The Dressing
A side story based on the serial The Freelancers
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He never would have imagined killing one unarmed Colombian would be so much trouble.
Tyler's chest pushed up against the bindings. A grunt lined every uncomfortable exhale; flints of pain made his expression twitch on the matching inhales. "It has to be tight," Yuri murmured, the bandage fabric nimbly rolling through his fingers with each turn. Occasionally he would pause and thumb over the indentation where Tyler's back muscles met, feeling the prickly ridges of vertebrae under the flesh.
It was a bit like tying a corset in a strange way. Medical tape instead of silk lacings, constriction ending two inches above his navel, but still it made him seem slimmer and forced his posture straight.
Tyler flinched.
"I should call a doctor," Yuri said.
"It's fine, just bruised. They're not broken."
Yuri's fingers paused atop the place where the set of purplish ugly blobs sat. Under the bandage he couldn't see more than the dissolving tentacles of the marks, but he knew they were there all the same.
"I've broken my ribs before," Tyler said with a thin humorless smile. "I know what it feels like."
Saying it like that-- I've broken my ribs before-- made it sound like it was Tyler's fault. That it was something he had done to himself, rather than something that was done to him. The annoyance Yuri felt at the creative reinterpretation of history was distracting enough to offer a few minutes of relief from his worries.
"Any trouble breathing?"
Tyler shook his head. "Hurts a bit. Bit less now that the bandage is on."
"That's the point."
He had fallen out of the sky. One minute Yuri was happy: butterflies fluttering all through him, tremors of pleasure running up his windpipe with each breath, holding sludge-colored cups of disgusting coffee while they talked. One minute they were free and safe.
Then Tyler excused himself and nodded towards the bathroom. Yuri asked the waitress for the check.
The next minute he was waiting outside the unimpressive cafe when Tyler dropped from the sky and landed hard on his side on the dumpster Yuri was leaning on. The plastic top caved in under Tyler's weight and the force of the impact. Yuri was too startled to look up when Tyler looked up.
"What the?"
He barely got even that much of the obvious question out. Tyler came out of the garbage, wheezing a little, wobbling even more. "Run," he said and Yuri's instincts took over.
He had not gotten around to asking Tyler why he had chosen to be thrown off the roof over exiting through the front door like a normal person. He wasn't even going to bother asking Tyler who had thrown him off the roof in the first place. Tyler would either tell him or he would avoid the subject until forced to lie.
Yuri would rather not hear the lie.
Tyler was lucky Yuri had the good sense to pick cafes housed in single story buildings. He had come away from the incident with only those ugly bruises and some scratches.
If only that were true for all of Tyler's little miscalculations.
With so much naked skin in front of him, Yuri had to be careful not to get caught staring at any of the older marks. His contempt for them was disrespectful to Tyler, but Yuri couldn't help the overprotective disgust that would stew around in his throat when he happened upon one of these unfortunate souvenirs.
There were new ones: careless and jagged blue scars that spelled out 'mi vida loca' on Tyler's arm. Then a series of dots between his thumb and pointer fingers, which could pass for weird navy blue freckles if not for their neat geometric arrangement.
Most intolerable of them all was the one Yuri knew best: a round starburst of raised flesh on his shoulder. White and crinkled, the healing process had given up at 'good enough' and left that mark.
He looked up and caught Tyler staring at him in the mirror across from the bed.
Yuri cursed in Russian under his breath. He pretended he was too preoccupied with smoothing uneven edges of the snug bandage and felt his skin flush self-consciously.
He hated Tyler's scars. He felt responsible for every single one of them. Even the new ones.
Tyler reached up and touched the fingers that lingered on his shoulder. The warmth of contact drew Yuri's attention back to the American's expression in the mirror. Tyler smiled. A weathered, pained smile, but a smile all the same. It made Yuri feel a tiny bit better.
"It's just a bruise," Tyler repeated.
"It's more than that."
"Not if I say it isn't. Those things are over."
Yuri wanted to point out that since Tyler was still getting thrown off rooftops and still living a life that made a copy of The Physician's Desk Reference a quality Christmas present, those things were obviously not over. They would never be over because Tyler was addicted to the lifestyle. There were barely in the country for three hours before he had found trouble.
Yuri's satphone chirped insistently on the nightstand as Yuri worked on the last touches to his rough patch up job. He thought if he ignored it Tyler would too, but the translator's attention was slowly drifting towards the curiously noisy device.
"Client?" he asked.
Yuri nodded. He tried to reveal nothing in his expression but judging by the next round of questions that came from his lover he was probably scowling at the screen.
"CIA? FSB? Someone we know and has tried to kill us?"
Tyler was, to put in mildly, unbelievably bad for business. Yuri used to live nicely on the occasional pick ups from super power high rollers, but no more. No more cushy contracts from the CIA as long as Tyler's former employer had him marked as persona non grata. No more steady odd jobs from the Russians after what Yuri had done to get Tyler out of trouble the last time.
When your trade was intelligence matchmaking-- helping hook agencies up with informants-- not being able to work for either of the two largest information eating bureaucracies was limiting. Jobs had been few and far between since he had renewed his association with Tyler. It put Yuri in a terrible position as far as who he did business with.
He had been surprised when Tyler didn't seem troubled by the fact that he was doing to the occasional paid favor for organized crime. The American had changed so much since they first met.
"Can I come?"
....and in other ways not at all.
"No," Yuri said.
"Oh come on! I want to come. At least I look the part now."
"You are injured."
"It's just a bruise!"
And as he forcefully pushed out those words he flinched and drew towards his wounded side. Yuri gave him a pointed look.
"Well fine, are you leaving right now?"
"No."
"Then I'll be fine. A little time to rest and right as rain."
There was no point in arguing with him. If Yuri didn't let him tag along Tyler would just do something stupid. He was freshly out of prison and a bit stir crazy. You could see it from the twitchy flexing of his fingers to the wild look in his eyes.
