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Chapter Text

There was only one calendar in the whole building – at least there was only one Max could see. It was hanging on the wall of the common canteen where Max ate his breakfast, lunch and dinner day after day, and while it was a good three years outdated, someone always made sure that it showed the right month.
There were pictures he’d seen for the second time by now, but Max couldn’t care – the calendar was his only connection with the passing time, and checking it gave him some sense of normality.

In the movies it was a common cliché, that cops were the most hated there. That they were second in the row right after rapists who got killed.

Thankfully, the prisoners in Guantanamo got there mostly for the same reason – in the cell next to Max’ there was an ex-FBI agent, and while Max didn’t know the details, he could imagine why he was there.

Officially, or as far as every American knew, only the most dangerous terrorists were in Gitmo. People, who endangered the safety of the country, who killed millions of citizens.

Reality, in contrast, wasn’t that glamorous.
Yes, it was really a place for people who meant potential danger for the country, but not like that.
Cops, soldiers, marines, agents, everyone who had the audacity to go against what politicians liked to call the American dream.
And they could do it, without any prosecution, because Guantanamo was in Cuban territory, so the American laws didn’t work there – but those fuckers could still uphold the constitution.

Actually, while Max was on the other side – no pun intended – he really thought it was a very clever idea, but like this, behind these walls, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

Not like Max had any problems there. His days gone by in relative calmness.

It wasn’t a place where prisoners could have any entertainment.
There was no library, where he could have spent his days reading, no gym to get rid of the excess energy, there wasn’t even a garden, where he could have gone to see the sunlight.
The only purpose of the place was that the traitors could think about their sins, and repent them.

And most importantly, from Gitmo there was no way out.

Max knew the building relatively well, from another life, which felt like it was lightyears away. He’d been there many times, with Mick by his side, and he knew perfectly well that neither escaping, nor getting out alive were options.
Because in theory summary executions were legal, and they all were aware of that – the presence of the armed guards reminded them of that every second.

“Next!” the voice of the kitchen staff got him out of his mind, probably talking to him for some time now, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off of the calendar.

And he couldn’t not think about that conversation he’d had with Sebastian back in March.

June 21.

Seb mentioned fire, but obviously Seb also mentioned that Charles hated university, and constantly complained about that he had to attend one, so his words could have been coded messages – or not.

Still, Max’ whole day went in some rapt attention, part of his brain was waiting patiently for something, for anything to happen, just finally get out of there, while the other prat tried to persuade him that whatever he was waiting for, it wouldn’t happen.

Somewhere around dawn he was finally able to admit to himself that his rational part won. And why wouldn’t it? Soon it would be morning, and if Daniel and the others had wanted to do something, they would have done it already.
It was time to admit that no one was going to rescue him. That his life wasn’t a fairy tale, and he wasn’t the damsel in distress, waiting for the prince on a white horse, and…

The light switched on so suddenly it burned his eyes, but then it was dark again – like someone only did that for warning.

It was nothing like in movies.
There was no alarm going off, there was no explosion, and the door of his cell opened so quietly Max didn’t even notice it at first.

Lando sneaked behind him so quietly like he always did, and he managed to scare the shit out of Max.

“I told you not to sneak around!” the words left his mouth so automatically like the last time he’d said them was yesterday.

“I wasn’t sneaking.” Lando shrugged, arms crossed on his chest as usual, and he looked around the small cell like he came from magazine to check on the interior design. It seemed like he wasn’t impressed, and Max could completely agree with him “Are we going, or what?”

Chapter Text

Six months earlier…

"I don't know, Doc, it's just so weird." said Daniel, lying on his back on the couch in the psychologist’s office for the nth time, and also for the nth time, Lando was forced to listen to it.

It wasn't as complicated as the man wanted to make it look like, he either wanted something or not, but first of all he had to decide about it, but then he remembered that… something between him and Mike, whatever the fuck it was, and he didn't say anything.

It was a year and a half ago, when the four of them a arrived on the island in the midst of the greatest discretion on a four-seater Cessna 172 - Max didn't really leave them any other choice.

Ni'ihau, or as everyone in Hawaii liked to call it, "The forbidden island" was the seventh largest island of the archipelago, and the smallest one which still had a population.
According to a local legend, Ni'ihau was created before all other islands in Hawaii. Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, originally created it for herself to find a home in the middle of Oceania and then travel from there, creating more and more islands with every step she took.
Reality wasn’t that romantic though, according to the geologists, Ni'ihau was formed by an outbreak of the Kaua's volcano.

But the history of the island wasn’t that ordinary.

The first written record of Ni'ihau had been made in 1864 when Elizabeth Sinclair, a 63-year-old widow, had bought the island from the local residents for $10,000 gold and one day had arrived on a boat named Bessie, with her 13-member family, and a piano.
The island had been owned by the family since then, and they tried to keep it in the state it had been back then, 180 square miles of wilderness, that its inhabitants would only leave if needed.

Now there were about 170 people living there, and although the island was officially part of the United States, the inhabitants spoke Hawaiian instead of the official English, and even a special, local dialect of that.
On the island, there were no paved roads, no running water, and electricity - but with the small amount of annual rainfall and the number of sunshine hours, solar cells could easily deal with the electricity.
Ni'ihau also didn’t have medical care, and more importantly, there was no police.

Outsiders could only enter the island in three ways: with personal invitation from the family, with special permission of the US Government, or as a member of the Navy.

Lando had been on the island for the first time when Max and Mick had been trying to prepare everything for their undercover wokr. And not even as part of the Marine Corps.

Lando had no idea what Max had done to earn the owners’ trust, and he was unwilling to tell him, but it was a fact that he had a house in a remote part of the island, far from the naval base, and that was exactly what they needed.

The scratching of the psychologist's pen broke got him out of his thoughts.

"And in the meantime, I miss him so much." Daniel added, talking to the ceiling. Dr. Kekoa, the psychologist, had already told him that it wasn’t necessary to lie down on the couch in the room like in the movies, but Daniel said he felt comfortable like that.

It was all Mike's idea.

Kauai was the closest island to Ni'ihau, where there was already a civilization in the usual sense of the word, where there were shops, A Starbucks for Lance's greatest pleasure, and what Daniel really needed, there was a therapist with whom he could share his thoughts.
And obviously Lando, or Michael always accompanied him on his sessions.

"That seems clear to me." said Dr. Kekoa looked up from his notes. Lando wasn’t sure whether he was actually taking notes or just scribbling in the notebook before him. They'd been coming here for months now, but he didn't see any change in Dan's behavior.

"And you might be willing to share it with me, Doc?" Said Daniel on the couch. The collar of his disgustingly orange shirt ruffled his curly hair.

It often seemed to Lando like it was only yesterday that they had gotten out of the little Cessna on the island and had left everything behind, for the second time, but as he looked at the man who was no longer his boss or his mission, he clearly saw every passing day of that year and a half on his face.

The wrinkles on Daniel’s forehead gotten deeper, that only many thinking could explain. The dark bags under his eyes were almost no longer bags, but wheeled suitcases, which, moreover, were swollen as if they had been made for several weeks of holiday. The freshly ironed shirt and tie always wore were replaced by shorts and colorful shirts, and Lando couldn’t tell when the last time he saw the man wearing shoes.

Dan fit perfectly into what other people liked to call a tropical paradise - only to fall apart in the process.

"Mr. Ricciardo, the gentleman is your husband."

"But he isn't!"

"Maybe not officially. But for you, he is."

And that was the point.
That was what all of them had already tried to get into Daniel's thick head, but he was still violently opposed to it a year and a half later.
In spite of all the persuasion of Mike, in spite of Lance had still calling him Papa, in spite of the twice a week visits at the Doc.

Daniel couldn't even let the idea close to himself.
And somewhere deep down inside, Lando could understand him perfectly.

It was a dirty job, quite literally.

Lando didn't expect it to be that dirty, but there was nothing to do, and the cleaning was no longer his problem, but he was the one who had to pick up the body from the rooftop and do something with it, and it wasn't easy.

Especially since he didn't want make his clothes bloody.

He forced his mind to think, trying to remember the old biology lessons in school, he couldn't tell how long it would take for the blood to dry, but he was sure he didn't have time to wait.

He had worked for Alonso for less than half a year, and it was his first serious assignment - he couldn't start right away by leaving a dead body just because he didn't want blood on his clothes.
He took off his leather jacket and threw it on the floor, still better the dust of the city than just a drop of blood on it. Once the matter absorbed it, it would have been impossible to get it out of it.

He rolled up the sleeves of the shirt he was wearing and was prepared to carry the deceased down on a long flight of steps, preferably without attracting attention.

The man appeared so suddenly in front of him that he had no time to take out his own gun, so he used the one which was on the side of his victim – did that count as desecration of a corpse? - and lift that up.

Just to look right into the barrel of a similar weapon right away.

"Do you need help?" the stranger asked, directing the barrel of the pistol toward the ground.

Mistake.

Lando shot him in the chest, then again, just to be safe, but he could only manage that the other took two wobbly steps back.
Fucking bulletproof vest.

"You should have gone for the head." he said simply, and Lando had to agree with him. So now that he knew the other wasn't a cop, he put the gun in his pants and focused more on his work.

"Soo… do you need help with that?"

"No." said Lando firmly.

"Really, I’m happy to..."

"Thank you, I can do it alone."

"I don't doubt it. I was just trying to be a gentleman."

Lando stared at him with one of his eyebrows raised.

"Very kind of you."

"Yeah, I know."

"Are you always that sticky?"

"Yeah, I am."

"I was afraid you’d say that."

"I'm Michael, by the way."

Whatever his name was, Lando definitely had enough of him.

"I don't give a fuck."

Daniel stood up from the couch so suddenly that he managed to get back Lando from the past, but maybe it was better that way. The past was in the past, and while Lando seldom allowed himself to think about it, he sometimes felt nostalgic, and the only solution to cure that would have been a very large amount of alcohol - or something to distract him.

"You know what, Doc? You're absolutely right."

Dan turned to Lando almost as quickly as he got up, and he saw the change immediately.

The shine of his eyes that Lando had seen in New York returned, a half-smile was hiding in the corner of his mouth, and he began pacing in the narrow space as the gears were probably spinning in his mind. He was planning something, and it was obvious.

"Dr. Kekoa, it was a pleasure, really," said Daniel to the man, "but I don't think I'll be coming a lot in the future. Lando." Dan said, turning to him "I have a plan."

"Finally." said Lando, rolling his eyes, "I thought I was going to retire from here." he said, and the other began to laugh, as he had always done; with his head thrown back, one hand on his chest, as if he was afraid of losing his lungs.

Yeah, Daniel Ricciardo definitely came back.

Chapter Text

Present days

Michael watched the horizon, where the blue of the water and the blue of the sky mixed together, waiting for the plane to finally show up somewhere in the middle of the big blueness.

He would have lied if he said he wasn't skeptical about Hawaii at first.

After leaving the casino in such a hurry, they had no choice but to go with the flow, and he had never been the spontaneous type. He loved to think in a system, a routine, and tried to put it into all of their lives when they’d lived in New York.

But more importantly, he didn't like to give up control.

Even if he gave it to Lando.

He’d known him better than Lance, Daniel, or even Makani - Max? How he was supposed to call the man now? – had thought, and he would have trusted him with his life, but now he wasn't just talking about his own life.

He had taken responsibility for Daniel the minute they’d become friends, and as the years had passed, Lance became a part of Daniel's life, and, of course, Michael had welcomed him with open arms.

"What’s the time?" Dan asked suddenly. The man walked back and forth the shore so fast that the waves had no time to wash his tracks away.

Mike looked at his watch with a big sigh.
Daniel had asked him the same thing a half a minute ago.

"It’s almost…”

"No!" Daniel interrupted him quickly before he could answer "I don't want to know. He'll be here when he’ll be here."

Mike looked at Lance, who sat on the sand with his nose in his phone, ignoring the slightest interest that his father literally going through a heart attack. While he hadn't talked about it, and Lance wasn't willing to say anything about the case, Michael couldn't help but notice that the boy hadn’t been as surprised at the casino as he had been - or Daniel. Mike did not know the truth, but he would have been willing to put a bigger amount of money on that the kid had known what had been going on in front of him, but he’d decided to keep the truth to himself.

"Mike..."

"Daniel, not even a half-minute has passed since you last asked...!"

"No, I didn't mean to ask that this time."

Michael turned towards the other, but Daniel didn’t look at him; he looked at the ocean, as if he was waiting for answers to his questions from there.

It was clear that he had changed. Mike knew him as the palm of his hand, they had been inseparable since they were 15, and that was more than fifteen years ago - more than half of their lives. Dan's father had liked to joke that they’d been joined together like Siamese twins, and then Daniel had shot him in the chest like fifteen times, and then he stopped laughing, but it was a fact that he hadn’t seen him in that condition since that night.

"Hey, are you all right?" Even he knew how stupid it sounded, of course he wasn’t right, but Mike liked to think that he was keeping up good, considered the situation they were in, and that Daniel had finally found his way back to himself.

"What am I supposed to tell him?" he asked so quietly, for a second Michael wasn’t even sure he heard it correctly "What can I say in a situation like that?"

"I don't know, Daniel. I honestly don't know."

Mike watched from the bed as Lando grabbed his clothes, every piece of clothing around the room, searching in the dark for his socks.

He loved these quiet moments.
It wasn’t like he couldn’t enjoy these moments better if they hadn’t needed to end up with one of them being called to work, but there was something inexplicably intimate in all of this.

Lando crawled off of his chest as quietly as he always moved around, with graceful, tight muscles that fit more for a ballet dancer like a hitman, but that didn't make him a less professional.

"Who do you have to kill now?" He asked, knowing well that Lando wouldn’t answer.

They never gave an official name to what was going on between the two of them, and they only followed one unspoken rule - in bed, they never talked about work.

But right now, instead of Lando’s normal sarcastic answer, it was just humming, so unusual, and Mike didn’t like it.

"Is it me?" He asked, laughing, expecting only one mean comment. He was just a pawn in Alonso’s game of chess, so he was almost sure it wasn’t him.

But if Daniel was the target...

They took their weapons at the same time, and Lando pointed directly at his head, as Mike advised him many years ago, and he did the same.

Michael had lost his sense of time - he was only sure that he looked much longer in the barrel of Lando's gun than he wanted, and all the while he prayed that he wouldn’t pull the trigger, because then he had to do the same.

Eventually, Lando lowered his weapon, with slow, measured movements, as though not quite certain that the other wouldn’t take advantage of the offer.

"Don't look for me again." he said at last, and there was some sort of finality in his voice that Michael hated so much.

"Lan, please, if I really -"

"No."

"But then..."

"No.".

He knew he probably looked ridiculous, all naked getting out of the bed, trying to get into Lando’s way, stopping him from going out of the door, his weapon forgotten long ago.

"Just tell me what happened. I might be able to help. I'm sure Daniel..."

Lando seemed so lost in his thoughts that Mike wasn't sure he could hear what he was saying.

"I don't kill children." he said, and that was the last sentence Michael had heard from him. Until he walked back into his life on that fateful day, on Max Verstappen’s side.

"Papa!"

Mike turned back to the ocean when he heard Lance's voice, and only then did he realize that small, two-seater plane landed on the sand.

Lance rushed to his Papa immediately and hugged him tightly. Michael didn't hear what they were talking about, but he saw the smile on both faces, and that was enough for him.

And Daniel was still standing beside him, as if he were afraid to take one step toward Max, as if a bad move could break the idyllic moment.

"Come on. Go to him." Mike said gently.

"But... what should I tell him?"

"What you want him the most to hear."

Daniel bolted, took a deep breath, and walked toward the others - exactly when the other three came toward them.

They met halfway, Daniel, Mx, who still had Lance by his side, and Lando, who walked past them and stopped beside Michael instead.

It was a familiar situation, the two of them watching the events as outsiders; it was a certain routine that Mike missed so much.

"How did it go?" he asked, looking at the scene which had just opened in front of them. Michael saw Daniel swallowing hard, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

"Do you want to know a secret?" asked Dan, and Lance had the decency to take a step back and let him parents talk.

"Loosey goosey." said Lando "Everything went according to plan."

"Only if I can say one too." said Max to Daniel's question.

"Did you doubt it?" asked Mike Lando, hurt clearly in his voice.

"Of course not." Mike said.

"I love you." said Daniel in a low voice that Michael was not sure that he had heard it until Max had said the same thing.

"I love a good happy ending," Mike said as he watched his best friend kiss the man of his life. "Exactly like in a Disney movie."

Lando was just humming, and Michael was forced to turn his head away from the other two so he could look at him. He didn't like this humming at all.
Lando didn’t look at him, he was still watching Daniel and Max, and the two of them with Lance were unable to let go of each other.

Lando might have noticed that Mike was looking at him, and he turned to him slowly before he could say anything.

"Yeah. It’s a shame, movies have nothing to do with reality."

Chapter Text

Lance was, of course, not a fan of leaving his home - a place he was able to call home for the first time - but of course he always knew that his father was not a saint and that leaving was always an option for them.

The only thing that mattered was that they were together, that even though they had to run away at night, he had been sitting next to Dad in Mike's sweater, which was big enough to go down to his knees, and the Lando-piloted plane got off smoothly. For one last time he had looked out of the plane's window, and he hadn’t seen much in the dark, but at that moment Lance had realized that home wasn’t just a house, but the people who lived in it.

And there had been everyone next to him who mattered.

Almost everyone, because Papa hadn’t been there, and though Dad hadn’t shown it, but Lance could have seen how he couldn't have found his place without him, and Lance had had to agree with him on that.

Since Hulkenberg he had known Papa wasn't who he said he was.
As much as he wanted to forget, he remembered vividly the day that ended with the German’s death, and although people liked to think that, Lance wasn't stupid.

But it didn't matter now because Papa was home, it didn’t matter where that home was.

At least, it shouldn't have mattered if Dad wouldn’t treat him like a five-year-old.

"We need to discuss important matters with Cyril." Dad explained as if Lance didn’t know.

"But this is my room." Lance insisted. "And it’s my computer."

It wasn't easy persuading Dad to give a PC to Lance again. He knew he wasn't going on vacation in Hawaii, his Papa's absence reminded him for that in every minute, but enough was enough.

Lance needed the Internet, and his friends, a slice of normality in the middle of madness, anything, just not to have to stare at his Dad's sour face day by day. Fortunately, Lando and Michael were on his side, so now he had one in his room, one that was just as well-equipped as the one he had to leave behind.

And which his dad wanted to use right now.

"Lance, don't be so childish, please."

"You’re the one treating me like a child! I was also there at the casino when all that happened...! thankfully he didn't have to finish the sentence because Dad hugged him, and as it always happened, the debate ended.

Thank God, because Lance didn't want to go into details about what happened at the casino. His meeting with Esteban was only his business – just like the fact that Esteban was one of the many reasons he wanted to have a PC and Internet again.

But it was another story.

"All right." said Dad with a huge sigh "you can stay if you like, but we really need to talk to Cyril."

"I will be good, I promise."

Daniel just rolled his eyes at that.

Their lives turned upside down, and somehow they still didn't.

There were five of them there, like before, Lance was still a moody teenager, like before, Mike and Lando were whispering in the doorway, and Dan wouldn't be surprised if it would become a fight soon - just like before - and his husband was finally by his side again.
The situation was still not perfect, they had to discuss a lot of things, and he still couldn’t say Max as naturally as Makani, but they were working on it.

And speaking of work, Daniel couldn't forget that he had to deal with what he left behind.

Lance willingly turned on the videocall for him, and as promised, didn’t consent to the conversation, but that didn’t make it easier.

Dan was expecting bad news, but not that bad.

"There's nothing wrong with Vegas." Cyril explained on the other side of the screen and the world. Daniel still couldn’t get used to the fact that he was separated from his life by more than 7,000 miles "I spoke to the people there yesterday, and as we expected, Alonso didn’t try anything."

At least that wasn't surprising. Las Vegas and the casinos there were quite extensive in view of everyone knowing everyone, and as a defense and defiant, they stood up for each other. If Alonso tried anything, he wouldn't be alive for long.

And Alonso wasn't that stupid.

"Cyril, get to the point, please." Dan said, and the Frenchman soared. Cyril never liked telling bad news.

"Miami and Los Angeles have checked in with me."

"What's the damage?"

"It's not as bad as... as in the vicinity of Enchanté."

They say a man couldn’t have a favorite child, and although Daniel didn't know anything about it, he only had Lance - for now - but the casinos were his children, and although tried to give them equal attention, Enchanté was his favorite.

Of course, Alonso had that one.

He didn't even notice his hand clenched until he felt Max' fingers on his fist. He relaxed his muscles and intertwined their fingers and prepared for the worst.

"Can you deal with it?" he asked.

"Kimi helps. He sent some people over to spend the night here. Anyone who walks this way can see that we're watching. But I don't know how long that's gonna last."

"Are these anyone we can get there quick?"

"Who? Daniel, we're a casino. Sure, we can call more security guards, but even Masi's on Alonso's side. Honestly, we're pretty lost."

That's exactly what Dan was afraid of.

"How many of you are there?"

"The usual security guard, two of Kimi's men – not much. Too few."

"If I went there..."

"No." Cyril said, exactly when Max said the same thing.

"Danny, we can't risk it." he said, like he was talking to a five-year-old, or Lance, like Daniel was stupid, like he didn't know the dangers of...!

"Don't get involved with this." he said, and the moment Max let go of his hand, he shouldn’t have been that harsh "What do you suggest?" he turned back to Lance’s PC. Him and Max would talk about it later, now it was more important.

They were supposed to talk about many other things with Max anyway.

"We need protection, that's for sure." Cyril said, nodding on his own words "Where it comes from - it doesn't matter. The point is, we need trustworthy people, and as soon as possible. I'll ask around."

"Thank you."

"That's the least I can do. Take care of yourselves." Cyril disconnected the call, and Lando immediately stepped in to do something there. He made sure it was a secure line, but still, they didn’t want surprises.

Daniel turned in the chair he was sitting on to face the others.

"And now, what the fuck are we going to do?"

Chapter Text

Everything was silent – a little bit too silent for Michael’s liking.

Since they had arrived on the island, Dan had been lost more in solitary silence than it would have been healthy, but Mike had hoped that with Max’ reappearance he would return to his old self.

He stood outside of the big glass door which led to the kitchen of the house, where he could see the shore, and the way Daniel and Max were sitting on the ground at a perfect distance from the water, so the bigger waves could gently touch their feet.

They didn't talk, or at least Michael didn't see them talking or that they touched each other at all.

He wanted to go there and grab their shoulders, to shake them and yell at them until they finally discussed their problems for both of their sake, but...

"Stalker."

But of course, he might not have been the best person to give relationship advice.

He didn't hear Lando coming, but there was nothing surprising about that.

"I was thinking." he said, and that was actually surprising. Not the act itself, of course, but the fact that Lando wanted to inform him about it.

If he wanted to describe their relationship with only one word, he would have said it was civil, but if he had the opportunity, he could write essays, just about that the other said, the tone of his Lando’s voice, the silver glitter of his eyes, and the ability of all of that drag his stomach into a tight knot.

"And?" Mike asked, watching as the wind gently pulled on Lando’s curls. The salty seaside air made his hair even more curly "Did you come up with something?"

"Cyril said we need more protection."

He used the plural so naturally like they had worked as a team since forever. He was thinking of the time when Lando was too proud to trust anyone but himself – even though Mike was really trying.
Lando was one of the best in the business, and he didn't want to share this title with anyone.

Lando watched Mike's eyes slide from his eyes to his mouth and then back. He thought about making a comment, but he stopped himself just in time.

He was getting too soft for that idiot.

He turned his eyes away from looking into Mike's puppy eyes, watching Daniel and Max instead, but it made him almost depressed.

The two of them dodged each other as if they had been crawling on broken glass, with careful strides, not wanting to step into anything that might hurt.

If they had asked, Lando would have liked to tell them his opinion about the situation, but they didn’t ask him.
Because he did have an opinion.

Hawaii had a terrible effect on him. Of course, it wasn't Hawaii, it would have happened anywhere else, but right now they were here, and he had to blame someone, something, so he had no other choice.

At first, when they’d arrived, he’d enjoyed doing nothing, the endless sunbathing on the beach, the great food, and the tranquillity that the place offered.

Then the rainy days had come - anyway, how fucked-up it had been, rain, in Hawaii - and then one day he’d had nothing to do and then he’d had no choice but to stay alone with his thoughts, and that was always dangerous.

Because his thoughts always returned to Michael, to their past, to all that happened between them, and how they got to the present.

Something pulled them to each other like a magnet, hoisted them back together, fate, destiny - or their case just a crazy marine and his crazy plan.

But whatever it was, Michael was here, right in front of Lando's eyes, and he couldn't not think of the past.

"And?" asked Michael again.

"I know people. And I'm sure you do, too."

Mike nodded on his words.

All four of them knew a lot of people, Daniel had his own connections, just like probably Max did too – not like they could do anything with those connections in this situation. Dan wasn't there, he couldn't be there, in the middle of the action,  to talk to anyone in person, and on his side was the only person they could trust was Kimi, who had already done more than he had ever been asked to do.

And Max...

Max was on the other side. Of course, if someone was capable to reach such a high position within the Navy, he must have known the superiors, people in high places, but according to Lando, who had checked the system several times, an international intercept warrant was issued against him, so maybe it wasn’t the best idea of him to call some of his old Navy friends.

So, there were two of them, Lando and him.

Lando saw the realization coming into Michael's eyes. He knew him well enough to know that he thought the same thing he was thinking.

"Okay, but how do you want to...?"

"I don't know yet." Lando shrugged. There were a lot of details to work out on the plan, but at least they had a plan, and that was already one step forward, and it filled both of them with new excitement.

Not like Daniel and Max.

Lando turned to their direction again, and before he could turn away in time, he saw Daniel grabbing Max, and laying on top on the other, kissing him hard. He really didn’t want to see that.

"I don't think we should talk about this right now." said Michael, who was also watching the other two "It seems like they’re… Quite busy. I go in to check on Lance instead."

Lando looked at him until he disappeared inside the house.

Chapter Text

Leslie - the name was written on the side of the plastic coffee cup with permanent marker, of course it was biodegradable plastic, in Hawaii it was very important, and the barista even took the time and draw him some flowers on the side.

Hibiscus, national flower of the islands.

Not that Lance cared, he came there to get out of Ni'ihau and drink a good iced coffee.

And of course, to use the free Wi-Fi.

He didn't need it, he had everything on the island he wanted, and he had learned long ago how to get from Dad whatever he wanted, and even though he tried not to take advantage of the situation, the Internet was the first thing he wanted.
And of course, the PC.

He had ordered the parts one by one, each with a request for one of the islands within the archipelago not to attract attention, and most of the time it had been Michael or Lando, who had gone to pick it up.

And when he’d finally had all the parts, and for the first time he could have checked into the online game that he played with the others, and after a long time he’d heard the voice of Pierre, Nicky, Charles, and Esteban, he had been very grateful for Dad for not letting him to use a webcam, because he had to admit that he had shed some tears.

Of course, it hadn’t been easy to explain where he’d been in the meantime, but then he’d managed to make a very believable story that his new Papa had had to travel abroad because of his job, which hadn’t been that far from the truth, but fortunately, the others hadn’t asked ask any unpleasant questions, and Lance had got a little piece of his old life back.

The point was, Lance had his own PC at home, and it didn't even give his father a reason to think that he didn't necessarily blackmail Mike to escort him to Starbucks every week so he could have a nice cup of coffee.
Lance didn't like coffee.

Fortunately, the local latte was more milk with coffee than coffee with milk, and he always gave a false name at the counter, as promised, and sat in one corner with his nose deep lost in his phone, which made him look exactly like any other teenager in the room.

"You said we’re coming because you wanted to be around people." Michael said once. He had always taken special care not to come at the same time as Lance did, and sometimes he didn’t even go into the building, Lance still felt him around. "Yet, you’re not even looking at the people around you."

"Maybe I’ve just had enough of all of you." Lance shrugged, hoping that Mike wouldn’t take his words too personal, but only thing that he was a moody teenager, because the last thing he wanted to do was to hurt him.

Lance hated lying, especially to his family.

He lied terribly if he wanted to be honest, and it was a miracle that the truth hadn't slipped through his mouth in front of the boys so far, or that he hadn’t said his real name at the counter, or…
The point is Lance was a terrible liar.

But every week he forced the coffee he hated down his throath, and every week he acted like he thought teens around his age did, and he sat in the corner every week, ignoring Mike's watchful eyes, and...!

And every week, he switched the VPN on his phone from Starbucks's Wi-Fi, paying attention for not using the same twice, and he logged in to the e-mail address he created.
And as he hoped, there was always one (1) unread e-mail in his box.

