Mike Is A Hitman OMG
Um... You guys can just ignore this. It's fic about how Kevin Jonas and Mike Carden are in love and I understand not everyone wants to read about that. So just scroll on past this, k?
Now also on AO3
Mike Is A Hitman OMG (16652 words) by
Not_So_Austen
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Bandom, Jonas Brothers
Rating: Mature
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Mike Carden/Kevin Jonas (pre-slashish?)
Summary:
The Academy Is... guys are hitmen, the Jonas Brothers own a cafe-bookstore, secret pasts, epic gun fights and awkward and probably inappropriate crushing ensues
Title: Mike Is A Hitman OMG
Pairing: Mike Carden/Kevin Jonas (pre-slashish?)
Rating: M (I... I don't know. Maybe MA?)
Warnings: Course language, casual murder
Word Count: 16, 519
Summary: The Academy Is... guys are hitmen, the Jonas Brothers own a cafe-bookstore, secret pasts, epic gun fights and awkward and probably inappropriate crushing ensues
With thanks to dist_reflection who doesn't like Jonas or know TAI yet bribed me with pop tarts to keep writing, and my stepmum because, weirdly enough, she bullied me into picking back up whenever I stopped writing for a few weeks, and starflowers who read the first half of this sometime last year and assured me that it did not suck.
Mike drives down the long stretch of back roads out of the city to his favourite dumping ground. It's only on rare occasions that an employer will request the customer 'disappear' but those are some of Mike's favourite jobs. It means he can take a full two days off and hit the road. Every now and then it's nice to have an excuse to get out of the city, and Mike knows he probably never would if it wasn't for work.
Mike winds the window down and flicks the butt of his cigarette outside. The air that whips Mike’s hair across his face smells heavily of dirt and grass and moisture from the recent rain, and the small hills and pastures he can see through the tree line are a lush, wet green. The rain had subsided a short while ago, and now the midday sun is back in full force. Mike rolls his window back up and turns the air con up a little higher.
He stops at a gas station in the next town he passes through to refuel the car and grab a fresh pack of cigarettes and some chips for lunch. Mike parks the car on the side of the road and sits on the wooden-railed fence that separates the road from what looks to be the back of someone’s property and tears open the packet of Cheetos. Mike doesn’t have a problem with eating in his car - the empty food wrappers that litter the back seat and passenger side floor are testament to that - but Cheetos always leave a trail of sticky orange powder all over the place and it’s a bitch to drive with a steering wheel coated in the stuff.
Mike sees the car pull up behind his own, county sheriff’s department shield on the side and lights on top. He’s been pulled over on countless occasions - usually for breathalysers and once for speeding - and after the first couple of times it becomes routine. Mike drops another handful of Cheetos into his mouth and chews them sedately as the deputy emerges from his vehicle.
“Car troubles?” he asks by way of greeting, ambling over to rest against the trunk of Mike’s car which groans under the weight, and Mike notices the deputy’s belt buckle and shirt buttons are under a similar, albeit silent strain.
Mike finishes chewing, swallows, grabs another couple of Cheetos and says, “Just stopping for lunch,” before dropping the new handful of cheese-flavoured snack into his mouth. He tilts the packet up in offering, but the deputy declines.
They make small talk for a while, and Mike spares a moment to consider how very close the deputy is to discovering his crime; what the deputy would say if he knew he was inches away from earthly the remains of one Mr David Gruber who is now sporting a charming new bruise across his neck where the cord Mike had strangled him with still remained. That within the trunk the deputy is resting against there is a conspicuously large, thick, air-sealed case that Mr Gruber now resides in.
But the deputy merely raps his fist against the trunk, bids his farewell and pushes off Mike’s car and returns to his own. Mike waves his hand good-bye in one sharp movement, crinkles up the empty Cheetos packet and tosses it into the backseat. He wipes his hands down the thighs of his jeans, leaving a trail of orange powder in their wake, and climbs back into the car to finish his job.
It’s dusk by the time Mike reaches his destination. He picks his way through the scrub and dense trees, body case in tow, and digs a new grave in the small clearing. As he’s shovelling dirt back into the hole his phone starts buzzing impatiently in the pocket of his jeans. Mike drops his shovel into the soft turned dirt and checks the display: Bill. He presses the ignore button and slips the phone back into his pocket and continues shovelling. His phone only goes off once more, and Mike waits until after he’s finished packing up the car before he checks it again, climbing into the comfort of the driver’s seat and pulling his boots off.
Bill has left him a text message letting Mike know that he’s got a new job lined up as soon as he gets back. Mike hopes this new client is as easy as Mr Gruber was. He has every intention of putting in for a few days vacation after this.
Mike tosses the phone onto the passenger seat and gets to work cleaning the dirt from his boots, clothes and hands. He’ll do a more thorough job once he gets back home; he has limited cleaning supplies with him and he’ll have to give the car a quick once-over as well. But in the meantime it will be good enough to simply not look like he has been out digging graves in the woods.
-+-
Bill is sitting behind the counter waiting for him when Mike returns the next evening. The bell chimes as Mike pushes open the door and Bill glances up and waves him over. The room is difficult to manoeuvre, with small aisles between crowded stands of potted flowers and pre-made bouquets, and the combined smell of the flowers in the room make Mike’s nose itch. The counter is littered with papers and Bill jots down a few quick notes, tucks his pencil behind his ear and leans across the counter towards Mike.
“Is the customer satisfied?” asks Bill, all seriousness except for the trace of amusement Mike can hear in his voice. Mike purses his lips; he hates this part of the routine, but Bill is the boss and he insists on it. Something about constant vigilance and maintaining covers. Mostly Mike thinks that Bill just finds it entertaining. Bill leans forward and looks at him expectantly.
Mike rolls his eyes and says dully, “The customer is very satisfied.”
The corners of Bill’s lips twitch into a barely restrained smile. “Excellent,” he says, tearing a post-it note from one of the ledgers in front of him. “New client. Here’s the file number. I told Siska you’d be by to pick it up, so it should be ready to go. There’s not much in there so you’ll have to do some recon, but it’s nothing you can’t handle.”
Mike nods and peels the post-it from the tip of Bill’s proffered hand. Siska has been demoted to the records room for the foreseeable future and has been sulking about it for the last three weeks. Since Siska almost screwed up a job, though, Mike thinks he’s lucky a stint in records is all he got. But with the Butcher getting injured and Conrad leaving, they were down a few too many and someone needed to keep the files in order.
Sisky frantically moves his feet from the desktop to the floor and slams his game boy into an open drawer as Mike pushes open the door to their records room.
“Oh,” he says, looking over at Mike. “I thought you were Bill checking up on me again. You’re not here to replace me, are you?” he asks hopefully.
“I’m just here to pick up a file,” Mike says, shaking his head, and Siska looks so dejected that Mike resolves to buy him a drink when this new job is finished. Siska takes the post-it when Mike holds it out to him, and pulls a file along with his game boy out of the lower desk drawer. He slaps the file down on the desk and Mike has barely picked it up before Siska’s feet slam down onto the desk after it.
“It’s an easy one,” Sisky says, nodding at the file in Mike’s hands. “Maybe you can convince Bill to let me ride along, supervise on this one so I can get out of this crap hole and get back in the field?”
Mike makes a noncommittal sound at the back of his throat, waves a good-bye and heads back into the main store. Sure Mike feels bad for Siska being stuck in the records room for months on end, but there is absolutely no way Mike is going to get saddled with baby-sitting Siska on a job that requires any amount of reconnaissance. There are only so many “weenie” anecdotes Mike can put up with before he starts considering abandoning the customer in favour of planning the murder of Siska instead.
Bill is hunched over the papers on his desk, a pencil between his lips and fingers tapping away at a calculator and he doesn’t look up when Mike walks out. Bill is the one who decided on a flower shop as the new front for the business, but even after several months he is still genuinely perplexed at the paperwork it entails. Mike thinks there’s something to be said for how comparatively easy it is for Bill to routinely get away with murder than it is for him to run a small business.
Mike flips the Open sign on the door to Closed as he leaves. The flower shop would have closed a couple of hours earlier but no one ever remembers to flip the sign over. Mike stops to light a cigarette when he hits the sidewalk, and he spares a few moments to flick through the file. The new customer is a book store sales assistant named Paul Kevin Jonas II. There’s a work schedule attached and Mike decides to get a better idea of the customer’s daily routines this week, starting tomorrow, and finish the job next week.
There’s a picture paper clipped to the back of the file of a young, curly-haired man who looks about as threatening as newborn puppy and, while Mike can’t think of a reason anyone would need to take out what appears to be a typically unthreatening book store clerk, he thinks Bill and Siska are right: this is probably going to be one of the easier jobs.
-+-
The hair on the back of Kevin’s neck prickles and he knows the guy is staring at him again. The same guy who stopped by yesterday, bought a coffee from the adjoining café bar, settled down at one of the corner tables and stared at Kevin from behind his book for the better part of the afternoon. Kevin tries not to drop the stack of books he’s shelving, but knowing he’s being watched is making him nervous and jittery.
Kevin walks back over to the bookstore counter and sneaks a look at the guy in the corner, but when Kevin looks over the guy appears engrossed in his newspaper and casually sips his coffee. There aren’t many people in the book section so Kevin wanders over to see his brothers in the adjoining café; there’s no real separation between the bookstore and café other than the rows of tables transitioning into rows of book shelves, so Kevin can easily keep an eye on the book counter from there.
“Hey,” says Joe, grabbing an apple cinnamon muffin from the display case and taking a bite. There are always regular lulls in foot traffic on weekdays because most of their patrons are from the surrounding office buildings with regular lunch and tea breaks. Joe thinks these are good times to relax and take a break, and Nick thinks these are good times to catch up on the smaller jobs and increase productivity. Kevin thinks it’s a good idea not to pick sides.
“That guy keeps staring at me,” Kevin stage whispers to Joe who looks up from his muffin and asks loudly, “What guy?”
“Sh!” Kevin hisses and waves his arms emphatically. He doesn’t want the guy to know, sheesh!
“The guy at table three,” says Nick appearing behind them, apron dusted with what looks like flour and batter. “And you’re paying for that,” he says, pointing at the muffin Joe is still cramming into his mouth.
“Table three,” Joe murmurs, ignoring Nick’s latter statement. “The guy with the hair and the creepy eyes?”
Kevin nods and stifles a squeak of fear when the guy looks over at them right then. Like he has super hearing or can read minds or something. Kevin really hopes he can’t do either of those things.
“It’s like his eyes are empty,” says Joe in hushed awe, openly staring at the man. “Like he has no soul.”
Kevin makes a strangled sound in his throat, and he’s pretty sure his eyes are bugging out. The guy looks like a hungry tiger sizing up a particularly delicious-looking deer. Kevin watches National Geographic, he’d know that look anywhere.
Nick just hits Joe with one of the menus and tells them to get back to work.
Kevin isn’t sure when the creepy guy leaves, because he’s trying so hard to focus on working and not on what Joe was saying about soulless eyes, that when Kevin very subtly sneaks a glance at table three the guy is gone.
Relief floods through him and he’s just thinking that maybe he should talk Nick into vacation time because he’s clearly stressed out, when he hears someone clearing their throat. Kevin looks up from where he’s playing with the tasselled bookmarks on the counter-top display and right into the scary dark eyes of the creepy guy.
Kevin freezes and it’s not until the guy clears his throat again and taps on the cover of the book he’s holding that Kevin so much as blinks. There’s a long and increasingly awkward silence wherein Kevin stares right at the man in front of him and can’t manage to say anything at all. Kevin isn’t so sure if, close up, the guy’s eyes are soulless so much as dark and confused. He’s staring at Kevin like he’s some sort of confusing puzzle that needs to be solved or, possibly, like he’s concerned that Kevin is having some sort of serious incapacitating problem and isn’t sure what to do. That’s probably because of all the not-moving and not-talking Kevin is doing.
