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The Dragon's Lair

Something about the rising hysteria sparked a terrible kind of amusement in him, and Victor chuckled—out of pity more than humor, but the latter was plenty there too.


"Relax." He drew out the word as if defining it, his thumb tracing gentle circles into the back of Nicolas' hand. "I know you haven't done this before, I know you don't wanna, and I don't expect either of you. If you knew what you were doin', I'd'a sent you out here on your own." He flashed a crooked smirk and squeezed the younger man against his side. "That's what my guy did to me. I didn't have no one like me when I was your age."


He supposed that came with a single benefit, anyway: he desperately wanted Nicolas to maintain his own independence, apart from him and whatever he'd become. Even if it was almost inevitable. Even if there was really nothing he could do if things did end up that way.


Especially now.


"Now look at me—" He raised his eyebrows, slid a hand beneath the other's chin to tilt his face. "No one's gonna die, you hear me? No one's gonna die, and no one's gonna get hurt. That's for sure."


There's no such thing as one-hundred-percent. It was something he'd been taught in the midst of a drastically different situation. But the probability had been in his favor then, so why not now? Statistically speaking, he had far better chances of hitting his mark than becoming it.


Victor drew in a deep breath. He didn't wanna do this either. His eyes fell on Nicolas', and a part of him winced, crushing the urge to kiss to him. He had to remind himself—not the first time since this morning—that blatant intimacy was still iffy between them in the realm of consciousness, and maybe not the best course of action in their current situation.


"I know you're scared," he murmured, reasonably softer, squeezing Nicolas' hand in return. He had known, but it was a terrible pleasure to hear it admitted. "Don't let—no, you know what? Don't worry about being scared."


The more terrified he was, Victor speculated, the more he'd look like he wasn't going anywhere. A vulnerable little lamb wasn't going to leave the only wolf that would protect him—but, realistically speaking, Nicolas was hardly a lamb (apart from in appearance, maybe), and Victor suspected that he'd show it when he confronted the man he'd adopted at least half his snark from.


Victor had been in much the same situation, but lamb was too generous a term. Mathias was a lamb; he'd been more of a tick. Back in the day no one looked twice at intimacy within the unorthodox communities, and it was so much easier to get wrapped up in someone and their sweet lies when they made you feel like you were the only thing they'd ever loved.


But the first time, he recalled with a painful wrench in his stomach, the first time had been easy. Everything was new and exciting and euphoric, and the smug satisfaction he felt when he came home to his parents' criticism after a night with a stranger still hadn't completely disappeared.


Then things turned dark. Then the compliments became manipulative, and his desires went out the window, and things started to hurt, and his anxiety ran wild whenever he was given a slick side glance that he didn't want to interpret. Then he'd seen the same terrible emptiness in his best friend, and when they'd tried to fix each other, they'd been separated.


And then—


The tightness in his chest forced him to stop, and he became aware that he'd been squeezing Nicolas' hand hard. How many times had he thought about hurting the boy? How many times had he thought that was the only way to do things?


But Nicolas wasn't scared because he'd been hurt and didn't know what else to do with himself. He wasn't clinging to him because he thought he loved him and was willing to do anything to keep things going. He was smarter and more independent than Victor had ever been at this point—but Victor hadn't treated him the way he'd been treated.


He tried to convince himself that he'd done the best he could. Failed.


"Hey." His voice was soft, almost inaudible. The panic crept in on every facet of his being, but he kept it away from his outward appearance like his life depended on it. Instead he looked at Nicolas, imploring, a little desperate. "We'll be okay. I promise we will be. But I need you to be honest with me, alright, for me. Did I hurt you last night?"
 
Nicolas allowed himself to take a heavy breath when instructed and found himself leaning easily into the warm caress of Victor's arms. He was letting Victor baby him, lick his wounds and pretend hugging it out and a little mindful meditation would take the fear out of his heart and mind. There was nothing more embarrassing and juvenile than giving Victor the power to coddle and nurture him like a child, and Nicolas was stupid to let it go on without a fight back. He liked -- too much -- the way he felt when being pampered, and he was too much of an idiot to pull himself together and get it to stop.


He knew that Victor didn't expect him to be brave or courageous or anything of the sort, but he also wanted to be regarded with respect. He didn't need the hushed whispers like he was going to break, and even though he sometimes felt like everything around him was falling apart, at some point he was going to have gather enough strength to get the fuck over himself.


And if no one was going to die, why were they being so careful? Why was this man so frightening that the likes of Victor was getting worked up about a meeting with him? Nicolas could sense is anxiety, he wasn't stupid. He wasn't the only one that needed to take a chill pill and relax as Victor so easily said. They both chased away their problems with alcohol, and Nicolas with the addition of drugs, but at least the younger man admitted that he was worried. Victor balled all his nervous ticks up into a ball and shoved it to the back of a closet to be forgotten for years.


Nicolas stared hard and deep into Victor's eyes as the older man held his chin proud and high to reassure him, but the words didn't help anything. He was still worried. He still felt the itching under his skin growing into festering clouds of worry to dangle overhead. "I'm going to worry until this is over," he said, honest, and he looked away from Victor but did not remove his jaw from the older man's grasp. He looked past him and into the parking lot again. I'm going to be scared until everything in my life is back to normal.


There was a good chance that Nicolas was going to be scared for his life until Victor was out of it.


He didn't realize the tightly wound pain in his hand until Victor loosened his grip on his palm and allowed the skin to breathe once again. Nicolas stared down at his lap as if had the answers he was looking before he allowed himself to look into Victor's eyes.


"Hurt me?" he asked, brows pinched.


How was he supposed to have been hurt from sex? They had been drinking, yes, of course, and in all technicalities it was impossible to consent under the influence, but Nicolas was always ready before there was any drinks inside of him, and he'd like to think the same when it came to Victor. He had been with people while intoxicated before. Hell, he had been riding a high for hours when he fucked someone for the first time. Same with the first time he was fucked. He didn't know if Victor was worried for his wellbeing or more about the reputation that he was leaving himself with, but if it was the latter, he should probably look at who he was fucking rather than how. There was more problems with Nicolas's age than there was with any other part of their relationship. Rather, the problem lied within Victor's too. If anyone knew how old Victor truly was, they'd think Nicolas was a callboy or some kind of whore paid for whatever services desired.


So he scowled and huffed out a bent breath. "No, you didn't hurt me. Why? All of a sudden I can't take care of myself because I'm scared of dying?" He pushed Victor's hand away from his jaw and dragged his body back toward the passenger side door, away from Victor. "And don't patronize me. You didn't fuck when I didn't want it. You weren't too rough, too angry, too drunk or whatever the fuck else you think went down. I'm fine."
 
He grinned despite himself, nerves briefly subdued by the ironic twist of humor that surfaced with Nicolas' reversion to his typical, prickly demeanor. With all the excavated emotions tightened up in his chest and bound together by this rising anxiety, the abrupt disappearance of the boy's bout of vulnerability had him sick with dubious relief. The angry reassurance was nice, too.


It was beneficial for him to be terrified, but the idea of a permanent fear in Nicolas was more concerning for Victor than anything that might have been about to happen.


"You're too cute." He meant it too, he realized. But that was a discussion for another time.


He waved him out of the car, then stepped out himself, making it a point to glance at the time before turning off the vehicle. 1:37. If the conversation wasn't over in twenty minutes--which it wouldn't be--then he'd have someone looking out for them. Their one last Hail Mary, as Nicolas had so eloquently put it.


It was--if nothing else--one of the only reasons he knew they'd get out of here alive.


But the idea had sprung from paranoia to begin with. Grant wasn't going to kill him, he reasoned; he had no purpose in doing so, and, if anything, it'd put him in a terrible position among the community. Mat would kill him, no doubt, and someone else would kill Mat--


What if it's Marcus? What if Grant shoots me and then tries to kill Mat and sends Marcus after him? But what would he want to do that for? He's not that crazy, is he? He might be. He'll kill Nicolas, too. He might send Marcus after both of them--





The gory visuals accompanying that string of thought fractured his psyche a bit. Victor ran a hand compulsively through his hair and drew Nicolas up against his side, willing to brush off the boy's discomfort for the sake of soothing his own terror-struck imagination.


"Come on," he murmured, locking the car, then double checking it for no real reason. "I'll take care 'a everything."


And he would.


They rounded the hedge and skirted the flank of a sleek silver Mercedes to meet a man who might have been Victor's father, only three inches shorter and a hell of a lot friendlier-looking than Nicolas' escort. Martin Grant looked to be somewhere in his mid-forties, with laugh lines branching from his mossy eyes, an open face, and a crop of neat blond hair tinged gray at the temples. He was handsome, considering the conventional angles of his features, and the smile that curled his lips when he saw the two was the kind that most people described as "enough to light up a whole room".


"Look at you." Everything was the same--the voice, the grin, the unexpectedly crushing hug and passionately innocent cheek kiss. "My God, look at you. Ah, and I didn't think you could get any skinnier."