And the sight of it always made his heart beat a little faster, but he always blamed it on the caffeine.

I hope you had a good week - the e-mail started, just like that, without being addressed for it was safer. They both knew they couldn't use names, but they didn't even have to.

Mine went quite tolerably - Lance never dared to ask what that meant, and the other never explained it further, and perhaps it was better that way. There were things that they didn't talk about, actually they never really talked about anything important. It was enough that they knew the other was there. Somewhere in the other end of the world, but reading the other’s messages, there was no distance.

I'm glad your Papa got home safely – Was it risky to tell him what was going on with his Papa, of course it was, but Lance didn't care at all. If the other had let him, he would have told him where he was, but fortunately he had more common sense than Lance would ever have. Still, he knew that the other wasn't lying, he was really happy about his happiness. He couldn't tell how he knew it, but he knew.

Like he had known, the moment he’d pointed his gun at Esteban, he couldn't have pulled the trigger.
And for his luck, Esteban couldn’t either.

He had been thinking a lot about how he could get in contact with him after the whole madness, if it would be a good idea to get in touch with him or not.

But Esteban hadn’t shot him.
Este had the opportunity, it was right in front of him, Lance offered himself on a silver platter, quite literally, and he hadn’t taken it.

That meant something, didn’t it?

Of course, Lance knew Esteban’s phone number.
At least he knew a number, that was Esteban’s, or at least the guy’s he’d been playing against online for ages, and that guy apparently was the same person who worked for his dad’s rival, and also the two of them had met during the worst circumstances, and oh, did Lance mention it was the same fucking guy??
Whatever.
Lance had decided to try his luck, and had sent a text to him with only an e-mail address and his initials, and had prayed that Esteban wouldn’t run to Alonso with it.

Este hadn’t rushed with the answer.

Lance checked his account regularly, but the hours slowly turned into days, and the days into weeks, and when he was thinking of canceling the whole thing, the answer finally arrived. It was just as short as the next ones after it, and just as shady too, but most importantly, it was just as regular too. Este responded to his messages twice a week, Sundays and Wednesday nights, which Lance always read and answered the next day in Starbucks.

It was their little routine, as if they'd been doing it for years, and Lance liked the idea of them had a secret to share.

The weather is wonderful - he started his answer. He was always talking about the weather, like some kind of a defensive mechanism, explaining the current atmospheric phenomena with long words and picturesque metaphors trying to avoid to think about what he wanted to write about, but he hoped that if someone in some way could trace their correspondence, he would get bored at the beginning and stop reading.

Esteban had written about his tolerable week, and although Lance didn't know what it meant, he told him about everything in such detail, including everything like the time he stepped onto a sea urchin, if not for another reason, to make the other laugh. He was not the quickest thinker, but he was not completely stupid; even he understood that tolerable wasn’t the best word to describe something goo.

I think about you a lot - he wrote, then deleted it, then wrote it again, and then deleted it again.

He took a deep breath and drank the last sip of the terrible coffee - it was a sin to ruin the milk with that - and looked up from his phone.
Michael wasn't in the building, but Lance knew, the moment he would walk out of that door, he’d be by his side.

It was usually his cue, the coffee was gone, no matter how slow he sipped it, he couldn’t explain why he was staying later than usual.
Lance stood up from the table and picked up his phone for the last time.

Take care of yourself - he wrote at the end of the message, and hit send.

By the time he slipped the phone into his pocket, threw his cup to the bin, and said a polite goodbye to the barista while walking out of the building Mike miraculously appeared next to him.

"Well, have you had your daily recreation time without us?" He asked as they walked to the car, nudging Lance with his shoulder.

"Oh come ooon." Lance said, rolling his eyes, but he was unable not to smile. Mike always got the best out of people.
Well, except of Lando.

Lance hated lying, especially to his family.
And he could only hope he wouldn't regret it.

Chapter Text

They sat around the round table like the knights in every King Arthur movie.
Or at least almost like that, because for Max they still looked, well, chaotic.

Lando’s legs were on the table, and he was sharpening one of his knives, iron slipped on iron, and the sound of it totally drove Lance crazy, so he put his head on the table, next to Lando’s legs, and he tried to cover his ears with his arms.

Michael didn’t seem bothered about it at all, he was nose deep in his phone, and Max wouldn’t the been surprised if he had been looking for new recipes to try. Crazy.

And Daniel...

Daniel looked like the most professional out of them, which was a bold statement in itself.

The man wore one of his unbelievably colorful shirts, barefoot, his curls got long enough to fall in his eyes, which he tried to solve with running his fingers through them in every tenth second, and that made him look like some kind of a model, posing for the newest surf commercial. That would be interesting actually, because Dan was deadly afraid of sharks – most of the time he was terrified to even go close to the ocean.

And there was him, Max, who felt like he’d done back then, when he’d first walked through the gates of the Ricciardo estate. He was alone among a group of people who were already familiar with each other, having their own routines, and he had absolutely no idea how to be included.

The only difference between the now and then was that back then he’d had Lando by his side, another outsider, but now he was completely alone.

And this time it was a circle that he didn't have to be get in, he wanted to be in.

Max knew he could do that, he had done it before, he just had to be patient.
And while he wasn’t a patient type, right now, he had nothing better to do.

"So?" Dan asked and looked first at Lando then at Mike. Michael put down his phone, and to Lance’s great relief, Lando put his knife back in the holster attached to his waist.

"We need people" he said, as if it hadn't been decided before. "But since neither you", he pointed first at Daniel and then to Max "nor you are in a position to open a recruitment office, Michael and I decided we’ll take the matter in our hands.".

Daniel frowned, always a sign of keen concentration, and waved with one of his hands, signaling for Lando to continue.

"We know a lot of people from the business."  Michael took over "Lando from the time before he started working for Alonso, and also while he was there, he met a lot of people. I know all your partners, and everyone knows that when they negotiate with me, it's like they're negotiating with you. Plus, I know a couple of other people too. From here and there. And if that's still not enough, I'm sure Kimi can give us some names."

"We don't need a lot of people. We need the bests."

"And if we can gather enough people together, then we'll have enough people to stop Alonso from trying anything."

"Or we could get ahead of things."

Daniel watched as Mike and Lando talked together, finishing each other's sentences as if they had rehearsed the whole thing. It seemed like everything was well thought out, and it wasn’t the first time they went through the details. There was a certain easiness in the way they worked together, and Dan couldn't help but wonder how many times they'd worked together like this in the past.

And, of course, he wondered why that work relationship had ended.

"What's the plan?" he asked, not addressing the words to either of them. It was better not to ruin the peace right away by misjudging which one of them was the boss in their little mission.

"You can't go anywhere." said Lando again. "Alonso's men are after your heads, and so are the men of all the three lettered acronym agencies."

"You're also on the international wanted list." Lance said, speaking for the first time since they sat there.

Max looked at the boy, the little boy to whom he’d made warm milk with honey in the middle of the night the first night he’d spent in the house, because the kid also couldn't sleep, the kid who had called him Papa from the first second.

When he’d started this assignment, Lance had been one of the unstable points in the whole plan. They’d had no records of the child, of where he had come from, of whose child he had actually been, because it had been clear he hadn’t been Ricciardo’s, even though there had been striking resemblance to the man he’d called his father. What Max hadn’t known at the time had been that he would have been the first person he could turn to his side, and how big of a role he would play in getting him to the other side.

And this child, this little boy, had somehow grown up in the last year.
Max couldn't decide how to feel about it yet.

"True Lando will make some fake passports and IDs, but we need to ask Kimi to help with the organizing. Flights, tickets, and..." Mike said, nodding, like they had also thought about that part too.

"I can help with that!" Lance said again, quick to interrupt the other "I mean, I also helped him arrange the whole honeymoon. "Please let me help, I know what I’m doing, I promise!”

Mike looked at Daniel, who slowly gave him a small nod.
Max wasn’t happy about it.

"That would be great, thank you Lance. We need a lot of things. Passports, identity cards, credit cards. I'm not sure what you're looking for. Disposable, untraceable ones. Hair dye, colored contact lenses." the man shrugged "And the rest of it's just like in the movies."

"That's what I'm afraid of." Daniel nodded. "In the movies, that's always followed by the big bust."

"Hopefully here too." Lando told him with a wide smile. "I'd like to see Alonso's face when he realizes we won. In the movies, the good guys always win, right?"

Max wasn't convinced that they were the good guys, but he chose not to say it out loud.

Chapter Text

The next few weeks were really like in the movies.

It was like the days went by in fast motion, Lance spent his days in his room, and he was only willing to come out when he was hungry, Daniel and Michael figured out who could be mobilized and who were the ones who could only be brought in if all else failed, and Cyril was a frequent guest online at these meetings, Lando and Mike spent hours scrolling over a giant map to figure out where they needed to go and what would be the most convenient route, and Max...

And Max found himself wandering around the house, helping here and helping there, but he really had nothing to add to the things.

"Can you dye my hair?" Lando asked him one night, and though Max never took care of his own hair beyond washing it once a week, he was glad of the opportunity.

That was it, his life sunk so low, whatever, just to do something.

Lando's hair was simply amazing. Tiny curls, blonder than ever in the always shining sun, like angels. It didn’t matter how long it got, he always wore it down, never even using a bandana which Max found both fascinating and annoying; he simply couldn’t understand how the other never got sweaty from it during a fight. Or that it didn’t fall into his eyes and cover his vision. Or that it didn’t get stuck anywhere.

After the first brush stroke, as he started to apply the black paint, he felt like he was ruining the whole thing, and not just because he'd never done anything like that before in his life.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Why, who else do you think I would have asked to do it? Lance?"

"Maybe he could have done it better than me."

"Yeah, sure. He would have watched a few YouTube videos and then turned pro. Oh honestly, Max. Besides, I trust you."

That all sounded very nice, but Max wasn't sure that the other guy wasn't making the biggest mistake of his life.
He picked up another batch of paint and watched the ticks suck it all in.

"You could have asked Michael." he brought it up carefully, making it fit into perfectly in a casual conversation "You two have such a good relationship nowadays…"

Lando turned cautiously toward him, careful not to smear anything on his head, and looked at him meaningfully.

"Okay, okay." Max shrugged "Just saying."

"Well, don’t." Lando sighed, and let Max turn his head back straight and work on his hair. There was something strangely comforting about the monotony of the job, brush in paint, then brush on hair, then brush in paint, then...

"I'm bored." he said it so suddenly, even he was surprised that he actually said that out loud.

"Should I tell Daniel that he doesn't fulfill his marital duties often enough?" asked Lando without turning to look at him.

"Idiot." Max rolled his eyes, even though Lando couldn’t see it.

"Me?! Darling, we're here in Hawaii, on a dream island, and you have your husband and your kid with you." Lando used those big words so freely like it really was only about that. Like the island didn’t mean prison, but it was nothing but a pleasant vacation.

Max wasn't used to vacations.

From the moment he entered the military academy, his days were nothing more than continuous training, day after day, climbing up higher and higher that proverbial ladder, and when he reached the top, one case followed another.
There was never a stop.

And now that he had the opportunity, he just couldn't get used to doing nothing.

"I wish we could switch roles." Lando continued "I'd much rather sunbathe on the ocean shore than parade around the world with Michael, believe me."

Max wasn't so sure about that, but after the reaction to his earlier comment, he didn't want to say it out loud.

"But it is what it is, I guess. I gotta make the best out of it. Are you finally done yet?"

"Don't be so impatient. We have all the time on Earth." Max said, smiling back, using his own weapon on Lando, who sighed. "But promise me one thing."

It sounded far more serious than it was intended, and Lando probably noticed that too, because he was turning over his shoulder. Grey-green eyes were staring into Max’ turquoise ones, like they were looking straight into his soul, and Lando slowly nodded.

"Anything." he said softly.

The whole situation was starting to get too serious, and there was a hidden emotion in it that Max wasn't happy about. They spent a lot of time looking at each other, communicating without words, which they'd gotten so good at during the time they'd spent working together, and now for the first time since Max was on the island, he was starting to feel that no matter how long he'd been away, he still belonged.

He was still at home.

"Try not to kill Michael." he said, the joke completely killing the mood, but it seemed that Lando also didn't mind that much.

"I can't promise anything" he replied with a big sigh, "but I'll see what I can do".

That wasn't so bad from Lando.

Chapter Text

"Lance!"

Lando stood up so suddenly from the table that Daniel followed his movement – for a short minute he actually worried the man would be able to hurt his son.
They had been planning that whole shit for so long, it would have been a shame to cancel everything now.

It took him days to somehow get used to Lando’s new, dark hair color, but it was still better than Mike’s, because in some inexplainable way it suited Lando, while Michael just looked ridiculous in blonde.
Daniel tried not to laugh in his face every time he looked at him – he had that much solidarity for his best friend.

And now, when everything was finally ready, all the finishing touches were added – to name them, the fake documents – Lando started to act like a five-year-old.

Well, in a way Daniel could totally understand him.

Mike looked at the papers in his hands. Ten passports, ten ID card, dozens of credit cards, all of them made for the manes in the passports, and they looked so believable even he thought they were real.
The only similar thing in all of them was…

"Newlyweds? Newlyweds??" Lando talked louder and louder with every word he said out loud. Dan wanted to laugh, but he was in too much fear for his life.

"Mr. Kimi and I decided that it was the most obvious cover." Lance shrugged, like he didn’t even realize what kind of a threat was right in front of him.
Ahh, so Kimi’s hands were also in it, that explained a lot.    

Mike was too afraid to talk.
He knew Lando well enough to know that it was better to stay silent, and just wait patiently until the other was over the worse.

If he wanted to be honest, he could agree with Kimi and Lance, that was actually the best cover for them.
Two strangers travelling together was more suspicious than a couple, and at least this way they could avoid a whole lot of uncomfortable questions. Max reached his arms towards him, silently asking for the passports, and Michael tried to somehow become invisible.

"I do not care what insanity you and Kimi came up with, I am not willing to…! The fuck are you laughing at?!" Lando turned to look at Max, who went through the papers one by one.

Who was in Michael’s opinion very very brave, or simply stupid.

"Have you even checked the names?" Max asked back "It’s amazing."

"I’m glad that at least you have a good time!"

"Lawrence and Roy Bittaker." Max help up two passports, and the matching ID cards "They killed more than twelve people in the 80s, and dig them in their farm. They’re one of the most successful serial killers."

"And I’ll be even more successful if I kill all of you for…!"

Max didn’t pay attention to Lando, but grabbed another pile.

"Kenneth and Angelo Buono. They only abducted and killed four women. Not as successful as the others, but they also did their fare share. Leonard and Charles Lake. Not my favs, they’re ex-marines. Killed eight people, abducted three, and robbed sixteen banks in six states. Steven and Frank Cano. Abducted twelve, killed all of them. And my all-time favourite." he held up the last two passports "Mr. and Mr. Clyde Barrow. Nice easter egg Lance. A cute Bonnie and Clyde reference. They killed nine cops, four civilians, and robbed more than a hundred banks."

"A classic." Lance said with a smile, and he looked really proud of himself.

"Yeah, great, I’m soooo happy you have fun!" it seemed like Lando would never calm down.

"How do you even know things like that?" Daniel asked Max.

"We learned in the academy."

"You’re so clever." Dan said with that lovestruck look Lando had seen the emotions even before Daniel had been willing to admit it to himself, but he didn’t have time for that right now.

He just couldn’t act like he was Michael’s husband.

Yeah, of course, it would have been hypocrisy to say that he had any problems with he physical aspect of the thing, but he was proud to say that since that night when Mike had not so kindly kicked him out of his room at the Ricciardo estate, he hadn’t tried anything. Michael was the one who had made that decision, he was the one who had had enough of Lando, and Lando wasn’t the type who tried more.

He wouldn’t go to Mike for a rejection, and the other had insulted him so much with the things he’d said, that the wound that his words had caused was still there.

But just like he’d established it before, somehow, he couldn’t keep his distance from Michael – it didn’t matter how hard he tried.

Because he did try, really! He had to admit that this trying led them to where they currently were.

He was looking at Mike, waiting, waiting for the other to say something, to be just as angry as him, to be offended, anything just Lando wanted to see an emotion on his face so desperately – but no. Of course, nothing. It wouldn’t have been Michael.

Mike felt Lando’s eyes on him, and yes, the other was probably waiting for him to look back, he avoided looking at Lando.
Why the fuck was he that angry anyway?! Okay, knowing their past it wasn’t optimal to put it mildly, but Mike could have said many other worse things.
Not like he could think about any at that moment, but he was sure, there were worse things than that.

And actually, if anyone had the right to be offended, it wasn’t Lando, but him.
He tried everything to keep his distance. It was Lando, who had decided from one moment to another waking up next to Mike on a sunny September morning that it had been the last time they had woken up together, and had just simply cut Mike off.

He wanted an explanation for ages.
The logical part of his brain simply couldn’t have processed the thing, and had searched for the reasons, a possible explanation, the mistake he’d made, because it had probably been him, because Lando wouldn’t have left if Mike had been perfect – and Mike had been looking for those answers until he’d gone crazy.

Until one morning he’d woken up – and he hadn’t thought about Lando.

Just like that, from one day to another, the constant pressure had disappeared from the back of his mind, he could have breathed without a heavy weight on his chest, and he could have coherent thoughts without thinking about Lando.

Of course, the other had to fuck it up again, and walk into Michael’s life – for the second time.

Mike was obviously proud of himself for being able to say no for him that time.
Okay, not immediately, because it was Lando, but slow and steady won the race, and maybe he’d been a little too harsh – Lando left him be.

Then came Lane and Kimi, and the whole playing with the papers like it was some kind of an insane card game, which was probably exactly like that for them – but Mike wasn’t in the mood to play.

And if that all wasn’t enough, Lando went full psycho, and acted like sitting next to Mihcael on a plane, or God forbid sharing a bed, or even having the same last name on their fake passports was like the apocalypse.

Well, fuck Lando then.

"Whatever." he shrugged, and only hoped that Lando wouldn’t gut him in his sleep for that. He could only survive until they could get together their little A team, and it wouldn’t take longer than a few weeks.

Michael tried to convince himself that he’d been in a worse situation before.
But after he got a meaningful look from Lando, who ran out of the room like a hurricane, he wasn’t so sure about that.

Chapter Text

Lance had Deja Vu and he didn’t like it at all.
Another time saying goodbye, another person of his family leaving, and okay, that time not it wasn’t about months or years, but he still didn’t like the situation.
He was standing at the seaside and watched the small hydroplane which was waiting for Michael and Lando to get in, and disappear in minutes.

"Just like we talked about it." Lance watched Papa maxplaining to Lando "If anything happens..."

"If anything happens, we can deal with that." Lando rolled his eyes "I killed more people in the past than all the names on the ID cards together."

"Yes, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of." nodded Max "Absolutely no killing civilians. Or killing cops. Or..."

"Okay, okay, get it. Chill. You worry too much. You’ll get wrinkles from that."

Lando and Papa could argue like they were an old married couple, but marriage was currently a word they couldn’t say out loud, so Lance chose not to tell that to them. He knew those two enough to understand that they used humor to show their emotions.

The exact opposite of what Mike and Dad did.

Lance watched the two of them, tightly hugging each other, quietly sharing some words, but he had no idea what they were talking about. It was probably one of the most surprising thing Lance had noticed after getting into the family: Daniel offered hugs so freely like he’d done that all his life.

"Take care of each other." Dad said after letting go of Michael "And if anything happens, just call. The sat-phone is safe, and we keep it turned on night and day until you get back."

"Everything Will be okay, don’t worry." told him Mike on that typical calm Mike voice which was so him, and which Lance would miss so much during those three weeks they’d be away.

Michael was the complete opposite of Lando. Not better, or worse, just different. Which obviously didn’t mean that Lance loved anyone them better than the other. They were part of his family, and he needed both of them.
Mike was calmness personified. The picture illustration next to the word in the dictionary. Someone, who always had some encouraging words at hand, and who knew hundreds, no, thousands of motivational quotes by heart like some kind of a Paulo Coelho. Someone, who always saw the good even in the worst situations. Someone who could always keep his cool. Someone Lance could lean on from the very first moment.

Lando couldn’t have been more different. He had a bad temper who could get really pissed off in seconds. Someone who could get worked up easily, and spend hours sulking. Someone, who was always ready whether it was about a gunfight or a good old hand to hand. Someone who had an opinion about everything, and wasn’t afraid saying it out loud – even if it led to some arguments. And someone Lance so envied for those personality traits.

Fire and ice.
Cats and dogs.
Michael and Lando fit perfectly in that line.

The only thing they seemed to agree on, ironically, was him.

Lando turned around and headed to Lance the exactly the same moment Mike did, and they got to him almost at the same time.

Mike, the eternal gentleman, with a wave of his hand and a nod, indicated to the other that he was willing to give up the lead in the parting, and for a moment, Lance was sure that Lando was going to be able to generate some controversy out of this, but in the end, he didn’t.

Lando’s huge, muscular arms embraced Lance tightly, squeezing him as if there was some kind of finality in that embrace. It was like he was about to go to the end of the world and never plans to come back.

The words came out of Lance's mouth without him being able to stop them.

"You won’t leave me, right?"

"My favourite idiot kid? Never." Lando said with a big grin before letting him go. "You're not getting rid of me that easily".

"I don't want to." Lance shrugged.

Mike took Lando's place, and now he was the one who hugged him tight.

"Take care of your parents, okay?" Michael said softly, as if either of them were in need to be taken care of. Or if Lance was able to do that.

"What about me? Aren’t they the ones who’re supposed to take care of me?"

"No, Lance, you can handle yourself. There's a lot more to you than you think."

Michael used to say things like that, with such confidence that on occasion even Lance believed his words.

The boy watched the two men walk away when everyone else was done saying goodbye.
They were so different, yet so alike.

Lance thought about how he’d read it once somewhere that opposites attracted.

***

Lando climbed into the driver’s seat of the seaplane and watched Michael fasten all the safety belts that had been fitted to the small plane.

"We're not going to crash, you know." he said "You can really trust me that much".

"Better safe than sorry." the man said simply.

"So, you're willing to admit that you're safe with me. There's always a first time, I guess."

"You're very funny." Mike remarked, and when he was done securely fastening all the hooks and buckles and belts, he looked at the other expectantly.

"Last chance to think about what's in your bag. I'm not turning back halfway because you left something on the island."

It was really like Lando to find the opportunity for a good sarcastic comment, and use it against Michael, didn’t matter where they were.

"Well, now that you mention it, I think I left one of the passports in the house." Mike said just to annoy the other.

And he succeeded.

"Seriously?!" Lando hit the stick. They'd discussed it a thousand times that Mike was in charge of the personnel files, and he was...

"Just kidding." Michael gave him the mercy shot.

"You have a fucking bad sense of humor."

Lando didn't ask him again if he had everything or not, but rather he started to occupy himself with the machine. Mike watched every move he made, turning on switches, setting all sorts of gauges, inputting the right coordinates into the system, and quickly going through the checklist.

He drove it like he drove everything else, which Michael already knew, because Lando was the one who brought them to the island, and he had lucky enough to have the experience of sitting by him while he was driving many years ago.
And he was lucky enough to survive that journey.

Lando didn't do anything half-heartedly, and that was true of his driving style too. It wasn't exactly dangerous, but Mike liked it better when he was the one doing driving. Not like Lando asked if he wanted to fly the plane.

The plane rose so smoothly that Michael couldn't tell when the moment was when they finally disappeared from the surface of the water, he could only notice that the distant figures of Lance, Max and Daniel were getting smaller and smaller as he looked at them from the small window.

With a huge sigh he fell backward in his seat, and once they reached the optimum flight altitude, there was no turning back.

Chapter Text

Tuvalu was a tiny island country about halfway between Australia and Hawaii, the smallest of the Ellice Islands - and the first stop on their little trip.

When Daniel and Michael had started putting their little recruitment plan together, they had spent hours coming up with as many names as they could have safely chosen from. In their profession, there was always the possibility that the last person they worked with wouldn't take the next job, or they couldn’t, because they were already working for someone else, or they were in prison, or they were actually resting in peace, only God knew where.

Fortunately, their man was operating in Australia, and so were two of Kimi's men, so it seemed logical to head there first.

Even if it wasn't that easy to get there.

Tuvalu was a lovely little place, one of the five coral reefs and four islands that make up the archipelago, with an area of just twenty-eight square kilometers and eleven thousand inhabitants, a total of five miles of paved roads, a sort of little banana republic, but most importantly, administratively it belonged to nowhere, enjoying complete autonomy.
And the fact, that out of the five miles of concrete roads, four were reserved for the airport, was just the icing on the cake.

After all, there was a scheduled flight from Tuvalu to Fiji three times a week, which was another step closer to their destination.

And a place, where they could finally test their acting skills.

Mike reached for Lando’s hand as they walked through the streets of Suva, the capital, toward the harbor.

The plan was to take a boat from Suva to New Zealand, and then they wouldn’t have to travel far to get to...

Lando instinctively pulled his hand back the moment he felt Michael's, but he was faster.

"Honey." Mike turned to his in his sweetest voice. "Can't I hold my husband's hand while we take a romantic walk?"

Michael looked at him in a way that Lando immediately wanted to throw up.

"Of course, you can, Darling."

He interlocked their fingers and angled his wrist so that she felt the other's muscles tighten. Just one more little movement, and he would have broken at least three of the man's fingers at once.
What he didn't do, of course, he’d promised Max that he would behave, but he also took satisfaction in knowing that Michael probably didn't know about that.

"Isn't it beautiful?" asked Lando, and with a twist of his hand, he made the other stop. They were only twenty yards from the open water, a sandy beach and palm trees and sparkling sunshine, all of which would most likely excite a couple.

At least that's what Lando thought, because for him there were too many people around, too much noise, and the color of the sand was not like what he was used to in Ni’ihau, and anyway, he was tired, restless, clumsy, and he wanted nothing more than to finally get to New Zealand and sleep in their soft, comfortable hotel bed.
He'd been awake for more than eighteen hours, and he was afraid that if he kept going like this, he'd lose control, and then heads would fall.

He glanced stealthily at Mike, but there was no sign of the fatigue of the journey on him.
But actually it was also true that the son of a bitch slept for a few hours while Lando was flying the seaplane.

"Just like you, Baby." Michael told him with a nice smile, and yes, now Lando was almost certain he would throw up. He would have answered with a sharp remark, but he was too tired and his brain was too slow to respond. "Come on, let’s go." He added, and slowly pulled his fingers out of Lando’s hold. Mike was almost certain the other wouldn't break his fingers, but it was better not to risk it.

They had more than an hour and a half before their ship sailed, and since it would have been too suspicious to just sit and wait in Suva harbor, they decided to walk.
A nice tourist couple made less of a splash than letting Lando fall asleep on a dock bench.

Michael stared straight ahead, but from his periphery he could see perfectly as the man next to him tried to suppress a yawn, with more or less success.

Mike offered to pilot the seaplane when they left Hawaii, and also to stay awake on the flight from Tuvalu to Fiji, because while they didn't look suspicious, at least for now it seemed like they didn't, Lando liked to stay awake all the time, but of course that stubborn idiot refused both, and now he was suffering the consequences.
Well, after that, Michael couldn't feel sorry for him for a minute.

No, clearly, he didn't put his arms around Lando’s shoulders so he could lean on him as they walked. It was just part of their disguise, and that way at least his fingers were safe.
And no, that was absolutely not why he pulled the other closer to him at all, to give Lando a chance to put his head on Michael’s shoulder if he needed to.
He was pretty sure he wasn't gonna do it anyway.
Just like he didn't take off his shirt anyway and risked sunstroke in a straw athlete because he saw Lando get goosebumps from the slightest warm blow, so, so tired. Maybe Mike was just hot.

"Oh Miiichael!" Lando laughed and patted him on the chest, which was probably meant as a nice, romantic gesture, but Mike felt the whole scene was so fake that he wondered if the people around them were not noticing.

Of course, it was possible that he was the only one who saw the whole thing, sort of an insider, like someone who already knew what Lando’s real laugh sounded.

There had been many nights spent talking, lying contentedly in a small motel's dubiously clean bunk bed, their only company a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and nowhere had been Lando's theatrical gestures, but Michael hadn’t missed them at all.
Lando was the epitome of humour, with a fast-moving tongue and even faster-spinning wheels in his brain, which made him have a striking commentary on everything, and a level of sarcasm that could bring some light to Mike's life even in the darkest of moments.
He was surprisingly honest, never avoided certain topics, and while they never talked about work, he was always willing to answer Michael's questions.

And he never, ever patted him on the chest like he just did. Lando hit, on the shoulder and hard, so hard that Mike often wondered if it was worth taking the risk and responding to the sarcasm with sarcasm, but he loved hearing Lando's laughter following the punch so much that he willingly took all kinds of pain.

