A/N: Sorry for the late posting, everyone! Yesterday was my birthday so I was adventuring past the range of wifi and forgot to post before I left. Instead, please enjoy a double chapter- half in apology, and half to celebrate my birthday twin!

There was a knock at the flat's door.

Ben Daniels glanced over at Snake, now sitting bolt upright in his chair with a questioning eyebrow raised. After a mutual shrug of bemusement later, Ben stood and strode towards the door, just as Wolf poked his head out of the kitchen, a steaming mug of black coffee clenched in his fist.

He jerked his head at the entrance hallway as Ben passed. "You order lunch? It is nearly noon."

"No," Ben said, approaching the door with only a marginal amount of caution. His glasses were on the coffee table, but he hadn't expected to need them given Smithers most recent message; assuring him that the entire business had been 'handled' and that if any attempts were made on their lives, it would not be by the Russian assassin living across the street. Anyone else looking to cause them any trouble wouldn't bother knocking. The SVR would probably just kick the door in, regardless of their actual business.

He couldn't think of any particular reason for anyone else to visit them, though. He supposed it could be someone from the building. Maintenance. A neighbor, perhaps. "And they would have used the intercom if they were delivering something."

Wolf stiffened, just as Snake stood in the living room behind him. "Trouble?"

"Assassins don't knock, do they? Probably just a neighbor," Snake offered, glancing at the bedroom door across from him, obviously debating whether or not he should wake Eagle. "Or our landlord."

"Or some MI6 spook, waiting in the wings to chew us out for last night," Wolf muttered into his mug. "We did technically get arrested, just not charged. I'm sure there's some record of it."

Ben peeked through the peephole in the door, jaw dropping. "Oh, my god, it's Alex." He yanked it open.

The boy himself glanced up at them with wry brown eyes, hair tugged untidily back into a short partial ponytail with more than a few strands escaping around his face. His school uniform was a quickly thrown together mess that probably skirted the minimum requirements for appropriate dress by an eyelash. He stood with his fingers looped through the straps of his bookbag, tugging them away from his body a bit like a parachuter pulling his chord. "Took you long enough."

Leaning against the wall behind the boy, a man Ben had only seen in low-quality photographs tucked away a small music player, regarding him with iceberg eyes. While Ben was inclined to describe the man's expression as neutral to the point of uncanny, he thought he might be imagining a faint hint of disapproval flitting momentarily across his features. He'd been standing just out of the peephole's view. "Opening the door without a full sweep or a clear field of vision," the man said. He could have been commenting on the weather for all the inflection in his voice. "Interesting. Their standards must be dropping."

Alright. Perhaps the disapproval was not imagined.

Ben froze, not bothering to respond nor guess which 'they' the assassin had been referring to. He flicked his gaze back to Alex, taking his eyes off the man across from him only for a split second.

Handled it, his arse. What the actual fuck was going on?

Wolf recovered much faster. His mug of coffee had disappeared somewhere, both arms tense at his sides as he strode past Ben, face already rigid with an expression only slightly more composed than a scowl. Their drill sergeant would have been proud. Without a second's hesitation, he loomed into the contract killer's space, seemingly without blinking nor breaking hostile eye contact. He seemed to restrain himself from attacking- barely. "Want to come inside, Cub?"

The teenager rolled his eyes. "No, Wolf. I've got school."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Positive. It's bloody Thursday." Alex grimaced at Ben, before nodding to Snake standing behind the spy in the doorway. "I guess Wolf's gone ahead and introduced himself to my mum like an utter prick." He twisted to look back at the Russian assassin, who hadn't so much as flinched at the invasion, nor glanced away from the other man's attempt to loom over him despite Gregorovitch's two inches of superior height. Their noses were practically touching. Despite the significant difference in their builds with Wolf being the more obviously muscled, Ben got the distinct impression that the less assuming man was the bigger threat; likely because he seemed wholly unphased by the interaction. "This is Fox and Snake," Alex told the blonde man. "Eagle's around too somewhere, I suppose."

"Hm," was all the response that warranted.

Ben took in a sharp breath and cleared his throat, automatically dropping into a pleasantly social tone. Damn. A little more warning from Smithers would have been appreciated- as much as Ben intended to starve MI6 of the more useful video footage they picked up, it would have been reassuring to have any of the man, just to be safe. Apart from the glasses, his other primary recording device was his button cam- currently installed in his winter coat, hanging on the rack behind him. "Thanks for handling the introductions for us, Alex. It's been a while coming, I'd like to think. What brings you over today?"

