryuichi had murdered his toy boy instead that would have broken him for sure. He would have crawled home to kiss his father’s feet.”

By now Aaron watched him very quietly. His staring made Alec twitch. He hid his face behind his hands and shook his head, which still hurt – thanks brother!

“So, now he’s going in there as well. I mean… he was supposed to at some point but actually I thought I would have a bit more time. I wanted to see Ryuichi Asami fucking break and I would have. I would have had him sob into my lap within a week if only I had the time!”

At the end the screamed, stood up and punched the wall. That hurt like hell also. He screamed again, this time not only in rage but also in agony.

Aaron was looking at him, leaning the scarred side of his face into his propped-up hand. But no matter how much he wanted to feign carelessness, his darkened eyes betrayed him.

“What about Ara… Akihito?”, he asked after Alec had thrown himself down onto the sofa again to blow air at his knuckles.

“I don’t know!”, the other exclaimed. “When I asked him, he said I sounded like I wanted to renegotiate our deal and that he did not like people who did that. I am to get what he promised. You and your men will get your payment from me. That is all I can tell you right now.”

Aaron’s eyes turned narrow. “How did you ask him?”, he inquired icily.

“How? How do you think? Sitting on his fucking Yacht somewhere out on the ocean in the middle of the night all alone. I told him that if he did not need the boy anymore anyway and therefore wanted to toss him away, then why not let me have him? I told him that some of my men had had enjoyed him a lot and would want some more time with him if possible. And that I would make sure no one would ever see or hear from the cunt again.”

“And what did he say?”

Alec grabbed the glass and hurled it across the room at his brother. It hit a kitchen cabinet just above the man, bursting into a hundred glistening shrapnel. Aaron was on him a second later, tore him to the ground and punched him in the face a second time. Then a third.

Alec spit out blood when the other let go of him.

“What did he say?”, Aaron asked again, hissing.

With a sneer Alec opened his eyes and looked up. He lay between the sofa and the tv table, with one of his brother’s foot pressed onto his chest.

“He said he very likely needed him to keep his son at bay.”

“Ah”, the other said from above, his grey eyes nearly white in cold rage. His pressed his foot down harder and Alec grabbed it, when he felt his breath forced out of his lungs. “So, it would be for your benefit still, right? You have been promised Richard’s support to take over any businesses of Asami you’d have an interest in. But those would only be available if the bastard stayed here and became his father’s lapdog.”

“I asked him! What more do you want?” It was hard to breath, even harder still to speak. “Get off!”, he hardly managed to wince.

“Why? Give me one good reason not to crush your chest and watch you suffocate?”

“Because –“, he shrieked, when Aaron pressed his foot down even harder. “– because… you won’t get him back without me.”

Then the pressure was released.

Chapter Text

He growled and muttered some Russian curses under his breath that were all in all rather nonsensical. Not that he cared about being reasonable right now. There was a searing pain between his shoulders that spread up into his skull and down his spine, and it took him a good while to feel capable of even moving slightly.

Yet time was on his side anyhow, he estimated – and found that thought proven correct, once he managed to sit up and lean against one of the old walls.

He was in a small chamber that consisted solely of red bricks and grey gaps in between and of a dark screed floor. One lamp without shade or casing spread a damp yellow light around. There was nothing else. No shelves, no furniture, not even dust. The stupid basement was just as clean as the rest of the house. I looked as if Maxim had his staff come down here and keep everything tidy as to not disappoint sudden prisoners.

Mikhail groaned and pressed his face into his hands. He was happy they were pretty cold because that felt good and eased the throbbing for a bit.

If the staff indeed had to clean the basement as well that would be a fucking lot of work. When he had been brought down here, he had been dragged down several corridors, some brighter and even with decorations or wainscoting, others darker and seemingly belonging to the maintenance areas of the building. The men who had half carried him, had tried several doors, but some had been locked without a key and others had revealed rooms that had not been to their liking. Into this chamber Mikhail had been tossed in the end. The light had been left on; the door had been thrown shut.

How much time had passed in between he could only tell by his watch: 3.30hours.

‘A lot time to hurt someone’, sprung a thought into his mind and he kicked at it by smashing his foot against the nearby door. It did not do him any good apart from replacing the dreadful idea with a new rush of pain to his neck.

In the end it was the observation that no one outside complained about him making noise inside, that made him fight to get up. He gritted his teeth doing so, but the pain had to wait. When this was all over, he would find a large bathtub, fill it with hot water and a lot of foam, and would lie in there for hours – and he would drag Fei Long inside clothed and everything should he be reluctant to join.

That imagination was enough to make him get going. He checked the door first, yet found it locked of course. Still, he searched for any weaknesses, the hinges maybe, or might the old wood have become brittle, might the lock have become rusty? There was a tiny bit of movement on the one side indeed, as if the lock had gotten some play in its frame or as if the bolt had become somewhat loose. Maybe he could smash the goddamn thing open with a well-placed kick.

He already took a step backwards, then reconsidered. He was unarmed and had no idea what was going on outside. Breaking free like that might just get him shot.

When the hurt came back from the frustration, he pushed his face into his hands again, but now there was no coldness left and it did not help. He looked around instead, yet the only thing he had not seen before as he had not really turned his aching neck towards the ceiling were a group of pipes protruding into the room through the wall on one side, crossing it and then vanishing in the next.

They were out of reach as long as he just stood here and raised his arm. Yet, they also hung a tiny bit below the ceiling fixed on some steel carriers. Jumping against the wall, kicking himself upwards from there, Mikhail tried to grab a hold onto the pipes.

It made his back hurt so fucking hard he had to wince a few times in between to get lost of a tiny bit of the agony. He also cut his hands somewhere on the pipes, maybe on screws or sharp welding seams. The blood made his fingers slippery, but then he was suddenly hanging there, fighting and gritting his teeth again to ease down the ache, to get his senses back which were temporarily drowned out by a white, harsh noise in his ears, and to concentrate on his fucking hands to keep their grip.

In the end he managed and did not find himself caring about the strange whimper that escaped his throat in triumph. There wasn’t anybody there in the first place, but then again: Whoever would have laughed at him, should try this himself!

Slowly he moved hand over hand – or rather finger over finger and inch by inch – along the batch of pipes. He did not even know why or what for, yet it was the only thing in there that was not a brick wall and a hard, impermeable floor.

Screeching and creaking accompanied his every movement and the metal carriers trembled and strained with his weight tearing at them. Suddenly he thought about what might happen if there was gas in them, or boiling water. Yet the pipes weren’t hot and – he hung there for a moment, then looked up and checked whatever he could see of the bundle of metal tubes again. He decided to trust in Maxim’s eagerness to keep all of this tidy and in perfect shape, and into the regulation mania of the EU: Gas pipes had to be painted yellow or to at least have some warning stickers attached to them, wherever they could be mixed up with other tubes anywhere nearby. How he knew this? Oh, it had its advantages to know such things when you sometimes wanted buildings to be unsuspiciously evacuated of all personnel or inhabitants.

Relieved, he continued his work – for a mere second. Then all of a sudden, the pipes gave in.

He fell before he realized it and hit his back on the floor so hard, he passed out.

Chapter Text

Whenever he decreed that someone would wait for him, that person did. Even for a day, or two, or three. In fact, there were very few people he would not dare to request patience from – but that was usually due to him maintaining the face of the philanthropist he wore if he had to leave his own domain or cared about a business deal very much. The man who had been taken to his study was one of those he usually would not have liked to offend.

 Right now, however, was not ‘usual’ and Richard saw no need in pretending that he was a decent human being anymore. He entered his study, where the Chinese still sat despite the hours that had passed - straight back, raised chin and with a dense air of aloofness about him. The only thing that was a bit out of place was the faint purple bruise on his cheekbone, yet even that did not cause any scratch to the coldness and superiority he emanated.

Richard sat in his chair on the opposite side of his desk, while the two guardsmen who had made sure his guest would not leave, vacated the room.

 Without as much as ever looking at the other, he took out his phone, had a glance at some messages that were not really of any interest right now, then opened his file manager and clicked onto a video to let it play.

He turned the device around and held it up high.

The Chinese flinched, then looked away, and there suddenly seemed to be a tiny tint of rosé on his checks.

“Seems you are very forthcoming towards some business rivals”, Richard said without any interest in his voice. He really did not care. He had just wanted to make a point: That that video of Russian mobster Mikhail Arbatov fucking Baishe’s Fei Long Liu on a table in someone else’s guesthouse existed. As a matter of fact, the file had been deleted… but his dear son seemed to have gotten distracted halfway through: it had still been in the system’s trash.

When the young man looked back, his eyes were chilly and dismissive.

“Why am I here?”, he asked. He had a rather calm and deep voice for someone whose face was as pretty and girly as that.

“You are here because my son invited you over. He did not ask my permission, yet I am happy about the opportunity”, he answered flatly.

“No… I mean in this room. Why did you have me brought to your study? Do you want to strike some bargain? Some deal?” He lowered his head a bit what added a menacing glimmer to his eyes.

Richard understood how so many people got frightened by the beautiful creature. He, however, wasn’t one of them.

“Oh, I did not bring you here to discuss anything with you, if that is what you are getting at. Not even to talk, at this point. Opportunity it is”, he answered while consciously forming his lips into something that could be perceived as a faint smile.

He got up and walked over to a broad, double-winged door. With both hands he pulled it open and revealed the room behind. His private quarters consisted of several chambers: this study and a tiny library, which had once offered access to the large one until he had it bricked up and had put a bookshelf in front; one small and one really large bathroom; a coffee kitchen; a vast walk-in-closet; a reading room with fireplace and a cabinet of world-class beverages and smokes; and his bedroom – which was what the doors gave way into.

Richard however did not turn towards the massive bed or any of the other exits, but towards a huge, silver framed mirror onto which some golden, lowly shimmering dress had been hung. There certainly was a name for a gown like this, yet he didn’t care. It might have been influenced by traditional Chinese or Korean or Japanese clothing, or by Arabian or Indian dressings for men. He really couldn’t care less. The only thing that had mattered when he had bought it was that it was so beautiful, he had needed to own it.

With a raised hand he turned around to the young man, who still sat in his chair, beholding his every movement closely.

“As I said: opportunity”, Richard voiced again, sharply now. “Please.” With a jerk on his hand, he pronounced that he requested the other to come over, and he did.

Fei Long took one step through the doorway, then stopped exactly there. Another beckoning was required to make him finally advance the mirror.

“Touch it”, Richard demanded, and the young man extended an arm to let his fingers feel the fabric and embroidering.

“It is beautiful”, he said quietly and curtly, and very reluctantly.

“Mulberry Silk”, the other informed. All the gown’s parts were made of the same golden silk fabric – not one that glistened or glittered brashly like cheap pretenders that tried to copy the unique radiance and warmth of the noble metal. No, it shone and gleamed in a low, soft light of its own. The only parts that were black all over – like the rope belt, the lapels around the neckline, along the deep cleavage and the hems of the sleeves – only appeared to be so because with the finest stitches black silk embroidery had been sewn onto it in the form of tiny feathers. And on the chest, there were two large ravens, all in black, wings spread, claws at the ready to attack their prey – or maybe each other? Silken, slim, black pants belonged to the ensemble.

“I saw this at the show of some young, aspiring designer. For some months his name was mentioned alongside Balmain, Gaurav Gupta, Giambattista Valli. Then he died of an overdose of heroin the very first time he had tried the stuff. Opportunity…”, for a brief moment he looked at the other, then beheld the gown again.

“When I saw it, I had to own it. I did not care that I would not be able to wear it or that I had no one in mind who would. I just had to make it mine.”

Folding his hands on his back, he took two leisurely steps backwards, and turned towards the Chinese once more. “I am sure it will fit you very well. Its shoulders are too wide for the type of woman I prefer – and any woman that would fit would have too wide hips. Put it on.”

Richard turned on the spot, passed the other and walked to the door, gripping the handles from the outside.

“What?”, Fei Long threw after him.

Within a short pause of movement, he looked at the Chinese, knowing that there was no expression showing on his face. He did not need to put on a frightening or intimidating visage.

“You have five minutes. Either you put it on yourself or I will have you put into it.”

The he pushed the doors shut. “You do not wear anything beneath this, by the way”, he added, before he sat in his chair again.

There was a nearly 30-year-old Rolex ‘Time to the Second’ watch on his desk that gave out a charming, quiet ticking noise. Gazing at it, Richard waited. At three seconds to five minutes, the doors were opened and Fei Long stepped inside.

The air of aloofness had not toned down a notch, yet his eyes had turned cold beyond imagination. Some men would certainly drop dead from feeling their glare upon them.

Richard however did not mind. He stood up and walked over, beholding the young man every step of the way. The golden silk put a warm shimmer onto the young man’s skin, his jet-black hair matched the embroidery and crows perfectly. And the fit? Shoulders, chest, waist, even the black, long, slim pants: To the inch! As if it had been made for him and no one else. Less than an armlength away Richard stopped, looking the other up and down, who obviously made a point of staring straight ahead and ignoring the taller man.

A sneer tugged at the side of Richard’s lips when he realized that the Chinese had indeed taken off his shirt. The cleavage was cut so low it almost reached his navel, and wide enough that his collarbones, the form of his pectoral muscles and his upper abs were showing.

“You are very obliging”, he said softly.

It made the cold eyes turn on him. They had a rather strange color, brown… yes… but not really. With a tint of lilac in it. Amethyst? Maybe. “If you are happy now, may we continue?”, the Chinese asked, not a tint of intimidation in his voice. He seemed to think that Richard was wasting time and not already in the midst of what he wanted to do.

This made his smile turn into a real one probably for the first time today.

“Opportunity”, he said again in a hush. “I bought this not knowing when it would ever been worn. I’ve had it with me always, as not to waste the perfect moment. Planning of course is important, but opportunity you just have to grab and make yourself the winner of. For years I have been planning and acting to take my son back. I knew sooner or later I would have him here, at my hands, at my will. What I did not know was that it would bring you here, Mr. Liu. Opportunity.”

The amethyst eyes narrowed. This man was just as dangerous as Richard was himself… but he had made the mistake of stepping into the other one’s kingdom.

“You are not afraid of me, are you?”, he asked him, his left hand now in his pocket. It was a fortune to be ambidextrous, for his left hand was the one he could raise behind the Chinese’s back without it being noticed.

A bit of distraction however could never hurt. He lifted one finger of his right towards the other’s face and when it seemed like he wanted to give an answer, he put his fingertip on those beautiful lips.

“Not yet, you aren’t”, he whispered. The little plastic cap he pushed off with his middle finger, then leaned his left hand onto the other’s shoulder and pushed the tiny syringe into his jugular vein.

There was a silent gasped and Fei Long flinched. Richard was certain that both the sting as much as the injection hurt a bit, not that he had ever had the displeasure. The young man blinked at him, his lips moved, but then his legs gave out already. Ripping the needle out and letting it fall, Richard caught Fei Long with one arm around his back, then snatched him up from the ground, picking up his legs with the other. Quickly the Chinese’s head lolled against his shoulder. There was tiny sigh, then his eyes closed.

Richard carried him over and threw him into the bed.

Ketamine. In the correct dose it worked swiftly and did not interfere with the respiration as so many other strong sedatives did.

Chapter Text

His hands were curled to fists so violently, his knuckles had become white and his fingers dull. He felt his face twitch, his jaws tighten, his teeth grind so hart, they started to ache. There was a burning at the side of his vision, as if the wall had caught fire. Again, and again the air stopped in his chest, and he had to force it on. He trembled in a rage as old as his every thought and as paralyzing as an avalanche.

He had run from all of this. Had run from it when he had been a child by dreaming himself away, by becoming numb and unfeeling. He had tried to gain his freedom so many times, yet no matter how far away he had made it – physically or mentally – in the end he still stared dead ahead when his father looked down upon him.

He had run so far and unrelentingly from it, yet in the end the paternal poison was still spread through in his soul.

When he had woken up here months ago, his first conscious thoughts had clung themselves to the believe that it must be a dream. A nightmare! The worst of all. Yet whenever he had fallen asleep it seemed the panic and dread would vanish, and only return when he opened his eyes again. Then Maxim had told him, promised him, that their father was nowhere near and not likely to return anytime soon.

And the longer Asami had lain there, the longer the place remained free of his father, the more it had seemed capable of some beauty and peace after all. Never had he found it there before.

After five months his mind had tricked him into believing that his father did not care anymore - seemingly he hadn’t for about a decade already. He had even dared to come back here, believing into Alec’s word. In his childhood home in Croatia for five months it had appeared he had been safe – and why wouldn’t Akihito? Why wouldn’t anybody he called upon? That his father might return had struck his mind at some points, yet as if he had brainwashed himself the voices of premonition and warning had drowned out within himself.

Now they laughed at him. And he wanted to smash his face into them – into his own mind – just as much as against the whole world.

He had been a king of a sandcastle, the most frightening and imposing in the world. His father however had not even needed to crush it with his foot. A glance had sufficed and Ryuichi had slowly plugged it apart with his own hands.

The world was afraid of him, yet he feared only his father. His eyes, his expressionless face, his cold words, his inviolability. Still, he froze in front of him, still his mind went blank, still he felt the need to proof himself and to run at the same time.

 He grabbed a pillow from the sofa on which he sat, and smashed it away with so much force, it ripped in the air and all the feathers spilled out.

In this room he had been kept for about 12 hours now. It had been his chamber when he had been a young child, yet nothing of that was showing anymore. There were two antique sofas now and one armchair, a Chinese antique cabinet and several showcases with one of the most expensive collections of antique coins in the world. Not that ever anybody looked upon them.

Only the mattress he had slept on next to Akihito had been dragged in here and the feathers settled upon and around it like snow. This night however he had not lain on it. He had just sat here.

Hours were ticking by on his wristwatch too quickly while his mind dared not even to wander. It had attached itself to his gaze and just stared dead ahead. Waiting… waiting… because now there was nothing else to do.

But he had to do something!... the cry screeched somewhere deep inside him only a few times, so faint and far away, that he had simply to shrug to toss it away. It was the only truth though, he knew. And the one thing he could not ever listen to. There was no way out. There had never been. He had tried for a decade, he had tried for all his life, and he had failed. And now he had dragged Akihito into it as well.

The breakfast he had been provided with in his room had just been taken away, when there was a knock on the door. Quentin was the name of the man who entered. He had been one of his father’s closest for as long as Asami remembered. He was tall and broad, had black skin, black hair, black eyes and a bleak soul – if men like them even actually had a soul left. Maybe in all of them it had just withered away long ago and now there was only one ugly, oily fleck where it had once been.

“You’re called upon”, the dark man said with his dark voice. Asami got up and followed.

He was brought to his father’s chambers, the door to the study was opened for him, golden light showered out through the frame into the dark corridor – but that could only be a trap. No room that his father was inside could be filled with anything as golden as that.

And indeed, when he entered, the air frosted in his lungs and his throat became dry and hard like dead earth.

His father sat at his desk as he had done so many times before, when he had beckoned his son to him. And Asami just waited, while the door closed behind him. He waited for those cold eyes to stare up at him, to measure him, to digest and then disgorge him.

Behind his back he folded his hands, to hide that they were still curled to fists, because the anger was still there, only subdued by the fear that ruled his every fiber. He tried to straighten up, to push out his chest – all these things that came naturally to him no matter how dire the danger. But he hardly managed it now.

His father however still did not look up. He wrote with a fountain pen on white paper – his writing small and upright and with a whisper so soft it could only be a lie as well.

He moved so suddenly, that Asami could not keep himself from twitching. But still his father did not look up. He merely produced something from his pocket and laid it onto the table. It was a tiny, white package of paper, smaller than the man’s little finger.

‘H5041-AMP Ammonia Inhalant’ was written on it in tiny black letters. Smelling salt.

Asami did not touch it. He did not know what to do with it.

“Please”, his father said, while his eyes remained fixed on his writing. “I need his full attention, as well.”

‘Whose?’, the other wanted to ask, yet did not dare. He felt his eyebrows narrow into a frown, felt his body move to accept the tiny paper packaging. There was some stick inside it which’s pink color was shining through a bit. What to do with it?

A faint movement of his father’s head made him turn around to the halfway opened entrance to the bedroom. Before he realized it, he had tossed one of the doors out of his way and at lunged unto the bed. From within the sheets, he pulled Fei Long.

“What did you do to him?”, he croaked, his throat in struggle with his mind. ‘Don’t!’, one very old and loud voice shrieked in horror. ‘You can’t! Don’t anger him!’

His father put away the pen in endless patience, stood up, walked around the table and stepped into the other room.

“Nothing much”, he declared, sounding as if he was describing the rain of some days ago. “He seemed to think that he could talk his way out of here and I got bored. I drugged him. Several times actually because the doses aren’t large enough for keeping him subdued very long. I did not touch him in any other way, if that is what you are aiming at. I am not you, Ryuichi.”

Asami kept his eyes away from his father and felt his cold, dismissive, mocking glare, nonetheless.

Fei Long looked as if he had been placed here and had never moved. His eyes were closed heavily, his face pale, safe for the bruise on his cheekbone.

‘I did that’, Asami found himself think. ‘I did all of this!’

‘Don’t!’, the other voice shot back, far louder. He had known that one since he had been capable of forming conscient thoughts.

In all aspects it seemed like Fei Long was just sleeping, yet there was no reaction, when the was tugged up into the other man’s arms. Not even a stir or a movement of the eyes below the lids. The oddest thing on him however was that dress. Some golden, silken dressing gown or a strange version of a kimono or cheongsam Asami had never seen before. It was cut open so low and wide at the front that it bared the scar on his chest near to his heart.

‘I did that’, again. ‘I did all of this!’

‘Don’t!’, much, much louder.

“Would you now please do what I asked of you”, his father phrased undeterredly from across the room. “You know I am not patient.”

Asami ripped open the small package he found to have almost crushed in his fist, took out the tiny pink stick and held it beneath the Chinese’s nose.

With a gasp Fei Long shot upwards, almost smashing his forehead against the chin of the man supporting him if that one had not pulled away. Then he fell backwards again, was caught and looked up at Asami with unfocussed, confused and heavily blinking eyes.

“Wha…?”, he breathed, then swallowed hard and his consciousness seemed to almost slip away again. That the old man would understand as insubordination, so Asami shook him.

“Fei”, he whispered. “Look at me.”

One hand grabbed his sleeve as if that way the young man could hold onto his senses as well.

“What…?”, he asked again.

“It’s alright”, Asami lied and knew that the other had to be able to tell it from his voice and see it in his eyes. There were no other words of comfort possible however, because now his father dragged over a chair and placed it at the end of the bed. He sat, he put one leg over the other, he folded his hands on his lap and stared at them.

This he did, when punishment was about to be distributed.

Asami let himself fall backwards against the headboard. It brought a tiny bit of more distance between him and his old man, and thereby he could just lean there, in case he would lose his own grip on the world. He pulled Fei Long with him, who felt too light in his arms and who looked up at the third person over there, as if he was only slowly realizing that now they stood trial before the devil himself.

His father smacked his lips, then started to talk, quietly and measuredly: “You have had about ten years of indulging in your own ambitions and freedoms, my son. It is time you take up your duties, and now you will. You will be handed all the business parts of the organization. If you decide to share some of the work with your brother that will be of you own decision. I will not interfere with that. Yet I will remain master of it all until my death. Mine will be the power until the end; yours will be the work from now on. I would have liked to hand it all over to you, but we both know that I cannot trust you.”

He paused, and Asami realized that he was not really looking at his old man. He was staring at some point next to him yet far, far away.

“Whenever outside of this house you will be allowed to behave and act as ever you wish, but you will never allow me to doubt that you will do your best to protect the organization and its prosperity. Within those boundaries I will grant you your freedom. Your businesses in Japan will be taken from you and handed over to another. You will not have any dealings there anymore whatsoever. And whenever you come back here, you shall have that boy at your own pleasure. I will not care what he calls himself or who he thinks he is. I will not care if he wants you or not. He will be yours to use to your wished. However, he will remain a hostage in this house, and should you fail me in any way, he will pay for it first.”

A pause again, a slow blink of the eyes, then he turned his head just a tiny notch to behold Fei Long.

“As to Mr. Liu: I have had to restrain myself from some ideas and plans that I would have liked to embark on, but never dared as they might have become a threat to my name, to that of my family and to my organization. Now I step down from the responsibility for all of these, I am happy to find myself granted the opportunity to venture into some of those ideas. I will do so with your help, using Baishe.”

Fei Long moved in Asami’s arms. He did not know if the Chinese wanted to speak, or just shivered, but he pulled him closer as if he could stop him from reacting in any way. Reaction to his father’s words was dangerous, until one was asked to give any kind of answer.

“I am sure that enough people are aware of your homosexuality and of your infatuation with my son. Hence, it will not be too hard for them to imagine that you have fallen for me instead and that you are in love so much and worried so badly to have the next Asami-man slip through your fingers, that you are willing to do anything for him. Even allow Baishe to dance to his every tune. You, after all, will be the one to convince them that this is the truth. And I am sure with some paparazzi pictures of you naked on my Yacht most doubts will be dissolved.”

A sigh and a stir again. It seemed as if Fei Long tried to push against the arms wrapped around him, yet Asami held him tight.

“In case you should not try to be a very good actor, in case you allow any doubt with your men or try to find a way to get out of this… in case I am unhappy with you…, it will be Mr. Arbatov who will suffer for it. And I will make you watch. I also will bring you little trinkets of him. And believe me, there are many pieces you can cut from a man long before he loses his mind or dies. I will make sure to perserve those trinkets for you so that in the end you will be able to put him back together, as if he was puzzle.”