Victor smiled tightly in return. That was another thing Nicolas should have been grateful for, he thought. I may have kidnapped you and forced you into a hazardous relationship, but at least I don't force my uninvited criticism into the beginning of every goddamn conversation.





"S'good to see you again," he said, and hugged the man again, because warmth on his end of the deal is an absolute necessity. Even if it makes his skin crawl.


"I know it is. My God, Victor, I can't believe you're all grown up. Is Marcus still around? How's your brother doing?"


They make idle chat for a bit, like little old ladies catching up on the latest gossip, Grant's hand rested on Victor's shoulder, as if rooting him to the spot. Victor keeps Nicolas well within his sights. Grant looks at him only once, too quickly for the former to notice, flashing a sickly sweet smile with a devilishly dark-eyed look to boot.


He has to bring Victor's attention back to the boy, which makes the former wince in the face of his own incompetence (he'd been hoping, for just a single, solitary split of a moment, that Nicolas might be ignored entirely--a stupid thought, if there ever was one). Grant's eyes are prying when he looks at the younger man, and Victor has to keep himself from scowling.


"And is this him?" he asks, and grins again when Victor nods. "Wonderful. He's cute. You've got your father's taste."


He ignores the comment, looks at Nicolas instead. His eyes are steady, calm and unwavering. He knows what he's doing; Nicolas is smart; and they'll all be fine. "I know. Come here, Nicolas."
 
Rolling his eyes, Nicolas scoffed and pushed himself out of the passenger side and slammed the door behind him as they headed wherever Victor was leading them. Cute my ass.


It only happened a few times in his life - an apt bulb of realization dawning on him. There were only a small handful of times that Nicolas was caught off guard, and slowly, that number was growing when his mind came back to Victor. Time and time again, he was experiencing emotions that he had never felt before while doing things that he had never quite imagined. Of course he imagined the sex. Who wouldn't? But he didn't imagine the black market deals swept under bloody rugs and that Victor would pay off his friends after they aided a murder in his crimes. Because even though neither of them had really approached what had happened back at MARCUS, Nicolas wasn't stupid, and he had to think that what he thought was true or else he was going to start doubting himself completely.


And now was one of those time, except it wasn't some proud festering chest cramp making him wish that there were less obstacles for the two of them to tackle on their road to being slightly normal. It was the rush of fear he couldn't quench gnawing at the back of his mind and at his stomach and at his heart. Most of the things that Victor made him feel had to do with anxiety, panic, arousal -- all of the normal multipliers that added into their relationship. Whatever that was. Fear wasn't something he was scared of feeling; not really. He liked the alarm when it built in his chest and caused heart palpitations that he couldn't calm down.


He was masochistic, he supposed.


Dealing with Mr. Grant -- whoever he was -- was only going to add to the worry in his head, and even though Victor told him not to spend his time thinking about what could go wrong, Nicolas needed to. Otherwise it would. He had this thing where when he thought about something going wrong, it didn't go wrong in any way that he thought it would, and more often than not, everything ended up fine. And he needed that here.


Victor pulled his against his body as they strode toward the car, and somehow Nicolas pulled himself together enough not to stare at his feet the entire time when they parted again. Grant isn't as terrifying to look at as Marcus was -- and still is. He seemed nice and gentle and caring, and that was what let the worry expand in his chest. Someone so perfectly normal -- fatherly, even, though Nicolas didn't have a good personal comparison -- was never looked at as a threat, but the very fact that they were pulled out of their normal lives for this meeting with this man was enough to set off any alarms that weren't already ringing.


If Victor didn't take care of this, whatever it was, he was never going to hear the end of it even if both of them were dead. Because he had promised. Or at least Nicolas took it as a promise. If it wasn't, it would still be a lie, and Nicolas was tired of being lied to.


When the attention was drawn to him, finally, Nicolas moved forward and stood close to Victor like he knew what he was doing. Like he was calm. Like he wasn't imagining what his obituary was going to read. Nicolas Cardou, 19, dies in parking lot on the shitty side of town as a petulant child who let his family down. That wasn't exactly prideful.


So he stood calmly next to Victor, their sides brushing as he moved closer as if it's going to give him a sliver more of the comfort that he didn't even have. He didn't like the way that either of them were watching him -- like hawks stalking prey. He was used to that from Victor, but it happened when they were alone. Not in public in front of whatever type of man Grant was.


"Hello, Mr. Grant," he said, like it was practiced. His hands are cold again, clammy and shaky from bundles of nerves tapping into every pore of his body. "It's nice to meet you."
 
Victor tucked his arm around Nicolas' waist as soon as the boy was within reaching distance, hysterically comforted by the fact that he couldn't squirrel his way out of it in the presence of a stranger. Albeit, he'd have had to suck it up either way--Victor needed physical support more than Nicolas didn't, and the former had made enough sacrifices today, as far as he was concerned.


His hand fell to the small of Nicolas' back and stayed there, fingers curled in slightly, like gripping claws. He was smiling, but the way it touched his eyes was innately unnatural, like a reflection in a foggy mirror. He was anxious. If they'd been standing here twenty years ago, he'd have been terrified. And if he was a smart man, he would have made sure Nicolas knew this long before he'd be forced to interact with a man like Martin Grant.


He squeezed his waist and kissed his temple before the eldest of the bunch could respond to the (thankfully courteous) greeting. It was a "you're doing great" gesture--or he hoped that's what it felt like, at least.


He watched with growing pain in his chest as Grant smiled, a wide, striking thing that sent Victor's eyes darting anywhere else. "You too, son." There was something vaguely off about his voice now, like a song with a single note changed. Victor cleared his throat, shifted his weight, squeezed Nicolas again. "Victor's told me a lot about you. And your family, your friends. He says you've met Marcus and Mathias too, is that true?"


He looked to Victor rather than Nicolas for a reply. A flutter of genuine agitation rose in the former's stomach, and he pursed his lips. "Yeah. We stayed at Mat's place last night."


A bold, unadulterated humor crept into the other man's brilliant grin. "And that's when--?"


"Yeah. Yes."


"And you'd been drinking?"


"Mhm." That's what I fucking told you.





Grant stared at him for several moments too long, though he seemed to be the only one not bothered by it. Victor didn't look at him. Grant chuckled, a low, continuous sound that never changed pitch. Comforting. Like a purr, almost. "Well that's disappointing, but I don't blame you. You've been fifty years sober. That's long enough, isn't it?"


Victor flashed him a smile. The words were warm, genuine, but beneath them was a thread of genuine disapproval, and Victor could pick up on it like a shark with blood. "I s'pose so." That was one time. I'm not going to do it again. I can sober the hell up, I'm an adult, fuck you.





But he wasn't going to waste his time having that conversation again. It wasn't about him, anyway.


Grant's big green cat eyes darted between Nicolas and Victor. At the former he smirked, and to the latter he looked expectantly, as if he might be able to predict his next question. "Virgin?"


Victor snorted at that, too caught off guard to be offended. "No." Not even close.





Grant mirrored his expression the way the most captivating people do, chuckling in return. "Shame. They're always easier to wrap around your finger when they start out fresh." He turned his attention back to Nicolas, leaving Victor to twitch and spasm in temporary not-really peace. "I'm sorry, Nicolas, you'll have to forgive me, it's a terrible habit of mine to talk about people in front of them. Now, I'm curious, so if you don't mind, how did you two meet?"
 
Victor's constant touching -- particularly the way it lingered -- was creating a rise in Nicolas's chest that he couldn't quite understand. He didn't believe that he outwardly looked like a bundle of nerves, so maybe the necessity was more for Victor's need than his own. The other had no way (as far as he knew) of truly telling that Nicolas was ever uncomfortable aside from the guesses that simply ended up being right and then right again. It wasn't unpleasant -- the touching -- but it did make him think a little too hard about what it could mean. Was that okay? Was it wrong of him to be nice? Maybe the gesture was telling him to watch himself, to tread carefully.


Everything was fine so far as he understood, so he didn't know why it would be a warning. A thank you, maybe.


He didn't like being talked about when he was standing right in front of people, and he really hated someone talking for him, but apparently that's how the conversation was going to play out. Neither Victor or Grant acknowledged that he was there aside from the touches and the unwavering grins that Grant sent him. He was still nervous, of course he was nervous, but how was he supposed to act his part if no one cared to listen?


And why did it matter if he was a virgin or not? Did Grant think that Nicolas was treating Victor like a god, acted like a little pet to cater to his every whim? Neither of them were wrapped around the other's finger. Their relationship might not have been healthy, at least not really, but there hadn't been any signs of emotional abuse yet.


He told you to give up your entire life, Nicolas thought to himself. And it was true. You fuck once and he tells you to give up everything. If that isn't emotional abuse, then what is?


Then Grant addressed him, and he wasn't sure what to do next. Tell the truth about Aria, that he was stalking Victor through the night after connecting him to the murder cases he'd seen in the paper? Make up some shit story about a falsity that never happened to avoid confrontation? He remembered when Victor knew that he was lying about his name and wondered what kind of research that Grant had done on him before making this meeting a reality. The other men knew each other, obviously, but he couldn't tell how alike they were by just this simple exchange. Victor was smooth, and Grant was clean. Almost too clean. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.


