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The left hook came unexpectedly, catching Alex smack on his eye-socket and sending a rose-bloom burst of pain hot across his face.
Ouch.
Alex inhaled heavy through the hurt and thanked his lucky stars that his opponent was a disgusting masochist, the overly-tattooed goon taking a few key seconds to laugh through his own bloody teeth at his good hit. Alex used the time to catch his breath and mentally send off a quick apology. He could already feel the throbbing warmth of a new bruise forming underneath his skin.
Shoulders back. Fists up. Alex's opponent was big, not smart. Block the jab. A swift duck under the hook. Steady feet and a loose torso. Give enough not to anger the brute, avoid enough not to get yelled at for strategy later. Lord knows he would never be hearing the end of this as it was.
He started corralling them around the edges of the ring, falling into a rhythmic, sweeping pattern of punch high, evade wide, kick low. If he let his mind wander a bit the fight became more and more like a dance, footwork intricate but second-nature, the roaring cheers of the crowd calming him like a symphony.
It didn't take long. Quick succession: a knee slammed low into the stomach, a flat palm clapped over an ear, finished with a kick to the knee that would have been illegal in most other rings. Easy peasy.
And then his arm was being hefted upward, victory bells ringing and the referee shouting something unintelligible right next to his ear. Alex barely felt the rough fingers squeezing his wrist, the crowd just blurry colors and indecipherable din.
He licked at blood coating his teeth, swallowing, revelling at the warmth of it trickling down his throat.
He needed to get to the phone.
--
He took the memorized steps quickly down the corridors, head buzzing and muscles throbbing. The rancor of the crowd grew more and more muffled with each thin wall he put between him and the arena. Everything was dark and dingy, stained walls and dirty concrete, barely lit by flickering, blue-white bulbs set behind cages. He rounded another corner to finally see his marker—a harsh neon glow at the end of the hallway. He sped up, footsteps echoing loudly around him.
His lips twitched up when he finally got close enough to make out the line of phones tucked away against the wall.
He hurried the rest of the way and quickly shoved his hand into the bucket of pennies sitting on the shallow counter as he ran over the right number in his head.
The plastic receiver warmed quickly against his flushed cheek. He only heard the dial tone once before the line clicked open.
“I taught you to evade a lead hook better than that,” came Yassen’s voice.
Alex grinned and it pulled at the cut on his lower lip. “Glad you’re alright, dearest. So relieved to hear your voice, darling.”
“I have never called you those words in my life.”
“You’re the one who said no real names across open lines. I’m just complying faithfully.”
Yassen hummed at him flatly. “Are you alright?”
“You should know.” Another hum. Alex lightly worried his teeth against the inside of his lip. “Did you stay on that sofa?”
There was a long beat of silence, which gave Alex plenty of time to start stressing that he hadn’t. They'd fought for days before they started this op over the safest thing for Yassen to be doing while Alex was risking getting his brain smashed in. And though he'd never admit it, Yassen could be equally as stubborn as Alex, if not moreso, when he wanted to be.
Yassen's staticky voice finally coming over the line again jolted Alex from his worry. “Yes. I stayed on the sofa. I’m thinking of starting up brocade weaving.”
Alex exhaled, relieved. If Yassen was complaining about the upholstery in the living room, he actually had stayed put there for a while. “I told you to grab a sudoku book or something.”
“Please,” Yassen scoffed.
“Yeah yeah.” The orange-purple neon that guided Alex to the phones before was burning vignettes in his vision. He stared up at it. It reignited something low and simmering in his veins, the same buzz and rush from minutes ago up in the ring. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the telephone harder against the side of his head. “Come out,” he said low into the receiver.
“Out?”
“To the club. Not yours. Queen’s, round the corner.”
“You should be coming back to the apartment.”
“To start brocading? Absolutely not.” He picked up a loose penny on the counter and rolled it in between his fingers. He pressed the metal ridges of it into the skin of his palm. “Come out with me.”
“There is a good chance we have mild concussions. I hardly think we need to be dancing under strobe lights right now.”
That image made Alex flush. He rolled his head on his shoulders and let the flickering glow over his head burn further into his vision. “Dancing? Stellar idea.” Yassen's noise of displeasure over the line just spurred Alex on more. “It’ll be fun. We need fun. I want fun.”
He waited. Nothing. Alex sighed, long. Well then. Desperate measures.
He brought his wrist to his mouth and pressed his lips against his skin for a moment, sucked lightly. Then he bit down.
There was a muffled curse from over the line and Alex smirked against his wrist, nipping at the warm skin under his mouth one more time before pulling away. “Come on. Enjoy your youth. Or at least let me enjoy mine with you.”
“Brat,” Yassen said, and Alex grinned even wider at the slight breathiness in his voice.