There was a little extra muscle under Tyler's skin. A strength that Yuri found fascinating and arousing as he pulled himself up against his lover and kissed his temple. His hair smelled stale and burnt, transfer from the travel and second hand smoke. Yuri closed his eyes and forced his mind to overlay something woody and sharp, the way he always fantasized Tyler smelling when he was alone.
Tyler's hands pressed into the arm around his waist even as he squirmed against the affection. At last a smile of his old self broke through his hardened exterior.
"Just rest now," Yuri said. "Long day tomorrow."
* * *
"I forgot to mention," Yuri began. "The people we're meeting are Kazakhstani. Is that one of yours?"
Tyler pressed his lips together. The pause made him seem melancholic and added a thoughtful bite to his words, as if he was forcing himself to respond. "Yeah, it's one of mine. It's my primary in fact."
Yuri had always suspected that Tyler did not develop his linguistic abilities in CIA training courses or with a university education. At first glance the American looked like he had just walked off the football field in slow motion, homecoming games and slutty cheerleaders left behind for a life buried in surveillance tape translating and transcribing. But there were little inconsistencies in his All-American facade that gave him away: big, brown, Central Asian irises set in wider Western European eyes, slightly yellowish undertones in his complexion, flatter cheekbones... He was mixed-- a pizza-eating, beer drinking, God-Bless-America halfbred-- but Yuri had not know what the mix was until now.
Kazakh. Yuri wondered whether the immigrant had been Tyler's mother or father, whether Tyler had been a product of love or abuse, whether that love had survived.
"Do you want me to keep my ears open?"
He was surprised Tyler felt he even had to ask. He took his eyes off the road long enough to raise an eyebrow in the translator's direction before nodding. "Of course."
In the gap that followed, Tyler began murmuring his thought process, his words blending with the hum of the car. "Kazakh huh ... so, Democratic Union, Aibat Movement, Society of Young Professionals, Kakhar, Vanguard of the Red Youth, Yelim-Ai, Young Guard?"
The list of former and current semi-legal political organizations grew longer as the road stretched out in front of them. The nettling and nagging via elementary school recitation could have gone on indefinitely if Yuri hadn't used his curiosity to shift the conversation in his favor.
"Do you want to go back?" he asked.
Tyler blinked. "Go back where?"
"To Kazakhstan?"
The edges of Tyler's lips turned up with a quick flick of a smile. "I've never been."
"Really?"
"Nah."
"You know an awful lot for that to be true."
"Well it is."
Traffic in the other direction whooshed past Yuri's broken-down, shitty steel box of a van. Yuri found himself trying to ward off memories of the last time they were in this car with a long drive ahead of them. Memories that involved sticky sweet climaxes, the touch of Tyler's hand and a few high-speed near-death experiences.
"Do you want to go?" Yuri asked.
"To Kazakhstan? Why would I?"
Yuri shrugged. "I dunno, to see family or something."
Again Tyler smiled sharply at the corner of his lips. He leaned over a placed a light kiss on Yuri's cheek, glancing mischievously at the road before turning back. A full out grin slowly spread across his face. Tyler remembered too, Yuri realized.
"Both hands on the wheel, big guy."
"Tyler..."
He thought he might try something, but the American pulled back into his seat and stared vacantly out at the road. He held his expression still long enough to stifle the grimace but not long enough to keep his shoulder from shrugging or his arm from sliding subconsciously across his injured ribs.
So. No high speed blowjobs today.
"Has the pain gotten worse?" Yuri asked.
Tyler ignored the question. "I don't have any family there. Everybody lives in the US now."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Communism and all, you know. Has a way of cutting ties. If there's anyone still there they probably have no idea I exist." He added with a tinge of bitterness. "No use looking them up."
"But still it might be nice to go. We need someplace to go."
"How do you figure?"
"To lie low," Yuri explained. "You can't go back to your home, I can't go back to mine. We need to go somewhere. Have at least a couple of months of something nice and quiet, stay away from the cities, maybe find some kind of cabin in the steppes..."
He realized too late that he was rambling. He realized much too late that Tyler was staring at him with this weird troublemaking expression plastered all over his face. Yuri ended his sentence on the words 'raise some goats' which fell out of his mouth without any regard for how completely ridiculous that sounded. He must look like a love sick puppy. Such a slip up with his feelings while Tyler's attention was so focused made him feel exposed.
"Eagles," Tyler said.
"What?"
"My family were eagle hunters. Besides, goats smell terrible. Raise eagles, not goats."
"Oh."
"So, how are we playing this job?" Tyler asked, dismissing Yuri's faux pas with little additional comment. "Old School or New School?"
"Which one involves passing the contact up the idiot chain?" Yuri replied.
"Old School, definitely. New School is all about going 'Hey, I'm CIA, want a drink?'"
"Ambitious." Contempt dripped from each unstressed note that passed Yuri's lips. He hated the flashy, post-modern, cowboy stuff. All this 'citizen of the world'/'coalition of freedom' nonsense. Give him the Cold War any day.
"Are we almost there?" The American asked with a long exaggerated yawn.
* * *
Yuri looked around without moving his head-- strategic use of backsplash mirrors and careful shifts of his gaze into the periphery helping him scan the dive bar crowd for the right faces.
Yuri wasn't sure whether Tyler would be a good addition to the equation or a bad one. He knew the game, but he was an American in an unexpected place and they were always looked upon with suspicion in his circles.
The idiot chain, as Yuri was fond of calling it, was a tactic of recruiting valuable enemy resources developed for an era when the enemy was another massive bureaucracy. First a matchmaker like Yuri would arrange for an individual from the client agency to meet the potential resource. This meeting would be choreographed to seem serendipitous so that the resource did not realize he was being recruited until both parties had plenty of time to do some good natured ass sniffing.
Then the first agent would introduce the resource to another agent in a similar fashion. Then that agent might pass the resource along to yet another agent.
Up and up it went until someone finally confessed to being a spy and the resource begins supplying officially whatever he was recruited for and might have been unwittingly supplying already.
