A/N: I do not own Alex Rider. Nor do I own High School Musical.
First tentative step into the Alex Rider fandom. Haven't read the books in a while, so please forgive if anything is out of character.
------------------------
01. We're So Not in This Together
It was too late to pretend that he had calculus homework. And on a Friday night, no less.
He'd heard better lies from even MI6, and that was certainly saying something. Alan Blunt's perpetual falsehoods had destroyed all credibility whatsoever that he had started out associating with Britain's secret service. Solving indefinite integrals and finding limits was just a little bit less distasteful, less self-deceiving in comparison.
Alex wasn't quite sure if it was stupidity or plain carelessness on his own part that had momentarily possessed him to agree to the entire damned thing in the first place. In retrospect, he figured it was a lethal combination of both and that he could have been doing something worse instead of watching over-processed American teenybopper fare.
Like getting drowned or dissected.
Or having his person subjected to numerous tools of torture.
Or getting involved in guerilla warfare in South America.
Or throwing himself into gathering intelligence in a civil war that was not his to fight.
Nope, Alex Rider was content as he could possibly be with an evening at home with his guardian and her boyfriend of two months and counting. But that certainly didn't mean that he wasn't going to take issue with 'movie night,' which the lovebird duo had coerced him into.
"So…High School Musical 3 at your age, Eagle?"
His innocent inquiry was immediately refuted with a passionate defense from aforementioned SAS trooper, citing nostalgia for the formulaic Disney musical of olden days as well as Jack's promise that he could pick the movie this time. ("Whipped." Alex whispered.)
"There's no shame in watching Disney films. I like to stay in touch with my youthful side." Eagle insisted vehemently as he popped the collector's edition―there really was no hope for him, Alex realized― DVD into the player. "See? Nary a wrinkle on me!"
O, the wonders of modern scientific advancements, the least of which were time-release retinol creams.
"You don't really need to do this for my benefit, you know. I'm seventeen, not twelve. And I'm sure my peers aren't half as juvenile as teen flicks portray them to be."
"You give me too much credit, Cub. Act your shoe size, they say."
"…" Alex refrained from further commentary on tiny feet and how immaturity was not equivalent to the fountain of youth, but he wisely kept his mouth shut as his guardian walked in with the homemade popcorn; Jack had warned him to be nice to her new boyfriend anyhow.
(God knew those didn't quite last for long, and Alex had the feeling that this would be no exception either. But for different and worse reasons, considering SAS members' life expectancies.)
"And Jack likes it anyhow." Eagle was saying. "Or rather, she sort of fancies Zac Efron."
"Jack likes what?" Jack asked, eyeing them with a suspicious look that promised much interrogation.
Eagle dove for the popcorn, and Alex more sedately took a handful. "Nothing, I was just commenting on Eagle's tastes in contemporary cinema. Or perhaps, the total lack of thereof."
Jack's eyes lit up in realization as she settled down on the couch. "Oh, are we watching 'Mean Girls' again? I think he has a bit of a crush on Lindsay Lohan."
Alex choked on a generously buttered kernel.
It took him a good time to get over near-death by popcorn, and Jack's incessant pounding on his back didn't quite help matters either. By then, the opening music was already playing across the screen as Eagle sat transfixed.
The man was sprawled in an ungainly fashion across a good part of the couch, with Jack nestled against his side―an admittedly endearing couple by all measures of the word, even if Alex had expressed a little concern over Eagle's suitability as a boyfriend giving his dubious occupation. Jack, in a rare fit of indignation, had called him the pot calling the kettle black.
Eagle's arm looked as if it was in a rather uncomfortable and numbing position, Alex noted with no little amusement, what with the way it seemed permanently entrapped between Jack and the back of the couch. If anything, he was quite glad that he was spared from the trials and tribulations of having a romantic interest.
"You're asexual, I suppose." Tom had diagnosed importantly that one time Alex had cluelessly and accidentally offended a girl trying to ask him out. "Although that sort of doesn't make sense, especially since you're a sp―"
"Don't compare me to Bond." Alex had protested with righteous crossness, and had left the subject at that.
And now, currently, it was always there at the back of his head. A veil of despair, stretched taut and taunting over his heart, beating in cadence with the sounds of his own fears.
You…Are... Not... Able…. To…. Love.