“I want to buy this book,” the guy says slowly, tapping his fingers against the cover again for emphasis.
“Oh,” says Kevin after a moment, and he’s more than a little relieved the guy isn’t demanding Kevin hand over his soul or inviting him out to eat puppies or something. “That’s five fifty.”
The guy drops the exact change in coins into Kevin’s hand, says “Thanks, kid,” nods his head and starts walking away, book tucked under his arm, before Kevin can ask him if he wants a bag.
“Have a nice day,” Kevin calls after him, because he has manners, okay? And just because a guy looks a little creepy, it doesn’t mean Kevin isn’t going to wish him a nice day. Even if that day could maybe possibly involve eating poor innocent puppies for snacks. Kevin isn’t sure a soulless puppy-eater would have paid for a book, though. But Kevin also doesn’t know anyone who eats puppies, either, so he can’t be certain.
The guy stops, looks back over his shoulder at Kevin and waves before pushing open the door and leaving. Kevin thinks that maybe he’s just the misunderstood, quiet intense type. Kevin maybe hopes that a lot.
-+-
The alarm clock goes off at 6:15 just like every morning. And, just like every morning, Kevin hits the snooze button and goes back to sleep for another ten minutes. The alarm goes off again exactly ten minutes later, and is followed soon after by the sound of Nick tapping on the wall near Kevin’s head from his own room next door. So Kevin rolls out of bed, gets dressed and heads out into the hall.
Nick and Joe are just stepping out of their respective rooms and the three close their respective doors behind them and trail downstairs to the kitchen. Since they own the building, the brothers live in the three decently sized flats above the café bookstore they run. Kevin’s room is in the middle and he likes knowing that even if they’re in their own separate flats, that he can still hear Joe blasting music too loudly and that Nick will still make sure he’s getting up on time by rapping against the wall near Kevin’s head each morning.
They eat breakfast in the kitchen, and everything smells of freshly baked bread and cinnamon and blueberries because Nick gets up extra early to start baking for their 7am open time. He always goes back upstairs to sleep a little longer and get ready for the rest of the day once he’s finished downstairs. Nick is always scribbling down new recipe ideas in one of his hundreds of notebooks and Kevin sometimes thinks that Nick should be head chef in his own huge restaurant instead of stuck in this tiny café with his brothers, but Kevin also doesn’t want Nick to go away - can’t imagine a life that isn’t here with his brothers joking around and fighting and having fun.
After breakfast Joe grabs a Gatorade from the refrigerator (Nick tells him he’ll be paying for that, too) and heads out for his morning run. Nick washes up and gets to work preparing food for the day, while Kevin hides out in the downstairs lounge and watches one of the music channels until Joe gets back and they have to start setting up tables and getting things ready for opening time.
Joe spends a few minutes checking his reflection in the metal cubby between the counter area and the kitchen.
“How do I look?” he asks for about the hundredth time, sweeping his bangs across his forehead.
“Like a cockatoo with all that preening,” says Nick, sliding a tray of croissants onto the cubby shelf and obscuring Joe’s reflection.
“You like fine, Joe,” says Kevin, quick to deter an argument.
“Just fine?” asks Joe, frowning. “It’s the hair, isn’t it? I need a new style.”
“Your hair is great, Joe,” says Kevin.
Nick rolls his eyes and says, “The only thing you need to fix are your priorities. These croissants aren’t going to put themselves in the display.”
At seven o’clock on the dot they open for business and, since the book store doesn’t officially open until nine, Kevin helps Joe work the café counter for the morning rush. Between seven and eight-thirty each morning is their busiest time of the entire day, with people lining up for coffee and breakfast on their way to work.
Kevin is having a great time taking customer orders while Joe fetches them. Kevin always makes the most tips when he’s working the café counter because he has, as he likes to say, a natural affinity for these things. He’s a people person. He’s polite and bubbly and people like him. Not to say that people don’t like Joe and Nick, because they do. But Kevin is pretty sure that if it came down to it, he’d be voted best cashier.
At exactly 8:23am, however, just as Kevin is about to ask the next customer what they would like today, Joe shoves him out of the way. Kevin stumbles a little, but thankfully avoids what could have been an entirely embarrassing fall to the floor, the likes of a slap-stick routine. There is minimal flailing as he steadies himself with one hand on the counter and decides that he will get Joe back later.
The mid-week produce delivery should be arriving soon, so Kevin leaves Joe leaning over the counter and flirting with the pretty blonde woman and heads through the kitchen to the side street delivery bay.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Kevin yells over his shoulder to Nick, who is furiously slicing away at something on the chopping board in front of him. “Produce guy will be here soon.”
“Yeah,” Nick calls back distractedly, and Kevin slips through the door to the lounge room and outside.
It’s cool and dark in the alley at this time of morning, and Kevin leans back against the door frame and closes his eyes. It’s nice to get some time to himself, Kevin thinks, and get away from the craziness inside. Kevin wonders if Nick has noticed Joe flirting yet and yelled at him to get back to work and stop holding up the line.
He doesn’t even hear footsteps approaching so, when his upper arms are suddenly in someone’s ridiculously tight grip, he is more than a little startled. Kevin’s eyes fly open and he involuntarily flinches backwards and he probably would have hit his head even harder on the wooden door if not for the firm grip steadying him.
“Woah, steady,” says the owner of the hands, and Kevin freezes without really meaning to.
Kevin looks up and right into those dark, possibly-soulless eyes and squeaks, “Creepy guy?”
-+-
Mike’s done some preliminary background checking into Paul Kevin Jonas II, his brothers and their business, trying to get a feel for the least messy way to complete this job. But the one thing that has kept bugging him is how clean this kid’s background is. It isn’t Mike’s business to ask why a customer is booked, but it’s usually pretty obvious within the first few days of routine surveillance.
There’s something about this job that feels off.
Mike is not impressed with himself. He spent his first two days of reconnaissance breaking all his own rules: he shouldn’t have spent more than half an hour in the café observing, he certainly should have been more subtle, and he shouldn’t have engaged the customer. He’s still not sure why he did it.
Mike is leaning against the brick wall at the mouth of the alley behind the bookstore, contemplating his next move, when he sees Kevin step out into the alley and slump back against the door. He’s moving before he really thinks about it, hands gripping Kevin’s upper arms.
“Woah, steady,” says Mike when Kevin flinches backwards into the closed door.
Kevin blinks up at him and says, “Creepy guy?”
Mike isn’t sure what to say to that, but he notices the fresh red smear on the doorjamb and says, “Your head is bleeding.”
“Where are we going?” asks Kevin as Mike wraps a supportive arm around Kevin’s side and walks him back out of the alley and down the street.
“We’re gonna get you cleaned up,” says Mike. “I’ve got supplies in my car.”
“Oh,” Kevin murmurs and leans into Mike’s side as they push past the people crowding the sidewalk heading in the opposite direction.
Mike digs through his pocket for his keys as soon as his car is in sight, and presses the unlock button on the remote. He opens the door and helps settle Kevin in the passenger seat before collecting the little first aid box from the trunk.
Kevin is slumped over sideways in the seat, feet still planted on the pavement and head against the backrest. Mike slides into the drivers seat, settles the first aid kit between the seats and reaches across to pull Kevin into the car and shut the door behind him.
“Are you wearing heels?” Mike asks when Kevin’s feet are safely inside the car.
“They happen to be a valid fashion choice,” says Kevin, scuffing the boots in question across the floor.
Mike just snorts and gets to work. The first aid kit is small and Mike grabs some tissues first to clean up before he pulls out a tube of antibacterial ointment and some gauze to press against the wound. It is only a small cut, but pretty messy. Mike tells Kevin as much and hands him a couple aspirin along with the bottle of water he picked up that morning. He presses a piece of gauze against the back of Kevin’s head.
“Keep pressure on it,” says Mike, packing up the first aid box and dropping onto the floor in the back. “It should stop bleeding soon enough.”
Mike looks at the kid, all curly-haired and barely 20 years old. His record’s suspiciously clean - like he’s been living in an isolated bubble his entire life - and Mike just doesn’t feel right about this job. Kevin and his brothers know his face and he’s screwed this up so bad. But Kevin’s right there in the car beside him. It would be like holding a suspect during the investigative process, really, Mike reasons. When Mike gets assigned a new customer they’ve usually done something to warrant it. Not that he should need to justify it to himself or anyone else, a job’s a job, but. Well...
Mike really needs that vacation.
“My head hurts,” grumbles Kevin, holding the gauze awkwardly against the back of his head, elbow jutting out into the space between him and Mike.
“Yeah, kid,” says Mike as he turns the key in the ignition. “You hit the door pretty hard.”
Mike isn’t sure if Kevin has hit his head hard enough to cause a concussion, or even remember what the procedure is for concussions because he usually only needs to distinguish between dead and not-dead-yet which isn’t usually very complicated. He’s fairly certain it doesn’t matter if someone with a concussion falls asleep so long as they wake up again without difficulty, but he doesn’t want to take any chances. So, when Kevin starts to letting his eyes droop, Mike shakes his arm until he regains focus again.
“Where’re we going?” asks Kevin dazedly, dropping the bloodied gauze and turning to look out the window.
“Just keep holding this to your head,” says Mike, picking up the piece of gauze from the seat and pressing it back against Kevin’s head.
Mike finally pulls into his parking space and helps Kevin up the stairs. Mike isn’t sure what he’s doing anymore, but there’s no easy way either of them can get out of this now.
-+-
Kevin’s arm feels all numb and tingly and it takes him a few moments to realise he’s fallen asleep with it trapped underneath him. He rolls off of his arm and onto the floor, which was really not what Kevin had planned to do, but at least his arm is free. Kevin sits up, shaking his arm to wake it up and sets off the sensation of pin pricks across his skin. Kevin had expected to wake up in his own bed. His own bed which is king-sized and soft and so roomy that he almost never falls out onto the floor in his sleep. Instead he’s woken up on a couch - not even his own couch - and the back of his head is tingly and itchy and he has no idea where he is.
Kevin’s arm is feeling normal again and he scratches at the spot on his head that’s troubling him. It hurts where Kevin’s nails scratch across the scalp, and his fingers are peppered with flakes of dried blood. And Kevin remembers hitting his head, and the guy from the café helping him, but he isn’t sure why he’s here in this cramped little apartment instead of in his own room.
There aren’t any pictures that Kevin can see as he takes the few steps over to the kitchen area. Kevin is pretty sure that’s not normal. Every home he’s ever visited has had at least a couple of framed photos scattered across shelves or hanging on the walls and Kevin is suddenly filled with sympathy for this poor man who doesn’t even have pictures of friends or family to display in his home.
There is a dispenser of antibacterial soap on the sink, and Kevin cleans his hands before rifling through the cupboards for something to eat. Most of the food seems to be canned or ingredients and Kevin isn’t really sure what exactly he can make with three different types of flour and a shelf of assorted herbs but he is pretty sure it won’t qualify as food. Finally he hits the jackpot with the cupboard above the sink: packet mix microwave meals, pancake mix, and an assortment of pop-tarts. Kevin doesn’t want to make a mess with pans and microwave dishes, and he hasn’t had pop-tarts in forever because there are always left-overs at home and Nick hardly ever stops cooking in his spare time anyway. And Kevin always feels guilty eating really sugary food around Nick. Even if Nick says he doesn’t mind, Kevin feels like he’s rubbing his face in it.
Kevin ignores the Apple Strudel and Raspberry packets and goes straight for the frosted S’mores. They burn his fingers when they pop from the toaster and Kevin tears off a piece of paper towel from the roll on the counter top and leaves the pop-tarts to cool for a couple minutes.
