Aberration
Sometimes, Alex thought ruefully, he was doomed never to manage anything normal.
Apart from the obvious, a normal shopping trip for most sixteen year old boys didn’t often include tampons for their guardian, but Alex was more than capable of dealing with that. And he was more than capable of dealing with the till robbers – amateurs – but that wasn’t the point. The point was this was supposed to be a normal, after-school, run-of-the-mill pop-to-the-shop deal, something hundreds of people did every day. Only Alex would pick the day his corner shop got held up.
The poor girl behind the counter, no older than Alex, was obviously terrified, trying desperately to keep calm and reason with them, pointing out that the safety mechanism on the till meant she couldn’t open it without some kind of purchase being made, and she didn’t have a key for it – “And anyway, we only keep a seventy pound float in it!”
But men like these, Alex knew from experience, were rarely rational.
“I don’t care what you say’s in it, open the till, you stupid cow!” one of them shouted, gesturing with his gun – outdated and unwieldy and the safety catch was still on, a part of Alex’s mind automatically logged as he lurked by the freezer holding Calippos and Magnums, trying to work out his assets in this situation.
Frankly, unless he tried to brain the pair of thieves with a tin of beans, it wasn’t looking good.
“I can’t!” the girl wailed, and Alex lurched forwards involuntarily as the so-far-silent man’s finger twitched on his trigger – a far more dangerous movement than the other’s wild gesturing. He hadn’t stopped deaths in foreign countries all over the world only to watch one happen in Chelsea.
His own movement brought him to the attention of the man who had spoken, though, and he licked his lips as the man turned to look at him. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he cursed himself viciously. Two years working for MI6 – he shouldn’t have been so thrown by all of this; he should have hidden properly by now and worked out a plan. Just because this was happening in the local Spar rather than in Bangkok didn’t give him leeway to be so unbalanced.
He scrabbled behind him in the open-top freezer as the first man advanced towards him, the second man keeping his gun trained on the shop girl. “Frozen with fear?” the would-be thief smirked, evidently amused by his own joke.
Alex’s hand came into contact with – a Magnum. Oh, perfect, he snarled inside his own head, and swallowed heavily as the man came nearer, simulating a fear he was long since past feeling. Indecision, yes, off-balance, yes, but these paltry till-robbers couldn’t even begin to frighten him. “I-I didn’t know what t-to do,” he stuttered, “I – if there’s only s-seventy pounds in there, w-why-”
“Shut up,” the second man snapped, and turned back to the girl, “Open the till!”
“I still can’t!” she said desperately, “I don’t have the key, and the manager’s not here right now-”
“Lucky manager,” the second man snapped – the real threat of the two of them, Alex could see, so far as either of them were real threats. “Right, get out of the way .” He went round the counter, yanking the girl out and shoving her towards his accomplice. “Watch them,” he snapped, and started fiddling with the till.
The girl’s breath – ‘Grace’, her cheap plastic name-tag read, scrawled on it in black marker pen – hitched ominously, and Alex fumbled for her hand with his free one, squeezing it and ignoring the damp fear-sweat.
“It’ll be fine,” he muttered to her, “we haven’t seen their faces, if they get what they want they’ll probably just g-”
Utterly frustrated, the second man fired three rounds into the till, bursting it open and swearing as he saw how little was truly in it. Grace’s panting breaths stopped altogether, and she squeezed Alex’s hand tightly, too frightened to breathe let alone scream. Alex tensed. The gunshots would have alerted someone, especially in this area of London, and that meant the police would almost certainly be alerted. The quick, clean get-away Alex had so desperately been hoping these two would make slid away.
The two men started talking at once – “John, what’d you do that for?” over, “You, bitch, where’s the safe?”
Alex took advantage of the confusion, lunging past their distracted guard and slamming the now rather melted Magnum into the face of the man behind the till. Eyes full of half-melted ice cream, it was a moment’s work for Alex to break the grip on the man’s (much more up-to-date) gun, and hold it competently himself.
A flaw in the plan: when he turned back, the man who had first spoken had an arm round Grace’s throat and a gun to her head. “Put the gun down,” he demanded, an accent of some kind thickening his words, and Alex paused, getting his back against the shelves of pickles and tinned fruit where he could keep an eye on everyone else in the store.
He made no move to put the gun down. “Is this what you really want?” he asked. It was worth a try; he’d never been in a hostage situation like this one – never one so normal – and that seemed to work in cop programmes like ‘The Bill’.
Not now, however. “Yes,” came the reply, sardonic.
“I don’t think it is,” Alex persisted “She’s new, you can tell from the name badge, not printed yet, not official. She couldn’t open the till without making a proper sale, she’s never going to know where the safe is. And someone heard those gunshots, people are com-”
“Stop trying to play hero and put the gun down!” Grace snapped, voice high and tense “It’s my life you’re messing around with!”
“Listen to her, why don’t you?” the second man asked, his eyes clear now though red and swollen.
