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The moment Ian hears Alex on the other end of the line, he knows something isn’t right.
“Excuse me for a moment,” Ian says to Wilby.
“Of course.” A strange look comes and goes on the other man’s face, but Ian allows it to slide as he answers the call.
“Alex?” Ian says into his earpiece, keeping both hands on the wheel. “Alex, what’s going on?”
“There’s,” Alex’s breathing is shallow and his voice is hushed, “I think there’s been a break-in. Jack’s gone out for the night to celebrate with friends. It’s supposed to be just me, but I heard something. Someone.”
Ian quickly pulls over and sets his gaze on the clock on the dashboard. He often comes across crossroads such as these. They usually aren’t so personal, though.
Wilby’s eyes also flicker across the dash followed by a flash of worry across his expression. It seems he has concerns about keeping their appointment in a timely manner.
“Jack’s gone out for the night? Have you called her?” Ian raises a hand to placate Wilby, but it doesn’t do much to dissuade him from his nerves.
“She must have her phone off or something. Or maybe she’s already gone to bed? I really don’t think she can help much right now.”
“Have you phoned the police? Can you handle it?” Ian asks, then immediately winces. Can you handle it, he mouths to himself. He can almost picture Alex frowning at his line of inquiry.
“Could you come home?” Alex whispers. “I think he’s still here.”
“Have you been keeping up with your Krav Maga lessons?”
“Please,” Alex says. “Could you come home? Please?”
“I’ve got a really important meeting,” it sounds flimsy in his mouth, “are you certain he’s still in the house?”
“I saw his face,” Alex’s breathing has quickened, “and he’s got this wicked scar. Looks like he can fight.”
Ian almost swears under his breath. “By any chance… did he look Russian to you?”
Wilby’s eyebrows have disappeared completely into his hairline listening in on Ian’s side of the conversation.
“Yeah, but… how did you know? Do you know him? Is he a friend?”
“Give me a moment, please.”
Ian turns to Wilby, covering the microphone of his device, “I think we’ve found exactly who we’re looking for.”
Wilby’s eyes narrow, mouth almost twisting into a grimace. “What? How can that be possible?”
“Please tell our friend from Moscow that we’ll need to reschedule. If we’re lucky, we won’t be needing his services anymore.”
“But his information’s good!” Wilby hurriedly adds, “And he might get scared away if we back off now.”
“We seem to have stumbled into something even better. I understand it’s very last minute, but I’ll put in a sincere apology,” Ian says. Before he can ask Wilby to accompany him back home, the man turns white as a sheet, losing more and more of the color in his face by the second.
“I’ll… I’ll go do that then,” Wilby swallows, “right now. In fact—” The other agent climbs out of the passenger seat and almost fumbles to get to the pavement.
“If that is the case, perhaps you can still make the meeting?” Ian suggests.
“Perhaps,” Wilby says with no commitment in his voice. His hands are folded nervously together. “Your… thing sounded rather sensitive. I don’t want to keep you. I’d best be off.”
Wilby jogs across the narrow street with more urgency than someone who's needed the loo for hours.
“Oh, and please,” Ian raises his voice across the way, “tell the Department my record of Danse Macabre has broken at home and that they’re to send me a replacement immediately.”
“Understood,” Wilby shouts back and disappears out of sight in hurried footsteps.
“Ian? Could you come home?”
“Hold on tight, Alex. Keep hiding away. Don’t be seen. Stay on the line.” It’s not even a question anymore. Ian reverses course, drives until he reaches a bend, and takes a U-turn in the complete opposite reaction as soon as it’s legally possible.
“... Okay.”
“You’ll be alright,” Ian reassures. “You’re a clever and level-headed boy.”
“Ian?” He has to strain to hear Alex’s voice this time around at the call of his name.
“Yes, I’m with you. Is the man still inside the house?”
Whilst waiting for Alex’s reply, the line abruptly cuts off. When Ian dials back twice and Alex doesn’t answer either of the calls, maybe he presses down on the accelerator more than he personally approves of.
It’s strange to him that Jack had gone out without a single word. The likelihood that Yassen somehow got her out of the picture first to get to Alex only further puts a damper on the situation.
Furthermore, the Department thinks Scorpia is done with. In extension, Yassen Gregorovich.