He taps out a tune on the counter while he waits until he remembers the phone sitting heavy in his pocket. The display says it’s almost noon and Kevin’s missed five calls from home. He flicks the phone open and closed for a few moments until he reaches a decision; if calls home he’ll either get no answer because at lunchtime it’s difficult enough to even hear the phone let alone have time to answer it or Nick will yell at him, so he calls Bob Bryar their produce guy.
“Kevin? Where are you?” says Bob before Kevin can even say hello.
“Um, I don’t know,” answers Kevin. He thinks maybe he was wrong. Bob is probably going to be angrier than Nick would have been.
“You don’t know,” Bob says through gritted teeth, and Kevin is pretty sure the vein on Bob’s neck is doing that creepy pulsating thing.
“I hit my head,” Kevin explains. “And that guy who kept staring at me at work was there and I think I’m at his place now. He has pop-tarts.”
“He’s with you now?” asks Bob, and he sounds worried.
“Um, no,” says Kevin. “I just woke up. I haven’t seen him since he drove me here.”
“Okay. And you didn’t see which direction you drove?”
“I was kind of busy trying not to puke,” says Kevin, picking at one of the pop-tarts and rifling through the papers on the counter. “Oh!” he says. “Michael Carden.”
The line is silent for a moment and Kevin is about to repeat what he said just in case, when Bob says in his scary-calm voice, “Mike Carden?”
Kevin nods, then remembers Bob can’t see him through the phone, and says, “Yeah. It’s on his mail.”
Kevin reads the address out to Bob and Bob makes him promise to meet him down the street because he’s on his way over right now.
He thinks maybe he should leave a thank you note or something, but he can’t see a pen anywhere, and Kevin doesn’t think Bob will be very understanding if Kevin’s not out waiting for him by the time he arrives. So Kevin wraps the second pop-tart in the paper towel, puts it in his pocket and heads for the front door.
It takes a few minutes for Kevin to give up. The door’s locked and Kevin cannot find the key anywhere. He even moves some of the books and movies from the nearby cabinet to see if the key is hiding there.
Nothing.
Kevin looks over to the window on the opposite wall. There’s a fire escape and the window unlatches easily. Kevin manfully resists the urge to do a victory dance, places the last half of his pop-tart in his mouth and swings his leg out the window.
It is at this very moment that the door opens and Kevin freezes half out the window, pop-tart between his teeth, and Mike staring at him from across the room.
-+-
Mike’s spent the better part of his morning with Butcher in the nursery, and now he can’t shake the smell of fertilizer and his shirt is sticking to his skin from the heat. When he finally unlocks the door to his apartment it takes his brain a minute to catch up on the scene in front of him. He stands frozen in the doorway, folded sheets of paper in one hand, keys in the other, staring at Kevin who is perched halfway out the window with a pop-tart jutting from his mouth.
It takes longer than he’d care to admit before he can think clearly enough to move, but he folds the papers in half again and tucks them into his front pocket, steps inside the apartment and closes the door firmly behind him. Kevin is still motionless on the windowsill, with wide eyes that make Mike think of a deer caught in headlights, and Mike is pulling Kevin back inside within a manner of moments.
“Thanks for taking care of my head,” says Kevin, and he even takes the pop-tart out of him mouth to say it. The pop-tart is coated thickly in saliva from being held in Kevin’s mouth, and there are chocolaty dribbles running down Kevin’s chin, hand and wrist. It would be more off-putting if he hadn’t spent so much time with people with significantly more disgusting habits.
“And thanks for the pop-tarts,” Kevin continues. Mike just nods.
“Anyway, I have to go,” says Kevin after a pause. “My produce guy is coming to pick me up.”
“Your produce guy?” asks Mike. This isn’t good. He knew he shouldn’t have taken Kevin home to begin with, but now he’d told someone else where he was. Mike will have to ditch this apartment, and just when he was starting to get used to it.
“Yeah,” Kevin continues on happily. “Bob Bryar. He runs this produce company, Bob’s Produce? I want to tell him that he should have chosen something clever or punny instead of just Bob’s Produce but he’s kind of scary sometimes. And I still think it’s really cool that the company manager does our deliveries, right?”
“Bob Bryar’s on his way here?” Mike clarifies. Because holy fuck. He does not need Bob Bryar after him, and this kid is in more trouble than Mike could have thought. And if Bryar is on his way then the Way brothers are probably not far behind.
“We have to go,” Mike say, herding Kevin towards the door.
“What? Why?” asks Kevin, and Mike really doesn’t have time for this.
“’Cause you’re more trouble than I thought,” he says.
“I am not trouble,” Kevin protests, and he sounds affronted.
“You are if Bob Bryar’s assigned to watch you and I’m contracted to kill you,” says Mike.
“You’re what?” Kevin’s voice is reaching a pitch higher than Mike thought possible for a human being, let alone a man.
“I’m probably not going to kill you,” Mike placates and continues herding Kevin towards the front door. “It depends on what this is all about.”
But Kevin isn’t any calmer, and in a move so sudden Mike completely misses it, Kevin is flailing over the back of the couch and hurtling himself out the window and down the fire escape. Mike curses and tears out of the apartment and down the three flights of stairs to the ground floor. He’s rounding the corner just as Kevin shoots past, and Mike manages to intercept him; arms wrapping around Kevin’s waist and tackling him to the grass.
Kevin groans and clutches at his head, and Mike spares a worried thought that he’s going to end up causing some sort of permanent damage to this kid if he spends any more time with him. Of course, Mike thinks a moment later, he’s supposed to kill the kid and, in the long run, a few bumps to the head are probably better than a muddy hole in the woods.
“I think I twisted my ankle,” Kevin moans when Mike helps him up. They hobble around the side of the building and across the parking lot together, and climb back into Mike’s car.
“So you’re probably not going to kill me, right?” says Kevin, nervously shifting his hands in his lap.
“Probably not,” Mike agrees. He tries to sound comforting, but he’s out of practice and he doesn’t think it would be reassuring anyway.
The rest of the drive is quiet, the music from the radio breaking the silence with some generic rock-pop song about love by some generic alternative band. Kevin is bopping his head along to the beat, and Mike thinks he is kind of a dork.
Mike also thinks that, all problems aside, this moment - this drive - with the lame music and Kevin bopping along beside him isn’t so bad.
-+-
It takes an hour to reach their destination, a small house on the outskirts of the city with a lopsided picket fence around the small front lawn. There are flowers growing haphazardly in patches along the fence line and clustered in a patchwork of colour around the letterbox. The house itself is a lowset timber structure with chipped green paint and a white trellis to one side, vines clinging to the lattice-work and stretching up towards the guttering. The cement path is uneven and cracked with green shoots pushing through from underneath, and Kevin stumbles a little, not paying attention to his footing.
The door swings open as they approach and a tall, lanky man with longest legs Kevin has ever seen ushers them inside. It’s mostly clean inside, with just a few stray bits and pieces littering the available surfaces and a small stack of magazines splayed across the carpet next to the couch.
“Hello,” says the man, offering his hand. “William Beckett. I’ll be your baby-sitter this afternoon.”
Kevin eyes the proffered hand, and shoots a quick look at Mike before gripping it in his own. “Kevin,” he says. “And I don’t need a baby-sitter.”
“Of course you don’t,” says Bill in a tone that suggests he thinks otherwise, gently pushing him towards the couch. “You just make yourself at home, Kevin. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Kevin eyes the worn grey couch with trepidation. It’s faded and the back is water stained, the cushions are worn and threaded badly enough that Kevin can see the old yellow foam peeking through. Bill is looking at him encouragingly and making shooing gestures with his hands. So Kevin seats himself on the - surprisingly comfortable - couch while Bill drags Mike into an adjoining room.
Kevin’s not sure if the point was to maintain some privacy or not, because he can hear absolutely every word of their conversation. He feels uncomfortable, like he’s eavesdropping, but it’s not like he can help it. And it’s not like they’re saying anything important, or that he can understand. From what Kevin can tell, William is annoyed about leaving a shop, and now a butcher is in charge, Mike thinks Bob is some sort of super assassin or something and William seems to agree. William says something about how Mike really stinks, and Kevin is inclined to agree because he’d been stuck in a car with him for ages and it smelt like the gardening section of a store. Kevin is pretty sure the smell is trapped at the back of his throat somewhere, and he is almost certain he can feel it sitting there taunting him with every breath.
The door opens and Mike walks across the living room and through another door, fluffy green towel in hand. Kevin’s watching the door click shut behind him when he feels the cushions shift, and Bill is sitting next to him, arm slung casually across the couch behind Kevin.
“Monopoly?” he asks, sliding the box onto the coffee table in front of them.
Kevin is collecting his ten dollars from a beauty pageant when Mike wanders back into the room, towel riding low on his hips and a pair of jeans clutched in one hand. There’s a light mist trailing in from the bathroom and it carries with it the scent of shower gel, light and faintly spicy and Kevin’s stomach twists. He’d give anything to be back in his kitchen again, trying to mediate while Joe and Nick get into another spat.
“There’s no way I’m going to fit into these. You own anything other than skinny jeans?” asks Mike. William starts to speak but Mike cuts in. “And I don’t mean those hotpants I found, either. I’m not going outside in them.”
Kevin thinks he maybe wouldn’t mind if Mike did. He definitely has the legs for it.
“I should have dress pants in the closet,” says William. “And I’ll have you know the hotpants were a gift.”
“Yeah, well, I have a change of clothes in the back of my car,” Mike throws his keys to William, who snatches them from the air with agile fingers.
“Fine, fine,” says Bill, standing up and heading outside.
Mike drops himself into the armchair and stretches his legs out on the floor in front of him. Kevin fiddles with his small collection of property cards, but catches himself shooting glances over at Mike. It’s just that Kevin can’t think of a time when he has ever been alone in a room with a naked person (other than when Joe was in his terrible twos and their mom would chase Joe around the house trying to convince him that pants were a good thing. Kevin thinks that’s not even close to the same thing, though). Okay, not so much a naked person as a person in a towel, but still. He never even used the showers in gym.
Kevin shifts awkwardly in his seat and tries not to think about it.
Mike is looking at him questioningly, but he doesn’t say anything so neither does Kevin, and when Bill finally returns, bag in hand, Kevin is intensely thankful. Mike catches the bag when William throws it to him, and he stalks back to the bathroom while Bill plops back down onto the couch next to Kevin.
“My turn,” says Bill, scooping up the pair of dice.
-+-
Mike finds The Butcher at the counter, meticulously arranging flowers. The Butcher had manfully taken over the horticultural duties after he broke his leg a fortnight ago. It is only supposed to be temporary, a form of art therapy until his leg heals and he can return to field work, but Bill has been talking about shifting The Butcher to full time plant care and coordination. It means they won’t have anyone outside the team working at the store and compromising security, and The Butcher is the only one of them who is actually capable of keeping anything alive.
“Impressive,” says Mike, and it’s true; it’s more of a display piece than a bouquet at this point, and the flowers and greenery that Mike never bothered to learn the names of, or really care about, look delicate and expensive, twined together in a carefully crafted structure.
“Anniversary present,” says Butcher, and he’s calmer than Mike’s ever seen him; patiently and painstakingly adding and rearranging each piece. He’s also wearing a shirt today which, Mike realises, is probably upon Bill’s insistence. He wouldn’t leave the running of the store to a guy in only shorts. “It’s going to fucking rule when it’s done.”
“Yeah,” says Mike, and he thinks Bill is on to something getting The Butcher on full time horticulture duties after he recovers. They might even start turning a real profit on this cover business. “Is Sisky in?”
“Oh, yeah,” says The Butcher, snickering a bit.
Mike heads back to the records room, and he’s prepared for whatever state of emotion Siska’s in. If Bill’s let The Butcher cover the front desk even though he’s injured and actually has another job to do, while Siska is still stuck locked away in the back room doing nothing, there’s a high chance for either sulking or violence. Mike’s not sure which one he would prefer.