“Why don’t you listen to me?” Alex asked back, ignoring Grace completely. “The police are coming, she can’t tell you anything more – take the money in the till and run. My fingerprints are on this gun, we don’t know your names and faces – you’re going to lose a lot more by staying than going.” Alex had always believed in the practical rather than the noble, and he just wanted to go home to Jack and her ready meals.
A brief glance was exchanged and the second man nodded, grabbing the notes and pound coins from the till, shoving them haphazardly into his pockets.
“If you two say anything-” the tall lug holding Grace started, and Alex scoffed.
“Like what?”
That left him at a loss, and although the taller one kept his gun trained on them until they were out the door, Alex kept his purloined one on them as well. For a long moment after they’d left, the cold, tiled little shop was silent except for Grace, who was finally crying. Methodically, he flicked the safety catch on the gun and slid the magazine out, laying the empty gun on the counter and, for want of anything else to do, took every single bullet out of it, his hands moving of their own accord.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said, his voice sounding strange and foreign even to his own ears. “I just – I’m sorry.”
The gun was well and truly dismantled now, and he shoved it away from himself in sudden distaste, pulling his phone out of his pocket and dialling in 999.
“999, police, ambulance or fire brigade?”
“Police, please.”
The little shop was empty – unusually so, Alex thought irrelevantly, for a Friday evening – and silent when he hung up. “Police are on their way,” he tried.
Grace didn’t reply. She’d stopped crying by now, but her cheeks were still stained and wet with tears and she was staring rather vacantly ahead, her breath hitching in her throat. Alex had no idea what to do. Touching her would not go down well, he knew, and talking to her probably wasn’t going to do much good; she needed someone she knew and trusted to comfort her, get through to her. Alex didn’t even begin to qualify.
He kept talking anyway. “They were amateurs,” he said awkwardly;she wasn’t listening, it didn’t matter what he said to her. “They were never going to do anything much, unless we let them get all worked up. They pretty much got what they wanted. And the security tapes will have picked them up. The police will be here soon,” he added uselessly, “and they’ll sort things out for you.” Choppy, pointless sentences, no structure to them, he thought blankly. He was trying to give her something to ground herself with, something to focus on, but he felt as if he was flying apart himself. “You can’t be blamed for not stopping them. I couldn’t have done either, and I’m better qualified than you.” A stupid thing to say, but she probably wasn’t listening anyway.
Unfortunately, he was unlucky again. Grace glanced up at that, one eyebrow raised, a rather bitter set to her mouth. “What, because you’re a boy?” she asked scathingly.
It was better than the blank-faced, traumatised look from earlier. “No, because I’m a spy,” he said with a grin that was just a shade too relieved to be comforting, and Grace shifted against the shelves and managed a tiny, weak smile of her own.
“So... because you’re a boy.”
He came a little closer, glancing briefly at the door for any sign of the police. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“I’m sorry for being such a bitch,” she offered, her voice still unsteady, and he could see from the pallor of her skin that she was a long way from being OK. Not exactly surprising.
“You had a gun to your head, I’d have been much worse,” he lied easily.
“I meant just then,” she told him. “I should have realised you were just joking.”
Since he hadn’t been, Alex wasn’t going to hold it against her. “Oh. Bit soon after for jokes.” He settled against the shelf. “I didn’t make it obvious, so. You know. Still a bit shook up, y’know?”
A rather sarcastic laugh, and Alex was more than acquainted with the habit of combating something traumatic with sarcasm, but it grated on his nerves at the moment. “Yeah, I know.”
They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Grace’s hands were shaking and she clenched them together to hide it. Alex swallowed around a sudden upsurge of nerves and frustration, wishing he could get away and deal with this his own way, but he couldn’t, not as the person he was supposed to be; playing a part was fine and easy in the middle of a situation, but having to stick to it afterwards as well dragged everything out beyond endurance.
The difficult part of this was over for Grace now; she could let other people deal with it. Alex never had that luxury. Grace would have statements to make, she might have to identify the men at some point, she might cry later tonight with her parents or friends, but it would eventually fade into an interesting story to tell. It was never going to be that simple for Alex.
“You, er... you should probably phone your family, tell them what happened,” he said awkwardly.
Grace paused. “I should shut the shop first. I can leave on you the shop floor on your own, right?”
A standard question, Alex realised, just to bring the conversation back to a normal level; but he was allowed to be sarcastic in the wake of a shock, too. Just this once. “If I was going to steal anything, I’d’ve done it already.”
The barest hint of a flush on shock-pale cheeks. “Yeah. Sorry.”
She shut and locked the door, flipping the sign to ‘shut’, and disappeared into an unobtrusive door in one corner of the shop, white paint scuffed, little round window grimy and chipped.
Alex watched her go, then pulled out his mobile. “Jack? It’s me. There’s been a bit of a problem...”
**
He sat stiffly by the shelving until the police arrived, banging on the locked door with official pomp, and Alex was more than happy to let them take over everything.They were long-winded and picky, but it meant he didn’t have to keep thinking, didn’t have to worry about anything from here on in. It wasn’t his problem anymore.
That was novel in its own right.
