Note: I hope you're in the mood for a lot of Newkirk in a modern AU, 'cause by golly, you're gonna get it!
Also, I have a crossover fic going: "Kidnappers, Clankers, and the Coming Thing". Even if you've never heard of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (and I expect you haven't, because many Leviathan fans weren't alive/watching TV in 1993), I heartily urge you to give it a try. There's kissing! spies! explosions! lorises in peril! ...and more! In short, it's lots of fun. ;)
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Eugene Newkirk wakes up only because some sadistic bastard is running the vacuum approximately six centimeters from his skull. His poor, aching, throbbing skull.
"Gahh," he says, rolling over, dragging the pillow atop his head, and squeezing his eyes more tightly shut. It doesn't help. In fact, the hoovering continues unabated. Louder, if anything. Closer.
He surfaces just enough to glare over his shoulder. Ah, no, terrible idea – it's too bright, and now his head hurts more. "Jaspert, what – What are you bloody doing?"
Jaspert switches off the vacuum. Newkirk squints at it. When did they get a vacuum?
"Cleaning, mate," he says cheerfully. Sadistic bastard.
Now Newkirk squints at the floor. Somehow his laundry has been collected into one heap by his bedroom door, and there's a noticeable lack of empty takeaway boxes and mostly-empty Squash bottles. "Why?"
"Ma's on her way to fetch De- Dylan; she'll be here in a few hours. And she has her suspicions, but she doesn't need to know I've been living in filth, aye?"
Newkirk takes a moment to think about this. His brain seems to be made of dry cotton, just like his tongue, but he supposes Jaspert's statement is reasonable. He rubs his hands against his face. "But why so early?"
"It's going on half-ten," Jaspert says, smirking at him. "Had a bit too much last night?"
"I was overserved," Newkirk says.
Jaspert chuffs a laugh and then – switches the vacuum on again.
When glaring balefully at his flatmate doesn't succeed, Newkirk decides he might as well fetch a glass of water and some aspirin. Just a pill or two. Half a bottle, tops.
Accordingly, he drags himself from the bed and pushes past Jaspert (means to shove the bastard, but Jaspert's not hung over and dodges easily), then staggers like a proper zombie into the living room.
Where he finds himself face-to-face with people. Two of them. One on the sofa, leg propped up on a mass of pillows, and one sitting cross-legged on the floor. Both with laptops out and open.
Newkirk scrubs a hand through his hair until his brain kicks in and he recognizes Dylan. Jaspert's brother. No, his cousin, or something like that. The other boy… he hasn't the slightest.
"Good morning," he says. Tries too, anyway. It comes out more like "Guh" but he doesn't care. He shuffles to the loo and gets the aspirin, then shuffles to the kitchen and pours a glass of water. And that's altogether exhausting, so – since the sofa's occupied – he drops into one of the chairs at the table, and lets his forehead come to rest on the cool, cool particleboard surface. God bless IKEA.
In the other room, Jaspert stops hoovering. God bless Jaspert.
"Morning, Newkirk," Dylan says.
"Uhnm," Newkirk says. Articulate, considering his mouth is smooshed against the table.
"This is my friend Alek, by the way."
"Uhnm."
"Alek, that's Newkirk," Dylan says, taking a big bite of something painfully crunchy. Crisps, maybe. It had better not be the bag of prawn cocktail crisps Newkirk bought two days ago; he hasn't had a single one yet.
Dylan goes on: "He works at Heathrow with Jaspert, and last night he got sloshed watching football with his daft mates."
Newkirk lifts his head slightly. "Arsenal won."
Dylan crunches. Loudly. "Brilliant."
"It was," Newkirk says, and tries to figure out if he can open the bottle without lifting his head any further. No. Sod it all.
"Pleased to meet you," the other boy – Alek, right – says. Very polite. Somehow expensive-sounding. It takes Newkirk a minute to notice the foreign accent.
He sits back in his chair, the better to fight with the aspirin bottle and see Alek, sitting on the floor. Alek and Dylan seem to have the same game open on their laptops. Newkirk would've sworn it was Jaspert's sister who was interested in gaming... but he's also fairly certain the sound of someone else chewing shouldn't make him feel sick. Dylan can keep those crisps, he decides. "Where are you from, Alek?"
"Austria," Alek says. Newkirk doesn't quite remember where Austria is. Near Germany, right?
Bloody hell, why are these caps so tricky to open?
Around a mouthful of crisps, Dylan says, "He's at university. Cambridge."
"Oh," Newkirk says, distracted because he's just achieved victory over the aspirin bottle. "Good on you, then."
He tosses a couple of pills into his mouth, swallows down some of the water, and hopes for a near future where his skull doesn't throb.
"Thank you," Alek says. Even through the fuzz of a hangover Newkirk can tell the boy's sincere, posh voice or not. "It's an excellent school; I was lucky to be accepted."
"Tu felix Austria," Dylan says, as if it's a joke.
Alek cuts the other boy an unreadable glance, then looks at his laptop. His ears (they're rather large) have gone pink. "I suppose," he says.
Meanwhile, Newkirk's cotton brain has made a connection: "So what d'you think about - I mean, didn't Austria nearly go to war a few years ago? Against Croatia, was it?"