The strength of this approach is that it protected people like Yuri. By the time the resource gets pitched, Yuri's involvement in opening the door to this slow wave of new friends and contacts is all but forgotten. But when dealing with the unscrupulous figures that lurked around the entrepreneurial arms trade and freedom fighting revolutionaries it was unnecessary precaution, if not down right silly. Those contacts would deal with anyone: Westerners on a Sunday, Communists the next Tuesday, dictators and useful war criminals any day after that. There wasn't the same risk exposing your true allegiances.
They also caught on faster to what was going on and in Yuri's experience were well aware of whom they were doing business with before they were officially told.
But spy deals had the same complications of flirtation: some people just felt more comfortable with an easy out.
And so it was for that reason that they sat in a bar waiting for two Kazakhstanis and a BAKIN code named Berkin.
Across the room, staring at him through his reflection in the backsplash, sat another familiar if unexpected face. Arms dealer Beckett Wreford, whose ridiculous sounding name was only rivaled by his ridiculous sounding accent and the unusually large selection of bazookas he carried about in the trunk of his car.
It was enough to make Yuri want to call the whole thing off. After a decade of carefully planning and executing coincidences, he no longer believed in them when he saw them in the wild. Why would an Australian arms dealer be in a dive bar with plastic lawn chair furniture and stained glass motifs created by duct taping tarp over holes in the windows?
He couldn't decide what to do before Wreford started moving towards the empty seat beside him.
"Is he yours?" the Aussie nodded towards Tyler's slumped over body on a plastic table in the corner. Yuri had thought Tyler was doing an excellent job actually. He had not looked at him once and was playing the role of man attempting to drink himself to death at two in the afternoon flawlessly.
Yet even that couldn't make up for his obvious Americanness in a section of Eastern Europe where Americans did not often tread. Yuri supposed it was an easy deduction to make when Wreford knew him well enough as anyone.
"Is he CIA?" Wreford asked rather than wait for a response to his question.
"No," Yuri said. Not anymore at least.
"So then he's not the guy."
"The guy?"
A raised eyebrow, a sly smirk, and Yuri felt a tinge of embarrassment. Even in their world with its intricate levels of cloak and dagger, gossip travelled fast. Especially when that gossip involved who might or might not be fucking whom up the ass.
Satisfied with the modest victory, Wreford changed the subject. "How's the SCAR working out for you?"
Yuri shrugged. "It's all right."
"Not doing the job?"
Yuri glanced over in Tyler's direction. "Well the people I need dead aren't dead yet."
"If you can't aim the damn thing that's not the gun's fault."
"I'm not dealing with amateurs here. It's not as simple as point and shoot."
Beckett Wreford cocked his head to the side, his eyes drifting back in Tyler's direction though never actually settling his gaze on him. "Does he know?"
"Know what?"
"That you're trying to kill his friends?"
Yuri felt the muscles in his neck tense and pinch prickly nerves around his spine. "They're not his friends. And no, he doesn't."
"That must be complicated."
"He'll know soon enough. I'm waiting for the right moment to bring him up to speed."
"Before or after they're dead?"
"Before, obviously."
The Kazakhs entered the bar. Yuri found himself studying their features and overlaying them on Tyler's, ticking off boxes where the half-bred in him was most obvious. It was Tyler's mother, Yuri decided. His surname didn't sound even slightly Central Asian so it had to be his mother.
"They ours?" Wreford asked, nodding towards the two Asians standing awkwardly at the door. He grinned with unabashed pleasure at the twitch in Yuri's expression.
Yuri didn't believe in coincidences for a reason.
"BAKIN, really?" he asked. "Of all things--"
"Be nice, I was the one who recommended you for this job." He looked over the Kazakhstanis through the mirror as he spoke, quietly appraising the merchandise before they dared approach. "They might do."
"Must be a slow economy if an Australian weapons dealer is moonlighting for Indonesian intelligence."
"You have no idea," Wreford replied. "All this cyber warfare stuff ... but I completely expect to make a killing on your ammunition needs now that your troublemaking boyfriend's back in town."
Yuri sneered and kicked the lower rung of the weapon dealer's bar stool. "Beat it. You're scaring away the fish."
With a shrug and a manipulative smile Wreford pulled himself to his feet and plodded towards the bathroom. He left his beer behind as a threat of his impending return, but Yuri knew he wouldn't show up until the wheels had properly been greased.
He was more Crocodile Dundee than James Bond, but even Wreford knew it was better when the resource being recruited thought he was the one doing the pursuing.
"Who's that?" one of the Kazakhs asked in lieu of formal greeting. They were obviously very nervous, but then they were little more than student revolutionaries a long way from home in a dingy bar with a companion they knew to have connections to organized crime. The realities of the underground never lived up to the elaborate world building of online forum fantasies.
"No one," Yuri said. "How goes the fundraising?"
A pair of shrugged shoulders and they talked about the disappointingly pedestrian realities of democratic reform for a while. It was easy to raise the banner of righteous revolution, but when it came to funding it backers wanted their investment to pay off in more than warm and fuzzy feelings. Kazakhs looking for fairer elections in their hometown had nothing to offer investors ... unless of course they were willing to put up some of the old Soviet weapons cache as collateral.
Yuri could see why BAKIN was interested, with investments in industry on the line they needed insight into any impending instability in Kazakhstan. It was a good match if Yuri could secure it for them.
"Anyway," he said. "That's not what I called you two to talk about."
"Yeah?"
Yuri allowed himself to slip up just long enough to glance at Tyler still playing drunk in the corner. "Where's a good place to lay low in your country? You know some place really isolated, out of the way?"
The young Kazakhs looked at each other. Under normal circumstances Yuri probably would have tried for a something more likely to entice them into letting their guard down, but he couldn't resist the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
Besides, if he could convince Tyler to run off with him, then he wouldn't have to kill his friends, then he wouldn't have to explain to Tyler that he was trying to kill his friends in the first place.
"The steppes of course," the taller of the two student revolutionaries answered. "But better to stay around Almaty as foreigners would definitely stand out."