Alex let out a little hum and tilted his head ever so slightly. "Oh, I thought I'd apologize. You know. For nearly running you over with a tank last night. In my defense, I was high and you guys were being pricks. Sorry."

Snake stepped out into the hallway, leaving himself a decent amount of distance between him and the Scorpia assassin glancing over at him from his staring contest, the soldier's lips pressed tightly together with obvious disapproval. Ben wasn't sure when, but he'd managed to tug on his jacket sometime in the last minute- with it's similarly installed body cam disguised as a button. The zipper was undone, altering the angle, but from the way he stood Ben was relatively certain it would capture the assassin at least. "High on what, exactly?"

Alex raised a single eyebrow, stepping forward to flick the man's camera and outright ignoring the question. "Oh, lovely. That's a Smithers. Well, Smithers inspired maybe. He's usually much better about hiding the seams."

Biting back a groan, Ben took in a neat little inhale and let it out. Yeah, the footage Snake was currently getting would have to get lost. Immediately. At least the kid had just hinted at a plausible explanation for what would no doubt amount to a convenient tendency to avoid the cameras, sparing Ben some awkward questions. "Apology accepted. I'm sorry if we came across a touch rudely the other night. That certainly wasn't our intention."

"Came?" Alex repeated dryly. He glanced back at the two men off to the side of him.

Fair enough. This was obviously going to have to work out, this bizarre little armistice Smithers had arranged, for the foreseeable future.

Fuck. They were all going to end up murdered.

"Wolf," Ben said.

Said soldier didn't budge for a long second. When he did withdraw, it was with a long, lingering look heavy with implied threat. "Where are my manners," he said, in a voice that made it clear they weren't so much as absent as wholly unneeded.

The assassin didn't so much as twitch as the SAS soldiers shifted uneasily. After a moment of tense silence which he seemed to be more an observer of, rather than a direct participant, he reached for his pocket.

Wolf and Snake both tensed, putting Ben on edge in response though he did a far better job of concealing it.

Now instead of mild blankness, there was a small undercurrent of amusement in the man as he consulted a flip phone. Snapping it shut, he glanced at Alex. "I've got to go. If they're going to be here, they might as well be useful. Don't forget you have a doctor's appointment after school."

Alex scowled. "I thought that was done."

"Another EEG." Gregorovitch took a step towards the stairwell, before pausing and glancing back at the boy. "And remember to get lunch before you go to class."

"I ate before we left the flat," Alex grumbled as the man walked away. He turned back to the somewhat dumbfounded men. "I swear to god, I could be diabetic and he couldn't get any more finicky about my blood sugar." He snapped his fingers to get their complete attention. "Oy. Get your coats. I'm already late as it is."

Ben blinked at him, shifting impatiently in the hallway. "Pardon?"

"Yassen says you can walk me to school." Alex nodded to the window at the end of the hall to make a point of the steady afternoon light as though it should be abundantly obvious what he was talking about already. "I'm doing a half day, but lunch hour is going to be over soon. Hurry up or I'm leaving without you."

There was a distant thud. Stumbling across the floor, Eagle poked a bleary head out behind Ben. "Cub! What are you doing here? What did I miss?"

"Coats," Alex groaned. "Just get them on."

Alex sighed as the cold wind bit his face. He felt like an awkwardly small mother duck, with four disproportionately larger men trailing after him like giant, befuddled ducklings. The whistling of the winter wind made it difficult to hear each other, not that it stopped any of them from trying to demand answers from him intermittently. Fortunately, no pedestrians seemed inclined to pay attention to their conversation as they passed them on the street, eager to get out of the weather. At least the metro wasn't much further. "No."

Snake put a gentle hand on Alex's shoulder. "Because you don't have to lie for him. If he's done anything you feel-"

"For the last time," Alex snapped. "I'm not a prisoner. I live with Yassen because I want to. If he was hurting me, I wouldn't want to stay and I would leave. Christ, Snake. Did you guys pay attention at all in Kingman?"

Wolf snorted. "To be fair, brat, you were more than a little high in Kingman."

"To be fair, I wish I was more than a little high right now," Alex countered as he descended the stairs and waited for them all to get tickets from the self-serve kiosks. His student pass was in his pocket, but as much as he wanted to leave them and their stupid questions behind, he knew it was beside the point. They had to get it out of their systems eventually. "Does anyone have any questions that aren't obvious or haven't already been asked?"