Wouldn't love, couldn't love, should have loved when he was still alive and with every limb and his mind intact, which was more than he could have hoped for. But he had never. Not like Jack and Eagle, not like Tom and the chick he fancied from eighth period chemistry, not like the cloyingly sweet couple around which High School Musical was centered.
"Oi, Cub? Earth to Cub?"
"Mm?" The spy spared Eagle a glance, and was relieved to find that he had stopped mouthing the words to every catchy pop-rock number. Surprisingly, Eagle sang as well as starring popstress Vanessa Hudgens―right through his nose.
"Aren't you in senior year too? Like Troy and Gabriella?" The older man queried, all the while jabbing his index finger at the TV. "Why don't you ever do fun stuff like this?"
…Who were Troy and Gabriella, anyhow?
In all probability, M16 would have taken issue with his spending excessive amounts of time on vapid drama productions after school instead of training. Training his body would be much more conducive to his continued survival in the field, as a sniper would hardly care if he went flat or not. Singing wasn't exactly his cup of tea either, if his tone-deafness (a genetic curse, as neither Ian nor John could sing) was any indication.
"I'm a football player." Alex only offered, eager not to provoke any worrying from Jack. "We don't do musicals. We do…goals."
"But he does both!" Eagle made a vague gesture towards the handsome visage of the main protagonist, who seemed to be experiencing a psychedelic episode in the darkened halls of his high school. And all in lyrical verse, too.
"That's different. He's Disney. And a basketball player. They do baskets. And…" Alex peered at the screen. "…why is he singing and falling all over the place?"
Surely there were better allegories to teenage angst than vertigo?
"It's called a musical for a reason, Alex." Jack sighed, snagging another handful of popcorn. "And it's a plot device."
But Eagle was frowning.
Alex had the gut feeling that he certainly wasn't going to leave the topic alone to die, and that Jack would be perfectly accepting of any intervention on her boyfriend's part in making her ward act more like a typical schoolboy and less like the spy he was.
"It's called expanding your horizons, y'know. You're young, and you have your entire life in front of you. So it's fine to try new things, especially since you might not have so much time or such an opportunity later on to do so."
"I do have a life, thank you very much. And I'd actually like to keep it."
And Eagle giving advice on life and ambition in general was somewhat disturbing, especially because he knew that the man was trying to keep his best interests in mind. K-Unit was not known for its displays of affection, despite the unit's close-knit comaderie.
"You mean you've never done anything remotely exciting." Eagle huffed.
"Like something exciting along the lines of base-jumping into Scorpia territory?"Alex suggested.
"Yeah, exactly―wait, what? What the hell were you doing near bloody Scorpia?!"
"Base-jumping?" Jack looked understandably confused. "Is it dangerous?"
"Classified." Alex smirked, and took the last of the popcorn. "The usual song-and-dance. And Tom's older brother goes base-jumping, so it's not all that bad."
"Hmph. Well, if you're not going to tell me that…do you have a girlfriend?" Eagle persisted doggedly.
Alex quirked an eyebrow at Eagle's and Jack's entwined positions. "I'm not into you like that. If you're into threesomes, go look for, I dunno, Wolf. He'll be more than willing, I think. He can keep a girlfriend like he could keep his glares to himself."
Jack guffawed, and her boyfriend scowled menacingly and muttered about teenagers nowadays.
"But you're not answering the question, Alex." She said pointedly.
No doubt fraternizing with spies had improved her observational skills by a tremendous amount, Alex thought with chagrin. Ian must have taught Jack a few necessary things.
"You know…with the stuff I do, it's hard to find time for anything." He hemmed and hawed, eliminating specifics in favor of a less damning statement.
"How about a daily planner or a Blackberry, Cub? Keeps your schedule organized and your priorities straight."
Alex groaned. "It's not about finding the time, it's me not having any time, alright?"
He was fairly sure that Eagle was not being deliberately obtuse, but rather was attempting to draw out further details and keep the conversation going before Alex intentionally led it into a dead end.
"You do realize that they're methodically romanticizing the high school experience, right? I mean, where's the drug dealing?" Alex pressed. "And teenage pregnancy?"
But Eagle had already thrown himself into cautiously planning a counter, and watching High School Musical 3 was forgotten in favor of Operation: Make Cub Make The Most Of His Youth.
The first item on the list, apparently, was getting a girlfriend.
And after Alex skimmed the rest of the neat spreadsheet in Excel, he figured that Eagle was truly off his rocker, if the SAS trooper had gone so far as to look up the names of all the girls he had been in regular contact with and somehow manage to calculate his compatibility of them.
