[fic] Paradise Day 5 (Part 2)

[kajornwan]

Title: Paradise Day 5 (Part 2)
Rating: Strictly NC-17
Warning: OC, threesome
Characters: Fei Long, Mikhail, mentions of Alexei and an OC
Spoiler: None
Disclaimer: All VF characters belong to Yamane Ayano. Alejandro and Alexei belong to me.
Beta: This installment has not been beta-ed, for the reason that I don't wish to waste my betas' precious times with pure smut. So please excuse any mistakes, and if you find my tense bunny, feel free to keep them. XD
Previous chapters are listed on the side bar. ^_^



Mikhail was lying on the sofa with a cigarette between his lips when Fei Long returned to the suite. Seeing them, together, at the door, he frowned. “What is he doing here?”

Fei Long entered, tagging Alejandro along with him, unaffected. “He’s here because it entertains me so.” He paused in front of the couch where Mikhail had taken all the space, sprawled across all three seats with his head on one end and his foot on the other. “Move over.”

Amused, Alejandro watched Fei Long bullied Mikhail Arbatov off the sofa, which drove him away to the mini bar, pouting as he snatched a beer from the fridge. Alejandro realized the man had to have fallen head over heels for the Baishe leader for that to happen, and the latter seemed to have no clue whatsoever how unlikely this picture was.

Completely ignoring the Russian’s subtle yet continuous protest, Fei Long had asked Alejandro to arrange for dinner to be served on the front porch. The night went on smoothly, with wine flowing non-stop throughout the four-course dinner. Somewhere in the middle of the main dish Mikhail had admitted defeat and dropped his tantrums. For one thing, Fei Long was clearly entertained, and he would hate to ruin the mood, for another, Alejandro had stopped being a pain with his sarcastic remarks. He could live with such arrangement, involuntarily, but not with too much agitation.

After dessert, they retreated back inside to the living room. The conversation that followed circled around business opportunities, travel, and hobbies, nothing on the past, Moscow, or Alexei, Fei Long noticed. They were being careful on the sensitive subjects, Alejandro most of all.

Upon finishing the last bottle, Mikhail, delightfully drunk stood by the minibar and watched the other two talk engagingly. Fei Long was in an especially good mood that night, more so, he would say, than most nights they’d shared so far. The wine had turned his cheeks rose-red and obviously warm, and his manner relaxed if not somewhat provocatively alluring to Mikhail. Very provocatively, actually.

“You’re not going to stay here all night, are you?” he asked Alejandro who seemed to have had no intention to leave anytime soon.

“Don’t ruin my entertainment, Mikhail.” Fei Long scowled.

“Apologies, your Highness,” Mikhail said. “I was only under the impression that you eventually want me to remind you something we’d left off this afternoon.”

Now he remembers. “You have forfeited your right to remind me for now, since you decided to leave for a shower,” Fei Long replied, stretching his legs out on the coffee table in the manner that upped the other man’s ache between the legs a notch. He knew what he was doing, what he had to do, for revenge, and was now quite happy with the result. “Until then,” he added, mimicking the tone used earlier, “suck it up, sweetheart,”

“You know,” Mikhail gave the Chinese man his signature naughty grin, “I could take Alejandro for a spin while I wait for you to come around. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

Next to him, Fei Long could feel Alejandro shifted in his seat, followed by a sharp breath taken and held a moment too long. It didn’t surprise him. The man, after all, had been harboring an obvious craving since he’d entered the suite earlier that afternoon - one that didn’t sit well with Fei Long. At the time.

It must be the wine, he thought. Because, somehow, he suddenly didn’t mind either. Mikhail was in the mood to tease, he was in the mood to play, and Alejandro, well, Alejandro was sitting there looking unbearably handsome and unforgivably tempting. “By all means,” he heard himself say something out of character and decided to ignore it, “entertain me.” He nodded at Alejandro.

The Argentinian, still unconvinced about the privilege he’d been given, bit his lip. “You are sure about this?” It was directed more at Mikhail than Fei Long.

“I’m willing to comply to anything that entertains him,” the Russian replied and placed the wineglass down on the minibar. “After all, I owe him a show.”

