Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me and I make no money with it.
Spoilers: Up to and including Snakehead.
Summary: Driving at night is boring. Luckily Alex has something to distract himself with.
Date: Dec. 29th - 10 pm, between Break Away and Silence (Timeline: http :/ shiruy. livejournal. com/ 3602. html)
Edited: 02.12.10
9. Drive
Driving at night was usually rather boring, what with there being nothing to look at. Driving at night in a limousine with smoked windows and a companion about as talkative as a rock was therefore fast approaching mind-numbingly dull. Alex stared at the sleek silver of the door's lever and pretended not to notice Barner's self-satisfied expression.
He had thought the man's perpetually stony look was annoying; now he learned that it had nothing on his smug oh-yeah-I'm-so-awesome one.
Almost five excruciatingly long and awkward hours after Yassen had left him on the terrace, Barner had suddenly turned up again, playing his role of the concerned father who had to get his young son to bed. Alex had grudgingly played his part as well and soon they were out of there, on the way back to their hotel.
He had asked Barner whether he had been successful the second the soundproof doors of their limousine had shut behind them, but the only answer he got was that it was none of his business.
Alex didn't agree with that – at all – but for now he bit his tongue and kept quiet, deciding that pushing could result in nothing good right now. He would wait until they reached the hotel and both had settled a bit before trying to get at least a little bit out of the agent. And if he still didn't want to tell Alex anything, well, the teen was rather good at snooping around, as proven in the past.
For now though, all he could do was stare at the door lever and resist the urge to say something extremely snarky and childish. He was tired, exhausted and fed up with Barner's attitude. And finding out that Yassen was alive hadn't helped in the slightest.
The number written on his arm was practically burning through his skin, but he was more than a little leery of looking at it with Barner right next to him. He would rather not make one of the world's most dangerous assassins think that he had betrayed him, thank you very much. On the other hand, though...
He glanced at Barner out of the corner of his eye.
The man was ignoring him, blindly staring straight ahead and mentally probably somewhere far, far away. Chances were he wouldn't even notice if Alex took a look at the number.
He argued with himself for a few more minutes, but in the end his boredom won out. After making sure that Barner really wasn't paying him the slightest bit of attention by making a face at him and getting no reaction, he pushed the sleeves of his coat and fine jacket back, revealing a row of small black numbers. They were running neatly down the inside of his arm and stopping just short of the ring of pale scars all around both his wrists. He had been hand-cuffed several times over the course of this last year and he could only hope that the traces of his struggles would fade with time. He wondered whether Yassen had noticed them.
The number itself was made up of twenty-two digits that seemed to have no particular order to them. It was simply a string of random numbers with no area or network code recognizable. But then again, Yassen had said that the cell phone he used was untraceable.
He silently mouthed the number, lightly letting his fingers trail over the black marks, and then shivered as he remembered Yassen doing the same. The whole scene had been oddly... intimate, the way the assassin had invaded his personal space. The more he thought about it the more awkward it seemed to get.
Not that it had been awkward-bad – which really only made the whole thing even stranger – but Alex still felt rather blindsided by this hyperawareness of everything Yassen that had befallen him the moment the assassin had stepped into his personal space. It was just... really... strange.
"What's that on your arm?"
He jumped in surprise and hastily pushed the sleeve back down, knowing even while he was doing it that the action was suspicious. Of course Barner would only pay him any attention when Alex didn't want him to.
"I met this girl at the party. Julia. She gave me her number."
Anyone who knew him would have instantly recognized that as a blatant lie, but Barner...
The man gave a disgusted snort, sneered at Alex and then turned away, obviously finding all his prejudices about stupid, careless teenagers validated.
Alex didn't feel inclined to correct him just then.