Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Makoto walked across the cobbled street looking for the café on the poster he was holding. He was on the tram when this little piece of paper caught his eye. He might have hated everything about the last job they pulled, except for helping those kids, but the money definitely helped with the whole ‘no one giving him a chance at an honest job’ part of the problem. Well, it did also help with mending his relationship with his dad, or the bare beginnings of understanding at least; Oh, and Abby, she begrudgingly agreed that they are friends now and that she cares for him, which he knew more than anyone meant a lot coming from her. So many things did work out, but it had taxed him emotionally and took a lot of effort from all sides. He didn’t know what Cynthia and Laurent were doing, and Abby had been considerate enough to avoid any work-related affairs with him. He shook his head stopping that train of thought. Here he was in Paris on his quest to taste coffee around the world and he was not gonna ruin it.

His phone pinged in his pocket. Abby? Speak of the devil. He opened the message and only read the words ‘heads up’ and ‘Laurent’ before the screen blinked to black. If that wasn’t enough to pique his interest. Speak of the devils. What is the blonde bastard up to now? The thought alone was enough for him to let out an exasperated sigh. Anything involving that man was bound to be exhausting. Of course, his phone had to die out on him now. His fault honestly, he was too tired to notice that the phone wasn’t plugged in at his inn the previous night. But if Abby had texted him, and as a heads up about Laurent… there was no way this wasn’t important. He shoved the café pamphlet into his bag and walked into the building he was standing next to. It seemed to be some kind of office, so they must have a charger.

“Hi,” he said walking up to the front desk hoping the man there would understand English. “Do you have a charger?” he asked meekly lifting up his phone. The man stared at him blankly. ‘Charger’ is a common enough word, right? He tried repeating himself slower, and this time the man nodded. Makoto smiled in relief as he handed Makoto the chord.

“You can go up to the second floor, it has empty sockets in the waiting area,” the man said with a heavy accent.

“Merci,” Makoto smiled and went up the stairs fidgeting with his sleeve waiting for the phone to turn back on.

After what felt like an eternity and his brain racketing up all sorts of hypotheticals the screen finally blinked back to life. He quickly tapped into his messaging app.

Abby: Heads up, Laurent is trying to get hold of you for this new con, so if you run into him and punch him, take a video for me.

Huh? Wait, what? Did they know he was in Paris? Wasn’t Laurent on some political scam in the US? His brain fumbled thinking about the various exit plans for if they found him when he heard a familiar voice.

“Oh, there you are Edamame, I thought we were going to meet at the café.” Makoto’s eyes widened. His fight-or-flight response kicked in. He quickly stood on his leg. His hand fisted up before he realised the public setting and settled on grinding his teeth.

“No.”

“But you were headed there, weren’t you?”

“Not that. Whatever you want me to do, I’m not doing it.”

“Oh, why ever would you think I was going to want something from you Edamame?”

Makoto simply cocked his eyebrow, “Do you want me to start the examples based on timeline or severity?”

Laurent laughed, which only made Makoto angrier. He took a deep calming breath ready for the wrath that had been brewing in him for the past year when a head popped through the glass window.

“Mr. Thierry,” said the woman, “ nous sommes prêts pour vous maintenant .” (We are ready for you now)

“ Oh merveilleux, merci ” (Oh wonderful, thank you)

Makoto’s French was awful. But he knew enough to understand what was going on. “We are already in it aren’t we,” he sighed willing himself to not break his head against the cream walls of the office. The blood would be a pain to remove.

The Frenchman only smirked in reply. “Let’s go Edamame. Doctor’s waiting.”

Whatever con he was going to play along with now, one Laurent Thierry is going to have his ears blown off the minute they are somewhere alone.

“So, let’s see, one of you doesn’t speak French so I hope English is okay?” Doctor Farrow, as she had introduced herself a minute ago said. He nodded, still trying to piece together what was going on. Laurent on the other hand was lounging on their shared couch like he owned the place. He’d put together as soon as they entered that this was likely a therapist’s office. But why were they here together? The one answer that made sense, made no sense. It couldn’t be. Right! Laurent wasn’t stupid enough to not take into account Makoto’s unpreparedness.

“Okay, so let’s start with what you think is wrong with your marriage.”

Makoto nearly yelled as Laurent’s hand rested on his shoulder, he felt himself freeze. He swallowed his words till he heard his name. Ah right.

“How about the fact that I didn’t realise we were getting couple’s counselling-” he looked straight at the tall man sitting next to him, “Till right about this minute.”

“Now now Edamame, you probably wouldn’t have come if you’d known.”

“And that makes it okay to just not tell me? Just like with LA, and Singapore and Tokyo. Do you ever just think maybe telling me would solve problems?”

“Oh, I’m sorry your inability to stick to plans is on me,” Laurent replied throwing up his hands. He was a good actor. 

“Yeah Laurent, that was very obvious with Tokyo, my inability, not your distrust.” He tried avoiding context very aware of the third person in the room. Parallelly his mind was trying to conceive a believable story for this therapist to believe before the inevitable question came.

“What exactly happened?” Dr Farrow interrupted.

“Oh, my husband is overreacting. I had business to take care of and had to leave and he wanted to extend the trip to Tokyo, which wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d just followed the schedule. But my work needs me to be flexible and there isn’t much I could have done about it,” Laurent covered for him. Makoto cringed at the word ‘husband’, but he had to keep up the act.

“Yeah flying to a different country and leaving me alone with no one I knew around was an amazing idea,” He smiled mockingly. 

“That’s our time today gentlemen. I’ll see you again next week I hope.”