The Lando who walked beside him was not the same Lando who didn't automatically withdraw from him touch.
The Lando in his memories, his Lando, liked to fall asleep on Michael’s shoulder when they had time.
He liked to switch through the TV channels, only to find that they didn't have anything he wanted to watch.
He liked to drink his whiskey-coke exactly the way Michael mixed it, or at least that was what he always said, even though Mike tried different mixing ratios.
His Lando was ticklish, and he would struggle to escape every time Mike pulled his fingernails down his side. And Mike never let him get away.

His Lando.
Who maybe never even existed.

With a sigh, he glanced at him again, then at his watch. Forty minutes before the ship left, which meant they still had time to buy some food and find the dock from which they were going.

"Let's go." He said it again, and then he turned around and maneuvered them to go back the way they had been walking.
Michael knew that he had to concentrate on his work; the picturesque surroundings were not there to dwell on the past.

What he didn't know was how hard it would be.

Chapter Text

There was a lot of things that could be said about New Zealand.
It was located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, it consisted of two large islands and many smaller ones, and its form of government was monarchy, with the head of state being the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom.
It had two official languages, English and Maori, and it had no land border.

But more importantly, because of its geographical location, New Zealand was the most isolated country on Earth.
It was 2,000 kilometers away from Australia, and the nearest other major landmass to the south was Antarctica.

But even more importantly, in New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, there was a booked hotel room waiting for them, with a bathroom, where Lando had been planning to take a long, very long shower to wash off the dust from the road, and a bed, soft, with mattresses and pillows, and many other things which were perhaps even more enticing than the shower, and for a moment, Lando seriously considered that the hygiene could go to hell, he’d fall into the bed as he was, clothes on and everything.
Of course, he would never have done that, but it just showed how tired he was. He slept a little on the ship on his way there, but no matter how far the Waitemata harbor was from Fiji, it couldn't make up for the previous almost full day of not sleeping. Actually, it was like that little nap just made it worse, and now it was like he was walking around in some kind of fog, covering his brain.
But it didn’t matter now, they were here, and it was time to go to sleep.

He should have known it wouldn't be so easy.

Due to the nature of his work, Lando was always prepared for the unexpected.
And when he said always, he meant it.

He always had a spare ammo for his gun, and a spare gun in case he ran out of the spare ammo, and of course, spare ammo for the spare gun, a minimum of two knives, bandages, more bandages, and an escape plan in case all of that didn't work.

He believed that life was like a game of chess, where to win you had to stay one step ahead of your opponent, and Lando was proud that he could do that in any situation.

Turned out he wasn't as good a chess player as he thought he was.

"There's one bed." he said it, just like that, factually, as he walked into the room by Mike's side. "There's only one bed."

"Yes." The man nodded to him and to Lando’s biggest surprise he didn't seem too shocked by it.

"Mike. There’s. Only. One. Bed." he explained, nice and slow, so the other person could understand. Okay, sure, the bed wasn't small, it was actually very large, and it looked so inviting that Lando had second (third?) thoughts about whether or not he needed that shower, but still.

The bed was nice, but there was only one of it.

"Lando." Michael started, and somehow his name sounded so weird coming out of Mike’s mouth. The whole situation seemed too serious, like a parent talking to his naughty child, and it was the last thought Lando wanted to attach to Mike. The man took his face in both hands and didn't continue until he made eye contact. "There’s only one bed, because we’re married."

Wow.
Wow.

Lando was almost sure she was dreaming.
Whether it was a good dream or a nightmare, he wasn't sure yet.

"I see." he said that while he was trying to nod, his head still in Mike's hands, but of course he was lying.
He didn't understand anything at all.

So, he and Michael were married.
Surprising, of course, but not so unexpected.
After all, something like this had always been in the air, hadn't it?

Of course, not marriage marriage, how could they be married already, where was the pickup period, the movies, dinner, flowers, opened car door?
Okay, maybe they had skipped that part, but they had covered for each other and had killed for each other, which may not have been as romantic to normal people, but those were exactly the kind of people who told Lando that he was never normal.

So, married.
Wow.

Lando's brain was spinning as fast as the swirling fog allowed, and he was trying to think.

If they were married, it meant that if he stood on his tiptoes and leaned just a few inches forward so that his lips touch Mike's lips, then the other one wouldn’t say no to him, right?
After all, that was what married people did, and he was aware of that, even if he didn't remember the details of the wedding.

Was it a big fuss? With a lot of people and loud music, in a sort of typical Kimi style, who probably organized the whole thing, and since it was just as likely that Lance was in on it, so Lando took the mess for granted.
Maybe even a couple of alpacas running around.
Or was it just a little family thing?
Just the five of them, and even though Lando would never say it out loud even under torture, the five of them were somehow silently became a family in his head, but since only he could hear his own thoughts, he was safe.

Marriage

He never thought he'd find a fool willing to marry him.
He wasn't exactly against marriage, but he wasn't for it either. The eternal question of if it was just a piece of paper why was it so important for so many people, but if it was just a piece of paper, why not?
Daniel and Max weren't married, and they seemed to be doing just fine without it, although it was also true that their relationship didn’t go back down as far as their relationship with Michael.
It was almost logical that they got married first.

"Lando."

"Hm?"

Oh, right.

Lando was still standing there, his head wedged between Mike's two huge hands, and he had no idea how much time had passed.

"Do you know where we are?"

"Married." He said, and let's just say he didn't quite understand the question.

"I think you’re a little out of it. Go to sleep, you'll be fine."

"Okay." he nodded, and as Michael let him go, he almost fell into the big bed.

He didn't go to the shower as he had planned, but the bed was just as soft as he had imagined, and Lando could almost feel himself sinking into the mattress among the many pillows, and although it wasn't cold at all - New Zealand, the average temperature for that time of year was about 30 degrees Celsius - he even put on the thin blanket.

He didn't have time to think about the whole marriage thing any longer - he fell asleep in seconds.

Chapter Text

The plane made the trip between Wellington, New Zealand, and Adelaide, Australia, in just over five hours, which was much shorter and definitely more comfortable than their entire previous there had been.
And this was only the first major stop on their journey.

Lando was looking at Michael sitting next to him, the man leaning back in his seat, pretending to sleep with his eyes closed. He'd slept next to him just enough times to know when the other one was really asleep. Mike’s breathing deepened, and the already calm aura that had always surrounded him became even calmer. Lando had always envied him for that peace.

He didn't mention last night, and Mike was too nice to bring it up.
Not that there was anything to talk about.

Lando was tired, and his head was a little messed up, so... It even happened with the bests sometimes.

And he was very proud of being the best, and that nothing similar had ever happened to him. In his best days, he had spent nights on empty rooftops, in cramped, dusty places, or anywhere, in the most uncomfortable positions, keeping watch, without even losing his attention even for a moment.

And that professionalism had to change right now, when he even had a witness for it.
That was just great.

Was he really that tired? Well, that was easy to say, because he was the one who took them there, and it took a lot of strength to keep the cover up all the time.
Or would he have been this sloppy? It'd been a long time since he'd actually been on a cover mission, not just as a sidekick, or been in active danger.
The Ricciardo case wasn't his thing, and as it turned out, it wasn't even a case to talk about.

Maybe he got old? Okay, no, he wouldn’t cross that line.

With a big sigh, he turned away from Michael and looked out the window next to him.

Or did he just feel safe?

Everybody in the business knew that Guillotine worked alone, and did the work of a whole team very well on his own. He didn't need some idiot to lean on his neck and watch his every move, to be distracted under the guise of help, to have anyone cover him from behind so he could take care of himself.

Yet, perhaps unconsciously, he was able to give way to his fatigue.
In a deeper part of his brain, there was Mike, the safe spot, who was watching for him, who he knew could protect them both, who was at least as professional as he was.

Maybe it was Michael all along, who -
No, he didn't want to think about that.

He could feel him moving beside him, so he turned around.

"Rise and shine, motherfucker."

"Good morning to you, too."

"We’re landing."

Mike just nodded at his words and in his head, he went through their route.
Adelaide was Australia's fifth-largest city, and though fortunately the plane landed close enough to the rendezvous point, a short journey was still ahead.

"We need to rent a car."

"I know."

Lando tried not to be offended that Michael thought he'd forgotten the plan.

West Beach was less than an hour's drive from the airport, a small coastal suburb of Adelaide, with a real sense of Australian life, with a sandy beach along a dazzling blue sea that attracted almost more tourists each year than any other place in the country. It had Australia's largest public golf course, the longest continuous bicycle path, a sailing harbor, and, if that wasn’t enough, numerous parks for visitors to enjoy.

Lando knew all about it, he'd just read the Wikipedia page on the place.

"Who do you want to be today?"

"Excuse me?"

"Who do you want to be today?" Mike repeated the question, slowly, verbatim, like Lando had asked back because he hadn't heard it in the noise of the landing. He’d never understand why people had to applaud the pilot the minute the plane's wheels hit the ground. No one ever applauded him, no matter how well he killed. And sometimes, he really deserved it. For example, when...

It didn’t matter.

"I heard what you said." He informed Michael when the man pressed his handbag into his hand, which he had just removed from the small storage compartment above their heads.

"Then what?"

"I just don't understand why..."

The only reason Mike was able to surprise him was because he wasn't prepared. They were standing in the narrow aisle of the plane, blocking the way for all the other passengers, and they were supposed to be busy, and this was exactly the moment that Michael chose to grab him by the wrist and pull him towards his chest and kiss him like he'd never kissed Lando before, which was a big deal because it wasn't even close to their first kiss, but if that wasn't enough, he squeezed Lando's hands to his body like...

Like he was trying to put his hand on the tiny pockets sewn on the inside of his pants.

It was Max' idea, well, no, it wasn't really his, but he mentioned that he'd met a smuggler who'd sneak important documents onto an airplane that way. Michael was tall enough that the extra lining on his jeans wouldn't be noticeable, and the fact that he wasn't even noticed during the body search was only because of a negligent airport worker doing his job.

Mike asked him who he wanted to be.
It was one thing to enter the country with a passport, but it would probably be safer to rent a car with another one.

But why it was necessary to commit a public indecency right in the middle of the plane, Lando could not understand.

Besides, he didn't care what passport they used.

"Welcome to Adelaide." smiled the woman at the car rental counter.

Michael smiled back almost as kindly and handed him two passports.

The two at the top of the pile, Lando didn't even look at which one it was.

"Mr. and Mr. Clyde Barrow." She read out the names and checked the pictures. One was Lando's, the other was Mike's, and they were such high-quality forgeries that he was sure the woman couldn't find anything objectionable in them. "Like Bonnie and Clyde?"

"You have no idea how many times we've heard that."

"I guess so. On your honeymoon?"

"No." Lando said the exact same time when Michael said yes.

"Second honeymoon." Mike explained "Anniversary."

"Oh, my God. It must be very romantic." she sighed instead of handing them the keys for a car.

"Sure." Lando nodded, though he wasn't so sure.
And when he finally got the key, Lando squeezed it like she was trying to take it back, and he could feel the fake smile twitching his cheeks.

"Mr. Barrow?"

They were halfway to the exit when she called after them, and there was something in her voice, something, something that Lando couldn't explain, but Michael, who was walking beside him could hear it too, because the man gave him a blank look.

"Don’t stop." Mike said, the best strategy in a crowded place. When someone's name was called, they would be instantly recognized, for them automatically turning toward the sound or runs away. Quiet was the best strategy.

Even though Lando was having a hard time staying calm.
He knew so well that Lance and his fucking names would get them in trouble. They were just trying to blend in, because Alonso's men could be anywhere, and this poor little fool is turning the spotlight on them.

"Hey?! Mr. and Mr. Barrow??" Lando heard the approaching footsteps, but he didn't look back. He didn't have a gun on him, not now, but he still had his fists, which was useless in a gunfight, but he was hoping they wouldn't go that far. They were out in the open, surrounded by hundreds, no, thousands of people, and the footsteps just kept coming, with a sharp, pounding sound, as if...

The receptionist jumped at him so suddenly, she didn't realize that Lando hadn't hit him on a reflex, and as far as he could tell, Michael was in a similar state.
But the woman still had a friendly smile, and in her hand were the two passports that both of them forgot to put away.

"Mr. Barrow? You left these at the reception."

"Oh, my God. It's very kind of you to bring them for us!"

"Oh it’s nothing, really! Once again, welcome to Adelaide and have fun here!" another nice smile, and the woman disappeared just as quickly as she got there. She probably went back to her work.

But as nice as she was, Lando didn’t have fun.
Not at all.

Chapter Text

"Are you sure we’re at the right place?"

"He must be here somewhere."

Finding someone without any concrete information about where he was, was actually harder than Michael had thought.
And Kimi hadn’t helped at all.

"You’ll recognize him." He’d said weeks ago, when the whole trip had only been a plan in their heads, and while yes, they knew Kimi’s man must have been somewhere there, at West Beach, he hadn’t been willing to say anything else.

"Okay, let’s think then." Lando stopped so suddenly in front if Mike that the man almost bumped into him.

Lando was standing there on the sandy beach, eyes closed, and he was trying to think things through.
He’d always been like that, analytical, searching for logic in everything, but ah the same time relying on his intuition, observing the world around him.

Which was no problem at all.
Michael had always been jealous of how the other could find the connection between two things just by thinking out loud, and most of the time he got to the right conclusion.

The problem right now was that Lando didn’t know Kimi at all.

"Kimi said we’d recognize him, so I guess our man has some special identification mark, or -"

"Lando?"

"Hm?"

"I think I found him."

That made Lando get out of his own thoughts, first looking at Mike, eyes narrowed like he didn’t really understand what the other was talking about, that typical look Michael got from him every time he was brave enough to be involved in his business, but then finally, finally he was willing to look at what Mike was trying to show him.

Pointing a finger at someone was rude, at least Mike’s mom had always told him that, and growing up he learned that it also wasn’t the most discreet thing ever.
And discretion was everything, in their life.

But all that didn’t matter now, because it was only the two – excuse me, three of them alone at the beach, Michael himself, Lando, who was watching the scene unfold in front of him with opened mouth, and the man, who was the scene.

"Morning!" said man was waving at them, one of his arms high up in the sky, and with the other he was holding a surfboard at his hips. He was wearing aviator sunglasses, and a thick blonde moustache which looked exactly like it cut his face in half. The mullet completed the look, and it looked surprisingly good on him.

But the most surprising of all was that he didn’t wear clothes.

Completely nothing.

No shoes, no shirt, not even a swimming trunk.

And when he didn’t get an answer for his greeting, he walked closer to them.  

"Can I help you somehow?" he asked, the same resting bitch face Mike got so used to seeing from Kimi. He couldn’t read any emotions on his face, but as he took of his sunglasses, the icy blue eyes watched them with interest.

Michael was sure they found their man.

"I think you already helped."

The man’s face changed in a second, just as quick as the weather did on Hawaii, and with a big smile, he reached his hand to Mike.

"Kimi told me you’d come. I’m Valtteri." he introduced himself "Although he didn’t say anything more, so I don’t know the details…"

"If you have any questions, we’re ready to answer them." Michael explained, and looked at Lando as confirmation, but it seemed the other didn’t really want to participate in the conversation. He looked straight at the sand under his feet, and it looked like he got completely lost in his own thoughts.

Like he wasn’t even there – and it really wasn’t like him.

"Nah, I’m fine mate." Valtteri shrugged "Kimi said he had a job for me, and I trust Kimi. Just tell me when and where, and I’ll be there."

"Val!" all three of them turned towards the female voice.

The woman was just as blonde as Valtteri, and it seemed like they know each other, because she walked up to him, and with one arm she hugged him, just to give a small kiss on his lips, and her other hand was on his hip, dangerously close…

Okay, Mike couldn’t just watch them like that.

He sneakily looked at Lando, and the could read the silent wow off his lips.

So that was why Lando was so quiet.

"Hey there, I’m Tiffany."

"Wherever I go, Tiff comes with me, I hope it’s not a problem." Valtteri said, again, with a shrug, which made the surfboard on his side moving up, which gave them enough visibility that Mike just saw moving his…

Suffice it to say, it wasn’t easy to keep eye contact.

"No problem." Mike said, and took a longing look to their rented car, then he forced himself to look at the man’s face and not…

Well. Other things.

Lando was still staring at the sand, so it was his job to talk through the technical details with the other two. While Tiffany wasn’t in their original plans, at least as Michael knew about it, but thankfully they all liked to be prepared, so it really wasn’t a problem. Kimi trusted Valtteri, and it seemed Valtteri trusted Tiffany, so they also had to trust her.

"Any questions?" he finished his monologue, looking at the pair.

"Nope."

"Just in case if anything comes to your mind, call Kimi, he’s in constant connection with Daniel. And that’s all. Thank you for your help."

"Don’t thank me yet." Valtteri took the surfboard from one of his hand to the other so he could easily shake Michael’s hand, revealing the naked reality, literally, but it seemed like he wasn’t shy "Well, if you excuse us, we should go to the water as long as we have good waves."

"Sure, yeah, of course. See you two at Ni’ihau."

A final round of polite saying goodbye, everyone shook everyone’s hand, and finally they could walk back to the car – and Lando could finally look up.

"Huge. Huuuuge…"

Michael had never been the envious type, at least he didn’t think about himself like that.
He was happy with what he had, found the happiness in the small things – no pun intended – and he found his balance.
By that age he accepted himself, his body, and yes, he had no reasons to be insecure.

We wouldn’t let Valtteri and his enormous, mutant, so long it could be seen from under the surfboard penis ruin his inner peace and plant he seed of body image disorder in his soul.

He was sure that also had disadvantages – he didn’t know per se, but he imagined it like that.

"… personality." He finished the sentence for Lando.

He felt the other’s eyes on him, but he somehow wasn’t in the mood to look back.

"Oh yes. Exactly what I wanted to say."

Michael opened the door and sat behind the wheel without looking at Lando.
Turned on the radio, and from there they didn’t talk to each other.

Until they arrived at Perth.

Chapter Text

"You’re not being serious, right?" Lando asked, and he was turning over his shoulder to give a deadly look to the random guy who pushed him from behind, but the man didn't even notice.
It was so crowded, no one paid attention to the etiquette.

"You’re absolutely no fun sometimes."

"I hate the circus."

"Why?"

"Clowns aren't funny, animals are in the zoo too, and the flea circus is so small I can't even see it."

"You are horrible."

"Me? You're the one dragging me into a circus when we're right in the middle of-!”

"Exactly." nodded Michael at Lando’s words. "Right in the middle of something important."

"And then Can’t we instead…?"

"Shh, shh, shh. They’re staring." Mike told him, and before the lights went out, Lando was pushed into one of the two empty chairs at the end of one row.

The ringmaster just started his usual monologue, which instantly made Lando want to throw up, and he was leaning closer to Mike to let him know that, when he hushed him again, and if that was what he wanted to do about it, then Lando was more than ready to make a scene in the middle of everything, so...

The audience erupted in loud applause as the lioness walked into the center of the stage.

It seemed like she didn’t like the crowd either; she whipped her tail while walking around and around as if she was trying to escape through the bars of an invisible cage, suspiciously watching those in the front row.

Lando only noticed the man when the animal also turned towards him.

There was nothing unusual about him, he must have been about Mike's height, blonde-ish hair with a short haircut, but there was something in his blue eyes that immediately caught Lando’s attention - and that the lioness also noticed.

They stared at each other for a long time, the man and the animal, as if they were communicating without a sound, and it only took a barely visible head movement from the man to control her.

Minutes or hours passed, Lando couldn’t tell.
All he was sure of was that he was watching with wide open eyes the beautifully choreographed show that the two of them were doing, moving in sync, the lioness as an extension of the man's hand, so much on the same wavelength that by the end he wasn't sure who was controlling who.

"Come on." Michael said as he pulled Lando up from his seat.

"Hey! I was watching!"

"What, you like the circus?"

"I'm about to give you a circus that'll...!"

"Michael!" they both turned at the same time in the direction of the sound, and for a minute and a half, Lando was convinced that it was the lioness that was calling after them, the same lioness he had just seen on stage, and...

"Scotty!" Mike let go of Lando's arm just to spread his arms and greet the other.

"Mikey!" the man did the same thing, and walked towards them with his arms outstretched.

"Scotty!"

"Mikey, you fucking bastard!" the man's voice suddenly wasn't as happy to see them, and that was almost immediately reflected in the face of the calmly sitting animal.

"Oh Scotty, come ooon!"

"Don't fucking Scotty to me, for God's sake! The last time I saw you, you almost got me killed for your fucking stupidity!"

"Welcome to the club." the words came out of Lando so naturally that he didn't even realize he had spoken them at first, until both the men and the lioness turned to her inquisitively.

"Oh, hey there. My name's Scotty. Scotty James." he shook Lando’s hand "And she’s Fluffy."

"Excuse me?"

The lioness stood up from her spot, and slowly walked towards them to introduce herself. She rubbed her head to Lando’s arm like cats did, except for the fact that a normal house cat wasn’t strong enough to get Lando out of his balance with only one touch.

"Fluffy?" the animal looked at Lando for the mention of her name, waiting for him to continue.

Lando hadn’t even known before that there was such think as an animal looking at him with such interest in her eyes, but he couldn’t explain it any other way. He held up his hand slowly, maybe even sloer than it was necessary, but this was the first time he’d been that close to a lioness.

"It’s okay, she won’t bite." Scotty said, seeing his hesitation, and Lando couldn’t hold back a laugh. The man was talking about her like she was some kind of a lapdog. But if he said she wouldn’t bite, Lando really hoped he wasn’t lying. He reached for the soft-looking fur, and started to pet her.

It was simply magical.

Lando’s hand made a big circle around the animal’s face, rubbing a little here and there, searching for the spot that would make her close her eyes, and he finally stopped at her nose but it seemed like it wasn’t enough for her – she pushed her huge head closer into Lando’s palm, demanding more pets.

"You’re such a fucking bitch."

"I hope you’re talking to her." Lando turned to look at Scotty.

"Well, I don’t know you long enough to make such comments about you, so…"

Mike felt like that was the exact moment when he should intervene.

Scotty had always been a little too honest, which was both a blessing and a curse at the same time, especially when it was about Lando, but Scotty could have been such a good addition to their little group – it would have been a shame if Lando cut his throat for a silly comment.

He was the most surprised when it didn’t happen.

Because Lando started to laugh, head leaned back, just like Daniel did so many times before, and his hand didn’t stop to pet Fluffy all along.

"I like you, Scotty James." he said when he was finally able to talk again.

"The pleasure is all mine."

Mchael decided that maybe it could have been better if Lando had cut his throat.

He took a deep breath, and reminded himself that Scotty was an old friend of his, that they had saved each other’s asses many times before, and that why they had come here to talk to him.

"So Scotty, the thing is…"

"Let me guess. You and Daniel got yourself into some deep shit, and now you need me to get you out of it. Like many times before."

"Don’t exaggerate, it’s just…"

"Can Fluffy come?"

"Ehhh. No."

"You need to wait until I find a responsible sitter for her then."

Fluffy, just like she was understanding that they were talking about her, chose that moment to lie down on her side, giving more space for Lando for some belly rubs too, who had to squat down on the ground to properly be able to give it to her.

"Are you sure she can’t come?" he looked up at Michael, with those huge, puppy eyes Mike could never say no to "Please, please, please!"

Mike wasn’t proud of it, but for a second he really questioned just how important Scotty James was for their mission.

Chapter Text

West-Australia and the Seychelles had a four-hour time difference, which didn’t provide that much of a jetlag – what was more, for Mike it felt like some kind of a time travel. From the metaphorical present to the past, four hours earlier, like it was fate, trying to give him a new chance to erase his past mistakes.

Well, for that fate should have given him way more than just four hours.

"We’re here." Lando was watching the building in front of them, while Michael was watching Lando.

They arrived to Victoria, the capital not even an hour ago, and they didn’t plant to stay more than that, but those four hours they got back by travelling there just couldn’t stop bothering him.

"After you." He opened the door of the bank for Lando.

The term tax haven referred to countries offering very beneficial taxation conditions for firms and business organizations.
And everyone knew the Seychelles was the tax haven of the tax havens.

It was governed as a Republic, and its population was the smallest among the African States, and the only thing the natives could make any money with was the fishing industry – no agriculture, no nothing, only small taxes.

What a coincidence.

But obviously the small taxes weren’t the only benefits of having an offshore account there.
The most important one for them was discretion.
Because rule number one on the Seychelles was that the actual owner of an account was kept as a complete secret. Se wen Kimi had flown there before their little trip for a family vacation and had opened an account in a bank, they didn’t need to be afraid of anyone connecting it to them.

The woman at the reception desk didn’t have the same soft voice and drippy smile as the one at the car rental place, and didn’t fake any surprise when they handed her the fake Bonnie and Clyde IDs – Mike was almost sure she didn’t even check the names.

They didn’t do that there.

The same woman led them through endless, winding corridors to the vault, where there were hundreds of safety deposit boxes behind a heavy door. She walked with them to one of those, and stopped in front of it.

"I leave you two alone for that. The door has an electric time lock, which means that after I close it behind myself, you’ll have exactly thirty minutes to do your business. The key only opens your box, and an alarm automatically goes off if you try to open any other." She nodded at her own words "See you in half an hour."

Lando immediately started to work.
The magnetic card, their key let out a loud click in the complete silence, and Lando got the heavy box from its place like it weighted nothing, even thought Michael knew Kimi enough to know it was full.
And yes, opening the safe confirmed for both of them that Kimi had been an overachiever packing for them.
Again.

At the top of the box there were rolled up banknotes in different currencies, the heads facing upwards, just the way they printed them in banks.
Or in Kimi’s office, but that was a story of another day.

Michael couldn’t have said how much it was, but it only took a look to know that it would be more than enough.
Lando automatically grabbed the Euros, since they were going to Europe from there, and he put some of it in his backpack and he also filled all of his pockets too.

Mike reached for the weapons laying under the money.
No one in the bank cared about what people kept in their safe boxes, and as far as Michael knew there weren’t even cameras there, and obviously Kimi had thought about everything.

Of course, they couldn’t carry that everything with them, they didn’t want to attract any attention, and while they hadn’t had that problem in the first part of their journey, Mike liked to keep it that way.
Because it was exactly that – only the first part of their journey.
He didn’t want to start causing a stir now.

He got the already used IDs and passports out of his pockets and put them in the box, getting new ones out.

"Do we have everything?" Lando asked, taking a last look into the box.

"Yes."

"Perfect."

He put the safe back to its place just as easily as he’d got it out, they key card clicked, Kimi’s safe was locked again.

"How much time do we have left?"

Mike lifted his hand and checked his watch.

"Nineteen minutes."

"Oh."

There was the opportunity.
The perfect opportunity, actually.

Mike symbolically got four hours back from his life, and now there were nineteen minutes of that for only themselves, when no outside distractions could stop them, when Lando didn’t have a place to escape to and he was forced to listen to Mike, and when Michael could maybe get answers for his questions.

When they’d left some days ago – damn, had it really only been some days?!
Michael had a feeling like they had been on the road for centuries now, like Lando had always been part of his life, like those days when they hadn’t been at each other’s side didn’t even exist.

He hadn’t thought before that it would be this hard.
That it would be this hard to be together with Lando, waking up and going to bed with him, and not to think about their past.

And now, when he was in the past somehow, and he had the chance, he just couldn’t take it.

They were just standing next to each other, Lando was playing with the zip of his backpack, and Mike was staring at the wall in front of him, and all that without saying a fucking word.

Amazing.

"It’s very hot in here." Mike said, and he wanted to shoot himself in the head with one of Kimi’s guns.

"Yeah, not even a fucking A/C here."

Okay, they agreed, that was something. At least they could get there during that almost one week. Michael checked his watch again – twelve minutes left.

That was the time when he should have said something, and quickly, because Mike almost heard the tick-tock of the clock, getting closer to the present with every passing second, and he started to run out of all that time he’d got back from fate.

"Are you sure you packed everything?" he turned to look at Lando.

"Yes."

Eight minutes.

"Good."

Five.

"I’m actually a little sad we’re leaving. I liked the sunshine."

Four.

"But that fucking jetlag here and there… it will be nice to be in a place where we don’t have to deal with that."

Three.

"Look, Lan…"

"Hm?"

The boy turned towards him, and this time he didn’t correct him for using the nickname, didn’t immediately come up with a sarcastic comment, didn’t put his hand around Michael’s throat to choke him to death…

So, obviously Mike didn’t tell him anything.

And fortunately, he didn’t have to.

The woman from the reception opened the door, a sign that their thirty minutes passed, and that it was time to leave.
Which was exactly what they were planning to do.

Hours later, when the two of them were sitting on a small plane ,very similar to the one they had come here with, on their way to the second bog stop their little tour, Mike slowly but surely got back from the past to the present.  

