A/N: Happy Monday, everyone! Bit of a shorter chapter this week, but hopefully the content should make up for that. As always, I love my commenters to death and would buy you all coffee and pastries if I could. My lack of replying capability is not remotely linked to my love for you all. Were I to try and put my feelings when I see the email notifications into interpretable symbols, it would mostly come out as "❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️!". So thank you. :)

Alex buried his face in his arms. Rather than getting to enjoy the sharp, enjoyable relief of shutting his eyes for a split second, it really only called to attention how much more tired he was than he actually thought. Damn. He really should have taken an Adderall before leaving, but he'd forgotten. The whole morning had devolved into a series of Yassen making phone calls and hashing out details with Smithers while the teen had listened in for any hint that the whole 'let's not kill K-unit' plan had been disrupted. Alex certainly meant to lay down and sleep, or at least slip away to take a quick upper, but hadn't actually gotten to it before Yassen asked him if he wanted to go to school.

He should have just stayed home and slept. He wasn't going to get anything out of his lessons today except perhaps an attendance mark.

Alex yawned again.

Seamus smacked his arm, prompting Alex to sit bolt upright just as the instructor walked by to pass out last week's sample exercises' feedback. Alex accepted his with a polite smile that hopefully came off as more distracted than guiltily sleepy. Fortunately, he'd been half concealed by their desktop easels, so perhaps from a distance it appeared that he'd been engrossed in fetching something from his bag.

"Short of sleep, Sasha?" Seamus asked him with a small grin as soon as the instructor was out of earshot. "You need to invite me to your wild parties, you know."

"I just had a crazy night last night," Alex muttered, scrubbing his face with his hands. But, he had to admit to himself, it had ultimately been a good one: as much as it had been a pain in the arse to babysit a high Yassen sowing chaos every fifteen or so yards, it had gone a long way in reassuring Alex about the future. If he could handle Yassen stealing a tank in his thirties, he could handle the man in his old age. He blinked owlishly at the other boy. "Thanks for covering for me."

Seamus leaned back in his seat. "You can count on me. I've been there."

"Doubt it," Alex muttered under his breath. He half considered slumping forward again as Ms. Etude clapped once to signal the class to attention.

"I know we're only a few weeks into the term," she began, "but I wanted to give everyone the opportunity to consider their midterm projects in advance. Remember, I want to see at least five of the techniques we've covered and the project overall should take you about fifteen to twenty hours to complete. That's honor system for the home portions, of course, but believe me-" she scoffed. "-I can tell when you've slapped something out. Now, we have five minutes before you're dismissed so please turn to the person next to you and begin brainstorming possible subjects for your project. Get to it."

The soft sounds of shuffling started up alongside the abrupt shift back to normal-volume conversation. Someone behind him knocked over an easel with a muttered curse, drawing laughter from the students nearby. Alex yawned again and glanced at Seamus out of the corner of his eye. "What're you doing for the project?" he asked.

Seamus shrugged and glanced away. "I was thinking I might do a portrait. You know. Make it easy to do all the light and shadow techniques Etude goes on and on about. Figured it might score me some extra points."

Alex shrugged. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Whose portrait?"

Seamus shrugged again, now looking at the floor. His ears seemed to be dusted pink. Odd. Alex didn't think Moscow got enough fucking sun to manage that in the winter. Maybe Seamus found the room warm. "Oh, I don't know. Doesn't matter. Just whoever's around, since we've got to work on it in class."

"You could always use a photo," Alex pointed out. "So the angle doesn't change."

"Maybe." Seamus glanced at him. "What are you going to do?"

"No idea. Figured I'd go through her supply closet and pick something. She said she's got vases and flower arrangements in there, right?"

Seamus cracked a wry grin at him. "Maybe you can do a classic and paint a fruit bowl or something. Be a proper artist about it."

Alex snorted and slumped forward onto the desk, cradling his head in the crook of his arms. "A proper mess, more like. I've got no artistic ability to speak of. Even when I was small, things like macaroni art were out of my league." He sat up suddenly. "Actually…"

Dima stared at him, face delightedly aghast. "A tank?"

Yassen was careful not to allow the flood of embarrassment passing through him to show on his face. What a stupid, reckless thing he had done. He'd made costly mistakes before, of course, but screwing up a large Scorpia requisition order was completely different than playing inebriated Battlezone in downtown Moscow. No weed. Never again. He closed the window of his email account. Lord knew he didn't have much legitimate work to do anyway: the mafia branch he represented only had a few minor issues in Australia at the moment, given Sergey's refusal to expand current operations, and while the power vacuum caused by Yu's Snakehead was a factor, Scorpia still had more than enough active operatives familiar with the area to handle it. "I'm astounded the museum didn't lock it. No security. None."