Perhaps the man isn’t acting as a liaison.
Perhaps it is personal.
If it was a coincidental break-in with a perpetrator who matched a description so close to Yassen’s with the linked Serenkov and Roscoe incidents so closely around the corner…
You see, coincidences simply don’t exist in their line of work.
It must be Yassen.
But the question left to ask is why now at this particular moment?
Was Ian meant to choose between the information from their friend from Moscow or Alex’s safety and well-being? Jack could already be dead. Alex would be devastated.
Ian’s grip tightens on the steering wheel as he rounds the corner to Collbridge Road. His knuckles are strained white from the exertion.
Ian gets the impression that not a stone is out of place by the time he parks sloppily across the street. It wouldn’t do if he left the car running and gave Yassen yet another route of escape.
Keeping his center of gravity low, Ian slips past the gate and the untampered front area and reaches to turn the doorknob. It gives easily, already unlocked, and he holds it in place to prevent any stray noises from the hinges.
Ian listens for any movement by the front door. He debates whether or not it’s a smart idea for Alex to see him with a gun in hand, but if he’s dealing with Yassen Gregorovich, blowing his cover to Alex may be the least of his worries.
The Department will probably have his head, though.
If Alex is stuck on the second floor, he’d probably board himself up and leave through a window. In the riskiest of scenarios, he’d probably try to take the intruder on face to face himself. Alex was good, but Yassen was better. Furthermore, there’s not much to be done when your opponent has got a gun and you don’t. Ian could only hope the assassin still had some sort of misplaced sentiments about John that extended to his son.
Ian means to clear the entire house room by room before any other critical judgment calls, but when he finds Alex sitting out in the open on the cold floor, propped against the kitchen island, eyes half-lidded and glazed over in a stupor, Ian’s heart goes still.
“Alex, can you hear me?” Ian quickly tucks his gun away and drops to his knees before he scoops Alex up and presses him into his chest in a solid, weighty embrace. The secondary source of metabolic heat from another human being should help ground him. “You’re in shock.”
Ian gently smooths Alex’s bangs down—it doesn’t do much to help the bird’s nest it's turned into—then lightly touches the underside of his neck and counts his racing pulse in a perfunctory manner. No blood loss.
Just as he’s about to phone Alex in as unresponsive, a pair of shaky arms return his hug tentatively. The initial unsureness melts into a release of all the stiff tension from Alex’s body as he finally relaxes into the hug, shoulders no longer raised to up his ears.
“Ian?” Alex rasps, muffled by way of Ian’s jacket.
“Alex?” Ian pulls away to properly examine Alex’s face. He frowns when he spots dried tear tracks. “Are you with me?”
“Yeah, I’m… yeah.” Still a little dazed, it seems.
“Why did you hang up?”
“I thought the man was getting a little too close and I needed a diversion,” Alex explains. “Sorry I didn’t give you a heads up. If he didn’t take it, it should still be by the front door.”
“That’s my boy,” Ian says, unable to disguise the pride in his voice, helping pull Alex to his feet. “Quick thinking.”
However, Alex only seems to sink further into himself at this, leaning against the island for additional support.
“Alex, you did very well in the circumstances.” Ian isn’t sure what exactly has prompted Alex’s strange reaction. “He didn’t catch you? Didn't speak with you at all?”
Alex shakes his head, eyes glued to Ian’s jacket.
“How did you manage to see his face without being spotted?”
“I guess I was just lucky.” Alex fidgets with the hem of his sleeve, touches his left ear, and crosses his arms in a self-soothing gesture.
He’s lying.
“Alex, I don’t know why you’re keeping something from me right now,” Ian says slowly, “but I need to have the full picture in order to help you.”
“Shouldn’t we phone the police now?” Alex suggests, an attempted diversion. “I don’t think you can help with this. Not really.”
“Did he…” Ian pauses deliberately. Yassen wouldn’t. He wouldn’t stoop that low. The assassin was professional if nothing else. “Did he do anything to you? Anything untoward? It's alright, Alex. None of this is your fault.”
“Like I said, he didn’t even see me.” And then the corner of Alex’s lips tug upward sardonically, cracking this sort of off smile. “In a way, yeah. About the fault.”
How he could still be amused in this type of situation is all Alex. Throwing in some mouthy humor now and then to relieve the tension. But this? It was self-deprecating and strange.