"There was a rave downtown," he answered, choosing the truth. At least as much of the truth he could give out. The night was still fuzzy. "But we didn't really meet until the next morning when I woke up at his place." His eyes shifted toward Victor's for some kind of okay -- to see if he was screwing everything up or helping them out of the shit hole they had dug themselves into. "And then he walked me home, so I guess that's kinda it."
 
Grant nodded, slowly. His expression faded, then vanished completely as he refocused on Victor. "The citadel?"


The cordial grin returned like a ray of sunshine once he had his nod of confirmation. "Good." There were, in fact, a number of places Victor could have called his own, but only one that he did. The subterranean dwelling in which they'd first met made a more than decent ossuary when the need arose, and as they both knew well enough (and Nicolas had probably already speculated), that was the plan from the start.


Grant's response seemed to reaffirm Victor's suspicion, that being he was striving to push every detail of the conversation back to one central fact: that Nicolas' expiration date hadn't been carried out responsibly, and had instead turned to a disgusting display of emotion that no one on the more mysterious end of Victor's affairs could have ever anticipated.


The younger man grew tense at this. He'd had dreams about Grant as a young adult--and still did, on the off occasion--wherein the man had sharp teeth and gaping holes where his eyes should be, and the lovely, charismatic beam remained ever present. It had taken him fifty-some years, but he'd since come to realize that the monster wasn't just a metaphorical projection of an overactive imagination; some people simply were such things, and Mister Grant was undoubtedly one of them.


Victor squeezed Nicolas' side again. It was less for support this time around and more to assure him that he was doing well--as of the time being. Honesty should get them both far, but there were times when lying was preferable (even for their guest), and the questions would come harder and faster the longer this took. If Grant's sickly sweet demeanor was any indication, he intended to push their patience.


"You know I am a little disheartened, Victor." The elder man's fingers fidgeted near his curled mouth, as if reaching for an invisible cigarette. "You've got such an upstanding reputation in the community, and it'd be a shame if people started thinking that you couldn't handle your job because you've been struck by some brown-eyed little boy. They'll see that as a weakness, you know. They might even try to take advantage of it. They admire you, do you realize that?" He chuckled to even out the sliver of strain in his voice, fully aware of how well Victor could detect such things. "And--not that I want to sound selfish, but imagine how Atticus and I will look. We raised you boys to be better than this. You'll drag your brother down with you, too. They'll kill all of you, or worse. I want you to be happy, son, but this isn't--"


The festering irritation in the pit of his stomach finally snapped, and Victor bared his teeth. "Are you done?" The words, strong though they felt, were not angry. He couldn't possibly make them sound hostile, aggressive, frustrated--disobedient. Not to this man. They were tense at best, and rude at worst.


His dark eyes swam with the briefest burst of emotion, but the smile was one of absolute, guilt-inducing regret. "I suppose I am. Apologies. I didn't mean to frighten--" He glanced sideways at Nicolas, pausing for a moment longer than he probably needed to. "--Nicolas. But I digress. It's more about you, isn't it?"


He turned to face the younger man again, sizing him up like Victor did sometimes when his mind wandered too far. "You really are a lovely young man," he purred. "And I'm sorry. In a different life I'm sure you and Victor would've been much happier together, but it seems we're not so lucky." His gaze switched briefly between the two, as if to assess their reactions to that statement. Victor chewed mercilessly on his lower lip, determined to test a level of self-discipline which he wasn't sure he had.


Grant didn't acknowledge him, and continued effortlessly. "Victor tells me your family is estranged, and that you know enough about him, and what he does for a living. He also tells me you were the one that came to him. Seems you're curious enough, so what exactly is it that you know?"


Victor leaned in close, feigning an expression of affection that he knew Grant wasn't falling for (but that was okay, this time around). "It's an opinion question," he murmured. "Tell him what you think, about me, about Mat, about the thing with Marcus, about this whole meeting, everything. Don't. Lie."
 
Handle his job? Nicolas thought to himself as Grant spoke. Victor's "reputation" is going to be questioned since we were together? Since we fucked?


And then the dawn of realization hit him.


Nicolas knew that Victor was an assassin or a hit man or whatever the fuck else people like to call hired murderers nowadays, and he knew that he had put himself in for a world of hurt when he woke up cramped on the hard floor or Victor's dwelling with no recollection of how he got there and the like, but for some reason he had never fully grasped the graveness of the situation. He remembered the way Victor loomed over him, threatened him with words and body language, knew his fucking name like he and studied him for a while. Nicolas had been so goddamn stupid to make it so far from that moment to only know fully understanding the truthfulness of the meeting. Because he wasn't supposed to leave, wasn't supposed to walk away, wasn't supposed to be survive.


He set his jaw angrily and looked down at the earth as Grant continued to rattle of nonsense that neither Victor nor him gave a solitary fuck about. He was tired of the lies and formalities that existed to only tear them down and apart and could quite possibly end in them being hurt or dead despite the bullshit that Victor kept feeding him. He didn't feel safe -- hadn't felt safe since before he fucked himself over by going to Aria when he should have continued to mind his own business.


Grant said his name and he tore his glance away from the pavement to look at him. Nicolas wanted to wipe the fake smile off his face, but that wasn't satisfactory. It would definitely end up with them harmed more they were already in for.


Estranged is one way to put it, he thought, and he wanted to look at Victor. Nicolas could have waited years before he put the distance between him and his parents, more than that even. He could have just dealt with the bullshit until they were dead to collect inheritance. But he had to make a sacrifice. He wondered if Grant knew that.


Victor's lips moved against his air in thin wispy breaths of air that tickled more than they guided, and Nicolas wanted to push him away. He didn't need the instructions or pep talk or whatever the fuck Victor was trying to make this out to be. He knew what he was doing -- sort of -- and the directions were only telling what he already knew. If they were still talking, though, maybe they still had a chance to get out of his unscathed and without more harm than was already called for.


Don't. Lie.





"I'm angry. About everything." He took a slight step away from Victor but it looked more than a fidget than anything. At least he hoped it did. "I don't like being caught up in all of this. The only thing any of this has done for me is letting my grades drop and having my friends hate me. Victor -- Victor paid off my friends after he forced us to deliver medical equipment to Marcus that he's probably going to use to kill people or perform black market surgery or some shit, and I don't know how I'm supposed to go back from that. My friends won't talk to me, and I guess I'm not supposed to talk to them either because I can't have friends anymore. And my parents, well, they've always been shitty, but I could have easily let it go until I was done with college."


He sent a side glance toward Victor before looking at Grant again. "I don't really hate it though. I'm upset that Mat works at my school for god knows why and that I've been on edge for the past few months because of everything that's happening, but I'm not gonna throw a temper tantrum over it." He took a deep breath and shoved his hands into his pockets. "And I don't even know why we're here, right? Maybe Victor fucked up and didn't end up killing me like he was supposed to, but how much does that really matter in the long run? It's not like I'm some kinda threat."


Nicolas glanced away and toward a line of shrubbery a few feet from the car. "I don't really know anything. It's just... speculation. Or whatever." He continued staring away for a moment before looking at Victor for some kind of confirmation and then back at Grant. "But it's all worked out so far. Nothing's happened. Nothing's changed. I guess, not really at least. I haven't said anything. I put distance from the people I was close to because Victor said so."


He looked between the two other men now, not sure if anything that he said was going to help them. "Is that okay? Is that what you want?"
 
The crushing stab of guilt Victor wrestled with stood in sharp, silent contrast to Grant's darkly cheerful demeanor, and he found himself gazing insipidly over the hedges while the more sadistic of the two listened raptly to Nicolas' woes, smiling with a kind of gentle empathy that could only be practiced to perfection by men who'd never had the capacity for the real thing.


Grant nodded when he was finished, his limpid eyes bright with the exaggeration of any number of sorrowful emotions. "I see why he likes you." He spoke softly at first, as if their exchange was a purely private one. "You're just like him. He's just like you, isn't he?" He raised his voice and glanced to Victor, as if calling beyond the veil of guilt the younger man had buried himself within. "Tugs at the heart strings, ever pessimistic. You must've taught him a few things already."


The other didn't find the idea nearly as exciting, nor did he attempt to consider the fact that he might have had an influence on Nicolas' personality already. He'd distanced himself from the two, lingering a few paces behind and a little nearer to Grant, leaving he and Nicolas standing closer together than the happy, happy couple themselves. It was an instinctive move; one that he hated himself for. Grant made him feel less guilty--always made him feel less guilty, when it didn't matter--and left him longing to lean on him, to ask for some justification for why he was in the right. He'd been doing it for himself for so long that the idea of another person reassuring him of his irresponsible decisions was downright tantalizing.


Nicolas wasn't like that. The boy might have been like him, but he didn't think like him. He came to terms with his emotions instead of letting them flop out like guts out of a corpse, and made most of his decisions--or tried to--based on his own intuition. He was smart. That was the difference between them: Victor was cunning; Nicolas was intelligent.