Another stir, much more forceful this time. Asami had to strain, to keep the other still.

“Don’t!”, he allowed the voice he always heard within himself whenever his father was near to slip out of his mouth – yet so quietly and without ever moving his lips. The third in the room could never know!

“Should you decide to end your own life, I promise you that Mr. Arbatov will experience cruelties never imagined by any human being before his death.”

Suddenly his father moved. He repositioned himself on the chair and changed the order of his legs. A chill caught around Asami and wanted to force him to close his eyes. He had to fight to stay focused and not turn away. Like Akihito had done in the other bedroom, he would have loved to hide between the sheets and pillows now. He knew those movements very well. His father was about to serve his final blow.

“Now in case all your best acting is yet not enough for your men – and especially for anybody who has ever been close to you – to convince them that you have fallen for me, I might have to remember them of your past.”

The fingers at Asami’s sleeved tightened, so hard, they dug deep into his skin.

“Photographs, I have heard, have caused some discord in this house as of lately. The power of captured memories is massive, isn’t it? You can try to dig up every name, search for every man and kill him, yet the longer in the past, the harder it becomes to erase it all. That is one of the reasons, why I like pictures. Photographs. To remind myself. To keep some proof.”

He put one hand into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small photo. For a moment he looked at it, then he turned again towards the two men on the bed.

“I always wondered if the day your father fell ill was the worst of your life. Now I guess this one might in the long run top it. But tell me: Did your brother allow you some time to adjust to the new situation or did he toss you at some man he wanted to win for himself right away?”

Fei Long closed his eyes and shuddered. Usually, his father had not allowed anybody he spoke to, to not look at him, yet in this case he seemed to make an excuse.

“I was offered the pleasure once. But I never had any interest. I passed it on…”

He stood up, walked over a few steps, then handed the picture to his son who was easier to reach.

Asami took it even though he could not feel his own fingers. On the picture was showing a portion of a dark room, half a bed, the aurora of some lamp in the corner. A child – it was impossible to say if it was a boy or a girl, or to determine the age - sat on the edge of the bed, next to the nightstand. The long black hair was woven into a braid, the pale face turned away from the camera and from the man who sprawled over the mattress. One of the bastard’s big hands was fumbling his own fly, the movement frozen yet unambiguously. With the other he had clawed his fingers into the cheongsam-like robe the child wore, and he had already pulled it halfway off its shoulders and down its back.

“I passed it on…”, his father said, less than two steps away and his voice so hard it seemed to make the whole room tremble. “… to two of my men who had been doing a good job. As I was told, they enjoyed it extensively.”

Asami had made sure that whatever the picture showed would not be visible to the young man at his side, but Fei Long hid his eyes nonetheless by turning his head against the taller one’s chest.

“You have been a whore once. That was about fourteen years ago. No one will even be astounded that you are whore still. Believe me, there are more pictures like these. Very, very clear ones indeed. But I am a kind man, in the end. I do not wish to take you. There might be a kiss necessary now and then, and some touching for fake paparazzi pictures, nothing more. Yet if you make me think that you cannot imagine how it would be to be my lover, I will take a leap of faith and will make you feel what it means.”

With that, he turned around and called for Quentin to have Asami brought back to his own room.

Chapter Text

At dinner a Brodetto was served – an Italian fish stew. His father loved it, and it was one of the cook’s masterpieces, but Maxim had never liked it very much. Yet also the wine, which had always been one of his favorites, left a bad taste on his tongue today.

They did not talk. They never did. Not until the servants had cleared the table. Then they exchanged some information on current businesses and deals, and talked about news from their world and about their plans. Tomorrow his father was to leave, because the ‘Steel Raven’, his Yacht, needed to be taken to Ameglia in Italy for maintenance. It was a three-day trip.

Maxim listened as always very attentively, making notes in his mind, yet he knew that his father would never allow anyone to keep tabs on him for long. As soon as he had put the ‘Steel Raven’ into the hands of the Sanlorenzo shipyard, he would very likely disappear from the radar entirely until he himself chose to get in touch with his once-home in Dubrovnik. Where he’d spend his time, however, that would remain a mystery.

“Does something occupy your mind?”, his father asked so suddenly, that Maxim felt heat rush into his head. If redness was showing on his cheek, then hopefully the dimmed light and the distance between them at both endings of the table made it invisible to the other man.

“Uhm”, he swallowed hard. “I keep thinking about Ryuichi. Whether he will play along?”

“That will not be much of your concern, will it? I told you that I will leave men here who are instructed on how to deal with him and with the boy.”

“Yes”, Maxim nodded. There was a drop of wine on the table. It must have been spilled when he had gotten a refill, and now it was slowly drying away. Usually, he had very likely asked one of the servants to remove it. But right now, he did not feel like it. He’d rather just watch it and how the light of the candles danced in it as if it was a tiny jewel.

“What about Alec?”, he had wondered about the man for a while, yet had not found a moment to ask.

His father sipped on his wine without any haste, before he answered: “Well, as far as I know he works for you?”

“And for you?”

“Yes, but that job is done. He will receive his payment via an informant I have placed for him to contact in Tokyo. That man will help him to grab up everything Ryuichi once had in businesses and contacts and possessions. It will still be a struggle for him to make that work, but none of that will be my or your concern. He will have any needed support from that informant and the people working for that man. Mind you, all of this has nothing to do with your own relationship with him. He is still working for you until one of you decides to end these relations. I do not have any interest in this.”

Slowly Maxim nodded. When they had searched Alec’s room the day before it had seemed to him that he had planned of coming back, and probably he still would – even if only to get his belongings.

The thought of seeing him after all this was only helping to make an ill knot in his stomach grow. Alec had betrayed him, had played him. But the worst was that he didn’t feel like the bastard deserved most of his anger. Most of it, he deserved himself.

His father now wiped his lips on the white, cloth napkin, then stood up. He walked along the table towards the exit, his heavy steps a low thunder on the parquet. Suddenly he stopped, placing one hand on Maxim’s shoulder, who felt himself tense beneath it. The knot in his stomach hurt and burned.

“Once I have left tomorrow, you will be able to send information to me the usual way and I will answer if I feel the need to. But the quicker from now one will be through my men. They will let me know at once if Ryuichi is not doing a good job. They will be at the ready to punish him.”

Slightly the fingers of his father tightened on his shoulder blade, yet there was no force needed anyway. The touch alone was agony to Maxim.

“Keep an eye on him. Be the better son. Do not betray me, Maxim.”

With that he walked, and the door was opened for him by one of the servants.

“What about… the Chinese?”

“He will accompany me.”

“And… Mr. Arbatov?”

No answer.

Maxim felt ill after that from the food he did not like and the sizzling peace of coal that seemed to have made it into his stomach. He sat in the room which had once been his own when he had been a child – though he had been allowed to return to his private chambers on the evening before already – in difference to Ryuichi.

Today, nothing of that child could still be found here. Now high, wooden shelves that were almost empty flanked the large window and the door into the hallway. There was a secretary desk with a big but very stiff leather seat in front and an antique chessboard with pieces made of black obsidian and white howlite gemstones.

He had hated the game as a child but had been ordered to play it again and again until he had mastered it against several tutors.

That and the emotions connected with it, he could remember vividly, but it was very much the only memory coming to him sitting here presently. Nothing else in this room was able to encourage his reminiscence.

Now all the pieces stood in basic position and had done so for years, unmoving and unconscious of it. It had to be bliss, Maxim thought.

Maybe something should be done about it…

As a child he had always played white, because he had thought they were the good ones. Later he had switched to only playing black, after he had realized with what kind of businesses his family had achieved and still did make their fortunes and power – they definitely weren’t the good ones, he had decreed. And therefore, neither was him.

It had taken him long to understand, that the world did solely consist of black and white, and nor were people only the one or the other.

You could be a criminal and be innocent still. You could be a murderer and nonetheless have a good heart. Sometimes there simply wasn’t a chance to avoid following a certain way, yet that did not mean that you yourself were being altered by having to embark on it. Sometimes simply staying alive meant that you had to step over and into the shadows.

With gentle fingers he took the white pawn in front of the right bishop and moved it one square forward. f3. The black pawn in front of the king was next. Two squares forward. e5. Then the white pawn in front of the right knight. ‘Horsey’, he had called it until he had been slapped by one of his tutors for not using the correct designation. Two squares forward. g4.

Black’s turn again. Qh4. He moved the queen slowly across the board, diagonally down and right along the black squares until it reached the right border.

Checkmate in 4 moves.

Death to the white king!

But who was white and who was black today?

Abruptly he stood, though it sent a jolt of pain down his spine and made the knot in his stomach blaze up. He walked to the window and pulled it open slowly and quietly. Night had fallen; the moon and stars were out; the illuminations around the house shimmering up from underneath.

There was a narrow balcony outside onto which he stepped, then he observed for a while the gardens he could examine from here. When he was sure enough, he closed the window behind, stepped over to one side of the balcony and sat on the stone railing. He shoved himself around on it and across, until he could place his feet onto the small protrusion of the balcony’s floor outside of the parapet.

The last time he had tried this he had been much smaller, much younger, much stronger – and his back had not been broken. Yet he decided not to care.

Maxim pushed his fingers into the deep gaps between the giant, beige stones out of which the mansion’s outer wall had been built, then moved his whole weight onto the tiny hold his feet found.

A wide step was necessary, and he just leaped forward. If he fell, it was all over anyway. Therefore, he thought to better plunge in with all his might and conscience and get done with it. One leg he threw ahead. He grabbed the edge of the stones as hard as he could and closed his eyes, praying, hoping. For a long, long moment he felt himself rush through the night air which grabbed at his hair and clothes. It surely took an eternity. Too long! Just too long! He had missed it! He would fall and this time hopefully die.

Then his foot caught the edge of the other balcony’s floor protruding just as much as his own’s. His motion was stopped so quickly, that he almost lost his finger’s halt, that almost his ankle and knee gave in. But he caught himself, he caught his senses, he caught the agony shrieking at him and asking him to just let go.

He would not! Instead, he threw his arms forward, snatched the opposite stone railing with his hands and pulled himself over there.

Onto the parapet of cold, hard rock he leaned, making sure that he was draped over it far enough that he would not lose his balance now. He had to catch a breath. For a few seconds at last. Then he had to move again, before somebody might walk into these parts of the garden after all. He had been lucky so far. He did not want to risk his good fortunes now. They had never much been on his side any time before.

Clumsily and aching he climbed over the next railing, before he allowed himself to slip down to the floor. Across it he shoved himself over to the window and knocked…

… knocked just like he had done when he had been a child.

And when one of them – mostly Ryuichi – had been sent to his room for some wrongdoing.

Why or how he still remembered the rhythm he could not tell. He had not thought about it before. But right now, right here, it had just come back to him and his hand moved to it effortlessly.

Then he had to wait, like he had as a child. Hoping that no one walked into these parts of the garden now. It was so very much like he was 10 again. He listened to any sound from within, any movement. Anything at all. For a long while… Listened and even closed his eyes.

Already he had lifted his hand again, to just give it one more try. Maybe he had come in vain.

But then the window was opened, a tiny notch only, and his brother peered outside.

Chapter Text

The man who had been put onto guard duty in his master’s bedroom probably had never had an easier job. For a whole long while he had been sitting here, leaned back into the chef’s seat, he had pushed over from the study next door. His eyes were fixed upon his mobile phone. From his position, he would see it if that strange lady-boy even as much as twitched. But up until now that guy had been rather obliging by just sleeping on.

In that golden dress he looked very much like a model that had gotten too many drinks or – more likely ‘and’ - had shot too much heroin after some successful show… not that he had ever been on one of those gigs… fashion weeks or anything like that. Yet he knew the stupidity of women who thought that by playing along with the rich men currently courting them, they would become the next missus of the house. As if that really happened!

They just got themselves fucked – and fucked over – and often enough guys like him then had the chance to comfort them – and to fuck them as well.

The first hour of his duty here had almost passed and if things went on like this, he was pretty sure, he could even take a nap at some point. He had walked over to the bed twice, had shook the long-haired Chinese, but he hadn’t reacted in any way.

With a shrug the guard had taken his place again.

Now he was watching some live stream of a baseball match and it took him a while until he realized that the hostage was indeed moving. An unpleasant shot of heat rushed to his head, because he had been so very sure he would not miss any stir on the bed… His boss better not hear of this!

Between the sheets the Chinese was moving now… or rather shivering? The whole mattress was soon trembling.

Some kind… of seizure maybe? Presumably a reaction to the drugs he had been given?

The guard got up from his chair rather reluctantly, yet then he rushed over to the bed. He grabbed the young man by the shoulders and shook him several times, even before he took a closer look.

“Hey!”, he bellowed at him.

Only then did he see that there was saliva running out of the Chinese’s mouth and down the side of his chin, and his eyelids were flattering, only showing the white behind.

“Hey!”, he shouted again. He’d better get some help. If his boss’ precious hostage died on his watch – that would… He could not even think about it without feeling his knees becoming weak.

“Stop that!”, he cried, then smacked the young man across the cheek.

His eyes opened at once, dark and focused. His hand shot up, but the guard did not see where it went. He only felt it, when he was thrown backwards. There was a ‘pop’ or something like that in his throat… and a grinding. He wondered about the strange sounds for a moment and did not even realize how hard he had hit the floor, how very much his knees had given out now indeed. Then he grabbed his own neck, when he noticed that there was no air coming through.

His fingers scratched at his skin and ripped it open. His vision slowly faded, while his lungs strained to pump out the air, while his brain called for oxidated blood in a frenzy.

The Chinese in his golden cloth getting out of bed, his black hair very much the color of the coat Death wore when he came riding, was the last he saw. When his eyes already lost all vision, the other man stepped on his neck with one foot and crushed his larynx even deeper into the dying man’s throat.

Chapter Text

Fei Long stared down onto the other until all light had vanished out of the dying man’s eyes. There was some gurgling sound in the end, then nothing.

He had been awake for a while, but in the beginning there had been a metallic, deep pain between his eyes. It had felt very much as if someone had stabbed him there with an ice pickle. Therefore, it had taken him sheer ages to finally dare and open his eyes – and he had done so just as little as it had been possible, because he had heard the other one near yet could not tell where the man was.

For a while then the room had faltered around the bed and there had not been any colors or perceiving except for the strange taste he had on his tongue, which very much reminded him of the aggressive smell of spray-paint. Both, the taste of formaldehyde – or whatever it was – and the tumbling of the room, had stopped at some point, and then he had been finally able to glance from one eye, mostly hidden between the cushions. He had seen the man, watched him for a while. He had listened to the transmission of the match from somewhere else on the planet.

The moderator was still talking now in a very broad American English. The crowd was cheering in the background.

Fei Long knelt down and searched the dead man. It provided him with a fully loaded Glock 27, but the big army jackknife he also discovered was in the current circumstances a bit more to his taste. Mikhail would love it… he pushed the thought away.

With a swift tug on the belt and grab at the gown’s collar he got rid of the golden dress and tossed it over the dead man who stared up at him as if he wanted to place any blame. Fei Long would never accept it. The person – whoever he had been, wherever he had come from – had chosen a brutal life and had died a brutal death. That was the way the world worked.

His own clothes were luckily still here, folded up neatly on a side-table. He put them on, hid the knife in his stocking and made sure once again the gun was loaded.

The cheering of the crowd caught his attention – not that he cared even the slightest bit about team sports.

He walked over to the chef’s chair on which the guard had left the phone. It was still playing obviously, still showing pictures of a rather bad quality that were relayed here via internet from across half the world.

Fei Long picked the device up. It was an iPhone. He pressed the ‘home’-button twice, then hit the screen with his thumb… the streaming-app had been set to not allow the phone to go into locked mode.

It did not take him longer than half a second to search through the icons and folders for the green phone-app. He switched to manual dialing and put in a rather long phone number which he knew by heart.

The tune of the call making it through the network of Croatia now into the very other direction than the live stream had come from before, was faintly playing for a long moment. Then there was an reply, a very familiar voice, and Fei Long answered.

“Yoh, it’s me. I’ve run into a little problem.”

Chapter Text

The car slowed down, when the giant cast iron gate was hit by the headlights, and came to a final halt next to the intercom which hung on a pole just like those American mailboxes did. With a quiet whirring the window was opened, and the driver leaned out a bit to press the flat silver button.

After a moment a voice asked who he was, and Alec answered.

‘You really think they’re gotta let you in again?’, Aaron had asked him before, and his brother had nodded.

‘I have not been fired or anything. If Richard had fired me, I’d be dead. Our deal is just done. I guess I’m still working for Maxim until he tosses me out… or well… at least…’

After his voiced had trailed away, Alec had fallen quiet for a long while in which he had stared off into some space beyond the dusky apartment and had pressed an ice cube against his swollen lip... It was slowly melting and dissolving in his hand. The water dripped down his arm, yet he did not seem to mind. Aaron had given him a good beating from which his brother would keep some reminders for a few days.

‘I guess I can at least get my stuff, as long as I don’t cross paths with Ryuichi or Mikhail or his… girlfriend. But I’m pretty sure they’re not gonna be a problem now… so: I’ll just say I want to clear out my room and then be gone’, finally he had continued. It had been the beginning of their planning.

And indeed, the gate swung open now. Alec steered the black limousine with which he had left for the city the other day over the compound and into the large garage, whose doors opened for him automatically and closed right after he had entered. There was a van parked, another limousine and two Oldtimers – beautifully restored convertibles. But these cars were obviously only a part of the property’s collection of vehicles.

From the backseat where he tried to stay hidden from sight, Aaron had been able to make out some more vans and cars parked on an outside lot.

Silence fell, when Alec had switched off the motor. Once again, he stared dead ahead, as if his gazed had fixed on something beyond anybody else’s perception. Aaron was not sorry, that he did not know what his brother saw before his inner eye.

He was not really sure, what the other was after at this point. He had been hired to do a job, he had been promised remuneration for it and if he had correctly recited the words of Richard Asami it seemed like he would indeed get exactly what he had been pledged from the beginning: payment for the men of Chernobog, including Aaron, and the old man’s support to grasp any of Ryuichi Asami’s old businesses and ventures in Japan that appeared valuable to him.

However, it seemed as if the profit he was supposed to be awarded with, was not what Alec wanted anymore.

Aaron could guess why: His brother was an agent to chaos. Yes, he needed wealth, connections and power to keep himself in the world he wanted to move in. But they were only the means by which he existed, not the reason. The reason why he did anything – his final motivation – were mayhem and havoc.

It had been Alec’s plan to come back here, claiming that he just wanted to get his belongings before he ‘resigned’ or got kicked out. It had been him who had talked about getting the boy– Arata, Akihito – for Aaron. But why? And even more so, how?!

If they were noticed, they would have to shoot their way in and out. Richard would never allow his hostage to be snatched away. It would indeed not matter if he actually hadn’t any plans with him at all. The point was, he had been asked for Arata by Alec, and had declined. So, if now Alec took the boy nonetheless, Richard would perceive that as an affront. And he killed people who were as dashing as to dare anything like that.

For a short moment Aaron had mused whether his brother was planning to kill Richard because of some strange urge for revenge. Yet if the man died that was the end of anything Alec had once been promised to be awarded with. There would be no payment for Chernobog, there would be no money and properties and connections in Japan.

Then again, of course the same was true if the old man Asami found out, what they were doing here – or even only if he got a whiff of what they were planning to do.

So, in the end it had to seem like Alec had settled on biting the hand that had fed him. But why? Maybe just to give his twin what he had asked for? The mere thought almost made Aaron laugh out loud. No! Definitely not. He was certain, absolutely positive, that his request in the end had nothing to do with it. It was just a coincidence: He wanted Arata – Arata was Akihito – Akihito was the love of Ryuichi Asami.

That very likely was the last piece of the puzzle: Alec wanted to see the Japanese bastard broken. That was what he had expected to witness at some point throughout his work, but in the end, when the plan had come to fruiting, he had missed the moment if ever it had occurred. Therefore, he wanted to recreate it. He wanted to see the man suffering and destroyed. He needed to take Akihito for that. And if he did that, Richard better got a bullet in the head on the way.

“Fuck!”, Alec hissed all of a sudden. “Get down!”

Aaron hadn’t even raised his head. He lay in the dark foot room in front of the backseats, dressed in black and beneath a black jacket that he simply pulled over his face.

The whirring of the window could be heard again.

“Hey!”, someone approached the car. His voice was getting loader while the short word was dragger very long.

“Hi!”, Alec answered, his own voice sounding nonchalantly and joyous as usually.

“Lot’s going on here!”, the other said, speaking English with a thick Slavic accent. “Boss’ men are here. Looking unfriendly as ever and have not brought as much booze as they promised.” The guy chuckled in a low gurgle.

“Selfish bastards!”, Alec trilled back. “They get around the world and then they always forget about us!”

“Yes! Yes! I told ‘em to better think of us next time they come round, or we’re gonna shit in their sheets!”

“Maybe that’s what they’re going for?”

“Hehehe!”, the other guy laughed for a short while, then he slapped the roof of the car with his flat hand.

“I’m back to work, now. Guard the garage and stables tonight. See you, Alec… A yes! The other day Maxim wanted to speak to you. Think that’s maybe not important anymore. Just so you know.”

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll be seeing him tomorrow morning. I’m sure he’s asleep already.”

“Probably is. Little baby!”

Another slap, then the window was whirring upwards again and Alec exhaled sharply.

“Friend of yours?”, Aaron snarled, when he ripped the jacket off from his face.

“As if!”

In the front seat, Alec reached for his belt. His gun and silencer gleamed in the bit of light permeating through the car’s toned windows.

“Get ready. I’m getting rid of him.”

With that he stepped outside and shoved the door shut behind him.

Aaron climbed out from the cavern between the seats, took a last look through the windows to make sure there were no surprises, then checked his own gear a last time.

It was forty minutes to midnight, and Alec knew where the guards would usually be positioned at this hour. He knew how many men there were, how many had come with Richard and how many had been stationed there before. He also knew that they had probably only this one night. On the next morning Richard would leave, and whether he planned to take Arata with him, Alec had not been able to find out.

“Coming…”, Aaron whispered to the emptiness of the car. For a second he found himself closing his eyes and sending a thought – maybe almost something like a prayer – that Arata was still there. That Akihito still wasn’t. Though in the end, he would not care, he promised himself. He would take the boy with him, either way.

Chapter Text

When they had been children, Maxim had sneaked into his bedroom like this, climbing across the broad stone balustrades of their little balcony’s and jumping across the gap in between. Back then it had already seemed saver to dare the physically dangerous way instead of the mentally, which had been to just step across the hallway though they had been confined to their rooms.

In the past a tiny, quiet tap on the window had alerted small Ryuichi of the brother outside, hiding behind the railing so none of the guards patrolling the grounds would spot him… and many of them very likely even hadn’t told anybody if indeed they had seen the boy up there. Each and every of them had been a child at some point, and as long as they could pretend not to have noticed anything, what harm was done?

Now Asami pulled open the window, sinking down next to it. There he had sat as a child, too, had allowed his brother to crawl through the opening and had pushed the glass-door shut again behind him.

And so, he did today, only that Maxim was not as quickly and good at crawling anymore. He grimaced for a moment, while the window was pushed shut, and winced a sharp breath out through his nose.

Because of his injury he had had to stop taking the climb and the leap. Because of his broken back he had as a matter of fact had to stop many things. And Asami had lain in his bed in the weeks and months after the accident, and had craved for that quiet, tiny tap on the window, knowing that it would not come. Not ever again.

Yet here it was! And while he watched his older brother overcome the hurt that still today tormented him, he closed his own eyes, cursing the stallion he had jumped onto out of his own mulishness, egoism and recklessness… No… he stopped that right away, then cursed himself. For his mistakes only others had paid the price. For his arrogance and his believe in his own infallibility and invulnerability he had never really suffered himself. Always others had: Maxim, Fei Long, Akihito.

He smashed his head backwards against the wall.

“That’s not going to help”, Maxim spoke quietly. He seemed tired and exhausted, his blue eyes dull and heavy – but still there was some spark in them, that looked kind of out of place with his brother.

Asami stared at the other man for a moment, then felt himself frown. “Why have you come?”, he asked, almost guessing what the other might answer. Still, he had to hear it from him directly, with his own words, to believe it to be true.

“We need to do something”, Maxim replied. He leaned backwards against the side of the bed and breathed very slowly and controlled as if he was still fighting with some pain.

‘But what?’, Asami wanted to ask, but didn’t. Of course, it was the truth! The time of sitting and waiting and hoping was over. Because with his father there had never been much hope in the first place. Not once before had Asami felt his own life slip through his fingers like this, like now: All the chances, all the hopes – they were thin and liquid as water and he did not know how to preserve them, no matter how fiercely his heart thumbed in his chest.

Yes! He needed to act. He had decided upon this, had known it to be the only way of even trying to go on. He could not just settle down and let it all rush past him, knowing that he would make it out alive, because whatever would be left of him on the other side of his father’s endgame, would not be worth a single breath.

In the warehouse they had almost died together, Akihito and him. He would have given his life back then if only he would have been able to protect the other. He would have been fine with finding his own end there. It might have been the only decent thing he had ever been capable of.