“Queen’s,” he repeated. He didn't give Yassen time to respond before he practically tossed the handset back on its hooks and was half-jogging back down the hallway.
--
Twenty minutes later found them both in the empty coat room in the front of the club, Alex's face smug and Yassen’s more than put-upon.
The older man made his way over from the entrance and Alex allowed himself a few seconds to take in just how well he filled out a plain black button-up as he stood from his chair in the lounge area. He smiled as cheekily as possible when Yassen got within arm's reach. And was promptly surprised when Yassen did, in fact, reach out an arm, pulling him by his shoulders in for a tight hug.
Alex inhaled sharply and after a moment of shock pressed as close as he could, relishing the contact. This type of honest affection from Yassen in such a public place was more than rare. He tucked his face into Yassen's neck and rested his hands heavily on his sides.
“I'm glad you're OK,” Yassen murmured into his ear.
Alex squeezed him tighter, pressing his thumbs in the divots above his hipbones. “‘Course I am, dearest.” Yassen tugged at the short ends of Alex’s hair and Alex held back a laugh. He’d bet anything Yassen was smiling. Mission accomplished.
A beat, then Yassen pulled away, face back to its blank slate and professional steps put between them. He held up his arm at his side, the underside of his wrist bared. “Not a cute trick. Don't do that again.”
Alex tilted his head impishly, smile growing. “You loved it.”
Yassen just narrowed his eyes and dragged him into the club by his shirtsleeve.
---
He had been beginning to feel a bit bad for how he’d cajoled Yassen to the club on the phone earlier, but that feeling quickly faded after four (six, for Yassen) shots and the opening of Yassen's top by a whopping three shirt buttons.
Yassen had begun keeping a proprietary finger looped into Alex’s belt loop halfway into their time at the bartop, much to Alex’s flushed delight, and refused to let him go much farther than that by the time they made their way onto the dance floor.
Yes, the dance floor, and the adrenaline and lust that had been thrumming low through Alex all night somehow found a way to be dialed up even higher, with Yassen's hands rucked up under his shirt and the DJ blaring music that had the floor literally shaking under them, pounding beneath his skin. There were so many people, bodies pressed up against everyone and everything and no lights to see their faces by, just flashes of glitter on skin and the quick colorful sweeps of stage lights across the floor. Yassen’s body moved with them, moved against him, and a more sober Alex might have been more shocked by how easily Yassen let his guard down for him. As it were, nothing in Alex's life had ever been more attractive.
There was no affection here, nothing to spill their cover or show a weakness, nothing to give them away to wandering eyes. Just two people drunk and in a crowd, together.
It was exhilarating. The anonymity, the alcohol in his bloodstream, the hot throb of a new bruise ringing his eye and the burst blood vessels trailing along his fingers. He pressed his thumb against the matching pale purple dusting on Yassen's own face, just a few shades lighter than his own, and grinned at the low sound that came from his soulmate’s throat.
“And you didn’t want to come,” Alex hummed into his ear a few minutes or a few lifetimes later, bare arms wrapped around Yassen's neck. They were closer to the edge of the dance floor now, and Alex welcomed the cooler air against the sweat drying on their skin. It tempered the roaring in his head and cooled the throbbing bruises scattered across his body.
Yassen responded by kissing him. Biting grazes against his lips too quick for Alex to follow in kind, precise and demanding. Alex happily lost his breath for as long as Yassen wanted, parting his lips and eagerly swallowing each kiss Yassen pressed into him.
When Yassen pulled away for a moment to breathe Alex chased him, resting their foreheads together and leaving one last messy kiss at the bow of his lips. He felt like jello. Happy jello. He took in the thin sheen of sweat on Yassen's brow and the plush redness of his mouth, and the way the club lights threw shadows around the edges of his scar. His heart felt full in his chest.
And then something clocked in his peripheral.
“No sodding way,” he said under his breath. Yassen raised an eyebrow at him. Alex huffed, shocked. “That's Jiménez’s backer. Sousa. Five o’clock.” Yassen's other eyebrow rose. He tangled his fingers in Alex's shirt and pulled him closer against him, letting the motion sway them artfully in place just enough for Yassen to make the identification.
“Well then,” Yassen said with a lilting hum that gave away just the faintest surprise himself. He turned them again so his back was once again facing the man. “That is—”
“Lucky?” Alex murmured into the hollow beneath his ear, feeling adrenaline already buzzing again beneath his skin, this time a different sort. Or, well, one very much mixed with the other kind he'd been fueled with all night. His lips were still kissed raw and tingling. But Sousa had been the sole roadblock in their infiltrating and fixing of the fights in the underground ring. A hidebound old codger that refused to be swayed by anything they put forth, inadvertently or not. Without him striking fear into underground, the last of the bosses running the ring would be easy work. To run into him having finally left his ivory mansion…
Yassen hummed again shortly. “Fortuitous, yes. But only if one is planning to—”
“Oh, we are definitely planning.”