It took the police a frustrating two hours before they finally decided that they had all the information they needed from him and let him go after checking and double-checking his contact details. The nastier part of Alex was convinced that this was just the biggest and most interesting crime they’d had in a while, and that they were being doubly diligent because they could.
He hesitated in the doorway, watching as Grace’s mother descended on her, contacted by the police, all worried expression and comforting hugs. So Grace was looked after. That was good.
He caught the eye of one of the policemen, and raised an eyebrow. The man nodded and looked away, giving him permission to leave – and Alex left without a look back, heading back home to warmth and normality. Or as near as he ever got.
**
“Hey, Jack.” Alex shut the door behind him and clicked the Yale lock closed without looking at it.
Jack appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, red hair messy, face concerned, eyes reassuringly warm. “Alex.” She took one look at his face, and pulled him into a warm hug. “Only you, huh?”
“Yeah, seems like.” He nodded into her shoulder. “But it was OK, so I guess. Y’know. Could have been worse.”
“Honestly, I’m surprised it wasn’t. This is you we’re talking about.” She pulled back. “I was going to make pasta, but how about we get an Indian? It’s the semi-final of the X-Factor tonight, we could catch that?”
Alex thought about it, thought of getting the usual chicken tikka masala and relaxing in front of mindless television with Jack and probably a lager – Jack was too sensible to stop him drinking underage when he was already doing far more dangerous things underage already. She picked her battles carefully, and kept him from drinking to excess, which was far more sensible than stopping him drinking at all.
But the thought of food made his stomach turn, and he didn’t want to deal with it at the moment.
“Maybe later?” he tried, and she nodded. “I’ve got homework and – stuff.”
Jack had never pushed him when he was too raw, knowing instinctively that waiting a few days was better. It was part of the reason Alex loved her so much. “OK. Well, if you get bored of homework – ‘and stuff’ – me and Simon Cowell will be down here for you.”
Alex managed a weak smile and nodded, dragging himself up into his room.
He sat himself down at his desk and stared at the maths homework he’d left open on his desk when Jack had called up to him that she needed tampons and milk, and could he run down to Spar for her? He’d never got them, either.
He wished she hadn’t, but knew that things would have gone worse if he hadn’t been there for Grace. Or would they? Would things have panned out the same way, or would he have seen an entry in The London Lite, using Grace’s death or injury as a statistic in London’s rising gun crimes? He didn’t know. He could have dealt with it if he really thought, really believed, that his being there had helped, but he couldn’t say that. Not for definite. He’d exacerbated things with one hand and then kept them from getting out of control with the other. Which was more significant?
No way of knowing now.
He pushed his maths homework aside and pulled his school diary towards him, flicking through it to check what homework he had set for the weekend. A French prep he could finish with his eyes shut, a Spanish prep – same deal – finishing off his Biology coursework... nothing he could put his mind to. He wanted to go out and do things, unable to sit still for nervous energy, one leg jogging up and down incessantly as he sat at his desk.
Abruptly, he pushed himself away from it, and stood, pacing his room nervously. He wasn’t a member of any gym, and karate classes were always Monday nights. He could go for a run, but he wasn’t sure he trusted himself to come back right now. Even at sixteen, he had more than enough resources to disappear and never resurface.
He was saved from imminent madness – he’d never dealt with these twitchy, unrestrained nerves at the end of an assignment, he’d always had more than enough time to calm down after them, and he had no idea how to deal with them now – by his mobile ringing. Yanking it out of his pocket, he checked the display before picking up, more out of habit than anything else.
“Yes?”
“Hey, Alex.” Tom sounded bright and cheerful – normal, in fact. “You said to ring you later about Felix’s party?”
“Oh.” He paused. Any other day, his response would have been easy: ‘bit tired tonight, Tom, sorry. Another time, yeah?’, or ‘Biology’s kicking my arse. Next week?’ But now... a party sounded great. A harmless, normal way of getting rid of these nerves. Alex had been at parties so wild his classmates would have flinched from them, and suddenly he craved that; so many people that no one was looking at him, dark rooms, loud music... something to lose himself in. A sixteen year old’s end-of-week party wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but it would definitely do. “Yeah, why not?”
Tom’s pause spoke volumes. “Woah, really?”
“Yeah. Gotta kick back sometimes, right?”
“I – yeah. Of course. Tell you what, why don’t you come over here first, we’ll head over there together. My dad’s at his girlfriend’s again, so you could crash here tonight. Or not. I know Alice McLynn’s been trying to pull you for weeks.”
There was a sly, teasing tone in Tom’s voice, and Alex laughed, longer and louder than the joke deserved, but it felt good. “Sure, we’ll see. You got anything, or should I bring something over?”
The thought of going into another corner shop sent a jerk of adrenaline through him again, but there was probably something in the top cupboard downstairs he could grab. Jack wouldn’t mind, he knew. She’d probably be glad he was doing something so normal.
In any case, Tom just laughed. “Alex, have you even met my dad?”