But they had lived, only to be separated again, not only by time but also by heart and soul. Yet if that was as it would be from now on, he’d rather return into the ruins and hope that Fei Long and Baishe never came. He would just lie there with Akihito in his arms until his blood had run cold, because with the other with him he would never be freezing. With Akihito by his side, he would have marched through hell, but even though he had promised the other that there was exactly where they would be going, he had not been prepared for purgatory.

If living to his father’s plan was all there was to come, then he did not want that life at all. Then he could try for the last – for the first time – to fight back and maybe at least safe somebody else.

He closed his eyes to marvel at the darkness for a moment. He could imagine Akihito’s face so vividly. His smile, his eyes. Many times before, he had feared that the light in his gaze might be dimmed by the darkness and danger his own world brought up against the other, yet Akihito had fought back. He had won. He had conquered. He had never, ever given up and had never backed down.

Time to finally become as brave as him!

Asami opened his eyes again and looked at his brother. “Guess it’s time for the ‘Ides of March’.”

Maxim nodded slowly. “Time to take the tyrant’s head.”

And then he reached beneath the thick woolen cardigan, that looked so much too warm for the lush Adriatic Coast evenings, and produced from the holsters he wore hidden beneath two Smith & Wesson M&P22 including silencers.

Asami allowed his breath to stream out across his lips slowly, gazing down at the two black guns. He took the one that was handed to him, checked the rounds, checked the setup, then nodded and felt a dangerous spark glowing up in his own eyes.

“Where is Akihito now?”

“As far as I could gather, he is still in his room. There is a guard in front, but it seemed that was all.”

“How many men are there?”

‘Numbers’, he thought. Numbers right now were their worst disadvantage, but he had been in situations like this before. And worse.

“Father brought 11 men, and there are 18 men stationed as security guards here.”

“Will they attack you? Or me?” After all, they were the boss’s sons!

Maxim shrugged and sighed. “For as long as they think there is an attack coming from outside, they might think that we’re not a threat. That we’re not… the rebels. But as soon as they figure out that we are going against father, or his orders, that will surely change. They’d very likely not kill us, probably try to not hurt us, except if there is some order by the old man. But our ‘luck’ will very likely not extend to anybody else, we’re trying to get out of here.”

With a slow nod, Asami rubbed a hand against his lips.

“What about the staff? Servants?”

“They are not trained nor supposed to use weapons. I don’t know if anybody of them is armed and they might of course take up a gun to defend themselves. But the household rule says that they are to gather in the kitchen and lock it from the inside, if ever there was some intrusion onto the grounds. And… of the men who are actually here as security, I don’t know if they’re all present. They have days off as well.”

Asami snickered to that. “Then let’s hope that some of them have gone for a night of leisure in the city.”

At worst it seemed that they were 2 against 29, plus their father of course. Not the best odds. Still not the worst.

“What about Fei Long?”, he took up the questions again.

Maxim shrugged once more. “I think he is still in father’s bedroom. Father has slept in my mother’s old room the last night and I believe he is staying there tonight as well. But…”, he broke off only for a moment and his face twitched before he continued: “He’ll leave tomorrow morning. And he’s taking Fei Long with him. They’re returning to the ‘Steel Raven’ and if they do, they’ll vanish, probably for months to come.”

That news had less effect on the younger than Maxim might have feared. He stared at the other as if he expected some outlash of anger because their planning was suddenly rushed so much. But actually, it didn’t matter. Either they did this now, or never.

“Well, maybe Rome wasn’t built in a day”, Asami answered, “but Caesar was killed within a few minutes.”

Maxim closed his eyes to that and drew in a sharp breath, yet when he looked at the other once more, there was no sign of resignation. On the contrary. His eyes seemed more vigilant now.

“So… how do we proceed?”, he asked lowering his voice even more.

“I guess you’ll be able to move more freely than me, so you should go ahead. See if you can get to father’s bed-“, Maxim interrupted, a pained expression sneaking across his face for a moment.

“Yuchi, I cannot carry anybody, that might still be drugged.”

That old nickname felt like a fist to the chest to Asami. He sucked on his lip, while he forced himself to exhale slowly instead of allowing the air to rush from his lungs as if they had collapsed.

He nodded then, when he felt able to. “Ok. Ok… you go and get Akihito-“

“He won’t trust me”, Maxim injected again.

“Neither will he trust me, I fear. Use the gun if you must, to make him come with you. Get to the garage or to a car outside. Then you go to the airport. Do not wait for me! As far as I know Fei Long’s private jet is still there and so is at least a cockpit crew if not some additional staff. And even if for whatever reason they have left, there is always a way to contact the ones responsible for filing the flight plan and for paying the bill and taxes. Tell Baishe what happened here and tell them to inform Yoh.”

“What if they don’t believe me.”

“I am very sure that if you tell them who you are… especially if you have Akihito with you, they will believe you. And if you tell them to call Yoh, even more so.”

“Who is that?”, Maxim asked, but Asami was already getting up. He did not feel like giving any long explanations now. Suddenly he felt like time was already running out. It wasn’t too long to midnight, midnight meant ‘tomorrow’, and tomorrow their chances would quickly start to perish.

“Good man. He’ll know what to do.”

He reached down with his hand, offering it to his brother, then helped him up.

“So, we are doing this?”, Maxim asked, yet still there was no doubt showing in his eyes now. They had both run far too long.

 “Yes”, Asami answered.

“Will you… go to father?”

A sigh… then he felt himself chuckle. “First of all, I will find Mikhail. If he learns what the old man is planning, what he did, then he’ll murder him with his own hands. I won’t even need to dirty my own on him.”

Maxim nodded to that, then shrugged, nonetheless. “I have tried to find out where Mikhail is, but it would have been too suspicious if I asked around. He is somewhere in the basement, and you know what that means.”

Yes, Asami did. The basement was fucking huge.

“If I had to keep someone down there, I would have put him into the maintenance parts, but that’s just… me. It’s just a hunch. I really don’t know. But someone will have to look for him now and then? Someone will have to know.”

“So, all I need is to find the right person who’ll talk to me.” Or, he mused to himself, just kill them all and then we would have enough time to just search every room.

That however was the harder way definitely. Because it meant, that he would have to do it all alone. Maxim would leave with Akihito and they would be safe, and Fei Long was very likely still unconscious. That left Asami to fight his way through. He could not help but chuckle again.

Then he reached out and offered his hand to his brother once more.

“Time to go.”

“Time to go”, the other answered, shaking his hand firmly. He turned towards the exit then. They had already decided that he would go first.

“I think I’ll play a little trick with the guard that is guarding your door”, the older smiled, grabbing the handle.

“Hey Max”, Asami spoke suddenly, his voice still quietly so it was not heard outside.

His brother turned around, and he continued: “Make sure I see you again. Alive.”

Chapter Text

All it took was enough pressure on the throat for enough time. A very simple equation. Throwing your arm from behind around the neck of an unsuspecting target, grabbing your own wrist and then pulling, pulling as hard as you could. It took about a minute at most. Then consciousness faded as well as the struggle to get free.

Lifelessly the man he had known for several months – had drunken with, had joked with – dropped to the floor and Alec stepped over him. He did not care one tiny bit.

Aaron came out of the large garage now and into the corridor that led underground directly into the basement. He kicked his food against the dead man’s head, just to be completely sure. Then he picked him up by the shoulders.

“What are you doing?”, Alec asked in a whisper, the dismissal in his voice ringing aloud, nonetheless.

“Making sure, we’re not caught even though we’re not spotted”, his brother grimaced back, then dragged the corpse back to the limousine with which they had come. He shoved it into the trunk, before he once more stepped through the exit into the long hallway.

It was silent down here, except for some very quiet humming of some generator in one of the adjacent rooms.

Guns at the ready, they started their stroll. All the walls and the ceiling down here were built from red bricks with grey gaps of mortar in between, while the floor was dark screed. On it their steps fell almost without the tiniest sound for as long as they remained slowly.

Sometimes doors, mostly out of steel, but some made of wood also, led into small rooms on both sides, which contained refrigerators and storages, equipment for repairs on the building, and large batches of tubes and pipes and cables, as well as parts of the heating system, the air conditioning and the water supply. None of that was the slightest bit interesting.

Quickly the hallway met another corridor that forked away from them.

Aaron stopped before entering it, and listened, moving his head slightly from one side to the other. There were some very faint noises, that reminded of the usual sounds of an inhabited house, yet they reached here from so far away and probably from one of the upper floors, that they seemed entirely meaningless.

Still holding his gun up close to his face, with both hands, index near to the trigger, Aaron jerked his chin down one of the hallways.

“So? That way?”, he asked.

“Yeah”, Alec answered. “Down to the third open staircase you find. There is one behind a door that is never used. It was built for the servants to be able to hide away from any lordly eyes. It’s very likely locked anyway. The first staircase only reaches the first floor. You need to go to the second floor. So: third up. You turn right. 2^nd door then on the right. There might be a guard, inside or outside.”

He had explained all that before. He had even drawn a stupid map, but the proportions had all been off and he had ripped it to shreds therefore while Aaron had grinned at him with spite.

“Where are you off to?”, now his brother asked, not sounding like he really cared. It was probably just to make sure they would not end up shooting each other.

“To the other direction”, Alec answered and now it was his smile that beheld the other with malice. “See you, Roro”, he snarked and walked off.

When he reached the near corner of the hallway, Aaron had already vanished down the other corridor.

On sneaky feet Alec kept walking, making his way to the most remote staircase on this side of the building. It led up past the private chambers of Maxim, from where it was not too far to those rooms which Richard’s occupied whenever he was here.

He did not make it far. At the last corner he stopped right in time, when he noticed a single man leaning against the wall down the corridor.

Nearly he had turned around to simply take the next staircase. After all, until now he very like could actually move freely throughout the building. All of the men knew him – those who had worked for Maxim here, as well as those who worked for Richard – and he had not been declared ‘persona-non-grata’ or he would never have made it through the gate. He would never have made it to the garage alive.

But… why was that man there, he started to wonder and paused. The smile on his face was suddenly back. He hid his gun, then walked down the hallway, waving from the distance once the other spotted him.

“Hey! Did not know you’re back. Maxim was looking for you the other day”, the man blared. His accent was an Italian though he did not look like it. He had greyish blonde hair and tiny green eyes.

“Ah, yeah, yeah”, Alec answered turning his wave into a lazy gesture.

“That was some kind of misunderstanding. I had met with the boss, but Maxim had been occupied and I had not found him, to tell him I was leaving. You know how he sometimes just hides in his rooms.”

“Yeah”, the other answered. He still leaned on the wall, next to one door. There were some broken pieces of pipes and metal bars on the ground.

“What’cha doing here? Disciplinary measures? Have you stolen some cake or cookies?”

“He he”, the other guy laughed, then hammered his fist against the door. The thud echoed through the hallway momentarily. “No. I’m guarding that Russian motherfucker. Though I doubt there’s gonna be much more from him. He rampaged a bit last night. Broke down the pipes here.”

With the tip of his shoe, he shoved the pipes next to him a bit further away. “Did not help him anyway of course.”

“Mikhail?”, Alec gasped and felt a spark lighten up his eyes so intensely, it seemed to brighten up the whole corridor. Oh, what fun!

“That’s the name.”

“Open the door!”.

“Nah”, the other shook his head and made a grimace. “Can’t. I’m to keep him in there, and others out. Order from the big boss. Guess he needs him for something.”

“Oh, come on!”, Alec laughed and raised his hands in utter innocence. “I just want to see him and maybe give him a little kick in the side. I have some score that needs settling with him.”

“No can do, sorry.”

“Pity”, Alec sighed, shrugged, then turned to show that he was leaving. The next moment he whirled around and chased a bullet through the other’s head. The silencer’s noise skid down the walls. It sounded very much like icicles crushing to the ground.

As a lifeless sack the dead man tumbled to the ground. Alec grabbed him by the shirt and pulled the cloth over his face to keep as much of the blood from spilling onto the floor. He did not want to leave a puddle that could be noticed. But he would care about that after he had his fun.

The key he found quickly, unlocked the door and pushed it open.

The room behind looked very much like a small cell. Yellow, damp light filled it and was nearly the only thing in there except for the brick walls… and the blonde man who sat slumped into a corner.

Alec dragged the dead man in and just let him fall to the ground. Then he walked over, his gun raised, his smile broad, his eyes sparkling.

“Looking good!”, he boomed at the other Russian. There was some movement in Mikhail’s chest and shoulders that proved that he was alive, yet he did not appear really healthy apart from that. Even before he had dragged in the dead man, there had been some traces of blood on the floor. Just a few drops, but well, at least that.

Mikhail sat in the corner of the room, only supported by the two walls. His hands lay unmoving on his lap and on his fingers blood had dried. His jeans and shirt were dirty and in the white fabric of the upper there were some more drops of red.

Alec knelt down in front of him, raised the muzzle of the silencer against the other’s forehead and pushed his head back against the wall to look at his face. There was no reaction. Mikhail’s eyelids were closed heavily, the pupils below unmoving.

‘Tzass!’, he made at the other. “That’s what you get for bad karma. You need to be a kind person, or it will come back at you. But no… you wanted to keep it all for yourself”, Alec chimed, shaking his head mockingly.

“I mean, was it asked so much to be generous for once? You know that bitch would certainly have liked to ride my dick for a change. But no, no, you wanted it all for yourself. And that’s when I would have been absolutely fine to share with you! You could have fucked him first, while he sucked my cock, and then we could have taken turns. And…”, he broke off chuckling and pushed the gun another time against the other man’s forehead. No reaction. Slowly he dragged it down the side of Mikhail’s face, down the throat, down the shoulder, down the arm. “And in the end, we could have rammed both our cock’s up his cunt and I’m sure he would have loved that. But you were so stingy.”

With a shrug, he looked at the other for another long moment. Then he tapped the side of the gun against Mikhail’s shoulder as if he wanted to comfort him. He even leaned in a bit, to speak in a confident whisper.

“I promise, he’ll get over your death quickly, once he’s feeling me inside.”

A loud laugh… but it caught in his throat, when there was some quick motion. Alec jerked away, tore the gun around, but hit an iron wrist that was suddenly in his.

‘Just shoot!’, he told himself and his index finger slipped onto the trigger.

He flinched before he could pull. Flinched when something stung him in the side of his throat.

The gun was ripped from his hand the next moment, but he did not feel interested in that right now. Instead, he grappled with his fingers at his neck, finding something that felt very much like the head ring of a key had been sticked to it… No, like it was protruding out of it.

He pushed himself backwards, grinding his teeth, one hand now covering the small, round metal piece. Blue eyes gleamed at him. The gun shimmered in the damp yellow light.

Hardly feeling his limps Alec scrambled onto his feet and – more falling forward then running – he stumbled from the room into the corridor.

‘KSCH!’, ‘KSCH!’, he heard the silencer ringing behind him. The impact of the bullets against the door was not as quiet.

Chapter Text

The crickets had stopped their song like they always did at some time around midnight. Just as if one of them gave a signall to all the others and they fell silent the next moment.

After that the night seemed suddenly much thicker.

His foot was not chained to the bedpost anymore and he was allowed to move about the room. Freedom… in a way. It meant he could stand in front of the window and stare outside for hours if he wanted to.

Right now, he indeed felt like it. He couldn’t sleep. Probably because he had just laid there too long.

For days he had craved to rush over to the window, open it and climb outside. He had in fact tried once. In this moment however he only dragged his fingers slowly along the lower frame.

He wanted to get out still, of course. But he was so confused…

‘Five months it had been’, that they had told him. Five months since he had been taken from a hospital in Hong Kong. No… not taken. Kidnapped! Or… wasn’t he?

Asami said they had been lovers. He had told him that he had marched into some warehouse to protect the other, that they had both been hurt and had hardly survived. But how could he tell if there was any truth in this?

The man had locked him into walk-in-closet, then into this room. He had tied him to the bed, and his father had made him strip and… and show…

He shuddered from the thought.

Others had tossed him into a cell as well, but one much darker, much colder, much grimmer. He had hurt for so many days that time had become meaningless altogether. Had that only been a few months? Had it really been so long? He did not even know how to think about time anymore.

Aaron had taken him out of there. Out of the hard, grey cell. He had brought him to the apartment in Warsaw but that one he had not been allowed to leave neither. Aaron had said that they had once worked together to bring down Asami Ryuichi, but that he had been caught and brainwashed and raped, until Arata had believed that his name Akihito.

Yet that name felt so real right now. When he whispered it, when he had heard it spoken out load at first, he had felt like it was a curse. Some dangerous incantation to be afraid of. The tiny hairs all over his body had stood on end right away, his breathing had become shallow, his stomach tingling. But by now that did not happen anymore.

Today he could speak both names ‘Arata’, ‘Akihito’, and they both felt real. And they both felt like a lie.

He just could not tell.

Pushing his hands onto the windowsill he leaned forward until his forehead touched the cold glass. His shoulders started to tremble, when the tears rushed up into his eyes. He could not keep them inside. If only they could rinse away the lies so that he could finally see the truth. He did not even demand to remember it all. He simply, only wished for the knowledge what was verity, and what was not, because the worst of all cells he had ever been in was that of ignorance and doubt.

All he wanted was to know who was telling the truth. Whom he could really trust, so he could finally stop feeling so lost. It was like he was still lying on the cold concrete floor in his grey cell, wondering if he had been forgotten. Wondering if beyond the steel door anything still existed.

He jumped, when there was a heavy thud on the door. Holding his breath, he listened. There were some muffled sounds outsides. It sounded like somebody rubbed against the wood or the wall – something bigger than a cat. Then there were steps, vanishing first, coming back a moment later. The door was unlocked, somebody stepped inside, hidden from Arata who had not switched on the light, as that would have turned the nightly gardens behind the window almost invisible.

Leaning against the door the tall person closed the exit again, then searched for the light switch.

Arata fell onto his knees to hide behind the bed, the second before brightness filled the room. Only with one blinking eye he peeked beyond the sheets.

It was the blonde man with glasses, that looked so much like Asami. He was… his brother or something, Arata had gathered.

“Hey”, the man spoke in a quiet hush and slowly. He had spotted the boy behind the bed already. “I need you to come with me. We’re leaving. This place is not safe anymore.”

‘We’re leaving now. I am taking you out of here, but I need you to be quiet. If they catch us, I might not be able to protect you. I don’t know what they might do to you. Or to me’, that was what Aaron had said in the darkness of his cell. The situation could not be any more different.

Hard, greyish, hurting concrete there, parquet and cushions and velvety curtains here. Both men were blonde, but Aaron had that scar on his face and those tattoos on his body and those bright eyes. This one was dressed in a woolen cardigan and corduroy trousers, and behind his glasses his eyes were a dark blue.

“Where?”, Arata asked, raising his head a bit. Where did that man now want to take him? And why did he want to take him away.

“It is not safe here anymore. I cannot explain now. Ryuichi will tell you later.”

“Ah”, he heard himself say, but it sounded more like a gasp for air. So Asami was behind this as well. If he got with this man now, he did not get away from Asami Ryuichi then… or was it a trap? Or was that man lying as well?

Arata let his head fall against the bed and could not fight the sob that made it through his throat again. He couldn’t take any lies anymore. He did not know how to go on with all the doubt. Hardly he managed to get onto his feet because right now he wasn’t sure he could trust them.

“Please”, the blonde man spoke softly, yet he looked nervous and hasty. With one hand he beckoned the boy over.

“We need to be quiet and quick. We get outside, get into a car and leave. Ryuichi will meet us later.”

After switching off the light again, the other cautiously opened the door and looked outside, up and down the corridor. Sneakily he stepped outside, but only so far that he could still see the other, when he turned back again.

“Please. We need to hurry.”

Halfway across the room Arata stopped. A sob again, another gaps for air. Then he walked on, his own feet hardly hitting the floor, his vision wet from the tears that had caught in his eyes.

He just wished for it all to stop. His head was spinning, his mind was clawing at the insides of his skull.

Was this man friend or foe?

He stood in the hallway now which was dark and lonely, as if the spell of the crickets had commanded silence in here as well.

What of Asami Ryuichi? Friend or Foe? Or the Chinese? Or that other man… Asami’s father?

A faint noise somewhere made both of them freeze. Arata wrapped his arms around his own body so tightly, he was sure to strangle himself if he did not watch himself.

The other man put one finger in front of his lips, then reached beneath his cardigan and brought forward a gun with a long silence. The weapon was so black that it seemed to be a part of the nightly shadows itself.

‘What about Aaron?’, he found himself wonder. ‘Friend or foe?’

He did not know. He could not tell. He had no idea if he was walking into the next cell, into the next lie, into the next trap. All he knew was that he could not take it any longer. He pulled his arms even closer, but then suddenly he could not breath anymore. His chest squeezed in on him and even though his lungs strained for air, he could not inhale.

The blond man did not seem to observe any of that in the darkness. He turned around to Arata so that the little light that made it from the garden through the bedroom into the hallway illuminated his face. In the dimness he looked so very much like Asami Ryuichi.

“What are you doing?”, he asked and raised one hand towards the other. “Hurry up Akihito.”

Then there was air all of a sudden. Too much! It flooded his lungs in one massive wave, it made his blood boil and sear through his veins. A sharp pain shot through his skull like a flash of lightning had struck him.

“Who is there?”, someone asked through the shadows and the blonde man spun around, aiming his gun. The boy however did not move. He still saw that gesture, still saw that face, still heard those words.

Right now, he was in front of a large, white building with broken windows in the night of Hong Kong, between Jeeps and Vans and armored men, and the bulletproof vest was tight and heavy on his torso.

‘Ksch!’, the sound shot around him, yet he hardly noticed it.

In Hong Kong he raised his hand and grabbed Asami’s. “Anywhere you go, I’ll go too, even to hell”, he promised – and he spoke into the darkened hallway, where a shot fired from an unsilenced gun echoed next.

It tossed him back into today, when the blonde man bellowed: “Get back into the room!”

But he did not! That was Arata’s room. It was as unreal as him. Spinning around on the spot, he dashed away through the darkness, away from his cell, away from the lies… and now, that he had found himself, to look for Asami.

Chapter Text

The little birds had flown.

A constant ‘beep’ told him that somewhere else in the building a telephone kept ringing. Several indeed. He was calling the private rooms of Maxim and usually his son would never have left a call reaching him there unanswered, no matter the hour – because hardly anybody knew the combination of numbers to reach this place in the first hand, and no one who did, ever dared to use it if it was not very, very important.

Now however, Maxim was obviously keen on playing rebellious child, presumably together with his younger brother.

Richard quit the phone call and answered an incoming one the next moment.

“Yes?”, he spoke with a measured tone and calm voice.

“He is not here, Sir. The guard is dead. Headshot. Seems he was killed in the doorframe and dragged inside after.”

“Thank you”, with that he hung up, yet he kept the phone in his hand, just in case anybody else of his men wanted to inform him of some more news.

‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’, as far as that century-old idiom held any truth, he obviously had been sparing his boys too much, indeed. And that when he had thought that he had been very clear with his threats and announcements.

He stood in his bedroom right now, unimpressed by the dead man on the carpet whose eyes seemed to have nearly popped out because of his pre-exitus attempts to claw his larynx out of his throat again.

“Send someone down to the gate. Make sure no one leaves”, he ordered the first man, without the slightest hint of emotion in his voice.

“Switch off the lights”, he told the second.

Both left right away, their heavy steps vanished quickly down the hallways.

“The lights, Sir?”, Quentin asked, a tall, dark shadow at his side and the only one left here with him now.

“Well, obviously they do not mind killing my men… but what if my dear sons shot any of their friends by mistake? Also… I do not feel of making the flight easy for them. You know me: I am always happy to add the element of surprise for others, and to throw some bricks in their ways.”

Of course, it was possible that in the chaos induced by the lack of light, his children came to harm as well, but he just could not manage to make himself worry about that. At this point it seemed to be collateral damage. They had chosen to play with fire, and he would give them an inferno.

Still, certainly he preferred them all back in his hands, and alive. All his hostages! He had been too kind, too benevolent. He would change…

“Quentin”, he spoke softly, turning around to his right-hand man.

“Yes, Sir?”

“I want them found. All of them.”

The tall, dark man nodded firmly. “Yes, Sir.” Then he turned, to fulfill his duty, when Richard’s eyes fixed upon the golden gown again, now lying on the floor, where it had been tossed to cover the dead man.

“And Quentin”, his call made the other stop at once and look around.

“Yes, Sir?”

“Don’t hit the Chinese in the face. I want him to be pretty when he gets his punishment.”

Chapter Text

When the lights went out, he stopped, one foot in the air. He listened to the steps rushing further down the corridor, to the hoarse panting of the other man, just to have some kind of notion where he had run off to. Then he allowed himself to lean sideways against the wall and close his eyes for a moment.

His whole body hurt like hell; despite the addicting painkillers he had gobbled down. He felt like cursing, but that was a waste of energy and air.

For hours his goalers had left him lying on the floor, while his consciousness had drifted in and out a few times. Once, the only thing he had been capable of, had been to roll onto his side and spare a look at the chaos he had dished up. Around him had lain several broken and deformed pieces of metal, mostly old pipes, the insides crusted with lime and rust, yet they seemingly had not been in use for a long time. Some other debris had come down as well and got stuck in between: hose clamps and iron rods, thick pieces of wire and long steel girders, screws and nuts and dowels, and even some parts of the mortar from the ceiling.