The glass in the kitchen had been destroyed from the inside, the shatter patterns and debris from the breakage sitting in their yard indicating as much. The mess everywhere is a sure sign of some sort of struggle occurring, most probably a fight in close quarters. And yet there are no signs of forced entry, no signs of the Scorpia operative, as if Yassen was never even here, never even stepped foot on the property, all on top of the fact that Alex insistently maintains that he was never seen by the assassin.
What’s really going on here?
Within the span of a few hours, Alex had changed.
Something in his eyes had transformed, as though he had been forced to grow up in the time Ian was gone.
Was it the break-in?
Had Alex seen a glimpse of Ian's gun?
Or was it something else?
Had Yassen done something to him? Threatened him?
Ian has never felt more bizarre in his entire life second to the time he suddenly found himself taking Alex in after John and Helen’s deaths. None of his security measures had triggered. The front lock hadn’t been picked or brutally forced open. Yassen didn’t take anything, not Alex’s life nor any of Ian’s belongings.
If he didn’t even speak to Alex, why did he choose to come when Ian wasn’t in? And why did he leave so easily?
“Nothing at all, Alex?” Ian pushes for more information. Nothing lines up like an unreachable itch. “How did this mess happen?”
“Could we save this for tomorrow?” Alex asks, shooting him a weak smile. “I’m really, really tired.”
“Tomorrow? You’ve still got classes tomorrow.” Ian finds the words coming out automatically.
“I don’t feel very well,” Alex whispers. “I don’t think I can go to school like this.”
“If this is just a ploy to—” Ian’s reprimand dies in his mouth when he meets Alex’s quivering eyes. “Alright, then. I’ll call in for you.”
“Could you…” Alex swallows before he speaks, “take a few days off from your job at the bank? If that’s even possible?”
“We’re in the middle of a large acquisition, and this merger is very important,” Ian says. “It’s why I had to go back to the office today.”
“Right,” Alex nods slowly, but his facial expression and tone don’t quite match his words, as if he’s not convinced for even a second. “Large acquisition, sure.”
Ian senses Alex wants to give it another try, but a resigned look overcomes him instead.
“Half-term is soon,” Ian proposes, almost wishing Alex had pushed the subject further. He nudges some of the shattered glass by the yard with the toe of his shoes, looking for anything that could constitute new information within the shards of the evening. “We’ll get some time to ourselves then.”
“Half-term,” Alex mutters to himself. “... Cray.”
Ian turns his head over his shoulder. “Pardon?”
“I said great,” Alex repeats. On his face is a blank thousand-yard stare, zoned out as if he were reliving a distant memory. He’s far from great.
“You should get to bed,” Ian decides. He rests a hand on Alex’s shoulder and squeezes reassuringly, thankfully snapping him back to the present with the motion. “It’s getting late and you look exhausted. I’ll handle the rest, alright? Anything else can wait until morning.”
“Thank you,” Alex blurts as Ian prepares to phone all the parties that need to be in the know, shifting his weight from leg to leg like he can’t stand still to save his life, “for, um, coming home just because I called. You didn’t have to.”
“What? Alex, what makes you think that?”
Alex hangs his head. “I dunno. I suppose you were doing something important. You said you had to go back to the office and like… I know your job’s incredibly important to you.”
“It’s not as if I was abroad,” Ian says, instead of sorry, I wish I could tell you the truth. Maybe you'll understand one day. “That would make things slightly more difficult.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Alex’s eyes become suspiciously glossy as he makes his way to the hallway. Even though he attempts to hide it by inclining his head away from the kitchen, it’s not something Ian can easily miss. To Alex’s credit, his voice comes across stable and somewhat sleepy. “But thanks, anyway. It really means a lot to me.”
“Of course,” Ian can’t help the note of bewilderment in his reply. “Sleep well, Alex. I’ll be down here sorting out this mess.”
“Promise you won’t go anywhere?” Alex asks as though Ian might disappear into wisps of smoke the moment he heads upstairs. No, that’s not right. Alex pleads in the same way Ian had over John and Helen’s headstones, begging them to materialize and explain how they got away from the plane explosion. “Please?”
For the rest of the night, at least?
“Promise,” Ian swears solemnly.
He isn’t going anywhere.