Sisky is lying across the floor, shirt rucked up under his chest, drawing furiously on a piece of scrap paper. From what Mike can see, it looks like some unfortunate, bloated stick figures and the occasional block of text. Siska spares him the briefest of glances and says, “I am gonna kill Bill.”
Mike takes a moment to shake off the sudden movie flashback, and says, “I’ve got a job for you.”
“Aw, c’mon,” says Siska, petulantly. “You know how the filing system works. Do it yourself.”
Mike sidesteps the well-placed kick Siska aims at his ankles. “It’s in the field.” Then, for good measure, adds, “Dickwad.”
Siska is in the air and engaging in a jubilant fist pump and running out the door in a matter of seconds. Mike eyes the drawing Siska left abandoned on the floor and considers throwing it out. But Mike thinks that if Bill finds the picture he’ll probably just end up framing it. Bill’s got a weird sense of sentimentality.
Siska is loudly proclaiming his freedom and telling someone to “suck on that” which, as far as Mike can tell, isn’t directed at anyone in particular, rather the flower-filled room as a whole. The Butcher is grinning and waving his extended middle finger in Siska’s direction without looking up from his project. Mike bites back a grin of his own because these guys - his co-workers, his friends - they’ve been through a lot of painful shit lately, and their’s isn’t an easy occupation, but they get by and Mike doesn’t think he’d have lasted this long in a career like this if he was stuck working with anybody else.
Mike finds Siska leaning against the front window, arms crossed against his chest and expression stony.
“What’s the job?” he asks, falling into step beside Mike.
-+-
Kevin is getting bored. Bill had called a time out on their Monopoly game in order to show Kevin the various scrapbooks he had made. Kevin thinks that Bill is just a sore loser. And, as impressive as Bill’s scrap booking skills are, Kevin would much rather continue to win at Monopoly. Or, you know, get to go home.
The last album is filled with captioned photos of Bill, Mike and the handful of other guys from most of the previous albums. The majority of new photos were taken in rooms filled with flowers and it’s weird because none of the laughing, joyful, flower-toting guys look like they kidnap people and keep them hostage. Although, Kevin thinks, that’s probably how they gain the upper hand.
There’s one picture, towards the back, with a heavily tattooed man wearing only a wreath of flowers on his head and a pair of white short shorts frozen in the middle of a dance. And there, in the back left hand corner, is Mike Carden. The photo has captured him mid-laugh, the neck of a beer bottle held loosely between the fingers of one hand. He’s a little blurry, out of focus, but Kevin thinks it’s a little bit perfect. Kevin also thinks he might be developing Stockholm syndrome.
He closes the album and sets it on the pile he’s already flicked through; the cover staring up at him is a photo of Bill, Mike and three of the other guys sporting daisy chain crowns and a mixture of huge grins and solemn expressions. Kevin hopes that they can finish their game now.
Bill is sprawled across the other half of the couch, watching Kevin. He stretches and says, “We should have lunch, Mr Jonas.”
“Afternoon tea,” says Kevin, pointing at the clock above the TV. It’s almost three o’clock. Kevin can’t believe he hasn’t noticed how hungry he’s gotten until now. His stomach is making very loud and demanding gurgles.
“Details,” says Bill, waving his hand dismissively. He stands in one swift movement and gestures for Kevin to follow him through one of the doorways at the back of the room.
The kitchen is average sized with a small breakfast island and a little table for two. Bill is piling things across the cupboard and Kevin pulls up a stool and starts sorting ingredients.
“Do you have any water chestnuts?” he asks.
“No,” says Bill. “No I do not. I don’t know what they are.”
“Pasta?”
There’s a pause while Bill disappears from view again, then he slides two packets of pasta across the cupboard towards him. Kevin is tearing open the packet of angel hair in no time.
“Where’s -” he starts, but Bill’s already dropping a saucepan in front of him. “Thanks.”
“I thought your brothers were the chefs,” says Bill, leaning back against the sink and watching Kevin whisk lemon juice, chilli and garlic in a bowl. “Don’t you run the bookstore?”
Kevin bites the insides of his cheeks. He hates when people assume he can’t cook just because he’s ‘the bookstore guy’. He chose to work in the bookstore, okay? He’s just as good in the kitchen as his brothers. Okay, maybe not as good as Nick, but Nick’s some sort of culinary genius freak. But still. Kevin is at least as good as Joe; he just really likes the bookstore.
“I help out sometimes,” says Kevin.
Fifteen minutes later lunch is ready. Kevin feels like the pasta is missing something, but he’s used everything decent on hand so there’s not much he can do about that. There’s everything he’ll need for a decent carrot and sprout salad, so if he ends up stuck here for a while he can always make that.
Bill is clearing the plates and shelving them in the dishwasher when the front door slams open and moments later Kevin finds himself wrapped up in a three-way hug with Nick and Joe. He wrests his arms free and returns the embrace. Kevin’s a little ashamed at how happy he is to have them here because he’s pretty sure it means they’re in danger now too. He just clings a little tighter.
“We’re going to be talking in the living room,” says Bill. “You boys behave yourselves.”
The door closes quietly, and even though Joe hasn’t slackened his embrace, Nick is trying to wriggle his way out of the group hug.
“Guys,” he says, elbowing Kevin in the side as he twists around.
Neither Kevin nor Joe budges.
“Guys!”
They let go in unison, and Nick skids backwards across the tiles for a few steps. “I hate you,” he says.
“Love you too,” says Joe, pulling up a seat at the table. “So, what’d we miss?”
Kevin tells them about hitting his head, waking up at Mike’s, finding out about the contract on his head and spending the afternoon with Bill. He leaves out some of the falling over, though.
“Also, I think I’ve developed Stockholm syndrome,” he says.
“Stockholm syndrome,” repeats Nick incredulously. “You’ve only been gone eight hours.”
“You know I always pick things up quick,” say Kevin.
“Hey, yeah,” agrees Joe. “Remember when we went to that music camp over the summer? You totally learnt that song in like, half a day. It was awesome. And when we were learning about fondant you were even better than Nick. And -”
“Okay,” says Nick. “We get it. But it’s not the same thing.”
“Why not?” asks Joe.
“It’s not something you learn,” says Nick. “It’s just. It’s not.”
“You’re still mad about the fondant, aren’t you,” smirks Joe.
“I am not mad about the fondant!” But Nick is seething. Kevin leans back against the cupboard and watches them bicker. It’s only been eight hours since he saw them last, but he’s missed them so much.
-+-
Joe is perched on the counter swinging his legs, feet connecting with the cupboard in dull rhythmic thumps, and shovelling potato chips into his mouth. Nick has been scowling in his direction for the last five minutes. Joe smiles sweetly in Nick’s direction and swings his feet with greater fervour.
They’ve been sitting in the kitchen for over an hour now; they lapsed into silence when Joe and Nick finally stopped squabbling but no one made any move to join their captors in the next room. Kevin thinks being kidnapped by hired killers should be more interesting than this, but he’s also pretty sure that being kidnapped by hired killers is supposed to involve copious amounts of terror and pain, so he doesn’t really want to voice his complaints.
“So,” says Nick, clearing his throat and looking pointedly at Kevin. “Bill seems very nice.”
“I guess,” says Kevin. He’s still a little annoyed over the whole Monopoly thing, to be honest.
“What?” says Joe, his head is turning between Nick and Kevin like he’s watching a tennis match. Nick looks at Joe and Kevin’s not sure what kind of telepathic messages Nick’s sending, but a few moments later Joe says, “Right, yeah. He’s, uh, really pretty. Almost girl pretty. He’s like a really tall, really pretty girl. Only a guy.”
“What?” snaps Nick sharply. Joe shrugs.
“Okay,” says Kevin slowly. “You guys are really weird. Did they drug you?”
Kevin hopes it’s just a case of drugging. He’s more than a little concerned that these aren’t, in fact, his brothers but are instead super assassins in disguise to make him think he’s talking to his brothers, only he’s not. Because he’s talking to super assassins. Kevin’s not sure why super assassins would pose as his brothers just to sit around with him in a kitchen when he was already very thoroughly kidnapped, but Kevin is not yet learned in the ways of the super assassin.
“What he means,” says Nick, shooting a glare at Joe, “is that it’s okay with us if you like Bill, even if it isn’t because of Stockholm syndrome. Because we’re your brothers --”
“And we love you,” interrupts Joe, crunching loudly on a new handful of chips. “Even if you’re crazy and crushing on the guy who’s helping hold us captive.”
“Uh, yeah,” says Nick. “Essentially. Yeah. Although I can’t support any liaisons with a man who may or may not be helping to kill us, I still support you.”
“I don’t have a crush on Bill,” says Kevin, because what? When did this happen? And isn’t this almost identical to the speech Nick gave when Kevin decided to run the bookshop? Nick really needs to stop with the team-building conferences he insists on attending. He always spends months afterwards using ‘I’ statements and ‘trying to generate an environment of openness and understanding’ and it’s mostly just creepy and weird.
“You don’t need to deny it, bro,” says Joe. He slides from his perch on the cupboard and walks over to drape his arms around Kevin’s shoulders. “We all have lapses in taste sometimes.”
“Like every girl you’ve ever dated?” says Nick.
Joe straightens up and opens his mouth to retaliate, but Kevin jumps in first. “That’s really sweet, you guys. Um, I think? But I’m not interested in Bill.”
“You’re sure?” says Joe, sceptically.
“Even if I was,” says Kevin, “it would never work out. He totally cancelled our Monopoly game halfway through. What kind of person does that?”
Joe shrugs sympathetically and Nick says, “But what about your ‘Stockholm syndrome’?”
“Uh,” says Kevin, not sure what to say. Mike is kind of terrifying and also in the next room. He’s suddenly very aware of how clearly he had been able to hear Mike and Bill talking from the other room earlier.
“No way,” says Joe slowly, shaking his head. “No way!”
“What?” asks Nick.
“But he’s got the soulless eyes of a remorseless killer!” cries Joe.
“Oh,” says Nick, eyes widening in surprise for a moment before his expression returns to normal.
“You know, they are both actually remorseless killers,” he says to Joe.
“Yeah, but at least Bill doesn’t look like he wants to devour your immortal soul,” Joe shoots back.
“Guys,” says Kevin, a little hysterical. Mike is maybe going to kill them and all Kevin can think about is how warm Mike’s hands are and how pretty Mike looks when he’s actually smiling.
“Hey,” says Nick, and then Kevin is wrapped up in the middle of another group hug. Kevin clings a little more than he usually would. It ends sooner than he’d like, though, with Nick saying they should go figure this thing out. Kevin doesn’t really want to figure anything out; he wants to stay huddled up in the safe little kitchen and hope Mike and Bill just forget about them.
Bill and Mike are sitting on the couch and armchair respectively when Nick strides purposefully into the living room, Kevin and Joe trailing uncertainly behind him. Bill looks like he’s trying not to laugh and Mike is just staring right at Kevin. There is no way he doesn’t know, thinks Kevin. He really wishes the floor would just open up and swallow him whole.
“Nice outfit,” says Bill to Nick who is still garbed in his white chef’s uniform, flour smudged from his hairline to left temple. Mike had apparently emptied the establishment of its patrons and dragged Nick and Joe out of the building with great efficiency. Nick and Joe hadn’t been vague on the details but their stories were very inconsistent. Joe’s version had involved mind control and two explosions.
Nick scowls at Bill and, for a second, Kevin is concerned that Nick is going to snap. But Nick settles for scowling at Bill’s rapidly-growing smile.
Joe’s jittering with impatience beside Kevin; he has always been completely incapable of staying still for more than a few seconds at a time. Kevin sometimes wonders if Joe even knows he’s doing it, knows that he can’t even stop moving for an entire minute, that he looks over-caffeinated or under-medicated when he starts shaking and twitching and tapping on things.