Chapter Text

"The maid, in the library, with a wrench!"

Daniel stood up so suddenly and threw all his cards on the table, Lance was afraid he’d kick over the board.
He wouldn’t have been surprised about that.

There was only one fucking board game on the whole island, a very old Cluedo, and actually he’d been the one who had come up with the idea that now that they didn’t have anything else to do, they could have played a round or two – for now he regretted it a million times.

Even though it had been such a good idea.

The days after Lando and Michael had gone, hadn’t been easy.
Dad had checked the satellite phone religiously, he’d turned it on, then he’d turned it off just to turn it on again, just to be sure it had been actually working. But it didn’t matter how long he’d been waiting for Mike to call him; the phone had never rung.

Papa had disappeared for hours every day to go for a run, and while Lance had no idea how big the island was, he was almost sure Papa had already run zillions of laps around.

And here was him, in the middle of the nerve-wracking waiting.
Dad had been lost in his thoughts, his mind constantly on the task, which Lance couldn’t really help with, and yes, Papa had asked him for his runs but hey. There was a limit to everything.

So, he had just spent his days in his room, in front of his computer, playing with the boys, and Dad had never cared enough to scold him about it – another sign that it had been really bad.

Originally it had been Nicky’s idea, once Lance had told him how lonely he’d felt those days.
Obviously, he hadn’t told them about the details, his friends had only known that he’d had to move abroad because of his Dad’s job, which hadn’t been that far from the truth.

"Dad usually works all day. And Papa just enjoys his space."

"If they get a divorce, you’ll have two Christmases!" Pierre had informed him kindly, and the thought hadn’t made Lance happy, at all. He hadn’t really had a Papa for that long, and he hadn’t wanted it to end that fast.

"Do you think they’d get a divorce?"

"Oh my god Lan, they won’t! Pierrot stop, saying out loud all the stupid thoughts in your head!" Charles had warned him, and it had meant a lot coming from him. Maybe the others hadn’t really known Lance, but Charles did, and his opinion mattered the most.

Lance had no idea what he’d done so well in his life in the past to deserve friends like them, but he was really glad for it.
Or well, Lan, his alter ego, because for most of the guys, he’d still been anonym.

"We always played board games together." Nicky had added to the conversation.

"Nick, your parents actually divorced!" Pierre couldn’t have been able to stop his propaganda. "Estie, what are you and your parents do together?"

"My parents were both mercenaries. They taught me how to kill." Esteban had said in a voice that had made all of them laugh, but for a second Lance had really thought about if that had been true or not.

Just like he couldn’t have forgotten about that whole board game either.

He’d looked for something in the whole house, and in the end, he’d found that fucking Cluedo, which had destroyed his life on so many levels since then.
Maybe the situation couldn’t have been that bad if there had been a wide variety they could have chosen from, but that had been the only thing there, and his parents hadn’t been able to leave the safety of the island, and Dad hadn’t let him to go anywhere to buy something new alone, so yes.
He'd had to try and get the best out of what he’d had.

Lance had never been any problems with losing, moreover, at first he’d thought about it like some kind o a challenge, to beat Papa, who had won all of the rounds since the first time, but it seemed like Dad didn’t agree with him.

"You’re cheating!" Dad stood up from the small table where they played every day. Lance had also thought about that, but he soon realized that Papa couldn’t cheat that many times in a row without being busted, plus, it seemed logical in a way, Papa, who was a marine, some kind of a cop, and he was much better in solving crimes than them.

Even though if those crimes were only in a board game.

"Whaaaaat?" stood up Papa too, and Lance was actually very proud of himself for making themselves a playing nook in the living room, and not in the kitchen – he was afraid that Papa might have been able to find a knife there to defend his honor.

"I said what I said! You’re cheating!"

"I’m not! I’m not the one who cheats!"

"What are you suggesting here?!"

"I’m not suggesting anything, I’m saying it out loud, that you are the criminal here, so if someone would cheat that1s you, and now you’re only hate that someone is smarter than you, and…!"

Lance didn’t even wait for him to finish his sentence – he wasn’t exactly curious about it.
He left his parents in the room, and walked out to the shore instead, sitting down on the warm sand.

That wasn’t what he’d expected when Lando and Michael had left to go on their mission.
It was finally time for him to be alone with his Dad and Papa, and even if only temporarily, but they could act like a real family.
Lance had never had a family, or at least not one he would call one – he’d only had his first real bed when he’d moved to Daniel – but he hadn’t imagined it like that.

And Lando and Mike had only been away for like a week.

With a huge sigh he lay down on the sand, and started to watch the clouds floating in the sky, trying to find a shape in every one of them.
And trying not to think about how long the next some week would be without Lando and Michael.

He could only hope that Esteban had a better time than him.  

Chapter Text

Carlos looked at his dad, and his dad looked at Jenson.

Carlos couldn't help but notice that there were exactly seven people at the big table, seven as the seven deadly sins, and he saw some sort of fate in the matter.
The fact that he was the seventh to complete the numbers was just the icing on the cake.

"So, how are we doing?" Fernando asked, his eyes still fixed on Jenson, as if at least the man was the greatest scholar of all knowledge.

Maybe he was, but he couldn't fool Carlos anymore.

There was a time when he would have done anything for this.
To sit here with everyone else, to be a part of his father's business, to make his father realize that it wasn’t Esteban he should have called son, to do anything to earn his respect.

And now there were seven of them, his father, Mark, Jenson, Stoffel, Lewis, Esteban and him, and Carlos suddenly felt a burst of nausea from the sour taste in his mouth as he tried to swallow the huge lump in his throat.

"I'm going out for a cigarette."

That was a first for him, Carlos, to be so free to interrupt a meeting in the middle of it, as if it were the most natural thing, as if he had never been allowed to speak unless his father gave him permission.

"Of course, Carlito. I'll tell you all about it later." his father nodded.

There was no more cage disguised as a room, no more prison guard disguised as security, Carlos was free as a bird.

Fernando never called him Carlito, in fact, he never called him anything unless he needed to, but ever since that day at the casino, his whole life had been turned upside down.
And it wasn’t just because Fernando finally started to treat him like a human being.

Lando had made him promise that day that he would have left the building before his father realized he had been there, but of course Carlos hadn’t listened to him – he’d never done.
He had been there when his father's men had raided the place, and he had seen that blond man and the reinforcements to come in.
Carlos had no idea who he was, but he definitely knew they weren't on the same side.

Of course, his father had been furious when he’d got back in the van, and Carlos had been prepared for the inevitable, but it had never come.

"Have you used that?" His dad had grabbed his wrist instead of just taking his gun and holding it up to his face. It would have been futile to lie, he definitely had the smell of gunpowder.

"Yes."

"Who else was there?"

"Guillotine. And Italiano."

Maybe that had been the first hug his father had ever given him, or maybe he’d been just too young the last time to remember.
Whatever it was, of course, he kept quiet about that he might have had the chance to use the weapon earlier.

As he walked out the door, he reached into his pocket for the box and took a deep breath of the first slug of his cigarette.

Yes, he might have had the chance to use the gun before that, and on no other but Lance Ricciardo, but to be perfectly honest, Carlos couldn’t care less about the boy.

But he couldn’t forget Lando ‘Guillotine’ Norris.

The man was top – notch, an expect at his job, he’d killed more people with his bare hands than all the other Carlos knew, and trust him, he knew a lot of people, and he used his knife with such naturalness like it was an extension of his hand.

He was deadly.
But most importantly, he was deadly beautiful.

Carlos didn’t really have anything to do there, like really.
Most of the time he just sat in his room, locked or not, and he’d tried everything to get out of his father’s way, but even he could have seen the effect Lando had on everyone.

"Stop staring at me, Charlos." he’d said it to him one time with a twinkle in his eyes, and even though it had been the first time someone out of his dad’s crew had actually used his name and hadn’t just called him boy, there had been something about that pronunciation that somehow had made it even more special.

Of course, Carlos knew he’d had no chance.
How could a man like Lando have noticed a nobody like him?

But of course, that hadn’t stop him from trying – if there was something he’d learned from his dad it was that he should have never given up.

He knew he was only a replacement; he wasn't stupid enough not to know.
Lando had clearly had someone, and then he hadn’t, and Carlos had been lucky enough to be a part of his life as a substitute, even if only for a little time.

He didn't know who was replacing him, but he didn't really care.
Well, that little encounter at the casino answered that question.

It could have been called a lover obsession, although Carlos wouldn't have said he was in love with him.
It could have been called the hurt of the third, but considering he always knew he could only be second in Lando's life; so he didn't feel offended.
Carlos would have called it morbid curiosity, and maybe that was the closest thing to the truth.

His father hadn’t asked, and Carlos would never tell him.
Just like many other things that had happened in the past, their meeting would also be their dirty little secret.

He looked back over his shoulder and saw the other six in the office still in the middle of the meeting.
He put out his cigarette on the window sill and automatically reached for the next one.

He decided not to go back, as far as he could see, they were perfectly fine without him. Anyway, his dad said he'd tell him everything he needs to know.
Whether he wanted to or not.

He took big steps towards the garden. Spring was slowly turning into summer; there was no clouds on the sky.

Carlos turned back towards the house once more - with no one around, it seemed surprisingly calm.
It was like it was really just a house and not the cornerstone of something disgusting.

Everything he ever wanted was right here.
And Carlos hated every minute of it.

He decided to take along walk around – there were many things in his mind he wanted to think about.
All lies – there was only one thing, but it occupied all of his thoughts.

What are you up to there, Lando?

Chapter Text

Esteban watched Carlos leaving through the large glass door that opened onto the garden until the other man was out of sight. It was an unusual experience not being there with him and not following his every move, but somehow Este got over it.

One less thing to worry about.
But, of course, Esteban Ocon's life wouldn’t have been complete if he hadn’t immediately created another problem for himself to replace the previous one.

It wasn’t like Este always wanted this kind of life for himself.

He came from a perfectly normal family, father, mother, and their one and only son, and back home in France, he’d wanted to go to university.

But all his plans had been derailed by his father's untimely death.
He’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the policeman had said, when he’d stopped by their house in the middle of the night with the bad news, and it was something Esteban would remember for the rest of his life.

As well as the funeral, the tears of his mother and his cousins, the way his uncle tried to be strong for them, and how he just couldn't cry.

Not until ‘d found the people responsible, until he’d caught the man whose stray bullet stopped in his father's heart instead of his opponent's, and beat the shit out of him in a dark alley, and he had been still shaking from the adrenaline when he’ realized that the other guy couldn't have felt his punches anymore.

And from then, there was no turning back.
He might have been young and inexperienced, but full of ambition when he’d joined Alonso.

He wanted to get his phone out of his back pocket and check his e-mails, but he didn't.

The game they were playing with Lance was already dangerous enough, and it was becoming less and less more like a game, and Esteban was still looking for reasons why he hadn't shown his boss their first text exchange.

But Lance hadn’t shot him, in the Enchanté.
He would have had the same chance as Esteban, they'd been facing each other, he'd just had to pull the trigger, and he was sure Lance would have given his father at least as much pleasure with that as Este would have given to Alonso in reverse, but...

But he could still recall how the gun was shaking in Lance's hand.
But he could almost hear someone calling the boy's name, his dad, and Lance had turned toward the sound as if he hadn’t expected Esteban to shoot him.
He’d trusted him without even knowing who he was.

In Esteban's eyes, that made him terribly brave - or terribly stupid.

And then he got under his skin so smoothly that Este didn't even notice it, but he was definitely there like he had always been, and they exchanged one e-mail after another, and Esteban hardly noticed that he was already thinking about what to write in the next one. He was careful as always, although the other had repeatedly told him it was perfectly safe.

Este wasn't worried about himself, he didn't care what the outcome was, but if Lance didn't even know him, he was pretty sure he didn’t hear about his boss neither.

Lance didn't know what Fernando Alonso was capable of, unlike Esteban.
And he wanted to keep it that way.

I hope you had a good week - Lance started last time, and seriously, what Este could answer to that?

"Esteban? How's the undercover going?"

Alonso's voice took him out of his thoughts. For a moment, he even forgot where he was.
Oh, yes. The meeting.

Because while Esteban Ocon might have been nothing more than a nobody in Alonso's gang who was good enough to keep an eye on Carlos, the boss found him a job anyway.

How they got into Lance Ricciardo's internal system, he had no idea.
Computing was another area that Este didn't know much about. But he grew up with zillions of cousins, and they’d spent most of their free time together in front of the PlayStation.

At first, of course, Esteban hated their little playtime.

As much as Jenson tried to convince him that what he was doing was important, online gaming was probably one step lower on that particular ladder than following Carlos everywhere. But the boy was finally not his only problem, and that helped a lot.
The fact that by the end, he actually liked their little five was the icing on the cake.

The icing that made him quite uncomfortable.

"I can't give you much news", he said at last, after chewing on the answer for a long time.

Because, what else could he say?

Alonso was convinced that Lance, like his father, was the embodiment of evil, but Alonso didn't know Lance the way he did.
Alonso didn't know he would do anything for his family.
Alonso didn't know that Lance could laugh at the most trivial things until he started crying.
Alonso didn't know how deeply his little casino attack had affected the other one.
Alonso liked to think that Lance had been raised in the same spirit as Carlos.

And Alonso couldn't be further from the truth.

"He mostly talks about his parents."

It wasn't a secret that he was with them again, they knew it before it happened, that Ricciardo had even planned to escape, actually that was why they didn't try to stop him.
But what none of them knew, except Esteban, was that Lance wasn't just talking about his parents.

Lance loved to talk, and if he was as lonely as Carlos could be, Este could understand him.

At first, it wasn't easy to decipher his words, even though Esteban was pretty much aware of who he was.
His father, his uncle, then his new Papa, and finally another uncle were the most frequently mentioned characters in his stories.

His Dad, who did everything for him, and his Papa, who did everything to drive the previous one crazy.
His uncle, who was the best cook in the world, and the other uncle, who was happy to criticize his culinary skills.

"Nothing else?" asked Alonso, as Esteban shrugged his shoulders again.

He should have told him.
He should have told him that about two weeks ago Lance had complained that his uncles had left for a business trip together, and since then he really only mentioned his parents.
Each time adding that he couldn’t wait for the other two to return.

It was his job, and Alonso paid him for it, and if he wanted to be honest, that was probably why he kept him alive, but...

Esteban shook his head.

"Not really."

"I see." It was now Alonso’s turn to shook his head, probably in disappointment "You just keep your eyes and ears open."

"Yes Boss."

"Don't call me Boss. It's disrespectful."

"Yes Boss."

The meeting continued with Jenson starting to talk about something - he wasn’t paying attention anymore. Instead, he looked out the window again - spring was slowly turning into summer; there was not a single cloud in the sky.
That was at least something he could write about to Lance.

Chapter Text

To say that Max really screwed Mick up was an understatement.
Obviously, not because the decision Max had made, of course not.

Yeah, okay, that was also painful, but Mick had kept his feelings for Max buried deep in one dark, empty corner of his soul, that he actually didn’t find anything surprising in that.

No, Max literally destroyed Mick’s whole career, which at the Navy was the equivalent of beheading him.
In their professions people didn’t like rats, just like in any other places, Mick guessed, but there, people especially hated those who were willing to cover up for a traitor.
And it didn’t matter, how many times Mick had said – under oath, wired to a lie detector – that he hadn’t known anything about Max and his little side gig, they hadn’t believed him.
He lost his rank, which was the smaller problem, but he lost the trust of the whole organization, at that was impossible to get back. He had been sent to a compulsory leave, to a hidden cabin in the middle of nowhere, because they had been afraid of Mick saying something he shouldn’t have.

And from there, there was no turning back.

Or well, actually…

Because while Max had taken away everything from him, everything that once had meant his life, he’d also offered something in exchange.

Mick actually almost forgot how it all had started.
He remembered turning on his laptop one morning to check his emails, - old habits die hard, and it was even harder to get used to the civilian life – but it hadn’t mattered him much he’d tried to log in, he simply couldn’t.

Instead, there was another email account, perfectly normal, civilian, just a plain gmail, non-governmental, which he had tried to log out, but couldn’t.
The account had been empty, without any mails in the inbox, and Mick had wanted to call some kind of an IT service thingy, when he’d noticed that maybe there hadn’t been any mails in the inbox, there had been one – in the drafts.

It hadn’t been long, the only content had been a link, which automatically downloaded to his laptop after clicking on it – and Mick had immediately been sure who’d sent it.

Especially after checking what had been in there, a reduced plot file, with a zillions of pictures, audio files, and all of them could have been linked to someone called Michael Masi.

From that time, Max had regularly sent him emails to that account, from where they had been automatically deleted after downloading.

And these mails had had everything to help Mick get back the trust of the Navy, the trust of his old colleauges and bosses – just enough things so he could have his job back.
Climbing back on that proverbial ladder hadn’t been easy, and Mick was now still only somewhere halfway.

But for his biggest surprise, Max wasn’t alone helping him.

"The window was open."

Mick didn’t hear Hamilton climbing through the window, but he definitely expected him.
It might have been a more dangerous game than the one he was playing with Max, but it was just as rewarding.

"I know. I was the one leaving it open. I don’t want you to ruin the lock. Again."

Mick had to admit, it only happened once, for the very first time, when Hamilton had decided one night that he’d give him a friendly visit, but Mick liked to remind the other as many times as he could.

Opposed to the emails, Mick could remember the exact moment when it started.

Three weeks after Ricciardo had presumably got Max out of prison, one year and ten months after his life was ruined, and three hours after he’d decided that alcohol poisoning was the less painful was of suicide.

Just like he said, Hamilton had broken into his house that night, quite literally, breaking the lock on the window, and if that wasn’t enough he also cracked the glass, but by that time Mick had been so out of it, he couldn’t have noticed the noise. He hadn’t even been sure that it all hadn’t been just his imagination when the man had been standing in front of him.

They mutually used each other.
Hamilton gave him so small and unimportant info which actually anyone could have known with spending some time to look at the details, and he did the same as a barter.

And the whole time they were waiting for the other to be so unprofessional and let something slip.

Mick heard as Hamilton opened his fridge like he was at home, got a bottle of beer out of it, the same brand Mick kept in there only for Hamilton, and getting the bottle opener out of the drawer. The bottle was opened with a sizzle, and not even a minute later the man was sitting next to him on the couch, eyes glued on the TV.
None of them actually watched it, but the background noise calmed both of them – and obviously the white noise was good against any listening devices.

"We had a little chitchat today." Hamilton said, after long minutes of silence.

"And?"

"Nothing important." he shrugged.

Mick knew that there was something important about it, otherwise Hamilton wouldn’t have mentioned it.

"We still have no idea where Ricciardo is."

"I can’t help with that." at least that was something Mick didn’t need to lie about. They really had no idea where any one them was.

It still didn’t stop him to keep it a secret that he had a private channel that somehow could have been linked to Max, and in that way to Ricciardo.

Hamilton didn’t have to know about everything.

What made Lewis Hamilton visit him every once in a while, he obviously had no idea, but he didn’t give the satisfaction to the other to ask him.
As far as he knew, the other hadn’t run to Alonso with the news that they accidentally became such good friends, drinking together and everything, at least no one broke the door on Mick in the middle of the night just to get him out of bed wearing only his night boxers – yet.
Maybe something like that would happen in the future, but now he was willing not to talk about their little visits to the Navy.

Actually, Hamilton played a bigger role in Mick getting the trust of the office back than Max.
Maybe he couldn’t get anything specific and factual out of the man, his words were only like little drops in the big old ocean, but Mick had learned how to read between the lines.

"There will be a short con on the east side tomorrow." Hamilton added, tone as casual as he was talking about the weather.

"A short con."

"Yes, something trivial."

"Hm."

Hamilton took a sip of his beer, eyes still on the screen, like he was watching the most interesting thing on earth.

"Define ‘short’."

"Oh, very insignificant."

Which, in Hamilto’s language meant that whatever that ‘con’ was, it was only distraction.

"East side?"

"Yupp."

So, it would be on the west side.

"Good to know."

"You’re welcome."

"I’ll send some people there to check it."

Which in his language meant that Mick would do absolutely nothing.

If Hamilton had said the truth, and Mick was almost sure he did, the man had never lied, it wouldn’t have been any use in doing anything.

That was their own little game: Mick was the chaser, Lewis was the chased. He was always talking in riddles, expecting the other to understand, waiting patiently for the other to pick up the clues, waiting for Mick to finally catch him – like the hunted animal, which got so tired during the run that it actually wanted the hunter to catch them.

Poetic, and Mick was sure it was very far from the truth.

But Lewis was there, on his couch, drinking his beer, and maybe Mick would spend the evening to search even the smallest part of the west side to find something, to find anything, he got one step closer to something.

With one last sip Lewis emptied his bottle, stood up just as casually as he sat down, and Mick head the empty bottle on the kitchen counter.

"It was a pleasure." Said Lewis on his way out.

"As always." Mick nodded, but he wasn’t sure the other still heard him.

He wasn’t sure in many things.
For a starter, he wasn’t sure what the actual fuck they were doing. What the fuck was that whole thing going on between them.
He wasn’t sure when it had become the new normal that he left the window open for a wanted criminal.
He wasnt sure when he’d started to buy that typical brand of beer simply because the other was vegan. (he wasn’t even sure why he knew Lewis Hamilton was vegan)
And most importantly, he wasn’t sure how Hamilton slowly tuned into Lewis.

Well, yes.
Max really screwed Mick up.

Chapter Text

Fernando was standing in front of the huge window of the room, playing with the last sip of his whiskey at the bottom of his glass.
It was just the two of them in the room now, him and Jenson, the meeting had long ago ended, but somehow, Fernando couldn’t switch off his brain.

There was something, something, he didn’t pay attention to, he felt it, but he had no idea what that it was, and he didn’t like that feeling.
Al all.

He finished his drink, and reached his empty glass to Jenson, who instantly grabbed it as the dutiful lapdog he was, and filled it up again.

From the window Fernando could see Carlos, walking in the bug garden, smoking one cigarette after another, occasionally looking up at the sky, like he was seeing something very interesting there.
His son had always been like that, a daydreamer in his own silent way, not caring a little big about his father’s business.

But since the thing that had happened in the casino, Nando had seen the kid in a different light.

"Where’s Esteban?" he asked Jenson, his eyes still following Carlos.

"No idea." Fernando didn’t have to turn around to know that the other shrugged "Doing his thing, I assume."

"Get someone else on Carlos. Esteban is too busy to deal with him too."

When Nando had seen Carlos at the emergency exit of Enchanté, with his hair ruffled and a gun in his hand, a strange sense of proud had rushed through his veins.
His son.
Finally doing what had always been expected from him.

Which didn’t only make Carlos a worthy heir in his eyes – but also a potential rival.
And Fernando didn’t want to end up like Joe Ricciardo.

But now he had more important things to deal with.

He turned away from the window, away from Carlos, and reached for the now full glass.

"So, how are we doing?" he asked, taking a sip.

"As I said before at the meeting…"

"It’s not a meeting, Jense. It’s just you and me now. I want to know the truth."

Jenson loosened the knot of his tie, and half sat up on the huge ebony desk. Nando was waiting patiently until the other got a glass of whiskey for himself too, and took a big sip.

"We still don’t know where they are." Jenson said quietly.

Yes, that was exactly the thing that couldn’t get out of Fernando’s mind.
Because things went well, maybe suspiciously well.

The Enchanté was close to its final downfall, because no one cared about its safety anymore.
Masi still was just a pawn on the board of the game of chess Fernando was playing, but he made his job like he’d done before, giving out important information to them.
Hamilton took care of the blonde man, who had turned out to be a Navy SEAL in the casino, and who had retired in the meantime, but Nando was almost sure it wasn’t his own decision. Whatever had happened with him, it was better to keep an eye on him.
Esteban got as close to the youngest Ricciardo as it was possible through the online games, and Fernando had a feeling that it was just a matter of time to break the kid.

So, yes, everything was perfect.

Or more like, almost perfect.

Because while Ricciardo’s empire slowly but surely was crashing down, the man himself was still not found.
Okay, there were more than eight billion people on Earth, and it would have been pomposity to say that Nando knew all of them, he had his own connections.
He constantly watched every person that could be connected to said empire, he had his own people in Miami, LA, and if that wasn’t enough, there was someone who was standing outside of the Ricciardo villa at that moment, waiting for the smallest sign of life there.
He had people on airports, so he would have known if the man and the gang had left the states, even if they had done it in an unofficial, and illegal way, and yes, he even had his own people in Europe, ready to call him the moment Ricciardo sat his foot there – but no.
Ricciardo was definitely still in the country.

He even thought about that maybe the Raikkönen family was also involved, and he even had people monitoring them too – he failed miserably.
It wasn’t that easy to outsmart Kimi Raikkönen.

He should have been happy, actually.
There was no sight of Ricciardo, or Italiano, or that asshole from the Navy, that stupid kid, or that fucking traitor Norris.
Fernando’s biggest rival was swallowed by the earth, and if he wanted to he could easily walk into his property, swim in his fancy, big swimming pool, eat from his fridge, sleep in his bed – and no one would have stopped him.

They knew he was still alive, because Esteban was in daily contact with the kid.
They were all alive, and they were all at the same place – or at least Esteban told him that little bastard said they were on a ‘family vacation’.
How cute.
Fernando could almost see the mental image, Ricciardo in colorful swimming trunks, barefoot, somewhere in Australia, trying not to drown in the ocean while surfing, while his perfect looking husband working on his tan, and Lando building a sandcastle with the kid. A picture-perfect family.

The only problem was, that it absolutely didn’t sound like Ricciardo.

And that was the it, he couldn’t get out of his head, the something, that kept him awake at night, the question he constantly asked himself.

Where?
Ricciardo was living his best life – but where?

Fernando knew, there was something he didn’t notice. That there was something, something he forgot to think about, right in front of him, something so obvious, something he just wasn’t able to see – purely because it was so clear.

"We’ll find them." he said, and finished his drink again. Was that a promise to Jenson, or to himself, he wasn’t sure about. "You can go now." he added with a quick notion of his hand, and when he was finally alone in his office, he started to walk back and forth in the big room.
He could always think better while he was in motion, and now he really needed to think.

Ricciardo is Australian, with Italian origins. He checked both places – they weren’t there.
Italiano, same, so there was nothing else to do there.
Lando had British origins, with very strong Spanish connections – Nando didn’t even take his precious time with that.
He knew nothing about the kid, but well, he was a kid, and he wasn’t the smartest cookie in the jar.

But in this case, where?

If he could answer that one question, all his problems could be solved.

Chapter Text

Even though Fernando Alonso had no idea about it, the image in his head about the vacation of the Ricciardo’s family, wasn’t that far from the truth.
Except of course the surfing – Daniel was too afraid of sharks to do that.

But everything else was mostly valid, the colorful swim trunks and Lance building a sand castle, and Max, Max who was getting a tan on the white sand, and who was…

Well, actually Daniel didn’t even know what was going on with Max.

They spent the biggest part of their days without each other, because Dan was too busy with coordinating the things from the distance – well.
If he wanted to be honest, he was busy with the lack of coordinating.
Thorough the years he got so used to the fact that he always had something to do, that now he had a hard time dealing with all the free time he suddenly had.

Of course, he tried to keep himself as busy as he could.
He carried the satellite phone with himself everywhere, waiting for Michael to check in, from God knew where, and he couldn’t stop thinking about if the other hadn’t called yet because everything went according to the plan, or he hadn’t because things went horribly.

Knowing Mike, if he’d been there with Dan, he’d have started a long, way too long motivational speech about the disadvantages of negative thoughts, and the manifesting force of positivity, but that was exactly the problem – Michael wasn’t there, and Daniel had no idea if he was still alive or not.
So much for positivity.

He was in a daily contact with Cyril, and he actually had some good news about the other casinos, and with Kimi, who couldn’t say anything new, but Daniel just needed to talk to them every day to keep his own sanity.

At first, he actually thought Max was doing okay.
Why wouldn’t he? After all those months he’d spent in prison, they managed to free him, the family was back together, and the man could finally do whatever he wanted to, even if that was running for hours around the island, or reading every book he could find there. Max spent a lot of time in nature, and a lot of time with Lance.
Of course, he was fine.
He had to be fine.

Daniel was really ashamed of it, but he only realized it now, that the island was actually just a nicer replacement for the prison.
Max was out, and Max was fine, but he wasn’t fine.

And instead of telling Dan, he let the other completely forgot about him.

"You’re covering my sun." said the man on the sand as Daniel stood next to him. He looked stunning in his blue swim trunks, the same color as his eyes, and the way the sun made his sand brown hair a little blonder. His skin already got a nice tan, not as golden brown as Daniel’s but as the sweat looked like someone painted little diamonds over his whole body, Dan had to swallow hard not to jump on him and lick those diamonds off.

