This was supposed to be chapter 12, but I, uh, forgot about it. So, instead of the delicious Cleon angst you were promised, you get Roxas and Axel. Some may like this surprise change of plans, some may not, whatever. There'll be plenty of Cleon angst to go 'round, don't worry, just… not right now.

This chapter was written, like pretty much all of them are, with a beer in one hand and while jamming to skanky European pop-rock dance beats. Enjoy!

The second time Rock Mann met the infamous Alexei Gorodetsky, the latter had acquired some facial tattoos and a good deal of attitude. About two and a half years had passed since their first meeting in Poland, and this one was a complete accident; the two of them simply happened to be in the same place at the same time.

Rock was in Moscow on a mission. Fortunately for him, the job had gone much more smoothly than his team had anticipated, and he had obtained the information he needed more than twelve hours ahead of schedule. Instead of phoning for an early extraction, as he supposed he probably should have done, Rock was content to use his hard-earned free time to explore the city. He'd been wandering around on foot for hours, now, staying in areas with a good deal of foot traffic but otherwise being completely careless. He was busily thinking about how excited Aerith would be to hear about everything he'd seen in Moscow when he crashed into someone who was turning a corner and got knocked flat onto his butt.

"… Rock?" Damn straight it's Rock, you clumsy jackwipe! Wait, how did someone know his name? He looked up, and then jerked upright in surprise when he realized was staring at the guy he'd sprung from a secret prison two years before. Alexei was, were it possible, even taller and leaner than he'd been back then. He was wearing a hat to cover up some of his distinctive red hair, and he'd gotten tattoos on both of his cheeks, but he was most definitely the same person, staring down his nose at Rock with one eyebrow raised.

"Alexei?" Rock finally squeaked. He'd known about his mission in Moscow for months, and the possibility of running into Alexei Gorodetsky on the street had never even crossed his mind. He was excited, in spite of himself- Alexei was the only person that he knew outside of the Institute, and that automatically made him the most interesting guy in the world.

"Why are you in Russia?" Alexei asked curiously, as he extended his hand to help Rock back on his feet. Well, he would have been the most interesting guy in the world, were Rock able to understand anything he said. Alexei sighed and decided to try again. "Moscow? Russia? Why are you here?" Rock shrugged his shoulders helplessly. English was not on the list of subjects his handlers felt he needed to know. Usually, it didn't bother him much, but right now he was wishing like hell that Aerith were around to translate for him. Her English was perfect, at least, as far as Rock was concerned- he'd tried to make her teach him some but she said no because she was too afraid of getting in trouble. And so, he was left mute, and silently cursing the cold bastards back at the Institute.

"No English," he said softly, in case Alexei had forgotten. The redhead chuckled a little, and Rock smiled, too.

"Ah. Still Nish?" Alexei teased. Rock glared at him, but he didn't really mean it. No one else had ever given him a nickname. Alexei tried again. "Thank you for Poland. Do you understand me? Danke for Poland?" Rock perked up immediately.

"Ach, das war doch kein Problem!" he said happily, thrilled to actually almost have a conversation. Unfortunately, his sudden outburst in German shut it down right quick. Looks like Alexei hadn't learned any German in the interim, either, despite his use of danke. Well, then. He looked up at the other boy hopelessly. Alexei, by contrast, had leaped right over the language barrier and was clearly planning something- Rock could see the gears turning in the taller Russian's head as he looked him up and down. Finally, he came to some sort of decision, crossing his arms and considering Rock with a cocky grin.

"I am going to buy you a coffee," he declared. When Rock clearly wasn't getting it, he leaned down and said "Cof-fee," much more slowly, spelling it out for Rock's Nishy benefit.

"Kaffee?" he asked, both confused and irritated at being patronized.

"Yes!" Alexei said triumphantly, and without further warning, he grabbed Rock's hand and dragged him off in a completely new direction. Rock's instincts told him to take his hand back, but hey, he still had more than eight hours to kill, and besides, he'd seen Alexei Gorodetsky in a fight- he could totally kick his ass if it came to that. And so, Rock found himself being dragged into a tiny coffee shop with mismatched tables and chairs, and dropped in a corner while Alexei went to get them drinks. He had no words with which to tell Alexei that he always drank his coffee black, so when the boy came back and deposited a frothy, sugary horror in front of him, he just said thank you and accepted it gratefully. Alexei busily dumped a few more sugar packets into his own drink- Rock's stomach churned- and then he tried to make conversation.