Feeling his heartbeat quickened, Fei Long watched Mikhail’s fingers undid the buttons of his shirt, pausing a few seconds too long between some as more and more amount of skin was being exposed. By his side, Alejandro’s heavy breathing could be heard to match his own. Fei Long wondered what he was thinking then, or rather, what he was imagining doing to Mikhail.

The white linen shirt was peeled off and tossed carelessly on the floor. The two men watching swallowed, almost simultaneously. Mikhail was now standing half naked by the mini bar, waiting to be touched, and seen touching, by more than one man in that room.

Alejandro rose from the couch slowly, uncertain at first and then with obvious conviction a few steps later. Fei Long clutched onto a pillow as the blue polo shirt came off along the way, revealing a body no less than that of the other man. Standing next to each other, he realized Alejandro was the slightly bigger one of the two. He was broader around the shoulders, and with firmer, tighter muscle tone like those of a top athlete. From a distance, he could see Mikhail holding his breath at the sight. It was understandable. Alejandro had given Fei Long more than one reason to wish he could switch places with the blond-haired man in the course of those five steps he took. The man was already too much to look at with his shirt on. Without, it was like seeing a live version of Dieux du Stade, only under the circumstances, it wasn’t going to stop with a calendar pose.

They were standing next to each other now, with nothing between them from the waist up but an inch thickness of air. The rise and fall of Mikhail's chest, the way his body had become hard and rigid when Alejandro pressed closer could be seen from where Fei Long was seated. Reaching up, the older man slid his fingers through the tangled curls of the jet black hair, and with a slight tug, held its owner in place just a hairbreadth away from his own lips. He glanced at Fei Long then, as if waiting for permission. Fei Long, realizing this, dug his fingernails deep into the cushion of the pillow he was holding and nodded.

There was a sudden shortage of air in that suite when they kissed, and Fei Long felt himself literally hanging on the edge of his seat watching them. He could almost taste those hot, hungry lips as they met each other. The thrust of Mikhail’s tongue that Alejandro answered with his own was sending shivers down this spine. Shifting his weight on the couch, he wondered if it had been the wine, or the dangerously high level of testosterone in that room that made the air almost unbearably hot.

A suffocating groan sounded as Alejandro’s lips became more violent. Mikhail resisted and pushed back in an attempt to regain his ground. Without the slightest intention to yield, Alejandro slid his leg between the other man’s and held him back with a thrust from his hips. It was a fight for dominance that Mikhail was clearly losing. Alejandro’s appetite and cravings had been too intense to harness even by someone as able as the Russian. It reminded him then, that this was the man who had taught Mikhail everything he knew, that he may have driven his lover into complete submission time and time again in the past. The idea alone was already making Fei Long painfully hard, and he was about to be shown this in detail, from no more than five paces away.

Alejandro placed a hand on Mikhail's chest when they broke from the kiss, and, with a force that nearly made Fei Long jolt from his seat, slammed the other man back against the wall.

“It’s been so long,” said the Argentinian, pressing firmly to keep his partner in place. “Allow me.”

Fei Long could see Mikhail heaved a breath at the same time he drew his over that promise. They both shivered when Alejandro reach down with his free hand to begin unbuckling the other man’s belt. Time was taken, and Fei Long cursed himself for wanting nothing more than to see it come off as fast as possible. But Adonis was not subtle in his intention to make them wait, especially Mikhail who was now chewing his lip relentlessly, watching the younger man finger his belt in the slowest manner as possible.

"Something tells me," Alejandro said, trailing his kisses down from Mikhail’s collarbone toward his chest, "that you have not been attended to for quite a while.” He took the already standing nipple in his mouth and made a full circle with his tongue.

Mikhail’s muscles were pulled tight all over when he squirmed at that, again, and again as the Argentinian continued to drive him to the edge. The belt came off soon after, and Fei Long found himself winding his fingers on the corner of the pillow to keep from making a sound. The zipper was pulled down, and Mikhail shook backwards when his shaft sprung free, hard and dripping with pre cum.

"I don't remember you being this hard from just a little bit of foreplay," said Adonis, licking his lips seductively.