With the little receptiveness he had been able to muster, he had grabbed at the pieces, searching for anything that seemed useful. In the end, he had kept a piece of old, almost black wire. It was as thick as a toothpick. In its midst it had been formed into an ‘o’ and both ends had been twirled around each other. Probably this had been used as a surrogate for a missing clamp… maybe as a provisional measure, that had never been replaced. For a minute Mikhail had tried to unwind the two strands, yet then he had lost his ambition – and strength. Actually, it was fine as it was anyway: pretty small, very sturdy and very sharp on the end.

He had pushed the ‘o’ under the strap of his watch, turning the dangerous edge sideways so he did not sever his own wrist’s artery by an unlucky movement. Then he had passed out again.

Knowing that he was dreaming, he had found himself walking down a long, bleak corridor with shadowy figures rushing around in it. He had heard voices, too, calling for him: his father’s, his mother’s, Yuri’s. He had also heard the unique cracking sound a whip made when it hit on flesh. The legs in his dream had carried him on, passing by the other creatures that wandered down there in the dark with him, and they had finally managed to lead him to the light: it was a staircase leading upwards for maybe a hundred steps, and down from there shone a warm, beautiful light.

One foot moved onto the first step without him doing anything, but he called it back, like he had called back the little dog he had had as a child. He could not walk up there now. He could not ascend into safety and out of the darkness. Instead, he turned around. “Fei Long!”, he called, then rushed back between the shadows.

In the following hours, he had come back to and passed out again several times, and the time announced by his watch had been the only thing that had got him any bearing on how long he had lain there. At some point the relics of his rampage had been tossed outside and someone had kicked him. Somewhen else he had been brought an empty, iron bucket and he had guessed what it was meant for. Then once there was place another bucket, now with water, and some sandwiches. Not that he felt any hunger. Not that he had known how to move and grab one…

It hadn’t been until noon of the next day that someone took a closer look at him and pulled him upright. That guy smacked his cheeks lightly a few times, until Mikhail realized that he was not dreaming but indeed awake.

“What?… fuck…”, he had whispered. His back had hurt as if it was being torn apart at the very moment. As if someone was smashing a sledgehammer into it.

“You not dying?”, the man had asked, his eyes dark and lively, his accent Indian. “You better not die! Only trouble for everyone. You better eat. And here:”, with that the other one had grabbed Mikhail’s hand and had pushed a small plastic can into it, closing his fingers around it. Then he had left.

For how long he had then just sat there, not knowing whether he was still awake or not, he had not been able to tell. The next time, consciousness had come back, he had lifted that small can up towards his eyes – because moving his neck hurt much more than raising his arm – and had looked at it. ‘Morphine Sulfate, 200mg’ stood written on it.

‘How attentive!’, he had thought, had ripped the can open and swallowed two of the little blue pills, scooping up some water from the bucket that had been shoved near to him, to swallow them.

Indeed, the next time, he had awoken, there had been less pain. He had been able to eat the sandwiches that did not look as appetizing as they probably had when they had been left here for him. Then he downed another two of the blue pills, aware that he was definitely crossing the maximum dose with this – and that this stuff was addictive.

By now it had been a day since he had been put in here, and he knew that he needed to do something. Anything! But what? And how? He was not even sure he could get onto his feet. Not if he did not manage to make the dreadful agony of his back stop for at least a short time. Maybe there was something broken – hopefully just some rib – but as far as he could tell he could feel all his fingers and toes, and could move them, too. It could not be too bad after all… if only the fucking ache stopped!

In the end, he had swallowed another blue pill, and had closed his eyes again, concentrating if there was any way he could by slight motions help his body get rid of some of the pain.

When the door had been thrown open, he had not moved, had ignored the slurping sounds, no matter how curious they had made him. The most effort he had had to put into making his visitor believe he was still out, he had however had to muster, when Alec had started to talk his… heresy!

He had waited, forcing his eyes to stare ahead into the black nothingness behind his lids, so his irises would not be moving; breathing slowly, not flinching, not twitching, until the other was close enough.

Sadly, he had not hit him in a deadly spot. The vein in the throat – if only he had gotten the wire into that, then Alec would have drowned in his own blood within a minute. Yet bloody the injury was, nonetheless.

Twice he had fired the gun at the back of the fleeing man though he had not hit him. Sadly, again. Hissing through his gritted teeth he had managed to get onto his feet. The pain was still there but dulled a lot by the tiny blue capsules. He had pushed the can into his pocket, then had searched the dead man – the slurping sound from before, when Alec had dragged him inside – and had found another gun. That one went into his belt.

Outside of the room he had found the piece wire on the ground and had thought for a moment, to pick it up and keep it as a lucky charm. Instead, he had started to follow Alec. He could come back later for his self-made weapon – after all, if he bowed down right now, he probably would never get back up again.

Blood was on the floor, and a lot, even though he had missed the deadliest spot. It had probably been a rather stupid idea of Alec to rip the metal out of himself. It might have kept the wound sealed.

Now he was not only bleeding severely, he was also leaving a pretty obvious trail on the floor.

One, that only vanished when the lights went out.

Mikhail sighed heavily but picked himself off from the wall he had leaned against quickly. That position had made some ache in his back return.

Maxim’s pedantry proved beneficial now as well. There were some green exit lamps here and there that still provided the basement with a bit of light – the only left. In it the drops of blood were black and rather hard to spot on the screed floor, but Mikhail followed them only slowly and quietly anyway.

He was gradually getting the feeling that him and Alec weren’t the only ones awake in the vast building… not even the only ones down here. Several times he stopped and cut his breath to listen intently into the distance of the corridors around and the stairways that led up and away. They could not be compared to the ones glowing in golden light in his dream, but there was some brightness coming down, presumably the bit of moon- and starshine that permeated through the windows and into the mansion.

A sudden movement ahead made him shove himself against the wall again. He raised the gun Alec had left him with in his generosity, squinting into the darkness. He could not even tell, if it had been ten steps ahead, or fifty.

“Hey?”, he whispered, barely loud enough to hear it himself.

‘Something was going on’, his instincts told him. The mansion was too noisy, filled with what sounded like far away sneaking and distant murmur, while it was too quiet still to be awake. It felt like the whole estate had turned into a labyrinth of hide and sick, cat and mouse, and he was not really sure which of those he was.

He had a gun, that was an advantage, probably. But then again, Maxim’s men were armed as well, so were Alec and Asami, and his ‘mudak’* of a father.

  And his greatest disadvantage – apart from the fact that he might have shattered his spine into twenty pieces – was that he had absolutely no fucking idea of where he was and where to go. The only goal right now: Alec. The only way: to follow the droplets on the floor.

When no other movement had shown in the distance again, and he was sure that no sound was really close, he started walking once more, step by step, foot by foot, keeping an eye on all the forks and crossings and doors.

He reached another intersection with a flight of stairs to his right and a dead end ahead. Moving along the wall, he pushed himself forward, making sure that he saw first before he was seen, yet for the gun, he carried at the ready, that had not worked.

It was grabbed suddenly. He ripped it away and the motion made him stumbled hard into Alec.

“Fuck!”, the other Russian yelled.

‘Ksch!’, made the silencer, when the other hands squeezed Mikhail’s finger onto the trigger. The bullet hit the ceiling with a loud ‘bang!’, mortar and stone dust rained down onto them. In the little light coming down the staircase and hailing from the small green emergency exit sign Alec’s eyes seemed black, just like the flood of blood that had streamed down the side of his throat and over his shoulder.

“Fuck you!”, he screamed in a hoarse, straining voice.

There were footsteps suddenly, running, somewhere nearby. Probably not anybody friendly, Mikhail imagined, estimating the number of people presumably still around. He shoved the other man off himself so hard, that he was sure he just broke another of his ribs. For a few seconds the pain made it impossible for him to breathe, but he run nonetheless, down the corridor he had come from.

He did not get far, when the stitching in his side and the straining of his lungs forced him to slow down. Then something smashed into him from behind. He was thrown to the floor, hit it once again with his whole weight, feeling as if his bones where shattered like a porcelain doll would on a stone floor.

This time he could not silence the scream of agony. He slammed his fists around despite all, rolled over and found Alec on top of himself. The other man grabbed the gun with one iron grip, Mikhail’s throat with the other and thumbed his head violently onto the floor.

The man on top shouted something that Mikhail could not hear, because for a few seconds there was no sound, then he kicked the other, tore at the gun, pushed it upwards, while Alec tried to wrangle it form his fist. Another kick. Another shove of Alec’s full body weight against the weapon to win it over, to turn the muzzle a bit.

Another kick and Mikhail had thrown the other off, yet the gun slipped in his fingers.

‘Ksch!’, the silencer went once.

“Fuck you!”, Alec barked, slammed his elbow onto Mikhail’s cheekbone and tore at the gun another time.

‘Ksch!’

Then silence.

Chapter Text

His march through the building had been a real waltz. Alec’s descriptions had led him sure and without any problems along the dim corridors, and the two men he had killed had never even spotted him – the first had gotten his punishment for relaxing on an antique bench and not taking his job seriously; the second for being too curious about the sound of the silencer.

Then he sat foot onto the upper floor and approached the room he was heading for, when he saw in the distance how the door was opened and how a grey shimmer painted the doorframe’s outlines onto the parquet. Two figures stepped outside cautiously, one tall, one smaller. ‘Arata!’, he knew right away.

He stopped, grabbed his gun firmly, raised it towards the taller person so far away, and only then did he notice that the three of them weren’t alone. There was another man in the shadows between them.

“Who is there?”, that one barked towards the other two. No answer. There was hectic whispering instead, before the wheeze of another suppressed gun soared along the walls. It was answered right away by the figure in between shooting back, his weapon so much loader. The muzzle light flashed in the darkness and made Aaron blind for a second. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shove the dazzle away – and heard in all the noise how someone ran. A quick glance at the first instant his eyes saw clearly again confirmed that it was the boy. He had run off.

Aaron hissed at himself, then darted around and away from the two men still between himself and the one he had come for. They both were still shooting at each other, while one of them was calling for… ‘Akihito’ to come back.

‘No!’, Aaron gritted his teeth to keep himself from yelling, when he rushed down the next fly of stairs to catch up with the boy on the lower floor. But was he here? Had he run this way? Or another?

He shot another two men who stumbled across his path, not caring who they were, only making sure they were not the one he was after.

Then the lights went out and he was suddenly blind again – even though in these parts there hadn’t been much light before anyway except for what had fallen through the windows from the garden.

Sightlessness and irritation made him stop dead in his tracks. He panted but tried to remain as quiet as possible for now only his ears could help him know if anybody was around.

So much talk and planning for nothing! It would have bugged him, because he as a matter of fact liked to walk into whatever danger came his way well-prepared. Even if he was not afraid of surprises, only an idiot did not try to get as much and as detailed information as possible. And he was a fucking professional! The simple reason why this all kind of amused him – or at least would have if he had not felt preoccupied with other thoughts – was that it once more proofed the needlessness of fancy words. Yet his brother had never stopped in his posh descriptions and speculations when they had been planning.

Very likely by now even for Alec any joy in fancy talk had run out.

Despite the quiet that still hung inside the mansion mainly, it was impossible to not realize what was going on: There was too much background noise that kept interrupting the quiet ever so slightly. Sometimes from afar, sometimes from somewhat closer shots could now be heard frequently. Occasionally a shout echoed in between through the dark hallways like a stray bird that was searching for a way out, and footsteps, sometimes sneaking, sometimes halting abruptly to not give themselves away, sometimes running hammered like a faint beat beneath it all.

Aaron hurried down corridor after corridor, dodged into corners and doorways whenever he was not sure if there might be a danger lurking nearby that one man wouldn’t be able to handle easily, then he almost stumbled across one of the men he had shot dead before. It was the curious one, laying face down in a puddle of his own blood, and Aaron almost had passed him, when he saw the motion in the edge of his eye. He whirled around, gun at the ready, finger on the trigger.

Arata had knelt above the other, probably searching for a weapon… Oh! Indeed, searching for a weapon! Shoving himself backwards and away from the corpse and the man aiming at him, the boy raised the gun. Huge eyes stared up at Aaron, in which the dim moonlight that permeated through a large window got caught and reflected.

Moving his free hand slowly through the air, Aaron tried to signal the other that he meant no harm – even though it was a lie of course if this was not Arata anymore. He licked his lips and promised this much to himself: He had come for Arata, not for the other. If this was Akihito again, then he would just shoot the boy. After all, that was the best punishment for Ryuichi Asami he could imagine.

“I’m here to get you out”, he tried, whispering distinctly and measuredly.

Two hands now grabbed at the gun opposing him which seemed pretty large in those tiny fingers. The moonlight was already swimming in some wetness that was brimming in the boy’s huge eyes.

“I’m here to take you to safety.”

“Like you did in the other cellar? Or like you did in the hospital?”, the young man shrieked back.

‘Ah!’, Aaron’s mind made very loudly. It felt like the hammer of a judge had crushed onto his desc.

Nonetheless, he caught himself whispering: “Arata...”

“No!”, the boy hissed back. The wetness in his eyes was suddenly gone. They lightened up furiously – as if rage had instantly burned the tears away. Then he jerked the gun upwards, his finger’s twitched –

Aaron leapt aside. The shot rang so loudly around him it made his ears shriek in horror, then he lashed out and the weapon that had tried to pierce him with a salvo skid across the floor.

“No!”, Akihito yelled. He struck back. A sharp blow crashed into Aarons knee, he stumbled and smashed his kneecap into the ground. Again, he gritted his teeth but this time in agony.

But a second later he was up, caught up with the boy that had tried to weasel away from him. He grabbed him, then smacked him across the face with the knuckles of the fist he had closed around the gun.

The young man fell backwards against the wall, skid down on it and hit the floor with a thud. For a few moments he winced at the pain and the disorientation that blow had to have caused him. Then he looked up again, his eyes angry and hateful, his lip bleeding.

Violently his chest heaved, probably less from the effort to flee than from the rage inside him.

Aaron felt an evil, cold knot form in his stomach. He raised the gun, he aimed, he looked for a last time into those huge eyes staring up at him. The trigger was hard and obedient at his finger.

‘Pull!’, he told himself.

It was just a twitch that was necessary.

‘Shoot!’

His fingertip quivered on the tiny lever.

Akihito sobbed for air staring up at the other man, fixating him still, his eyes alive with spite.

Aaron shook his hand with the gun to relax it, then raised it again, aimed, felt the trigger, flexed his muscles, but the only thing that twitched was something in his face.

It was some muffled talk down one of the hallways, that made him finally move again. He turned his head just a tiny notch, not ripping his eyes from the other ones. Like that he listened. Not a word he could understand, but a second later he knew already that the people whispering to each other were approaching, hurriedly, angrily.

He swallowed back some bile that wanted to sour his insides.

“Get the gun!”, he snarled at the boy, and jerking his head into the other direction where the weapon the other had found and lost so easily still lay. “Get the gun and get out of here!”

Akihito’s face darkened. For a second it became red and furious, but then he tore himself away, scrambled across the floor and snatched the weapon back up. He turned with it in his grasp and raised it up, aiming once more. A sharp wheeze shot out between his teeth but got interrupted by steps somewhere near and very loud now.

“Run!”, Aaron yelled at him, then dashed around to get rid of whoever was coming.

Chapter Text

Blood soiled his knuckles, though it was not his own. His fist hurt, yes, but he was pretty sure the other man hurt more by far. That one spat out now, splattering the ground with even more blood.

“Where is he?”, Asami growled again, grabbing the man above whom he knelt at the collar of his vest. He was one of his father’s guards – he could tell not only because he had been able to get a good glimpse of those figures working for Maxim in the recent months, but also because this guy adhered to the laws of his old man, who had always fancied uniform-like attire for the intimidation it caused in others. His victim was dressed all in black – army pants, long sleeve and vest.

“I don’t know”, the one on the ground panted through broken front teeth.

Asami raised his right fist again.

“Wait!”, another spat. “Wait! Fuck! The basement! Basement!”

“I fucking know that!”, he hissed and drew his arm upwards even further. Droplets of blood trickled down from his knuckles. “Where in the basement?”

“Somewhere… maintenance, right wing…”, he broke off with a croak of pain.

Maxim had recommended the same area, but that was not as helpful as it might seem. The building was too fucking huge, the basement a labyrinth of parallel corridors and intersections that all looked the same. There was a board game for children that formed a maze out of some fixed and some moving pieces, in which each player had to get a treasure, while the others around tried to close off the paths to his goal by shoving the pieces around on the board.

Of course, the walls did not actually move down there, but the many staircases and doors and dead ends would be filled with his father’s men soon enough – and those of Maxim who decided to follow the orders of the old man instead of those from the man they had been serving under recently. If at some point the instruction came from Richard Asami to end even his children, both his sons could probably not judge for whom the troops that had been stationed here in the mansion would opt. Maybe some of them might choose to stay on Maxim’s sides, but there was no way of foreseeing this.

Already something was going on, Asami knew, since the lights had gone out. Very likely his father had been informed of his or Maxim’s flight. Or… the other had screwed up.

Asami had to keep himself from closing his eyes for a second in a sudden urge of despair. These recent days had gotten to him like nothing had ever before. For a long while he had not been in control of himself. It had felt as if he had been thrown into a bleak dungeon, disconnected from the world. Knowing that pretty likely Akihito had indeed been in such a place had helped him climb out again. That… and Fei Long.

But the latter had to wait now. He needed to find Mikhail first, because as far as the calculations of Maxim were anywhere near to reality, they were still two against about 30. And if his brother did as Asami had asked of him, then he would leave with Akihito for safety as soon as possible. However, that of course would leave him all alone. Yet somewhere in the goddamn basement, Mikhail Arbatov was – and very likely in a very sour mood. One that would only get worse, once he was informed about the old man’s plans.

‘One after the other!’, he reminded himself, then dragged the men beneath him around, tore his arms onto his back and broke both of them. The sound of old, thick wood being ripped apart hit the ceiling and the walls as a flat noise but did not make it outside. Neither did the hoarse shriek that was muffled the next second by strong hands clapped onto the victim’s mouth. Asami had shoved the man into one of the living rooms and had locked the door behind them, to not get found by anybody else.

His brother’s cats sat on one of the armchairs and wondered about what was going on – yet did not really seem to care.

“You stay here in this room and don’t make a noise. Maybe then no one will feel the need to kill you. And once this is over and the right people are still alive, you might actually make it out of here alive as well”, he gnarled into the other man’s ear, then took his gun and marched towards the door.

All three cats jumped from the chair and followed him, but when he was sure there was no danger outside and stepped into the shadows, they fell back.

Putting a finger across his lips he signaled them to be quiet, then closed the door between himself and them.

He hurried down one of the rear corridors that was very seldomly used. Mostly the servants could be met here, but right now they were supposed to be hiding in the kitchen – if they had realized what was going on in the building.

Down a staircase Asami sneaked, around a corner, and ran promptly into another man. A silver gun blinked in the light of an emergency exit sign. The sound of the shot was deafening. Blind for a second from the reflex to close his eyes, Asami lashed out for the weapon nonetheless with one arm. It clattered across the floor an instant later. There was a loud curse, then he was pushed against the wall and his breath was squeezed out of his lungs. His own gun wheezed the silencer’s curse towards the ceiling.

Then he saw again and dashed after the running figure right away.

Curses again. And again. The man veered off whenever there was some intersection or fork, and still Asami had almost caught up. Another corner, only a few steps between them – then a loud ‘whack’ and he had to jump away from the body coming back at him. It hit the floor with the very sound a sack of potatoes made and did not move again. Though that was not the problem right now anyway – but the reason why that man had come flying.

Asami whirled around the corner and did not even get to raise his gun halfway when he was already staring into a muzzle. Just as fast the offending weapon had been pointed at him, as rapidly was it lowered again, and he allowed his own to sink with a sigh.

“What the fuck?”

There were some people he would always recognize even if all light that was left was a vain, grey shimmer from a window on the upper floor.

“I’m sorry?”, Fei Long replied advancing a few steps.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Sorry, did I interfere with some of your plans?”

The Chinese frowned up at him and there was it again: that tiny, nasty bit inside of him that wanted to make a point of how little he liked the other and of how he did not care about him at all. This time it expired as quickly as the feeble flame of matchstick in a stormy night.

“Are you alright?”, he asked the other.

The obvious sound of concern in his voice made Fei Long blink.

“No”, he answered after a moment and sighed. “I’m a bit dizzy and disorientated. And I’m… hurting as if I’ve got a fever.”

Asami did not know why, only that he could not stop himself: he raised one hand and laid the back of his fingers against Fei Long’s forehead. The Chinese flinched, but did not pull away.

“Nah, no fever. Probably only a side effect of the drugs… or the withdrawal.”

His abs tensed as he had to fight against a sudden rush of rage. It wanted him to slam his fist into the next wall just to get rid of some of the fury, but that kind of vent never helped. And he’d rather kept it in until he met his father.

“You… Maxim is getting Akihito. They’re leaving then, going to the airport to inform Baishe – “, Fei Long cut his words short.

“I have already.” Out of a pocket he took a mobile phone that was showing a black screen with some white markings on its sides. “The guy who was ‘guarding’ me was watching some live broadcast. It seems the app keeps the phone from going into locked mode for as long as it’s on. I called Yoh.”

Asami couldn’t help himself but snicker quietly for a tiny moment, but then he grabbed Fei Long at the arm and dragged him over towards the next fly of stairs.

“You should go as well. Get into one of the cars, or just leave the premises, and-“

“I’m not leaving without Mikhail”, the other shot back, his voice and eyes not allowing any contradiction or doubt.

With a grimace Asami nodded to that. He had expected nothing else.

“Where is he?”, Fei Long added and already his expression was not as certain anymore. He seemed worried.

“I don’t know. Somewhe-“

With another jerk on Fei Long’s arm, he pulled him over to the wall and ducked against it. There was movement somewhere, and close!

“Come on!”, he hissed and pulled the Chinese with him, down the direction he had come from initially. They were running after a few steps from gunshots of which they could not even tell if they were meant for them. Sometimes they were far away, sometime just right next to them. Once Asami jumped across something on the floor, without knowing what it was, then he ducked behind another corner. He fired his own gun into the darkness beneath the ceiling to not hurt anybody who was not actually an enemy.

When a bulled finally ripped across his shoulder he fell backwards and slammed into the floor.

Grey moonlight shone down upon him. He pushed himself further into the corner, raised his gun and waited for whomever had shot at him to walk into the opening ahead.

“Fei Long?”, he snarled and realized that he had no idea if they might have gotten separated at some point. There had been parts in which they had just been able to run straight ahead by moving with one hand along the walls. Again, and again Asami had been blinded or deafened by shots, had dived away and fired back.

“Fei!”, he growled once more. But there was no answer. And whoever had managed to wound him never walked into his view. Very likely that one had lost orientation as well.

Still, he kept lying there, gun at the ready, aiming to where a head would appear approximately. He had to force himself to get up again finally, then decided to take the upper floor for a while. Down there it was not even a mace anymore. It was a flight through the dark. He would not archive anything there.

On the first floor however, things weren’t really better. There was a bit less darkness, but in the little light the tiny drops of blood that had run down his arm and dripped from his fingers could be seen easily on the floor. And certainly, right away he heard steps behind him which pretty likely followed the trace.

“Fuck!”, he cursed voicelessly, then disappeared into another one of those living rooms – bookshelves, desks, tables, armchairs, fireplace, an antique globe. For a tiny moment he thought there had been a movement. One of the cats very likely. He had no time for them now.

Instead, he hearkened for the steps to approach, then rushed outside the door and dragged the other person inside. It was just another of his father’s men, dressed all in black. He grabbed Asami’s arm and had almost torn himself free, when the silencer chased a bulled through his head.

Quietly Asami let the man slip to the ground behind the door.

Then he checked the outside and walked-

He paused with a hand on the door handle.

For some strange reason his heart had just skipped a beat.

With light, unfeeling fingers he pulled the door shut softly. He locked it. He turned around and took in the room again. Grey moonlight flooded into it without making it appear cold.

Even though the windows were closed there seemed to be a draft, yet not a chilly one.

Another skip… and the tiny hairs in his neck stood on end.

“Akihito?”, he asked into the silence.

Chapter Text

At one point he had stood in an opened door that led out into the garden. He could see the huge cast iron gate from there, black in front of the night sky that hung over the slope leading down the hill. Trees and arcades and fountains and bushes had all been but shadows out there between which someone could lurk easily, waiting…

But right there he had been sure that he could make it. He would sprint as fast as he could, even if it felt like his lungs would soon burst; he’d reach the gate, find a way to pull it open or manage to climb across this time. He could make it.

Then he had turned around and had sneaked down another of those gloomy corridors, holding the heavy gun at the ready. Never would he leave without Asami. What reason was there any way to get out, if they weren’t together?

It had been the same question that had made him smash his rucksack into his guard’s face in Macao; the same question, that had him exit the van and walk into the warehouse. He had been supposed to stay there, where it was safe, but how could anybody think him capable of doing that, while the shots in the building echoed through the night, while shouts could be heard, and the flashes of muzzle fire flickered in the windows.

He had not been able to wait, or to just hope, or to stay there knowing that he would be safe and would make it out alive. It was strange how in these moments he had known so fiercely that he did not want that life, if he could not share it with the man he loved.

It was not worth living at all.

Therefore, he had marched into the building, not to prove himself to anybody else who thought him weak or scared in the first place – but to quench the dread inside of him. Sure, the next day would have come even if he had just waited patiently in the van, but that tomorrow had probably been one he did not want to see the dawn of.