"I s'pose," he said, only because he knew a response was required before Grant would move on. The man never looked at him like his parents had--like something was fundamentally wrong with him, that is--but he maintained strict standards that required Victor to prove that he wasn't what they thought he was. And that meant, among other things, never leaving a question unanswered.


If he could feel Victor's crippling remorse, Grant didn't acknowledge it. Victor was grateful for that much. The elder man was looking at Nicolas the way he often did--as if he should be irritated, but couldn't resist simply adoring him. Victor twitched at that.


"Well it is all very depressing, I know, having to leave your whole life behind. And Marcus isn't exactly much help, is he?" Grant chuckled, casually as if they were discussing a move to a slightly less pleasant part of town. "But you've got a grand opportunity in front of you, my boy. Victor is--well, he hasn't told you, has he?" He glanced briefly over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows. "You've got to keep this boy in the loop, Victor. No wonder he's so upset with you."


"That's not why he's upset with me," Victor muttered beneath his breath.


"Anyway," Grant continued, once more looking past a grand opportunity to embarrass his old friend. "Victor is the most affluent figure in our little community, see. A leader figure of sorts. Very, very influential. Respected. Has just about everyone under his thumb. Now I'm sure it's hard to come to terms with this sort of change, but it's not without reward. He can give you whatever you like. Am I wrong, son?"


Victor ducked briefly out of his trance to offer a glossy-eyed but entirely sincere "no", and Grant beamed, as if this were a turning point. "Now you're a reasonable young man, I know. And you're supposed to be dead. You've got a detached personal life and an intimidating financial path ahead of you, and this city is going down in flames sooner or later, you know that. Now, can you honestly, reasonably tell me that you wouldn't prefer the rest of the world to what you've got now?"
 
Nioclas felt as Victor stepped away and put space between them and immediately felt distressed. Sure, he wanted Victor to know how he felt and what he thought about everything, but he didn't want whatever was going on between them to suffer because he had opened his mouth. More than anything, Nicolas wanted everything to be okay so he could go back to the new normal that his life had become. No more little meetings between psychopaths that had some kind of hold over Victor that no one could really explain. He just wanted to go to school and have his life back, but he didn't want to let Victor go, and he seemed to come with all these little add-ons that ended up with one of them physically or emotionally hurt.


Everything seemed to be more complicated than it seemed it could be, and Nicolas had no clue why everything had to be so complex in this little world that Victor had made for himself. He didn't understand the need that all of these people had for measured attempts at violence -- and he doubted that he ever would -- but he wanted it to just be a few levels simpler so they didn't have to go through all these trials and tribulations to avoid bloodshed.


In the end, he didn't care too much about throwing his parents behind. Emotionally, he didn't give a shit at all, but financially, he needed them more than he'd care to admit. And while Victor offered to take care of that, he had statutes and limitations to go through before Nicolas was allowed anything, and Nicolas wasn't one for rules.


But more than his anger regarding Victor pushing him into unfavorable situations he was indignant about they way that Grant was treating both of them, though more toward Victor. He had never seen someone throw someone else down and down again so many times in just minutes simply by being himself, and Nicolas was angry. They go there to be attacked. They went to sort their shit out and get back to the mundane twists and turns of life. At least that's why Nicolas was there.


"What I have now?" he asked, and sent a questioning glance between Grant and Victor. "Everything I need I have. If I went back to "the rest of the world" someone'd probably come after me since Victor didn't and finish the job. I'm fine with this. I don't need anything else."
 
"Good." Grant took this as solid confirmation more eagerly than most careful men might. Victor noted this dully and loped a little closer to Nicolas, his gaze still wavering above the horizon of the emerald labyrinth, as if searching for something he was too frustrated to find. He listened to Grant's honeyed murmur slide through another round of silken-sounding sympathies, fought down another bout of aggravation, and spoke up above Nicolas' shoulder. "Are we through?"


"Just about." The other man took his return to reality as casually as if he'd been a part of the conversation to begin with. This wasn't the first time Victor had spaced out completely, but Grant's excuse for ignoring such things was a result of Victor's own youthful desires; he'd never wanted anyone to pay attention to the more unique things he did. So much so, in fact, that he'd made a request early on that they should be ignored, that he'd be able to deal with them on his own, without the scrutiny-laced concern of his new mentors.


But that only went so far before the damage could take root, and his old, naive excuses stayed fresh. It's what you wanted, isn't it? He was doing it now; he was doing it to both of them.


Victor twitched.


Grant rummaged in the center counsel of his car for all of fifteen seconds before handing off a slip of paper to Victor, no bigger than a standard receipt. "That's for you. Concerning what we're going to do about all this, of course."


Victor slid him a brief, addled look before pouring over the concise chicken scratch in his hand. Gradually his expression rose like a violent tide, and his eyes were bright with malice by the time he looked back to Grant. "You can't be serious."


It was the same kind of shock in Mat's tone when he'd discovered Victor's less than savory activities last night. The twitch became a quiver, and he started to shift his weight, the little note clamped mercilessly under one sweaty palm. Grant watched him the way one might watch a wild animal pacing behind glass at the zoo; awe-struck, but quietly reverent.


"There's only so many ways I can apologize, my dear," he purred in his sickly sweet, ever-so-sorrowful tone. "I love you and so does everyone else, but you know well enough what will happen if they find out you've made any kind of exception for yourself." A moment of violent silence passed between them before Grant nodded at Nicolas. "Tell him. You can't keep him in the dark any longer."


He was right, Victor supposed, but that didn't make him any more eager to start sharing. Although at this point, he didn't have much choice. He was in between a rock and a hard place, and it was becoming more and more difficult to keep the both of them from getting crushed.


He put his arm around Nicolas' shoulders and pressed him to his side again, though he didn't expect the contact to last long. "Listen." The note shifted and crinkled in his hand until the words were sure to be smeared clean off, but that wasn't a problem; he'd kept track of the details, just like he had with every last slip before it. "I need--we need--this is a job. A senator's rival. And he wants you to do it with me." He stopped, bit his lip, looked the other way to avoid looking at Grant. And just when he'd thought he'd hit rock bottom. "D'you understand?"
 
An ease set into him far earlier than it should have. They weren't free, weren't leaving. Grant had only turned away for a fraction of a millisecond and Nicolas was already allowing himself to relax. It was weak and stupid to let down his guards so quickly once eye contact broke and his attention could be focused elsewhere. There was still enough space between himself and Victor that moving closer to him would be noticed immediately, so he let his shoulders drop and let his eyes find Victor's face before he dropped his gaze again when Grant returned to the conversation.


The paper was small, almost infinitesimally so, but the way Victor's face convulsed and his lip sneered, he knew that it wasn't something that could be shrugged off or ignored. Looking like nothing more than a parking ticket, Nicolas wanted to rip it out of Victor's grasp and leave the torn scraps on the concrete before storming away. He was sick of these games -- whether Victor was playing them or it was Grant, he didn't care -- and he wanted things to start making sense without leaving people in the dust or dead.


Victor didn't sound pleased in the slightest, and Nicolas shifted his eyes between them both as he tried to read the situation. He was more mathematically intelligent than anything, and reading emotions and social cues didn't come easy to him, but he managed.


He pushed Victor away, only slightly, when he wrapped his arm back around him, and he pointed angrily at the slip of parchment. "This is what I have to do to prove myself, is that it?" He didn't even know who to direct his anger at this time. Victor was so close and they were in the same boat, but Grant was so far above that spouting off curses and excuses wasn't going to prove anything aside from the life that he didn't deserve to keep. So he turned on Victor. "I have to kill some rich bastard that probably has a family and children and people that care about him because you dragged me into this fucking mess of a life so I'm in as deep as the rest of you? And the only out I have is to get someone to kill me or kill myself."


Nicolas huffed. "Of course I fuckin' understand."


There weren't enough words to express how trapped and violated he felt, and he knew that wasn't entirely Victor's fault as much as it was his own, but if he continued to keep his mouth shut like he tried to always do -- even though that rarely happened -- he was going to continue to get trampled. Victor wasn't the problem, though, and he felt guilty for yelling at him like he was. For whatever reason, they were going to have to start working together and being on the same side from now on because not doing that was going to get them (or at least Nicolas) killed.


For most of his life, Nicolas didn't have much choice of what he did. Sure, he had choices, but they were limited. His parents wanted to make sure that he'd fit in the perfect public image for their family name so it was always soccer or basketball, student council or National Honor Society, Boy Scouts or 4-H. Maybe that was why he turned to drugs for answers, or at least a leading cause. And he didn't really have a choice here, so it was like going back to the life that he was trying to leave behind. Nicolas knew that he wasn't always going to do whatever he wanted to when it came to living, and it was going to be even harder if they were turning him into a murderer.


But he wasn't a big fan of dying.


"I'll do it, though. Or we'll do it -- whatever. It'll get done." He moved a side step closer to Victor and crossed his arms over his chest before he allowed himself to look up and level a glance at Grant. "Is there anything else?" he asked, tone polite again like his introduction. "Or is that it?"
 
