Work Text:
Alex Rider tries heroin for the first time on a mission.
He doesn’t want any of it. Flashes of the clips played in health class unhelpfully surface to his mind, their message uniform: “Say no to peer pressure”. And yet here he is, standing amongst five of Britain’s most notorious drug dealers, and surely he cannot prove his cover without testing some of the merchandise? He had, of course, posed as an addicted teenager looking to start selling to infiltrate the operation in the first place.
So he thinks of his classmates, the ones that dropped out of school after becoming addicted to one drug or another. He thinks of his science partner, who was found dead in the school bathroom during year 10 with a line of cocaine freshly snorted up his nasal passageways. He thinks of MI6, who are monitoring the situation at a distance, ready to intervene as soon as pushes the button hidden on the string of his hoodie.
And with those vulnerable civilians in mind, and the chance he knows he has to help them, he takes the leap. Plunging the needle into his arm (and praying to the high heavens that it’s clean) he injects the liquid into a vein without any noticeable hesitation.
The instant after it hits his blood stream, Alex knows a mistake has been made. A horrible, irreversible mistake. This is not the euphoria he had expected. There is no overwhelming joy. Instead, his head is swimming and his world is twisting, and oh god is this an overdose?
But he remembers the symptoms he had memorized before this mission. After all, he had expected he would need to prove himself to these seedy drug dealers. And while he feels disoriented, and confused, and weak - he is still conscious and breathing. This is not an overdose.
Laughter passes into his scope of awareness.
“George can’t handle the shit he’s supposed to sell!”
George? Oh fuck, that’s me, Alex realizes.
“What? You dissociating or some shit?” Everybody is looking at him curiously now. Had he said that out loud? Keeping a cover would be a hell of a lot harder when he couldn’t think straight. He had to pull himself together.
“I haven’t had the pleasure of trying any as strong as yours,” Alex tries to keep his voice steady, but it sounds… off. Distant. Dreamy, even. He injects enough flattery into it to satisfy their curiosity, though, and just the thought of complimenting them makes Alex feel worse than he already does. There’s not enough showers in the world to wash off his own self-disgust.
He thinks people are still talking around him, but the conversation is impossible to track. Voices float around, disconnected from any face or identity. The feeling is overwhelming. His consciousness is only loosely tied to his body, and he gets lighter and lighter until he thinks he might be floating away.
He wakes up with chills, a deep ache already settled into his bones. Around him, a few others have passed out on the floor of the warehouse.
The fire of self-hatred is much stronger than the feverish after effects.
He slips away before anyone else can wake. Stumbling back to the apartment MI6 provided for this deep-cover assignment, he can feel judgmental looks passing over him. He throws open the door to his flat as quickly as he can, staggering to the bathroom.
When confronted with a mirror, he understands the critical gazes sent his ways. His hair is disheveled, his skin an unhealthy grey, and pupils still too small.
He can’t look much longer. Drawing upon reserves of strength, he forces himself to remain standing long enough to take a quick shower. He scrubs quickly, wincing as he passes over the bruising on his inner arm. The fucking injection site. Without the luxury of dwelling on the past, he rinses and flings himself on top of the bed.
Many more days passed without his loyalties being questioned again. The other dealers seem to trust Alex, beginning to explain their operation to him. Their strategic targeting of children is enough to make Alex's stomach turn in disgust, and convince him that he had made the right decision.
(He reminds himself of this a week later, when a new needle is inserted in his arm without warning. Laughter erupts around him, and Alex feels himself float away.)
Alex is getting close to the head of the operation. He can feel it. Always referred to as the “boss”, all he needs is a name for this horrible mission to be over. Maybe then, he will allow himself to crawl into bed and stay there until the track marks on his arms have disappeared.
Finally, after three weeks of being undercover and shadowing this drug ring, Alex is invited to a party to try a new shipment. He accepts without hesitation, knowing this is the best chance to identify the drug lord. Alex shoots Smither’s a quick message, but he is unsure if it is received. The device only works one way.
Standing in front of the mirror, he does his best to dress for the festivities. But weeks of undercover work, paired with intermittent drug usage, has left him looking sickly. An unhealthy grey tinges his normally tan skin, and he notices the hollowness of his cheeks. He has lost weight he could not afford to lose in the first place. There is no time to dwell on his personal wellbeing, though when British children everywhere depend on him to dismantle this operation.
Mask firmly in place, Alex resolves himself to survive whatever the night throws at him.
As soon as he enters the party, he realizes he has made a mistake. Gruff, street-hardened criminals fill the warehouse; this is more of a rave than a party. Even drug dealers like to have fun apparently.
Unconsciously, Alex fingers the string on his hoodie. With some degree of anxiety, he realizes how horribly outnumbered he is. Even with the backup of MI6, Alex could foresee no way that this massive crowd could be subdued without heavy casualties on both sides. If he wanted to pull the plug on the operation tonight, it would be impossible to ensure all of the leaders were caught. Without the confidence of MI6’s protection, Alex suddenly feels more vulnerable than he had in years. He feels like a teenager that has been thrown to the wolves.
It doesn't take long for the men Alex has “befriended” to find him.
One slings an arm around Alex’s shoulders, pulling him close. Swallowing his revulsion, Alex manages to resist the urge to recoil away from the contact. Glancing around casually, he observes the mens’ attitude; they are all smiling with noticeably bloodshot eyes. A blunt is being passed around, and Alex feels his spirits rise a little. No heroin tonight, then.