"…99% compatibility with Sabina Pleasure. 98% with everyone else. 100% with Wolf. If you're going to fix the statistics, at the very least please make it a little less obvious."
"I aim to please, Cub."
Alex sighed and deleted the file, and went even further on to permanently clear the contents of the Recycle Bin, much to Jack's amusement.
The second spreadsheet and its accompanying data was a good deal better, although Alex wasn't quite sure if he even wanted to apply to college as his side-job as a spy was looking more and more like a permanent career with every mission he completed.
"Brown University is a very nice school!" Jack protested, in quick defense of her undergrad alma mater. "And if you're in the States, MI6 can't get their hands on you!"
Alex and Eagle exchanged significant looks, before Eagle shook his head. "Doesn't work like that, sweetheart. That's not going to stop MI6 from finding him."
"And then we'd be paying tuition for nothing because I'd never be in class, and you know how it costs an arm and a leg to attend a private university." Alex said noncommittally.
His mind churned with the multiple possibilities of his future, none of which included higher education in any institution of the academic sort. It would be asking far too much for Malagosto to take him back, and they didn't offer recognized degrees that translated into practical transferable skills for any decent profession. That was, in any other major than sabotage, corruption, intelligence and assassination.
"How about Oxford, then?"
"My grades aren't quite that good." Lack of attendance tended to do that to even the most conscientious of students.
As for the school itself, Ash had said that John Rider had went there, and he wasn't going to be a mindless follower all of his life, even in an ironic search for self-identity. And post-GCSE, he wasn't very confident in his chances of getting into such a top-notch university.
All roads led back to one singular path already set in stone, and he was fairly sure that it was sooner than later that his death would suddenly occur, culminating a life never truly lived.
"Cambridge?"
That edge of anxiety that smothered him every time he told her he was leaving on a mission; It was only as of recent that a note of silent desperation had entered her tone.
I only want you to be happy, she would say plainly, but even that gave him very little to work with. He'd never dreamed of a future without her, but at the same time he would never even have one without M16.
It was nearly pathetic, he thought, in a sudden burst of clarity how displaced he was from the day-to-day existence of normal teenagers with teenage responsibility.
------------------------------------------------------------
"I got accepted into Cornell University." Tom confided to Alex as school let out.
It was like a wash of color over his grayscale vantage point of the world, as he blinked and tried to take in what was happening to his small corner of existence.
It was ripping apart so nicely apart at the seams, that was what was finally happening.
"You're leaving England?"
"I figured I'd head aboard. Maybe my parents might even learn to get along if I wasn't running interference every so often."
"Cool." Alex had always felt a world apart from his peers, but this new lack of communication with Tom was startling and unwelcome after solitary confinement in a prison cell on his last mission.
The usually firm grip that he had over his emotions was inexistent today, as Alex felt misplaced resentment pool within him. That resentment welled into anger and jealousy, before being quelled by resignation.
"Congrats, mate." The spy said sincerely, not wanting to "rain on Tom's parade," as Jack would have said in one of her frequent senseless American-isms.
"Thanks―it's the best school I've made so far, and admissions this year seems pretty tough."
What to say, what to say? Alex had never prided himself on tact, and his sharp tongue had often led to Jack accusing him of not having a sense of self-preservation. "Um…What are you going to be majoring in?"
Safe question that didn't display his ignorance, harmless if unfamiliar territory.
"Engineering Physics. It was either that or Mechanical."
Alex couldn't remember the last time he recalled Tom having an interest in anything remotely pertaining to engineering in general, and bitterly caulked it up to not being enough of a best mate to the only boy who knew what he was going through.
"As long as it isn't bioengineering." It reminded him of insane, skewed genius, of Point Blanc, and he left all that unsaid due to respect of Tom's not needing to be dragged any further into what he was doing.
"Bioengineering?"
"Classified, sorry." Alex said with a grimace. "Feel free to speculate, but MI6 won't let me say anything."
He'd never be able to read the chapter on genetics and cloning in their standard biology curriculum without breaking a cold sweat. And despite the fact that the entire incident with that sick, sick school was a good few years ago, remembrance always brought to mind the fragility of his presence in the world. Having an artificial construct as a replacement for everything he lived for, he stood for…
"Alex?"
"Sorry. Just spacing out."
What in bloody hell did he live for and stand for, anyways?
------------------------------------
Please r&r.