Victor leaned away from the slew of well-deserved curses, choosing instead to focus all his unwavering attention on the wrinkled message clamped between his quivering fingers. He waited well through Nicolas' furious breakdown before stuffing it deep in his pocket and meeting the younger man's blistering gaze, lips still parted with bewilderment. Gradually, he felt himself nodding in tune to Cardou's grievances; it was the only reasonable thing to do.


It wasn't his fault, the more egotistical part of him reasoned. He'd never wanted this, never asked for such a treacherous part of his past to emerge when he least expected it. Grant had come here of his own accord. Not even the overwhelming, awe-inspiring influences Victor held over his "community" could prevent that grinning piece of omniscient shit from worming his way into their lives.


But he'd brought it on. Everyone would tell him this--Grant, Nicolas, Marcus, if he was still around (and what a shame he wasn't; he'd be getting a fucking kick out of all this). Victor didn't expect his ego to win this round. He'd drank himself into a needy puddle of hormones and confidence tricks, and now here he was, paying for it all, as he should.


He'd sacrifice pieces of his own sanity, his pride, his independence, and all of them tenfold for Nicolas. They were both humiliated, but at least Victor had created his own choices. Nicolas had them laid out for him, and even then, he'd been wrestled one way or the other so often that Victor had his doubts whether the kid even cared anymore.


There was no bout of inspiration or admiration or anything else or in between with this anger. There was Victor's raw, unadulterated guilt, his defensive urge to snarl right back, and his ever-burning malice towards Grant, which was not lost on the man, but rarely acknowledged.


And so they'd come full circle.


Victor looked to Grant with the abrupt change of Nicolas' tone, pursing his lips and tensing up when Nicolas moved unexpectedly closer. The man's smile had fallen, but the pull of his features suggested the ever-present easiness that was there in all people too happy to be human. "That's all," he echoed. "For now."


"I'm not gonna make him do this, Martin." Victor's voice was not a growl, but something close to it. His hands were shoved in his pockets, his palm sweaty against the ink.


"You will." Grant raised his eyebrows at the bold demand. For a single slip of a moment, his facade of contentedness seemed to fade completely. "Or we'll find someone else. It really shouldn't be that hard, Victor. The boy's still young." The smile returned, toothless, but indescribably warm. The man opened his car door again and slithered inside, leaving Victor's head spinning with all the ways he could kill him in such a small space. "I'll see you two later. Take my word for it."


Victor watched the vehicle glide effortlessly out of the maze. Off to wherever. He didn't know. Couldn't know. Another city, maybe. A neighboring house.


"I'm not gonna make you do this," he muttered beneath his breath. He was standing close enough to Nicolas to feel the warmth on the boy, but something inside him refused to make eye contact. "But we need to talk. And we need to go."
 
The relationship between Grant and Victor was getting easier and harder to understand at the same time. The former had all this faith and trust in Victor that only reminded Nicolas of a parent who had never been let down before, but Victor reacted to each confrontation and statement with the same symptoms of an abuse victim . He was anxious, angry, wretched, and Nicolas was at a loss of how to respond to anything and what any of this was really supposed to mean.


When he was forced to see a therapist in high school due to the pressures of the school nurse, she continued to drill the effects of childhood abuse into his head, and now he saw the same signs appearing in Victor's life. He was anti-social, maybe, and had alcohol issues and criminal behavior. Hell, his entire life was based around his underground killing-spree kind of life, and now, Nicolas wasn't sure why he didn't see any of this earlier. They both had problems communicating with each other and practically everyone else around them, and while Nicolas wasn't about to admit that his parents spent years teaching him to hate himself, he saw the same fear on caution that he used to express that Victor was expressing now, and it all felt more similar than he had ever realized.


He knew that it was going to happen, Victor fighting for him, but he didn't want it to be about this. If they didn't do this, if he didn't do this, there was a high chance that he was going to end up in a ditch outside the city or floating through the sewer system under it. He didn't know how Grant worked, but if the way he approached the situation was any acknowledgement of the type of person he was, there wasn't an out.


Nicolas was going to have to get over himself and do what needed to be done. He was the reason he was in this mess n the first place, and it was high time that he stopped blaming Victor for all of his problems. He was the one who researched the murders and delved into business that wasn't his own. He was the one who went to Aria and decided that he was going to play detective. None of that was Victor, and it was time that he starting taking responsibilities for his own actions.


Grant leaving lifted a weight off his chest that he didn't know was burrowing itself in, and Nicolas watched it pull out of the drive before he moved.


"What is it anyway?" he asked, and he tried to move around to look at Victor, but the other wouldn't have it, and Nicolas gave up. He shook his head and stared off toward Victor's car. "You've killed people before, and I mean, it's not like I have, but I'd rather kill someone than get myself killed." His voice was rushed and quiet despite them being alone in the parking lot. If Victor's people found out about them so fast, there had to be eyes everywhere.


He took a few steps toward the car and turned to look back at Victor. "Fine, let's talk. But it's cold , and I really don't want to stand out here looking like a couple of idiots." He huffed and kept walking before sliding into the passenger seat and staring through the windshield.


Nicolas turned toward Victor after a moment of silence and gave him a confused once-over. "How did he even know anything was going on? It's not like this happened a month ago and everyone's been talkin' about it. It was, like, ten hours ago. Eleven, maybe. I don't fuckin' know." He shook his head and scratched at his forehead before looking back out the front window. "And what is he? Like your dad or some shit? Some guy that treats you like shit because he can, apparently."
 
Victor shifted his jaw with increasing agitation, vacuous to Nicolas' concerns until he was loping faithfully after him. All the role reversal had his stomach churning. He could only put up with so much in one day at his age, and hitting both lows in less than forty-five minutes--subject to a predator and then to his own prey--was disconcerting, to say the least.


But he did so without complaint, sliding behind the wheel and curling his fingers around the priceless leather as he'd done so a thousand times before. He gazed at the windshield itself rather than through it, at a tiny, blooming fracture in the right corner that Mat invested some kind of bizarre artistic appreciation in. Victor found it more irritating with every passing glance. He and Mathias weren't the same; he and Grant weren't the same. Nicolas was like him, and would take after him, and would do the same thing to whomever he happened to come upon when Victor and the rest were long dead. Personalities were unpredictable, but they took root and spread with like poison in the system.


He didn't know how to break the chain, either. That was upsetting. Not as if he had a choice if he wanted everyone alive and well (which he did, for the most part), but Grant had been into his head, knocked things around and convinced him that Nicolas was already in some kind of trance, whether he wanted it or not. And Victor had no counterargument. He hadn't known his behavior was changing before it did. He hadn't known how to use a gun before he'd killed.


It's not anyone's fault, he tried to tell himself. But that was wrong. If it was Nicolas', it was his, and if it was his fault, then it was his responsibility. He was the adult. Nicolas was a child.





He tried to tell himself that, too. Countless times the kid had reminded him that he wasn't stupid, and Victor had never put up much of a fight. He was smart. He was smarter than Victor had ever been in his shoes. But intelligence put years on a man, and Nicolas seemed beyond nineteen, even if his explosive emotions put him back a few in contrast. It difficult for Victor himself to recall his pitiful teenage days, but he had a strong suspicion that he and Nicolas would hardly be friends. Teenagers didn't act like Nicolas Cardou. Grown, tired, drunken men acted like Nicolas Cardou, and it became increasingly difficult to remind himself how new he was to this world as their situation spiraled ever deeper into chaos.


It occurred to him then that he hadn't started the car or spoken in almost a full minute. He swallowed, looked back at Nicolas and repeated the string of questions in his mind. What is it? How did they find out? Who's Grant?


The dad line made him chuckle out of some abstract desperation. "No." It was the most solid response he'd given since they arrived. "No. My father was a...nasty old man. He never liked me and he made sure I knew." He leaned over the wheel and looked out the window, watching precise movements behind the hedges. A sliver of a bumper pulling away into darkness; a pair of dark-clothed figures slinking back along the walls. Little things here and there. Things Grant had probably noticed before getting out of his car. "But I suppose that's better than him, huh?" He grinned, an empty, aching grin that could hardly be called the shadow of his old mentor's. "Yeah. That's how they getcha."


He rubbed at his mouth and started the car, flinching when the engine leaped to life. "Um..." His features warped and he passed a hand through his hair, struggling to recall the rest of the interrogation. The meeting was an emotional drain, to say the least. "I...it's a system, Nicolas. I check and balance with the rest of...everyone else. And he's right, that I can't make exceptions for myself. It's not just him telling me what to do. It's everyone. Thirty thousand people, if you wanna be specific.


"And that's why I called them," he continued, sighing heavily with the word. "It's better they know than find out later. I know you think it's a private thing, what we did, but it's not. Grant already knew about you. So did six other people. They respect me, but they're upset, because they don't want me to abuse my privileges because I got attached to you. That's not fair to them. Grant was just the mediator."


He pulled the paper from his pocket and flattened it on the counsel. "This is the deal. It's not hard. Two to the chest, one to the head. That's all." That's all. He'd never considered how terrible that must sound to someone who didn't count it as part of his routine. Victor had been so desensitized to death and murder that he was focused on everything but the act itself--something he could knock out in five minutes, give or take an hour to pitch the body.