Mikhail, aching and impatient, snatched a lock of his hair and jerked him to attention. “On your knees,” he commanded. “Now.”

Those words could have made Fei Long come at any minute. It was something he could never imagine being done to him - Mikhail was too careful with him for that. With Alejandro he was much more brutal. Harsh, cold, and almost barbaric to be precise, only all it did was add more fuel to the fire. Alejandro had liked it, he could tell, and that gestured had seemed to increase his already unquenchable hunger.

"Patience had never been one of your virtues," Alejandro frowned before lowering himself on the floor.

It was a motion that was concealed from where Fei Long was seated, and he had no idea what Alejandro did to drive that godforsaken groan out of Mikhail. Whatever he was doing with his mouth, or tongue, or a combination of both had sent the other man desperately searching for something nearby to dig his fingers into. Mikhail had found his support at the corner of the minibar, and was now straining from head to toe like someone had bound him hands and feet and was jabbing him repeatedly with a stun gun.

It went on for a few minutes, which seemed to Fei Long an eternity of being tortured by the swelling between his legs. And just when he realized Mikhail was about to come, Alejandro pulled back abruptly and rose to his feet.

There was murder on Mikhail's face then. But who could blame him? That kind of agony could send any man on a killing spree.

“I will fucking kill you one of these days,” Mikhail threatened under pain and obvious suffocation.

“Calm down,” Alejandro smiled innocently. “When have I ever allowed you to come so soon?" He took a step back and licked the pre cum off his fingers. "The night is young, and I'm sure Liu Laoban would appreciate something more than being a mere spectator."

"Come," he turned to Fei Long. "You have not done this, have you?"

God save my soul, Fei Long would have said if he was in any way a theist. It seemed appropriate at the time considering what he was being tempted with. Had he done it? Alejandro asked. He hadn't. Not like this, not with men who knew what they were doing, not with the man who’d just sent his blond-haired torturer on a roller coaster ride and back.

It was an invitation he could not refuse, with or without wine in his system.

Guided by Alejandro, he was now standing between them, facing Mikhail who was obviously having a hard time holding himself steady.

"May I?" Alejandro asked as he stepped closer to Fei Long.

"Not a chance in hell,” Mikhail growled possessively.

"Shut it," Fei long glared at the man, “I'm just as entitled to this as you are.” He turned to Alejandro, "You may. I’ll deal with his tantrums in my own time.”

Alejandro smiled amusingly to the way Fei Long brushed the Russian aside so effortlessly. Not everyone could do that to Mikhail Arbatov. No one to date, to be precise.

"Close your eyes," said the Argentinian, positioning himself behind the Baishe leader.

Fei Long did and felt a hand pushing his hair to one side before hot, wet lips came down on the side of his neck. They grazed his skin slowly and delicately in places he didn’t know existed, and in ways that brought him up on his toes, shivering uncontrollably.

Alejandro's hands moved down his torso and undressed him from behind, and Fei Long squirmed at the cool breeze that told him he was being stripped down to the last piece of clothing. Standing naked, sandwiched between the two men together equipped with possibly enough testosterone to bring down an elephant, Fei Long began to wonder if he was ever going to survive the night.

Not likely, he told himself. Not completely anyway.

As he prepared himself for what was to come, Mikhail leaned over and kissed him, kneading his scalp between his large hands that had always given him spasms in more areas than one. Behind him, Fei Long could hear Alejandro unbuckling his own belt. His pulse quickened at the sound, knowing from then onwards there would be nothing but flesh and muscles against one another, enveloping him in the heat that was making him dizzier by the minute.

He felt the firmness of Alejandro's chest on his shoulder blades, the length of his leg sliding in between his own, and the Argentinian's hard, swollen member against his backside. Mikhail closed in at the same time, and was now pressing himself against Fei Long from shoulder to hip. All the while Fei Long reminded himself to breathe, or he would most likely collapse between them given the rate at which his pulse was accelerating.

“Kiss him, here,” he heard Alejandro whispered, and felt the man’s lips brushing softly on the back of his earlobe. Fei Long’s face was being tilted up by the chin, exposing a generous area of his throat, where Mikhail planted a kiss.

“Lower,” Alejandro said. “A little to the right.” Fei Long groaned. “There,” he added in approval. “Now work your way down.”