Kevin places a reassuring hand on Nick’s shoulder, spurring him into action.
“What is going on?” he asks.
On to Part 2
Now also on AO3
Mike Is A Hitman OMG (16652 words) by
Not_So_Austen
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Bandom, Jonas Brothers
Rating: Mature
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Mike Carden/Kevin Jonas (pre-slashish?)
Summary:
The Academy Is... guys are hitmen, the Jonas Brothers own a cafe-bookstore, secret pasts, epic gun fights and awkward and probably inappropriate crushing ensues
Title: Mike Is A Hitman OMG
Pairing: Mike Carden/Kevin Jonas (pre-slashish?)
Rating: M (I... I don't know. Maybe MA?)
Warnings: Course language, casual murder
Word Count: 16, 519
Summary: The Academy Is... guys are hitmen, the Jonas Brothers own a cafe-bookstore, secret pasts, epic gun fights and awkward and probably inappropriate crushing ensues
With thanks to dist_reflection who doesn't like Jonas or know TAI yet bribed me with pop tarts to keep writing, and my stepmum because, weirdly enough, she bullied me into picking back up whenever I stopped writing for a few weeks, and starflowers who read the first half of this sometime last year and assured me that it did not suck.
Mike drives down the long stretch of back roads out of the city to his favourite dumping ground. It's only on rare occasions that an employer will request the customer 'disappear' but those are some of Mike's favourite jobs. It means he can take a full two days off and hit the road. Every now and then it's nice to have an excuse to get out of the city, and Mike knows he probably never would if it wasn't for work.
Mike winds the window down and flicks the butt of his cigarette outside. The air that whips Mike’s hair across his face smells heavily of dirt and grass and moisture from the recent rain, and the small hills and pastures he can see through the tree line are a lush, wet green. The rain had subsided a short while ago, and now the midday sun is back in full force. Mike rolls his window back up and turns the air con up a little higher.
He stops at a gas station in the next town he passes through to refuel the car and grab a fresh pack of cigarettes and some chips for lunch. Mike parks the car on the side of the road and sits on the wooden-railed fence that separates the road from what looks to be the back of someone’s property and tears open the packet of Cheetos. Mike doesn’t have a problem with eating in his car - the empty food wrappers that litter the back seat and passenger side floor are testament to that - but Cheetos always leave a trail of sticky orange powder all over the place and it’s a bitch to drive with a steering wheel coated in the stuff.
Mike sees the car pull up behind his own, county sheriff’s department shield on the side and lights on top. He’s been pulled over on countless occasions - usually for breathalysers and once for speeding - and after the first couple of times it becomes routine. Mike drops another handful of Cheetos into his mouth and chews them sedately as the deputy emerges from his vehicle.
“Car troubles?” he asks by way of greeting, ambling over to rest against the trunk of Mike’s car which groans under the weight, and Mike notices the deputy’s belt buckle and shirt buttons are under a similar, albeit silent strain.
Mike finishes chewing, swallows, grabs another couple of Cheetos and says, “Just stopping for lunch,” before dropping the new handful of cheese-flavoured snack into his mouth. He tilts the packet up in offering, but the deputy declines.
They make small talk for a while, and Mike spares a moment to consider how very close the deputy is to discovering his crime; what the deputy would say if he knew he was inches away from earthly the remains of one Mr David Gruber who is now sporting a charming new bruise across his neck where the cord Mike had strangled him with still remained. That within the trunk the deputy is resting against there is a conspicuously large, thick, air-sealed case that Mr Gruber now resides in.
But the deputy merely raps his fist against the trunk, bids his farewell and pushes off Mike’s car and returns to his own. Mike waves his hand good-bye in one sharp movement, crinkles up the empty Cheetos packet and tosses it into the backseat. He wipes his hands down the thighs of his jeans, leaving a trail of orange powder in their wake, and climbs back into the car to finish his job.
It’s dusk by the time Mike reaches his destination. He picks his way through the scrub and dense trees, body case in tow, and digs a new grave in the small clearing. As he’s shovelling dirt back into the hole his phone starts buzzing impatiently in the pocket of his jeans. Mike drops his shovel into the soft turned dirt and checks the display: Bill. He presses the ignore button and slips the phone back into his pocket and continues shovelling. His phone only goes off once more, and Mike waits until after he’s finished packing up the car before he checks it again, climbing into the comfort of the driver’s seat and pulling his boots off.
Bill has left him a text message letting Mike know that he’s got a new job lined up as soon as he gets back. Mike hopes this new client is as easy as Mr Gruber was. He has every intention of putting in for a few days vacation after this.
Mike tosses the phone onto the passenger seat and gets to work cleaning the dirt from his boots, clothes and hands. He’ll do a more thorough job once he gets back home; he has limited cleaning supplies with him and he’ll have to give the car a quick once-over as well. But in the meantime it will be good enough to simply not look like he has been out digging graves in the woods.
-+-
Bill is sitting behind the counter waiting for him when Mike returns the next evening. The bell chimes as Mike pushes open the door and Bill glances up and waves him over. The room is difficult to manoeuvre, with small aisles between crowded stands of potted flowers and pre-made bouquets, and the combined smell of the flowers in the room make Mike’s nose itch. The counter is littered with papers and Bill jots down a few quick notes, tucks his pencil behind his ear and leans across the counter towards Mike.
“Is the customer satisfied?” asks Bill, all seriousness except for the trace of amusement Mike can hear in his voice. Mike purses his lips; he hates this part of the routine, but Bill is the boss and he insists on it. Something about constant vigilance and maintaining covers. Mostly Mike thinks that Bill just finds it entertaining. Bill leans forward and looks at him expectantly.
Mike rolls his eyes and says dully, “The customer is very satisfied.”
The corners of Bill’s lips twitch into a barely restrained smile. “Excellent,” he says, tearing a post-it note from one of the ledgers in front of him. “New client. Here’s the file number. I told Siska you’d be by to pick it up, so it should be ready to go. There’s not much in there so you’ll have to do some recon, but it’s nothing you can’t handle.”
Mike nods and peels the post-it from the tip of Bill’s proffered hand. Siska has been demoted to the records room for the foreseeable future and has been sulking about it for the last three weeks. Since Siska almost screwed up a job, though, Mike thinks he’s lucky a stint in records is all he got. But with the Butcher getting injured and Conrad leaving, they were down a few too many and someone needed to keep the files in order.
Sisky frantically moves his feet from the desktop to the floor and slams his game boy into an open drawer as Mike pushes open the door to their records room.
“Oh,” he says, looking over at Mike. “I thought you were Bill checking up on me again. You’re not here to replace me, are you?” he asks hopefully.
“I’m just here to pick up a file,” Mike says, shaking his head, and Siska looks so dejected that Mike resolves to buy him a drink when this new job is finished. Siska takes the post-it when Mike holds it out to him, and pulls a file along with his game boy out of the lower desk drawer. He slaps the file down on the desk and Mike has barely picked it up before Siska’s feet slam down onto the desk after it.
“It’s an easy one,” Sisky says, nodding at the file in Mike’s hands. “Maybe you can convince Bill to let me ride along, supervise on this one so I can get out of this crap hole and get back in the field?”
Mike makes a noncommittal sound at the back of his throat, waves a good-bye and heads back into the main store. Sure Mike feels bad for Siska being stuck in the records room for months on end, but there is absolutely no way Mike is going to get saddled with baby-sitting Siska on a job that requires any amount of reconnaissance. There are only so many “weenie” anecdotes Mike can put up with before he starts considering abandoning the customer in favour of planning the murder of Siska instead.
Bill is hunched over the papers on his desk, a pencil between his lips and fingers tapping away at a calculator and he doesn’t look up when Mike walks out. Bill is the one who decided on a flower shop as the new front for the business, but even after several months he is still genuinely perplexed at the paperwork it entails. Mike thinks there’s something to be said for how comparatively easy it is for Bill to routinely get away with murder than it is for him to run a small business.
Mike flips the Open sign on the door to Closed as he leaves. The flower shop would have closed a couple of hours earlier but no one ever remembers to flip the sign over. Mike stops to light a cigarette when he hits the sidewalk, and he spares a few moments to flick through the file. The new customer is a book store sales assistant named Paul Kevin Jonas II. There’s a work schedule attached and Mike decides to get a better idea of the customer’s daily routines this week, starting tomorrow, and finish the job next week.
There’s a picture paper clipped to the back of the file of a young, curly-haired man who looks about as threatening as newborn puppy and, while Mike can’t think of a reason anyone would need to take out what appears to be a typically unthreatening book store clerk, he thinks Bill and Siska are right: this is probably going to be one of the easier jobs.
-+-
The hair on the back of Kevin’s neck prickles and he knows the guy is staring at him again. The same guy who stopped by yesterday, bought a coffee from the adjoining café bar, settled down at one of the corner tables and stared at Kevin from behind his book for the better part of the afternoon. Kevin tries not to drop the stack of books he’s shelving, but knowing he’s being watched is making him nervous and jittery.
Kevin walks back over to the bookstore counter and sneaks a look at the guy in the corner, but when Kevin looks over the guy appears engrossed in his newspaper and casually sips his coffee. There aren’t many people in the book section so Kevin wanders over to see his brothers in the adjoining café; there’s no real separation between the bookstore and café other than the rows of tables transitioning into rows of book shelves, so Kevin can easily keep an eye on the book counter from there.
“Hey,” says Joe, grabbing an apple cinnamon muffin from the display case and taking a bite. There are always regular lulls in foot traffic on weekdays because most of their patrons are from the surrounding office buildings with regular lunch and tea breaks. Joe thinks these are good times to relax and take a break, and Nick thinks these are good times to catch up on the smaller jobs and increase productivity. Kevin thinks it’s a good idea not to pick sides.
“That guy keeps staring at me,” Kevin stage whispers to Joe who looks up from his muffin and asks loudly, “What guy?”
“Sh!” Kevin hisses and waves his arms emphatically. He doesn’t want the guy to know, sheesh!
“The guy at table three,” says Nick appearing behind them, apron dusted with what looks like flour and batter. “And you’re paying for that,” he says, pointing at the muffin Joe is still cramming into his mouth.
“Table three,” Joe murmurs, ignoring Nick’s latter statement. “The guy with the hair and the creepy eyes?”
Kevin nods and stifles a squeak of fear when the guy looks over at them right then. Like he has super hearing or can read minds or something. Kevin really hopes he can’t do either of those things.
“It’s like his eyes are empty,” says Joe in hushed awe, openly staring at the man. “Like he has no soul.”
Kevin makes a strangled sound in his throat, and he’s pretty sure his eyes are bugging out. The guy looks like a hungry tiger sizing up a particularly delicious-looking deer. Kevin watches National Geographic, he’d know that look anywhere.
Nick just hits Joe with one of the menus and tells them to get back to work.
Kevin isn’t sure when the creepy guy leaves, because he’s trying so hard to focus on working and not on what Joe was saying about soulless eyes, that when Kevin very subtly sneaks a glance at table three the guy is gone.
Relief floods through him and he’s just thinking that maybe he should talk Nick into vacation time because he’s clearly stressed out, when he hears someone clearing their throat. Kevin looks up from where he’s playing with the tasselled bookmarks on the counter-top display and right into the scary dark eyes of the creepy guy.
Kevin freezes and it’s not until the guy clears his throat again and taps on the cover of the book he’s holding that Kevin so much as blinks. There’s a long and increasingly awkward silence wherein Kevin stares right at the man in front of him and can’t manage to say anything at all. Kevin isn’t so sure if, close up, the guy’s eyes are soulless so much as dark and confused. He’s staring at Kevin like he’s some sort of confusing puzzle that needs to be solved or, possibly, like he’s concerned that Kevin is having some sort of serious incapacitating problem and isn’t sure what to do. That’s probably because of all the not-moving and not-talking Kevin is doing.