Nicolas had never killed anyone before. That was weird. Cardou was the only person he'd ever encountered who hadn't.


"This is our only option. It's this guy or you, me, and everyone else." Another apology dwindled on his tongue, but he fought it down. There were only so many ways to say sorry before it became utterly pointless. "This is all we can do, okay? This is just the way it is."
 
"Thirty thousand people," Nicolas said it carefully like it was a dirty, unclean, and horrific word. The weight of the situation still hadn't settled in his chest yet -- nor his mind -- and nothing Victor was saying wanted to stick. In one ear and right out the other, his father always said as ifn Nicolas had never paid attention to a single thing his entire life. But he concentrated on each syllable, each word, when he mind wanted to venture elsewhere, and hearing everything made him want to puke.


All of this was still new and as much as Nicolas didn't want any piece of it to be happening, he had to face the truth sooner rather than later especially if he wanted to survive whatever hell these thirty thousand people would put him through if him and Victor didn't make good on the deal.


He didn't want to kill anyone. He really didn't. But he didn't want to die himself, and he figured that it would be better to suffer the reminder that he was the one who put someone's son, father, or lover into the ground was better to be there himself. And the guy was some guy's enemy for a reason. He had to have done something terrible and evil even have someone else after his life in the first place, and that made Nicolas a little more relaxed to the idea.


But maybe the guy they were assigned to kill was the good guy and the man behind the note was the entity needing to be destroyed and they were only helping a sinister cause that would undoubtedly lead to more bloodshed and misfortune. Maybe the name on the list belonged to a foster father or orphaned children saved from the ghetto is the devastated New York City that had taken over the East these past few years, and maybe he was one of the only good souls left in this forsaken town. Maybe he would be the one to cure cancer and the senator simply wanted to keep medical taxes high on the poor and nonexistent on the rich for personal political gain. Maybe what they were being told to do would be the beginning of their own undoing.


Nicolas wished his father's name was on the slip.


"I don't understand any of this." The words were low and strung out and tired. "I really don't understand you at all, okay? Why are you still being ordered around like a child? I don't care if it's not Grant telling you what to do or thirty thousand people or the fucking President. You're the one letting this happening, and it's pathetic. It really is, and you don't even see it. You think that this is what you have to do and you don't have any other options or whatever, and that's bullshit. You give in. You bow down or bend over or whatever the fuck you do to let them work you over and you do what you're told like a fucking dog."


He wasn't irate -- yet. Just annoyed. Victor said "This is just the way it is" like there wasn't another way or single out or an ability to say "no". And that was distressing to say in the least. He didn't know all of the reasons Victor didn't fight back and Grant and the system they were constructed under, but he wanted to stop listening to what people were telling him to do all the time. He was tired of being treated like he didn't know what he was doing and had to be cared for. He was tired of being scared of people like Grant and his father and Marcus and sometimes even Victor. He was tired of nothing changing when he had worked so hard to be happy, and now everything was falling apart all over again.


"It's whatever," he said after a moment, and he stared out the side window angrily, hands crossed over his chest and torso tilted toward the glass. "We're going to do it anyway and you're going to continue to listen to people and I'm going to go back to the way I was before all of this. Bitter and mad all the time, because that's how it was before I pulled myself into this mess, and I'm tired of blaming you. I'm the one the followed you. I'm the one that was stupid enough to think that I could solve some murder case on my own. I'm the one that fucked myself over and ruined my entire life, and I'm the one that's going to have to kill this guy!"


He breathed heavily and turned around toward Victor again, face tight and visibly upset. "Right?" Isn't that how this is supposed to work? Like some kinda initiation process so that my hands are dirty just like the rest of yours?"
 
"Nicolas—" He sighed into the yawning tension, too tired to apologize and too guilty to snarl. The endless bombardment of questions and their accusing counterparts weighed on him like layered stones, stacked higher and higher until he lost all will to look to the peak.


Maybe this is what getting old is, he thought. Being so goddamned tired all the time.


If he were a little more ignorant, a little more cold-hearted, he thought, maybe he'd be more eager to pin these feelings of growing despair on Nicolas. He wasn't the one bombarding himself with all these questions, after all—he wasn't the one confronting himself with all these impossible possibilities of escape, of retribution, of taking back what had been taken from him.


Nicolas believed firmly in the utter wrongness that was Victor's inability to do just that—to confront himself, to consider his options. Nicolas believed that he shouldn't have to do it for him. He'd gotten them into this mess, hadn't he? It only made sense that he should try and clean things up.


But Nicolas had an excuse. Nineteen was a sour age, clinging just to the border between childhood and reality, and Victor empathized. There had been a time where he, too, hadn't realized just how limited his options were when he stepped into the unforgiving realm of adulthood (and assassinations); it was frustrating, to say the very least. And Nicolas had it especially hard. The poor kid had never been faced with a solid "no" in his life.


There was something to admire in his ferocity, as per usual. And he wasn't necessarily wrong either. But what remained of Victor's mental energy had no intention of offering him a rallying cry, and he was too sick with regret and everything and anything like it to consider giving him the harshest breakdown of why his overly-optimistic plan was bound to leave them afloat in the Hudson.


Unfortunately, the medium between exhaustion and gentleness ended up as a reflection of the former rather than the latter.


He was so tired. So, so tired.


"That's just not how it works." He nearly kicked himself after saying it, though part of him just couldn't afford to care so much. He'd given him the same bland, general statement twice in the last ten minutes, and without even the slightest hint of genuine concern. Nicolas was already pissed, and as far as he knew, Victor hadn't even heard him.


He pulled out of the parking lot, let the silence hang out for longer than it ever should have. "And you're not going to kill anyone. I told you that, didn't I?" There was a rare hint of genuine annoyance in his tone. He watched Nicolas carefully from the corner of his eye, his stomach wrenching with sickness.


"You're not going to hurt anyone. That's not going to happen, and stop fucking blaming yourself, and stop fucking blaming me, you little brat. Your guilt trip isn't going to work. You think I don't know what I've done? You think I'm proud of this?" The strain in his tone grew to aggravation, then borderline bitterness. There was a terrible, aching feeling at the back of his mind for the clearly pained expression on the boy's face, but all the pressure at the forefront of his thoughts and the angry words at the end of his tongue were reigning supreme. He was pissed. Wasn't he allowed to be pissed?


"And you know what? You're always bitter and mad. You've always been bitter and mad, and don't act like this was the defining factor, like this is gonna make you take a turn for the worse. Don't sit there and tell me you wouldn't be bitter and mad if I hadn't come along and fucked things up for you. Your life was shit. At least I gave you some kind of opportunity." The words stung, as if they were aimed at him, but he didn't stop. "Me coming along to mess up your life was probably the best goddamn thing that ever happened to you. And you still have the audacity to tell me that I'm doing something wrong here, that after sixty fucking years you're going to inspire me to rise up against all this fucking abuse, like it's something I've never thought of when I was your age, when I was watching the only people I've ever cared about get hurt right in front of me. Like it's a choice for me. Do you think it's you, Nicolas? You think because we were drunk and worked up one night that things changed for me? You think you're the first? Because I really would like to know."
 
Throughout the onslaught of Victor's words, Nicolas remained trapped in his own mind. He still heard what the other man said even though he didn't want to. He didn't like the tension that was clearly palpable in the room, but he kept adding to wood to the fire and he wasn't sure as to why. Maybe he liked the frustration; he didn't know. Maybe forcing conflict between them was something his subconscious was intent on doing and he just couldn't wrap his mind around it yet.


He wanted to be all "what-the-fuck-ever I don't need you" but that was further from the truth than he initially imagined. Without his parents in the picture anymore, as far as they knew, he was going to have to rely completely on himself or stop being such a bitch to Victor, and neither were exactly easy. He didn't want to choose between the lesser of two evils, the better of two prides, but there wasn't away around it. If he wanted to continue to survive in this world, he was going to have to let go of whatever audacity he tried to claim over Victor and just let things happen.


"I'dunno what I think."


Nicolas wasn't sure why he felt that Victor was going to be changed by him or altered in such a way that he himself already was. Victor was an enigma -- he was the basis for confusion in Nicolas's entire life, really. Before him, there wasn't any real doubt about what Nicolas's life was going to be like. He was going to graduate from NYU, get whatever business job that was available and have his dad pay him through to get to the top, marry someone who'd make him look in charge, have kids and put them through the same shit, and die. It wasn't a glamorous life, not with moments or feelings or happiness, but he was going to be as rich or richer than his father and get the chance to put his anger in to the children he'd raise just like his parents did with him.


Now he had no idea what was going to happen. Fuck, he didn't even know if he was going to graduate. He went to most of his classes and did a fair share of the work, but if Grant and his people wanted utter control over Victor's life and jobs and decisions, he might not be allowed to care anymore. While it wouldn't be horrible to drop out, he had no idea what he was supposed to do without a degree. His entire life was paved out for him from birth and without a little piece of paper saying he's adequate enough, he wasn't going to get anymore. Or at least that's what it felt like.