The instructions were precise, and Fei Long, breathless and painfully aroused, found himself grinding his teeth to the anticipation of these being carried out to perfection. He wondered if both of them knew, that those words that described in detail what was about to be done to him nearly overwhelmed the actual experience itself. Nearly.

“Softly,” said Adonis when Mikhail circled his nipple with his tongue. “No, slowly. Don’t rush.”

The Russian, impatient as always, was still rushing.

“Here,” Alejandro turned him around, “let me.”

The implication alone was already too much handle. But what was considered too much for Fei Long wasn’t quite enough for the Argentinian. “Hold him,” he told the other man.

Mikhail held him by the upper arms, pulling them back too firmly than necessary. It occurred to Fei Long then, that he was about to be bound and defenseless against someone who possibly knew exactly what to do to drive him near insanity.

Fei Long’s heart was pounding against his ribcage as Alejandro lowered himself to where Mikhail was. His chest was heaving violently now, and the grip on his arms tightened to keep him steady. He saw Alejandro smile before planting hot, uncompromising lips on his nipple, and Fei Long groaned to the way it made every hair on his body stand from root to tip.

“Hold on,” Mikhail whispered when Alejandro moved further down, kneeling in front of him.

Out of habit, Fei Long snapped at that. “I don’t need to hold o…holy…” Fuck.

“What did I tell you?” He could just see Mikhail grinning from behind.

Something to hold on to was fucking necessary. His knees were already giving in the moment he began to heed Mikhail’s suggestion. Whatever Alejandro was doing to him had sent his legs kicking in search of steady ground that had somehow disappeared miraculously from underneath his feet. That, or his legs had just been stripped of all their strength to support his weight. With both arms still bound behind his back, Fei Long realized he wasn’t going to last for much longer.

"Loosen him," Alejandro instructed.

Fei Long's eyes flew open at that. He could hardly stand as it is. "Wait..."

His protest never came through. Mikhail's finger entered him before he could form another word. He cried to the way his muscles ached like they were being stretched in all directions at once with each thrust of Mikhail's hand and Alejandro's very skillful attempt at sucking him dry. He didn't know which was going faster, his pulse or the flow of blood that rushed straight to his groin. A few more times and he would have come by the best mouth job of his life. Three. Two. O...

It was precisely that moment, that Alejandro pulled back and rose to his feet. For once, Fei Long had to agree with Mikhail's murderous rage earlier. He could just kill this man right then and there over unfinished blow job.

Still panting agonizingly, Fei Long looked for words to protest and realized his intelligence had gone elsewhere. How many times had Mikhail been through this? How did he survive? Most importantly, how could anyone dump this guy? He would have kept the man locked up in the basement to eternity for his skills alone.

"Hang on to me," said Alejandro, wrapping Fei Long's arms around his neck. “He's going to fuck you now, and fuck you hard."

Those were some simple words, but they were enough to send him hanging on to dear life before Mikhail entered him, at once, all the way from tip to hilt. The urgency of it ripped apart the last of his control, and Fei Long cried out a sound he didn't know he could - one that sent a strong message to Mikhail's erection, doubling in an instant the swelling of what was inside of him. He couldn't remember Mikhail being that large, or that hard before. Alejandro knew what he was doing, and was making it worse with his hand, holding both his and Fei Long's shaft, sliding up and down in perfect timing with Mikhail's thrust.

It was the moment Fei Long realized he might have gone through the experience of a cardiac arrest in its onset. No part of him seemed to function anymore, and every time Mikhail slammed into him Fei Long felt his strength and consciousness being mercilessly stripped away one chunk at a time. Mikhail was doing what Alejandro had promised. He was fucking him, hard, to the point that all that was holding him up right was the strong arm around his waist, and his skin seemed to be the only thing keeping him from breaking into pieces. They came, soon after, in what Fei Long could only describe as an explosion that could have broken a lot of things, had anything been within reach.

Minutes later, Fei Long found himself supporting his weight with an arm around Mikhail's shoulder, panting close to dying as he summoned his strength to stand. The man upon whom he rested against was in no better condition.