Since his parent’s divorce, Tom’s mother had been all about her work and his father had been all about his freedom. Getting alcohol while Tom was in his dad’s flat wouldn’t be a problem.
“Oops?” he offered and grinned to himself. “See you in a few, k?”
Tom hung up without answering.
**
Downstairs, Alex paused in the doorway to the sitting room, coat in one hand, putting his phone back in his pocket with the other. He’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a plain black T-shirt in place of his uniform and slicked some gel through his hair, but avoided the Lynx trap since Jack always called it the smell of teenage desperation. Living with a woman in her mid-twenties gave Alex a head-start on most of his peers.
Being a spy helped a bit with that as well.
“How’s Simon Cowell?” he asked casually, and Jack glanced up sharply.
“Hey.” She glanced at his jacket. “You heading out?”
“Yeah – friend of Tom’s is having a party, thought I should go with him. Y’know. Stop any international terrorists who might drop by.”
“It worries me that that probably won’t be funny by the end of the evening.” She glanced back at the screen, where Cowell was ripping into some other poor unfortunate. “I guess Tom’s more interesting than me and my one true love. Wait, Simon Cowell isn’t gay, is he?”
Alex grinned. “If I ever meet him, I’ll ask. I’ll probably see you tomorrow sometime, OK?”
“Give me a call if you need picking up.” She grinned at him. “I’ll have the painkillers waiting for you in the morning.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
“Don’t get AIDs!” followed him out of the house.
**
Tom was waiting outside the entrance to his dad’s block of flats and threw away the remainder of his cigarette as Alex approached. Alex hid a grin, knowing that Tom didn’t enjoy smoking but did it to look more adult than he was; in his drunker moments (which were rare around Alex), Tom had admitted to hating the taste and not enjoying the head rush, but nothing would make Alex mock Tom for it. They all had their own private little rebellions.
“Hey, Alex.” Tom grinned at him, unabashedly happy to see him. “Didn’t think I’d get you to one of these parties.”
“Yeah, well.” Alex thought of Grace’s terrified face as a gun pressed to her temple, and shrugged the image away. This was what normal sixteen-year-olds did. They didn’t fight terrorism or get held up in corner stores. “First time for everything, right?”
“Like this is the first time you’ve ever been to a party,” Tom scoffed, punching the button to call the lift. Alex would rather have taken the stairs, but he made himself stand and wait with Tom, keeping himself still by an act of sheer willpower.
“Not one like this.”
“Seriously?” Tom glanced over at him as they entered the lift.
“Seriously. The ones I get caught up in-” Tom didn’t need Alex to qualify how he got caught up in these parties anymore, and after two years he knew better than to ask for details- “are always a bit – off-the-wall.”
“Drugs and dames?”
“Oh, c’mon Tom, ‘dames’?”
“I was pushed for alliteration, shut up,” Tom grinned, letting them into his father’s flat and throwing his keys on the kitchen table as the door clicked shut behind them. “So, there’s JD, Smirnoff, Malibu, or gin. And I got coke as a mixer – what d’you want?”
Alex didn’t pause. “JD. When are we heading over to Felix’s?”
“Party starts at eight, so we don’t want to be there before nine at the earliest,” Tom pointed out. “Wanna watch Skins till then?”
**
They spent the next hour and a half watching episodes of Skins and downing JD and cokes like they were going out of fashion. Alex’s tolerance for alcohol was significantly higher than Tom’s, but even he was feeling happily buzzed by the time they left for Felix’s. Tom had been practically chain-smoking, or as near to it as he got – his dad tended not to care whether he came back to a flat which stank of cigarette smoke or not, and Tom took full advantage of it – but he changed his T-shirt to go out, pointing out in a voice which was only slightly slurred that “girls didn’t like the smell of stale cigarette smoke.”
Alex had raised an eyebrow at that. “Surest way to deal with that is not to smoke,” he pointed out calmly.
Tom just laughed, like he always did. “Yeah, well. Teen rebellion, y’know. I’ll get over it.”
“I hope you do,” Alex muttered, but didn’t push it. The short walk to Felix’s was more amicable than usual; alcohol made Tom, talkative at the best of times, even more so, and he chatted loudly all the way down the street. Alex, buzzed but nowhere near drunk (enough) yet, made sure he didn’t walk into the middle of the road and nodded at all the appropriate intervals.
Felix King wasn’t someone Alex knew particularly well, but then Alex didn’t know most people in his year particularly well, so that wasn’t a surprise. Not that it would matter at a party where it was more important that lots of people came than that the host knew everyone. Certainly, Felix wasn’t complaining. He gave Alex a grin, evidently already well on his way to being trashed, and smacked him on the back. “God, Rider, I thought you were a fucking hermit or something! Hey look, Luke! Rider turned up!”
“Awesome!” Alex had known Luke fairly well before what Alex thought of as the MI6 Affair, and the alcohol lessened any of the lingering mistrust his classmates still felt towards him. “Alex, come on, I’ll get you a drink...”