And since he now had a taste of what life with Victor would be like, even with his own complaining and grumbling and annoyance, he didn't want to settle down into some cookie-cutter family and raise kids to be the same kind of evil that his father was trying to make him out to be. He craved the fear and the feeling of anxiety in his chest more than he liked to think and he wasn't going to get that kind of rush living in the suburbs or in a loft with three kids and a stay-at-home-dad as his husband. They're be no power, no intensity, no storm of emotions making him lust for more. He wold just exist and then cease to exist, and that was that.


He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the side mirror and down the road behind them. "But you think I don't know that? You think I don't get that I'm not important? That I don't mean fuck to you or anyone else? Because I do." Lie. "You think I think I'm some special little exception that you actually care about? You don't know about love or affection or the fuck else. Neither of us do. You kill people for money, for an actual living, and I'm wasting my time snorting cocaine when I should be in class because I don't know where to get happiness from aside form drugs and alcohol and fucking, and I don't know about you, but I'm tired of buying myself release. I don't want to do a line just to feel good. I just want to feel good. In general. All the time."


When they had sex, it wasn't because they were worked up and drunk. It might have been Victor, because what the hell did Nicolas know, but he believed it been a long time coming. He thought about Victor more often than not when he was alone, when he was pushing himself over the edge of a precipice he didn't realize was there, when he was fucking other people. It wasn't just some spur of the moment drunken rambling. At least not for him.


He didn't say anything for a few seconds and just let himself breathe. "So what now?" he asked. "I really don't wanna argue with you. Can we just... figure out what's going on and I'll stop being a bitch and we can just go forward? We know what we gotta do. Or what you gotta do, I'dunno. But I'm gonna be around for a while now, so can we hate each other a little less for like half an hour while we work this out?"
 
The sudden thread of maturity succeeding that rush of equally justified aggravation left him more frustrated than anything else. He'd worked hard at keeping himself under control, dammit. Laughing things off, calming things down, it was difficult. Now his one opportunity to throw a tantrum of his own had been compromised by the unlikeliest chance that Nicolas wanted to take on the role of the adult himself in the midst of their terrible circumstances. Go figure.





He didn't respond for the longest time. He fiddled somewhat subconsciously with the lighter in his pocket, and then the note on the counsel, and then both of them, flicking the flame on and off inches from the smudged ink, steering with one hand, his eyes dark and his jaw set. He drove just fine (as "fine" as he ever could, anyway), but everything was hot and the road was hazy, bleeding into puddles of monochrome light that made his looming headache worsen with every passing moment. He needed caffeine or a cigarette or something, but the idea of being kept awake any longer than absolutely necessary by some artificial bullshit was plain depressing. His game plan was more along the lines of a handful of Ambien and a three-day nap.


But that wasn't wise either--not even a little bit. If he was responsible, if he was making the most of a shit situation, he'd go home and teach the kid how to shoot. He'd pull out every tired old trick in the book to convince Nicolas that killing a person was really quite superficial, that there were always more benefits than downfalls, and that he'd actually feel much better after it was just over and done with. He'd make him practice with a Glock until he bitched too much, and then he'd stay up for hours afterward planning every goddamn second of what they were going to do, how they were going to do it, where they were going to go afterward, how he was going to keep everyone safe and out of sight. That's what Grant wanted.


Victor wanted to set the goddamn car on fire and kill the both of them right in the middle of a crowded intersection. He came close enough to this dream twice before setting both the death sentence and the lighter carefully in Nicolas' lap, his throat hitching at the last second before he could tell the boy not to let him have them again. Nicolas was already as terrified as he was; there was no reason to leave the impression that his only link to sanity was fractured enough to leave him spiraling at the slightest jostle.


"Yeah." His voice was drowsier than anticipated, and he only spoke once they were free of the smothering company of skyscrapers. By then he was fidgety again, and not entirely sure what he'd just agreed to.


He sped through Mat's neighborhood, missing the mailbox by a narrow margin when he hauled the Buick up onto the curb. His fingers stayed tight around the keys long after the engine died. The crisp lawn of a neighbor he'd never seen became remarkably interesting, a wonderful distraction from the lost, puppy-eyed and now completely screwed young man he'd scraped up in the most terrific mistake of his entire life.


Killing them would be easier. What could he offer Nicolas? He didn't want to hurt people, no sane person did. They had no future together--Nicolas didn't want it, and Victor wasn't sure it was possible if he did. There was no room in a melting society for a vaguely suicidal rich boy and a twitchy kingpin who still bowed to a boundless father figure like he was just as clueless as he'd ever been. None of this was meant to work.


Victor shifted his attention from the windshield to the roof, forcing himself, through much more pain than what should have been, to come up with some kind of reassurance that wouldn't give away just how desperate he was. The results weren't very reassuring--or even relevant. "I'm going to sleep, kid," he muttered, scratching absently at his chest. "I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you, I'm tired of me, and if I have to deal with either of us or anyone else any longer, it's gonna make things that much worse for the both of us. I'll figure it out. I will. We've got time."


Not much.


He leaned over to kiss the other's cheek, blissfully unaware of how easily these silly displays of intimacy now came to him. "You're welcome to join me." Encouraged, really, he thought, but never said it. Desperate though he may have been, he wasn't any more eager than he'd ever been to admit that he wanted someone.


He slipped out of the car, never thinking to wait for Nicolas and overwhelmingly guilty because of it. They may have only been together for a few weeks now, but Victor made it an imperative point to never let him out of his sight; the risk was just too great, and he'd made the mistake before. It was hard. Everything was getting so goddamn hard.
 
The lighter felt heavy in his lap, and he held onto it with vigor. Victor's shaking and physical ramblings weren't calming in any shape of the word, and now that he wasn't smoking, Victor only seemed further off put about what had happened than he did before.


But nothing that Victor did made him feel at ease. There was always the boundless twitching of his skin whenever he was around, the rattling of his bones whenever he spoke, and the animosity in his eyes when they exchanged glances. To be stuck with that for whatever amount of time they were cursed with wasn't something Nicolas was truly looking forward to, but the blood running through his veins was hot with excitement and adrenaline. He didn't know how he was supposed to feel no matter the situation. When it came down to Victor, he was always stuck in a quandary. Listen to his mind and pull away as far as he could or listen to his heart and the tide drag him under current after current? Nothing made sense.


Grant just increased the confusion tenfold. Nicolas kept waiting for something to make sense and click, and now that Grant was a part of the equation -- no matter how small the part was -- there wasn't going to be a moment of revelation. Nicolas wasn't going to see the heavens open above him and give him the answer that he had been waiting for since that day at Aria months before.


His thoughts were as interesting as the neighborhood they were driving through, house after house of the same design, and he found himself relax as the car pulled up to Mat's house. He wasn't going to pull a thought together in the minutes that it took them to get back, and there wasn't much to think about now that they were back. His thoughts became actions when he felt comfortable, and he tended to do whatever he felt like without thinking about the consequences.


The presence of Victor's lips on his cheek made his heart swell in panic and admiration at the same time, and he wasn't sure which emotion outweighed the other. Intimacy meant something else when Victor was involved than it had ever been with someone else. Nicolas used to be able to fuck whenever he felt like it. At a party? Fuck. After class? Fuck. At his father's dinner parties? Fuck. It was a cycle. It was an answer. There wasn't much to think about when you didn't care about the people that you were fucking, and now that Nicolas had actual thoughts and cares about the person that he was fucking, well, he just didn't know what to do with himself. It used to be relief to know that he could fuck someone if he wanted to -- that they would drop things for him. With Victor it was different. Sex changed the dynamics of their relationship. At least it did for Nicolas. He felt himself getting tongue-tied and frustrated more than the usual anger that would seamlessly pour out of him no matter what Victor did.


But Victor was a person. Not an object. Everyone else had been an object.


"Maybe," Nicolas said, and he felt Victor get out of the car. He waited a moment, long enough to get his thoughts together, and snapped off his seat belt. He left the lighter and the cigarettes on the passenger seat as he rose from the car and let the door slam behind him.


It was still early. Early enough for him to go back to sleep, and early enough for him to catch his class. Since there was no way he was doing the latter, he strode forward to meet up with Victor. He felt compelled to move quickly. Sometimes he felt that if they weren't close enough, Victor was just gong to fade away. The fear was irrational, but most of his life didn't make sense in the first place. One more thing that didn't add up wouldn't change much.


"We don't have to talk about it now," he started, and he looked down at his feet as they walked to the front door. "I have a lot of questions. You probably wouldn't be able to answer half of them anyway." He snorted and bit at the inside of his cheek. "I just want to get a better picture of what's actually going on here. With Grant. With this job." He looked up toward Victor and away again as they entered.


"Not now," he said again. "Definitely not now, but I need something else. I need to know what else I have to prepare myself for."
 