“How,” Fei Long had to ask, still struggling to breathe, “can you possibly be this good?”

“I was sleeping with Alexei for a year,” Alejandro said as he walked over to the minibar and picked up Mikhail's unfinished wine, pushing back the curls of his badly tangled hair along the way. “You don’t want to know the things that man can do.” He wished it had been an exaggeration, only it wasn’t.

"So," he said after draining the glass in one go. "Do we call it a night or should I open another bottle?"

It was like being offered a nine-course dinner when he was full enough to throw up. But this was sex. This was different. And Fei Long thought, what the hell...

"Get the wine," he told Alejandro. The night was young, and he wasn't, in the least, more frail or fragile than either of them.

***

On the front porch, with dawn slowly painting the sky in mesmerizing shades of pink, Alejandro stood with a cigarette between his lips, watching the outline of the Alyssa coming into view. It was a beautiful boat. He could still remember his time spent on board, lying on her deck, lightheaded from the wine he and Mikhail had shared. Those were the times when he'd wished nothing would ever change, when he was content, ready to give anything to stay right where he was. Watching her now, still every bit exactly as he'd remembered, it reminded him, that the possibility of being there again, as they were, was as far fetch as turning back time itself.

"How is Fei Long?" He asked without turning to the man who'd just joined him on the porch. He could recognize those footsteps anywhere, then, now, perhaps twenty years from now if nothing changes, and change did not seem likely.

"Sleeping," Mikhail replied, lighting himself a cigarette as he leaned on a wooden post a few steps away from the younger man. "He's not used to this.” Even he could sleep for two days after what they’d just done.

"He's beautiful," Alejandro said. He felt like being sincere. Fei Long was every bit deserving of Mikhail's attention. "Then again, you could never resist anything that beautiful."

"So were you," Mikhail responded casually. It was what he’d thought then of the young man he saw in the wine cellar one summer’s afternoon, and not much had changed since then. "You still are."

Alejandro smiled ruefully. "And yet you have never been in love with me." Three years and it still stung like a fresh wound to hear him say it. Mikhail had always been brutal when it comes to love. He loves brutally just as he ends it, but it would be a lie to say that this had not been among the many things that made him fall, and fall too dangerously, for the man.

"That's not," Mikhail said, almost reluctantly, "entirely accurate."

Those words stirred something within him - an old wound left opened, an aftertaste of insult that had never been erased. It was why he was still here, looking at the Alyssa, wishing that something could still be done, or undone. Alejandro turned to Mikhail then with hurt and accusation in his eyes. He didn't want to do this, but Fei Long had invited him here for something more than sex -for an apology, a closure, and the will to move on.

“I once asked you, if I had been no more than your plaything,” he said, recalling the words that once drove through him like a spear, leaving a hollowness that had never been filled even now. “And you asked me in return, if you’d ever told me otherwise.” His voice began to tremble then, just like that day when Mikhail had said it, when everything came crumbling down to pieces all at once, at least on his part. There had been a coldness in those blues eyes then, direct and brutally honest, as he revealed the content of his heart, or rather, the lack thereof. He’d realized on that day, that Mikhail had made no promises and therefore had broken none. From that day onwards, he had been made to believe that none of it mattered, that everything he’d treasured had been his own imagination. And now the man who’d done this was standing in front of him, saying that it wasn’t ‘entirely accurate.’

“You hurt me.” It had been this, pure and simple, that had been a problem. It still hurt, to that very day.

Mikhail took a long draw on the cigarette and exhaled, before shifting his gaze to the Alyssa. He’d liked those days with Alejandro. No one else outside the family had made him feel so at home, not up to the moment anyway.

“I didn’t trust myself with you,” Mikhail confessed. “The alternatives were,” he paused to find the right words, “unacceptable to me.”

The alternatives had been unacceptable to them both. There had been no way out without inflicting either him, Mikhail, or Alexei. Mikhail had chosen him to be that person. He was expendable, incomparable to Alexei. “I’m supposed to believe, now, after all this time,” Alejandro said, feeling a lump in his throat growing by the minute, “that I had meant something to you?”