Alex glanced back at Tom, but he was talking to a girl a few inches taller than him and was making an admirable attempt not to be too obvious about staring at her cleavage – so Alex just grinned and allowed Luke to pull him away.
**
An hour or so later and Alex was far more drunk than he had been and enjoying himself far more than when he’d first arrived. The rest of his year was drunk enough that they forgot to pay attention to all the rumours about him, and he was drunk enough that he could push away the memories from earlier with ease – Grace’s terrified face, knowing that he wasn’t like her and never would be, never could be, wasn’t like any of them – and he was beginning to enjoy himself. Really enjoy himself.
Alice McLynn was helping with that.
She had practically cornered him, but he admitted his protest hadn’t exactly been – strenuous. He pulled her closer, biting gently at her bottom lip, soothing over the mild hurt with his tongue. She pressed herself against him, breaking their kiss for a brief laugh as his hands settled on her arse. Her kisses were knowledgeable, practised in a way Alex could appreciate, but it wasn’t what he needed today. Not today. Most other days, it might well be enough. But sometimes, he just needed something... more.
“Hey, Alice, I just gotta check on Tom. He’s a real lightweight, y’know? But I’d love to – pick this up another day.”
“How about tomorrow? Cinema’s showing Harry Potter Six.”
“Sounds great,” he agreed. “I’ll give you a ring, OK?”
She let him go with one more long, confident kiss and he grinned into it, hand tight at her waist, before sliding away from her into the main throng.
He was looking for someone specific, a boy he’d known a little before the MI6 Affair who was definitely ambiguous if not outright gay. And that was what he wanted. Something rougher, something a bit harder than he would get from a girl.
“Hey, Daniel.” He grinned, hand on the other boy’s hip, mouthing at his earlobe.
“Rider.”
“Why not try ‘Alex’?” he suggested.
“What do you want?” Daniel’s voice was resigned.
Briefly, Alex wondered how many other boys in his class had tried this on with Daniel, but he shrugged. “You suck me off, I’ll suck you.”
Daniel turned and glared at Alex. “I knew you were a sick bastard from the rumours, Rider, but-“
“Spare me. You’re straight or some bullshit, right?”
“No. I’m gay, not a whore. If that’s your deal, you can-”
“It’s a fucking blowjob, not-”
“Jesus, Rider, you arrogant shit, I just don’t find you attractive, OK?”
It was only when Daniel finished speaking that he noticed that Alex had manoeuvred them out of the crowd, into a darkened corner of the room, and Alex grinned at him. “Let me convince you.”
“Don’t you-”
Alex mouthed at Daniel’s neck, noticing that Daniel’s protests were markedly less forceful than they should have been were they real. “C’mon,” he said, never moving his lips from Daniel’s skin. “Give me a chance, alright?”
“L-like you c-could convince me,” Daniel forced out.
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure.” Alex slid a hand down Daniel’s torso, his touch sure. He bit hard on Daniel’s earlobe, fingers finding the button of his fly. “I don’t think you think I’m unattractive, Dan. I think you’re just worried that everyone’ll look at you different if you actually do something gay, rather than just tell them that you’re gay.”
“Valid concern.” Daniel’s voice was rough with arousal. “We can’t all leave school every two weeks.”
“Doesn’t the danger thrill you?” Alex grinned and forced himself not to think of the way the danger terrified him. He refused to admit, even to himself, that it bothered him less than the difference between him and this kid, whose most pressing concern was his friends not liking his sexuality. Alex worried that he would never react the same way as his schoolmates, as his peer group, that he would never be anything like a normal person again.
He refused to think about it for the moment.
“A blowjob’s a blowjob, right?” he said firmly, and sank to his knees.
Alex knew perfectly well what he was doing, having gained experience over the last two years of assignments, and he pulled out Daniel’s cock, stroking one finger up the main vein on the underside before following his finger with his tongue, teasing it to full hardness. Done, he took the first few inches of it into his mouth and sucked, knowing that a blowjob this skilled and thorough was a new experience for Daniel. He didn’t want to end this too soon, so he pulled back, teasing at the slit with the tip of his tongue. Daniel’s protesting noise was all he needed to be sure that he was doing well.
As a reward he sucked the rest of the head into his mouth, his teeth grazing the bundle of nerves just under it – very gently, revelling in the way Daniel’s breath caught – andthen followed that suggestively dangerous pressure with is tongue. He soothed away any pain with broad, loving licks, sliding down the shaft a little way and working his tongue against the underside.
It was evidently a shock to Daniel that Alex didn’t stop when his cock hit the back of the other boy’s throat, but continued to swallow. He hummed, low in his throat, and worked his tongue against the underside, sucking hardon the rest of it. Daniel wasn’t exactly hardcore; a few minutes later Alex was spitting onto the floor, uncaring of what Felix would say in the morning.
“My turn now, right?”
It took a few moments to get Daniel to come down off his post-coital high, but he nodded with good grace, dropping to his knees in front of Alex and taking his cock into his mouth. It was considerably less skilful than Alex’s had been, but it was what Alex wanted right now.