“I want to buy this book,” the guy says slowly, tapping his fingers against the cover again for emphasis.
“Oh,” says Kevin after a moment, and he’s more than a little relieved the guy isn’t demanding Kevin hand over his soul or inviting him out to eat puppies or something. “That’s five fifty.”
The guy drops the exact change in coins into Kevin’s hand, says “Thanks, kid,” nods his head and starts walking away, book tucked under his arm, before Kevin can ask him if he wants a bag.
“Have a nice day,” Kevin calls after him, because he has manners, okay? And just because a guy looks a little creepy, it doesn’t mean Kevin isn’t going to wish him a nice day. Even if that day could maybe possibly involve eating poor innocent puppies for snacks. Kevin isn’t sure a soulless puppy-eater would have paid for a book, though. But Kevin also doesn’t know anyone who eats puppies, either, so he can’t be certain.
The guy stops, looks back over his shoulder at Kevin and waves before pushing open the door and leaving. Kevin thinks that maybe he’s just the misunderstood, quiet intense type. Kevin maybe hopes that a lot.
-+-
The alarm clock goes off at 6:15 just like every morning. And, just like every morning, Kevin hits the snooze button and goes back to sleep for another ten minutes. The alarm goes off again exactly ten minutes later, and is followed soon after by the sound of Nick tapping on the wall near Kevin’s head from his own room next door. So Kevin rolls out of bed, gets dressed and heads out into the hall.
Nick and Joe are just stepping out of their respective rooms and the three close their respective doors behind them and trail downstairs to the kitchen. Since they own the building, the brothers live in the three decently sized flats above the café bookstore they run. Kevin’s room is in the middle and he likes knowing that even if they’re in their own separate flats, that he can still hear Joe blasting music too loudly and that Nick will still make sure he’s getting up on time by rapping against the wall near Kevin’s head each morning.
They eat breakfast in the kitchen, and everything smells of freshly baked bread and cinnamon and blueberries because Nick gets up extra early to start baking for their 7am open time. He always goes back upstairs to sleep a little longer and get ready for the rest of the day once he’s finished downstairs. Nick is always scribbling down new recipe ideas in one of his hundreds of notebooks and Kevin sometimes thinks that Nick should be head chef in his own huge restaurant instead of stuck in this tiny café with his brothers, but Kevin also doesn’t want Nick to go away - can’t imagine a life that isn’t here with his brothers joking around and fighting and having fun.
After breakfast Joe grabs a Gatorade from the refrigerator (Nick tells him he’ll be paying for that, too) and heads out for his morning run. Nick washes up and gets to work preparing food for the day, while Kevin hides out in the downstairs lounge and watches one of the music channels until Joe gets back and they have to start setting up tables and getting things ready for opening time.
Joe spends a few minutes checking his reflection in the metal cubby between the counter area and the kitchen.
“How do I look?” he asks for about the hundredth time, sweeping his bangs across his forehead.
“Like a cockatoo with all that preening,” says Nick, sliding a tray of croissants onto the cubby shelf and obscuring Joe’s reflection.
“You like fine, Joe,” says Kevin, quick to deter an argument.
“Just fine?” asks Joe, frowning. “It’s the hair, isn’t it? I need a new style.”
“Your hair is great, Joe,” says Kevin.
Nick rolls his eyes and says, “The only thing you need to fix are your priorities. These croissants aren’t going to put themselves in the display.”
At seven o’clock on the dot they open for business and, since the book store doesn’t officially open until nine, Kevin helps Joe work the café counter for the morning rush. Between seven and eight-thirty each morning is their busiest time of the entire day, with people lining up for coffee and breakfast on their way to work.
Kevin is having a great time taking customer orders while Joe fetches them. Kevin always makes the most tips when he’s working the café counter because he has, as he likes to say, a natural affinity for these things. He’s a people person. He’s polite and bubbly and people like him. Not to say that people don’t like Joe and Nick, because they do. But Kevin is pretty sure that if it came down to it, he’d be voted best cashier.
At exactly 8:23am, however, just as Kevin is about to ask the next customer what they would like today, Joe shoves him out of the way. Kevin stumbles a little, but thankfully avoids what could have been an entirely embarrassing fall to the floor, the likes of a slap-stick routine. There is minimal flailing as he steadies himself with one hand on the counter and decides that he will get Joe back later.
The mid-week produce delivery should be arriving soon, so Kevin leaves Joe leaning over the counter and flirting with the pretty blonde woman and heads through the kitchen to the side street delivery bay.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Kevin yells over his shoulder to Nick, who is furiously slicing away at something on the chopping board in front of him. “Produce guy will be here soon.”
“Yeah,” Nick calls back distractedly, and Kevin slips through the door to the lounge room and outside.
It’s cool and dark in the alley at this time of morning, and Kevin leans back against the door frame and closes his eyes. It’s nice to get some time to himself, Kevin thinks, and get away from the craziness inside. Kevin wonders if Nick has noticed Joe flirting yet and yelled at him to get back to work and stop holding up the line.
He doesn’t even hear footsteps approaching so, when his upper arms are suddenly in someone’s ridiculously tight grip, he is more than a little startled. Kevin’s eyes fly open and he involuntarily flinches backwards and he probably would have hit his head even harder on the wooden door if not for the firm grip steadying him.
“Woah, steady,” says the owner of the hands, and Kevin freezes without really meaning to.
Kevin looks up and right into those dark, possibly-soulless eyes and squeaks, “Creepy guy?”
-+-
Mike’s done some preliminary background checking into Paul Kevin Jonas II, his brothers and their business, trying to get a feel for the least messy way to complete this job. But the one thing that has kept bugging him is how clean this kid’s background is. It isn’t Mike’s business to ask why a customer is booked, but it’s usually pretty obvious within the first few days of routine surveillance.
There’s something about this job that feels off.
Mike is not impressed with himself. He spent his first two days of reconnaissance breaking all his own rules: he shouldn’t have spent more than half an hour in the café observing, he certainly should have been more subtle, and he shouldn’t have engaged the customer. He’s still not sure why he did it.
Mike is leaning against the brick wall at the mouth of the alley behind the bookstore, contemplating his next move, when he sees Kevin step out into the alley and slump back against the door. He’s moving before he really thinks about it, hands gripping Kevin’s upper arms.
“Woah, steady,” says Mike when Kevin flinches backwards into the closed door.
Kevin blinks up at him and says, “Creepy guy?”
Mike isn’t sure what to say to that, but he notices the fresh red smear on the doorjamb and says, “Your head is bleeding.”
“Where are we going?” asks Kevin as Mike wraps a supportive arm around Kevin’s side and walks him back out of the alley and down the street.
“We’re gonna get you cleaned up,” says Mike. “I’ve got supplies in my car.”
“Oh,” Kevin murmurs and leans into Mike’s side as they push past the people crowding the sidewalk heading in the opposite direction.
Mike digs through his pocket for his keys as soon as his car is in sight, and presses the unlock button on the remote. He opens the door and helps settle Kevin in the passenger seat before collecting the little first aid box from the trunk.
Kevin is slumped over sideways in the seat, feet still planted on the pavement and head against the backrest. Mike slides into the drivers seat, settles the first aid kit between the seats and reaches across to pull Kevin into the car and shut the door behind him.
“Are you wearing heels?” Mike asks when Kevin’s feet are safely inside the car.
“They happen to be a valid fashion choice,” says Kevin, scuffing the boots in question across the floor.
Mike just snorts and gets to work. The first aid kit is small and Mike grabs some tissues first to clean up before he pulls out a tube of antibacterial ointment and some gauze to press against the wound. It is only a small cut, but pretty messy. Mike tells Kevin as much and hands him a couple aspirin along with the bottle of water he picked up that morning. He presses a piece of gauze against the back of Kevin’s head.
“Keep pressure on it,” says Mike, packing up the first aid box and dropping onto the floor in the back. “It should stop bleeding soon enough.”
Mike looks at the kid, all curly-haired and barely 20 years old. His record’s suspiciously clean - like he’s been living in an isolated bubble his entire life - and Mike just doesn’t feel right about this job. Kevin and his brothers know his face and he’s screwed this up so bad. But Kevin’s right there in the car beside him. It would be like holding a suspect during the investigative process, really, Mike reasons. When Mike gets assigned a new customer they’ve usually done something to warrant it. Not that he should need to justify it to himself or anyone else, a job’s a job, but. Well...
Mike really needs that vacation.
“My head hurts,” grumbles Kevin, holding the gauze awkwardly against the back of his head, elbow jutting out into the space between him and Mike.
“Yeah, kid,” says Mike as he turns the key in the ignition. “You hit the door pretty hard.”
Mike isn’t sure if Kevin has hit his head hard enough to cause a concussion, or even remember what the procedure is for concussions because he usually only needs to distinguish between dead and not-dead-yet which isn’t usually very complicated. He’s fairly certain it doesn’t matter if someone with a concussion falls asleep so long as they wake up again without difficulty, but he doesn’t want to take any chances. So, when Kevin starts to letting his eyes droop, Mike shakes his arm until he regains focus again.
“Where’re we going?” asks Kevin dazedly, dropping the bloodied gauze and turning to look out the window.
“Just keep holding this to your head,” says Mike, picking up the piece of gauze from the seat and pressing it back against Kevin’s head.
Mike finally pulls into his parking space and helps Kevin up the stairs. Mike isn’t sure what he’s doing anymore, but there’s no easy way either of them can get out of this now.
-+-
Kevin’s arm feels all numb and tingly and it takes him a few moments to realise he’s fallen asleep with it trapped underneath him. He rolls off of his arm and onto the floor, which was really not what Kevin had planned to do, but at least his arm is free. Kevin sits up, shaking his arm to wake it up and sets off the sensation of pin pricks across his skin. Kevin had expected to wake up in his own bed. His own bed which is king-sized and soft and so roomy that he almost never falls out onto the floor in his sleep. Instead he’s woken up on a couch - not even his own couch - and the back of his head is tingly and itchy and he has no idea where he is.
Kevin’s arm is feeling normal again and he scratches at the spot on his head that’s troubling him. It hurts where Kevin’s nails scratch across the scalp, and his fingers are peppered with flakes of dried blood. And Kevin remembers hitting his head, and the guy from the café helping him, but he isn’t sure why he’s here in this cramped little apartment instead of in his own room.
There aren’t any pictures that Kevin can see as he takes the few steps over to the kitchen area. Kevin is pretty sure that’s not normal. Every home he’s ever visited has had at least a couple of framed photos scattered across shelves or hanging on the walls and Kevin is suddenly filled with sympathy for this poor man who doesn’t even have pictures of friends or family to display in his home.
There is a dispenser of antibacterial soap on the sink, and Kevin cleans his hands before rifling through the cupboards for something to eat. Most of the food seems to be canned or ingredients and Kevin isn’t really sure what exactly he can make with three different types of flour and a shelf of assorted herbs but he is pretty sure it won’t qualify as food. Finally he hits the jackpot with the cupboard above the sink: packet mix microwave meals, pancake mix, and an assortment of pop-tarts. Kevin doesn’t want to make a mess with pans and microwave dishes, and he hasn’t had pop-tarts in forever because there are always left-overs at home and Nick hardly ever stops cooking in his spare time anyway. And Kevin always feels guilty eating really sugary food around Nick. Even if Nick says he doesn’t mind, Kevin feels like he’s rubbing his face in it.
Kevin ignores the Apple Strudel and Raspberry packets and goes straight for the frosted S’mores. They burn his fingers when they pop from the toaster and Kevin tears off a piece of paper towel from the roll on the counter top and leaves the pop-tarts to cool for a couple minutes.
He taps out a tune on the counter while he waits until he remembers the phone sitting heavy in his pocket. The display says it’s almost noon and Kevin’s missed five calls from home. He flicks the phone open and closed for a few moments until he reaches a decision; if calls home he’ll either get no answer because at lunchtime it’s difficult enough to even hear the phone let alone have time to answer it or Nick will yell at him, so he calls Bob Bryar their produce guy.