Something isn’t right though. Years of spying had developed excellent instincts for when something was about to go to shit, and the back of Alex’s neck tingles in warning. He notices the glint of something predatory in the mens’ smiles, replacing the relaxed ones that had been there moments before. A certain tension in the air.
Leaning in further, the man closest to him whispers, “The boss has something special for you today, George. You’re gonna like this you lucky motherfucker.” But there’s a glint in his eyes that Alex can’t place, and warning bells are sounding in his head.
Before Alex can properly decipher the shift in the group’s mood, the arm weighing heavy on his shoulders is suddenly shoving him against the brick wall of the warehouse. Gasping in shock and pain, he raises his arms in defense. They are promptly pinned to his sides by two more members of the gang.
“What’s going on?” he demands. He allows some genuine fear to seep into his voice, to convince them of his cover as a normal teenage addict. Without more information, he cannot resolve whatever tensions have ignited this conflict.
The only answer to his question is a needle plunged into a vein on his arm. As the contents are injected into his bloodstream, he presses his lips against Alex’s ear.
“What’s wrong, Rider? Don’t want to sample the merchandise anymore?”
There’s something wrong with that statement… Alex is sure of it. But his vision has already begun to swirl, and the man’s face blurs in with the rest of the crowd. The world tilts dangerously; the floor that was solid moments ago suddenly feeling unstable. Lights are too bright… but so beautiful. How had Alex never noticed how beautiful the stars are? Small orbs lining the ceiling…
Oh fuck. Oh fuck ohfuckfuckityfuckshitohno. Rider. That’s what the man had said. Before injecting him with drugs. The drugs that now made him want to stargaze up at a warehouse ceiling.
This is not good. Like he needs to leave right now and crawl back to MI6 and call off the whole fucking mission.
Oh, look at that. He’s already moving. And now the world is sideways.
But that’s not right, Alex is the one who is sideways. He has been dumped into some alleyway in London, and he lies with his face pressed against the rough pavement. He wants to read the street signs, he really does, but the words peel off their metal and float in confusing patterns. They look a bit like hieroglyphics one moment, but by the next they have become Russian Cyrillic.
It is beautiful and breathtaking, and he is sure this isn’t heroin. Because when he squints closely, the signs don’t look like signs at all, they begin to twist and snarl and suddenly Alex is sure there are snacks slithering towards him.
Scrambling back weakly, he hears faint laughter float in from the background. A voice he knows… Alan Blunt? But it sounds maniacal and terrifying, and now Alex is genuinely scared.
Hallucinations then. These dealers have dumped Alex in this freezing back alley, leaving him to ward off hallucinations and die of exposure. How his cover was blown is a mystery that would require mental clarity that he did not have to solve.
Contact MI6 . That’s what he is supposed to be doing, instead of laying pathetically and listening to Blunt’s deranged laughter. He's fumbling with the string in his hoodie, forcing numb, uncooperative hands to pull it loose from the hoodie….
Then promptly drops the safety line as it too slithers and becomes a snake.
In fact, there seemed to be lots of them slithering along this alleyway. And he’s not certain, but at least one of them seems to have the face of Damian Cray. And was that… Mrs. Jones?
Awareness dims, and Alex finds himself entranced, lost, and terrified by what his mind perceives. This is like heroin, because he's drifting away, but this isn't like heroin because his consciousness doesn't feel like a balloon. No… this feels like an anchor. Yanking his downward, as waves of reality come and go. He doesn’t feel like he’s floating, but rather sinking below the surface…. he really wishes his button from Smithers hadn’t become a snake and slithered away. All he can do is clamp hands over his ears and screw his eyes shut, praying these dreams go away.
The next time he floats back down into consciousness, his body is moving. He is cradled against something warm, and firm. Pushing away with uncoordinated limbs, he fights against whatever predator has a firm grip against him.
“Stay still, little one,” commands the voice of a very dead Yassen Gregorovich.
Stilling instantly, he pauses to think. Even his drug-addled mind is certain that his guardian angel assassin is dead.
“Yas’n,” he gurgles out.
“Shhhhh Alex….” They walk a bit further, but Alex’s sense of direction is still horribly impaired. Instead of trying to figure out where they are, he focuses on fighting the nasua rising in his stomach, swallowing back bile. Why had never been so aware of the Earth’s orbit before? Had he never noticed this constant spinning? It was fascinating and horrible all at once.
He must make some noise of discomfort, because the arms around him tighten. Right… he’s being carried by the ghost of his uncle’s killer. He had almost forgotten.
“I… uh, l’ke this one.” He manages to force out of his mouth. And he didn't throw up - nice. It feels like a bigger accomplishment than it probably actually is.
“You like what, Alex?” The voice is simultaneously patient and exasperated. He swears he hears some concern, even panic lacing the words. All Alex can do is tuck his head against the warm shoulder holding him.
“This hal- ….hallucination. Issa nice ‘ne.”
“I am not a hallucination, Alex.”
Alex merely hums in disagreement. “Did’ya k’ll the snakes?” he whispers.
“Yes, Alex. I killed the snakes for you. Now rest .”
Alex is at the center of the universe now. He knows it because the Earth’s orbit has stopped, and now Yassen is the only thing steady. Everything else is revolving around them; Alex fists his hands in Yassen’s shirt and is certain he has found an anchor to reality. It was Yassen, it was always Yassen.
“You’re a good sun… th’nks for not lettin me drown.”