Laurent looked at Makoto and answered “We’ll think about it. I’ll make sure Makoto is okay with it first.” The man in question still had his arms folded as they thanked her and walked out. They got into a car that he assumed was Laurent’s and pulled on the seat belt.

“Wow Edamame, you really sold that,” the older man grinned. “I would have-”

He stops as Makoto held his hand up. “Don’t talk to me.”

“Edamame,” Laurent cooed.

“No. Take me to where the rest of the team is and if I hear one word out of you the whole ride I’m going to jump out of the car.” When no reply came he mumbled a “good” and put his feet on the dash. He kept his word. It was a quiet ride till they arrived at a villa.

“We’re here,” the man said, Makoto didn’t reply, he simply went up to the door and waited. He saw Abby first, then Cynthia and his dad came out of the kitchen with a flute of champagne. Abby was the first to react.

“Ha! See, you owe me 20$,” she said to Cynthia who rolled her eyes.

He sighed, because why o’ why did he ever think he could get out of this life? He saw his luggage placed in the living room and finally lost it.

“Are you kidding me?” He turned on his heel to where the blond man was standing and grabbed his collar. “I hate you. All of you. I’m leaving.”

“Oh, and where to Edamame, do you know where we are?” He, in fact, didn’t. He groaned and went into the closest room and locked the door. If he was going to sulk, he was going to sulk alone.

This team be damned. He came in looking for some good coffee, of course, he’d get dragged into one of this dastardly idiot’s schemes. He heard a muffled ‘ he’ll come around’ from the outside that he ignored. 

Their last case took so much of him emotionally. And no one, not even his father, had bothered to apologise. He’d meant every word he’d said when they were in that pretend tower hoping the anger would leave him there. It didn’t. But there wasn’t much he could do. Even on the boat back he tried to maintain civility. Abby was the only one who’d even thought about if he was alright. He did not want to feel that way ever again, and yet here there were.

A knock on the door dragged him out of his thoughts. He unlocked the door and saw his father smiling on the other side.

“Thought you might be hungry,” he said holding out a plate of food. Makoto opened the door wider letting him in as he grabbed the slice of pizza. “You alright kid?”

Makoto snorted a laugh. “It’s okay dad, I’m not mad at you, just that bastard.”

It wasn’t as hard as he thought it was going to be to understand why Oz did what he did. Dorothy was family too, and he tried to be understanding. But that didn’t change the fact that he had to survive all alone never knowing he was also loved. Oz gave him that space, and he appreciated that. It has taken nearly a year and a half of slow conversations to get to the point they were now. Forgiveness isn’t that easy. But he understood.

“Do you know what the con is?” Makoto asked.

“I think Laurent wants to explain it himself whenever you are ready to come out.”

“Dad?” he hesitated a little bit unsure how to phrase what he wanted to say.

“ I promise if any of us are planning to fake die or there are changes in the plans I will tell you beforehand irrespective of what anyone else wants, okay? ” he said in Japanese and Makoto was all the more grateful for the relationship they’d formed over the past year.

“ Thank you.” He replied taking another bite from his slice.

“So, we are conning a jewel collector who targets expensive family heirlooms and pays people to steal them from the target. Great! This all makes sense, except, oh, why am I pretending to be your husband again?” He leaned forward for another slice of pizza. He was apparently hungrier than he expected.

“Because, Edamame, Dr Farrow is his middleman. She handles all his deals and scouts all his marks, and we are trying to be a mark. Rich couples tend to be her targets, with her being a high profile couples counsellor, if that wasn’t obvious.”

“Couldn’t you have asked Abby or Cynthia,” he asked with his mouth full, “or for that matter asked me instead of coercing me into it.” He mumbled that last bit and Abby, who was sitting next to him chortled a laugh.

“Abby is working as Farrow’s authenticator and Cynthia is with Andre.”

“You could have literally asked anyone in your team of million,”

“Oh, but none of them are the best con man in Japan.”

“This is France asshole. And- ughh you know what, fine. I’ll do it, not like I have much of a choice anyway.” He walked away into the deck that was dimly lit next to the room, everyone mumbled their goodnights and went off to prepare for the next day, but Laurent stayed behind.

“Hey.” He said softly leaning against the doorframe with a glass of wine.

“What do you want now, I already said yes.” The silence stretched on for a while longer till Laurent approached him with a glass of wine handing it to Makoto.

“Okay, I can see this time is different though.”

“Oh god, Laurent. We always do this dance, I say no, you find a way to rope me into the plan anyway, then pretend to give me in out only to pull me back in one more time, but by then it’s too late for me to back out and you get the inevitable yes and win. I just cut the middle bits. You win alright.”

“Edamame,” his voice sounded softer. “What’s wrong my soybean? You know you can talk to me right?”

“Yeah, but you can’t talk to me. You keep me out of all the details of the con because you expect me to screw up, which fine, maybe I do. But when you do shit like let me think my dad killed my best friends, that I killed my dad , and then left me with a goddamn child trafficker when I didn’t even know the con was still on. You know what it did to me when he got arrested and what I thought it did to my mom? And you still left me. With her .” He thought he would be screaming by now. But his voice was cold. “That was my hell. To think that I was becoming who I thought my dad was. You told me I could opt out Laurent. But you’ve never once trusted me with anything you have done and probably never will. So, I’m tired. I’ll do whatever you need. Don’t tell me anything at all for all I care. Just don’t leave me alone without any warning this time. And after this is done, just leave me alone.”

“Makoto,” he didn’t want an apology right now, especially one that wouldn’t mean shit. But he turned to look at the speaking man’s face anyway. That was an expression he’d never seen before. He schooled his own to look neutral.

“I’m gonna go sleep now. Good night.”