"Date night?" he asked instead, trying to distract himself.

"Hm?" Max put his sunglasses on his forehead for that, interest clear in his eyes.

"Do you fancy doing something tonight?"

"Like… what?" Daniel watched as Max’ expression changed, and got that look which Dan like to call the ‘Makani-look’.

Obviously, it took him a lot of time, to accept the fact that the man he fell in love with wasn’t who he said he was.
It took him long hours lying on the couch at his therapist’s office to realize that Makani and Max were the same person, but what the doc hadn’t been able to understand was that somehow they weren’t the same.
Now, for example as Max was lying there in the sand on his elbows, his head slightly tilted to the right, his eyes shining even in the shadow Daniel put on him, and while he couldn’t see it, Dan was sure the cogs were turning in his head.

"I don’t know." Shrugged Daniel honestly, and sat down next to Max on the sand. On the very hot sand, dammit. How could Max handle that?

"There’s not much we can do around here." Max sat up, reached for the pack of cigarettes next to him, and lit a cigarette.

Sweet Jesus, that crazy idiot also had a lighter with him on the sun! Did he know how lucky he was for the gas in the lighter didn’t blow into his face?

"Yeah, I know." Daniel also thought about the lack of opportunities. By now, he’d spent more time on the island than the other, so he knew every corner of it like the back of his hand, every tree on land, and every fish in the ocean, but it didn’t mean they couldn’t have their own fun. Maybe they could have a night picnic, like they had done back at home, watching the stars, it must have been very romantic, or maybe…

"But." Max continued "We have a boat."

"That is true." Daniel nodded. Sailing wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe there was a fishing rod around here somewhere, and surely, Max wouldn’t be angry if he tried to catch something.

"And we definitely can be very cautious, so no one would recognize us…"yes, that was something Daniel had to agree with, again. Given their jobs, they were both very good at disguise, and…

Wait a second.
Max was really thinking about what Daniel was thinking that he was thinking??

"You’re telling me…?"

"I am." Now it was Max’ turn to nod on Dan’s words.

"But that’s…!" he didn’t have to finish the sentence for the other to understand.

Max was really implying that they should have got the boat, sail to one of the nearest islands, sneak in, spend a nice night there, and that was the craziest thing that Daniel had heard in the last some months.
All it took was one person there who could recognize them, police or mob related, whichever side – perfect recipe for instant disaster.

They could get themselves in danger.
They could get Lance in danger, with the chance that someone could have followed them back to the island.
They could get the whole mission in danger, which not only meant Michael and Lando, but also Kimi, his husband, Charles, and there was Cyril…

No.
Max probably went crazy of boredom.

No.

Still, as Dan felt his heartbeat getting faster his brain already knew that the reaction wasn’t that hard because of outrage.
It was a familiar feeling, the adrenaline filling his veins, and the excitement slowly arrived. He started to breathe faster, and he felt as his lips curled up to form a smile by themselves.

Was it crazy? Oh yes. More than just crazy.
But at the same time, it was so fucking exciting.

And then it was again.
That look on Max’ face which was so Makani, the borderline unpredictability, which was so fucking him, and which Daniel both hated at adored at the same time.
For a second Makani was back, and just like that, life got back to Max.

And with that, to Daniel too.

"I love you so fucking much."

Chapter Text

The Japanese Archipelago, where Japan the country was, consisted of exactly 6852 islands.
From the western side, the island state’s border was the Sea of Japan, from the south the Sea of Okhotsk, from the east the Pacific Ocean and from the north, the East China Sea.
Its population was 127 million, and its biggest city was Tokyo, which in itself had a population of 14 millions of people, and if you asked Lando, all 14 millions of them were right there at the fucking airport when they arrived with their fake passports.

The Land of the Rising Sun.
Well, unfortunately Lando didn’t have his sunglasses at hand.

"With all due respect." he started, but from his tone Mike already knew how he would continue "Which is like, none, by the way, but. What the actual fuck are we doing in fucking Japan??"

It wasn’t in the plan.
It wasn’t in the plan, and Lando and his anxiety hated when a plan changed last minute, but what he hated even more was if someone didn’t inform him about the change on purpose.
And that someone, Michael, to be more precise, seemed like he was perfectly aware of the change of plan, he just somehow forgot to tell it to Lando.

Or well, to anyone else.

"From Australia, you go to Russia straight ahead, and from there back to Europe, and back home." Daniel had explained the route on a big paper map which had been on the dining table back in Hawaii, Lando remembered it clearly, because he’d mocked Daniel for using such an outdated thing as a paper map.

Hawaii – Aussies – Russkies – Europe – back Hawaii.
No fucking one mentioned Asia.

"It’s just a little detour." Mike shrugged like it was perfectly normal like that.

Lando wasn’t sure if it was the hours spent on a plane, the lack of sleep, the sun directly in his eyes, or that little shrug made it, but right there, he lost the remainder of his patience.

“A little detour. A little detour?! Are you fucking serious?!"

Even he felt that maybe he was a little louder than he should have, and he stopped to look around at the airport, but no one cared about them.
Maybe they got used to crazy tourists.

"The rest of the plan is unchanged."

"Oh really? Let me call Daniel then and tell him about our little detour, I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear about how good the things are going on this side of the world, and… - "

"Mikey!"

They turned towards the voice at the same time.
It was probably part of the human nature, that while they both knew they were there with fake passports, under fake names, they couldn’t not turn around when hearing a familiar name.
And while yes, the sun was blinding Lando, he could clearly see the small man – man? Jesus, he looked like he was around fifteen – with huge, do me eyes, and opened arms walking up to them.

"I’m so happy to see you again!" he hugged Michael, giving kisses to both sides of his cheeks, and not even looking at the direction of Lando "I thought you’d never get there! Oh damn, how rude I am!" he said and like he just saw the other, he let go of Mike, and held out his hand to Lando "Hi. I’m Yuki."

Mike held up his empty glass – an international sign for the bartender for another drink.
The whiskey was in front of him in seconds.
It was much easier like that, Mike didn’t speak any of the Asian languages.

"Okay so." the guy sat down next to him at the bar so suddenly Michael almost got his gun out of his jacket’s pocket and shoot him. He reminded himself that it would have been a horrible idea, and not just because he was so fucking drunk he could barely aim, but mostly because he was around civilians, in the country of yakuza. It wouldn’t be wise to attract attention "What’s his name?"

"Do we know each other?" was Mike’s first question.

"We don’t, but I’ve been watching you drinking for three hours now." the guy said on that typical melodious voice, and he had such a huge smile on his face Michael wasn’t sure he was laughing at him, or with him.

"Why are you so sure it’s because of a guy?"

"It’s ALWAYS because of a guy, duh."

As irritating as he was, he was also right.
And it seemed like it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of him.

"Let me guess. Tall, blond, with long legs and ocean blue eyes, and he looks like he could kill you, but deep down a real softie. Right?"

"… green eyes." Mike whispered, and finished his glass. Whoever that guy was, he was a very good observer, or Michael was that predictable. "And I wouldn't say blond."

"If you want to cry about it with a drink, I’m always ready for a sake. And if you want to fuck about it, well…" he shrugged "I might be ready for that too."

"You don’t even know my name."

"Just like you don’t know mine."

The bartender filled his glass again, and Mike drank again.
For the first time he turned to the other’s direction to take a closer look at him. Small boy with black hair and the blackest eyes ever, and his age was somewhere between fifteen and thirty.
He was the exact opposite of Lando, but there was something in his eyes that reminded him of the other.

But fuck that, because Lando wasn’t there.
Lando decided to leave, to leave Michael, to leave whatever the fuck they had, and somehow Mike couldn’t find his place in the world ever since.

"I’m Michael."

"And I’m Yuki. Tsunoda. Nice to meet you Michael."

Lando shook the guy’s hand, and he was very proud of himself for not breaking his fingers immediately. As thin as the other was, it probably wouldn't be that hard.

"Hi." he said without introducing himself. Foreign country, unknown people. The guy, Yuki, maybe knew Mike, but it wasn’t enough for him.

"It’s so nice to meet you! Mike’s friends are my friends too. Come on guys, the car is waiting for us at the entrance, and on the way home you can tell me everything about that project of yours. And then we’ll see if I can help or not."

Oh, how great it was that unknown guy already knew about everything!

Lando would have been already satisfied if he knew about his existence.

Chapter Text

The yakuza was the oldest criminal organization in the world - Its roots went back to the seventeenth century
The English equivalent of the term was gangster, and the term referred to three numbers, the 8 (ya), the 9 (ku), and the 3 (za), which represented the winning position in the Japanese card game Oicso-Kabu - and this luck still played an important role in the lives of the members.

Their members had once been nothing but gamblers and street vendors, outcasts, homeless vagrants who, by joining the clans, had found a new family that they could have protected with their lives if necessary.

And, of course, all in the utmost secrecy.

Organized crime had always been illegal, yet the yakuza had managed to acquire power to override even that law.
Until the 1990s, there had been a tacit agreement between the yakuza and the Japanese government to engage in prostitution, gambling, arms and drug trafficking, something the good government would turn a blind eye to, in exchange for the yakuza informing the police about minor criminal groups and providing security for tourists.

It worked fine until the yakuza had become more powerful than the government itself, which obviously hadn’t been cool with them. The yakuza had also got involved in real estate and stock market speculation, making billions by bringing a lot of companies to the brink of bankruptcy, so they had been everywhere where big money had been circulating.

The yakuza had claimed that they had never been involved in the murder of a policeman, but the fact was that at that time the number of dead policemen had suddenly increased.
Whether the yakuza had been involved or whether certain bankrupt business executives had tried to somehow weaken their power, the government had passed the Organized Crime Act in 1995.

This, of course, had been by no means the end of the Yakuza's power.

Yuki was driving like some kind of a maniac, which, of course, would have been hypocrisy   from Lando, who also preferred speed over safety, so he didn't say anything.
It was humiliating enough to sit in the back seat and listen to Michael and the other guy talk to each other like long-lost acquaintances.
Or even worse – lovers.

"How's the little boy? What's his name, Larry?"

"Lance." Michael corrected him "And he's not so little anymore."

Lando thought it was pretty irresponsible of Mike to talk to a yakuza member about a kid he should have been protected from everything, but again, he didn't say it out loud.

Instead, he tried to engage in conversation with the man himself.

"I thought the Yakuza doesn’t employ people under 21." He said suddenly, which made both Michael and Yuki shut up. Hah, Lando may not have been as at home here as Mike, but he knew a thing or two about the place. Even now, without preparation.

"Nah, they don’t." Yuki said with a shrug, and Lando saw the huge smile on his face in the rearview mirror before the car stopped with a huge brake. Mike was holding on, that son of a bitch, like he knew this crazy kid was up to something, but obviously, he wouldn’t have warned Lando, who almost got his motherfucking head blown off. Just perfect.

The moment the car stopped, a man was right next to it and opened the door for Yuki, and in the blink of an eye, he did the same for Michael and Lando.

Yuki told something to him quickly in a language Lando couldn’t understand, which the man only confirmed with a nod, and he was gone.

"I'm not an employee here, Sweetheart." he explained to Lando as they headed for the inside of the huge building instead of them "I'm the boss here."

Lando wasn't sure if it was because of his statement or because of that Sweetheart that he instinctively moved his hand towards the knife in his pocket.

"Oh, and by the way, I’m 24. I can’t help I’m aging like a fine wine!"

That was all.
Lando would kill Yuki Tsunoda the moment he could.

Chapter Text

"Make yourselves comfortable." Yuki said, and just like he wanted to obey for his own words, he sat down on the huge couch in the living room. "Zhou will be here in a second with some drinks, and in the meantime, you can tell me what trouble you’ve gotten yourselves into."

Lando was looking at Michael, and he was looking at him, like he was the reason this whole detour was needed in the first place. He raised one of his eyebrows and waited until the silence was long enough for Mike to speak.
Lando would have never made it any easier for him.

"We need people." Michael said, as if it was that easy, as if they were on such good terms with the other man that all Mike had to do was ask, and Yuki would give, and for a second Lando really thought that maybe they were.

Who the fuck Yuki was, and how did him and Mike know each other, and why did he think he had to drag Lando into this??
He forced the wheels to move in his brain. He was a professional, and as such, he couldn't let his anger take over.
He had to think logically, and quickly.

Yuki hadn’t been there when Lando had moved into Ricciardo's villa years ago, and he hadn’t been there before in that other life, which may or may not have been true, which suggests that these two may have met sometime during the years when Lando hadn’t been present in Michael's life.

Something very small stirred in him, something dangerously close to jealousy, so Lando quickly reminded himself that he had no time for that now.

So, Mike and Yuki met, sometime in the past, but Lando never heard his name mentioned during the time they all lived together, and even when Daniel and Mike were discussing every detail of their plan, Daniel Ricciardo didn't know Yuki Tsunoda existed any more than Lando did.

And yet here they were, and though Lando was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to have time to analyze every word of their conversation, their very presence suggested that Mike thought Yuki might still be able to help.

And more importantly, he trusted the other.

"Can I use the bathroom?" he asked, distracting Michael, who was probably in the middle of his sentence. They both turned to look at him, like they were just realizing that there was someone else there besides them. “I didn’t have time for that at the airport. And on the plane, well… It’s probably the best if I don’t talk about that." Lando said, and he did everything he could to make it look innocent.

It probably worked, because Yuki started to laugh again.
Lando was startled by the sound.

"I totally get it. Airplane toilets are always so gross. It's the second door on the left." Yuki pointed to the bathroom.

"Thank you."

In fact, Lando didn’t go in the direction indicated to use the bathroom as intended, nor did he intend to go anywhere near it. He was a big boy, he could do all his stuff in a gross bathroom, unlike Yuki, he wasn't that squeamish, but of course it was a great opportunity to not have to listen to the other two, and of course to look around a little bit.

Because Michael could trust Tsunoda as much as he wanted, but he couldn't expect Lando to do the same.

The house was impressive, by the way, and not just in size.
Lando was not an art expert, but he had a hunch that the pictures on the walls were not there because they fit the decor, mainly because most of them were horribly ugly - the first criterion of outrageously expensive paintings.

So, Yuki was loaded with money.

If the man's story was to be believed, which Lando was still not sure of, then the house was owned by the yakuza and could have served as some kind of headquarters.

He didn't know much about the yakuza, having spent almost his entire life with Alonso's gang, which tied him to Europe most of the time. He faintly recalled that the man had mentioned something once or twice about certain Asian connections, but he had never had to deal with them.

But suddenly the whole thing began to puzzle him.
Michael came here believing that Yuki would come to their aid right away, even if they hadn't seen each other in years, but if Alonso had ties to the locals, then, unbeknownst to Mike, they'd just walked into a pretty big trap.

Typical Mike, with his big fucking naivety, able to trust anyone.
Lando remembered how many times he had to bail him out of the shit he got himself into.

Just like he probably needed now.

He heard the approaching footsteps behind him before the other could reach him.
Taking advantage of the situation, he turned left at the next corner and waited for the other to arrive, then when he was within arm's length, he pulled him to his side and twisted his arm back, pushing Tsunoda against the wall.

Or at least he would have, but Yuki already had a knife in his hand, similar to the one Lando liked to use. He had to let go of his attacker to get out of the way of the blade.

He took out his own knife, which he always carried with him, and now he was the one who stabbed first. He wasn't aiming at the neck, he wouldn't have been worth it if he killed the other guy right away, so he tried to get behind him, and he managed to make a long cut on the other’s arm, which caused the knife to fall out of his hand. He stepped on the edge of the fallen knife, and with a loose motion he would have kicked it behind him, but instead a kick landed on his knee, causing him to lose his balance for a moment. Yuki reached for his arm, which Lando turned away from, and elbowed him in the ribs, while with his empty hand he reached for his hair and pulled the guy closer by his dark locks.

Yuki was in front of him like that, his hair in Lando's hands, his neck pulled back, the knife pressed against right his neck artery.

It was probably the rush of adrenaline in his veins that caused him to feel the blade piercing his side only when he had time to breathe again.

Tsunoda had another knife.

He shouldn't have been so surprised, he also had at least three of them on him besides the one he just nailed to Yuki’s neck, but somehow, he didn’t expect that much from him. He broke the first and most important rule - he underestimated his opponent, and now it led to a stalemate.

Because that was exactly what it was, no backwards or forwards, and if Lando had decided to stab, he knew very well that Yuki would have done the same thing.

And of course, they were both aware of that.

"So? What's next, Sweetheart?" asked Yuki with a big smile.

He could have taken that chance.
There was that damn word again that made Lando really want to try it, but he had to be faster than the man and stab and push at the same time, take two big steps back, then let him bleed to death, hop on the next plane, let Michael do whatever he wants, and forget about this whole detour thing.

Instead, he took a deep breath and pushed the other one away without running the blade across his throat. Oh, my God, how he wanted to.

He turned to Yuki, who was running his fingers through his hair, like he was trying to pinpoint the damage that Lando had done.
He looked at his own hand and was pleased to see that the damage was considerable.

"Are you trying to make me bald before 30??"

"Oops." Lando said with a smile and his fingers spread out, scattering the black hairs on the floor. It wasn't a scalpel, but it was good enough.

"You attacked me!"

"You came after me. I was just looking for the bathroom."

"I was just following you, so you wouldn't get lost."

They were facing each other, both with their arms crossed on their chests, and both of them perfectly aware that the other was lying. For long, silent minutes, they stared at each other, waiting for the other to break first, but it seemed that they were waiting in vain.

"You're exactly the way I pictured you based on what Mikey told me about you." Yuki said and in a strange way, it made Lando feel betrayed.

He could almost see the scene, Yuki and Michael naked in a huge king-size bed, the sheets tucked into their folded legs, resting contentedly, discussing what they need to know about Lando Norris.

"I'd love to say the same, but Mikey never told me about you." Yes, Lando was petty. But also, he didn’t care.

"Don't worry, it’s not like he has anything to say. Not because I didn’t want to, but because of a certain someone…"

Lando didn't want to hear any more. What Michael did or didn't do with Tsunoda was none of his business.

"What do you know about Alonso?" he asked instead, changing the topic.

"Ah. So it’s about him." Yuki grimaced "He’s quite irritative. He tried to come to us a few times, but I always sent him away. We’ve got our own problems here, the last thing we need is a megalomaniac dick." Lando couldn’t help but snort at that. That was the best description he ever heard of his former boss.

"You need people against him?"

"Didn’t Mikey tell you?"

"I didn’t really pay attention. I needed to keep my eyes on other things." He added, and his tone made sure that he was talking about Lando "But don’t you work for him? When Mikey talked about -”

"I don't work for him anymore". Lando said quickly before he could finish his sentence. "We had some... disagreements".

"Well, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?" Yuki said simply, and he had that big smile on his face again. "And to be honest, I’d gladly cut off some of his fingers."

That was something Lando needed to laugh at.
Maybe Yuki wasn't as bad as he thought.

"But! In this case it’s time to make a plan!" Yuki shook himself, and like nothing happened started to walk back to the direction of the living room, taking it for granted that Lando was following him "I want to know everything, before…" he stopped, realizing that he was talking to himself, and turned back over his shoulder "Are you coming, Sweetheart?"

Yes, Yuki was just as bad as Lando thought, and maybe a little worse.
But maybe he would keep him alive for a while.

Just for the sake of the plan.

Chapter Text

Lance should have been asleep long ago – at least according to what they had agreed on with his Dad.

At home it had never been a problem that Lance had spent days playing on his PC, sometimes without any sleep. The internet had been his only connection with the outside world, and he hadn’t wanted to waste his precious time on such things like sleep.

But now they weren’t at home, and there they had different rule, and even if Lance was old enough for not having to ask Dad and Papa about curfew, he had to admit, there was logic in their words.
And now their lives depended on if Lance was willing to listen to them, or not.
Of course, it didn’t matter what rules he had to follow there, it didn’t make falling asleep any easier.
Well, he didn’t have to sleep, in the literal sense, just spending less time on the internet.

So, Lance was just laying in bed, in the darkness, phone in his hands, playing some kind of stupid snake game he was horrible at, and he was thinking about how dangerous it would be to quickly check his e-mails.
Very quickly.
Data on, e-mail account refresh, data off.
Just to check if he got a new e-mail from Esteban.

Not like he hadn’t checked it a million times, and not like the results hadn’t been the same every time – Este didn’t write him, moreover, Lance had his ways to know that Esteban hadn’t even read his last e-mail – and that was kinda unsettling.

Because of course Lance couldn’t get Esteban and that stupid e-mail out of his mind.
His stupid, hyperactive, autistic brain made scenario after scenario: Este was kidnapped, or his boss noticed they were talking, and he didn’t just took away his phone, but now Lance risked everyone’s lives, or a third party somehow got access to their messages, and now not just him and his family, but the whole Alonso gang was in danger too, and obviously, there was the chance that Esteban was just too busy to check his e-mails, but Lance’s brain rejected the possibility of that.

So, the thing was, that Lance was already in bed, and his phone’s screen was the only light in the complete darkness, and he really should have switched both that, and his brain off – but he simply couldn’t.
With a huge sigh he pressed the big button on the side of his phone, and the screen went black.
Hawaii was nice, but he was still homesick.

His eyes were closed for like ten seconds, when he heard the noise.

The noise came from downstairs, and it was so short for a minute Lance thought it was all in his head, but then he heard it again, and there was no turning back.

Lance reconsidered the matter – Hawaii wasn’t that nice.

He sat up in his bed, curled the blanket around his body, even though he didn’t really use it before: it was too hot for a blanket.

There was someone in the house.
Which wasn’t that surprising, Dad and Papa were there too, at least when he went to bed they were, but that noise wasn’t like them.
His parents spent a lot of time in the living room, cuddling on the couch, Dad watching some stupid movie, Papa reading on his phone until he fell asleep on Dad’s chest, which was both romantic and disgusting at the same time, considering they were his parents, but as he checked the time on his phone – three in the morning – he was sure the noise didn’t come from them. At that time, they were usually asleep.

The situation wasn’t optimal, to put it mildly.
Lance in his room, while someone was in the house who was neither his Dad, nor his Papa, but the thing was, it should only have been the three of them on the whole island.
He closed his eyes again, and covered his ears with his hands, trying to silence the voice in his head, which chanted over and over again that whoever took Esteban now went after him.
But if they were after him, it meant –

"Dad! Papa!" Lance jumped off his bed, and violently opened the door, ready to face the intruder, whoever the fuck it was.
Then he realized that the floor under his feet was that cold, because he was barefoot, and the only thing he was wearing was boxer briefs and a big shirt, and that he was probably running into a shitstorm.

As loud as he opened the door, he closed it as quietly as he could.

"Deep breath." he mumbled to himself. What was that Michael always told him?
Think.
But God, how could he think when there was a stranger in the house, and if the fear he felt wasn’t enough, here was that crushing guilt, and –

Lando.

Lance opened the door again, this time not as hurriedly, and as quietly as he could, he tiptoed to the top of the staircase which led upstairs – or more precisely, to the small table there.
It was a nice little table, it had a potted plant on it, Lance had no idea what it was, his Dad kept it alive, and next to that there were a lot of things, little seashells, cool rocks he found on the shore, keys, and everything they didn’t really know where to put – but most importantly Lando taped a gun under the tabletop before he’d left.

"It anything happens," he’d explained "know that it’s here. I taught you how to use it, so if it’s needed, just do it." And even if Lance wanted nothing less than to do it, it seemed there was no other choice.

The sound of the duct tape was like screaming in the silence, but Lance was in a hurry because Dad and Papa were there somewhere in the living room, and the noise came from the kitchen, which was right next to the living room, and fuck, there was a loaded gun in Lance’s hands. The cold iron was burning his skin, the stairs were squeaking under his feet, and the closer he got, the louder the noise became, like the intruders were trying to turn the house upside down.

He took one last deep breath, and he decided fuck that, and literally kicked off the door of the kitchen, and pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened.

He pulled the trigger again – and nothing kept happening.
The clip clicked and clicked, but the gun didn’t fire.

"You need to unlock it first." Said the black-haired guy who was standing there in the kitchen, and grabbed the gun "Look. You unlock it…" he explained, and did as he said "And after you can fire." And the man shot in the ceiling twice.

The man, who despite the hair color looked eerily like his Papa.

"What the fuck are you doing?!"

The other man only turned to look at them when he heard the noise of the shooting, otherwise he was busy searching for something in the fridge.

"Teaching the kid how to shoot."

"Dad?"

If Lance’s Papa looked crazy, his Dad was simply ridiculous.
Because it was them, Papa and Dad, one of them with his hair dyed black, and the other wearing huge sunglasses and a fake moustache, and if that wasn’t enough…

"Are you drunk?!"

"Oh, please!" his dad said, but his words were so blurry, Lance couldn’t take him seriously.

"You are drunk! Where the fuck did you…?" even though people liked to think that, Lance wasn’t stupid. Maybe it took him some time to connect the dots, but he managed "You left the island." He looked out of the kitchen window, and as he expected, the small boat his dad used to fish was there in the sand "You took the boat, and went on another island to get drunk!"

Lance was so fucking angry.
In these last minutes, when he really thought someone broke into the house, he couldn’t think about anything else, but how it was all his fault.
That he risked everyone’s lives with putting himself first for the first time in his life, and kept talking to Esteban.
That he betrayed his family, his loved ones, the people who were ready to kill, or to die for him.

Obviously, he was relieved it wasn’t like that.
But at the same time, he’d never been that angry.

"How could you be that irresponsible?!" he looked at his Dad and then at his Papa "You should be the adults here! I hear nothing from you but how I’m just a kid, and I know nothing, while it’s you who act like stupid, reckless kids! I can’t fucking believe it!"

"Lance…"

"I don’t care! Do whatever the fuck you want!"

His Dad said something else, but Lance couldn’t hear it anymore, and not just because he hurried back to his room upstairs, but because he still heard his heart beating in his ears.

The moment he was back in bed again, he grabbed his phone and switched on the data.
If his parents could be irresponsible, so could he.

He opened his e-mails, and without thinking started to type.

… you won’t believe the night I had…

Chapter Text

Death had always been part of Esteban’s life.

He couldn’t have been able to tell how old he’d been, when his parents had been killed, he he clearly remembered the sound of it.

He had been a little boy, that was for sure, small enough to fit in the small space under the kitchen island, where he’d hid, frightened, and with both of his small hands on his ears, had tried to block the outside world.

He’d heard adults arguing, one of them being his Papa, and he’d known Papa would have been angry of him for eavesdropping, but had it been really eavesdropping, when he’d been there first?
So, adults had been arguing, coming and going in the room, Esteban had heard their shoes on the floor tiles, even that he hadn’t wanted to, but just when he’d tried to press his hands harder on his ears, someone had broken a glass, and the fragments on the floor had made the noise even louder.

The clinking had been replaced with fighting, and then more glass breaking, plates, glasses, Este had had no idea at his hiding place, and then he’d immediately heard the shots.

Bang, bang, bang.

The noise had come from so close; Esteban had felt like they had come from right next to him – and it had probably been like that. He had felt the power of the gun in his chest, but the worse had been the ringing in his ears.
As an adult, Esteban knew that he’d been very lucky that his eardrum hadn’t ruptured.

But it still wasn’t what Esteban remembered the clearest – but what had happened after that.

"Let’s go." A voice had said, not Papa’s voice, he hadn’t heard Papa’s voice for some time, and he’d started to panic. He’d heard footsteps getting away, their noise had become quieter and quieter, and when he finally couldn’t have heard them anymore, he’d uncovered his ears.

He wished he hadn’t done it.

The next sound had been like someone had quietly blown a whistle. It had had a system, whistle, quiet, whistle, quiet, a steady rhythm, sometimes interrupted by a small groan.
Something had been bubbling, like the tiny bubbles in a glass of lemonade on a hot summer day, the bubbles he’d liked to make so much with a straw, and what Maman had told him many times not to do.
A rustle on the floor, like someone had been scratching on the tiles.
The whistle had gotten quieter and quieter, and after a while it had been nothing but moaning and groaning, and those bubbles, slowly, but louder.

And then – like a balloon had been popped.
The room had become silent.

Esteban had only understood later that he’d listened to Papa die.
It had been disgusting.

Right at that moment he thought about that memory.
Would be his own death just as disgusting, or maybe he would be lucky, and it would go quicker?

"I’m asking you, what’s that?" Alonso repeated, and if eyes could kill, Esteban would definitely have been dead.

The man had Este’s phone in his hand, the phone Esteban thought he could keep a secret, but of course he was just that unlucky.
But the phone wasn’t the real problem, he could have found an explanation for that, but there was no explanation for the e-mails on the phone which he got from the one and only Lance Ricciardo.