He let his head fall back against the wall, and forgot anything he didn’t want to remember for the next few minutes. The alcohol was buzzing through his veins, and he had something to lose himself in.
For the moment, it was enough.
Apart from the obvious, a normal shopping trip for most sixteen year old boys didn’t often include tampons for their guardian, but Alex was more than capable of dealing with that. And he was more than capable of dealing with the till robbers – amateurs – but that wasn’t the point. The point was this was supposed to be a normal, after-school, run-of-the-mill pop-to-the-shop deal, something hundreds of people did every day. Only Alex would pick the day his corner shop got held up.
The poor girl behind the counter, no older than Alex, was obviously terrified, trying desperately to keep calm and reason with them, pointing out that the safety mechanism on the till meant she couldn’t open it without some kind of purchase being made, and she didn’t have a key for it – “And anyway, we only keep a seventy pound float in it!”
But men like these, Alex knew from experience, were rarely rational.
“I don’t care what you say’s in it, open the till, you stupid cow!” one of them shouted, gesturing with his gun – outdated and unwieldy and the safety catch was still on, a part of Alex’s mind automatically logged as he lurked by the freezer holding Calippos and Magnums, trying to work out his assets in this situation.
Frankly, unless he tried to brain the pair of thieves with a tin of beans, it wasn’t looking good.
“I can’t!” the girl wailed, and Alex lurched forwards involuntarily as the so-far-silent man’s finger twitched on his trigger – a far more dangerous movement than the other’s wild gesturing. He hadn’t stopped deaths in foreign countries all over the world only to watch one happen in Chelsea.
His own movement brought him to the attention of the man who had spoken, though, and he licked his lips as the man turned to look at him. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he cursed himself viciously. Two years working for MI6 – he shouldn’t have been so thrown by all of this; he should have hidden properly by now and worked out a plan. Just because this was happening in the local Spar rather than in Bangkok didn’t give him leeway to be so unbalanced.
He scrabbled behind him in the open-top freezer as the first man advanced towards him, the second man keeping his gun trained on the shop girl. “Frozen with fear?” the would-be thief smirked, evidently amused by his own joke.
Alex’s hand came into contact with – a Magnum. Oh, perfect, he snarled inside his own head, and swallowed heavily as the man came nearer, simulating a fear he was long since past feeling. Indecision, yes, off-balance, yes, but these paltry till-robbers couldn’t even begin to frighten him. “I-I didn’t know what t-to do,” he stuttered, “I – if there’s only s-seventy pounds in there, w-why-”
“Shut up,” the second man snapped, and turned back to the girl, “Open the till!”
“I still can’t!” she said desperately, “I don’t have the key, and the manager’s not here right now-”
“Lucky manager,” the second man snapped – the real threat of the two of them, Alex could see, so far as either of them were real threats. “Right, get out of the way .” He went round the counter, yanking the girl out and shoving her towards his accomplice. “Watch them,” he snapped, and started fiddling with the till.
The girl’s breath – ‘Grace’, her cheap plastic name-tag read, scrawled on it in black marker pen – hitched ominously, and Alex fumbled for her hand with his free one, squeezing it and ignoring the damp fear-sweat.
“It’ll be fine,” he muttered to her, “we haven’t seen their faces, if they get what they want they’ll probably just g-”
Utterly frustrated, the second man fired three rounds into the till, bursting it open and swearing as he saw how little was truly in it. Grace’s panting breaths stopped altogether, and she squeezed Alex’s hand tightly, too frightened to breathe let alone scream. Alex tensed. The gunshots would have alerted someone, especially in this area of London, and that meant the police would almost certainly be alerted. The quick, clean get-away Alex had so desperately been hoping these two would make slid away.
The two men started talking at once – “John, what’d you do that for?” over, “You, bitch, where’s the safe?”
Alex took advantage of the confusion, lunging past their distracted guard and slamming the now rather melted Magnum into the face of the man behind the till. Eyes full of half-melted ice cream, it was a moment’s work for Alex to break the grip on the man’s (much more up-to-date) gun, and hold it competently himself.
A flaw in the plan: when he turned back, the man who had first spoken had an arm round Grace’s throat and a gun to her head. “Put the gun down,” he demanded, an accent of some kind thickening his words, and Alex paused, getting his back against the shelves of pickles and tinned fruit where he could keep an eye on everyone else in the store.
He made no move to put the gun down. “Is this what you really want?” he asked. It was worth a try; he’d never been in a hostage situation like this one – never one so normal – and that seemed to work in cop programmes like ‘The Bill’.
Not now, however. “Yes,” came the reply, sardonic.
“I don’t think it is,” Alex persisted “She’s new, you can tell from the name badge, not printed yet, not official. She couldn’t open the till without making a proper sale, she’s never going to know where the safe is. And someone heard those gunshots, people are com-”
“Stop trying to play hero and put the gun down!” Grace snapped, voice high and tense “It’s my life you’re messing around with!”
“Listen to her, why don’t you?” the second man asked, his eyes clear now though red and swollen.