“Kevin? Where are you?” says Bob before Kevin can even say hello.
“Um, I don’t know,” answers Kevin. He thinks maybe he was wrong. Bob is probably going to be angrier than Nick would have been.
“You don’t know,” Bob says through gritted teeth, and Kevin is pretty sure the vein on Bob’s neck is doing that creepy pulsating thing.
“I hit my head,” Kevin explains. “And that guy who kept staring at me at work was there and I think I’m at his place now. He has pop-tarts.”
“He’s with you now?” asks Bob, and he sounds worried.
“Um, no,” says Kevin. “I just woke up. I haven’t seen him since he drove me here.”
“Okay. And you didn’t see which direction you drove?”
“I was kind of busy trying not to puke,” says Kevin, picking at one of the pop-tarts and rifling through the papers on the counter. “Oh!” he says. “Michael Carden.”
The line is silent for a moment and Kevin is about to repeat what he said just in case, when Bob says in his scary-calm voice, “Mike Carden?”
Kevin nods, then remembers Bob can’t see him through the phone, and says, “Yeah. It’s on his mail.”
Kevin reads the address out to Bob and Bob makes him promise to meet him down the street because he’s on his way over right now.
He thinks maybe he should leave a thank you note or something, but he can’t see a pen anywhere, and Kevin doesn’t think Bob will be very understanding if Kevin’s not out waiting for him by the time he arrives. So Kevin wraps the second pop-tart in the paper towel, puts it in his pocket and heads for the front door.
It takes a few minutes for Kevin to give up. The door’s locked and Kevin cannot find the key anywhere. He even moves some of the books and movies from the nearby cabinet to see if the key is hiding there.
Nothing.
Kevin looks over to the window on the opposite wall. There’s a fire escape and the window unlatches easily. Kevin manfully resists the urge to do a victory dance, places the last half of his pop-tart in his mouth and swings his leg out the window.
It is at this very moment that the door opens and Kevin freezes half out the window, pop-tart between his teeth, and Mike staring at him from across the room.
-+-
Mike’s spent the better part of his morning with Butcher in the nursery, and now he can’t shake the smell of fertilizer and his shirt is sticking to his skin from the heat. When he finally unlocks the door to his apartment it takes his brain a minute to catch up on the scene in front of him. He stands frozen in the doorway, folded sheets of paper in one hand, keys in the other, staring at Kevin who is perched halfway out the window with a pop-tart jutting from his mouth.
It takes longer than he’d care to admit before he can think clearly enough to move, but he folds the papers in half again and tucks them into his front pocket, steps inside the apartment and closes the door firmly behind him. Kevin is still motionless on the windowsill, with wide eyes that make Mike think of a deer caught in headlights, and Mike is pulling Kevin back inside within a manner of moments.
“Thanks for taking care of my head,” says Kevin, and he even takes the pop-tart out of him mouth to say it. The pop-tart is coated thickly in saliva from being held in Kevin’s mouth, and there are chocolaty dribbles running down Kevin’s chin, hand and wrist. It would be more off-putting if he hadn’t spent so much time with people with significantly more disgusting habits.
“And thanks for the pop-tarts,” Kevin continues. Mike just nods.
“Anyway, I have to go,” says Kevin after a pause. “My produce guy is coming to pick me up.”
“Your produce guy?” asks Mike. This isn’t good. He knew he shouldn’t have taken Kevin home to begin with, but now he’d told someone else where he was. Mike will have to ditch this apartment, and just when he was starting to get used to it.
“Yeah,” Kevin continues on happily. “Bob Bryar. He runs this produce company, Bob’s Produce? I want to tell him that he should have chosen something clever or punny instead of just Bob’s Produce but he’s kind of scary sometimes. And I still think it’s really cool that the company manager does our deliveries, right?”
“Bob Bryar’s on his way here?” Mike clarifies. Because holy fuck. He does not need Bob Bryar after him, and this kid is in more trouble than Mike could have thought. And if Bryar is on his way then the Way brothers are probably not far behind.
“We have to go,” Mike say, herding Kevin towards the door.
“What? Why?” asks Kevin, and Mike really doesn’t have time for this.
“’Cause you’re more trouble than I thought,” he says.
“I am not trouble,” Kevin protests, and he sounds affronted.
“You are if Bob Bryar’s assigned to watch you and I’m contracted to kill you,” says Mike.
“You’re what?” Kevin’s voice is reaching a pitch higher than Mike thought possible for a human being, let alone a man.
“I’m probably not going to kill you,” Mike placates and continues herding Kevin towards the front door. “It depends on what this is all about.”
But Kevin isn’t any calmer, and in a move so sudden Mike completely misses it, Kevin is flailing over the back of the couch and hurtling himself out the window and down the fire escape. Mike curses and tears out of the apartment and down the three flights of stairs to the ground floor. He’s rounding the corner just as Kevin shoots past, and Mike manages to intercept him; arms wrapping around Kevin’s waist and tackling him to the grass.
Kevin groans and clutches at his head, and Mike spares a worried thought that he’s going to end up causing some sort of permanent damage to this kid if he spends any more time with him. Of course, Mike thinks a moment later, he’s supposed to kill the kid and, in the long run, a few bumps to the head are probably better than a muddy hole in the woods.
“I think I twisted my ankle,” Kevin moans when Mike helps him up. They hobble around the side of the building and across the parking lot together, and climb back into Mike’s car.
“So you’re probably not going to kill me, right?” says Kevin, nervously shifting his hands in his lap.
“Probably not,” Mike agrees. He tries to sound comforting, but he’s out of practice and he doesn’t think it would be reassuring anyway.
The rest of the drive is quiet, the music from the radio breaking the silence with some generic rock-pop song about love by some generic alternative band. Kevin is bopping his head along to the beat, and Mike thinks he is kind of a dork.
Mike also thinks that, all problems aside, this moment - this drive - with the lame music and Kevin bopping along beside him isn’t so bad.
-+-
It takes an hour to reach their destination, a small house on the outskirts of the city with a lopsided picket fence around the small front lawn. There are flowers growing haphazardly in patches along the fence line and clustered in a patchwork of colour around the letterbox. The house itself is a lowset timber structure with chipped green paint and a white trellis to one side, vines clinging to the lattice-work and stretching up towards the guttering. The cement path is uneven and cracked with green shoots pushing through from underneath, and Kevin stumbles a little, not paying attention to his footing.
The door swings open as they approach and a tall, lanky man with longest legs Kevin has ever seen ushers them inside. It’s mostly clean inside, with just a few stray bits and pieces littering the available surfaces and a small stack of magazines splayed across the carpet next to the couch.
“Hello,” says the man, offering his hand. “William Beckett. I’ll be your baby-sitter this afternoon.”
Kevin eyes the proffered hand, and shoots a quick look at Mike before gripping it in his own. “Kevin,” he says. “And I don’t need a baby-sitter.”
“Of course you don’t,” says Bill in a tone that suggests he thinks otherwise, gently pushing him towards the couch. “You just make yourself at home, Kevin. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Kevin eyes the worn grey couch with trepidation. It’s faded and the back is water stained, the cushions are worn and threaded badly enough that Kevin can see the old yellow foam peeking through. Bill is looking at him encouragingly and making shooing gestures with his hands. So Kevin seats himself on the - surprisingly comfortable - couch while Bill drags Mike into an adjoining room.
Kevin’s not sure if the point was to maintain some privacy or not, because he can hear absolutely every word of their conversation. He feels uncomfortable, like he’s eavesdropping, but it’s not like he can help it. And it’s not like they’re saying anything important, or that he can understand. From what Kevin can tell, William is annoyed about leaving a shop, and now a butcher is in charge, Mike thinks Bob is some sort of super assassin or something and William seems to agree. William says something about how Mike really stinks, and Kevin is inclined to agree because he’d been stuck in a car with him for ages and it smelt like the gardening section of a store. Kevin is pretty sure the smell is trapped at the back of his throat somewhere, and he is almost certain he can feel it sitting there taunting him with every breath.
The door opens and Mike walks across the living room and through another door, fluffy green towel in hand. Kevin’s watching the door click shut behind him when he feels the cushions shift, and Bill is sitting next to him, arm slung casually across the couch behind Kevin.
“Monopoly?” he asks, sliding the box onto the coffee table in front of them.
Kevin is collecting his ten dollars from a beauty pageant when Mike wanders back into the room, towel riding low on his hips and a pair of jeans clutched in one hand. There’s a light mist trailing in from the bathroom and it carries with it the scent of shower gel, light and faintly spicy and Kevin’s stomach twists. He’d give anything to be back in his kitchen again, trying to mediate while Joe and Nick get into another spat.
“There’s no way I’m going to fit into these. You own anything other than skinny jeans?” asks Mike. William starts to speak but Mike cuts in. “And I don’t mean those hotpants I found, either. I’m not going outside in them.”
Kevin thinks he maybe wouldn’t mind if Mike did. He definitely has the legs for it.
“I should have dress pants in the closet,” says William. “And I’ll have you know the hotpants were a gift.”
“Yeah, well, I have a change of clothes in the back of my car,” Mike throws his keys to William, who snatches them from the air with agile fingers.
“Fine, fine,” says Bill, standing up and heading outside.
Mike drops himself into the armchair and stretches his legs out on the floor in front of him. Kevin fiddles with his small collection of property cards, but catches himself shooting glances over at Mike. It’s just that Kevin can’t think of a time when he has ever been alone in a room with a naked person (other than when Joe was in his terrible twos and their mom would chase Joe around the house trying to convince him that pants were a good thing. Kevin thinks that’s not even close to the same thing, though). Okay, not so much a naked person as a person in a towel, but still. He never even used the showers in gym.
Kevin shifts awkwardly in his seat and tries not to think about it.
Mike is looking at him questioningly, but he doesn’t say anything so neither does Kevin, and when Bill finally returns, bag in hand, Kevin is intensely thankful. Mike catches the bag when William throws it to him, and he stalks back to the bathroom while Bill plops back down onto the couch next to Kevin.
“My turn,” says Bill, scooping up the pair of dice.
-+-
Mike finds The Butcher at the counter, meticulously arranging flowers. The Butcher had manfully taken over the horticultural duties after he broke his leg a fortnight ago. It is only supposed to be temporary, a form of art therapy until his leg heals and he can return to field work, but Bill has been talking about shifting The Butcher to full time plant care and coordination. It means they won’t have anyone outside the team working at the store and compromising security, and The Butcher is the only one of them who is actually capable of keeping anything alive.
“Impressive,” says Mike, and it’s true; it’s more of a display piece than a bouquet at this point, and the flowers and greenery that Mike never bothered to learn the names of, or really care about, look delicate and expensive, twined together in a carefully crafted structure.
“Anniversary present,” says Butcher, and he’s calmer than Mike’s ever seen him; patiently and painstakingly adding and rearranging each piece. He’s also wearing a shirt today which, Mike realises, is probably upon Bill’s insistence. He wouldn’t leave the running of the store to a guy in only shorts. “It’s going to fucking rule when it’s done.”
“Yeah,” says Mike, and he thinks Bill is on to something getting The Butcher on full time horticulture duties after he recovers. They might even start turning a real profit on this cover business. “Is Sisky in?”
“Oh, yeah,” says The Butcher, snickering a bit.
Mike heads back to the records room, and he’s prepared for whatever state of emotion Siska’s in. If Bill’s let The Butcher cover the front desk even though he’s injured and actually has another job to do, while Siska is still stuck locked away in the back room doing nothing, there’s a high chance for either sulking or violence. Mike’s not sure which one he would prefer.