"E-mails." He answered as calm as he could. He wasn’t afraid of death. He got so used to it, that he actually didn’t care about the gun in Mark’s hand, or Jenson’s strong hand on his shoulder. He wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t have to hold him that strong, because he wasn’t planning to go anywhere, but he decided against it.
If he had to die right here and right now, he was okay with that – but he would do everything in his power to warn Lance.

Lance was innocent.
Lance was the best thing, that ever happened in Esteban’s life.
Lance…

"Is that Lance Ricciardo?" Alonso asked, like he couldn’t read the name in the e-mail. Esteban was sure he’d already read all the messages, or if not him, one of his men had done it.

"Yes." Lying was futile.

Este saw how the man’s nostrils flared as he took a deep breath.
Interesting, what he noticed when he was that close to death. Like the last rays of the afternoon sun shining through the window. Or how the gun was slightly shaking in Mark’s hand – he got old. Or the worry on Carlos’ face, who was just standing there without saying or doing anything.
Or those huge, huge nostrils.

Alonso’s hand moved, and Este was ready to see his phone fly through the room, breaking on the wall in front of them, which would break into millions of pieces – and probably the same would happen with his face too.
He took a deep breath with his eyes closed, thinking about that day many, many ages ago, when he also hadn’t been able to see what had been happening around him, and he would have given anything to switch off his hearing.

But the impact never came.

"Good job." Alonso said, his hand arriving on Esteban’s other shoulder, and he even got a little pat there. "Perfect job." Alonso added with a huge smile "Mark, take the phone to the IT guys, and tell them to track the messages back. They have an hour to find them."

"Yes boss."

"Amazing, Esteban. You did absolutely amazing."

Until that moment Este thought that the most disgusting thing he’d ever heard was when he’d had to listen to his Papa die in their kitchen.
But now he was nauseous from disgust. 

Chapter Text

The Trans-Siberian railway was the longest railway on the world.
People could travel on 9288 kilometers of the railway – twenty percent of that was in Europe, and the rest went through Asia.
It had been started to built in 1891, and it had been finished by 1901. The first time passengers could actually use it was in 1905.

The Beijing – Moscow distance was precisely 5793 kilometers, and to take that route with the train was around 140 hours, just enough time for Lando to curse Michael Italiano and all his ancestors.

 "And are you sure now we’re going where we have to?" he asked Mike for the hundredth time, but the only answer he got was a huge sigh. For the other’s luck, actually, because if he’d tried to say anything, Lando would have been able to say something about it "I just want to know if that’s another little detour, or…"

"We go where we should, according to the plan."

"Oh, I see." nodded Lando. He didn’t say anything else, he was sure his face did all the talking for him.

He looked out the window with a sigh.
As they got further on their way, the scene got whiter, and the weather got colder, and his anger grey bigger and bigger.

He should been on a plane.
In an ideal world, they would have been on their way back from Russia, and t that exact moment, he should have been on a plane, comfortably sitting on first class, taking off all the big coats, waving goodbye to the ruskies, and happily stirring his Mai Tai with one of those little, purple umbrellas they always put in cocktails, without any worry on their way to Europe.

But obviously, the natural disaster called Michael Italiano had other plans.

Rationally, Lando could understand why Yuki would be such a big help for their plan. It wasn’t easy, but also it wasn’t the first time Lando had to put aside his own feelings for a successful job – but maybe it was the worst case.
It was painful to admit, but Yuki was actually a good ally. He had money, power, men, all the things they needed. He knew Alonso, and he had his own problems with him, which could also be helpful.
So, involving Yuki wasn’t as bad of an idea as Lando had thought at first. Not like he would ever say that out loud. Especially not for Michael.

Yuki was… interesting.
There was something in the way he was always talking, in how he constantly had a smile on his lips, or in those huge, huge eyes, or even bigger confidence that made Lando wanting to punch him in that pretty face.
But at the same time, he had to notice, that those huge eyes noticed even the smallest details, that during all the talk Yuki always asked the right questions, and that those some people Lando had met before really respected him.

But as he had been watching him and Mike discussing the situation, he had automatically had to think about how those two had met for the first time.

Yuki didn’t know Daniel, he was sure about that, because if they had known each other, Michael wouldn’t have planned their little detour secretly. It was hard to imagine Michael doing anything without Dan by his side, but Daniel probably didn’t know about when they’d had that something either. He definitely could have kept it a secret if he and Yuki had had anything.

Was that before Lando? Or after? Maybe while? Normally Lando wouldn’t dismiss the idea, but Michael simply wasn’t that kind of guy.

He never mentioned Yuki for Lando, which didn’t rule out anything per se. Lando also hadn’t talk to Mike about his eyes.

Yuki had greeted Lando at the airport with saying he’d heard a lot about him, but again, it didn’t prove anything. Mike could have mentioned him to the Japanese when they had arranged their meeting.

But the worst of anything, Lando had to admit, that Yuki was beautiful.
Not just handsome, not just nice, or cute, simply gorgeous.
He had some natural beauty, in his small, delicate figure, in his raven black hair, which was fashionably messy, like he just woke up and ruffled it, He looked like a fragile damsel in distress, who needed Michael to save him.
Lando was the exact opposite of him. With his long limbs he looked like a teenage boy, and his brown curls most of the time looked like a bird made a nest on top of his head.
If Mike fucked both of them, his taste in men covered a board spectrum.

But looking under the surface, Yuki and Lando couldn’t have been more similar. They both had worked very hard to climb up that social ladder, and they were now on top of their professions. Yuki was just as much borderline crazy as Lando, and maybe he’d only had the pleasure to experience it once, he already knew the other also preferred knives to fight with.

Lando turned away from the window, and looked at Mike.
Maybe his type wasn’t about looks, but a psychologist would definitely could have worked on Michael if he like crazy, dangerous men. Probably some childhood trauma – but that wasn’t Lando’s problem.

He had more than enough problems already.

With another sight, he looked around in carriage. The cabin, where they spent their nights was so small, Lando could feel the walls closing on him. Here, the in the communal cart, there was too many people – he had no idea which one was worse.

"Vodka?" a man, sitting next to him had a horrible Russian accent. The bottle he was reaching towards Lando, not just looked sus, but it smelled awful.

Well, maybe it wasn’t a Mai Tai, but hopefully Lando would survive it.

"Vodka." he nodded simply, and took a big sip of the drink. 

Chapter Text

Michael watched as Lando got the plastic bottle out of the man’s hand, and drank from it without even smelling it first – it was instantly visible on his face that it was a bad decision.
Mike could swear he was how the alcohol burned Lando’s throat.

It wasn’t easy for the to get there, quite the contrary, but he still thought it was worth it. He knew Yuki long enough to know without asking that he’d help them – and that he’d be a huge help.

Now as he was thinking about it, he should have told Daniel about him, really, the man wouldn’t have made a problem out of a plus stop in their route, but somehow, he felt more comfortable keeping it to himself.
Not because it actually mattered.
Whatever Lando thought about the situation – because Michael knew he had an opinion about it - nothing ever happened between him and Yuki. The guy had come to his life as unexpected as a sudden explosion, not much after Lando had left it, and yes, fuck that, it had felt good to tell the whole story to someone without judgement.
And that was all, Yuki had been his emotional support in the hard time, who had always been ready to get drunk with Mike.

So Yuki belonged to the part of Michael’s life that Lando did, and he never talked about that life to Danie, so it was easier like that.
Obviously, them meeting was inevitable, but Mike was sure Daniel would understand.
Or at least he’d be more understanding than Lando.

Who was actually the other one Michael should have talked about it.
Well, not Yuki, probably, but the part that Lando had called small detour ever since. It wasn’t exactly how Lando labelled it, but the tone instead.
That tone could kill Mike.

But he had to admit, it wasn’t as bad as he expected.
He was still alive, and that was a good sign.
And Yuki as well, which was even better. Because Michael had actually been prepared for Lando to kill Yuki in the middle of the Tokyo airport, and right after doing the same with Mike just to finish the job alone, and perfectly on time.

Instead Lando was sitting next to a suspicious looking Russian guy right now, trying to get through the language barrier, and they seemed to have the time of their life.
How much was it because of the alcohol, Michael didn’t know.

The important part was that they survived, him, Yuki, Yuki’s people, and even though those two liked to thin they had been very subtle about that dick measuring content they had, Mike wasn’t stupid.
They had definitely had a fight, in Japan, leaving Michael waiting on the couch, and he would have lied telling he hadn’t checked the minutes passing on his watch in every second. Just as he'd decided that that had been it, and he’d have gone and check on them, the two had miraculously appeared.
And by miraculously he meant alive.
They hadn’t become besties of course, but Michael hadn’t seen any signs of dying on them – a total win.

Well, until Yuki had dropped the next bomb.

“You can’t leave the country by plane now Sweethearts. Everyone saw you with me.” Yuki had informed them, and to Mike’s defence, ha also hadn’t planned it like that.

But actually, there had been logic behind Yuki’s words.
He didn’t only have power and people, he had enemies too.
They Japanese had seen two stranger walking around town with Yuki, so obviously, that put them in danger too,

“Tell us then, Sweetheart, how will we leave the fucking country?!”

Lando had been furious, Yuki had just laughed, and Michael had tried to be invisible.

“Well, it’s an island, Sweetheart.”

At least he hadn’t meant that they had needed to swim.

They had used a hydroplane to get to China, and even though Yuki had offered a pilot too, Lando was too much of a control freak for that.
At the short a car had been waiting for them and had taken them to Beijing, and since they had never entered the country officially, they would have never made it through the airport security.

That was how they arrived here, slowly rattling on a train heading to Russia, sitting in the buffer wagon, and where Lando just became lifelong besties with a Russian guy.
It wasn’t ideal, Mike had to admit. He’d planned to immediately continue they way from Yuki’s which would have only added some plus hours to their travel, but like that, now they were forced to spend the next five-ish days with hundreds of other passengers. And here, in the middle of nowhere, he had no opportunity to inform Dan about it.

He looked out the window, just like Lando had done before and thought about the others at home.

Home – interesting.
As the word came to his mind, he didn’t think about Hawaii and the ocean, but the ones living there. Daniel and his ever-present huge grin. Lance, and his unmistakable laughter. Max and his huge heart which he was trying to cover with sarcasm. And Lando, and…

“What are you staring at?!” Lando grumbled when he noticed Michael looking at him.

Ah, yes.
Even here, in the middle of the cold, white, snowy nowhere, Lando was exactly the same as always.

Which made Mike miss home a little less.

Chapter Text

If the dining wagon was crowded, the sleeping cabin might be a little worse.

The room could hardly have been more than eight feet by eight feet, which would have been enough space for two normal-sized people, but Michael was not exactly normal-sized, so to be able to stretch his legs while lying in bed was nothing more than an elusive dream.

Of course, this didn’t bother Lando in the least.

He was so full of vodka that the minute his head touched the pillow, he was asleep. At least that was what Mike thought, because he couldn't hear anything from the other side of the room.

The interior height was also not quite comfortable for Michael, as the two beds in the cabin were placed by the designer - Mike cursed his name - less than half a metre from the top of the cabin to save space, thus making use of the space below.
Michael wasn't exactly the home decor type, but as he thought about the little seats underneath him and the rocky table, he didn't exactly see an IKEA catalogue before his eyes.

So, the point was, it wasn't enough that Mike couldn't stretch his limbs, tired from all the sitting, but he couldn't even turn from one side to the other comfortably in that bed, and all while Lando was sleeping like a log.

And obviously, he’d had to dib the bed behind the door, because he was a professional like that.

“Instant karma.” Lando had told him the first day they had moved into their little cabin, and Mike couldn't have helped but notice that little gloating smile in the corner of his mouth.

In the darkness, he looked at the other bed - and then at the clock on his phone.

Sometime around 10:00, he’d managed to convince the man that maybe he had been close enough to alcohol poisoning now that it had been time to go to bed, and that was about five hours ago.

Maybe he should have had a drink too.
Then maybe he wouldn't be thinking about how numb his waist would be lying on his back and how much he'd like to roll over on his right side, but then his shoulder would be rubbing against the ceiling, and the thought of that would make him claustrophobic, and when he tried to lift his leg up, his knee would hit the ceiling, and he was too old for that, and his joints...

He kept his gun under his pillow, but the other one came up to him so suddenly, he didn't have a chance to reach for it.

“Lando???”

“Shut up.” he said, and as he stood there next to Mike in his boxer briefs and a stretchy T-shirt he'd worn to bed, for a moment Michael thought about...

No.
Lando was drunk.
Michael would never take advantage of this.
But the other's shirt slipped off his shoulders, so much so that she could almost see the...

Mike swallowed hard.

“There's someone at the door.” Lando continued, and Michael's thoughts immediately returned to normal.

How in the hell could Lando, who could barely stand still, even through the fog of alcohol be able to hear what Mike just heard, the rattling of steps in the corridor between the cabins, the knocking on doors and the talking, getting closer and closer.

There was someone out in the hallway, someone who was more than likely looking for them, and now they were going from booth to booth all over the train just to finally get to theirs. Was that someone from Japan who followed them here because of Lily?
Or did Alonso's people track them down and catch them at the bidding?
As far as Michael knew, it could have been anyone. Whoever it was, he was sure they'd have no trouble getting rid of their bodies out here in the middle of nowhere.

If they succeeded, of course.

It was good that Lando warned him.
Of course, Mike’s pride was crushed, he couldn’t even deny it, but if that was their biggest problem during the night…!

A more pressing problem was that the steps were getting louder, presumably their attackers were getting closer, but perhaps an even more pressing problem was that Lando was drunk.

Which, of course, Mike already knew.
And that wouldn't have been a problem at all if he'd had time to go to sleep it off, but instead, Lando was standing there in his tiny boxers and his oversized shirt with a fucking knife in his hand, which he was probably keeping under his pillow and which was shaking so much in his hand that there was a chance he’d stab himself in the thigh.

“Fucking fuck.” Michael whined. “Give me that.”

“No way!” he would have taken a step back, and Mike was surprised to find that he had reached the point of despair of praying the name of the designer of the space, since in the teeny tiny booth, Lando couldn't get out of reach.

Michael also got out of bed, which his muscles gratefully accepted, and reached for the weapon in Lando's hand.

“Give me that shit!”

“This is mine, you have your own!”

“Lando, please don't start this now.”

“I don’t!”

“Lando, there's someone on the other side of that door, and...”

“That's why I won't give it to you! If it was up to you, that someone would walk in and you wouldn’t even notice because you're too busy jerking off under the covers and...!”

“I wasn’t jerking off.” Michael didn’t know why, but he thought it was important to add.

The whole situation was so absurd that he couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry.
This crazy guy, this crazy drunk guy, to be exact, was able to generate a last-minute argument just to be a little shit one last time, as if he didn't care that they might actually be in their last moments, and all the while, he looked so sleepy with his big blue eyes and his curly curls and his barely-covering his body clothes that Mike just couldn't seem to get mad at him for God's sake.

After all, it was Lando, his Lando, who, after all that drinking, could only worry that Michael was going to take his knife.

“You are such a muppet.”

“How dare you talk to me like that, you...!”

“Полиция! Открывает!”

None of them spoke Russian.

If they had spoken Russian, they would have known that the police were on the other side of the door, and although they told them to open the door, they didn’t wait for a reply, instead simply going into the cabin.

Where all they could see was a couple kissing in the middle of the booth.

Chapter Text

"Oh, извинение! I’m so sorry."

Three people entered the booth, and Michael took a closer look at all of them.
The first one, who quickly switched from Russian to English was decent enough that he took his eyes off them, but the two other grim looking guys behind him wasn’t raised that well. They stared at Lando's bare feet, unconcerned whether he noticed them or not.

Mike was just hoping that in exchange, they wouldn't notice the knife that he was hiding behind his back.

It had been a sudden idea, and it seemed like both of them had been thinking the same thing. Michael and Lando had moved towards each other at the same time, playing the role they'd already mastered.
Lovers on their honeymoon. What could be less conspicuous than this?

"Oh my!" Lando playing his role of being perfectly innocent, in an instant was hiding behind Mike, his huge blue eyes flashing from one man to the next.
He may have seemed like a perfectly normal, frightened young guy, and Mike hoped that the others would see him that way.

"Sorry, we didn't mean to scare you."

"Who are you?" asked Michael. The cramped cabin definitely felt even more cramped with so many people there, but they might have even been able to turn that to their advantage, if the situation ended in hand-to-hand combat. He held one arm out holding Lando back, protecting him though it was the others he had to protect from him.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your khm... evening." the man continued. "I have to inform you that there's been a murder on the train."

"It wasn't me." Lando muttered, and if he hadn't been covered by Mike, he could have seen the other rolling his eyes.

"What did the gentleman say? As you might hear, my English is... basic."

"The gentleman is drunk." Michael explained, and he was just hoping that would be enough of an explanation.

"Oh! Bодка?"

"Yes. Vodka."

"I thought so. You know a lot of tourists don’t expect that to…"

"I'm sorry, you mentioned a murder earlier." Mike was trying to bring the conversation back to its original topic.

"Oh, yes, the murder! So, someone…" the man make a gesture with his thumb front of his neck, the universal sign of being killed indicating what had happened. "But obviously, there’s no reason to panic. The police are already here. We are here."

Michael would have said a lot of things about the man, but he wouldn't have said he was a cop.
The other two looked like they were standing mute in the doorway of the compartment, blocking the escape route, and this one was parading around like some kind of grinder monkey.

But, of course, Lando was the perfect example of how Michael shouldn't judge by appearances.

"Okay, so now what? Do we stop?" he asked the only logical question. It wouldn't be optimal, not in the least, to interrupt their travel and waste even more time on nothing, but now that they were officially in the country, maybe they could take a plane, or rent a small plane, or...

"Oh, no, not to worry. Our journey continues without interruption. Which means… I have to ask you to stay in your cabin from now on."

"Excuse me, what?"

That was the first time Lando said anything.
He stepped out from behind Michael, and with a glance, he made the two policemen who had been staring to look away from him. Mike could almost see his boiling blood gushing out of him.

But at least he didn't have the knife in his hand.

"If we stop, we can’t keep to the schedule." the man explained "If we don’t, and everyone live their lives as nothing happened, we can’t catch the murdered. But if everyone would be so kind and cooperate with the police, staying in your cabins, we can interrogate everyone.

"Do you have enough men on the train to keep everyone locked up?"

"Do not worry about it, Sir. We can deal with that. Since you can’t leave your cabins until we find the murderer, your food will be catered here three times a day."

"And what if I want to get off the train?"

"Then I advise you to not want it, Sir." the policeman said, and while he was smiling, for Mike it looked more like a cold baring of teeth. "Well, if you don’t have any more questions…"

He left so quick, Michael thought he wouldn’t have waited even if they had had any questions.
And the little group left them alone with the silence of the night.

None of them said anything. Lando climber back up to his bed, and after a while Mike did the same. He still heard the noises of the three walking up to the next door, just like he heard Lando putting his knife back under his pillow, but after a while, it was complete silence.

Only Michael couldn’t silence his thoughts, they were running million miles per hour, screaming loudly in his head, jumping from one to another, trying to digest everything he just heard.
They had more than one week left from their journey, and it seemed they needed to spend it locked up.
But what was even more important than that…

"We’re not alone."

Lando’s voice broke the silence.
And he said out loud the same thing that Michael couldn’t stop thinking about.
Someone had been murdered on the train – while they had been the only murderers there – so it could only mean, that someone else was there too.

Now they just had to find out who.

Chapter Text

Lando was walking back and forth in the narrow space - two steps forward, turn, two steps back.

“You're like the lion in the zoo.”

“And you're more like a sloth.” Lando said quickly.  Mike didn't seem to mind at all that his living space was confined to his bed. “It feels like fucking prison.”

“Well, you’re an expert of that, right?”

Not for the first time, Lando actually thought about killing him.
Speaking of murder...

Lando stopped and looked at the bed where Michael was staring at the ceiling. He didn't think he'd see anything in the dark, but for some reasons Mike kept his eyes there.

Only a day had passed, barely a day, but Lando was beginning to feel the slight claustrophobia creeping under his skin.
During the day, he tried to keep busy, staring out of the narrow window, counting the fading lampposts, trying to take the shape of the trees. He was reading, he was on his phone. He watched videos, longer ones, shorter ones.

Like that, the day passed surprisingly quickly, and Lando thought, no, he hoped the evening would be easier. Time passed faster while sleeping, right?
What he didn't count on was that after a day of doing nothing, it wouldn't be so easy to fall asleep.
After hours of futile attempts, there was nothing left to do but to walk up and down, treading on empty space.

And to make it even worse, Michael was here to annoy him.

“We're in the middle of a fucking Stephen King book, like, "Murder on the train" or something.”

“You mean Agatha Christie. Murder on the Orient Express.”

Lando closed his eyes, and in his mind, he dismembered the man.
It was a very reassuring mental image.

“But honestly, no. I’m also not happy about the situation we’re in.” Mike got on his elbows, and looked down at Lando “So, I was thinking.”

“Did it hurt?”

“… anyway…” Michael went on as if he hadn't heard Lando “Someone was killed. The cop guy just said.”

“I don’t like him.” Lando nodded to his own words. There was just something about the man's flashy style that made the jackknife in his pocket pop open.

Like, literally.

“Yeah, I mean, he won’t be my best bud either, but that's not the point. Someone was killed. Like you said, we're not alone.”

“Yes, but we're smarter than to kill someone on a train full of people. That’s just too much attention.”

Lando would have lied if he hadn't been thinking about that all the fucking time. It was such an absurd situation, like the beginning of a bad joke: two killers met on the train...

“Exactly.” Mike nodded, and it was as if life had returned to him, in a second he was right next to Lando “Let's go through it. We, know it wasn’t us, so that's out of the equation. Is that a coincidence? What are the chances of that?”

“I've never been good at math, but I think it's pretty low.”

“I am good at math. Trust me, the chances are like… non-existent.  Alonso's people? You know them. Can they be that stupid?”

“They're even more stupid, actually. But then...”

“Then we were the target. Or well, we still are.”

Yeah, that was something Lando had also thought about
But ...

“The train's full of cops.”

The Russian police didn't have enough men to put a man in front of every sleeping compartment, but they had enough to get some into every carriage.
Lando had seen two of them as a third had accompanied him to the bathroom.

“Why would it be a problem for someone really good?” Michael shrugged, and Lando had to admit, he was right. He’d broken into guarded houses and killed a lot of people without the officers guarding them noticing.

And if he could have done it, so could anyone else.

And in that case, cops or not, they were still the ones being targeted, and even though Lando didn't think much of the killer, - maybe killers? who knew – it was probably better to be prepared.

Of course, it wasn’t like he could do much preparation there.

The windows could be opened, at least partly, but the gap would have been just enough for a smaller adult: Lando could have climbed through it, but Michael would have gotten stuck Him and his fucking wide shoulders.
And as the policeman had mentioned earlier, the train didn’t stop anywhere, and to climb out of a train window at hundreds of miles an hour just to get back somewhere else would be a real achievement. Lando wasn’t sure he’d risk it just to kill someone.
But of course, it didn’t matter he should have dismissed the idea.

Getting through the door unnoticed wouldn’t have been easy, but also, wouldn’t have been impossible.
Especially if...

“What if it was one of the cops?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.” Mike nodded “Then why all the fuss? Cops everywhere, ‘looking for’ the murderer and all”

“Okay, but without the first murder…”

“Then there's no way the cops could get in, because there's no need for a cop on a train.”

“So, whoever was killed...”

“...it was a distraction from us. Unless, of course...”

“…if they've actually killed anyone.”

“Exactly.”

They ended each other's sentences as if they were reading each other's minds.
Lando had to accept that they were a good team. Which, of course, wasn't surprising because they were both pros.
And, of course, Lando didn't forget how many nights they'd spent like that, discussing their current work, saying all the details out loud, coming up with ideas together.

It was almost the same. Almost, because on those occasions, they had usually been lying in bed talking, naked, with Michael playing with Lando’s hair as he’d been thinking, and Lando had been drawing patterns on the man's chest with the tip of his fingers, and...

“… to find out.”

“What?”

“I said, it’s not like there’s a way we can actually find out if there’s a corpse of not.”

Of course, things didn’t look good.
They were stuck in a hellhole, with a window that wasn’t big enough to sneak out, cops were at the doors who only let them out to pee...

But like Michael said before, why would it be a problem for someone really good?

Chapter Text

Sergei hated his job.

Okay, that statement in itself was a lie. Sergei had learned a lot to become a cop, at the academy in Moscow, which was very far away from the little village where he grew up, and his parents were very proud of him.

It was just he hadn’t imagined it like that when he’d been a kid.
He’d dreamed about excitement. Secret missions, interesting investigations, catching real bad guys.

Instead, he spent his third day in a row with walking back and forth in one of the wagons of the train with one of his colleagues, just to escort civilians to the bathroom, so yes – right now, Sergei hated his job.

He heard as the door of one of the sleeping-cars opened, so he walked towards there.

“Да?”

“I have to pee.”

The man at the door actually could have been Russian, with his light-coloured hair and big, blueish green eyes.
Okay, his job had its perks.

“Net.” he said, and shook his head, just to be sure the other understood him “You have to wait.”

“You don’t understand.” the man shook his head too “I have to pee, now.”

Sergei took a deep breath.
He was currently alone in the corridor, because his colleague was also on bathroom duty, and there were so many people on this damned train who had to pee at the same time that they didn’t have enough cops for that.

“I’m so sorry Sir, But I can’t leave my spot without other policemen here. Once my colleague…” the guy move so suddenly and unexpectedly that Sergei didn’t have time to react. And he squeezed the hem of his shirt that the same went for escaping.

“Listen to me сэр.” the man used the Russian word for Sir so easily that Sergei had to think about his nationality again “I will go to the bathroom, with, or without you. The decision is yours.”

“… after you.”

“Good.”

Michael was waiting until he didn’t hear the footsteps of Lando and the cop anymore, and only opened the door when he was sure they left.
The most difficult part of the plan was done – they had been spending hours standing in their car, listening at the door to hear when one of the cops had left.

He opened the door carefully, and just as he hoped, no one was out there.
Now he just needed to somehow get to the dining car.

Mike had to admit, Lando was really the best at his job, and not just in the killing part of it.

“Let’s say, that there is a corpse.” Lando had said two days ago, when they had tried to consider their options. Michael had seen the excitement in his eyes, and if he’d wanted to be honest, he’d felt something similar. It had felt so good to finally do something. “The train didn’t stop, so…”

“So, if there is a corpse, it must be here somewhere.”

“Where would you put one?”

“On ice?” Mike had shrugged, but obviously, it hadn’t really helped. They had been in Russia, there had been cold everywhere, and… “A refrigerator wagon?” he looked at Lando, who answered with a huge smile.

“Bingo.”

It sounded logical.
They were served food on the train, and it must have been kept fresh somewhere, so Mike assumed there was a wagon full with huge refrigerators.
Or with opened windows, since it was fucking Russia.

And while they didn’t know the exact layout of the whole train, it seemed logical that if there was a car like that, it mist have been close to the one where they ate their meals day after day – and that car was not too far away from them.

So, Michael was on his way there, while Lando distracted the cop. He hadn’t told Mike how he’d planned to do it, but Michael didn’t really care.

He had to admit, he enjoyed the situation.

He’d been right by Daniel’s side for so long, and he hadn’t taken part in an actual operation since forever, that this little sneaking around in the middle of the night made his heart beating faster. Not like it wasn’t exciting enough to be Daniel’s personal bodyguard, but still.
As he opened the door of the car next to theirs, and saw the cop there looking at him, his arms moved like it was muscle memory – he wrapped one of his arms around the neck of the man, and squeezed it hard enough to pass out, but not too hard to kill him, he felt the wave of nostalgia – good old days, when he’d just been one of the low-end criminals.

And there was something very liberating in the feeling.
There wasn’t another cop in the car, which was a pity, because Mike was prepared to do the same with them too, but in that way, he reached his destination faster – the wagon behind the dining car.

The cold hit him in the face as he opened the door, and the four A/Cs made enough noise to cover the constant buzzing of the train. There were four fridges in the car, but Mike didn’t waste his time opening them – he could tell by first look that they weren’t big enough for a corpse.
He walked past the chrome steel kitchen island (could he call it that? he had no idea of the appropriate vocab of this place), taking a look at all the things there. Knives, bowls, tableware, plates, everything secured to the shelves. There was a huge gallon in one of the corners, the clean water supply, and it was such a strangely interesting place, Michael could have spent hours there, looking around, but then he tripped in something, and he didn’t care about the kitchen supplies anymore.

That was definitely a corpse, covered with a white tablecloth, probably the only thing big enough for it that the cops found.
Mike squatted, and looked under it.
The man’s throat was slit, it wasn’t hard to see the huge cut from ear to ear, or the dried blood there.