It was the same now. He had been able to run, he might have made it, yet he did not even try. Without Asami he would not leave. Without Asami there was nowhere to run to.

The corridors however lay now in fast darkness, the shots and footsteps of others engulfed him. It made his heart race so violently, so loudly that he was sure, the beating would be heard by anybody else in the whole mansion. He tried to calm it down, pushing himself backwards against a wall so violently he might have almost merged into it, yet all it did was make his muscles tremble and sparks of light burst in front of his eyes. The thumping however went on.

‘THUD, THUD, THUD’, and once more there were steps somewhere close. He listened, he closed his eyes, he bit his lip and it bled again. It had before from Aaron hitting him with his fist, it did again now, filling his mouth with the taste of iron. The sparkles were still there, even behind the darkness of his own eyelids, and the thundering of his heart only mixed with that of the steps until one became the other.

Blindly he pushed himself sideways along the wall in whatever direction he thought for a second would be the saver one. Then he found a door, caressed it open and slid inside. Behind an armchair, empty but for the moonlight that flooded in through the windows, he hid, crouching there, listening.

He had to find Asami! If only he knew how. In the warehouse he had run into Kirishima and head learned that his master had rushed ahead, trailing the enemy. But where was ‘ahead’? He had not known; he had just walked on and soon enough there had been no way to go but up. This was different. In the darkness everything looked the same. He might have raced in circles from the moment he had been told to run by Aaron.

And even why? Why had the other not just shot him? Why had he stared down onto him as if he was searching for something, waiting for something – for a thought inside his own head or a change of mind of the other.

It had not happened. That should have been the end! Yet Aaron had not killed him. He was still here, and the other still out there. For the better or the worse, he just did not know.

What if he found Asami first? What if Asami found Aaron? What if…

He let himself sink onto the floor, feeling the hard parquet at his cheek. It was so much warmer still than his dark, grey cell had been.

Closing his eyes, he dived back into the warehouse. He had not been afraid then. He had not doubted any of his own movements. Surefootedly he had walked up the stairs, had followed the shots, had found Asami, had distracted the enemy, had saved him.

He had been brave, hadn’t he? He had done good, hadn’t he? They could have made it out of there if only fate had been on their side. But it never seemed to be. And maybe it wasn’t even today…

As if it was happening right now, he felt the building tremble beneath him; he felt the bullets hit Asami, felt blood splash onto his fingers and his face, felt those arms wrap around him to just keep him safe and protected.

On the floor he curled up, pulling his knees up to his forehead, hiding his head between his arms. He could not hold the gun anymore. He had fired one in the warehouse, but it had not saved them. The building had crumbled and collapsed nonetheless, because fate just did not give them a break only once. No matter how much they fought and tried and endured.

It just did not give them a single chance.

He felt himself tumble through the darkness with Asami in his arms, with his words in his ears, but then his voice trailed away, and he was alone. He fell still; soaring downwards through eternal blackness and ended in his cell once more, hurting and not remembering, and crying until his tears could not seep through beneath the door and started to fill up the room so he would drown in them.

With a start he came to… His lips trembled and he put a hand in front of them. He was not alone, he was sure. Someone had entered the room, maybe to sneak away from somebody else,… or maybe to search for whomever might have hidden here and there between the furniture. Fate… just did not give them any chance!

He pressed his hand so hard against his lip that he could not breath anymore. It was better this way, because maybe even the beating of his heart would finally stop, and he would not give himself away. Then he would not be a liability for anybody else again.

“Akihito?”, a voice whispered softly.

There were tears in his eyes that had turned the faint grey moonlight into an ocean of silver. He had to blink them away to know if he was still in that room… if he was not just making things up.

But he was there, and he lay on the floor.

He heard a step.

“Akihito?”, the voice asked again, sounding breathless now.

‘Visions?’, he thought. ‘Memories swept into reality because my mind does not know what is real and what is a lie.’

He did not want to move, but he could not stop himself. Before he could have run and make it out alive and live and see tomorrow, yet he would not leave without Asami. He’d rather die. And if the end had come now and his mind was therefore making him hear that voice once more – even if only because it played a trick on him – then he was fine with that. It was all he could wish for.

On shaky knees he got up, grabbed the backrest of the armchair and pulled himself up. He had to blink again to make the tears clear his vision. Grey was the room, all color drained because of the night. Empty but for the two men there. Himself and the other.

That one stood at the door, staring at him, as if he himself was not sure if he was seeing a mere mirage.

Another step the man took forward, and another until he stood in the moonlight and could be seen better.

“I’ve tried to find you”, Akihito spoke, but his voice was nothing but a murmur, broken by his trembling lips. He held tight to the armchair because he feared that if he let go, he would fall again and end in the cell once more; or that the room would just dissolve, and fate would come and strike again.

The other one however took another slow step towards him, and another, and another. Until there was nothing but an armlength of space between them.

“Akihito?”, he asked again, his voice deep and full of uncertainty. Maybe he feared an illusion as well, still.

With a sharp breath Akihito flinched. ‘No!’, he realized. Not an illusion, but somebody else’s presence.

“I remember”, he said, and it did not matter if nothing of this was real. If it was his last chance to speak these words then he needed to do so now, even if it was towards a manifestation of his mind. “I remember walking into the warehouse. I met… glasses secretary. He asked me where my guard was, and I told him that he had a tummy ache. He said you had run after the enemy and told me to get back into the van. But I didn’t. I followed you, up the stairs. And I found you. And I helped you… a little bit”, he started talking faster and faster for now he feared that his time to speak all this might run out. Maybe the building would collapse again around them. “And then there was a Sudou Shu, and he shot at you, and you were hit, and I shot back and… and…”, and his voice was nearly swept away by the tears that rolled down his cheeks now, but he did not back down. Not now! “And you said that you loved me. And then you were in my arms and we fell because… the… and I love you, too! And I am sorry!”

Asami leapt onto him, wrapped his arms around him, pulled him close, but he kept trembling and shivering. He had to claw at the taller man’s shirt to keep himself from scattering or dissolving. He had to clutch at it to prevent the moment from vanishing. But it did not, not even when his body slowly, very slowly stopped quivering. Asami’s hand stroked his hair, held tight to the back of his head to keep him close.

“I’m sorry”, Akihito hummed again, his voice now almost inaudible.

That was when Asami turned his head and kissed him. On the temple, on the forehead, on his cheek, his nose, then his lips.

And he gripped harder at the other and was grabbed fiercer until they seemed to melt into each other.

“I am sorry”, Asami whispered onto his lips. “I love you, Akihito!”

Chapter Text

He ran out of tricks quickly – not that he had expected anything else. His chances to ever get any good at this game of hide and seek and shoot dead with your own hand had expired many, many years ago. After that he had been a secretary to the devil at best. He had ordered other people’s misery and had decreed for them to die but had never put a bullet into anybody himself.

His work had been pure theory without any drop of blood ever soiling his hands with color, even though the guilt was his of course, nonetheless.

When he had pulled open the door to what had once been his brother’s childhood chamber, he had looked at the guard outside in fake surprise. “Aren’t you guarding the wrong room?”, he had asked, raising his eyebrows even higher.

The spell had worked for a mere second in which the other’s gaze had wandered down the corridor, wondering if indeed he stood one door too far up the hallway. Then realization had beset him, making him realize that in fact Maxim had just stepped outside of a room in which he had no right to be.

That second however had been all that had been needed. A tiny tint of surprise and Maxim had aimed, had pulled the lever, had killed.

When the man slid down in the doorframe, momentarily he had not lowered the gun, which had suddenly felt so cold it seemed to burn into his flesh. Then Ryuichi had put a hand onto his shoulder.

Maxim had shrugged, had noticed a pained smiled to cross his face, then had thrown his doubts off. They had to go!

In front of the bedroom in which Akihito had been locked in for days his luck had run out, and it had been anticipated by him. The boy had no reason to trust him – or anybody else for that matter. Maxim did not even manage to feel a pang of anger about it. It had not been the boy who had failed him, it had not been the fault of whatever men had suddenly appeared down the corridor – two it had seemed to him, and they appeared to not belong together. In the end it the search for the real culprit led back months, even years: his father.

At some point all the routes of disaster ran back to him. And they had to end it, to finally be free.

All of them!

Maybe there were still some advantages on his side: He knew the mansion blindly, better than any of his men or of his father; very likely even better than his old man himself or his brother. Furthermore, he had always been very quiet. Even as he hurried down one corridor and up another, listening intently, he hardly ever had to exhale loudly because he was used to measure his breathing to soothe the pain in his body.  Whenever there was a step somewhere near, or an even fainter noise, he hid inside one room, slid along the walls and exited through another once he was absolutely sure there was no one outside.

At some point he came across a moaning man, lying face down, his arms twisted oddly behind his back. Maxim raised the gun, but let it sink right away. This one seemed hardly conscious, and even if he were, his arms would be no use of him. Also, he had not wanted to kill anybody in front of his cats, who had sat on an armchair, watching the hurt man, as if his fate nothing but amused them.

When he left the room, they jumped down from the seat and followed him. In the doorframe he voiced to them nearly inaudibly to go back inside, but they did not listen. And there were steps somewhere further up the hall again.

So, he had closed the door and had sneaked away.

The cats however had overtaken him soon, three white, graceful shapes that slid through the darkness in front of him without any noise but the hardly audible tingling of the bells around their necks. Now and then their eyes gleamed back at him as if to check that he was still there.

Whenever there was a corner, they paused, took a look at each of their options, then all together choose one. Maxim found himself following them. It was as good a route to select as any it seemed at this point…

…until he was proven wrong.

Something hurled into him, hit him around his torso with such a force that he was thrown from his feet and tumbled through an open door into a small study chamber. He slammed against a low side table, then crashed onto the floor.

A sharp pain shot through his body from his spine. Like a razor it slit through him as if he had been severed in the midst of his torso. He gasped aloud in agony but could not replace the air with another breath. For seconds, he tried to get back up, fighting the quivering of his bones that felt like they were violently abused as a xylophone, while his muscles tensed up and shut down on him, while a cramp seared up from his hip to his neck and made him stiff. Then he fell to the ground once more and the thud of his head hitting the floor hard was the last, he heard.

Lyon was licking his forehead. The others never did that. Only him. And surely when Maxim managed to open his eyes again, the fluffy white cat was standing next to him. A tear of pain trailed down his cheek and Lyon liked that away as well.

“I have Maxim”, a deep voice spoke somewhere nearby. “But it seems they have already gotten many of our men, Sir.”

Even without turning his head, he could see the dark figure in front of the brighter window from the corner of his eye. Maxim tried to twitch his fingers and felt a rush of happiness when he realized that they still moved, that they still obeyed.

If his whole body had just been shattered and all that would be left from no one was his mind and head to be his to govern, he would not have been surprised after the incredible bolt of hurt that had just shot through him.

Slowly, still aching severely and fighting against it by controlling his breathing, he sat up.

“Yes, Sir”, the dark man said into the mobile phone he held to this ear. It was Quentin, dressed in black as always, with black hair and black skin. In the shimmer of the moonlight, he looked like a picture drawn in negative colors.

With his other hand he still held his gun aloft, finger on the trigger.

“Yes, Sir”, he spoke again.

Maxim pushed himself to lean against a cabinet. His own gun was still there, but his fingers felt weak against it, dull, trembling. He tried to grab it, nonetheless, while Lyon brushed his head against his elbow. The other two laid on his lap and he felt bliss as he had seldom before about sensed their weight.

“Yes. Will do, Sir.”

With that Quentin quit the call, put the phone away, turned around slowly and looked down at Maxim.

“And I thought you had decided to take a nap. You should have been a good boy and listened to your father”, he snarled, raised his gun.

The cats all bucked and hissed at him.

Ofelia, the smallest leapt up at the dark man with an angry screech and pinched her claws into his pants. Quentin gnarled. He kicked at her, threw her off, moved the gun about, took aim –

- then Maxim shot him.

For minutes he remained sitting there, caressing the small cat which now lay on his lap again. Ofelia looked as if nothing whatsoever had happened. As if nothing had bothered her at all. There were some splatters of blood on her bright white fur but that was all Quentin’s.

He had fallen against the wall beneath the windowsill, had tried to raise his arm with the gun once more, but Maxim had fired a second time at him. After that there was not much left of the other man’s head.

While only slowly the pain in his body was subsiding, he knew that time was running out, nonetheless. ‘It seems they have already gotten many of our men’, Quentin had said. Presumable he had been wandering through the mansion as well and had found the bodies that lay everywhere.

29 had been Maxim’s rough estimate of men they – himself, his brother, Mikhail Arbatov and Fei Long – would have been up against, if each of his own men decided to fight for his father. For some reason he had been of the impression that those men who had been working under him directly for a long while now would be able to make a conscious decision about their loyalty. That however had not happened it seemed, in the confusion and darkness after the lights had been cut. After that it had been very likely everyone against everyone.

And maybe they had been somewhat lucky.

But what now? How many men were in fact left there? What had happened to Akihito? What to the other three men?

Suddenly it felt hard to breath. Maxim tried to fight it, but right now his long-acquired technique did not work. What if they were alone there, now, him and his father? He did not even care about whatever punishment or retribution there would come his way. But… what of the others? Ryuichi? Fei Long?

He tossed his head backwards against the cabinet which’s drawers made a faint rattle. The cats looked up at him with their gleaming eyes.

There was something blue inside of them now. Then not. Then again.

Maxim looked up in surprise and found the blue streaming inside through the window with the light of the night, and the color became stronger each time it could be seen.

Cutting his breath to stop the pain, he forced himself to get up, then fought his way to a window in front of which there was no dead man lying.

He could see the black shapes of the garden, the wall around them, the gate even further away, and behind that all, where the slope of the hill was quite steep and there should hence be nothing but starry sky, there was more of the blue. Now. Then it vanished, then again, then it vanished.

Abruptly white light burst through the gap in the estate’s outer wall, illuminating the two armored men who were guarding the entrance. The next second they were rolled down by a red, small firetruck that crashed through the gate, flung the two cast iron wings open and kept speeding on. It filled the garden with blue light. Two black vans followed behind.

Maxim made his way to the main entrance as quickly as he could, the cats again just a few steps ahead. The giant door stood already open, the truck – an Iveco Eurocargo 100E21, that the city of Dubrovnik used to ensure firefighting even in the narrow streets of the old town – had stopped when it had crashed against the stairs.

A man jumped out who did not look as if the impact had shaken him very much. He had worn a helmed that he tossed away now. Quickly those who had arrived in the vans gathered around him. All were armed, all had dark hair and Asian features.

Maxim raised his hands up above his head, the gun grasped tightly but pointing to the ceiling first, then towards the porticus after he had stepped outside.

Several of the machine pistols turned on him.

“I am… Maxim Asami!”, he spoke to them in English, as firmly and clearly as he managed with his trembling, aching body.

Murmur was the answer. He was not even sure any of those men understood a word, yet he did not know any Chinese - if they worked for Fei Long – and hardly any Japanese – if they were his brother’s. It was only then that he suddenly thought that these troops could as well be some of his father’s.

He swallowed hard and tried again. The cats curled around his feet, the only comfort he could find, staring into so many muzzles.

“I am the brother of Ryuichi Asami! Asami Ryuichi!”, he tried again. Slowly he took one step forward after the other, down one stair after the other. Someone snatched the gun from his hand, but he kept his arms up. Then one rifle was jabbed at his chest and what might not have hurt anybody else badly, made him close his eyes and wheeze in pain when another bolt of agony shot through his body.

“I am – “, he tried once more, but got interrupted.

“Baishe!”, someone yelled, then talked aloud in Chinese, and even though he did not understand a word, Maxim recognized his brother’s voice at once. He sighed, more to the pain he finally felt able to give in to a tiny notch, than to the sudden relieve that spread out through his body warmly.

The rifles weren’t lowered, but turned away, and the men who held them, watched the mansion now with sharp eyes. Only the one who had driven the truck still looked ahead and answered to whatever he had been told.

Within a moment they disperse and melted into the shadows, while Maxim had not yet dared to move. It was his brother’s hand again, that soothed him out of his rigidity. Slowly he turned, was taken by the hand and almost tenderly dragged up the stairs again, inside the building and into a corner where they would be hidden from anybody spotting them from afar.

“Are you alright?”, Ryuichi asked, his hands on his brother’s shoulders.

Maxim nodded very slowly, letting go of his breath in a long, measured exhale. It pushed a large dose of hurt out of him as well.

“I guess I am”, he answered, then turned his head a tiny bit.

The boy stood there, looking pale and wide-eyed, yet smiling faintly.

“Uh…”, Ryuichi made. “This is Akihito. Akihito: my older brother Maxim.”

Chapter Text

His senses were still pretty off. The walls tumbled around him; the floor quivered beneath his feet. The faster he hurried, the less sure was he that he was actually moving forward at all. Sometimes it seemed to him as if he was standing still, while the walls rushed into the distance away from him, to either side. The green exit lights, whenever he came across them, were gigantic flares of brightness that almost blinded him, while the darkness of the corridors was so thick, he thought he could push it aside with his hands.

He had to concentrate fiercely on keeping his surrounding in check and not run into a gun or any other danger. Doing so however he had not been able to keep up with Asami. There had been blackness all around for a long time and when he had dived out of it on the other side just like it had been a deep lake to swim through, he found himself at just another crossing, and all the paths looked the same. Somewhere along the way he had slammed against the outer corner between two walls and the sharp edge of the bricks had sort of cut into his right upper arm right above his elbow. There was no blood to be felt or seen, but it hurt as if the impact had hacked a notch through his flesh and muscles all down to his bone.

Where it had happened and how, he could not even tell. He had stumbled across something – or the floor had just tossed him off – and lost his footing. It had been all dark back there. Not that it was much brighter here now…

It was unwise for him to stay down in the basement in his current state, he knew that. If he was smart, he would have listened to Asami and had tried to leave the premises. He could have returned once his men got here but…

Pushing himself against a wall to catch a moment’s breath, he shook his head. But he would not leave without Mikhail.

‘Why not?’, a voice inquired inside of him that resembled very much his own. To his surprised it did not sound doubting or patronizing as it usually did. It just sounded… astonished.

Why not?

Why not leave?

It was pure instinct. The only thing he could rely on now. His senses might betray him, his vision fool him with strange images, but so far, his instincts had prevailed. They had kept him alive. But if he had listened to them to survive, then why would he stop adhering to their advice in this case and simply do what might have seemed smart from an unbiased and unemotional perspective? That perspective had not ever worked for him anyway, no matter how much he attempted to appear cold, aloof and unapproachable. It was just a charade and sometimes it seemed to him that the fiercer he tried to keep up the act, the more he hurt.

Yan would call him stupid; he knew. Dumb and reckless! Asami might even think like that about him. Yet Fei Long found himself not caring about their opinion. His instincts knew what to do and how to keep him alive, and he decided to trust them – and by that resolved to believe in them as well when it came to Mikhail. He had to find him!

He needed to find him!

With a sharp hiss he pushed himself off from the wall, rubbing his elbow, from which there was a sharp thumb of pain running all up and down his arm from his fingers to his shoulder. But he could still move his hand. He could still raise his arm and lift the gun and pull the trigger. He tried to make sure, only not giving enough force onto the small lever to actually fire a bullet. Then he kept on walking.

Once more he had no idea where he was. He had tried so many doors, some locked, some opening to reveal uninhabited rooms.

Suddenly he stopped, turned around and for a second the walls shook and only slowly rested again. What if he had passed one door? What if he had forgotten one – the right one?

A knot built in his throat and he had to fight to push it down. He could hardly swallow. There were so many passages down here, so much gloom, so much blood that had splattered onto floors here and there, so many dead bodies. And maybe thousands of doors. He did not know. He hadn’t counted.

With a sob he gasped for breath and grabbed the gun harder, even though that pushed a sear of ache up his arm.

He just wanted to call out. The name was already on his lips, but they shivered too violently now. He would not be able to utter a single word. Nonetheless he sucked in air, filled his lungs, tried to force himself to yell into the endless labyrinth, hoping there might come an echo back to him, even if he had to wait for an eternity. Just one call, that made him know the other was still…

With the back of his left hand, he rubbed a tear out of the corner of his eye, then let go of his breath. He could not call, or he would give himself away.

Instead, he walked on, concentrating hard once more. There seemed to be much less noise around now, even though it had never gotten loud down here anyway. The only thing that had ever broken the silence had been the shots, but even those had by now died down.

Maybe everyone was dead…

He pushed that thought away, angled his arm, because that hurt more, and used the pain to keep himself alert. Several new doors – or old ones, he really could not tell – he tried to open. Some remained locked, others opened into small rooms full of darkness, without any movement, without any faint sound of a breathing.

A sudden bang somewhere upstairs made him halt again. He whirled around and the corridor kept spinning for a moment, in which he had to grab the wall to not lose his balance. A second crash, an even louder noise followed, like a sudden screeching and creaking – then silence again. And this time it remained.

Still, he kept listening into it. Momentarily he thought he might have gotten deaf, but he could indeed hear his own breathing. And he heard the quiet ‘tick’ when he flicked one fingernail against the gun.

From all the nothingness around he felt compelled to think that he was alone here now. The only one alive… A second later he was not sure anymore. There were faint noises somewhere, so weak, so soft, they might be just the natural melody of the basement. He could not tell.

Finally, he decided to keep on walking. Even if he did not manage to open all the doors, at some point someone would find him – for the better or the worse.

He walked around a corner, down the next corridor, and stopped.

His eyes fixed into the distance, where the hallway became so black again that in that darkness shapes seemed to move and dance. But he hardly saw them. He only stared ahead to not turn his head… to not look…

Again, his throat became tight, his breathing stopped, his lungs felt like giant hands were squeezing them. And his heart hurt much more than his arm had ever done.

Only slowly he forced himself to turn around – because he had to see even if he did not want to.

His own sharp gasp for air was the only sound in a long while.

There was a trail of blood on the floor black on black, that led into a puddle of blackness, in which a man lay, face down, his blonde curls soiled by crimson.

‘No’, his mind whispered when his instincts had already vanished down the same route as his senses.

“No”, his lips muttered without a voice carrying the sound.

He reached out with his arm, lifted his hand to where he saw the head, but he was too far away. He had to step up, to kneel down.

Without knowing how or even why he did that. His feet dragged him forwards, his knees helped him down. His breath froze in his chest and his heart became as a feeble, frail shell.

Again, he reached out, his fingers touched the head of the man, unfeeling, and turned it a tiny bit. He snatched them away, as if he had burned them; hissing, as if they hurt.

It wasn’t…!

It was…!

“You looking for me?”, made him spin around. There was a door opened just right behind him; a small room with shelves fixed to one wall; a blonde man sitting on the floor beneath the storage of clutter.

Fei Long scuttled across the floor, through the door and threw his arms around Mikhail’s shoulders. He pulled him tight, even though he heard the other moan in pain. He just could not help it, nor could he keep the tears that trailed down his cheek.

Mikhail’s hand on his arm made him finally let go, though only a tiny bit. He kissed the Russian’s forehead.

“Are you hurt?”, he whispered.

Again, Mikhail moaned and nodded slightly. But then he looked up and smiled. He raised his hand even more to stroke some strands of black hair out of the other’s face.

“I think you have never been as beautiful as right now… but maybe I’m a bit biased, because I guess this is the first time you’ve ever looked so worried because of me.”

Fei Long panted at him. That had been supposed to be a cold laugh, but he did not manage. It looked very much like the stupid Russian to flirt even in a moment like this.

“What happened?”, he asked him and brushed the hand away gently.

“My back. I climbed onto some pipes and ripped them down and fell on my back. Oh well, and they hit me in the neck with a gun or something. You?”

 “I’m fine”, Fei Long lied, turning away towards the door to not give himself away too easily. Alec lay out there and the amount of blood made it very unlike that he could be still alive. There was no sign of breathing as well.

“Let’s go”, Mikhail muttered and moved suddenly. Fei Long whirled around and put his hands onto his shoulders to stop him.

“No! I don’t know who might still be out there. If they find…”

“I don’t want to sit here any longer”, Mikhail smiled the contradiction away. “Several people have crossed this way and I think the only reason why no one ever stopped to take a closer look, was that they kept chasing and running from each other. But’s a bit too quiet now. I don’t want to wait until someone else comes here.”

Fei Long bit his lower lip and felt himself frown, while he tried to concentrate again. It was harder now than ever before. Something inside of him just wanted to pull the door close and lock it… and stay here… and…

But there was no key to start with.

“Ok”, he answered eventually. “We’ll walk a tiny bit and then find another room and hide there.”

Mikhail looked pale and tired, his eyes were dull and reddened, his lips chapped. And the way his face twitched now and then ever so slightly made Fei Long sure that the other was in a lot of pain. They would not be able to get far, probably would never have a chance to march upstairs and out of the building, while making sure they were still unspotted and safe. But at least they could try and hide somewhere else.

He stood up, halfway, then offered his help to Mikhail. That was hard though. Not only was the Russian a fair bit taller, but he was also of a broader built – nothing that Fei Long had ever thought he might want to complain about. Right now, however it was to their disadvantage.

Quietly they stepped out back into the hallway, with one of Mikhail’s arms across his shoulders and both of his hands holding the other up, even if that meant that he had had to put away the gun. At least, Mikhail still had his – or… whosever it had been once.