“Why don’t you listen to me?” Alex asked back, ignoring Grace completely. “The police are coming, she can’t tell you anything more – take the money in the till and run. My fingerprints are on this gun, we don’t know your names and faces – you’re going to lose a lot more by staying than going.” Alex had always believed in the practical rather than the noble, and he just wanted to go home to Jack and her ready meals.
A brief glance was exchanged and the second man nodded, grabbing the notes and pound coins from the till, shoving them haphazardly into his pockets.
“If you two say anything-” the tall lug holding Grace started, and Alex scoffed.
“Like what?”
That left him at a loss, and although the taller one kept his gun trained on them until they were out the door, Alex kept his purloined one on them as well. For a long moment after they’d left, the cold, tiled little shop was silent except for Grace, who was finally crying. Methodically, he flicked the safety catch on the gun and slid the magazine out, laying the empty gun on the counter and, for want of anything else to do, took every single bullet out of it, his hands moving of their own accord.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said, his voice sounding strange and foreign even to his own ears. “I just – I’m sorry.”
The gun was well and truly dismantled now, and he shoved it away from himself in sudden distaste, pulling his phone out of his pocket and dialling in 999.
“999, police, ambulance or fire brigade?”
“Police, please.”
The little shop was empty – unusually so, Alex thought irrelevantly, for a Friday evening – and silent when he hung up. “Police are on their way,” he tried.
Grace didn’t reply. She’d stopped crying by now, but her cheeks were still stained and wet with tears and she was staring rather vacantly ahead, her breath hitching in her throat. Alex had no idea what to do. Touching her would not go down well, he knew, and talking to her probably wasn’t going to do much good; she needed someone she knew and trusted to comfort her, get through to her. Alex didn’t even begin to qualify.
He kept talking anyway. “They were amateurs,” he said awkwardly;she wasn’t listening, it didn’t matter what he said to her. “They were never going to do anything much, unless we let them get all worked up. They pretty much got what they wanted. And the security tapes will have picked them up. The police will be here soon,” he added uselessly, “and they’ll sort things out for you.” Choppy, pointless sentences, no structure to them, he thought blankly. He was trying to give her something to ground herself with, something to focus on, but he felt as if he was flying apart himself. “You can’t be blamed for not stopping them. I couldn’t have done either, and I’m better qualified than you.” A stupid thing to say, but she probably wasn’t listening anyway.
Unfortunately, he was unlucky again. Grace glanced up at that, one eyebrow raised, a rather bitter set to her mouth. “What, because you’re a boy?” she asked scathingly.
It was better than the blank-faced, traumatised look from earlier. “No, because I’m a spy,” he said with a grin that was just a shade too relieved to be comforting, and Grace shifted against the shelves and managed a tiny, weak smile of her own.
“So... because you’re a boy.”
He came a little closer, glancing briefly at the door for any sign of the police. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“I’m sorry for being such a bitch,” she offered, her voice still unsteady, and he could see from the pallor of her skin that she was a long way from being OK. Not exactly surprising.
“You had a gun to your head, I’d have been much worse,” he lied easily.
“I meant just then,” she told him. “I should have realised you were just joking.”
Since he hadn’t been, Alex wasn’t going to hold it against her. “Oh. Bit soon after for jokes.” He settled against the shelf. “I didn’t make it obvious, so. You know. Still a bit shook up, y’know?”
A rather sarcastic laugh, and Alex was more than acquainted with the habit of combating something traumatic with sarcasm, but it grated on his nerves at the moment. “Yeah, I know.”
They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Grace’s hands were shaking and she clenched them together to hide it. Alex swallowed around a sudden upsurge of nerves and frustration, wishing he could get away and deal with this his own way, but he couldn’t, not as the person he was supposed to be; playing a part was fine and easy in the middle of a situation, but having to stick to it afterwards as well dragged everything out beyond endurance.
The difficult part of this was over for Grace now; she could let other people deal with it. Alex never had that luxury. Grace would have statements to make, she might have to identify the men at some point, she might cry later tonight with her parents or friends, but it would eventually fade into an interesting story to tell. It was never going to be that simple for Alex.
“You, er... you should probably phone your family, tell them what happened,” he said awkwardly.
Grace paused. “I should shut the shop first. I can leave on you the shop floor on your own, right?”
A standard question, Alex realised, just to bring the conversation back to a normal level; but he was allowed to be sarcastic in the wake of a shock, too. Just this once. “If I was going to steal anything, I’d’ve done it already.”
The barest hint of a flush on shock-pale cheeks. “Yeah. Sorry.”
She shut and locked the door, flipping the sign to ‘shut’, and disappeared into an unobtrusive door in one corner of the shop, white paint scuffed, little round window grimy and chipped.
Alex watched her go, then pulled out his mobile. “Jack? It’s me. There’s been a bit of a problem...”
**
He sat stiffly by the shelving until the police arrived, banging on the locked door with official pomp, and Alex was more than happy to let them take over everything.They were long-winded and picky, but it meant he didn’t have to keep thinking, didn’t have to worry about anything from here on in. It wasn’t his problem anymore.