Their theory collapsed, the cops weren’t on the train because of some fake reason, someone was really killed on the train, but with that the list of unanswered questions grew bigger, like who was that guy, or why was he killed, or who killed him, or if that was the killer’s original plan, or was it just some kind of distraction, or…

Even through the noise of the A/Cs, Michael could hear the door opening.
There was no way to escape, so he could only hope that whoever entered the car, wouldn’t check every corner of it. He glued his back to the kitchen island, hiding as much as he could, and for a second he didn’t even breathe.
He heard footsteps coming closer, and saw the ray of a flashlight, but fortunately right before it could reach him, another person came there. The two of them started to talk in Russian, which obviously Mike didn’t understand, but whatever they were talking about, after some minutes the left.

Michael was waiting for another minute, and then decided to follow their example.
He already knew everything he wanted to.

Sergei knocked on the bathroom door again.
He could have entered the room if he wanted to, he had every right for it, and for a second he really wanted to, but then he remembered how disappointed his mom would have been if she had known, so he decided to wait, outside.

The guy had been there for an hour now.
And while there were a lot of logical reasons for that, reasons Sergei didn’t really want to know about, he started to worry.

He left his post way too long ago, and if his colleague was back in their car he could report it to their boss, and then Sergei could forget about climbing that ladder, especially if the guy in there turned out to be some kind of a bad guy, and –

“I’m done.” the guy came out of the bathroom, looking at Sergei so innocently like he didn’t just spend half an hour in there.

“What took you so long?! You said you just had to pee!”

“I pooped too.” he shrugged, and without any further explanation, he started to walk back to his own sleeping cabin.

And that made it official – Sergei really hated his job.

Chapter Text

“White male in his late thirties, or early forties. Brown hair, bullet body.”

“And how was the cut?”

Of course, Lando only cared about that.

“Straight. One firm movement.”

“So, we have a professional.” Lando nodded at his own words. Michael hated to admit, but he didn’t even think about that.

“Did he look familiar?”

“Hm?”

“The man. Have you seen him before?”

“I don’t think so.”

Which, of course, wasn't surprising. When they had boarded the train in Beijing, there had been a lot of passengers, and as the time had passed more passengers had joined them, because the train stopped every seventy or eighty kilometres, and the corpse could have joined the passengers at any of these stops.

But what bothered Lando was the manner of the murder.

He was an expert with knives, so he knew very well that while it was one of the quickest and easiest ways to kill someone, it had its drawbacks.

According to Michael, the man was killed by a sharp cut to the neck, so the killer must have had not only the proper anatomical knowledge, but the proper tools. A flat bread knife had teeth that were too large for a flat-edged cut, and a chisel wasn’t sharp enough.
Whoever killed the man had to have a knife that was just right for the job.

The other thing that was bothering him was the complete absence of blood.
Because while cutting someone's throat was relatively easy, cleaning it up afterwards was a nightmare. And Lando couldn't imagine that on a bumpy train, which was also full of people, someone would have had time to clean up every drop of blood.
And according to Michael, the body was completely clean.

The body, whose identity was a mystery to them.

“I should have been the one checking on it.” Lando said with a big sigh. He had much more extensive connections in the mob, and in his years with Alonso, he’d probably met more people than Mike, who had only been responsible only for Daniel's personal security for years.

“Maybe, but I couldn't have smiled so nicely to distract the cop.”

Lando raised one eyebrow.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I'm just saying. That's the truth, isn't it?”

“Yeah, sure. I also just said the truth.”

“Which is?”

“That I should have seen the body, because then we'd know more.”

“You got a problem with how I’m doing my job?”

“Me? How can I? I'm just here look good for the cop.”

Michael already opened his mouth to make some impassioned remark, which, of course, would have accomplished nothing except to get them into another argument, but the knock on their door drowned the words in.

“Police, open up!”

Lando felt like he had to deal a lot more with the cops nowadays than in his entire career.
Probably because previously he always had a chance to escape from them.

Just like the first time, the chief of police didn't wait for the door to be opened and walked into the cabin as if it were his own.

Lando's fingers ran through Michael's hair as he kissed him, and he put his arms around his waist.

“Ah, you're awake, perfect.”

“Yes, we are...”

“Having sex.” Lando finished Mike’s sentence “We are about to have sex.” he added as he saw the confusion on the cop’s face “You just arrived when we wanted to undress.”

“I see.” the cop nodded, even though his face said the exact opposite “And you’ve been doing that… till now?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

They talked at the same time, just like they turned to look at the other at the same time, only communicating with their eyes. They were still standing in the middle of their cabin, hugging each other, Michael’s arm on Lando’s waist, who had his arms on Mike’s shoulders.

“You just came back from the bathroom, didn’t you, Darling?”

“Oh! Yes. I completely forgot about it. Potty break. That’s why we got dressed. That nice cop outside our door accompanied me.”

“I see.” the cop nodded again, which made Mike wonder how much he actually understood of the language.

Seemingly, not too much.

“Did anything happen? Another murder, or…?” he asked gently, innocently playing the curious tourist. He felt as Lando’s hand grabbed his shirt a little stronger.

“Net, net, fortunately no, don’t worry. Just something broke in the kitchen, and I thought…”

If that was even possible, Lando squeezed Michael’s shirt even stronger.
He just so knew it should have bee him going there to look around. But nooo, of course not, here was Michael, the big strong alpha male, while Lando had spent half an hour in a small, disgusting bathroom which smelled like shit, just for Michael to leave his traces behind.

“But of course, you’re way too far from the kitchen to hear anything.” the cop waved it off with a smile “Well. Have fun you two, I guess.” he added, and he left just as quickly as he had come.

"Did you really knock something down?" Lando gritted between his teeth. He wanted to scream, but he wasn't sure if the policeman was still within earshot. He couldn't stop himself from punching the other’s shoulder with all his might. Michael was very lucky he could get away with that.

“No!” Mike automatically rubbed the place where the other hit him. Fuck, he was strong. Mike felt his whole arm going numb from the impact.

“No? The guy just said…!”

“Lando, no, please! I swear! I checked, all the shit there are tied to the shelves, I couldn’t knock anything down even if I wanted to!”

Lando stared at him for a long time, silently. Michael was like an open book, his thoughts were always written on his face, he could read everything off of it with ease.

“But if you really didn't knock down anything...”

“No, I did not. I didn't have a chance.”

Mike wasn't lying. Lando would have known that.
He had mentioned earlier that he had been disturbed while examining the body, but since he hadn’t been disguised, he hadn’t really care about it,

Looked like he should have.

“But then...”

“Yeah.” Lando didn’t have to finish the sentence for Michael to think about the same “The police think we’re sus.”

Just what they needed.

Chapter Text

The whole ride shouldn’t have been longer than a week, but Mike felt like they had been on their way since forever. It was strange to think about how just some years ago he would have done anything to spend as much alone time with Lando as he could, locked in a room barely bigger than a prison cell.

They should have talked.

They should have, and obviously, they did, about the job ahead of them, the murder on the train, or the identity of the mysterious corpse, about anything but this whole goddamn situation that was eating away at Michael's insides, and about which Lando seemingly didn’t really care.
It was easy to think that he was over Lando and had managed to bury all the hurt and pain of the past in the deepest corners of his brain, but then he had come back into Mike’s life like a bomb, and Michael was a little afraid that if he couldn’t let it all out of his system, he'd be the one who exploded.

It wasn’t like any part of Mike wanted to actually talk.
He knew the two of them well enough to know that a conversation would soon turn into an argument, but he just couldn't take it anymore.
They had to make things clear once and for all, and unfortunately, there was no other way to do that.

He was trying to figure out a way to wake Lando up without risking the other guy cutting his throat. It would be ironic, two bodies with their throats cut on a train, like the beginning of some bad joke. But then the knock on the door of their cabin solved it for him.

Lando's eyes opened, and Mike could see the blade of the knife twinkling in his hand, even in the dark. What a fucking professional.

“We need to talk.” said the policeman at their door, the same one who walked past Mike with such ease and went into their booth as if he was spending his nights there with them.

"What happened?" asked Lando, who had already gotten out of bed. Michael was glad not to see the knife in his hand.

"I know you're hiding something", the policeman began, without any disguise, "and I'd like you to tell me what it is".

“We don't...” Mike started, but the man stopped him with one movement of his hand.

“Let me be more specific then. Either you tell me what you’re hiding, or we'll try some of the KGB's interrogation techniques. And believe me, after that, you’ll tell me everything I want to know.

Michael had heard of Russian torture methods - in fact, some of them were still used by the CIA.
In fact, the Soviets denied that the treatment of their prisoners had been torture, since physical violence had rarely been used. They preferred to call it a minor inconvenience, and at first glance it really sounded like that. Confinement, constant light, being kept awake, reduced food intake, alternating cold and heat. However, isolation, anxiety, exhaustion, lack of sleep, unpleasant temperatures, and constant hunger had caused mood and behaviour disorders in almost all of the prisoners. Each of these had causes extreme discomfort and had led to severe impairment of bodily functions, so it could rightly be called torture.

Michael saw Lando looking towards his bed, probably guessing how long it would take him to get to his knife.

Before he could move, Mike took his hand, turned towards him and then slowly shook his head. Lando has always been intuitive. The kind that went, did, got the job done, and then dealt with the consequences later. Go big or go home.

They couldn't afford that right now.
They were on a train, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by so many policemen that a small police station would envy.
But more importantly, Daniel and Max were counting on them. They couldn't risk it.

“Okay, then.” He said, and he took a deep breath. He looked at Lando one more time, then turned back to the police officer “We're not married.”

The policeman sighed heavily.

“I thought so. Married people don't have that much sex.”

“Please, don’t tell anyone!” Mike let out the breath he didn’t know he was keeping in, when Lando started to talk. He’d only hoped the other would follow his lead, and thankfully, they worked quite well together “My husband kills him if he finds out!”

The man looked from one to the other, as if looking for signs of lying, then sighed deeply again.

"Sit down". He said, pointing to the little bench-like thing under Lando's bed, while he sat across from them, on the one under Mike's bed. “How long has it been going like that?”

“For years.” Michael answered. The basis of a good lie was to stay as close to the truth as possible.

“You've been lovers for years?”

“We weren't always lovers.” Lando added “Just for the record. For a long time, we haven’t even met.”

“And why have you met again?” 

“…work.” they said at the same time. And they didn’t even lie.

The policeman nodded slowly.

The whole situation started to be like some kind of a low-budged couples counselling, and Lando didn’t like it. In his profession it was the best to always be prepared and it was actually painful to admit how he didn’t have a plan for that.
But seriously, who would have thought that he would entertain a cop with the details about his relationship with Michael in the middle of nowhere.

“Which one of you ended it? Back then?”

“It was a mutual agreement.”

“The fuck it was!” Mike blurted out, looking at Lando like he couldn’t see how his eyes could kill him in a second. Not here, not now, just not – was the message in those big, greenish blue eyes, but it seemed Michael didn’t get it. “You left me!” Years of resentment got out of his system with saying it out loud.

“I had my reasons!”

“What??”

Lando crossed his arms on his chest. It didn’t matter how angry he was, he couldn’t forget where they were.

“…work.” he said after a minute of silence, and it seemed the message finally reached Mike, because after that, he didn’t push it.

“But do you love each other?”

“More than anything.”

Michael only realized how true his words were when he said them out loud.
Because it didn’t matter how many years they had spent away from each other, or why, the moment Lando was back in his life, he got back to Mike’s heart too, and from that second, there was no turning back.
Michael was just as crazy in love with Lando as crazy Lando himself was – and what love was if not that craze?

“Okay, I’m only saying it once.” the cop leaned closer to them, with his elbows on his knees “Life gave you a second chance.” he said, emphasizing every word “Don’t waste that chance.”

They didn’t talk about it.
They actually didn’t talk about anything, ever since the policeguy left, they were laying in their own beds in complete silence, like nothing happened.
If Michael had hoped that talking about it would have made it better, well. He had been wrong.

“Lando?” he asked the darkness quietly. He didn’t want to wake the other up if he asleep, but there was something else he needed to know.

“Hm?”

“That work.” Mike swallowed hard “That you mentioned. Was it me? I was your next target?”

The first time, when he’d asked the same, he hadn’t got an answer, which could have been an answer in itself, but somehow it wasn’t. It simply wasn’t logical of Alonso to get Lando killing Mike – he could have done it with Daniel instead.

He could have understood it.
All Lando should have done was telling it to him, back then, when they had still had a chance, and Michael would have understood it, really. They could have gone to Daniel together, could have admitted everything, and maybe, just maybe things would be different now.

But Michael hadn’t got an answer neither then –

“Good night, Michael.”

– nor now.

Chapter Text

The train stopped so suddenly, Lando didn’t even realize it at first.
What he did realize was the absence of the constant noise.

“God, it’s quiet.” he said, and for a second, he actually started to think if it was really quiet, or he just got so used to the noise of the train that his brain considered it as background noise.

But said background noise now suddenly stopped, and Lando’s brain slowly but surely connected the dots, when the door was burst open, and Michael ran in, panting.

“It’s over!”

“I don’t care about your genital herpes, Italiano.”

“No! Lando, we stopped! It’s finally over!”

Ah, so that was why it wasn’t noisy anymore. Yeah, now that he was actually thinking about it, Lano felt how the ground wasn’t shaking under his feet, or –

It wasn’t easy, but Lando’s brain started to work.

“What?”

“Exactly!”

Lando looked out the window, where the scenery wasn’t moving.
They were on a perfectly normal platform, old buildings in the distance, and a huge board, Москва - Ярославский вокзал, and while Lando didn’t speak Russian, it was clearly written in Russian, so they arrived to their destination, which meant people, and civilization, and

“Cops.” he said to Mike.

There were four police cars standing right next to the railway track, and armed cops got out of it one by one.
He had felt surrounded by the police on the train, but now that they stopped it just got even worse.

“Do you think…” Michael couldn’t finished the sentence, because the cop who had been standing at their door opened it without knocking.

“Pack your suitcases.” he said easily “We’re here.”

They didn’t have much things to pack.
Lando just throw everything in his bag, and he’d have said he was ready, but he had no idea what to do with all the weapons they had on them. He put his knife in its own holder on his waist, which was covered by his coat – bless Russia and its weather, no one would ask him why he was wearing so much clothes.
And hopefully no one would notice it during a body search.
From the corner of his eyes, he could see Michael doing the same, covering his gun with thick fabric.

“Do you have everything?” he asked Lando, who answered with a nod “Let’s go then.”

Everyone wanted to leave the train at the same time, and Lando could understand them.
He fought his way through the narrow space of the corridor between cabins, through all the people, and followed the mass to the door, and after only walking down three stairs, the cold hit him like a train – no pun intended.

But he didn’t care about the crowd, he didn’t care about how freezing it was outside, he didn’t care about anything anymore, all that didn’t matter, because he was finally out, on fresh air, and he felt exactly like he’d felt after getting out of jail.
The fresh smell of freedom was nothing but just petrol vapour from the police cars, and sweat, and cold, which was so harsh it burned his lungs, but it felt amazing to take a deep breath.
He wanted to kneel down, just to feel the solid ground under his palms to know he wasn’t dreaming.

The shouting from his left had the same effect.

Lando didn’t understand a word, and maybe because of that, but he paid a close attention, who knew, they were in a foreign country, and better safe than sorry.

“Isn’t that your buddy?” Michael asked, and yes, by now Lando could also see that the shouting came from a man, whose hands were cuffed behind his back, and who was led to the police car by two cops.

“He’s not my buddy.” Lando rolled his eyes when he noticed the man too.

He looked like every other Russian man on the train, sharp, boney jawline, cold blue eyes, and it didn’t take much time for Lando to notice the guy he had drunk bottles of vodka on their first night there.

“He confessed everything.” the cop they got too familiar with on their journey appeared next to them with a big smile on his face.

“He’s the killer?”

“Why, do you know him?”

“No.” they said in union.

“Just out of curiosity.” Mike started carefully “What did he say, what was the motive?”

“He was drunk.” the cop shrugged, like he didn’t really are about it, he was just happy to finally be over it “Enjoy your stay.” he added, and with a nod he went to the car, where their murderer was already sitting on the backseat.

Lando watched the car leaving.

The platform slowly got empty, the cops left, and the people continued their daily routine like nothing happened, like the week-long torture was an everyday occurrence.

It seemed so easy.
The motive sounded so obvious, alcohol, instantaneous impulse, it happened million times in every corner of the world.

“Do you believe him?” Michael asked. Lando thought about what they could have found out about the corpse. One sharp cut, no blood around – that didn’t indicate instantaneous impulse. “Good, because me neither.” Mike added when he didn’t get an answer.

Was it the incompetent police catching a professional? Or was it all for just the show, and there were more serious things in the background? Was it really the murderer sitting in the car, or just an idiot who took the blame?

A lot of questions ran through Lando’s head, but he didn’t get an answer to any of them.

They were in Russia for like five minutes, and the only thing he was sure of was that it didn’t hurt to keep their eyes open.

Chapter Text

The Daniel K. Inouye International Airport was the largest airport in the state of Hawaii. Located on the island of O’ahu, just 4 miles from downtown Honolulu, the airport had four runways that served both international and interstate flights.

Yuki decided to take the boat anyway.
It's not that he didn't think it was safe to fly, in fact, he could've taken a private jet if he wanted to, but Mikey said to avoid unnecessary attention, and he was such a nice person -. that was the least he could've done for Mikey. Yuki was almost certain that one day this blessed good heart would take him to the grave.

And yet, here he was, sitting in the crowded airport lobby, at the appointed meeting place, not knowing who he was supposed to meet, (Mikey didn't say a name or give any identification, just that he would recognize him, which didn't help much) and trying to blend in.

Not like the man sitting across from him.

Who, by the way, didn’t look anything special, really.
Except that the man looked into the faces of every passing person as if he wondered if he knew them or not. It's like he was waiting, or even looking for someone, only he didn’t know exactly who that someone was, just like Yuki wasn't sure he wasn't the one he was supposed to be looking for.

Well, yes, he was sure that they weren't looking for each other, but he wasn't sure that they weren’t waiting for the same person.

At least the couple at the window wasn't so conspicuous.
The blonde woman and the even blonder man stood in front of the large glass window, embracing each other, and seemingly watching the planes landing, but Yuki sometimes caught the man's gaze in the reflection of the glass as it travelled through the crowd.

If he had to guess, he'd have say the blonde man was the only one who actually knew who they were waiting for, so from now on Yuki wasn't looking at the crowd, but rather at the blonde man and his cold blue eyes.

Turns out Mikey was right.

Of course, Yuki would never have said that out loud, but the thing was, if he hadn't seen the recognition in the blond man's eyes, Yuki would have known he was waiting for that man - without him saying a word.

Because there was something about the man, something that Yuki couldn't explain, but it was definitely there.
He was blond, but not as blond as this other man, probably his natural hair colour.
His eyes were covered with dark sunglasses, and there was no emotion on his face.
He was wearing a suit, an ironed shirt and a tie, which was pretty unusual on an airplane, but it wouldn't have made him stand out from the crowd.

But what was more in this man than in anyone else around him was this vibe, this don't fuck with me style, which was not derived from his clothes, but was entirely his own, which floated around him like some kind of perfume.

He stopped in the middle of the room and took a quick look around.

“I think we're looking for each other.” Yuki said to him, and he put his sunglasses on his head. Yuki saw the bleach blonde man at the window turning towards them, and the man sitting across from him standing up. “At least Mikey told me to come here.”

The right corner of the man's mouth moved slightly upward, which could have been a sign of a stroke, but Yuki preferred to think he was seeing the beginning of smile.

“Mikey. That's good.” the man said. He had a raspy, yet commanding voice. He nodded to the couple who were walking towards them. The two men shook hands without a word, and the blonde woman received a hug. So, the three blondes knew each other.

Meanwhile, the third man arrived; instead of shaking hands, he immediately hugged the suited one.

“It's been a while.” he said, and he definitely had a smile on his face. “What's the plan, Boss?”

Yeah, that was something Yuki also would've wanted to know.

Mikey and Lando hadn’t told him much, as far as he knew, from there they were off to another, smaller island, where Yuki could finally meet the kid, (Lanny? Larry? he had a terrible memory for names) who was under Mikey’s protection, and the famous Daniel, who he'd heard so much about and who'd introduce him to every detail of the plan.

“Change of plans” said the man instead “We're going to Europe.” he added casually, like he was talking about the weather.

Yuki understood it, of course he did.
The man was clearly someone who was used to giving orders and expected everyone to follow them blindly.

The only problem was, Yuki was used to it too, and he didn't like the role reversal.
Not at all.

“And please, enlighten us, what the fuck are we doing in Europe?” he asked, because he may have promised Mikey he'd help, but he refused to blindly follow someone he didn't even know the name of, or be told what to do, or –

“Fuck some shit up.” the suited guy said that with just as calmly as he’d said anything so far

“Cool.”

The bleach blonde spoke first, and though he didn't say much, that one word was enough to make the third guy laugh out loud, the blonde woman smiled with a twinkle in her eyes, and the man in the suit have that little stroke sign in the corner of his mouth that by now Yuki knew was a smile.

They weren't an A-Team, that was for sure.
But maybe Yuki was able to put someone else in charge.

Just this one time.

Chapter Text

“The snow glows white on the mountain tonight, not a footprint to be seeeeeen! A kingdom of isolation, and it looks like, I’m the queen!”

Max watched from the window upstairs as Lance was playing in the garden, knee deep in the snow, singing the lyrics of Frozen. The boy was spinning around fast until he became dizzy, and right after he lay down on the soft whiteness.

At least he enjoyed the snow.

Not like Danie, who was sitting next to the huge fireplace right now, wearing a hat, a scarf and glows – Max started sweating just by looking at him.

“It’s almost thirty degrees inside.”

“I can feel the cold.” answered the man, like just because he was born in Australia, that made him feeling the outside temperature inside the house. Max wasn’t exactly happy about the situation either, but he wasn’t as bothered by it as Daniel.

Logically, he knew they should have been grateful.
For Kimi, who had offered them his house in Finland without questioning it, and for Mick, who had warned them for the danger that had been coming.

For a long time, the conversation between him and Mick had been one sided through the e-mail address Max had made – correction, Lance had made it – to contact his ex-colleague.
He knew he had a lot to make up for, and that seemed the less dangerous solution for both of them. 
With Kimi’s help they could have exposed Masi and his corruption, which was good, not just because now Alonso didn’t have a man inside the police, but also because that was Mick could have got his position back, the same position he’d lost because of Max.
But how the other had known about what happened in the inside circle of Alonso, he had no idea. The only thing he knew was that had been an e-mail, written in the drafts, just like Max always did it, and there had been only three words in there – get lost, NOW.
Max had thought it would have been better to do exactly that.

And what a good decision it had been – Max had checked the Hawaiian news that evening, and it had turned out that while they had been on the way to Finland, the Hawaiian police had raided the island.
Why Alonso had decided to get the job done with the police instead of his own men was just as big of a mystery as how he’d found them.

They had somehow gotten caught.
But how, they had absolutely no idea.

Lando and Michael hadn’t called them on the satellite phone, which they would have done if they had been in danger, so it wasn’t an option.

“Close the fucking door!” Daniel screamed as the cold wind entered the house.

“Sorry!” he heard Lance’s voice from the hall. He was trying to get rid of the snow on his boots, which Max already know would leave a mark on the carpet – he made a mental note to buy a new one for the Raikkönen family – and then Lance walked into the living room with a big smile on his face “It’s soooo fun here!”

“Yeah, soooo fun.” nodded Daniel. Lance didn’t notice the sarcasm in his voice.

Not many people knew where they were.
Kimi, obviously and Cyril who was dealing with everything connected to the casinos and mostly Enchanté, and Max trusted both of them with his life.
And there was of course also Lando and Mike, who were only God knew where in the world, and they had recruited new people for their plan. Max couldn’t talk for them, but both Daniel and Kimi had told him that they were also trustworthy. They had spent months to find the correct people, and Max had to admit that they were probably right – but it was still an option. And Daniel didn’t need to know about Max asking Kimi to keep an eye on their A Team.

And then, there were the three of them.
Daniel, who was ready to die in hypothermia, and Lance, who seemed like he couldn’t be more satisfied with the situation.

The boy sat down next to his father, and automatically grabbed his phone, just to quickly starting to type something on it. Max watched as his fingers ran through the screen, like he was typing a text to someone.

To whom, he had no idea.
He knew that Lance had his friends, his life would have been quite boring without them, and he also knew that Daniel made strict rules about how to stay connected to them – no webcam, no using the same IP address twice.

But would it be that hard for Lance to disobey his father? The boy was a fucking genius when it was about computers, he could do anything with a laptop and internet connection, and let’s admit, none of them were on his level.

Lance locked his screen with a loud click, and stood up from the couch to walk to the kitchen.
And Danil was so caught up in his suffering, he didn’t notice Max following him.

“Do we still have apple juice?” the boy asked him, his head in the fridge. It seemed like the weather didn’t bother him enough not to drink something cold. His phone was waiting for him on the kitchen counter to be grabbed – obviously with his screen down.

“Top shelf.” Max told him easily, and sat down at the kitchen island the same time the phone started to buzz.

They reached for it at the same time, just to stop in the middle of the movement in sync. Lance looked like a deer in headlights, looking at Max with wide eyes, and he was almost sure the boy forgot to breathe for a second.
In contrast, Max took a deep breath.
For long minutes none of them said anything, but they both know they were thinking of the same thing.

“I just want you to be careful.” Max said in the end. He wanted to scream, shout, confront Lance, look into those fucking texts, to know what the boy had done what had forced them to escape in the middle of the night…!

But it was pointless. What was done was done, and whatever the fuck it was, it didn’t matter anymore.
They were safe, and that was the most important.

Lance swallowed hard.

“I promise.” he said, and slowly nodded to it.

It wasn’t optimal, but Max was satisfied with it – for now.

Chapter Text

Fernando Alonso didn't consider himself a particularly sentimental type, but the thing was, that whenever he went home to Spain, there was simply something in the air, something he just needed to call home.
Of course, he was doing very well in the States, indeed, both in business and in any other way, but there was something inexplicable about the country that caused him to visit here from time to time, and it was everything but sentimentality.

While it wasn’t the best idea for convenience reasons to keep the two largest of his warehouses in Spain, because it meant more people with whom he had to deal with on a daily basis, it made good business sense.

Masi was busted and removed from his position on suspicion of corruption, which was the politically correct way of saying he was kicked out, but at least he had no connection to the Spanish warehouses, and that was why Fernando preferred to keep the bulk of the goods here, away from everything – it was safe.

And yet here he was, measuring the damage in the middle of the ruins, in the half-burned hangar that was supposed to hold over 800 tons of cocaine, arranged in nice little bricks per kilo.

“Who much de we have left?” he asked Jenson, who was doing the damage assessment.

“Usable? Almost nothing.” he shook his head “And what is left is unsalvageable. Not even if we put flour on it or something.”

That wasn't good news.

“Let's go.” he told Jenson, and he already turned his back on the ruins. There was nothing to see here anymore.

Fernando had got a phone call in the middle of the night from his local people that the warehouse had been on fire, and even though he had a private jet, and it had made things faster, by the time he’d got there, all that was left was the damage assessment.

But the good news was that the other hangar, which was about a half-hour drive from this one, reported no such thing.
And what was there was more important than some white powder.

Jenson only nodded to the two guards at the entrance to the other hangar to open the door for them.

“Everything’s all right?” he asked one of the men. A huge rottweiler was sitting at his feet, and the muscles in the man’s arm were tightening as he tried to keep the dog in place. To the animal, they were strangers, and that was exactly why the dog was there - to keep the strangers out.

“Yes, everything.” the man nodded “The cameras didn't show any disturbance, and the dog was here all night.”

Cocaine was good business, really.
The Colombian shipment was a pittance, but the profit was huge, and Fernando loved few things more than the profit.
But it didn’t matter how many addicts there were in America, it still wasn't nearly as profitable as the many guns waiting in the hangar, neatly arranged on floor-to-ceiling shelves, just as Fernando had last seen them.

That was where the real money was.
And fortunately, this one was not harmed in any way.

As Fernando walked in, the motion-sensing lights on the ceiling were switched on simultaneously with each step he took, and as he took one of the guns off the shelf and held it out, the weight on his chest that he’d had ever since he got the call last night finally lifted.

He didn’t pull the trigger on purpose. Really, he didn't want to, it wouldn't have made any sense, neither of the guns were loaded, the bullets were stored separately in wooden boxes at the other end of the hangar, and yet, as Fernando's finger barely touched the trigger, the gun went off, and all he could do was point the gun at the ceiling as fast as he could, prepared for the force of the recoil that would follow -

But it didn't come.

The gun was lit, but it wasn't lit, and Fernando Alonso’s mouth formed a prefect O shape, as he stared at the little BANG flag that was coming out of the barrel of the gun.