It did not take long though until the blonde man was hissing in pain and had squeezed his eyes shut. His weight seemed to slowly increase, and Fei Long could feel him slip through his embrace, inch by inch. They had to stop, to take a moments rest, or to stay just here and get into the next room.

He helped Mikhail lean against the wall. Then there was a shot. It echoed so loud it was impossible to say from where it had come.

Fei Long blinked heavily, sipped in air wondering what might have been the gun’s aim. Then Mikhail moaned and slipped out of his grip. He tried to catch him, and almost did so but was pulled down to the floor as well. There was blood right away that soaked the Russian’s white shirt with redness.

“No!”, Fei Long exhaled, pressing his hand onto the other’s side.

Mikhail had his eyes closed, squeezed shut again, but only for a moment, then all the tenseness was suddenly gone.

“No!”, the Chinese shrieked. There… there wasn’t that much blood! Mikhail had been hit in the side, yet this was not lethal, Fei Long wanted to yell to inform the other man. He would discuss this with him! Then his head was jerked upwards. He threw up his arms and found a massive fist that had caught his hair. It yanked him backwards from his feet and then dragged him across the floor.

“No!”, he yelled again, trying to rip the fingers out of his hair, but they seemed to hardly care. Only then he realized that he was clawing at a glove not at flesh. That discovery however remained just as faint as everything else. He saw the walls and ceiling trailing away to his sides, felt tears bursting into his eyes from the pain, felt dizzy quickly from his attempts to get back onto his feet, though he was hauled along on his back. He would not even have cared if his scalp was ripped off, he had to get back to the other man. Already he could not see Mikhail anymore. The voice of the person who had caught him was what he noticed clearest, while he now tried to pry the grip lose.

“Pity I passed your brother’s offer onto my underlings those years back. If I had enjoyed you back then maybe you would have been a bit more respectful today”, the deep, low voice of Richard Asami snarled though the man did neither stop nor turn around.

Fei Long stemmed his feet onto the ground and push himself up to hurl himself against the other. The man stumbled forward; his fist let go for a mere second. Fei Long found himself on the ground and tried to roll away, but the floor seemed to seep through his fingers suddenly. Then he was grabbed at the shoulder, yanked around and the next moment a white flash of agony spread through his head from out his cheek.

At once there was the taste of blood in his mouth and Yan’s face above him. His spiteful grin burning down onto him. Then it vanished and all he saw once more were the bricks of the basement and Richard Asami. The man snatched Fei Long’s gun from out of his belt and tossed it away, then straightened up. But suddenly something else caught his attention. He stared off into the distance, his shoulders somewhat hunched as if he was waiting attentively. His fingers fumbled on his own white gun in his hand.

As quick as lightning he suddenly leapt down again and grabbed Fei Long once more. The Chinese smacked his hands away, rolled around, tried to crawl off – then there was the giant hand at his scalp just as before. He was pulled upwards when his fingers had just made their way beneath his stocking…

“Father!”, Asami shouted from down the hallway. His voice echoed from the wall so much louder than all the shots before.

Richard tore Fei Long upwards, turned the gun to aim at his hostage, then exclaimed in a sound of surprise.

Once more Fei Long slammed to the ground. The back of his head hit the screed, but this time he did not even dare to close his eyes. He pushed himself up unto his elbows, staring up at the man who looked down his own torso with astonishment about the army knife that stuck between his rips. A trail of blood tickled out into his white shirt.

But it just made him laugh noiselessly.

“Father!”, Asami shouted again, even louder, even closer by.

The older man however did not care. He raised his gun again, his face now hard as if it had been frozen by hate.

Fei Long saw the muzzle turn towards him. He could not even flinch when there echoed a shot.

Richard stumbled one step backwards. There was another trail of blood. Yet nothing more. His face turned into a grin of loathing. He aimed again.

The black muzzle stared at Fei Long another time.

Another shot. Another stumble backwards. Another trail of blood. He had been hit in the chest twice now and still all there was, were some tiny tickles.

‘Bulletproof vest’, the word echoed in a frightened shriek through Fei Long’s mind, when the white gun was raised for a third time.

A faint click of an empty gun crept up from somewhere else, and he felt himself just flinch. He would not look away. If this was it, then what the hell…

Richard’s head burst open the next moment from a gun fired from behind him.

He crushed down to the floor an armlength away from Fei Long, who placed one foot on the white weapon and shoved it away. Not that it was very likely that this man would ever use it again.

Asami was behind him a second later, trying to pull him up, but Fei Long pushed him off, leapt around to Mikhail and… found the Russian with his arm still help up high, his gun still aiming to where a moment ago there had been a head. The distance between shooter and target had been about fifty steps, and yet he had made his mark perfectly.

Fei Long clambered up onto shaky feet, ran back to the other and smashed onto the floor heavily next to him.

He pulled Mikhail’s shirt up and found what he had tried to argue about before: The bullet had merely grazed his side. There was a bit of blood and maybe a rib had gotten a scratch, but that was it.

“Don’t scare me like that!”, Fei Long hissed at the Russian, when he heard the steps of the other three approach behind him. He turned only slightly in pure instinct – Asami, Maxim, even Akihito.

“Baishe is getting rid of whomever they can find”, Asami explained. “Looks like we sorted them out well.”

“Sorry I could not help”, Mikhail grinned upwards to the other.

Very likely Asami had wanted to answer something, but whatever could have turned into some bickering was stopped the moment Fei Long pressed his lips onto Mikhail’s.

Chapter Text

The three last shots all came from suppressed guns, whose hoarse hisses only made it far through the labyrinth as there was hardly any other noise left now. After each came a pause, and after that a silence fell that even the commotion not too far down the hallway could not disturb.

Even though there was definitely still some movement somewhere in the basement, someone alive, someone armed – it felt like the war was over. This now was the time to lick your wounds and flee if you wanted to make it out.

Nonetheless, Aaron stayed for a moment longer. He had crouched down and kept his ears pricked for whatever he might hear around, his gun at the ready, his finger near the trigger. His eyes however he kept on the picture before him. Blood had built a puddle on the floor, and by now it was not only black because of the lack of light, but because it had started to coagulate. There was no warmth in it anymore, and there hadn’t been for a while.

“Fucking idiot”, he merely moved his lips, for the one he was speaking to would not hear anything even if he had yelled at him.

About one and half hour ago they had parted, and at some moment in the time passed until now his brother had managed to get himself shot – and Aaron hadn’t notice anything. It made him wonder… there had been so little space between them: only a few corridors, just one or two floors. Yet he had not … felt anything. Maybe he had been too occupied to realize something had happened? Or maybe… there really wasn’t anything that could have been experience at all? No snapping of some kind of mental bond, like a rubber band that had been pulled too hard?

For a moment he stared up to the bricked ceiling. Once they had entered life together, but they had been apart from early on. Too different in character, too callous their upbringing.

Probably there just had never even been any connection between them. Or it had been severed so long ago that he had forgot.

“Fucking idiot!”, he spelled again, blinking one time when the bricks suddenly seemed to become a bit blurred.

Then he got up and left. There was nothing else for him to do – and certainly Alec did not deserve for him to lose his life here as well. Not that the other had ever expected that of him.

Moving cautiously between the shadows, hiding again and again, and taking quite a long time, Aaron managed to finally get back into the garage. He checked for anybody around, then locked the door, went to the car they had arrived in before, opened the trunk to get out the corpse he had hidden there – because he definitely didn’t want to drive around with a dead man’s body – then he stopped.

Something had caught in the corner of eye. Slowly he closed the trunk again, the corpse still in there; then he walked down the garage to the black and chrome of a car’s rear that stuck out from a tarpaulin.

‘You need to hurry’, he told himself, yet pulled the covering sheet off still, to reveal a shiny black and silver 1966 Jaguar E type convertible.

‘Get out!’, his conscience tried to interfere again, and he just interrupted it: “That’s what I’m doing.”

He tried the car’s front door, found it open, so he got into the driver’s seat. He also found the key – lying innocently on the dash – including a switch for the garage door.

  For a moment, he stared at it, and thought. Yet one car was as good as the other, wasn’t it? The one was a long black limousine, this other an incredibly well restored Oldtimer. Both were worth a fortune, both rather conspicuous, especially once the sun came up. With both, he had to find a way through the gate to get out from the compound…

So, it really didn’t seem to matter which one he chose… and now that he was already sitting inside this one – and there was still a corpse in the other…

He pushed the key into the ignition and turned it. The car started up right away, its sound a low, honest growl. The tank was nearly full as well. Aaron pressed the button for the garage, and the door started to roll upwards, when he already reversed.

No one seemed to mind. He switched the lights off, anyway – just in case. With a quick look ahead, he checked if there was any obstacle until he would have to face the front gate, then realized that the gate was gone. Two vans and a… firetruck had obviously gotten rid of hit before. That explained the strange crashing noises he had heard a while back.

‘Maybe…’, he started to think when he felt his foot on the gas pedal. ‘…maybe that one good deed has gotten you some good Karma.’

Not that he believed in something like that.

But he had let Arata go. He had been nothing but a charade anyway. Perhaps if he was a different person, he realized, he would be feeling sad or angry or betrayed. Probably if he was not who he was, he would have started to imagine how life could have been…

In the end however, he was who he was. He was not ashamed of it, or sorry about it.

Well… but maybe… he could quit and start something new.

He hit the gas pedal, the car sped off, passed the vans and several dark figures that even ran after him. He heard the shots fired behind him of which not even one made its mark, then raced through the gate and was gone.

30 minutes he needed to get back to his apartment, grab his stuff and whatever had been left there by Alec, then rush into his new car again. The border to Bosna Hercegovina was only a few miles away. He had his passport; he had the money to speed up things… and by the time the sun came up he had already passed into Montenegro.

Chapter Text

One of the great advantages of Croatia was, that with the right amount of money everything was possible. By 10am both the Police and the Fire Department had lost all interest in whatever might have happened on the grounds of the mansion behind the now shattered cast iron gate. Neither the fact that obviously people had been killed nor that some Asian looking men had stolen a fire truck in the dead of the night was of any concern to them anymore.

About one hour later, Maxim had released all his staff except for two very loyal servants into a week of paid holiday and had gotten hands on new guards who he had hired from a security firm that sold their services to about anybody who was able to pay the right price. They also provided the cleaning of the house off all traces and evidence, and did not care the slightest bit about what had actually happened.

The story that was about to be spread would be that there had been an attack on the family’s home which had cost the lives of many men, including that of Richard Asami. Probably it had been some Russian Anti-Government Organization named Chernobog, yet that was of course only speculation.

It was noon when Asami stepped out onto the porch in front of the large portal. Beneath him on the steps Akihito had thrown his arms around Fei Long and hugged him – just as he had done in the basement hours ago.

Back then, while his own father’s blood was still spilling onto the floor, Asami had turned away from the tiny moment of intimacy – of Fei Long kissing Mikhail. The sight had made him feel a little pang in his heart – not one of jealousy though, not one of regret about chances lost. That he had felt in that instant maybe stronger than ever before. No, he had not felt any romantic connection with Fei Long. He never had. So, this was not of seeing the other finding someone else, or about a path he had not taken.

 However, in a way regret it was, nonetheless. Seven years ago, he had screwed up. That he had always admitted, yet for the wrong reasons. He had indeed bungled a job, had returned to Japan with that failure and had had to digest the defeat – thus had been his train of thought to which he had clung. But in the end, it had been a lie. The truth was very different: The job had been to screw up a person, and he had not been able to actually do it. He had cared too much for the other. While he had pretended in front of himself that he was just playing Fei Long, that he was just ‘working’, he had effectively tricked them both – and had only realized that he had cheated himself when it had been much too late.

Disaster had followed and his ignorance had cost him… yes, what? Not a lover, no. But… a friend? Or something as cheesy as a soul mate?

Not to mention that it had cost Fei Long far, far more.

Staring down the corridor to where his father’s blood had now built large puddle on the floor, he had felt his mouth twitch into a pityful smile – yet with his parent’s death that had had nothing to do.

Akihito had taken his hand then, his skin warm, his grip strong. He had looked tired, but his eyes had been clear and bright.

Only when some men of Baishe had come down the hallway had Fei Long taken a step back from Mikhail. The Russian had been brought upstairs then, when his consciousness had already faded from the hurt and the exhaustion. And only then had the Chinese actually taken a look around, until his eyes had focused on Akihito as if now for the first time, he had really understood that the other was here.

“Are you alright?”, he had asked, which had seemed kind of out of place as indeed he had looked far more fatigued and distraught than the Japanese.

Akihito had smiled at him, had shrugged, had nodded, had appeared as if he had not really known what to do or what to say. It had then dawned on Asami that the two of them had not met since their last encounter on the Casino Ship. They had sent messages to one another for months, had talked on the phone, yet the first time they had been in the same room had been when Akihito had still been in hospital – unconscious – and then here in the mansion when he had believed his name to be ‘Arata’.

“I remember…”, the boy had told the other, his voice and expression somewhere between pride and relief, his hand squeezing Asami’s another time. Then he had stepped over and had hugged Fei Long, who had for a few moments seemed to be completely lost at what to do, until he had just embraced the other as well.

Now in the sunlight of midday the new hug looked much more natural. For a few moments Akihito held on to Fei Long, then stepped away smiling.

Within a few minutes all of the Chinese’s and the Russian’s belongings had been brought from the Guesthouse into one of the vans, in which Mikhail slept on the back seat, sedated by some strong painkillers. Two men of Baishe had guarded him, their automatic rifles at the ready all the time.

“Take care”, Fei Long said to Akihito, who nodded, and the Chinese did indeed seem to have a very faint smile on his lips. It however vanished very quickly when he turned to look up the stairs towards the other two men who had stepped outside.

“There is a video”, he started to speak, not looking at either Maxim or Asami, but staring through in between them into the darkness of the entrance hall behind. The gloominess was mirrored by his eyes, which suddenly turned a bit darker. “Your father had it on his phone. It was taken by a hidden camera in the room which had been given to Mikhail.”

Asami slowly turned towards Maxim, who exhaled loudly, then pressed his lips onto another. He stirred uncomfortably when the eyes of Akihito and Fei Long followed Asami’s and turned towards him. He blushed quite heavily and became even paler underneath.

“I… I had that video deleted. I did not know… I must have made a mistake.”

For a second he looked over to his younger brother as if he was hoping for any help from there, but Asami did not feel like there was anything he could do. That there were cameras in the house here and there he had noticed in those months he had spent in the place, and that his brother had very rarely invited incredibly expensive call-girls to watch them, Alec had implied a few times. Yet Asami had not thought that his brother would like to spy on…

He felt himself frown at Maxim, when the other was staring down the stairs in front of his feet.

“I have never used that system without the consent of the persons I watched. I swear! This was just… this was…”

“I do not care”, Fei Long answered, his voice calm but sharp. “I want that video deleted. All copies of it.”

Maxim nodded firmly several times and managed to look the other in the eye in the end. “I will make sure of it. I promise. I am sorry.”

That only made the Chinese nod back distinctly once. He seemed to be about to leave then but stopped before he had even turned away halfway. Instead, he looked up to Asami and when he spoke again, he had switched to Japanese: “Those pictures…”

His hands formed into fists and he looked away.

“I’ll make them disappear”, Asami answered. Only one of them he had seen: The one his father had shown him. Yet the old man had said there were more. Where, was the question, however.

It took Fei Long another moment to meet the other’s eyes again. He nodded once more and added a faint “thank you”, then he finally turned around and headed to the vans in which his men were ready to leave.

“Fei Long!”, Asami called him, right before the other got into the backseat next to Mikhail. The Chinese turned around another time.

“Call me, when you are home safely”, Asami spoke – once more in Japanese which presumably only the both of them and Akihito understood. Maxim had never been any good in the language anyway.

Fei Long blinked at him, then frowned for a moment. In the end however he answered: “I will”. After that he got in the van. They left, heading back for the airport where his jet was already waiting. He wanted to get Mikhail back home as quickly as possible.

The rest of the day passed very much like in a waking dream. Lunch had been provided for the three men staying, but they had not been very hungry. After that, Asami and Akihito retired to the guest room in which Fei Long had resided before. On the bed, the boy lay in his arms and fell asleep at some point, his fingers curled around the hem of his shirt as if he wanted to make sure that Asami did not slip away. As if he was still afraid that it was all a vision.

Another trick on his mind.

Asami however could not sleep. Now and then he planted little kisses on the other’s forehead and nose, careful not to wake him. He also stared at him a lot and ignored the about hundred calls and messages by Kirishima which reached his mobile phone that had been set to not give a single beep or movement.

He knew what the messages were saying anyway. Half of them were of worry about what might have happened and if his master was save – Asami had sent him a very short information in the morning. The other half were pleas for his boss to come back to Japan as soon as possible. Best: Right away!

Every hour the other stayed away was only accumulating his losses. If Asami wanted to save his businesses, his connections, his wealth, his… life back in Japan, then he needed to come home now! Right now! With increasing distress and urgency Kirishima had been adamant about this since the moment Asami had gotten back into contact with him.

It was ‘almost too late’ was a common phrase in the most recent urges.

Asami knew that the man only had his best interest at heart. Kirishima was the most loyal friend he had had in his life. The man would die for him, and he wanted to protect what belonged to him.

Yet after nearly a year of running from Chernobog, who had chased him out of his own apartment and out of Japan, and then of hiding at his family home in Croatia, there was not that much left of what had once belonged to him… But actually, how worthwhile had that been anyway?

Once he had had – as people put it – ‘the world in his hands’ and all it had brought him had been cruelty and hate and despair. In the end all his wealth and power had been reduced to nothing in the face of losing the one he… he loved.

When he had started to believe that Akihito had been taken away from him, his whole façade, his whole being had fallen apart. He had crumbled away and nearly he had given up.

He had not cared about anything else anymore. Not about his life, not about his death. He had wished himself back into the warehouse in Macao… he had indeed wished that they had both just died there, in each other’s arms, by each other’s side.

If with all his might and influence and strength he had still not been able to protect the other, if Akihito still had been snatched away from him, then what had been the worth of all of that?

Today, Akihito was back in his arms. They were together. They were alive. They could heed Kirishima’s calls, return to Japan, and Asami could rebuilt his life there – pretty quickly, too, very likely. But then, wouldn’t it be the same again and again?

He had wanted nothing more than not to become like his father and had yet in the end become exactly the same. He had not wanted that sort of life but had waltzed into it nonetheless with all the dangers and hate and hurt – only that usually it were others who paid the price, never he himself: Maxim, Shinji, Fei Long and Akihito.

Now he could pack his lover, return home, reprise his former status quo…

Or he could for once be the one to pay the price. The one to make a sacrifice. And that… in the end probably got him the life he had always truly been searching for.

Chapter Text

There was a low, quiet buzz around. Very much as if some big creature had put him into his mound and was humming a melody. But that idea was ridiculous, he thought. He was a bit too tall for that. And he would definitely not have allowed any strange, huge creature to swallow him.

Wearily he raised his hand to the wall on his right, which felt and looked very much like an eggshell. It was just as pale, just as smooth,… and pretty cold. And it was very slightly vibrating. It was then that he slowly became aware that a moment ago he had been dreaming and that now he was gradually awakening.

The humming was not that of a gigantic animal, but of two engines. The smooth shell around him was not that of an egg, but of an aircraft in which the window shades had been closed. As a matter of fact, it was a very pretty aircraft, with accents of polished chrome, with beige leather seats, a thick ornament carpet, and glossy walnut wood veneer. It was a Bombardier Global 7500 with a private suite in the rear of the cabin which gave the owner privacy from the other passengers.

Mikhail found himself lying on his back, his fingers still attached to the slightly buzzing outer wall. Some of the pillows of the extraordinarily expensive Frette Doppio Ajour bedding had been put between him and that shell, which felt indeed quite chilly to his touch – as if to shield him from the cold. The lamps in the suite had been dimmed and due to the pulled down window shades there was not much light left. Yet he was able to spot the IV bag that had been hung from the shelf above the bed, which was filled with books on Asian culture and history – and the tube that connected the bag with the butterfly syringe that stuck in the back of his hand.

Slowly he lifted his arm a bit more, to eye the white band-aid and the pink, winged handle of the infusion set.

‘Ah’, he felt his mind make, when memory slowly returned. It was still a bit hazy though, and so was he.

He was not even sure if the motions he felt now and then were turbulence or something like that, or probably just dizziness.

But he did not manage to become really concerned about that anyway, when he turned his head to look around.

Someone lay next to him… lay on his side, with his forehead resting against Mikhail’s shoulder, with the fingers of one of his hands curling around his biceps.

Black strands had fallen into Fei Long’s face and almost the blonde man had reached over to brush them away gently, when he had felt – and therefore remembered – the IV tube. He’d probably not reach the man without ripping on the needle. And if he moved his other arm, the Chinese would very like wake up. That however Mikhail did not want.

Right now, all he wanted to do, was so watch how for once Fei Long seemed at peace with himself and the tiring reality. How his long lashes and black hair shimmered like the finest silk even though there was so little light around. How his shoulders moved slowly with each breath.

It was a fucking cold, cruel and hateful world, Mikhail had had to learn early in his life. It was also a wonderous and beautiful one, and he wanted to be a part of it, no matter how hard he had to fight for maintaining that right.

A year back he had nothing but dreamed of ever being allowed to touch Fei Long. Half a year ago they had made a deal, which Mikhail would for the rest of his days regret and celebrate at the same time. It had been a disgusting suggestion, a vile idea of a trade; it had also been a proposal which had sprung from the deepest, most hopeful and gullible spot in his heart. And it had been a start…

Today for once their places were exchanged: Mikhail lay on his back, Fei Long on his side, and the Chinese’s fingers held onto the Russian’s arm as if he was afraid that the other might sneak out and steal himself away. Not that there was anywhere Mikhail actually could go, right now. Not that he wanted to!

“Fei?”, he whispered very, very softly, because as a matter of fact he did not want to awaken the other, still, no matter how much he craved those eyes to look at him, those lips to kiss his own. It seemed to him that right now the other might be at some faraway place where it was warm and save and life was happy. And he did not want to take that away from him.

“Fei?”, he spoke again, nonetheless. Just as quietly, just as softly. Only to make sure that the other was really fast asleep. There was no reaction at all.

“I love you”, he whispered, therefore. Then he closed his eyes to fall asleep again himself. Maybe he could find that place Fei Long had drifted off to.

The world was – despite being cold, cruel and hateful – a wondrous and beautiful one.

He woke up with the unmistakable signs of the aircraft touching down – the bumping, the shaking and the deceleration – and found the bed next to him empty. The lamps were still dimmed, yet the window shades had been pushed up, and a grey, gloomy rainy morning light poured inside. The IV had been taken down as well and even the butterfly syringe had been removed without him even noticing. Either he had been too tired, or the pain killers still kept his senses dulled.

Feeling feeble, Mikhail sat up and leaned against the cabin wall to take a look around. He was alone, and remained so until the jet had come to a hold on the business aviation area of Hong Kong International Airport. Within a few moments the engines were shut down, ground handling took up their work with a lot of banging and whirring sounds and other noises around, while the downpour of the rain sat in as a dim background hum.

Still sitting there and waiting, Mikhail watched as several black cars pulled up, men with umbrellas got out and rushed towards the jet, luggage was taken from the belly of the plane and stored in the vehicles, and then a large van approached as well. Three men in bright yellow jackets produced a stretcher from the car’s back, then marched towards the plane.

He pushed himself off from the bed and towards the now opened door to the front of the cabin. Squeezing shut his eyes, he ignored the sudden jolt of pain that burned through his back and up into his skull like his spine wanted to jump out of his skin. He slumped against the compartment door, nonetheless, when his knees almost gave out. Someone caught him. Someone with black hair – and for a moment he had thought… then he realized that it was just one of the Baishe men who had accompanied them to Dubrovnik days ago and had after that waited for Fei Long to return – or for the order to rush to his side.

“Master Liu”, the Asian called for his boss, who appeared all the way up in the front of the aircraft a moment later. For a second Fei Long seemed worried, when he approached, but only a moment later that expression was gone and replaced by his typical, icy demeanor.

“You should sit down”, he spoke calmly but without any warmth. “I have arranged for you to be taken home.”

The Baishe man helped him back down onto the bed, when Mikhail felt his strength vanish for good. Grabbing the shelf next to the bed for support, he turned towards the master of the triad, who stood some steps away.

“But… I thought”, he started, speaking in Russian, then broke off mid-sentence. He felt now dizzier and more wearily than ever before.

“You need to rest, Mr. Arbatov. You need to see a Doctor”, Fei Long said, his voice and words perfectly factual.

Mikhail wanted to contradict. He wanted to rebel, yet right now he did not know how. ‘Mr. Arbatov’, never before had hearing his own name felt like he was being cut with a frozen knife. Minutes ago, he had not cared much about the chill of the cabin wall and even the gloom of the rainy morning had seemed golden to him – because he had been filled with cozy, brilliant bliss. Now suddenly it had drained out of him. He gritted his teeth.

The world was cold, cruel and hateful.

On the narrow stretcher he was carried to the van, one umbrella held high above him, a plastic tarp covering his lower body. Moments later the car drove off without giving Mikhail another chance to speak to Fei Long, or to even see him. He was brought home to his mansion in Macau, where he let himself be taken to his private rooms.

His doctor arrived minutes later, checked him for seemingly an hour and dressed the bullet wound in his side while two of his men gave Mikhail a short update on recent businesses and events in their territory. Nothing of that however interested him much. He listened, and nodded and gave some orders, but all the time he stared ahead into nothingness, wondering at what point the dream had started to crumble.