Sisky is lying across the floor, shirt rucked up under his chest, drawing furiously on a piece of scrap paper. From what Mike can see, it looks like some unfortunate, bloated stick figures and the occasional block of text. Siska spares him the briefest of glances and says, “I am gonna kill Bill.”
Mike takes a moment to shake off the sudden movie flashback, and says, “I’ve got a job for you.”
“Aw, c’mon,” says Siska, petulantly. “You know how the filing system works. Do it yourself.”
Mike sidesteps the well-placed kick Siska aims at his ankles. “It’s in the field.” Then, for good measure, adds, “Dickwad.”
Siska is in the air and engaging in a jubilant fist pump and running out the door in a matter of seconds. Mike eyes the drawing Siska left abandoned on the floor and considers throwing it out. But Mike thinks that if Bill finds the picture he’ll probably just end up framing it. Bill’s got a weird sense of sentimentality.
Siska is loudly proclaiming his freedom and telling someone to “suck on that” which, as far as Mike can tell, isn’t directed at anyone in particular, rather the flower-filled room as a whole. The Butcher is grinning and waving his extended middle finger in Siska’s direction without looking up from his project. Mike bites back a grin of his own because these guys - his co-workers, his friends - they’ve been through a lot of painful shit lately, and their’s isn’t an easy occupation, but they get by and Mike doesn’t think he’d have lasted this long in a career like this if he was stuck working with anybody else.
Mike finds Siska leaning against the front window, arms crossed against his chest and expression stony.
“What’s the job?” he asks, falling into step beside Mike.
-+-
Kevin is getting bored. Bill had called a time out on their Monopoly game in order to show Kevin the various scrapbooks he had made. Kevin thinks that Bill is just a sore loser. And, as impressive as Bill’s scrap booking skills are, Kevin would much rather continue to win at Monopoly. Or, you know, get to go home.
The last album is filled with captioned photos of Bill, Mike and the handful of other guys from most of the previous albums. The majority of new photos were taken in rooms filled with flowers and it’s weird because none of the laughing, joyful, flower-toting guys look like they kidnap people and keep them hostage. Although, Kevin thinks, that’s probably how they gain the upper hand.
There’s one picture, towards the back, with a heavily tattooed man wearing only a wreath of flowers on his head and a pair of white short shorts frozen in the middle of a dance. And there, in the back left hand corner, is Mike Carden. The photo has captured him mid-laugh, the neck of a beer bottle held loosely between the fingers of one hand. He’s a little blurry, out of focus, but Kevin thinks it’s a little bit perfect. Kevin also thinks he might be developing Stockholm syndrome.
He closes the album and sets it on the pile he’s already flicked through; the cover staring up at him is a photo of Bill, Mike and three of the other guys sporting daisy chain crowns and a mixture of huge grins and solemn expressions. Kevin hopes that they can finish their game now.
Bill is sprawled across the other half of the couch, watching Kevin. He stretches and says, “We should have lunch, Mr Jonas.”
“Afternoon tea,” says Kevin, pointing at the clock above the TV. It’s almost three o’clock. Kevin can’t believe he hasn’t noticed how hungry he’s gotten until now. His stomach is making very loud and demanding gurgles.
“Details,” says Bill, waving his hand dismissively. He stands in one swift movement and gestures for Kevin to follow him through one of the doorways at the back of the room.
The kitchen is average sized with a small breakfast island and a little table for two. Bill is piling things across the cupboard and Kevin pulls up a stool and starts sorting ingredients.
“Do you have any water chestnuts?” he asks.
“No,” says Bill. “No I do not. I don’t know what they are.”
“Pasta?”
There’s a pause while Bill disappears from view again, then he slides two packets of pasta across the cupboard towards him. Kevin is tearing open the packet of angel hair in no time.
“Where’s -” he starts, but Bill’s already dropping a saucepan in front of him. “Thanks.”
“I thought your brothers were the chefs,” says Bill, leaning back against the sink and watching Kevin whisk lemon juice, chilli and garlic in a bowl. “Don’t you run the bookstore?”
Kevin bites the insides of his cheeks. He hates when people assume he can’t cook just because he’s ‘the bookstore guy’. He chose to work in the bookstore, okay? He’s just as good in the kitchen as his brothers. Okay, maybe not as good as Nick, but Nick’s some sort of culinary genius freak. But still. Kevin is at least as good as Joe; he just really likes the bookstore.
“I help out sometimes,” says Kevin.
Fifteen minutes later lunch is ready. Kevin feels like the pasta is missing something, but he’s used everything decent on hand so there’s not much he can do about that. There’s everything he’ll need for a decent carrot and sprout salad, so if he ends up stuck here for a while he can always make that.
Bill is clearing the plates and shelving them in the dishwasher when the front door slams open and moments later Kevin finds himself wrapped up in a three-way hug with Nick and Joe. He wrests his arms free and returns the embrace. Kevin’s a little ashamed at how happy he is to have them here because he’s pretty sure it means they’re in danger now too. He just clings a little tighter.
“We’re going to be talking in the living room,” says Bill. “You boys behave yourselves.”
The door closes quietly, and even though Joe hasn’t slackened his embrace, Nick is trying to wriggle his way out of the group hug.
“Guys,” he says, elbowing Kevin in the side as he twists around.
Neither Kevin nor Joe budges.
“Guys!”
They let go in unison, and Nick skids backwards across the tiles for a few steps. “I hate you,” he says.
“Love you too,” says Joe, pulling up a seat at the table. “So, what’d we miss?”
Kevin tells them about hitting his head, waking up at Mike’s, finding out about the contract on his head and spending the afternoon with Bill. He leaves out some of the falling over, though.
“Also, I think I’ve developed Stockholm syndrome,” he says.
“Stockholm syndrome,” repeats Nick incredulously. “You’ve only been gone eight hours.”
“You know I always pick things up quick,” say Kevin.
“Hey, yeah,” agrees Joe. “Remember when we went to that music camp over the summer? You totally learnt that song in like, half a day. It was awesome. And when we were learning about fondant you were even better than Nick. And -”
“Okay,” says Nick. “We get it. But it’s not the same thing.”
“Why not?” asks Joe.
“It’s not something you learn,” says Nick. “It’s just. It’s not.”
“You’re still mad about the fondant, aren’t you,” smirks Joe.
“I am not mad about the fondant!” But Nick is seething. Kevin leans back against the cupboard and watches them bicker. It’s only been eight hours since he saw them last, but he’s missed them so much.
-+-
Joe is perched on the counter swinging his legs, feet connecting with the cupboard in dull rhythmic thumps, and shovelling potato chips into his mouth. Nick has been scowling in his direction for the last five minutes. Joe smiles sweetly in Nick’s direction and swings his feet with greater fervour.
They’ve been sitting in the kitchen for over an hour now; they lapsed into silence when Joe and Nick finally stopped squabbling but no one made any move to join their captors in the next room. Kevin thinks being kidnapped by hired killers should be more interesting than this, but he’s also pretty sure that being kidnapped by hired killers is supposed to involve copious amounts of terror and pain, so he doesn’t really want to voice his complaints.
“So,” says Nick, clearing his throat and looking pointedly at Kevin. “Bill seems very nice.”
“I guess,” says Kevin. He’s still a little annoyed over the whole Monopoly thing, to be honest.
“What?” says Joe, his head is turning between Nick and Kevin like he’s watching a tennis match. Nick looks at Joe and Kevin’s not sure what kind of telepathic messages Nick’s sending, but a few moments later Joe says, “Right, yeah. He’s, uh, really pretty. Almost girl pretty. He’s like a really tall, really pretty girl. Only a guy.”
“What?” snaps Nick sharply. Joe shrugs.
“Okay,” says Kevin slowly. “You guys are really weird. Did they drug you?”
Kevin hopes it’s just a case of drugging. He’s more than a little concerned that these aren’t, in fact, his brothers but are instead super assassins in disguise to make him think he’s talking to his brothers, only he’s not. Because he’s talking to super assassins. Kevin’s not sure why super assassins would pose as his brothers just to sit around with him in a kitchen when he was already very thoroughly kidnapped, but Kevin is not yet learned in the ways of the super assassin.
“What he means,” says Nick, shooting a glare at Joe, “is that it’s okay with us if you like Bill, even if it isn’t because of Stockholm syndrome. Because we’re your brothers --”
“And we love you,” interrupts Joe, crunching loudly on a new handful of chips. “Even if you’re crazy and crushing on the guy who’s helping hold us captive.”
“Uh, yeah,” says Nick. “Essentially. Yeah. Although I can’t support any liaisons with a man who may or may not be helping to kill us, I still support you.”
“I don’t have a crush on Bill,” says Kevin, because what? When did this happen? And isn’t this almost identical to the speech Nick gave when Kevin decided to run the bookshop? Nick really needs to stop with the team-building conferences he insists on attending. He always spends months afterwards using ‘I’ statements and ‘trying to generate an environment of openness and understanding’ and it’s mostly just creepy and weird.
“You don’t need to deny it, bro,” says Joe. He slides from his perch on the cupboard and walks over to drape his arms around Kevin’s shoulders. “We all have lapses in taste sometimes.”
“Like every girl you’ve ever dated?” says Nick.
Joe straightens up and opens his mouth to retaliate, but Kevin jumps in first. “That’s really sweet, you guys. Um, I think? But I’m not interested in Bill.”
“You’re sure?” says Joe, sceptically.
“Even if I was,” says Kevin, “it would never work out. He totally cancelled our Monopoly game halfway through. What kind of person does that?”
Joe shrugs sympathetically and Nick says, “But what about your ‘Stockholm syndrome’?”
“Uh,” says Kevin, not sure what to say. Mike is kind of terrifying and also in the next room. He’s suddenly very aware of how clearly he had been able to hear Mike and Bill talking from the other room earlier.
“No way,” says Joe slowly, shaking his head. “No way!”
“What?” asks Nick.
“But he’s got the soulless eyes of a remorseless killer!” cries Joe.
“Oh,” says Nick, eyes widening in surprise for a moment before his expression returns to normal.
“You know, they are both actually remorseless killers,” he says to Joe.
“Yeah, but at least Bill doesn’t look like he wants to devour your immortal soul,” Joe shoots back.
“Guys,” says Kevin, a little hysterical. Mike is maybe going to kill them and all Kevin can think about is how warm Mike’s hands are and how pretty Mike looks when he’s actually smiling.
“Hey,” says Nick, and then Kevin is wrapped up in the middle of another group hug. Kevin clings a little more than he usually would. It ends sooner than he’d like, though, with Nick saying they should go figure this thing out. Kevin doesn’t really want to figure anything out; he wants to stay huddled up in the safe little kitchen and hope Mike and Bill just forget about them.
Bill and Mike are sitting on the couch and armchair respectively when Nick strides purposefully into the living room, Kevin and Joe trailing uncertainly behind him. Bill looks like he’s trying not to laugh and Mike is just staring right at Kevin. There is no way he doesn’t know, thinks Kevin. He really wishes the floor would just open up and swallow him whole.
“Nice outfit,” says Bill to Nick who is still garbed in his white chef’s uniform, flour smudged from his hairline to left temple. Mike had apparently emptied the establishment of its patrons and dragged Nick and Joe out of the building with great efficiency. Nick and Joe hadn’t been vague on the details but their stories were very inconsistent. Joe’s version had involved mind control and two explosions.
Nick scowls at Bill and, for a second, Kevin is concerned that Nick is going to snap. But Nick settles for scowling at Bill’s rapidly-growing smile.
Joe’s jittering with impatience beside Kevin; he has always been completely incapable of staying still for more than a few seconds at a time. Kevin sometimes wonders if Joe even knows he’s doing it, knows that he can’t even stop moving for an entire minute, that he looks over-caffeinated or under-medicated when he starts shaking and twitching and tapping on things.
Kevin places a reassuring hand on Nick’s shoulder, spurring him into action.
“What is going on?” he asks.
On to Part 2