"Maybe Kolsai or Balkhash?" the other suggested.
Yuri nodded and tried to memorize the names so that he could suggest them to Tyler later.
"Why?"
"Things are a little too hot out here," he admitted. "I need some time off."
One of the Kazakhs opened his mouth and made a strange face at Yuri, his gaze darting beyond him with quick snaps. "Does it have anything to do with the scary looking guy lurking by the bathrooms?"
Yuri hardly needed to turn around to know it was Wreford they were referring to.
Definitely more Crocodile Dundee than James Bond.
"I owe him money," Yuri said. "Don't worry about it."
"Is he dangerous?"
"Depends what his back stock looks like." And then when the confusion had just a few seconds to seep in, Yuri leaned over and whispered. "I bought a gun from him."
"A gun?"
"A BIG gun."
He saw the pieces click into place in their expression. He also saw the undeniable glints of interest. In their world arms dealers were like super models; the would-be revolutionaries were practically licking their lips at the thought of him.
"Hey now," Yuri said. "I thought you were peaceful revolutionaries. I didn't call you here because I want to lay low in a country you two are going to blow to bits."
"We would never..." Their mock insult was muffled by the lingering stars in their eyes.
"Promise me you won't involve him," Yuri said.
"Of course not," the empty promises came so smoothly it was like a written script. "What would we need an gun dealer for anyway?"
That was that, then; Wreford could be coy to the point of cruelty and still not shake their interest in being his new best friends. Yuri made just enough conversation to keep his departure from seeming abrupt. He waited for Tyler back where they had parked the van.
The American emerged from the bar about twenty minutes later. A bit longer than he had to, but Yuri figured he probably wanted to finish his beer. Sometimes his frugality was silly.
"No go?" he asked as he climbed into the passenger seat.
Yuri blinked it him. "It went fine."
"That's it?"
"Yeah."
"That's the whole thing?"
"Yeah. It's just an introduction Tyler, not a wedding ceremony."
The engine rumbled as they pulled back onto the shitty Eastern European suburban roads.
"I know but ... you didn't actually introduce them."
"Were they talking when you left?" Yuri asked.
"Yeah but--"
"Then that's it."
Tyler sighed in amazement and Yuri could feel the question in his mouth even as it looked less and less like he was going to actually ask it. Tyler had been on an introduction that went horribly wrong before: it was how they had met. He shouldn't need to ask why Yuri was reluctant to let him tag along on such a simple job. He should know that when these things went wrong they went really wrong really fast.
"So," Tyler said instead. "How much are we getting paid for that?"
"We?"
"You going to leave me to fend for myself? A dangerous fugitive with no hope of respectful employment? Or are you going to be the bread winner of the family while I pull my shit together?"
Yuri smiled despite himself and rolled his eyes. "$3,000"
"THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS?"
He knew Tyler would react like that.
"Yes."
"For that?"
"It's harder than it looks, Tyler."
"Do you know how much I get paid translating?"
"You were on a salary--"
"I mean freelancing, what I would make if I wasn't recruited. Thirty cents a word or less."
Without even thinking about it Yuri quipped, "Sounds like prison might have been profitable post-grad career training."
He hated himself for bringing it up. The stunned silence that filled the van clouded his head. Mentally he was kicking himself, even as Tyler started laughing beside him.
"Sorry," Yuri grunted. Tyler's laugh sounded sincere, uproarious and deep in his belly, but the delay made it hard to believe that he wasn't just being polite.
"Why?" Tyler smiled. "That was funny."
After a while he added, "And unfortunately true. I should have saved myself the student loan debt and just robbed a bank."
Yuri shook his head. "Probably would have ended up in a poorly funded state facility then. Wouldn't have been placed with any of the important criminals."
"Right, of course, have to aim higher if you want to be granted admittance to the Harvard or Yale of penitentiaries."
As the engine purred, glimmers of the impoverished countryside began to peek out from beyond the urban decay. Yuri kept his hands tightly on the wheel and his eyes on the road, but he could not will his curiosity away. He had spent every night since the FBI had taken Tyler away wondering if he was okay. He couldn't force himself to stop even after a thorough inspection had confirmed all Tyler's fingers, toes and necessary appendages were where he had left them.
"What was it like?" he asked.
"What?" Tyler replied coyly.
"Prison."
This time the silence was not broken with a cheerful and forgiving laugh. Yuri thought about telling Tyler to forget about it and shoving some contrived and bland conversation topic in his face instead.
As if the dreadful memories of that place could be swept away after he had let them out.
"Desolate," Tyler said finally.
"I'm sorry."
The translator shook his head. "I wanted to go."
That was the American in his blood talking. Tyler was such a frustrating mix of martyr and vigilante. The complexities of competing ideals and sheltered frontier delusions about how the world should be making his behavior erratic and self destructive.
He did what he did for all the wrong reasons.
"Yuri..."
Tyler's voice was hesitant and small. Yuri's thoughts flashed immediately to the sound and the impact of his body on the dumpster. Another image he would torture himself with on sleepless nights, plotting out hypothetical heroics that would have kept Tyler from harm. As if anyone could keep Tyler from harm.
"Yeah?" he said trying not to look away from the road.
"About the other day."
Yes, the other day. The coffee, the cafe, the dumpster ... Yuri felt a buzz in his gut upon realizing that Tyler was actually going to explain himself.
"What about it?"
"Well, I saw somebody."
"The same somebody who threw you off the roof?"
"The same somebody who gave me this."
He made Yuri turn his head by rolling up his sleeve and pointing at the ugly blue scars on his arm. The prison tattoo-slash-brand that Yuri had gathered was not entirely consensual.
Mi vida loca...
Yuri stared at the words. The empty road cutting straight through a hallow shell of a nation offered no distractions.
There was a time not long ago where Yuri was prepared to kill anyone who touched Tyler, but he had worked hard to break himself of that instinct and now he was not sure what he should be feeling when he stared at the marks.