“What the fuck.” he muttered, but then the wonder was replaced by anger, and he got louder “What the fuck is that?” he screamed, and he threw the gun on the ground.

He pulled another gun off that same shelf, pulled the trigger, and was hardly surprised when the same thing happened.

In a hurry, he stepped onto another shelf and grabbed the M16 that was there.
It looked exactly as it should, except for the tiny, barely visible Mattel inscription on the pipe.
He found Nerf, Airsoft, and Paintball guns, and in fact, almost the entire stockpile had been changed for some toy gun company's product, and the boxes that were supposed to contain the bullets were now empty except for the little note that Fernando found at the bottom of one.

No go, amigo

With two big steps, Fernando walked up to the guard and pulled the man to himself by his collar, not caring that the dog was barking loudly at his feet.

“You said everything was fine!”

“It was! The dog didn't alert, and the alarm didn't go off.”

“And the, how the fuck…?!”

Ricciardo.
The name came into his mind so obviously like it had been there all along, but he only realized how obvious it was then he tore that little note in millions of pieces.

Of course, it had been Ricciardo and his little gang of misfits. For someone who was good with IT, breaking into his system would have been nothing, and the dog had probably even easier than that.

Because Ricciardo had had to run away from the safety of his perfect little Hawaiian dream, and now, the burned-out hangar and the stolen guns, it was his revenge for that.

Fernando pushed the man away. He really wanted to shoot him, actually, but it seemed like he had nothing he could have done it with.
He needed to think, but for that he needed to calm down – which seemed to be the biggest problem right now.

“Police! Hands on your head!”

Okay, yeah, Fernando was wrong, because that was his biggest problem right now, a full strike team, full tactical, breaking down the door of his hangar, all of them pointing their guns – real guns – on them.

He put his hands on his head with a sigh, and he saw Jenson and the two useless guards too. He was trying to find his inside men among the others, the Spanish Masi, if you may, for whom he paid a big amount of money every month, specifically to avoid these kinds of situations, but he didn’t see the man there.
Which meant that it didn’t matter where Ricciardo was, he knew who was the one he’d needed to move out of his way.

“Is there a problem, officers?” Nando asked in his calmest voice. He didn’t need to worry anyway, it had actually been Ricciardo who made him a favour with switching all the real guns to the real one from Mattel. The police wouldn’t find anything.

“We got a call about a full warehouse of guns.” said the man who was standing in front of Fernando.

“I’m sorry you came here for nothing. As you can see, these are only toys.”

The police man nodded to another two, and those started to walk around the place, checking everything, just like Fernando wanted to look around and check everything, before the arrival of the police so rudely interrupted him.

The thing was, Fernando really hoped there was nothing there but toys now.
He wouldn’t say it for sure, because he didn’t have time to see it for himself, and actually, that would have been so typical of Ricciardo, making Fernando believe that there were only toys in the hangar and then calling the police, because just one bullet was enough to fuck with him, and –

“You’re the owner of this place?” the policeman asked Fernando.

“I am.”

“Then you’re coming with me.” he waved to the direction of the other side of the warehouse with his gun, showing the way to a big, unopened wooden box “Open it.”

Grenades.
Fernando knew that the box should have had grenades in there, but still, part of his brain didn’t expect to actually see them inside. He hoped that it would be just as empty as the others, but he didn’t have any luck with that.

“So, you’re saying these are just toys?”

“Yes.” Fernando nodded, and he tried to look convincing.

“Pull out the safety pin then.”

“Officer, I’m not sure…”

“Now.”

So, that was the end.
Fernando’s brain was trying to tell him not to, but his hands didn’t follow the command, knowing very well that if the grenades were real, and they really looked real, the chances for survival were literally zero, but at least they would take some policemen down too.
His last thought before pulling out the pin was that Ricciardo, that fucking bastard won.

It was an explosion, but still not what Fernando expected.

As he could finally see through the colourful dust cloud, he noticed that it wasn’t just him, and his very expensive suit looked like a rainbow, but the policeman who was standing next to him.

“See? Paintball.” Fernando muttered through his teeth, and not just because his mouth was full with blue paint.

He’d always thought that once he could finally catch Ricciardo, he’d have shot him between his eyes without thinking.
Now as he was standing there like a pride flag from head to toe, he decided that he wouldn’t be that quick with killing the man.

Ricciardo deserved some torture first.

Chapter Text

Lando didn't bother to be silent – it wouldn't have made any sense anyway.

As if he heard Michael shouting something behind him, but his heart was beating so fast in his ears that he couldn't tell what he was saying.
He didn't even care.

His feet took him straight to the panic room, to that panic room, which he hadn’t seen any point to have when they had moved here to the island.

“It's completely unnecessary.” he clearly remembered saying that to Daniel back then “We're here if anything happens”

Except they hadn’t been.
And he had no one to blame, but himself.

When they had arrived to Russia, everything had been going so well.
Their plan had been moving along nicely, even if a little slower than they had expected, but it had been all good. They hadn't heard from home, - when did he start thinking of Hawaii as home?! - the satellite phone had been silent, just like all the channels they had agreed to share, and they also hadn’t called the others, because there had been nothing to talk about.

He took the stairs down to the basement in pairs, and when he encountered one of Alonso's men, whom he recognized by sight, he cut his throat without thinking with the knife in his hand. He pushed the man on the ground and walked on.

Then they had found Daniil in Russia.
Daniil was one of the best and most well-known tech gurus, not just in the country, but in the world, so was understandable that they had needed his help. In today's world, most of the wars were no longer fought on the battlefield, but online, and as much as Lando knew about IT, he was nowhere near as good as Daniil, or so they’d said.

It hadn’t been easy to find the man, he hadn’t advertised himself or his services anywhere for obvious reasons, and Lando still didn't understand how they’d got to him, Kimi knew someone who knew someone who had heard that... the point was, the taxi had taken them to the address given, and they had been standing in front of the scummy house, and Lando had involuntarily reached for his knife at the sight, but before he could have reached it, a tall, brown man had appeared in the door.

“You're late.” he’d told them simply, like he’d been aware that Mike and Lando had spent the past week in a cramped cabin on a train.

And as it had turned out, it had been exactly the case.

“I've been watching you.” Daniil had said, when they had all been in the basement of the house, in total darkness, with the only light coming from the monitors around the wall. “I like to know what's going on in the world.”

Lando had been amazed at the sight before him.
On one of the monitors, all the major news channels had been shown on a split screen, as if Daniil hadn’t wanted to miss anything.
On another, satellite images.
And besides that, there had been screens of everything, flashing green dots on a black background, unreadable codes, and many other things that Lando had only seen in movies.

“Then you know we need your help.” Michael had said, and he hadn’t seem too impressed with the man's work. Whatever the cost.”

“I don't care about the money,” Daniil had shrugged “but there's something I think you should see.”

His fingers had been flying rapidly on the keyboard of one of the computers, completely untraceable to Lando, until a map had appeared on the screen, a bit like Google Maps, and there had been Hawaii and all its islands in front of them, with a red flashing spot in the middle.

Exactly where Ni’ihau must have been.

“What’s that?” Lando had asked, the words slipping out of his mouth.

The words just came out of his mouth.

“A distress signal. Probably from a panic room or something.”

Only now, as he got closer and closer to said panic room, did Lando realize that they hadn't even asked Daniil how he knew they had a panic button.

But it didn't matter now, Lando just wanted to make sure as soon as possible that they were okay, that everyone was okay, that they hadn't arrived late, that Alonso's fucking men hadn't overtaken them, that -

In the door of the panic room, he ran into another guard, which was a good sign, because it meant they were unable to get in, but it was bad news for the guard, because Lando first broke his nose with his elbow, and then he pushed the knife as deep into his chest as he could, not caring that the weapon stopped so deep that he couldn't get it out.

He stood trembling in front of the retinal scanner, which he’d thought was even more stupid than the existence of the room, but he had to admit that Max had been right, that a simple door with a numerical code would have been easily broken into, and he actually thought about telling it to the other man, not that Max needed it to boost his ego, but fuck his ego, Lando just wanted to know that they were all safe.

Once he was inside, he was looking around in a hurry, ready for anything.
Almost everything.

Because the room behind the door was completely empty, no Lance, no Max, no Daniel, not safe, not wounded, and Lando could feel the panic attack in his throat, and –

“…o! Lando! Lan!” the slap hit his skin hard, burning his face, as well as the hot tears that he had not noticed before.

“Thanks.” he said, and took a deep breath. He didn't realize how much his lungs needed it. “Where…?”

“Safe.” Michael showed him the post it notes he found on the table. Lando ripped it right out of his hand. It had only two coordinates, latitude and longitude, and yet it instantly made it easier for him to breathe. Of course, there was no one here, because they’d got off the island before anything could have happened to them.

The relief was as quick to overwhelm him as the adrenaline.

“You’re bleeding!” Mike took a big step and wiped the bright red blood off Lando’s face.

“That’s not mine.” he shook his head slowly, but it didn't seem to satisfy Michael. The man took off his shirt, and now he began to wipe it, gently, carefully, as if he was looking for a wound under the blood.

Lando couldn't tell how it happened. Maybe the adrenaline was still running through his veins, or maybe the tenderness with which Mike touched him, or maybe he was momentarily insane, but whatever it was, the next moment he was hugging Michael's neck and pressing his lips hungrily against the man's.

Who answered just as fiercely.

Lando could feel the heat pouring from his body, and his muscles tightening as he lifted Lando from the ground like he weighted nothing. His legs automatically wrapped around the man's waist, and he could feel as Michael pushed his back against the wall. As their tongues danced wildly, one of Mike's enormous hands searched for the zipper of his jeans.

Michael went crazy the minute he saw the blood on Lando's face. Like a raging bull, he saw the proverbial red flag and was sure that if they weren't already dead, he would have killed the two men Lando had killed earlier with his own hands. It was like his brain only realized how real the danger was when he saw it, when he felt the warmth of the blood on his own hands. And then there was no stopping. He kissed Lando back as strong as he kissed him, tearing his lips with his teeth, because seeing was no longer enough, he had to feel that the other was there with him, that he was alive, that nothing had happened to him.

Mike pulled back, his hands holding Lando up by his ass, leaving him enough room to pull his jeans down, and then he pushed him so deep into the wall that Lando couldn't escape even if he wanted to. With one hand, he hugged the man's neck, and with the other, he held onto his back, and then as he felt Michael's fingers around his hole, his nails tightened against the soft, sun-tanned skin. He could feel the moisture under his fingers, he probably hurt Michael, but none of them seemed to care.

It wasn’t easy, but with Lando’s help Mike unbuckled his belt, and they moaned at the same time when Michael was finally in him.

“Give me a second.” Michael sighed, and stopped for a moment, before he started to move. He got Lando’s hair out of his face, those curly locks he loved so much, and for a long minute, he just watched the other. His parted lips. His pink cheeks. His still watery eyes. Mike was so in love it was actually painful.

Michael kissed him again, but this kiss was different.
There was something in it that hadn’t been there before, something that screamed I’m glad you’re alive without any word, and Lando involuntarily started to cry again. Especially because he felt the same.

It didn’t matter what they’d had in the past, all the shared moments after work, the last some years they’d been forced to spend together, Lando’s last thought was that he never felt that close to Michael.

Then orgasm shook his body, and he couldn’t think about anything anymore.

Chapter Text

Switzerland – home of chocolate, cheese and Army knives.
Where the mountains were higher than we could imagine, the grass was greener than anywhere else, and to make the whole picture more idyllic, cows were walking around everywhere.

The picturesque village of La Curse was a typical Swiss little town. It was located only 20 kilometres away from Lake Geneva, and it looked exactly like it just came from the pages of a tour book.
But what made this village really special, was the local hotel.
Even though the Hotel Arber Franco-Suisse wasn’t that interesting. It wasn’t that high up in the mountains to offer a good view to the lake, and it only had two stars.

But it was built right on the French-Swiss border.

The history of the hotel went back to the 19th century. On December 8, 1862, the French and Swiss governments signed an agreement to modify the border, which entered into force in February 1863. Accordingly, the bilateral boundary agreement didn’t concern already existing buildings, and a sophisticated businessman had known how to use it for his own good. Monsieur Ponthus had built a building in a flash on one of the plots affected by the amendment. And by the time the new borders had come into effect, Ponthus's three-story building had been up and his cross-border business had been flourishing.

That's how the bar had got on the French side and the shop on the Swiss. So, it was possible that the hotel guests were sleeping in two countries at the same time. At lunchtime, they could use salt from one country and pepper from another. In the dining room, in the kitchen, in the souvenir shop, in the hallways, in their rooms, people were able to cross the international border. There was a room that was on Swiss territory, but the bathroom was in France.

And using this, Kimi was able to get the entire team together in one place, without fear of too many common law criminals being in the same area at the same time.
And Switzerland had always been a country that likes to be flexible with its laws anyway.

“Lando!”

He was holding Lance like it had been years, not months, since he'd seen him for the last time. If he didn't know it was impossible, he'd have even said that the boy in his arms was taller than before. It was like the child he left behind had grown up in a matter of weeks.

“I missed you.” the boy whispered in his neck.

“I missed you, too.” Lando whispered back. “But if you tell anyone, I'll have to kill you.” He added, which made Lance giggle. His breath tickled Lando's neck, and it was as if he could feel the moisture of a few drops of tears.

“Very nice. I'm not even going to get a hug?”

“Mikey!” Since Lance didn’t want to let go of Lando, it was Daniel who hugged Michael. “I’m so glad you survived!”

“Thanks.” Michael grimaced at the other’s words, but didn't let go of him. He needed that hug, to feel they were all okay just as much as Daniel.

“I thought Lando would kill you sooner.” Dan shrugged with his always present big grin on his face.

And Mike would have totally agreed with him.
Until about three days ago.

Because on the night they had run to Hawaii, breathless, everything had changed - that was clear. It was like the uncertainty of what would have welcomed them in the house had somehow brought them closer together than the many years they'd known each other. He’d already known that Lando was a pro, and he liked to think that he wasn't doing such a bad job either. And even though they'd spent the weeks before that together, it had been their first time working as a team, and they made a very good one.
And what had happened after that...

Mike's eyes were on the man for half a second, who held Lance tightly as if his life depended on it, and yet somehow they caught each other's gaze.

Only to turn away almost at the same time.

“You guys fucked!”

“Can you be a little louder?! I’m not sure everyone heard it!” Mike hissed at Daniel. He didn’t know how, but the grin got bigger on the man’s face.

“You can be sure about that.”

Michael felt Scotty’s arms around him even before he could see the man standing next to him. He’d seen the other the last time in Perth, when him and Lando had gone there and had persuaded him to join their team.

“How’s Fluffy?” he asked, referring to Scott’s lion.

“Don’t change the topic Mikey. Did you fuck him, or not?”

“It’s not just a him.” Daniel informed Scotty “That’s the love of Mikey’s life.” Mike buried his face in his hands with a big sigh. He wondered if he could go back to Russia instead, just to be as far away from that two if it was humanly possible.

“And that’s the first time I hear about him.” Scott shook his head “That’s not very nice of you.”

“I also didn’t know about it until he moved in with us.”

“Okay, so let me get it straight.” Scotty frowned as he tried to get a brief review on the situation “Danny got married, but not really, then really, and in the meantime Mikey met the love of his life, who worked for the bad guys before, but now is with us, and if that isn’t enough, said bad guy is trying to do everything to kill Danny and everyone he loves, so Tiffany, Valtteri, Yuki and me are risking our asses so it won’t happen. Did I miss something?”

“We’re not married with Max.” said Daniel after a moment of silence.

Lando automatically turned towards the three men when he heard them laughing. He didn’t even notice how he hadn’t heard Michael laughing like that for a long time.

“Who is he?”

Lance still wasn’t willing to let go of him, his arms were strongly around Lando’s waist, not caring about the fact that Lando got into a conversation with Max.
Who also didn’t answer to Lance’s question, so the others probably didn’t meet the new members of their team.

“Scotty. Scotty James.” Lando explained to them “He has a lion.”

“Are you okay?” asked him Max.

“A real one?!” it was the first time Lance seemed interested in anything that wasn’t Lando.

“Yeah, a real one. They’re in a circus.”

“Can I pet them???”  

“Well, as I know Fluffy is not here with him, but…”

“Fluffy?! Are you sure you didn’t get poisoned in Russia or something?!”

Lando turned towards Max now.

“You’re just jealous because I saw her.”

“He really has one. Showed me pictures and everything.” a black-haired Asian guy walked up to them “I’m Yuki, by the way.”

“Do you think he can show me pictures too?” Lance whispered to Lando.

“I think you should go there and ask him.”

“Alone??”

Maybe Lance grew taller since the last time Lando had seen him, but he was still the socially awkward little boy he had been.

“You won’t be alone. Mike and your dad are there too.”

Michael, as he could hear his name, turned towards Lando. He gave the man a meaningful look, looking at him, and Lance, and that was enough for them to understand each other. Mike opened his arms, inviting Lance to walk up to them with a small smile. Lance slowly let go of Lando, and now he was hugging Mike.
Lando watched as the man was listening to the boy whispering to his ears, most likely asking the same thing he’d asked Lando, and the next moment Scott got his phone out of his pocket, and the four of them watched something on the screen.

“I wasn’t the one seeing that, right?!”

“Definitely not.”

Lando looked at Max and Yuki.

“What?”

“What?! Darling, you and Mikey just talked without any words, and you’re just what??”

Lando almost forgot how irritating Yuki could be.
And he didn’t even know how it was even worse when Yuki and Max teamed up against him.

“You fucked.” it wasn’t a question, so Lando didn’t feel the need to answer to Max.

“And?” he shrugged “It wasn’t the first time.”

“This one’s different.”

Okay, maybe Yuki was just irritating, but Max was right.
Even Lando didn’t understand what had happened. Having sex with Michael wasn’t a big thing, it was nothing new, but he’d never felt the way he did now. Not like he could explain how exactly he felt, but something wasn’t right for sure.
Somehow like the line that had separated them, the line that Lando had drawn for himself had disappeared. Like the big wall between them had collapsed – and not just brick by brick, giving some time or Lando to prepare, no, it was like Mike had had a huge hammer and had crashed with one hit.

And Lando had absolutely not idea how to feel about that.

Max already opened his mouth to say something, no, to ask, Lando was sure about that, but for his luck he was interrupted by Kimi even before he could say a word.

“Khm.”

The Finn never had to raise his voice, to have people’s attention.
As always, he was wearing a suit and tie, and obviously, sunglasses inside the building.

“I would like to ask everyone to come over to France. There’s a thing or two we must discuss.”

Chapter Text

Mick was laughing so hard, he was afraid he'd choke on an olive.

“And there we were, all of us, Alonso's suit still dripping of paintball paint, water guns and toy guns everywhere, and if that wasn't enough, the cops showed up.”

Here Mich started to cough. Hamilton reached across the table and gently patted him on the back a few times.

“I wish I could have been there.” Mick said when he could talk again. He could almost see in his mind everything that Lewis had told him, Alonso's suit, the warehouse full of toy guns, and the paintball grenades that had painted not only the man, but his men nearby, in rainbow colours. But what he really regretted missing was all the emotions running through the face of the Spaniard in the midst of all this madness.

“Oh yes, how lucky I am to be there.” Lewis rolled his eyes, and even though his voice was dripping with sarcasm, Mick saw the faint little smile in the corner of his mouth. Lewis picked up a slice of carrot from the bowl and dipped it in the hummus before he took a bite.

Mick hadn't realized how much Lewis Hamilton had crept into his life. It may have been three weeks ago, when the man climbed in through the window on one of his regular visits – in better places it was called breaking and entering - Mick had just taken his pizza from the delivery guy’s hands seconds before. It would've been impolite not to offer.

“No, thank you. I'm a vegan.” Lewis had said, and Mick, of course, remembered, so the next time the man showed up, he already had some food in his apartment that he actually ate, and then more and more, and now he was eating hummus from the same bowl with the enemy

Sometimes he wondered what Max would say if he saw him, but then he remembered that Max was too busy sharing his bed with the enemy.
Well, only if Mick could believe Lewis, and why wouldn't he? The man has never given him false information before. In fact. Max and his mob boss had escaped Alonso's attack because Lewis had mentioned it to Mick, who could have warned him in time.

Lewis Hamilton wasn’t the first double agent Mick had ever worked with – but he was the first one whose motivation he didn't understand.
Hamilton, for example, had never asked him for money. That would be the most basic reason for someone to leave their current employer and start working for their enemy, but of course Mick wasn't Alonso's enemy in the sense that Daniel Ricciardo was.

"Did you check up the names I gave you?" asked Lewis, chewing on a piece of celery.

Yeah, that was an opportunity, information for information, but they both knew the other didn’t lay down all their cards.

Mick nodded, and he also reached for a piece of celery.
Hamilton had given him four names, and although he hadn’t said anything about why they were important, Mick ran a search on all four of them.

“Yuki Tsunoda.” he started “Yakuza leader.”

“Sounds familiar.” Lewis’ eyes narrowed. 

“I'm not surprised. We don't have much on him, we're not on good terms with the National Public Security Office.”

Actually, to say that they weren’t on good terms was an understatement. Japan didn’t officially have a secret service, like the United States did, but Japanese and American intelligence agencies regularly cooperated, to gather and to share information.

Especially when the head of a criminal organization in one country collided with the head of a criminal organization in another country.

“As far as I know, he had a little disagreement with your boss in the past.” Mick continued “They met at the gun market. Or to be more precise Alonso wandered to Tsunoda’s market.”

“Ahh, yes. Now I remember him.” Lewis smiled. " He has style. And great legs.”

Mick chose not to comment on that.

“Scott James.” he said the next name.  “We definitely have more on him. Stealing, robbing, breaking and entering, the art of con, until he got stuck with one of our dear mutual acquaintances.”

“Ricciardo.”

“Exactly. When Ricciardo's father was the head of the Italians, he, Italiano and James had a lot of things going on together.” James was in the file that Max and Mick had put together before they had gone undercover, so he knew that the man had been there when Ricciardo had shot the old Joe, but then he’d just kind of disappeared. “Valtteri Bottas” Mick said the third name “Ex-military. He was a long-time member of SUPO, the Finnish secret service, but he retired a few years ago. The last one is Tiffany Cromwell.” Mick stopped here to take a deep breath.” She’s a civilian.”

“What??”

Lewis finally looked up from the small plate of vegetables that Mick had set up hours earlier, and he seemed just as confused as Mick had felt when he’d typed the woman's name into the system, and it hadn’t come up with anything.

Which could have been suspicious, actually: no parking tickets, no late checks, no credit card debt, nothing. She was either a perfect citizen or a spy who was so embedded in the system that she didn’t even exist anywhere, but somehow Mick doubted that.

All the others didn't surprise him. Lewis gave him four names, three of which could be somehow connected to Ricciardo. Scott James directly, while the other two through different connections, since the yakuza had a grudge against Alonso, Bottas could probably get in touch with the man through Raikkönen.

But a civilian?

“That can’t be.”

“I’m telling you, it can.”

“But...?”

“I ran her through the system, twice. Nothing.”

Lewis was looking at the bowl of sliced vegetables and the almost-finished hummus as if he were looking for answers, and Mick was looking at him for the same reason.
In the end, it was him, who broke the silence first.

“Who are these people?”

“They're the ones who ransacked Alonso's armoury, and set the cocaine on fire. And as I know, they're the new security in Enchanté. They’re Ricciardo's new A Team.”

A yakuza leader, a con man, an ex-soldier and a civilian in a casino... could even be the start of a bad joke.
Mick was starting to feel like his whole life was a big joke.

And he was just waiting for the punch line.

Chapter Text

“Thank you.” Esteban said softly to the valet who opened the car door for him. There was no point in talking any louder, he was pretty sure the other person wouldn't hear it.

When a casino reopened, whether it was for renovation or a facelift, it was always more than cutting the red ribbon. In a moment like this, it wasn’t just the building coming to life, but also a phenomenon. It was a space that became both an entertainment hub, a social laboratory, and at best, an iconic venue.

Although, Esteban thought that the Enchanté was already iconic before Alonso and his men, him included blew the building to smithereens. But also, he didn’t know what it had been like before.

“Stay where I can see you.” he told Carlos, who walked up to him. The other didn’t answer, both of them knew he had no other choice.

When Alonso had found out that the Enchanté was reopening, obviously he’d immediately began to panic. The fact that Ricciardo's whereabouts were unknown, but his business was flourishing, had driven Alonso to a near-stroke; Este could have almost seen the veins in his forehead throbbing.
Of course, he didn't know much about what happened next. The man had spent days locked in his office with Jenson by his side, and all sorts of people had come to see him - corrupt cops, hit men, leaders of other Mafia groups. He’d been planning a counterattack, that much even Esteban knew, even though his main job was to keep an eye on the man’s heir, he hadn’t expected what had happened next.

Because four days after Fernando had retreated to his office to work on his latest El plan, the door to Carlos' room had opened.

“Put your clothes on. You're going to the opening tonight. Both of you.” It wasn't a request.

Compared to Fernando's enthusiasm for his son being there during the siege of the Enchanté only some years ago, he quickly forgot that both Carlos and Esteban were recorded on the security camera footage.

Even worse, Fernando had made it sound like he’d entrusted his son with something important, but they all knew he was lying. Carlos was nothing more than a living shield, a pawn in a chess game, ready to be sacrificed at any moment, a guinea pig with nothing to do but walk into the casino and wait for the end.
Carlos was a test, nothing more, a test of what Ricciardo and his men would do if they saw Fernando Alonso's son on their turf. Esteban couldn’t even imagine how it must have felt for the other.

But maybe they both would be lucky, and the lion at the gates would eat them before that.

Esteban knew there was going to be a lot of fuss, but that wasn’t what he had in mind. A smaller crowd gathered in front of the entrance, where the animal and its trainer performed their show. The man was wearing a mask, like the ones they wear at the Venice carnival, but he didn't take his eyes off the animal. Their movements were in perfect sync; it took only one warning look from the trainer, and the lion was already following his instructions.

The man bowed at the end of the performance. It was greeted with applause and cheers.

“Can I pet it?” asked the woman next to Este.

“Me, or her?” asked the trainer back, his words got a good laugh out from his audience.

The man looked at them, only for a second, but Esteban was sure he knew who they were. Circus act or not, Este was more than sure the man wasn’t just a lion tamer here.
He grabbed Carlos’ arm, and dragged him towards the entrance, and the man didn’t stop them – they walked into the casino like everyone else.

The sight outside was mesmerizing, but what he saw inside made him stop breathing. Marble everywhere, glittering gold decorations, thousands of crystals gleaming in the light of the chandeliers, but what impressed Esteban was how different the place was compared to how he’d last seen it. There were no bullet marks on the walls, and the furniture wasn’t turned upside down, like the day when not only them but the police destroyed the place had never happened.

“Welcome to Enchanté.” a man reached his hand towards him.

Cyril Abiteboul, the manager, the man who had stayed here with Kimi Raikkönen to stop everyone while Ricciardo and his family had tried to escape through the back corridors where Este had first met -

“Keep your eyes open” had been the last thing his boss had told him before him and Caros had got on the plane to New York. Esteban had had his own opinion about how the man should have told him to keep an eye on his son, but he hadn’t said it out loud. “If any of them are there, I want to know about it.”

Finally, that was something Este could have promised him.

Since that fateful day, when Alonso somehow had found the e-mails him and Lance had sent to each other, he hadn’t heard from Lance. He knew that his boss had organized a raid on the island where they lived in Hawaii, and he knew that it had failed, but he had no idea how they had escaped.

And ever since – complete radio silence.

Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep at night, he liked to think that Lance lived somewhere in Europe with his family, surrounded by love and safety, away from all kinds of danger, away from the entire Alonso gang, and although he was also part of that, he always came to the conclusion that it was worth it. Maybe he would never see Lance again, but if that was the only way to know the other was safe, he was more than fine with that.
But of course, there was always the uncertainty, because although Alonso's plan had failed, Esteban didn't know for sure that the other was okay, and it was eating him from the inside like some disgusting kind on cancer.

Alonso didn’t even know how much of a favour he’d given him when he’d decided that Carlos would have to attend the reopening of the casino, and obviously he must have been by his side. or how much he would actually keep his eyes open.
Because if there was even the slightest chance that he could find out anything about the boy, he wouldn’t miss it.

“Hi.” He shook Abiteboul's hand. The man didn't say anything, and neither did Este, but they both knew it wasn't the first time they'd met.

“If there's anything I can help you with, just let me know.”

“Thank you.” Esteban wiped his sweaty palms in his pants after they let go of each other's hands. Was it just him, or was there something in the way he said anything?

He nodded to Abiteboul one last time, then he headed for the inside of the casino.