"How is your coffee?" he asked. Rock understood not a word, and just shrugged. Alexei rolled his eyes and pulled a pen out of a mystery pants pocket, twirling it over his fingers in a way that Rock found very sexy indeed, especially considering that Alexei was evidently left-handed. With a smirk, like he knew he was hot shit, Alexei pushed the button on the end a single time, then crouched over a napkin, using his right arm as a shield so that Rock couldn't see what he was writing. Finally, Alexei swept both hands away, in an elaborate reveal of…

…a picture of a coffee cup. Next to the cup were two crudely drawn hands, one giving a thumbs up and one giving a thumbs down. Then there was a big question mark. Rock tried his best not to laugh at the cryptic picture-language, and barely managed to extend one arm in a thumbs-up. Alexei beamed like an idiot, and Rock grinned at the glimpse of the bumbling doof he'd rescued two years before. Good to know the attitude was mostly an act, then. Alexei pulled the napkin back and scribbled something new. Rock looked at it curiously.

Why are you in Russia?

Well… Russia was capitalized- that probably meant he meant Russland. And he understood 'you' and 'in'- Alexei must be asking him why he was in Russia. Rock grabbed his pen, hoped the English word for 'work' would be something similar, and scribbled back:

die Arbeit

Alexei stared at it. He stared some more, then looked up at Rock and shrugged right back. Rock sighed, flipped the napkin over to the clean side, and started drawing. First he drew a rough body shape, then he started adding all his spy gear- his belt with all his little gadgets, his goggles, his body armor, and finally, he added his own spiky hair and a sword in his hand so that Alexei would know it was him. He added the caption :

SPION – Rock bei der Arbeit

Alexei looked at the picture, and giggled. He crossed out SPION and wrote SPY?, then pushed the napkin back for Rock to examine. He recognized the word 'spy,' it being what he was, and he nodded vigorously, happy at being understood. He came to Russia to spy on people, which was his job. Well… he hoped that wouldn't offend Alexei too badly. He grabbed the napkin back, circled Alexei's original question, and showed it to him. He laughed, and wrote:

I live here.

Rock looked at the napkin, and then shrugged. He understood 'I' and 'here,' but without the verb, he had no idea what the sentence was supposed to mean. Alexei helped him by drawing a little picture of a house, and a stick figure with crazy hair. Rock smiled, and wrote back:

Cool. One word that was blessedly the same in almost every language. Thanks, America! Rock really wanted to go there someday. Seifer had been once, but he wouldn't tell anyone about it, and Rock was convinced he was just withholding semi-interesting information just to be a stick-up-the-butt douchehat.

Since talking was such a hassle, the two teenagers settled for drinking their coffee in silence. Well, Alexei drank his, and then he drank Rock's, when it was clear that he wasn't going to. Rock was content just to sit and look around the shop. He had never been in a coffee shop before, and this place couldn't be more different than the cafeteria inside the Institute. For one, everything was just so colorful- artwork, paintings and photographs, hung all over the walls, most of them with price tags indicating that they were for sale. Then the mixed up chairs, and the benches with the cushions, and everyone talking in Russian, a language Rock found quite pretty. He loved the smell of coffee, too, and he couldn't help thinking that he'd experienced more human culture in the past thirty minutes than he had in his entire lifetime.

Alexei stood, and took the coffee cups to give back to the bar, nudging Rock's ankles with his boots as he did so. Rock smiled at him, both because he wanted to, and because he'd long since fallen into that pattern of smiling a lot during trans-lingual conversations so that the other person can be assured you're not insulting them. But Alexei… he really was rather good-looking. And hey, they'd just been on a date and everything. Maybe if he played his cards right, he'd be able to get a little something out of this. After all, he still had more than seven hours left. Rock fiddled self-consciously with his unruly blonde hair while Alexei plopped back down. They looked at each other for a long moment, not sure what to do now. Alexei had that look in his eyes again, that same look he'd had right before asking Rock to come get coffee with him. He slowly slid his hand across the table, grabbed the napkin between two fingers, and slowly pulled it back to him. He started writing, not breaking eye contact the entire time, and keeping his very slight smirk. Rock sighed, and hoped he wasn't noticeably disappointed- they were going to try to talk some more? Alexei held up what he'd written, cramped in the corner of the well-loved piece of paper-cloth.