It was Tyler's business. Tyler was a full-grown man perfectly capable of avenging himself.
"You saw him here?" Yuri asked. "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
"What is someone from an American prison doing here?"
Tyler snorted. "I'm here, aren't I?"
"That's different. I brought you here."
The white noise of air wiping across the frame of the van made each pause feel longer than it should be. Yuri pulled his attention away from the tattoo and back to the road just as a sign with reflective edging announced they were 15km from their temporary home.
He tried to stop thinking of the steppe: a quiet barren place that stretched on for miles. They could play Cowboys and Indians until they forgot their real names... Ride camels through miniature Grand Canyons... A world in no way perfect, but at the very least removed from this black hole of crime and chaos.
"You joined a gang in prison?" Yuri asked, looking back at the tattoo again. "Or does that have a different meaning than I think in America?"
"I didn't have much of a choice about it." The American shifted his bottom lip and ran it under his teeth. He stared straight ahead and made no attempt to handle this revelation gently. "It was either the crazy Colombians or the white supremacists ... the Colombians had slightly more tolerable membership dues."
After a beat he added, "It was survival, Yuri. They kept me safe, for a price."
"Sex?"
"Amusement." Tyler tilted his jaw towards the tattoo. "Did it with a horrible-looking thing pieced together from a toothbrush, a cheap pen and a fan motor. Nothing for the pain. Goes without saying that the artist hadn't exactly spent years apprenticing. I think they did it just to see if they could make me scream."
Yuri wanted to ask if it had worked but he wasn't sure what he wanted the answer to be. He felt his knuckles ache as his grip tightened on the steering wheel and the scenery seemed to flip past the van at an alarming pace.
"Do you want to clear out?" he finally made himself ask. "Nothing keeping us in this country really. We can be gone and--"
"Yuri, no."
It was clear and it was final. The sound of it made Yuri's heart beat faster and his mouth feel dry and scratchy. The anticipation was strangely erotic and euphoric, almost as if Tyler was going to declare his love and propose in this shitty, broken-down excuse for a van.
"I want to kill him," Tyler said instead.
Yuri thought he'd never ask.
* * *
"That is...." Tyler began, his brown eyes blinking wider and wider until they were about saucer size. "A big gun."
"A really big gun," he added a second later.
Yuri nodded, running his fingers over the long barrel of the SCAR as it peaked out from its swaddling clothes on the floor of the van. Its sand colored paint job made it look like a toy.
"Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle," Yuri said. "SCAR for short."
"Funny, because I'm guessing it doesn't actually leave a lot of those."
He felt his lips tug into a smile. His touch slid down to the deadly weapon's curved magazine case, a hard slug of death lying next to the assault rifle like a post-coital lover. It probably didn't leave many people alive long enough to develop scar tissue.
"There's a bit of a surplus on the market right now since the US Army cancelled a big order. I got it pretty cheap."
"Uh-huh," Tyler said.
"I got it for the Alexes." No use in delaying it any longer, Yuri thought. If he didn't find out now that relations between them and their Russian allies had soured, he would find out about it when they were taking cover from sniper fire later.
He didn't know why he tacked on the words "it has a grenade launching attachment that comes extra." As if intending to kill Tyler's friends was some how better as long as he really really meant it.
And he was surprised when Tyler seemed to take this in stride. "I see," he said, nodding once to himself before leaving the van and plodding back to their safe house.
Yuri hastily closed up and locked down the vehicle. The SCAR vanished behind two heavy metal doors.
"Tyler!"
He jogged after him, meaningless apologies and explanations forming in his head. An arsenal of a completely different kind that he was untrained in and unaccustomed to.
Tyler stopped before he got to the door. He was rubbing his keys between his fingers and looked thoughtful for a moment. "I'm not mad," he said, although the words were so softly spoken and devoid of force they were in no way reassuring to Yuri. "It's just a lot to adjust to. I went from one murder I'll regret for the rest of my life to having a shopping list of kills. It's a bit ... jarring how quickly I feel okay with this."
Then Yuri found himself saying something that was on his tongue every time he saw Tyler, but that he always dismissed. "Let's run away."
Tyler blinked at him.
"I mean it. You, me, new names, new identities ... go raise eagles, or whatever, in Balkhash."
The American cracked a smile at him. "You don't even know where that is."
"...In Kazakhstan ... somewhere."
"It's a lake," Tyler said. "And I'd prefer Fabrichniy if we were going to go anywhere. They have dirt bike racing there."
"Fine, whatever. It doesn't matter to me."
Tyler watched him for a while, his eyes ticking back and forth as if he was calculating something. He cocked his head to the side and then glanced back down at the tattoo and its ugly jagged edges.
"I was in the infirmary for three months with Hep B," he said.
And that was Yuri's answer. He felt like the bottom of him had just been cut out. Tyler didn't know, he didn't see that life was inherently cruel and awful and that it was a waste of time to try to correct just one more injustice because there was always just one more injustice waiting to happen. He didn't want to grab their little shot of happiness because he assumed that it would be there waiting for them when the bad guys were done. He was immature and petty and stupid and sometimes Yuri hated him for living in a world where people really did believe peace was the default state.
But then Yuri would look down at the tattoo himself, his eyes studying the topography of it ... all the places where the lines went deeper and irregular tears in the flesh-- "Okay," he said. "Let's do this then."
Tyler raised an eyebrow at him. "You sure? I can handle this on my own if you'd prefer."
"If you think for a minute that I'm going to let you go after a Colombian gangbanger alone then you must have a hole in your head to match the one in your shoulder."
Tyler chuckled and squirmed almost bashfully under the growling vibrations of Yuri's voice. "All right, all right, you can tag along."
* * *
The smug look on Wreford's face was like every 'told you so' ever muttered rolled into one.
"I asked for a 9mm," Yuri said coldly. The more time he spent fiddling with his guns the less time he had to spend being smirked at by an armed felon who seemed to want to play Yoda to his Luke Skywalker.
"Did you? What's the matter, boyfriend can't handle a .45?"