There was a sardonic smile on the older man’s face then. Mikhail turned to him, looking almost sorry for himself. “You are my first man. It was not,” Alejandro saw him wince at this, “easy to get you out of my mind, whether or not love was a part of it.”

In a way, it had been what Alejandro wanted to hear, what he needed to hear. For someone who’d turned his whole world upside down, he wanted, at least, to make a dent in the man’s memory.

“For what it’s worth,” Mikhail said, looking at him now with the same honesty in his eyes as the last time they spoke. “You hold a part of me that is permanent. I would not be here, with him, if you hadn’t brought me out from where I was.” It was true. His relationship, or whatever it was, with Fei Long would not have been possible had he not gotten past certain trauma. The scars on his back ran too deep for that, and while they had not been forgotten or removed, Alejandro had separated them from matters of the heart, and taught him what he needed to make a clear distinction between pleasure and pain. That much was hard to erase, if they could ever be at all.

Alejandro drew a breath. The lump in his throat had doubled in size now, and words did not come easily. Too many things had been left unsaid, too many questions unanswered. He would never be able to let go, if some were not spoken. “Did I hurt you?” He had to know.

“A little,” Mikhail replied, unaffected. “A lot,” he admitted a few seconds later. “I did drive my Lamborghini into a pole.”

From the corner of his eyes, Mikhail could see Alejandro laugh at that, before a hand was raised to his face, covering most of it as to shield away his expression. Silence hung in the air soon after, save for the sound of short, uneven breaths the younger man took, and of the waves that crashed upon the rocks nearby.

It was not manly for a grown man to cry, but he wished Alejandro hadn’t needed to hide it from him. They had gone past being pretentious with each other - something that he hadn’t achieved, or even come close, with Fei Long, at least on the Chinese man’s part. It made him wonder, if he would ever get there at all.

He’d kept his distance then. It wasn’t his place to offer a shoulder to cry on, not as they stood anyway. Alejandro would do better without sympathy. Mikhail knew this, knew who he was, and how strong the man could be. He was desired, but never needed by the younger man.

“It wouldn’t have worked out,” Alejandro said some time later, wiping the tears with his thumb, sniffing as he spoke. “I know that now.” He might have already known it then, too, had he not been so centered on his own pain. It was inevitable. He had come between a bond between brothers that was unbreakable, at least not by him.

Mikhail took another puff from the cigarette. “I don’t think,” he said, turning back to the sea, away from the other man, “either one of us, Alexei and I, could ever forgive ourselves concerning you.”

Alejandro nodded. It was something only he could understand. “You would never forgive yourself for taking me from Alexei, just as he would never forgive himself for making you leave me.” In the end, he had lost them both. There was no other way. Something had bound them together too permanently, long before he’d come between them. “I wonder,” he murmured, almost too softly to be heard, “if you would do the same with Fei Long.”

He heard Mikhail laugh at that, in spite of himself. "It happens to be necessary that I get him first in order to dump him.” As always, he made a jest out of the things closest to his heart. "Ah but you know me. I don't plan my life that far ahead."

"Or at all," Alejandro retorted. Mikhail had always been someone who lives for the moment, and lives recklessly. The uncertainty of things excited him, a challenge keeps him coming back for more. He'd loved the man for it, until now.

Moving closer to Mikhail, Alejandro noticed the absence of the weight that had occupied his heart. He was still very much in love with this man, but it was all that was left for him to feel. In a way, he was content with how things stood at the moment, with no more tension or hostility, or hurt, between them. He could approach Mikhail now without opening an old wound.

”You said that you didn't trust yourself with me,” Alejandro recalled, facing the blond haired man who was standing just an arm’s length away. "Do you trust yourself with me now?” He teased with a seductive grin, sliding his hand underneath Mikhail’s robe just below his collarbone. “Is that why we just did what we did?”

Still and seemingly unaffected, Mikhail smiled. “Things are different.” He gestured to the bedroom, still dark without the lights on. “That man in there will be the death of me.” The things he was willing to do for Fei Long scared even him. “Literally,” he added.

“He’s one lucky guy,” Alejandro said, not caring to hide the sadness in his tone. It didn’t seem to him that Fei Long was aware of it. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Some things are always true.