My apartment is up from here. Come?

Rock understood none of it, and he just shrugged pathetically, like usual. Alexei rolled his eyes and tried again, circling the simpler message and pointing to it emphatically.

SEX?

Rock burst out laughing. The hopeful-but-trying-to-stay-chill expression on Alexei's face was just too ridiculous to try not to. Since he'd been completely silent the entire time he'd been in the tiny coffee shop, the sudden, raucous noise caused quite a few customers to turn and glare at them. Well, the bitchy Russians could shove it. For this afternoon, Rock Mann was going to get laid by a beautiful almost-stranger.

"Jawohl," he grinned.

Minutes later, Rock was being lifted and slammed against a door while Alexei fumbled for his keys. Rock kissed him frantically, digging his fingers into the thick red hair and tugging him closer, ignoring the tiny squeak of pain. Alexei had a tongue piercing. Hot.

Finally the door clicked open and the two boys tumbled into the kitchen of a small and filthy studio apartment. Books and maps were piled everywhere, a good deal of them tour guides, most of them well-worn, and all for what he recognized to be Belarus.

"Weiβrussland?" he asked curiously. Alexei apparently interpreted what he'd said to be some kind of German sexy-talk, and grinned as he pushed Rock towards the unmade bed tucked under the apartment's single window, roughly pulling Rock's shirt off. Unfortunately for both of them, underneath his street clothes, Rock was still wearing the full-body armor from his mission earlier that day. Alexei tipped his head back and groaned miserably, and the gesture was so cute that Rock decided right then and there that he wasn't going to help him at all. Besides… while this had seemed like a great idea downstairs, the closer he got to the actual bed and what he'd signed himself up for, Rock was beginning to get a little nervous.

He wasn't a virgin, no, not by a long shot… he'd had loads more sex than probably any other boy his age in the whole country of Germany. The problem was that it was always with prostitutes- women hired by the Institute as part of his, ah, training. He'd never had sex without being filmed and graded for it. On the other hand, he'd gotten very good at faking orgasms. Like hell he was going to put those women through that; like hell he was going to let those pervy scientists watch him get off over and over.

"Rock? You ok?" Alexei mumbled into his hair. Rock checked his body and saw that Alexei had successfully unfastened only three clasps on his armor suit in the time he'd been lost in thought. He smiled, and ran his fingers up under his lover's shirt, fingering his smooth abs. While Alexei continued undoing his armor one piece at a time, Rock wrapped his lips around one of Alexei's nipples, sucking on it gently through his tight cotton t-shirt. He'd never fooled around with another man before- the Institute would of course not condone that sort of thing, eye roll- but based on the noises Alexei was making, men's and women's bodies were roughly analogous. He supposed he'd be ok, then. He knew better than to show it, but he was getting some serious performance anxiety- how would someone who wasn't being paid react to him?

Alexei let out a relieved whistle of triumph as he peeled off the last pieces of armor on Rock's chest and thighs, at long last stripping him down to his little black boxer briefs. Rock suddenly felt very skinny and naked. Better to take charge, get Alexei into the same position. He slipped his hands all the way up the taller man's chest, encouraging him to yank off his own t-shirt, and then moved down to the pants.

Rock tumbled back onto the bed with a tiny shout, and Axel climbed on top of him, gently pinning him in place. Alexei was hot- really hot- not just in the metaphoric sense, but the literal sense, too. Sweat was pouring off Rock's body and sticking him to the sheets, enhancing the sex smell that was threatening to overpower him. He vaguely remembered Alexei carrying him, all those months ago, hoisting him up and running him through a tunnel full of fire. Alexei ran his tongue piercing over his neck, and ground against his crotch, evoking a breathy moan of pleasure.