He slept for half a day thereafter, only once remembering how he had craved to take a hot bath with Fei Long, even if he would have had to pull the other into the bathtub with him. It was funny how as a prisoner back in that small basement cell, without any knowledge of what was happening or of when and how they would get out of the trap they had walked into, he had been absolutely sure that this future was a certain one. Now he was free, back home safely… and his hopes simply had dissolved. They had burst like little bubbles. Fei Long had been right there, right next to him. So close, he had been able to feel the other’s warmth, smell his scent, hear his breathing – maybe even his heartbeat if he had listened very closely and if the jet’s engines hadn’t been that loud. Now he was gone.

Just like that. In the blink of an eye.

Night was falling outside, when he sat up on his bed again. Still rain was pouring down. There were some strong painkillers his doctor had left on the nightstand, but Mikhail had only taken the first dose. He didn’t need them. The pain in his back and in his side were welcome to him, for it dulled the other: The one in his chest, which felt like someone had ripped out of him whatever had once filled it with life.

A knock on the door interrupted his anyway futile attempts of concentrating on an article he had found on his phone. In fact, he had actually mostly stared at the screen waiting for a call or a message that never came, while thinking whether he should just make the first step. Several times he had opened the calling app, other times a messaging app, but again and again he had closed them right away – sometimes out of a loss for what to say or write, yet far more often out of frustration.

“Yeah”, he answered to the knock and tossed the device away.

One of his servants entered – Tomás, a Portuguese in his late forties who was as small as Mikhail’s little finger but quick-witted and nimble. “Sir, there is a car at the gate. A visitor for you. A certain Mr. Liu?”

Mikhail’s fingers grabbed the bedsheets tightly. At once he felt a tiny sparkle in his chest that wanted to burst into flames and fill him with warmth again, but he quenched it, for whenever it was smothered by the other it hurt far more than doing it himself.

“You hadn’t told me you were expecting a visitor, so I…”, Tomás continued when his boss did not answer for too long.

“Ah…, no. Because I didn’t. But let him in. Bring him here.”

The Portuguese nodded quickly then spun around to leave.

“Tomás!”, Mikhail called him back. For a second though he kept staring out of the windows where the light was slowly drained from the anyway overcast sky. The rain still beat down on the gardens.

“Let him know that due to safety measures no car that is not one of ours is allowed to enter the compound. He’ll have to walk from the gate.”

His servants first reaction was a tiny cough that sounded more like a hum. Tomás was smart and knew his own position to be well enough to allow himself to sound as if he was contradicting: “I should provide Mr. Liu with a towel then. It is quite pouring down, Sir.”

Mikhail felt his fingers twitch violently in the sheets. The tiny sparkle was currently being beat up by a raging, black shadow that kept punching it to scare it away.

“Well, it will be his choice, won’t it?”, he answered back, still staring outside the window. He saw Tomás nod again in the reflection in the glass. Then the man left.

His master pushed away the sheet then and moved to the side of the bed, where he needed a moment to allow his dizzy mind to come to terms with the movement. Slowly he got up, then walked out of his room and to one of the large windows of the upper hallway. It was dark inside here, no lamps had been switched on, so he could oversee the road that led from the main entrance to the gate.

There stood a black limousine, parked closely to the intercom, the headlights still on now, but switched off a moment later. A man jumped out on the driver’s side – ‘Yoh’, Mikhail was sure right away, even if he only saw the person for a moment and had never spoken with the guy ever. The man opened a black umbrella beneath which he got out of sight, then he rushed to the other side of the car… but his passenger had gotten out already.

The distance was too far, the rain as thick as fog, so Mikhail could not witness each movement, yet what ever happened down there, the result was, that Fei Long walked away from the car without taking the giant umbrella. He pushed open the gate and walked up the road, and his skin seemed to glow palely while the water made it look as if he was about to drown.

Suddenly there formed an ugly little knot in Mikhail’s chest. The sparkle gave out. He clenched his jaws, felt his fingers form into tight fists. He wanted to punch the wall, just to remind himself how much he preferred physical pain to… to this. Instead, he turned around and walked back into his room. He put on a shirt, which was hard enough as his back was not happy with him moving his arms too much. Therefore, he did not care about closing the buttons on the front. Also, he thought that the man walking through the rain to him might very much see what the result of Mikhail’s loyalty was.

When there was another knock, he sat on the edge of his bed, dressed in that opened shirt and grey jogging pants.

“Yeah!”, he barked. The door was opened nearly inaudibly. Fei Long stepped inside and closed the door just as quietly behind himself.

“Do you enjoy hurting me?”, Mikhail growled not even allowing the other any other word. The Chinese paused for a moment, then took a few steps forwards. He stopped halfway through the room. Rain was dripping out of his hair and running out of his clothes – suit pants, white dress shirt, jacket – he looked like he had come to argue about some business deal… and in the end maybe that was all there had ever been. Maybe Mikhail had just tricked himself into thinking there was more. Misery tried to flood into him, but he pushed it away, holding tight to the anger.

“In Dubrovnik you said that you weren’t doing it on purpose, but to me it seems like you are getting some kicks out of it”, he snarled on, staring straight ahead, so he could only see the other from the corner of his eye. Fei Long sighed in an annoyed manner, then crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“There is always Baishe first. I told you that. Did you expect me to hold your hand or cradle you while my men were watching?”

“You kissed me in front of Asami! What fucking difference is there?”, Mikhail yelled back, his eyes shot towards the other who turned his face away a bit… as if he was hiding something.

“There is a very big difference”, was the answer, factually, coldly. “I trust Asami in this matter. And I had been very worried about los-“, he stirred, then shrugged, before he started a different sentence. “I have to maintain a reputation. I have to uphold an image. I cannot show affection towards a business partner – or rival.”

“Ah! So, which part now is the pretense actually? The one where you act as if you don’t give a fucking damn about me or the one where you begged me to stay with you in Dubrovnik?”

“I did not beg!”, Fei Long hissed, whirling half around to glower at Mikhail for a moment. By the movement strands of his hair got stuck in his face due to the wetness. He brushed them away and turned away again the very same moment.

“You told me… you promised me: Only me!”, Mikhail growled on. He stood up, even though his back now hurt probably more than ever before. “You said you liked to be touched by me. That you wanted me to stay. Was all of that a fucking lie to make me play along?”

The Chinese shrugged again. His arms hugged him tighter one second, then seemed about to let go the next, just to close around his body again. It were only a few moments, which Mikhail needed to advance to only a few steps of space between them, while Fei Long looked as if he was hectically deliberating between running away and attacking.

‘Attack!’, was what the Russian got, when the other finally turned towards him, pushed up his chin and said: “I needed you there. So, I did not want you to leave. That was no lie. And I gave you what you wanted. It is not my fault that you are delusional. This has to end now.”

He spun around towards the door, when Mikhail grabbed his arm, to just keep him from walking.

“Why don’t you say that to my face?”, he told the other. Rage was in his voice still and he tried to cling to it as if it was the saving rope that could pull him out from the danger of drowning. But though that angry burning filled vast parts of him, though frustration crawled through his veins like poison, there was also that tiny glimmering spark again – because not for a second, not for a blink Fei Long had looked up at him. Neither did he turn around now. The light from the ceiling shone on his damp hair that hid his face to Mikhail.

It had not been an attack after all. Fei Long was running.

“You’re lying to me…”, Mikhail whispered in Russian. “Are you trying to make me angry and to hurt me, so it will be easier for you to leave? Or because you think that it might be easier for me to get over you? Because that’s not working.”

Just a little motion followed. Fei Long lowered his head, presumably to stare towards the ground. His arm moved forward slightly, as if to ascertain how hard that grab was. As if trying to find out if there was a way to just pull away. But there wasn’t.

The rage inside of Mikhail attempted to lash out. It clawed at its edges, yearning to spread and fill all of him, but it was pretty powerless compared to the chill that cooled down his blood and slowed his heartbeat until it hurt. There it was again: That kind of pain was so much worse than any physical injury.

“You kissed me because you had been worried about los… what?”, he rephrased the sentence Fei Long had aborted before. “… because you have been worried about losing me?”

No answer. If that manifestation of his rage had a voice it was shrieking now: ‘No! No! No!’

“I woke up in the plane one time. You were sleeping next me, holding onto my arm like you wanted to make sure that I would not just run away. Was that… holding onto me… just pretense as well?”

No answer still. After a while however Fei Long pushed up his head again. “I only came to end this”, he spoke calmly, factually, but his voice seemed a bit deeper than usual, and again he did not turn around. “I cannot give you what you want. You need to find someone else.”

Once more he tried to pull his arm away, a bit stronger this time. It only made the fingers around his biceps clench harder, until he whimpered from the pain.

To Mikhail it pretty much seemed that his rage had now rallied into his hand, because that was the only place where it was allowed to remain. Soon he felt his fist grasp the other’s arm so hard that he was definitely bruising and hurting him. Fei Long’s shoulders hunched together on the pain, but all he kept doing was trying to pull away.

Mikhail’s fingers started to tremble from the strain. A bad, stinging ache seared up his arm and into his back, but the agony in his chest was worse still.

“Tell me to my face that you want to end this. After all the lies, I deserve as much as that, don’t I?”, he managed to say coldly, then forced his grip to soften so the other could turn. He didn’t though for a while. Then he finally swallowed loud enough for Mikhail to hear.

Slowly Fei Long moved around, his eyes however did not meet the Russian’s until the end.

Mikhail coerced an angry grin onto his lips, when he stared down onto the other, despite what he saw. There was some wetness on the Chinese’s cheeks that looked quite new… and not as if it was just more rainwater running out of his hair.

“You deserve what you want, Mikhail. But I cannot give you that”, Fei Long spoke with another swallow first as if he had to steady his voice.

‘This is the attack now!’, Mikhail realized. By trying to make him angry, Fei Long had run. By trying to talk to him as if he was being reasonable, he attacked. This time amethyst eyes stared up at him fiercely. Too fiercely though. As if they looked though him, focused on somewhere else, somewhere far from his face.

“I love you”, Mikhail spoke, because that was the only reply he had. It sounded hard and unrelenting because it was the truth, and no lies and pretense and hurt would take it away – he knew that now. He had before, but right in this moment he realized it more clearly than ever. He had loved Fei Long from afar without any hope of ever having a moment alone with him. Without anything but dreaming of being allowed to touch for a second. He had loved Fei Long when he had known that their time together was simply a deal and that their touching and kissing meant nothing to the other. He had loved him when he had feared to be betrayed by him and tossed away and left behind. He loved him still and probably always would, no matter if that made him stupid.

Fei Long wanted to spin around and flee, but Mikhail caught him by the arms again and held him tight. Instead, the Chinese turned his head away so that the black hair covered his face.

“Let go, please”, he growled hoarsely.

“Not until I understand you. You feared that I would leave you in Dubrovnik! You feared to lose me in that basement! You feared that I would just sneak out on your jet when I could not run anywhere. But despite all that you’re throwing me away now? You’re losing me on purpose?”, he had realized that his voice was getting louder and louder by the word but could not stop himself. With tears of anger and despair brimming in his eyes, he yelled at Fei Long in the end: “I love you, and your charades will not change that. So, explain to me what the fuck is going on!”

He shook the other by the arms several times. Right now, he understood how Ryuichi Asami had felt.

Again, Fei Long tried to pull away, but the hands were gripping him too hard. Probably with his skills in combat he could get rid of them – and of the man fixing him to the spot – easily… but it did not seem as if he had the strength at the moment.

“Mikhail”, he started and finally looked up and into his eyes for real. He just did not speak right away. He searched for words or for his voice, and looked lost and confused while doing so. For a moment it also seemed to Mikhail as if his hands were the only thing that kept the Chinese standing.

“I told you that… it will be Baishe first. I cannot…”, he grabbed the other’s sleeves, holding tight a moment, trying to push the next. “I cannot give you what you deserve. I can’t… I… You deserve someone who does not only love you behind closed doors and when no one is-“

He stopped startled by Mikhail who suddenly had let go of his arms to snatch his face with both his hands. It surprised the Russian as well. He held the other tight like that, making sure Fei Long’s face was turned upwards and his eyes were looking at him.

It took him a moment however until he had understood where the motion had come from.

“The doors are closed right now”, he whispered. “No one is around.”

Fei Long frowned, then blinked at him very slowly. He bit his lower lip.

“Do you love me right now?”, Mikhail asked in a hum.

The other tried to pull away, but he did not let him. The tear that tumbled down from those thick, long lashes therefore fell down onto the Russian’s fingers.

The end Fei Long spoke without a voice: “Yes.”

It made Mikhail hiss. The rage burst through him in a red inferno that narrowed his vision, thumbed with agony through his skull and turned his breath fiery. Then it was gone.

“Then why the fuck do you want to let me go? Do you think I’m gonna be happy without you? Do you think that making me angry or hurting me is making me stop loving you?”

He did not even need an answer to that. Fei Long’s eyes proved that all of that was true. Mikhail had gathered long ago that the other had hardly any idea of love. He understood longing and desire and lust, and his past had made him mistake all of that for ‘love’. He had simply not known how much ‘love’ had hurt Fei Long before, how much he feared it.

“It will be like this… again and again”, the other now spoke, fighting for his voice. “I will not hold your hand in public or talk to you with affection. I cannot give you any of that.”

Mikhail hissed again, though the rage was already gone. He laughed then. “Fei, I don’t want you to turn me into your first lady or something like that. I have my own businesses, my own ventures. I’m not gonna step back a single notch for the benefit of Baishe. I will flirt with every pretty girl that comes my way and I will be offensive and flirty towards you, no matter who will be around. And you can go on acting cold and aloof in front of me to your hearts content, as long as behind closed doors I may wrap my arms around you and kiss you and hold you and sleep next to you and…”

“You should have more than that”, Fei Long interrupted him and he just laughed again.

“Where does that come from? Why do you think I deserve so much, while you think that you yourself deserve nothing? I am a bastard, a criminal, a murderer. I have no idea how many people I killed without even doing it directly, through dealing weapons and drugs. And I don’t care. I don’t deserve more than the next man. I only deserve what I manage to fight for, and I will fight for you until you shoot me dead.”

Fei Long stirred to free himself of the hands still holding his cheeks, but he did not step away. Right there, Mikhail could just wrap his arms around the other. He was so close.

“I told you I don’t care about your past. I don’t care what you did that makes you believe you would not deserve anything good. I fucking won’t listen to you if you say these things.”

“I don’t deserve any of this”, Fei Long stated, nonetheless. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Oh, shut up!”, Mikhail snapped at him. The Chinese looked up sharply. There was a tiny flicker of anger – presumably because no one ever dared to talk to the dragon of Baishe like that –, but it was gone right away. “Or keep talking…”, the Russian added and started to smile nastily, “and I will shut you up.”

“And how will you do that?”, Fei Long asked. There were tears on his cheeks still, but his eyes did not seem as confused anymore.

Mikhail grabbed his face again and pushed his lips onto the others to seal them.

Chapter Text

Though the cleaning of the mansion was done within one day – after which the only evidence of what had happened was the gate that had been only provisionally replaced by a crude wooden one – Akihito and Asami stuck to the guesthouse. They had their meals served in their room, spent hours lying in bed, just holding onto each other, or sometimes went for a walk into the far-off areas of the gardens.

Now and then, there were messages or phone calls coming in, but only one of them Asami had answered – in the first night, early in the morning. Somewhen around midnight he had taken out the device and had set it back to allow ringing, to not miss the one call he expected. It came about two hours later.

Akihito had been awake for a while, had rested his head on Asami’s chest and had listened to his heartbeat. He had slept too much – almost the whole last day and long into the evening – he simply was not tired anymore, yet he did not want to move an inch. If the room had been on fire, he’d probably not gotten up.

The older man had twitched once the ringing had started, for he had been asleep for a short while. But shrugging off any drowsiness, he had snatched the phone from the nightstand and had answered it, after one quick check of the name in the display.

“Yes”, he had spoken very quietly. Akihito had raised himself onto his elbows to show that there was no need for whispering.

“Did I wake you?”, Asami formed with his lips and the boy shook his head.

“Is that Fei Long?”

The man raised his free hand and let his fingers caress the other’s cheek, smiling. “I will put you on speaker. Akihito is with me”, he told the phone.

“Good morning, Fei Long!”, the younger had blurted out, clapping a hand onto his grinning lips then. He had not meant to speak that loud even if they were alone.

“Good morning”, the Chinese replied.

After a few moments the call was already finished. Fei Long had reached Baishe HQ safely. Everything seemed fine.

All the other calls however, and all the messages for which he barely ever spared an eye, Asami left unanswered.

“If they’re important, you should take them”, Akihito had told him. The taller man had only pulled him close and had kissed him.

“They’re not important”, remained his only response.

The first time they walked back into the mansion was when Maxim had them informed that he had managed to open his father’s safe.

Just like in the movies this one was hidden in the old man’s study, yet not behind a painting but behind one of the bookcases. The vault behind was big enough that probably even Asami could have climbed inside and would not have had to curl up too tightly if he wanted to turn around in it. From it one of Maxim’s men had already produced folders, ring binders, boxes and envelopes of files. Obviously, the wealth hidden in this safe was not one of gold or money, but of information.

With a low, long sigh Maxim greeted both Akihito and Asami when they entered the study. Over the desk he handed his younger brother one thick folder. Either man had to use both hands to hold it and it slumped onto the table where Asami placed it with a loud thud.

He opened it and had a look at about every 20iest page of the probably 400.

 “I feel I’ll find out some stuff about my own life that I hadn’t know about myself if I ever read all of this”, he snarled when he punched the folder shut again. In it were detailed records on his life from the day he had left his family until now – including several pictures of his young lover.

The only thing he took out had been stuck to the first page, and he handed it to Akihito.

“Is that you?”, Akihito had asked, unable to stop himself from grinning. It was a picture of a boy of about 6 years with band-aids on his forehead and on his chin.

“Yes”, Asami had answered. A smile had flickered across his face for a second, but it was gone quickly. Dealing with all of this – with his father – was obviously nothing easy for him.

Quietly Akihito chuckled, both about the picture and in hope that it might somewhat lighten up the moment. It made him feel even more helpless. In instants like this he felt like an alien in Asami’s world. He had no idea of it, no insight into it. He was an outsider, that had stumbled into it and could just be cast away easily.

With a sigh that turned into a low hum he handed the picture back. But Asami did not take it. He stepped closer and kissed his forehead instead, and there was once again a faint smile, when Akihito looked up.

“Keep it”, the other said.

A tiny cough from the other side of the table made both turn towards Maxim again, who seemed ill at ease and apologized right away. Then he handed another file across the table. This one was even thicker.

Asami took it, turned it, and on the cover, there was the snake symbol of Baishe. He growled, then placed the folder on the desk with another loud thud.

Akihito slowly stepped up next to him, cautiously watching whether there would be any objection to him looking over the other’s shoulder, but there never came one. Asami started to turn the pages, only skipping parts that were larger passages of texts. There were a lot of pictures in between of people that Akihito did not know. An older man appeared again and again, growing even older as the pages – and therefore time progressed. For a moment that made him wonder: Whenever he had had to put files into a binder, he had put the oldest last and the newer ones in front, which ultimately meant for him having to scroll through the binder then backwards – opposite to the usual way of reading a book. Richard Asami had done it the other way around: The oldest files were the first and after that all additions were becoming more recent.

On the picture of a young man Asami paused for a moment. It made Akihito take a closer look. The guy was around 20 maybe, and quite good-looking, with sleek black hair and a broad jaw. There was a tiny mole next to his eye.

“Who is that?”, Akihito asked in a mumble. He was not sure if he was supposed to have any questions at all.

“Liu Yan Tsui. Fei Long’s brother”, was the answer. Asami growled it. He turned the next pages with a bit more force and speed until he stopped again at a photograph. This one – it looked very much like the work of some Paparazzi – showed that man again, some years older now, in front of some bar or something like that, but he was not alone. Wind had made the other person’s long hair fly around his head and he had raised a hand to keep it out of his face.

Akihito heard himself inhale sharply, when he leaned in even closer to Asami. On the picture was Fei Long, looking as if he was maybe 18 or 19. His hair was so long he looked very much like Rapunzel. With a flinch Asami turned to the young man at his side, staring at him intently, and Akihito felt himself blush. He took a step back. Maybe he should go. This was some business matter! He had no right to be here!

Then Asami faced the binder again and a moment later he ripped the picture off the page and tore it in half, handing the part with Fei Long on it to Akihito. “Keep it”, Asami said. When Akihito managed to take his surprised gaze from the photograph and lay it upon his lover again, the other was once more smiling very faintly. Again, it was gone quickly enough, when he waltzed through the next pages.

Slowly his eyes seemed to get dark and Akihito could not help himself but step closer again, fighting the urge to through his arms around the other.

For long pages there followed legal texts and documents of police investigation – Akihito could only tell because of the headers of the Hong Kong Police Department which always contained English texts as well that were plain enough to be understood by him.

“How did he get all these?”, Asami asked quietly, shaking his head. He paused at the photograph of an elderly, very well dressed and groomed man with fine white hair, then wanted to turn the page, but Akihito asked: “Who is that?”

Somehow, he thought he knew the person, even though that was very unlikely. Asami tore the picture from the page and handed it over.

“Throw it in the bin. That’s Toh. Fei Long’s biological father. You better never mention him to Fei Long.”

“Oh”, Akihito heard himself say in surprise. The man on the picture looked like someone he would have guessed to be very kind and nice. That however was probably only the first impression. On a second thought Akihito realized why he had believed he knew the man: he had exactly the same eyes as Fei Long.

He did, as he had been asked, and pushed the photograph into the trash, before he returned to his lover’s side.

“Fuck!”, Asami snarled. Another page… and there was a photograph of a younger Yoh.

“How did he get all this?”, he shook his head, and Maxim on the other side of the desk shrugged in helplessness.

“Stop!”, Akihito made Asami pause on a page that he had not even opened fully. Perhaps he had halted on it anyway, but Akihito hadn’t wanted to leave it to chance: It was a report about a prison admission – again he could only judge from the few English texts on the pages he understood, but there were two pictures that looked very much like mug shots… only that most of these Akihito had seen before made the person photographed looked pretty bleak. These ones however showed a very pretty young man with short…

“Is that Fei Long?”, he asked.

Asami took the file from the binder and handed it over. “Don’t keep it”, he said softly.

“Ok”, Akihito promised, already staring at the picture taken from the front. Fei Long seemed to be about 20, maybe a bit older. His marvelous long hair had been cut short, but he looked beautiful, nonetheless – and still pretty feminine.

“He was in prison?”, suddenly Akihito found himself ask.

“For about a year when he was 21, 22”, Asami answered. He had in the meantime skipped through many long text documents. Again, he shook his head, flipping through page after page, passing over pictures.

There was one of Tao – looking to be about 6 years old. It was taken out and handed over as well. Then photographs of many men – presumably belonging to Baishe. With an annoyed hiss Asami stopped another time nearly to the end of the file.

“How the fuck…”, he tore a picture from the pages, turned it around and studied the date that had been written on it. “This is more than two years back. Why…? How did he know?”, he gnarled at his brother.

“I don’t know. A hunch? Observation skills? Intel? I don’t know.”

Akihito stepped up and was handed the picture to his surprise. It showed Mikhail Arbatov on a red carpet in front of some well-illuminated castle like building. There was a really beautiful young woman on his arm.

“This is all…”, Asami started to say in utter annoyance, but stopped mid-sentence. He had reached the last page beneath which there had been stuck a small envelope. The Chinese letter’s for ‘Liu Fei Long’ were written onto it, and a date – about 14 years back.

For a long while he simply stared at the paper bag.

“Shall I?”, Maxim finally asked, speaking calmly and tenderly.

Asami however shook his head. He took the envelope, opened it and had a look at the pictures from above, without pulling them out.

Slowly his breath was becoming quiet, then forced. Akihito stepped up to him, not even knowing how he managed to move. Right now, there seemed to be some icy wave to emanate from his lover, that grew even colder by the moment. But his place was there by his side – Akihito knew right away. There he belonged. There maybe he could bring in some warmth.

And Asami slammed the enveloped onto the desk, through his arms around the smaller man and pulled him close, pushing his lips onto his forehead and exhaling sharply. Akihito hugged him, tightly, feeling the other man’s heart beat heavily in his chest.

“Tell me if you can identify those men. And if they’re still alive, tell me where they are”, Asami hissed towards his brother.

At nightfall Asami had dragged the heavy mattress from their bed out onto a balcony, where now they lay beneath the vast night sky of Croatia. There were so many stars above! And yet the longer Akihito stared, the more he found in the darkness between the brighter ones.

He had rested his head on the taller man’s biceps. For a long while he had believed that Asami was asleep, but when he finally looked up, he found the other blink slowly while gazing off into nothingness.

“Hey”, he whispered as quietly as he could. There were crickets everywhere around who sang a song for them, and his voice was hardly loud enough to be heard.

With a smile forming on his lips Asami shifted to look at him.

“Hey.”

Even in the little light there was Akihito could see that the other’s eyes were still overshadowed. There was a question he had to ask… one that he had been carrying with him for a long while – not only in these hours, not only in the last days, but for many, many months. Before he could phrase it however, he had to ask something else.

“Those men… on the pictures from the envelope. You’re going to kill them, right?”