Yassen pinched his side through the sweat-sticking fabric of his shirt. “I can simply sit still and look pretty by your side all night instead of giving you the useful poison in my pocket, if you are so hellbent on not letting me speak.”
Alex pulled back a hair’s breadth with a twist in the corner of his lips, half trying to shake off the fingers and half trying to wiggle closer. “Nah.” He met Yassen's eyes with his own, half-lidded. “That's my retirement plan.”
Lucky again—Fernando Souza decided to move before Yassen could do anything in the way of replying. Point, Alex, he thought with another self-satisfied grin as he relayed Sousa’s movements under his breath. Alex pressed closer one more time, hooking his chin over Yassen’s shoulder to track the man across the room. He let himself get lost in the thrumming music and dancing lights for just one more moment before his brain caught up to the other thing.
“Wait. Did you say poison?”
Yassen shifted against him and didn’t let him pull away, mouthing at the side of his neck and dragging Alex’s hands down his torso. Anyone else would have seen just another couple dancing up against each other indecently on the club floor. But Alex felt the barley-there outline of something thin and cylindrical underneath the fabric of Yassen's front pant pocket, easily hidden by the loose hem of his untucked shirt.
“Why on earth do you have this on you?” Alex tried to sound incredulous and perturbed, but didn't think he much succeeded in the face of Yassen’s roving lips above his clavicle and wandering fingers over his waist. He squeezed Yassen’s hips tightly instead.
“Take it. It's very long lasting and slow-acting. Get him to drink it, and it won't start taking effect for hours. Our hands will be clean.”
Alex watched Sousa laughing and shaking hands with a group of men at a table in the corner. He thought about these being the last moments he spent alive, the very last minutes of a man's life.
“Take it, Alex.” Yassen's voice was closer now, and Alex pulled back enough to meet his eyes. Yassen’s looked black in the dim strobe lights. “Remember why we're here.”
Alex breathed in. The faces of the many people that man has hurt flashed in his head. He pulled the thin vial from Yassen’s pocket with barely a movement and slipped it quickly into his own. Then he took in every curve and divot of Yassen’s face, swept his fingers lightly along the curve of his brow and around his eye.
“Alex,” Yassen said under his breath, pressing back into his fingers just slightly. Then a furrow slowly grew between his brow. “Alex,” he said again, a little bit less lightly. “The poison isn't deadly."
Alex's shoulders slumped as he let out a shaky breath he didn't know he had been holding. “Yas,” he hissed, looking upward to the ceiling. His lingering alcohol buzz made his brain swirl rather rudely as he tried to quickly reevaluate a couple of key things. “You said poison.”
Yassen had the gall to shrug. “Close enough.”
Alex just groaned and decided it was easier to just kiss Yassen again and again and again, and then a few times more after that, until their target started moving away from the crowded table. Then Alex swiftly pulled himself away and let a single-minded focus fall over him as he crossed the room, interrupted only for a second by a pinching feeling against the inside of his wrist right before he reached the bar where Sousa had repositioned himself. He squeezed his thumb and forefinger over that spot, and exhaled.
Alex became the stumbling drunk athlete, pompous and dirty and a right bastard of a winner, fresh off a multi-thousand victory.
His act worked surprisingly well, falling into the stool next to Sousa with a roguish grin and just the perfect amount of inebriated sway added to his posture. He lazily caught the eye of the bartender down the way as he did.
He ducked his head to the side and ran his fingers through his hair, shouting just a bit to be heard over the music. “What a fuckin’ night to be out, yeah?”
Sousa’s eyes were appraising, yet blank. Alex did not like them one bit.
“I’ve just become king of the fuckin' town, but no one knows it yet,” Alex said conspiratorially, giving the man a wink. The bartender appeared and Alex ordered two Jack and gingers, keeping his gaze on Sousa and making sure to place an obviously too-large bill on the bartop as he did. “Want to celebrate with me?”
Sousa laughed, from deep in his throat grating and wet, with his eyes still unreadably empty. Alex instantly hated the sound. “How ostentatious,” he muttered through grinning teeth. “What makes you think you deserve to drink with me?”
Alex grabbed the glasses placed in front of him with a crooked half-smile and his palms over the rims. “You want me to prove myself?” He asked, sliding one over near Sousa’s hand. He took a sip of his own, still smiling. Out of his hands, now.
Sousa wrapped thick, sturdy fingers around his tumbler. Alex let out a mini cheer in his head, but it was short-lived. The man picked up the drink, but didn't move to his lips. Just kept staring.