Ben raised an eyebrow. "You do realize how bizarre this is to us, right? Don't misunderstand- I'm thrilled we're on sober speaking terms now, but this whole situation is crazy."

"I know it," Alex pointed out, unable to keep the thin thread of resentment from creeping into his voice. "And you lot are here to ruin the most normal part of it."

That earned him the odd wince of two. Ben sighed and yanked his ticket out of the printer, stepping forward with Alex as he trotted towards the turnstiles. "Look, Alex. You know we don't want to make your life hell, but help us out here. It's all just moved so fast. We're missing pieces. Fill us in. Help us understand."

Alex rolled his eyes. "But it's been forever. Ancient history."

"Alex," Ben tried, voice dropping into something that wasn't exactly condescending but a little more gentle than expected. "You realize you've been with Yassen for what? A few months?"

Alex paused, actually doing the math for the first time. It was early February now, whereas he'd arrived at the prison in… He scrunched up his face slightly, trying to use holidays as landmarks. It was trickier than he expected, given how sedated and otherwise occupied he'd been. Late October?

Okay, maybe their shock made a little more sense. Just a little. It was kind of overwhelming to realize he'd been with Yassen for maybe three months total. It felt like much, much longer. Probably from all the time spent dodging people trying to shoot at them or drag him back to prison. Or sitting in motel rooms in mutual annoyance at the other's taste in television programs.

The teen sighed. "Okay, okay. Fine. It's odd to you, but it's my new normal now. Yassen looks after me and I swear to god he's not crazy or abusive or anything like that. Just- just stop repeating the questions and take me at my word. It's weird for everyone, but I'm not lying and sometimes there just isn't a better answer. Things just are and if I wasn't alright with it, I would have left by now. Trust me on that."

Wolf tapped him on the shoulder. "How about you just tell us how you would go about that?"

Alex squinted at him, shifting the weight of his backpack. "How I would go about what?"

"Leaving," the man told him, crossing his arms with a scowl as a train swept into the station. He shifted slightly, glancing suspiciously at a commuter pushing past him. "You say you have a choice about being with the arsehole, so prove it. How could you leave?"

Alex heaved a massive sigh. At least this was a new approach to the same, stupid problem. The variety was nice. "Well, apart from all the people who would be rather upset about me skipping out, it would be easy to slip away. I know enough Russian to read street signs. I have vast amounts of unsupervised time. Plenty of money, plus I can get much more."

Snake raised an eyebrow. "How much more?"

"I don't know. Lots." Alex eyed him askance. It wasn't exactly protected information, given the unlikelihood that anyone who managed to break into their flat would bother robbing them. "Yassen keeps lots of cash on hand and showed me where it all is. I almost never use it. I've usually got what amounts to about a hundred pounds on me at all times-"

"That's one hell of an allowance," Wolf said, with a raised eyebrow.

Alex shrugged. "Yassen's a bit paranoid about my health, mostly. Wants me to be able to take a taxi if I get tired or eat if my blood sugar gets low. It's stupid because I don't even have low blood sugar."

Eagle gave him a look, heavy with doubt. "So he just gives you money?" His eyes narrowed. "What does he make you do to earn it?"

Alex gave him a flat look as his train pulled to the platform. He stepped forward, waiting for the doors to open and expel passengers. "Nothing. Sometimes I clean the flat, but I'm not supposed to if I have homework."

Commuters pushed past him in a small flood. Alex ignored the SAS men while he waited for it to clear, mindful of how closely they were watching him. Ben, especially. Maybe it was the spy training or just their general yet inconvenient concern that had them constantly scanning him for any signs of bruises or suspicious injuries. Part of him knew they meant well, but a much larger part just wanted to hurl them onto the tracks and walk away. After so long of being on their own in relative isolation, Alex had thought the hardest part would be adapting to all of the droll, people laden interactions that came with living in the city. This constant scrutiny was a whole new level aggravating, especially when every effort he made to communicate this fact was met with more concern.

For blokes trying to reassure themselves that he had an escape route, it was a touch ironic that they were the ones who made him want to use it the most.

Dropping into a seat on the train, Alex tried to smother his sudden surge of anger as he realized one SAS man had sat on either side of them, leaving Wolf and Eagle to grip the loops and poles in front of him, essentially boxing him in.

This was going to be a long train ride.