Asami’s face twitched with some signs of anger. He nodded slowly. “Yes. If they are still alive and Maxim can find them, then I will go and kill them. I… will have to…”, he started, but Akihito interrupted. He had expected this.

“You will have to leave me for a few days at least, when you do so”, he concluded because he knew already – and even though he only had a vague idea of what had been on those photographs, he knew that there was no way around this. Fei Long had been fourteen on those pictures. And both Asami and Maxim had hardly managed to look at them. The older of the brothers had been pale and shook afterwards, the younger had in the end smashed his fist against the wall and Akihito had bandaged his bleeding knuckles. He had not taken a look, not that it had been offered. Asami wanted to protect him from the knowledge – and he didn’t want to gain it.

Nevertheless, he understood that those two men, wherever they were, had to die, and that Asami would go and leave him and punish them… and he was fine with that. He knew that so fiercely as if his mind had itself punched a fist into a wall.

“Ok. Give them what they deserve”, he told the older man, who pulled him into his embrace then. Grabbing the back of Akihito’s head, he let his fingers trail through his hair and laid his lips once more against the younger one’s forehead. Like this, Akihito could have fallen asleep – and he really wanted to – but there still was that other question. And finally, he had to ask it.

“Do you love him? Fei Long?”

There was no reaction for a short while, only those fingers that kept wandering tenderly through his hair. For moment he had started to believe that Asami was just ignoring him, yet then he stirred slightly.

“When you came into my life, that was the first time I ever thought about the idea of love. You taught me that”, he hummed. “Before you I never thought I wanted it or needed it, nor had I ever wondered about how it would feel. You gave me that knowledge. Today I can tell that I did love him back then. And I still do. But not like I love you…”

He paused for a moment after his last words had been spoken louder and stronger. “I love him differently. Like…”, he broke off –

– and did not start speaking again. Akihito moved to look up at him and found him screwing up his eyes in exaggeration. He obviously had only waited for the other to behold this, for then he broke into a grin. “… like an annoying little brother, maybe. Who will never do what you tell him and then you have to run and save his ass…”

“I think he saved your ass often enough”, Akihito interrupted giving the other a little nudge with the elbow.

“Maybe”, Asami admitted, when he already looked down to the smaller man in his arms again. His face suddenly changed. There was no humor in it anymore, but also no anger, no contemplation, no uncertainty. His golden eyes were turned almost black by the night, but they twinkled into Akihito’s as if they wanted to hypnotize him.

“Before you I did not know love. And I love you more than anything… Let us leave”, he whispered.

“Hm?”, the younger made. He did not know how to move his lips. He felt like he was spellbound already.

“I buy a ship. A sailing yacht. We stuff it full of food and everything else we need for weeks and then we just sail away. Somewhere where no one know us.”

“But…”, he had to fight to put in that word. This sounded like a dream. Probably he had fallen asleep in Asami’s arms, and he did not want to wake himself up by expressing any doubt. And if this was just idle talk, just… daydreaming about what would be possible if they were somebody else… if only Asami was somebody else, then he did not want to bust that bubble.

“But…”, he found his voice croak it the second time he whispered it. “… you need to get home to Japan. Because of your businesses and-“

“I never wanted them”, Asami interjected. “I wanted a small bar of my own. I wanted to be my own master and to be free. Instead, I became my father. I lost track of everything I had once sworn to myself and became exactly what I had never wanted to be. Help me to leave it behind, Akihito. I will hand it all to Kirishima. He can do with it whatever he wishes or toss it all away. I don’t care.”

That his fingers had clawed into Asami’s shirt he only realized when the taller man’s hand touched them gently. Akihito flinched. Some kind of gasp escaped his throat and when he tried to speak, he noticed that his teeth were trembling a tiny bit.

“You would lose… everything…”, he stuttered, but Asami moved his head until their foreheads touched.

“I would keep the one thing I would not survive to lose: You.”

Akihito laughed for a tiny moment, uncertain of why. This did not feel like a joke to him. ‘Then maybe… it is happiness?’, he wondered for a moment, before the floor seemed to shake beneath him and he believed he was falling.

“I…”, he started, closing his eyes, to keep in tears that suddenly started to fill them. “When I was in Warsaw… I… I and that… guy…A…”

“No”, Asami said and it made Akihito look up startled. There was no surprise in that voice, no sharpness, no anger – and in those eyes only warmth and confidence.

“That was Arata. That was not you”, he declared, and his words were so strong it made even the singing of the crickets fall silent.

“It may only have been some faint subconsciousness of you, that remembered me, my touch, my kisses, and craved them.”

It sounded so cheesy, no matter how dreadful the matter, that Akihito could not keep himself from chuckling. Still the tears streamed down his face and Asami shifted and rolled over him to kiss them away.

Then his lips found the other’s and Akihito though that if right now he could suffocate from that kiss, he would be happy. He pushed Asami’s hands onto his body, sought the other man’s flesh with his own fingers. They pulled each other close and closer, and the warm night air made their skin damp, no matter how many pieces of clothing they took off.

In the end, Akihito climbed on top of the other, as he knew in some kind of hazy memory that now felt more like a dream almost forgotten, he had done in Warsaw only a few days ago.

“Look at me”, he whispered when he broke the kiss and straightened up, to gaze upon the beautiful man beneath him… between his legs.

Then he allowed himself to sink onto Asami’s thick cock and had to catch his breath to not frighten the crickets away with his moan. Large palms pressed onto his skin, not to guide him, not to determine the rhythm – Asami let him do all that on his own, while he watched him – only to feel him. First slowly, then gradually faster and fiercer Akihito moved his hips, taking the other man deeper with each thrust.

Very likely there were some guards in the garden who could see them, but right now he did not care. If the whole world saw what they did, he did not mind. This was the man he loved, the man he would have given his life for to save, the man who would have died to protect him.

And Asami sat up, grabbed him around the waist and pulled him close to kiss him again and again, whispering, “I love you”, in between. “I love you, Akihito.”

Chapter Text

With a long, deep sigh Mikhail leaned back in the bathtub, his eyes closed, his hands on either side of the basin. Warm, fragrant steam billowed up around him. There followed a loud, happy hum, when his head came to rest on the wall and a smile showed on his lips. Slowly he inhaled.

“Oh, I missed this”, he mumbled.

“The bath?”, Fei Long asked, cautiously sliding down and backwards until his back leaned against the other man’s chest. “Or this?” With a tiny moan he pushed his hips further down, only pausing for a second, when the pressure took his breath away. Then his muscles allowed the thick, burning manhood access.

Mikhail hissed a moan of himself. “Both of it”, he answered, already breathless.

His injuries had kept him from taking a bath and them from having sex for almost two weeks now. Of course, there were other ways in enjoying each other, yet in the end it was not the same. Not like this.

“Don’t move”, Fei Long whispered. He was positioned between the Russian’s legs, pushed his feet onto the ground of the giant tub and started to set up a rhythm my himself, slow and deep, while the warm water splashed up around him.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that”, Mikhail answered. Soon his thighs and abs shivered and trembled beneath Fei Long in an attempt to keep still. It seemed as if every muscle in him wanted to jerk upwards to thrust even deeper.

Maybe to distract himself he started to kiss the side of Fei Long’s throat, then to nibble on his skin, then to grace it with his teeth. More and more his breath was becoming harsh and hot, rougher his bites became until they definitely would leave bruises.

So, Fei Long turned his head and caught the other man’s lips with his own, allowing his tongue to slide in deep, while his own movements became quicker and harder. Splash splash, the water spattered all around and over the edges of the basin.

“You feeling good?”, Mikhail breathed into his mouth, his words ripped by his ragged breath.

“Yes”, Fei Long replied, but his own voice was torn apart by a moan.

He had to grip the sides of the bathtub fiercely now to keep up any kind of rhythm and not just slam himself down with brute force. After all, there was still a healing wound on the man, whose cock he fucked into himself.

“You drive me nuts”, the other panted into his ear, pulling him so close to himself that water was pressed out between their chest and back, and they seemed to be glued together.

“I ah… know”, the Chinese answered. He had his eyes squeezed shut, his eyebrows knotted tightly together. All he could hear was the hot, hard breath of the other man, and the heavy symphony of both their heartbeats.

Then suddenly Mikhail shrieked into his ear: “I can’t…!”

“No-“, the answer was drowned by his own load moan, when the Russian grabbed him around the thighs, lifted him up until the whole front of his body rose above the water’s surface, and then started to ram his own crotch upwards violently and fiercely.

“No… aah!... Don…”, Fei Long tried to wiggle himself from the other’s grasp to regain control, but only for a moment and only halfheartedly. His own manhood pointed to the ceiling, unattended in the chilly air beyond the warmth of the bath – and that was how he wanted it. He did not need any stroking… he preferred it this way.

And surely enough, when Mikhail’s thrusts became frantic and brutal, his own body stiffened in the man’s relentless grip, his every muscle tensed and quivered. He did not even realize how he slumped his head back hard onto the edge of the tub in his need for breath, while the white, blinding waves of orgasm washed through him.

When perception returned, he had sunk back beneath the water mostly and felt Mikhail breathing harshly beneath him.

“Wow!”, the Russian chimed, and Fei Long didn’t even need to turn his head to know that he was grinning madly. “That was quite a load!”

“Oh, you’re disgusting!”, he complained, giving the other man a slight nudge with the elbow on the side where there was no healing bullet wound.

“Well, obviously you liked it!”, Mikhail shot back still panting but also laughing. He grabbed Fei Long by the chin with two fingers and turned his head, so he looked back. “You came all over yourself. And shot pretty far, too!”

His tongue darted out to lick several times along the Chinese’s neck and jawline.

“Delicious!”, was his verdict, when his blue eyes sparkled into the other’s again after that.

“You’re also a connoisseur, obviously”, Fei Long answered, accepting the kiss that followed – and the tongue on which he could taste himself.

At shortly after midnight, he wandered through his vast apartment quietly within the silence. He didn’t need to switch on any lamps because the lights from the city that permeated through the windows were always enough.

For quite a while he had been awake and had stared at the ceiling of his room, wondering what had awakened him. He had dreamed, that he knew, but of what he did not remember. Maybe for an hour he had listened to the slow and soothing breathing of Mikhail by his side, without ever feeling uneasy or annoying by own his wakefulness.

Yet at some point he had found that maybe a short walk and a glass of water would distract his mind sufficiently from whatever it could not recall anyway.

Stepping in front of one of the giant windows that allowed to gaze over Victoria Harbour and the never sleeping city all around that brimmed with life and light even at this hour, he had a look at his mobile phone – and found one missed call.

The number he had been given by someone else but had never used it himself. For a moment he deliberated, then calculated the difference of the time zones, before he pressed the return button.

“Yes? Fei Long?”, Maxim’s voice answered within a few seconds.

“Good evening”, Fei Long replied.

“Good e-… uhm… morning. Isn’t it morning already for you? You needn’t call me back at this time.”

Croatia was 6 hours behind Hong Kong, so for Maxim the sun was still up.

“I was awake. Don’t worry. What did you want?... Did someth-“

Maxim interrupted him, probably because he had heard the alarm that had crept into the other’s voice.

“Oh, everything is alright. I…”, whatever it was, even if it weren’t bad news, he had to swallow hard, nonetheless. Fei Long remained silent, waiting for the other man to explain – and he did, after he cleared his voice: “We… found those pictures. I burned them. They are gone.”

For some moment there flickered bright lights in the darkness of the vast room, like fireflies. Aggressive ones! They seemed to close in. He could even hear their buzzing and it became so loud and dense it started to take his breath. He…

“Fei Long?”, Maxim’s voice shook him back. The well-known gloom spread throughout the room again and the world fell silent once more except for the very faint noise of the bustling city and the constant, low strokes of a giant, old hall clock.

“Are you… alright?”, the man asked and Fei Long nodded slowly, wet his lips and then answered “Yes”, even though it was more a croak than anything else.

Now he himself swallowed hard and could not prevent some distraught sigh to burst from his mouth.

“Thank you”, finally he managed to say.

“There is… more”, Maxim added. He spoke softly but a bit more confident now than before. “We were able to find those men. Ryuichi, he… he has killed them both. The first three days ago in Split. The other today in Geneva.”

Even though once again the mobile phone felt weightless in his hand, the sparkling fireflies did not return. Fei Long found himself listening to the steady beating of the clock as if it was the very beating of his heart.

After he had gotten out of prison and had started to take control over Baishe, he had found anybody who had ever toughed him – and he had killed them all. Those two however, he had never found out anything about. He had been too young and the man they had worked for was a mere shadow. Someone without a name or a shape, and without any of that how should he have ever figured out who those two henchmen had been. He would have had to burn down the whole world and kill every man that crossed his way…

For a flash of a second he saw their faces now – just like he had in many dreams – but clearer this time. Maybe… for some strange reason he had dreamed of them when he had found himself awoken by a nightmare about an hour ago? Perhaps for some strange form of instinct? Or just by coincidence? Maybe he had dreamed of them and had seen their faces – just like he did now in the darkness of his apartment. But now there were bullet holes in their heads and the last expression that had ever passed across their eyes had been fear.

“Thank you”, he whispered again.

“This is Ryuichi’s doing. I will pass it on.”

“Yes”, his voice was nearly inaudible now, and very likely because of that Maxim started to say his goodbye, when Fei Long interrupted him.

“Maxim!”

“Uh, yes?”, the other sounded pretty surprised from his sudden change, because he had spoken louder and clearer suddenly.

When he then continued there was nothing harsh in his voice: “Why was there this video of Mikhail and me?”

Slowly Maxim inhaled, then kept his breath for a long moment, before he let go again. “I…”, he started, but paused again for a few seconds. “I swear to you I had not planned it. I only ever used that system for some ladies who were my guests and were well aware of it and who had given me their consent. I have never done this without the other person’s knowledge or approval. I am sorry.”

“That is not what I asked”, Fei Long interfered. Still his voice was not harsh – but curious.

Another sigh. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to know how you were… underneath… and how… all that cold beauty could become raw and ardent… I…”

He fell silent, but his breath could be heard harshly through the phone – and Fei Long knew that the other was aware of it. Maxim was interested in women only, Asami had said. He had no doubt in that, despite that video. This had nothing to do with sexuality, Fei Long realized. And it had not been an attempt to trespass on something that was not offered in consent. Maxim was no one who exploited or forced himself onto someone he wanted.

The conclusion made a slight chill trail up his spine. Now… thanks to Maxim and Asami, and Yoh, – and his own doing – everyone who had ever taken from him without his permission was dead. He had killed most of them with his own two hands; Yoh had shot Yan Tsui; and Maxim and Asami had gotten rid of the last two. Even the pictures had gone and when they had fallen to ashes the cruelty he had come to know had been repaid. From today on all he needed to do to finally heal was to rise from the cinder. He had started to do so the day he had set foot out of his prison cell and at last… he was on the final straight.

“Thank you, Maxim”, he said again. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

“I am really sorry”, the other man reassured. There was a faint sound as if he sniffled. “Have a good night.”

“You, too.”

With that Fei Long hung up. He searched for the entry with Asami’s name then and put only two words into a message. “Thank you”, it read.

He had not made it halfway back to the bedroom, when there was a slight buzzing. He took up the phone again which illuminated faintly showing a short answer: “You’re welcome. Sleep tight.”

Mikhail still lay between the sheets. He had rolled onto his side, facing the window and therefore showed his back to Fei Long. Slowly he breathed, slowly his shoulders moved. The curtains had not been drawn and therefore the light from the harbor and from Kowloon on the far side made his skin and hair shimmer silver.

Lightly Fei Long climbed onto the bed and across it, stopping when he was right behind the other’s back. The scars were black streaks on Mikhail’s skin. Ever so tenderly, he dragged one finger along one of them, but the sleeping man did not seem to notice.

So, he leaned down and started to kiss them. Planting tiny, warm, gentle pecks onto the Russian’s shoulders, until Mikhail finally moved.

“Hey?”, he hummed, when he turned onto his back and caught Fei Long in his arms.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing?” In the faint light even his blue eyes shone like liquid silver, yet they did not sparkle one bit less warmly. “Can’t you sleep?”

“No… I’m trying to kiss your scars away”, Fei Long answered. He wondered actually if that was possible. They were many years old and some of them quite deep. Probably they would become a bit less crimson by time, but they would never completely vanish.

“You don’t have to. They are proof that I survived that. I do not mind them”, Mikhail answered, pulling him closer, until Fei Long lost his balance and tumbled half onto the other man – and into his embrace.

That sort of thing… only Mikhail could say something like that and have every ounce of his whole being resound that declaration. He believed in himself so much. Even the cruelest parts of his life he seemed to accept with so much ease…

One of his fingers suddenly found the collar of Fei Long’s nightrobe. He pushed it away tenderly, then let his fingertip caress the scar on the Chinese’s chest.

“Would you like me to kiss that one away?”, he asked in a hush.

Fei Long shook his head just bit, staring into the other’s eyes which were still so full of life and warmth – and love – even in the greyness of night.

“Not that one…”, he started, but then caught the air in his throat. He needed help to get rid of some scars, but not of those that could be seen.

“My scars are not showing on my skin”, he continued, his voice less than a hiss. He had hardly any breath to speak.

Yet Mikhail just smiled up at him and dragged him a bit closer into his strong arms.

“Then I just have kiss to more thoroughly”, he answered.

Chapter Text

8 months later, 70 miles off the coast of Algiers.

The boat was a Bavaria C57, an incredibly beautiful sailing Yacht which – whoever had the means to dig up an information like that knew – belonged to one certain Asami Ryuichi. That he had bought the ship seemingly on a whim and had then set sail had been a surprise, but not as much as the fact that he had called it ‘Brightness’ in remembrance of his young lover that had died tragically months before.

That he would then choose to take his own life this night would later be the most startling of it all – or maybe would, after everything else, not be that very startling anymore. Afterall it had seemed that he had lost his marbles for quite a while anyway.

When the boat’s motor and tank exploded it tore a huge hole into the ships side and burned the already dead man to the point of being unrecognizable – should indeed someone come and look for a corpse. The blast lit up the low clouds like a huge jack o’lantern above the black surface of the water. It was quite beautiful to behold, but those people who would later wonder how the once great Asami Ryuichi had fallen so quickly and so badly, would never know about the spectacular sight.

In fact, the only one who really witnessed it sat in a small inflatable boat a hundred yards away and tried to keep his eyes shielded from the sudden brightness and focused on the shallow, dark waves on which the dinghy bounced slightly up and down. He kept humming some pop song with which some Russian boy had made 10^th place in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest – and did not even know why the fuck that tune was stuck in his head.

He was pretty relieved to finally being able to occupy his mind with something else, when he spotted a teeny, tiddly white light flashing on the waves between himself and the burning Yacht. With one paddle he just pushed his dinghy towards it but stopped when there were only a few meters between them. A black arm shot out of the water then. He caught it and dragged the man attached to it inside.

“You look good for a dead man!”, he grinned, and Asami felt the sudden urge to punch him.

“Just get us out of here”, he gnarled instead, panting a moment for breath, then hoisted in the watertight package he had dragged through the ocean behind him.

“Your mood certainly has not improved”, Mikhail gave back, turning on the very quiet motor of the boat.

About 20 miles to the east there was another ship – a giant, white Sunseeker 35m motor Yacht – but the man it belonged to did not know that it was there, because he was dead and had been for more than 10 years. In truth he had never really bought the ship in the first place and therefore very likely did not care about the young Japanese who sat at the rear of the top deck and stared off into the darkness.

Every odd minute the youngster checked his watch, then the overcast sky again. He had been told by the man by his side, that they would very likely not be able to see the explosion because of the clouds – but then again, the other one was still standing there as well, gazing into the night.

“You know… we could just leave. We could leave them out there, go home … with each other…”

Akihito looked up grinning, but then shrugged. “Oh, but they would both be so sad.”

Fei Long smiled down to him before he nodded and sighed. “Yes. And we would probably miss them.”

When the dinghy finally came into sight, Akihito had almost dozed off from all the staring. For a while now he had believed to see shapes in the clouds, but whenever he had looked up it had been nothing. Now he was more cautious and only raised his arm to point into the distance when he was absolutely sure.

“There!”, he chimed. Together with Fei Long he climbed down the two staircases that lead to the bathing platform and the mooring point for the auxiliary boat.

Only minutes later, Mikhail steered the dinghy into the gap and against the slope along which the tiny tube would be pulled back into its ‘garage’.

“Did it all work out?”, Akihito asked in some nervous joy, when he tossed his lover a rope to fix the boat to the enormous Yacht.

“All’s well”, Asami answered giving him a confident smile. Then he climbed out onto the platform a moment later, pulling the younger one into his arms, soaking him from head to toe with his still drenched diving suit.

“Uh! You’re cold and wet!”, Akihito complained, struggling from the hug happily.

Already Mikhail had jumped out as well handing Asami’s watertight luggage up to Fei Long who sat on the upper flight of the steep stairs.

“We should get out of here”, the Chinese spoke, when he reached over to push the package onto the floor behind him. Probably he had wanted to add something else, but when he turned to face the bathing platform again, Mikhail had jumped unto the stairs and caught his lips in a kiss, leaning heavily against him.

“Get off me!”, Fei Long complained pushing the other away – after giving in to the kiss for a pretty long moment.

“Aye aye!”, the Russian yelled, then climbed across his lover, tumbling him over backwards onto the upper floor. From the Chinese’s attempt to smack him around the head, he managed to flee, ran up the next staircase and only a minute later the low rumble of the giant’s Yachts motor started to hum.

Soon the black water behind the ship was swirling and crimping in pretty waves, while they flew away into the night.

Two days later they lay just south of Valencia, near the National Park of Albufera, while the sun climbed up lazily in the east. In the summer months this area was usually very crowded with tourists at the beaches and boats crossing along the shore, but right now it was February. The water and air were quite chilly and there was a strong breeze that tried to push the Yacht towards the shore despite the heavy anchor. It also tried to wiggle Fei Long’s hair from the tight knot he had bound it into at the back of his head.

Akihito slowly released him from the embrace.

“So, first Valencia, and then?”, he asked the boy, who was dressed in expensive and warm outdoor clothing.

The other shrugged and raised his hands to emphasize it. “We have not even discussed it. We will see. We will just follow our noses until we think we found a spot to settle down.”

“Well, take care, Akihito.”

“You, too!”

With that the young man climbed down the stairs to the bathing platform and jumped into the dinghy where two giant tracking backpacks already waited – together with Mikhail who sat at the engine and hunched his back to the wind.

“I’ll call you as soon as I bought a new phone!”, the young Japanese shouted up at Fei Long, waving, but almost lost his balance and therefore sat down at once.

The Chinese turned towards the other man still up with him on the first floor of the Yacht. Just like his lover, Asami was dressed in outdoor clothing that looked as if he actually wanted to promote a new upcoming, over-the-top-expensive fashion brand for backpackers.

“Well… it’s goodbye then?” Fei Long had his arms crossed before his chest now and fought the urge to step from one foot onto the other. He did not really know how to do something like this… with Asami.

Neither did the other seem to know. Pushing his hands into his sides, the Japanese inhaled slowly and deeply. “Yeah… not forever though. I’ll be seeing you, or Akihito will rip my head off. Just… well… a few months probably.”

Maybe that was the truth – and actually why should he care? Asami was no friend of his, after all. They were business rivals, even rivals privately!... or not?

“Take care of him. And yourself.”

“I will.”

But Asami didn’t move. He still stood there, his hands pushed into his sides, his gaze staring off into nowhere. Yet Fei Long didn’t feel able to look him in the eyes anyway. He kept his own sight unfocussed and somewhere at the man’s feet.

‘He should just go’, Fei Long thought to himself, and felt a strange happiness that the other didn’t.

“Thank you for ruining your job back then”, he whispered, and the words rather carried on his breath than on his voice. It was an odd remark. Some strange sentimentality. Very likely the other would just laugh it away. But again, he didn’t.

“Thank you for not being able to pull the trigger back then”, Asami answered.

It made Fei Long look up and found the other’s eyes meeting his own now.

“Oh… the hell”, Asami growled, then stepped up and pulled the smaller man into his arms. For a second he thought Fei Long would struggle – as he had seven years ago when he had forced that kiss onto his lips – yet he didn’t. He just wrapped his arms around the Japanese’s chest and returned the hug.

Half an hour later, Asami shook Mikhail’s hand on the shore, and for once the stupid grin on the Russian’s face was a bit dimmed.

“Behave you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t”, he advised the Japanese men, nonetheless. Akihito chuckled to that, but Asami answered with a growl.

They had marched off some steps already and Mikhail had jumped back into the dinghy, when Asami turned around.

“Hey, Arbatov!”, he shouted, and the blonde man looked up in surprise. “If you hurt him, I’ll find you. And I’ll give you hell!”

On foot they made it into Valencia, had breakfast near the Mercat Central, then booked a room in a hotel nearby. Two days later they bought a BMW 8 series convertible and left the city, choosing on each crossing or fork they came upon where to turn next. They cruised through Spain and Portugal, France, Switzerland and Italy for months, while Akihito took photographs of the beauty of the world, sometimes of people, sometimes of nature. He even managed to get into selling them online, with a new name, a new identity, a new future.

They made new acquaintances all around south-western Europe, and sometimes visited them – just like that man who owned a giant mansion in Dubrovnik. And sometimes friends would come to visit them.

‘Akio’, stood written in his passport now, so his lover called him ‘Aki’, and he called him ‘Ryu’.

The End