"My god, that boy." Dima draped himself in one of the small chairs in front of Yassen's desk and pulled out his pack of cigarettes, offering Yassen one. Technically, smoking wasn't allowed in the building, but for the most part, they stuck to either of their offices, cracked a window if possible, and ignored the rule. "I can see why you want to give the kid an iPhone. There's a tracking feature in it. Are you sure you want to give him the permission to adjust it?"

Yassen sighed, accepting the cigarette. "If he can be tracked by me, he can be tracked by MI6."

Dima frowned, lighting up. "Is that a problem these days?"

"Not now, but in the future perhaps. I prefer to take the cautious route the first time."

The mobster across from him shrugged and dug around in his suit's internal pocket, handing over the small phone without fanfare. "Can't fault you for that, soldatik. I already had this one unlocked and modified for Timofey, but he's upgraded to the newest model and both twins balked at the idea of a hand-me-down. Brat used it for less than a month, but un-spoiling my children is a problem for another day."

"Same features as mine?"

"Slightly older model, with some extra modifications."

Setting his cigarette aside, Yassen examined the small black and silver phone. He slid his finger across the screen, examining the menus. "How do you disable the tracking then?"

"Same toggle in the main menu. Don't give me that look, I know that when you disable the cell connection, you can still potentially be tracked by your cell provider if the phone remains on. I had my own tech people go through and sever that connection entirely so the phone can still use the camera and things like that. No phone calls, of course, until you turn the feature back on."

"I see." Yassen flipped it over, studying the back of the case. "Is the battery removable?"

Dima held up a finger. "Typically, no, but again, I had my people fix the problem. See the bottom edge there, next to the speaker? That switch isn't on the normal models. When it's flicked, it dismounts the battery without the need to get a tiny screwdriver and spend a good ten minutes getting the damn thing off. In a pinch, he can use that to kill the phone's signals completely."

Yassen flicked a glance at the man. "And there's no mafia specific tracking or backdoor software, I trust."

Dima snorted and shook his head. "Absolutely not. You think I wish to give Sergey constant access to my children's whereabouts? More importantly, you think I wish to see my teenage child's search history?" He scowled around his cigarette. "I got quite the wakeup call when I used the desktop computer I used to make the children share. Never again. They all got individual laptops after that. I don't know who was watching what and I don't want to."

Yassen knew the man could sense his amusement, but didn't bother trying to quash it. "That's a boldly hypocritical stance coming from someone who didn't even bother hiding his Playboy magazines under his mattress as a teen."

Dima gave him a flat look and stubbed out his cigarette in the pen tray they'd been using as an improvised ashtray for the last few days. "Nudie mags are one thing, the internet is another. Hell, I figured with the whole Lada situation, I was getting off easy by only raising girls. As it turns out, pornography is no place for sexism."

The assassin raised an eyebrow. "That bad?"

"You have no idea. I don't know which one of my children is inappropriately enamored with horses and I would hate nothing more than finding out." Dima grimaced and waved a hand at the ceiling. "No one warns you about the awful parts of parenting. The horrible conversations you must have. I stumbled through it somehow, if you count summoning them all together, making vague statements about urges, and phases, and wearing condoms, before distributing laptops like a relief doctor pushing vaccines during a measles outbreak. It was horrid."

Yassen couldn't help it. He turned his head away from his lit cigarette and snickered.

Dima gave him a glower, but there was little heat in it. Surely he knew it was funny. He sighed. "Oh, stop it. Knowing Alex, yours was at least as bad."

Speak of the devil. Glancing at the clock, Yassen shoved the phone in his jacket pocket and stubbed out the little remaining bit of his cancer stick. It was nearly five. If he left a few minutes early, he could be at Goldstone just as Alex made it to the gates. "That's the silver lining in acquiring someone else's teenager: he's old enough that I don't have to."

"Oh, but that's cheating," Dima grumbled. He pursed his lips suddenly. "How old is Alex again?"

"Fifteen. He merely looks younger."

Dima held up a hand. "Are you sure he's had the talk? It sounds to me that his life has been chaotic since about the time he should have gotten it."

Yassen snorted, wiggling his mouse just long enough to shut down his computer. "Don't you start, Dima."

The man spread his hands. "If you insist. I'm sure it's very possible he's had things explained properly to him, and is not just operating on an assumption of knowledge from whatever wild tales he's heard in the school yard. He's bright. Of course, there are plenty of bright children his age who end up getting other teenagers pregnant or infected with something because they think you only need to take birth control on the days you wish to have intercourse or that condoms are washable. I'm sure he's not one of those."

Yassen gave him a hard look as he grabbed his coat.

Dima shrugged, eyes wickedly ghoulish. "I mean, you are a cautious man. Relax. This is normal dad stuff. Or perhaps you really are off the hook, since he calls you Mum."