"No, it means I have to buy two different types of ammunition."
Which of course Wreford was already aware of.
"You ripping me off?" Yuri asked.
"Of course not. This isn't fucking Tesco. You needed something on short notice, you take what's available."
It would have to do. They would just have to make sure that they were efficient in their execution and did not run into the Alexes along the way. He didn't want to have to run through a seedy downtown with pockets full of three different types of bullets
"How are the Kazakhs?" Yuri asked as he carefully checked his new handgun for any structural issues or complications.
"Chatty, naive, and light on discretion."
"So perfect then?"
The smile on Wreford's face was not tipped by the aloof shrug of his shoulders. "We'll see."
Yuri held the gun up towards the horizon and closed one eye. "The weight feels off. Has the barrel been filed lately?"
He could hear the click of the Aussie's tongue, a sharp condemning snap of saliva and flesh that no doubt accompanied a patronizing shake of his head. "He's going to get you killed."
"Not likely," Yuri retorted.
"'The weight feels off?' As if you could detect the tiny layer missing if the barrel had been filed? Please. Stop looking for excuses. You don't want to do this, do you?"
There seemed no harm in admitting it, even if it did mean he had to stare at the gun dealer's stupid face and listen to his stupid critique of Yuri's life decisions. "No."
"Whatever tricks he knows between the sheets, Gechel, he's not the only one. Cut him loose before you regret it."
Yuri calmly completed his inspection of the .45 and shoved it into the waistband of his jeans for safe keeping. "Thanks, next time I want my fortune read I'll order Chinese. At least those come wrapped up in cookies."
Someone like Wreford would never understand: it wasn't about sex, it wasn't even about love. Yuri knew a lot of people and they all treated him like he was useful but ultimately disposable. If one of their schemes, revolutions or heists ended up killing him, he knew they would be disappointed, but nothing more.
Tyler needed him. He had a way of looking at Yuri like Yuri was the only person worth spending time with in the world. He had a way of talking to Yuri about his plans that made it seem as if he was Tyler's only hope.
Yuri didn't know if there was a point to being alive if you couldn't have people who needed you around.
* * *
"Wow," Tyler hummed as Yuri climbed back into the van and placed the .45 on the dashboard. "Is that for me?"
"No," Yuri said flatly as he started up the engine. "You're getting the Makarov, because I know you can handle that."
Tyler fell quiet and sunk into his seat. His first kill had been with Yuri's Makarov. That one murder he said he would regret for the rest of his life.
"Sorry," Yuri said. "I didn't mean it like that."
"It's okay."
"I would just feel better if you have the Makarov."
Because the Makarov was his, he'd held it in his hands and prayed on it before, he'd slept with it, he'd worn it like a talisman when creeping into monstrous places. It felt like a part of him and he wanted some part of him to be with Tyler at all times.
Tyler nodded.
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes."
"All right then." Yuri nodded to himself. "Then we do this the right way: track and execute. No dramatics, okay?"
"Okay."
* * *
"It's unbelievable how shit your Russian is," Yuri said as he emerged from yet another small establishment rubbing his wrists and looking carefully around for any troubling abnormalities in the traffic flows. "Everybody in Kazakhstan speaks Russian."
After a couple of failed attempts at soliciting information from a local about any strange Spanish-speaking foreigners in the area, Yuri had taken over, and Tyler, embarrassed by the reactions his stabs at Slavic languages produced, slipped into the background like a useless wet sock.
"I told you I've never been to Kazakhstan," the translator said.
"But you speak the language fluently."
"It's really completely different from Russian."
"Same alphabet."
"COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ... And anyway the CIA wanted me to focus on related agglutinative Turkic languages, not Russian."
Yuri frowned. He had absolutely no idea what any of that meant. But as he watched the momentary flare of annoyance curl back under Tyler's skin and get buffed off his expression by still-lingering embarrassment he decided it probably wasn't important.
"Just because I have some advanced linguistic training does not mean I can speak any language on the planet five minutes after hearing it," Tyler added testily.
"Prasti" Yuri apologized. "....your first lesson."
He had meant it playfully, but judging by the way his lover rolled his eyes and sulked on the street corner, that was obviously not the way it was received. For all his acquired skills and talents, there were still too many situations where Tyler felt useless and powerless.
Yuri didn't quite know what to tell him. It took a long time to get good at this sort of life, and it wasn't something you ended up proud of yourself for achieving.
"Anyway they don't know anything," he said instead.
"Sixth one so far, maybe he left town after I confronted him?"
That seemed as unlikely as him sprouting wings and flying back to South America. Tyler wasn't exactly an intimidating presence. Prison had put some muscle on him, but even still he was more lean than broad; more wide-eyed than chiseled. In his worst moods he was like smoke: dark and deadly only if you couldn't manage to push through him.
"I'll do this one." Tyler gestured to the small grocery store behind him. "You get the next one."
Yuri didn't like being separated, even if it was only by a store front. He shook his head.
"Come on, I don't need a babysitter, Yuri."
He relented because he understood that letting Tyler do it on his own would be more soothing to his battered ego than all the kisses and sweet words Yuri's mouth might press against him. "Okay," he nodded. "Just be careful."
"Right, if they try to bludgeon me to death with a zucchini I'll be more than prepared."
Twenty minutes later Tyler was still talking to the girl at the counter. Yuri watched from the window. Every few minutes he would think about moving on to the next few businesses on the street instead of waiting for Tyler to get through fumbling and butchering basic conversation; every few minutes he would consider going inside and saving both of them from mistranslations. He did neither.
When Tyler did finally come out, he was rubbing the back of his head with a shy smile. "I think...." he said, trailing off as if not quite sure how to put the words together correctly.
Yuri waited.
"I think I found something."
"No way."
"Yes way." Tyler snorted. "She said arendu ... that's to rent isn't it? On arendu ... he rents?"
It was, but with Tyler's Russian who knew what had persuaded those two words to appear in conversation.