“I’m sorry,” Mikhail said apologetically. It would seem that he could never stop hurting the younger man, no matter how much time had passed, no matter how much he didn’t want to.

“Don’t apologize.” Alejandro shook his head. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“What suits me?”

“A kiss would be appropriate.”

Mikhail leaned forward and kissed him. It was only a brief and an uneventful one, but it reminded him of their first time. It was a good ending, perfect for goodbyes.

Alejandro left soon after, and Mikhail, leaning on the wooden rail, stood in silence listening to the footsteps of the younger man leaving the room. It was the second time Alejandro had walked out of his life, but this time, as it should be, by his own choice. Closure was what the man had needed, and it was wrong of him to not give him one three years ago. It brought him to the realization, that it had been seven years for Fei Long without a possibility to move on. How long, he wondered, would it take the man to make the same choice Alejandro had made just now? Without the same understanding, would he ever? Especially when the man at the heart of it all was Asami Ryuichi, who had not the slightest decency to offer Fei Long that closure. People should learn to clean up their own mess, or someone has to make sure they do.

“And I thought we were going to keep him until morning,” a voice, slightly tired, sounded from behind.

Mikhail looked over his shoulder and raised a brow. “How long have you been there?” He’d almost forgotten. Fei Long happened to be one of the deadliest assassins where he comes from, and that kiss might just cost him a serious wound.

“Long enough.” The Chinese man said with an unreadable expression. “You didn’t think I’d leave you alone with him for a minute, did you?”

“After what we just did, I didn’t think you’d mind.” It was, however, quite lovely to hear the possessiveness in his tone.

“Without me in it?” Fei Long said, stepping up to stand beside him. “I do mind.”

“Were you jealous?” It was impossible for him to suppress that grin now, even though he knew Fei Long would punish him for it one way or another.

“A little,” he said, stealing the cigarette from Mikhail’s lips and placed it between his own. “A lot.”

Fei Long had been there long enough for the entire conversation, he realized. “I thought you said we weren’t together.”

Blinking innocently at the Russian, he took another draw from the black cigarette and exhaled. “That’s not,” he replied, mimicking in perfection the Russian accent spoken minutes ago, “entirely accurate.”

Mikhail was smiling from ear to ear now, and Fei Long had thought of taking it back. But then again, the man was looking genuinely adorable, and he didn’t feel like ruining the moment.

“Does this mean I get an extension day?”

With Alejandro in it, he was extremely tempted to say yes, to be honest. “Don’t push your luck.” He really hated his own discipline sometimes. “Unlike you, some people have to work.”

Mikhail frowned. “Surely drug trafficking and murder can wait a few more days?”

“Murder, yes.” Fei Long eyed him cunningly. “Drug trafficking too if you let me use your routes.”

There was a laugh. “Don’t push your luck,” Mikhail returned the look. “That’s going to cost you at least three weeks in the Caribbean.”

“I might consider it if you bring Alejandro,” Fei Long grinned and remembered, “or your brother.” Alexei sounded like one hell of a temptation.

“Alejandro, maybe. Alexei, not a chance in hell.” Mikhail shuddered at the thought. He actually cringed at the mere mention of the day they would meet.

Fei Long smiled at the reaction he was given. “You’ll find that I’m not that easily swayed,” he said, shifting his gaze to the sea where the sun was now emerging slowly from the horizon.

It was a picture perfect sunrise that marked the end of their little vacation. Fei Long closed his eyes to the touch of warm, yellow light on his face. He was someone who wakes up early enough for dawn on most days, but he couldn’t remember the last time it had made a mark in his memory. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he’d never shared the moment with anyone, but then not just anyone would do. That day, standing next to Mikhail, he had to admit a word he rarely used suddenly came to mind. “Thank you,” he said, “for bringing me to paradise.”

Mikhail didn’t answer. He simply smiled. A few moments later, when the sun was already high, Fei Long felt his fingers being taken and held between them, softly entwined, and thought of pulling back.

Perhaps one morning doesn’t hurt, he thought, and didn’t try to conceal his expression when he felt a kiss on the back of his hand.

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A/N: Mikhail-Alejandro-Alexei prequel to CI, anyone? *Is so getting bricked for this*

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