From there on out, Rock wasn't quite sure what happened. His body was soaring, the heat was seeping into his eyes and mouth and ears. Alexei was underneath him, lying on his back, arched up, hands pushed behind his head and clutching his headboard, legs wrapped around Rock's shoulders. Rock's fingernails were digging into Alexei's elbows, his face buried in his chest, pushing as hard as he could. Alexei gasped something in Russian, fumbled for Rock's hand, and pushed it towards his own crotch- Rock got the message loud and clear, and grabbed onto Alexei's desperate cock, jacking it roughly In a rhythm not quite the same as his thrusts', but Alexei didn't seem to mind. White shadows were crowding the edges of Rock's eyes, and the floating sensation was getting worse, or was it better? Alexei was finishing- something hot and wet splashed against Rock's abdomen- this was it- he closed his eyes-!

Rock came so hard he fell off the bed. After he came, he tried to pull out and lie down but instead he just fell over. Alexei was too winded to help him, so Rock decided to just lay there, enjoying the cool floor while the sweat dried and his breathing returned to normal. He finally grabbed the sheets weakly and pulled himself back up, smiling at Alexei, who looked like he'd died and gone to heaven. Without bothering to try to ask if it was ok, Rock clambered back onto the bed and draped one arm loosely around Alexei's middle. Alexei didn't try to stop him.

"Ich mag dich," Rock murmured sleepily. His lover grunted inarticulately in response. The two boys fell asleep like that, tangled up in sweaty sheets, enjoying the sounds of the street traffic down below.

Hours later, Rock awoke. His head was fogged, and his body was surprisingly loose and relaxed- he wasn't quite sure where he was. Then he saw Alexei, and remembered everything. Including the fact that he was supposed to be extracted from Moscow sometime this very evening. Fuck.

Rock disentangled himself from Alexei and his bed, and felt around for his cell phone in the discarded clothes scattered all over the room. He finally found it, and frantically checked the time. He still had two and a half hours left, thank God. The Institute would never know. Though it sure would be hard to go back to fucking sex workers after… well, after whatever it was that had just happened. He looked over at Alexei, still snoring peacefully, and wondered if he should wake him up to say goodbye. No… no, he couldn't. After he'd reassembled his armor and street clothes (in less than half the time it had taken Alexei to get everything off), he dropped a kiss on his sleeping lover's cheek, and looked around for pen and paper. He'd just have to hope that in between all the travel books, the guy had a German-to-Russian dictionary. He glanced at the bed one last time, and sighed.

Lieber Alexei…

Six months later, Rock was pacing his tiny room, preparing to break out of the Institute where he'd lived his entire life. Aerith was sitting on his bed, glaring at him as he moved back and forth. He ignored her.

"You realize how little evidence you have to support your theory," she calmly asked without asking.

"Doesn't matter. I've made up my mind," Rock replied shortly.

"I know you have. I just want to make sure you know what you're doing."

"Please. They trained me better than that."

"I know." A long silence settled between them. "You realize," Aerith began again, more quietly. "You go missing, you fail, you get caught, I can't help you, and they're definitely not sending anyone after you. As soon as you walk out that door, you're on your own."

"No one would miss me," Rock said coldly. His watch beeped at him, indicating that it was time for him to leave. He shouldered his bag and walked out the door, without looking back. "Bye, Aerith."

Woo! Porntastic. A few comments:

Work on this fic stalled a little because I was working on a new multi-chapter silly crackfic called Zexion Drew and the Smalltown Blues, wherein Zexion Drew, full-time librarian and socially awkward resident of a podunk place called Twilight Town, takes it upon himself to 'solve a mystery,' since he has always dreamed of being a famous detective. Chapter one contains the phrase "ethnic manservant, Axel del Fuego." … You should probably go read it. ;)

Two, I'm a beta! The fic I'm betaing, "The Hunted" by 73n5Hl, got posted yesterday. It contains vampire hunters with guns. If you've made it this far in this fic, you probably like that sort of thing, sooo… go check it out! Give her some love.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY: Do you like the flashback chapters? Is there a character for whom you'd especially like to see an extended flashback? In the next chapter, Leon has- wait for it- integrated flashbacks. Ooooh.