Alek stills. "Bosnia," he says after a long moment.
Newkirk has no idea where Bosnia is. That part of the continent changes too sodding much to keep track of anything. "Oh, right, right. Because of that politician, yeah? Had his car bombed by terrorists."
"It was an IED," Alek says. He takes a breath and looks at his laptop screen, voice going flatter as he continues: "No one was injured, but it damaged their armored car, so they were transferred to another car in the security detail for the return trip. The driver took a wrong turn. Another member of the cell happened to be on that street corner."
"Alek," Dylan says, soft.
"He shot them," Alek says to his keyboard. "Everyone in the car, though their bodyguard survived. He's the one who notified me, in fact."
Newkirk's missing something. He knows he is. He rubs at his forehead and tries to force his brain to work. "Notified you?"
Dylan makes an impatient noise. "It was his parents, ninny, not just some politician. His da and ma both. Now stop blethering on about it, aye?"
Newkirk looks at Dylan, who's twisted around on the sofa in order to scowl at him.
Then he looks at Alek, whose face is a perfect mask but whose hands are white-knuckled around the keyboard of his laptop. Christ, he might break it, that way.
Newkirk says, "Right. Er – sorry, mate," and quickly takes a drink of water so he won't say anything stupid.
Well. Aside from all that.
Having taken some aspirin and traumatized the orphaned son of a martyred politician, Newkirk decides it's likely time to retreat to bed again. But that's not to be.
Jaspert emerges from the bedroom, holding Newkirk's duvet in one hand and a bulging laundry bag in the other. "Alek! You drove, aye?"
Alek starts. "I - Yes," he says, in a passably normal voice.
Jaspert sets down the bag and puts out his hand. "Keys, then. There's too much here for our wee machine; I'll have to take it to the laundrette."
Alek exchanges a glance with Dylan, then sighs, sets aside his laptop, stands, and draws a set of keys from his pocket. "It's a silver Ford Fiesta," he says, placing the keys into Jaspert's outstretched hand. "I had to park some distance down the street."
Jaspert's eyebrow lifts. "A Ford Fiesta."
"Yes," Alek says, obviously daring Jaspert to say something.
Jaspert refrains, issuing orders instead. "Newkirk, mind the pair of them. And have Dylan take his painkillers - I don't care how daft it bloody makes you feel," he adds, loudly, as Dylan begins to protest. "It's the first thing Ma'll have you do anyway."
Dylan subsides into disgruntled glaring. He shoves another handful of crisps into his mouth for good measure.
Why is food so loud?
"Have all that, Eugene?" Jaspert asks.
"Aye sir," Newkirk says, snapping off what has to be the worst salute in the history of Britain. It satisfies Jaspert, though, and he leaves the flat with enough dirty fabric to fill a laundrette twice over.
The door's scarcely shut before Dylan whoops with laughter. "A Fiesta! Blisters, Alek, I thought you were sodding rich!"
"I didn't want to seem ostentatious," Alek says, an unwilling grin tugging at his mouth.
Newkirk takes a drink of water in lieu of commenting. Using the word ostentatious is pretty bloody ostentatious, if you ask him.
Dylan snorts and closes his laptop. "You'll look like a prince even if you take the Tube."
"Are you?" Newkirk asks Alek, sitting up straighter. That would be something. "A prince, that is."
"Aye, but don't tell anyone," Dylan says, grabbing his crutches and heaving himself to his feet. "He's in witness protection."
Newkirk looks from Dylan to Alek and back again. "Really?"
Both boys begin to laugh – Dylan first, in a devilish cackle, and then Alek, more reluctantly, never rising above a chuckle.
Still -
"That isn't fair!" Newkirk exclaims, making himself wince. "I've got a hangover!"
Deryn scoffs. "And I've got a bashed knee. Life's not sodding fair."
Newkirk opens his mouth to ask What happened to your knee? but closes it just as fast. He's not falling into that trap more than once this morning. All right, more than twice. Three times, tops.
He tries for nonchalance: "Going to take your painkillers?"
"Aye," Dylan says. Growls, really. He swings the crutches in an awkward half-hop towards the loo, injured leg stiff in its brace.
"I apologize for laughing," Alek says to Newkirk. Posh but sincere.
Before Newkirk can sort out how he feels about the boy apologizing to him, there's another loud scoff.
"Blisters, Alek, it was only a bit of fun. Besides, Newkirk'll believe any yackum you tell him," Dylan says over his shoulder. "He even thinks I'm a boy."
It takes a moment. Then Newkirk works through the words, and surprise has him sitting bolt upright, jaw slack. "Wait. You mean – you aren't?"
The only answer is more cackling laughter, cut off by a thump and a spate of full-blooded cursing that is not very feminine at all.
Barking spiders, as Jaspert would say. Though suddenly quite a lot of things make quite a lot more sense.
"I'm too bloody hung over for this," Newkirk says to himself, pushing a hand through his aching hair. He takes a drink of water and reconsiders. "Or not drunk enough."
Alek chuckles quietly. He looks in the direction Dylan's gone, the perfect mask slipping back into place. "Yes," he says quietly. "I know the feeling."