Alex sank farther into his seat, tilted his head in just the right way and swirled his drink with a precarious circling of his wrist. "Because I'd be more than happy to prove myself."
Sousa still didn't take a sip. Instead he leaned closer into Alex's space and gave him a slimy, comically salacious grin that made Alex’s stomach turn. “Come with me.”
Huh. Alex had no choice but to follow. He remained calm, knowing Yassen’s eyes were steady on him from somewhere out on the floor.
Sousa led them toward a doorway tucked into the corner almost behind the bar, something Alex had failed to notice on his initial once-over of the area. He would have assumed it was for toilets, but once they ducked through it Alex realized by the signs on the doors littering the ensuing hallway that it was more of a maintenance space.
Given it was a Saturday night and Alex hadn't seen one employee bar the bartenders and the doormen, that really didn't bode extremely well for safety in numbers.
Alex slowed to a stop, raising an eyebrow at Sousa when the man turned back around to face him. “Not quite the party I was hoping for back here.”
Sousa chuckled, stepping closer. “Don’t worry. I think you’ll come to like this even better.”
Alex made a noncommittal sound and walked past him a few steps, further into the corridor. He pinched his wrist before he turned around and held up the drink he still held in his hand. “In that case. A toast to us, then?”
And, thank fuck, Sousa bought into it. He finally raised own glass with a lewd curl to his lips, and Alex didn't bother holding back his own small smile as they both lifted their drinks in a salute and took a sip.
Sousa stepped closer. Alex let him, and took the glass from his hand into his own, brushing their fingers just a little. The man’s breath was truly horrendous, and the disgusting, smarmy smile on his chapped lips was enough to make Alex almost wish Yassen had brought a more malignant poison.
They both startled as an angry voice came from the entrance to the hallway. “Kochanek. Nie pozwól mu mnie zobaczyć."
Alex threw his hand up and grabbed Sousa’s chin tight in between his fingers. “Oops,” he said, biting his lip and looking up from beneath his eyelashes. “Boyfriend found me.”
The flat palm slammed against the side of his head had Sousa crumpling to the ground in seconds.
Alex breathed out and met Yassen’s gaze over the body. He grinned. “That was hot.”
Yassen tilted his head in acknowledgement with a quirk to his lips. “Come. We’ll drag him into the room behind you.”
Alex turned his head. “Huh. So there was a loo back here.”
The two of them together made quick work of Sousa, splaying him on the tiles of the single stall room without much care to how he was positioned. Alex rose up with his hands on his thighs, distractedly thinking about how he should probably start stretching more. “Thanks for the save.”
Yassen started rustling through Sousa’s items, taking photos of cards and IDs and the like as he went. “Of course, dearest.”
Alex loved him so much.
“He won't say anything,” Yassen continued. “In his mind, he got knocked out by a disgruntled boyfriend after preying on a young boy by a bathroom. Men like him don't like stories like that getting out. The poison will start impairing his systems soon afterward, and with luck he'll blame that on me too.” Alex nodded his head slowly, rather stunned by how brilliantly this on-the-fly plan was working out. “Meet two blocks east. Five minutes.”
Alex took one last look at the scene before heading back to the door, grabbing the two drink glasses he'd put aside on his way. “This one locks from the inside,” he said over his shoulder. Yassen tipped his head once in acknowledgement.
“Five minutes.”
--
Alex occupied himself with a conveniently placed food cart two blocks down the street, most of the five minutes taken up by deciding which packet of crisps to get. Well, five minutes and thirteen seconds. Yassen was getting slow in his old age. He told him as much when Yassen finally made his way down the street to him, and knew he definitely deserved the glare and hard flick to the back of his hand he got.
They fell into step next to each other, headed in the direction of their temporary apartment.
“Well, that was exciting,” Alex said up at the night sky. He wished they were somewhere they could see stars. “We should get out more.”
Yassen actually laughed. It made Alex’s heart swell just a little bit. The remnants of alcohol in his system made it ridiculously easy to reach out and catch Yassen’s hand in his own, swinging it between them.
“We shouldn't be having any more issues with Jiménez, now,” Yassen said. “That cuts our timeline down significantly. Hopefully you won't have many more fights ahead of you.” He squeezed Alex’s hand. “I want to check your eye as soon as we get back.”
Alex hummed and pulled Yassen closer to his side. The night air felt wonderful on his skin, especially over where he’d been punched. “Or, hey. There's another bar right up there, we could—”
Yassen tugged on his hand hard enough to make him trip. “Okay, okay,” Alex laughed loudly as he regained his footing. He held Yassen’s hand tighter. “Let’s just go home.”