"Come in and ask her yourself," Tyler said.
He liked Tyler's clipped indignation. He wasn't sure what he was going to find when Tyler got out of that prison. He expected the experience to whittle him down, and for sure there were rough edges where a younger, more innocent Tyler had been scrapped off, but other times there were moments like this where Tyler was full of curiosity and mischief and it seemed like nothing had changed. He watched the American run his hands through his light brown hair and pick up his conversation with the grocery clerk where it had left off. He filled in the holes in his Russian with charm and flirtation: same old Tyler.
Yuri hung back to watch it. Those big brown eyes and plump lips were doing what they did best, despite the barriers. He was really beautiful. He really had a way of making everyone feel important. That was why he followed him. That was why the Alexes had followed him.
Yuri moved as if to take a step forward. He was cut off by a sound like a fire cracker and a sharp, searing pain at the side of his neck. The flesh burned. He was temporarily blinded and disorientated by the sensation. Later he would realize it was a gunshot, but that was after he saw his own blood hit the ground in a fantastic spray of large shimmering droplets.
* * *
"Oh, you big baby," Tyler tsked gently. "Stop whimpering like that, I'm almost done."
Yuri wasn't whimpering, but he was flinching and leaning away from each loop Tyler made with the sewing needle. Occasionally a sound would escape, but not a whimper, not as constant as that. Each pierce on the damaged flesh felt unusually intense. Each time the pain was surprising.
"I think not knowing whether you have any idea what you're doing is heightening my sensitivity."
"Excuses, excuses. Of course I know what I'm doing. You forget I went to the MIT of federal penitentiaries."
It was just a nick but it was a nick far too close to the jugular for Yuri's comfort. Tyler had saved his life by grabbing a roll of duct tape off the counter the minute he saw Yuri stumble.
Good thing the Alexs hadn't waited until they were at the second hand clothing store. Yuri might have died with a fanny pack wrapped around his neck instead.
"Supermax," Yuri said. Over his shoulder he could see Tyler shaking his head.
"Nah, that was like the prep school of federal penitentiaries. Supermax is all solitary, all the time."
Yuri's curiosity was like a mild anesthetic. Before Tyler went down, Yuri had never heard of the Supermax, then he couldn't find anything about it from any official, unofficial or even criminal source. Only the barest, most insignificant details were known about what the prison looked like beyond the gates. Pictures made it seem like an underground fortress, an iceberg on the plain with only the tip peeking out.
"Super maximum security," Yuri mumbled.
"That's right. They don't even send serial killers there. Only criminals that pose the greatest threat to international and domestic security: terrorists, organized crime--"
"And spies who go bad."
"Uh-huh."
But Tyler's scars hadn't come from there. Tyler wouldn't have had any contact with any of the other prisoners at Supermax. At least ... not enough contact for them to hold him down and tattoo something on his arm.
No, Tyler's scars had come when prison bureaucracy in its infinite wisdom had decided to transfer him out of Supermax and into an unsympathetic maximum security facility where he was certain to become the most popular local attraction. The guy that had seen the deepest, darkest dungeon there was. The guy who had passed into the lowest circle of incarceration and somehow, for some reason, been brought back up. He was a chew toy. A yard stick with which the biggest and baddest could measure their malice. Tyler was coming to them with an epithet of 'most dangerous' and everyone wanted to see if he deserved it.
Yuri didn't wanted to think about this anymore. He felt the stitches pull tight and the heat of Tyler's breath against the back of his neck as he cut the thread with his teeth. Then the ripping and peeling of a clean piece of duct tape, the remains of the old gunmetal strip crumbled and blood stained on the floor--
"Oh come on, gross."
"What? It works great on wounds. Besides, if you pop a stitch it will keep things together."
"I don't want to walk around with a piece of duct tape on my neck."
Yuri complained but he didn't move to keep Tyler from smoothing the strip over his newly stitched wound. The American's weight pressed into his back. His lips flirted against the surface, tickling his skin until connecting the sealed wound with a soft kiss. The warmth and wetness made Yuri's body tingle. He rolled onto his back and studied the patterns of shadow that fell across Tyler's face.
"I think Sasha went easy on you," Tyler said. His fingers ran up tape again, tapping on the edges to make extra sure the seal was perfect. "I think that was a warning shot."
"Nice warning," Yuri snorted.
"You've never seen him shoot before. You were standing still, out in the open. Hard to believe he would miss."
Sasha, the younger and arguably more dangerous of the two Alexes, had been missing a lot of shots lately. So either he wasn't as good as Tyler assumed he was or he wasn't fully committed to the cat and mouse game he had been dragged into. Either way it didn't matter, he had to die because Yuri was not going to spend the rest of his life lying awake in bed wondering if a truce was really a truce.
"Maybe he saw you," Yuri breathed, his fingers walking up Tyler's arm and exploring the new definition around his clavicle and throat. The very thought stirred a cocktail of jealousy and arousal, which he had to force himself to hide
"Maybe," the translator murmured. Something in Yuri's tone made him pause. He looked him over and whatever conclusions he drew were impossible to read from his expression. But his eyes seemed darker, a fringe of lashes hanging heavily in front of a leery lustful stare.
Yuri knew that look.
"It's the adrenaline," he said. "Makes you ... you know, winds you up."
A shake of his head and suddenly Tyler was crawling over him, rolling his shoulders in a way that Yuri decided was sort of feline. "It's not that."
"No?"
Tyler shook his head again and brought his cheek up to the uninjured side of Yuri's neck. "It's the smell of you."
He wanted him so badly. Images of a scene very much like this rocked him to sleep at night and flickered across his mind each morning. He stroked the side of Tyler's face slowly with his open palm and hoped he didn't look completely lovesick.
The wildness of Tyler's excitement brought out tawny highlights in his eyes. His intentions were always so mysterious to Yuri when it came to this. He transitioned from sexual to politely platonic as the situation warranted so easily. Never a hint of regret or discomfort.
Tyler crept forward and brushed his lips against Yuri's. It was a rare moment of introductory sweetness just to establish that Yuri was willing.