Victor rolled his eyes and shifted his jaw in one far too melodramatic expression of annoyance, though he wasn't sure at first if that was what he'd meant to convey. But if he wasn't annoyed, then he was irritated, and if he wasn't irritated, he was uneasy, and if he wasn't uneasy, then he was anxious, and the spiral wound ever downward until he was plain and simply petrified--and that was the last thing either of them needed. So for the time being, he was committed to being as annoyed as he could possibly be.


Even then, he didn't want the kid to think he was upset with him. He wasn't. He was upset with himself. This morning had been his wake up call, but he wasn't sure yet how far the guilt would pierce into those memories of not too long ago, when he'd been treating Nicolas like anything but another human being. He hadn't been thinking about the future then. He never could have anticipated all this grief over one bullshit mistake, and his foolish determination but almost complete inability to keep everyone safe from a situation that he never thought he'd be dragged into again.


What did he have to be annoyed about? "Annoyance" was an understatement in any aspect of their current situation. If anything, he was under-reacting.


And it was all for the sake of one of the only people he thought he might have truly cared about--which was no less terrifying than anything else.


"I'll answer your questions," he muttered in the begrudging sort of way that people his age probably did when they were sore and tired and sick of the constant nagging of younger, impatient people, no matter how justified that nagging was. "You just gotta give me a break first, okay?"


He was relieved at the kid's concession, nevertheless. They were getting somewhere. Nicolas wasn't stupid, but he was stubborn as all hell, and Victor had expected more of a fight when he proposed he was taking some time off from the killing nonsense. Part of him missed it, in a way. But if they had a disagreement, he might have said or done something he'd regret--which, if the last forty-eight hours were any indication, wouldn't have been a surprise by any stretch of the imagination.


The key was keeping it together, keeping them together. Victor pursed his lips. Grant had taught him that. This business prided itself with members of the utmost mental acuity, and Victor had always suffered the most in that area, to the surprise of almost no one. He was damn good at pretending, though. That was probably the only reason Nicolas wouldn't wise up and run to the cops. That, or he was doing something right--but he didn't want to give himself credit for anything. Not yet.


He tossed the keys on the counter and debated between the couch or the bed downstairs--happy, in that one single moment of stupid, unrestrained, bliss, that it was all he had to think about. But then the moment passed, and he nudged Nicolas unenthusiastically in the direction of the stairs.


He could have concocted just about any horseshit excuse in the back of his mind for why he was forcing himself to sleep in the apartment below, but the truth was that the bedroom made him nervous. He didn't want to revisit what he'd done. Who would, after it had led to a probably life-threatening situation? But half of "keeping it together" was being meaner than your demons--or at least pretending to--and Victor wasn't going to put either of them at risk, in any way, because he was too chickenshit to face his own mistakes.


"Tell you what--" He started chattering immediately once the room was in sight, and even more so after he'd sprawled himself carelessly across it. Grant would have lost his shit. Victor tucked one arm behind his head and patted the other side of the bed in a tentative invitation, eyebrows raised. "You can ask me whatever you want, if you want, as long as I can cut you off whenever. Alright?"
 
Nicolas pulled into himself a bit at Victor's tone, but he still nodded. He didn't need anything now. Not for a while, really. In the end all he wanted was to know what was going on in the world around him, and Victor keeping things from him wasn't going to help him obtain that goal. A break would be fine. As long as it didn't last months on top of months of Nicolas waiting and wanting and Victor only giving smidgens of moments that held barely any information.


When they headed downstairs, Nicolas was certain that Victor was going to collapse in on himself and crash as if the bed was the saving grace that he had been waiting for his entire life. He wasn't sure why they weren't staying in the same room as before but figured Victor had a reason for it somewhere it the back of his mind. Albeit the basement was cooler and Nicolas's skin was clinging to his clothes after the interaction with Grant in the parking lot. His back was hot and covered in sticky sweat, and he wasn't sure when the season would start to calm down his nervous body. In the car he had been minutely fidgeting the whole time - holding the lighter, watching Victor, staring out the window - they all added a layer of adhesive to his back and underarms that continued to drive him crazy.


He didn't sweat enough to smell, and he didn't feel completely gross, but he was still worried about sitting too close to Victor as he patted the bedding next to him. Nicolas sat down anyway and pushed away thoughts of hesitation and apprehension. If Victor was offering to answer questions now, then he had better not pass up the opportunity. It could be weeks until Victor felt this open again - probably longer - and Nicolas felt that he had been waiting for years to figure out what was going on between them and with Victor in general.


Nicolas already knew little tidbits of information. How old Victor was - if he allowed himself to believe that Victor was that young -, how many people Victor believed he had murdered, the quasi-relationship that Nicolas himself had with Victor, and the fact that Victor was worried he'd become Grant with him. The last two were more of speculation and people-watching skills than Victor telling him anything, but he figured they were more right than wrong. Asking other questions, whatever they ended up being, would only add to the knowledge that Nicolas had of him.


He was only scared of getting shot down.


Before he leaned back against the headboard, and in return Victor, Nicolas shucked off his shoes in an excuse to waste time. "Yeah, okay," he said, and his back hit the wooden board behind him. He gave Victor a once over from his feet to his face and sighed when they made eye contact. It wasn't uncomfortable to look at Victor most of the time, but it always seemed that he saw much more of Nicolas than he would allow to be seen of himself.


"I, uh," he began, and he shook his head and willed himself to start over. Victor wasn't going to want to answer questions from a stuttering teenager that didn't know what he was saying. "I know that you know Grant and Mat, and then there's people like Marcus, but, well, how many people do you "work with"? That kill, anyway. Or know about the killings."


He wasn't sure why he wanted to know, but the bigger the number got the more he felt like it wasn't personally related to him. "I know Grant said thirty thousand, or you said thirty thousand, I don't remember. But how many of those people do you actually know?" He swallowed and moved his gaze to the ceiling as if it would offer him some semblance of comfort. He knew it wouldn't and there was nothing to guarantee that Victor would recall or even tell him the answer, so he figured it would be okay to ask him something else that he had been thinking about for a long time, but he wasn't sure if he even cared anymore.


"Was it you?" he started, anyway. He figured if he thought about it now it was still lingering somewhere in his mind. "Were you the one killing people back in the beginning? At Aria? Or were you cleaning up for someone else and got distracted by whatever it is that interests you about me?"
 
"Jesus. Cut straight to the chase these days, don't you?" But Victor would have scolded himself for expecting anything less. At this point, he may as well have been doing anything and everything to stretch out the pause of more-or-less speculation between question and answer.


Nicolas was usually the one asking questions. Not always (though, in this particular moment, Victor could not recall a time when he'd voiced a genuine curiosity about the boy), but frequently enough that Victor thought it some injustice to deny him the pleasure of legitimate information. Always being the asker of questions and rarely the receiver of answers was a role he'd known all too well by the time he was Nicolas' age.


But there was a pause nonetheless. He thought about the first question, considering whether he actually wanted to answer. And when he figured that he might as well--though that decision hadn't taken nearly as much thought as he'd allowed himself--he thought about what he might say, about what he could say that was both truthful and appropriate in their current situation. Then he sat in silence for another moment, thinking of nothing. Letting himself feel like he'd won a little more than he had. Why not?


When he did speak, it was a sound before words; a soft, guttural half-growl, like the screeching of subway tires on the tracks--a final shred of hesitation before he let himself fracture a little more. In all honesty, these honesty sessions were painful. He never could have predicted the amount of verbal communication that came with essentially kidnapping someone. Cardou had a lot more questions than most people in his situation were ever capable of coming up with.


"Thirty thousand...give or take." He shifted a little, switching his other arm behind his head in the process, well aware of the glacial ache of his tone. "Personally, I know about five like the back of my hand. That's uh, Mat, Marcus, Grant, and Atticus--that's my mentor, Grant was always more of Mat's--and then Mat's ex, guy named Will. That's what they'll call a family." He gestured vaguely to the far wall, where his eyes rested meaninglessly. "Someone, or a couple of people, and the kids they pick up and teach. Grant and Atticus were kinda like brothers, so me and Mat kinda became brothers. And then Will was kinda adopted into it, 'cause Grant sorta...picked him out for Mat." He grimaced here, as if experiencing some wild secondhand pain--which wasn't far from the reality of it. "And Marcus is just as associate. I've known him for a while."


He shrugged, as if this information had been repeated time and time again. He was doing this for the kid's sake, he told himself; neither of his mentors had answered many of his questions when he'd had them, and the lack of answers to this day had settled in the back of his mind like a gaping black hole. There were some things you were just better off being told before you found them out for yourself. Or, in his case, never completely found out at all.


Nevertheless, he repeated the same thinking process in the face of the second question--but for longer this time. He considered lying, then the fact that the truth was already so incredibly obvious that it was somewhat suspicious that Nicolas was even asking. "Yeah, it was me." Victor said this somewhat incredulously. Who the hell else would it have been? He could name some names, no problem, but it would've been a waste of time. Nicolas probably didn't feel the same way about most serial killers that he did about Victor--whatever those feelings may have been. "I don't do clean up. I had a job in that area. But when I came to get you, that was just you. You little snitch." He pinched the boy's side, unsmiling, but begrudgingly affectionate. "You and all your goddamn questions..."
 
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