And quite quickly his hands were taking full advantage of the undressing that had preceded the stitching, spreading out over Yuri's chest, each touch triggering a glimmer of nostalgia and a twitch-like smirk in his expression.
"And prison of course. It's been a really long time."
Yuri didn't want to comment on that. He stroked Tyler's cheek and watched with fascination as his lover savored every second of physical contact. He practically purred, his tongue darting over the muscular curves of Yuri's arms, his teeth raking over an exposed nipple, possessively pawing until Yuri couldn't deny his own desires anymore. He shivered with lust and didn't care if Tyler noticed.
It had been a really long time for him too. Not since Tyler had left and taken away his ability to have mindless sex with the occasional warm, willing body. He only wanted him, and that thought tied a hard knot in his chest.
He gripped Tyler's arms hard enough to keep him still and growled along the American's jawline, letting Tyler feel his teeth.
Tyler laughed. It was sweet and unthreatened and, Yuri had always thought, completely irrational. He was a mercenary. He was a killer. And although he had for a long time tried restrict himself to matchmaking and avoid clients who were obviously looking for thuggery and violence, he still had kills on his resume.
There was no Earthly reason why Tyler should be so calm and so trusting around him.
But the half-cocked mischievous smile suggested otherwise.
Yuri sat up. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against Tyler's, the taste and warmth of his lips making him want Tyler naked right away. But his lover was more concerned with increasing the friction between them and it took a bit of coaxing with his tongue and lips before Tyler's rolling moans relented enough for the kiss to deepen.
He loved the way Tyler gasped and squirmed, trying to find just the right angle with which to slide up against Yuri's body. The way he moaned in frustration when Yuri wouldn't forfeit his control. The way he growled but wrapped his arms around Yuri instead of pushing him away.
The pants had to go. It only took a few kisses to convince Tyler to flop down onto his back, arching up as Yuri's tongue moved down his throat and his hands teased the skin around the bandage supporting his injured ribs.
He licked a trail down the American's abs, the pain from bites and nips brushed away with sloppy kisses. Each inch further down and Tyler became tenser and tenser, breaths hissing between his clenched teeth. The fly popped open with a flick of Yuri's fingers.
Tyler made a small, weak sound in the back of his throat when Yuri reached under him and practically dumped him out of his clothes. At the time, Yuri dismissed it. Tyler seemed nervous-- excited and unbelievably turned on-- but nervous all the same. Yuri figured he was just a little out of practice.
He grabbed hold of one of the translator's legs and pulled it over his shoulder, kissing up the inner thigh before lowered himself down. Tyler squirmed. He bit his lip as the wet tongue flicked over sensitive balls and started to say something that got choked out by Yuri's fingers probing under him.
When Yuri was close enough for his sandpaper stumble to rub against the head of his erection, Tyler yelped and pulled himself bolt upright in an absolute panic.
"Don't!"
Yuri chuckled; it was unlike Tyler to be so shy around such a basic sexual act. "What? I don't mind."
Tyler was feverishly red, his face was almost as red and his back almost as stiff as the throbbing cock between his legs. He squirmed and tried to push aside the mewing needy whines that lingered in his throat each time Yuri exhaled so close to such sensitive skin.
"It's just..." He looked off to the side and made a face. "The Hep ... they said it cleared, but I haven't had a real non-prison doc check me out yet. I just ... I don't want to risk it."
Yuri looked down at greedy appendage still standing straight up as if to say 'what? me?'. Tyler was cutely concerned. His penis had no such scruples.
"This is not a problem that can be solved with duct tape, is it?"
Tyler looked understandably horrified by the suggestion. "Oh fuck you," he snapped.
Yuri smiled and reached across the bed for his bag. "Not with that thing, you won't."
"Do you actually have condoms with you? Now? Here of all places?"
He rolled his eyes and rummaged around a rough sack filled with loose bullets and enough pedestrian odds and ends for MacGyver to build a small nuclear arsenal from. "Until you decided to rekindle your interest in contract killing I had planned to spend most of this week lying low with my wanted fugitive of a boyfriend. So, yes ... I do."
Tyler made a strange, although not completely unpleasant, face at the word boyfriend.
"Resourceful," he said instead.
"They have a number of surprisingly useful nonsexual applications."
"You mean besides water balloons?"
The foil pinched between his teeth, Yuri moved back on top and let Tyler sink down into the bed. He had already decided what he wanted to do. He wanted Tyler to need him as desperately as Yuri had always needed him.
The latex tasted terrible, but the jerk of Tyler's hips and the thrill of looking up and watching his expression made his pulse race. Then Tyler would catch him looking as his mouth slid up and down and the translator would close his eyes tight, making this delightful sound in the back of his throat and blushing all the way down to his knuckles.
He was as messy as possible, slurping, licking, slapping his tongue against the underside of Tyler's cock. He pressed his palm against Tyler's thighs, spreading him further and encouraging each writhe of pleasure with tender strokes across the soft skin there.
"Yuri..." Tyler moaned.
But his fingers got bored of that rather quickly and he moved those touches down, brushing his knuckle across one ball-- taking great pleasure in the noise Tyler made at the contact-- before he massaged the translator's tight ass and pushed those cheeks apart.
There was very little resistance when Yuri pushed a finger in, only a groan and a quick thrust of his hips. Yuri took his time teasing him like that: his mouth on one side of Tyler sucking hard and slow, his fingers on the other side stroking in and out, occasionally hooking up just to see how much higher Tyler's desperate cries could go.
"Fuck," Tyler gasped. "Holy fuck. Stop teasing me already."
Yuri pulled his face out from between Tyler's legs. He planted a quick kiss on each of Tyler's thighs before he said, "Roll over."
Brown eyes batting down at the dick: needy, throbbing, shrink wrapped with Yuri's saliva and so desperate for attention. He whined and wiggled up against the other's large body, his look and expression suggesting he would prefer to be nearly bent in half on his back instead.
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