That was novel in its own right.
It took the police a frustrating two hours before they finally decided that they had all the information they needed from him and let him go after checking and double-checking his contact details. The nastier part of Alex was convinced that this was just the biggest and most interesting crime they’d had in a while, and that they were being doubly diligent because they could.
He hesitated in the doorway, watching as Grace’s mother descended on her, contacted by the police, all worried expression and comforting hugs. So Grace was looked after. That was good.
He caught the eye of one of the policemen, and raised an eyebrow. The man nodded and looked away, giving him permission to leave – and Alex left without a look back, heading back home to warmth and normality. Or as near as he ever got.
**
“Hey, Jack.” Alex shut the door behind him and clicked the Yale lock closed without looking at it.
Jack appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, red hair messy, face concerned, eyes reassuringly warm. “Alex.” She took one look at his face, and pulled him into a warm hug. “Only you, huh?”
“Yeah, seems like.” He nodded into her shoulder. “But it was OK, so I guess. Y’know. Could have been worse.”
“Honestly, I’m surprised it wasn’t. This is you we’re talking about.” She pulled back. “I was going to make pasta, but how about we get an Indian? It’s the semi-final of the X-Factor tonight, we could catch that?”
Alex thought about it, thought of getting the usual chicken tikka masala and relaxing in front of mindless television with Jack and probably a lager – Jack was too sensible to stop him drinking underage when he was already doing far more dangerous things underage already. She picked her battles carefully, and kept him from drinking to excess, which was far more sensible than stopping him drinking at all.
But the thought of food made his stomach turn, and he didn’t want to deal with it at the moment.
“Maybe later?” he tried, and she nodded. “I’ve got homework and – stuff.”
Jack had never pushed him when he was too raw, knowing instinctively that waiting a few days was better. It was part of the reason Alex loved her so much. “OK. Well, if you get bored of homework – ‘and stuff’ – me and Simon Cowell will be down here for you.”
Alex managed a weak smile and nodded, dragging himself up into his room.
He sat himself down at his desk and stared at the maths homework he’d left open on his desk when Jack had called up to him that she needed tampons and milk, and could he run down to Spar for her? He’d never got them, either.
He wished she hadn’t, but knew that things would have gone worse if he hadn’t been there for Grace. Or would they? Would things have panned out the same way, or would he have seen an entry in The London Lite, using Grace’s death or injury as a statistic in London’s rising gun crimes? He didn’t know. He could have dealt with it if he really thought, really believed, that his being there had helped, but he couldn’t say that. Not for definite. He’d exacerbated things with one hand and then kept them from getting out of control with the other. Which was more significant?
No way of knowing now.
He pushed his maths homework aside and pulled his school diary towards him, flicking through it to check what homework he had set for the weekend. A French prep he could finish with his eyes shut, a Spanish prep – same deal – finishing off his Biology coursework... nothing he could put his mind to. He wanted to go out and do things, unable to sit still for nervous energy, one leg jogging up and down incessantly as he sat at his desk.
Abruptly, he pushed himself away from it, and stood, pacing his room nervously. He wasn’t a member of any gym, and karate classes were always Monday nights. He could go for a run, but he wasn’t sure he trusted himself to come back right now. Even at sixteen, he had more than enough resources to disappear and never resurface.
He was saved from imminent madness – he’d never dealt with these twitchy, unrestrained nerves at the end of an assignment, he’d always had more than enough time to calm down after them, and he had no idea how to deal with them now – by his mobile ringing. Yanking it out of his pocket, he checked the display before picking up, more out of habit than anything else.
“Yes?”
“Hey, Alex.” Tom sounded bright and cheerful – normal, in fact. “You said to ring you later about Felix’s party?”
“Oh.” He paused. Any other day, his response would have been easy: ‘bit tired tonight, Tom, sorry. Another time, yeah?’, or ‘Biology’s kicking my arse. Next week?’ But now... a party sounded great. A harmless, normal way of getting rid of these nerves. Alex had been at parties so wild his classmates would have flinched from them, and suddenly he craved that; so many people that no one was looking at him, dark rooms, loud music... something to lose himself in. A sixteen year old’s end-of-week party wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but it would definitely do. “Yeah, why not?”
Tom’s pause spoke volumes. “Woah, really?”
“Yeah. Gotta kick back sometimes, right?”
“I – yeah. Of course. Tell you what, why don’t you come over here first, we’ll head over there together. My dad’s at his girlfriend’s again, so you could crash here tonight. Or not. I know Alice McLynn’s been trying to pull you for weeks.”
There was a sly, teasing tone in Tom’s voice, and Alex laughed, longer and louder than the joke deserved, but it felt good. “Sure, we’ll see. You got anything, or should I bring something over?”
The thought of going into another corner shop sent a jerk of adrenaline through him again, but there was probably something in the top cupboard downstairs he could grab. Jack wouldn’t mind, he knew. She’d probably be glad he was doing something so normal.
In any case, Tom just laughed. “Alex, have you even met my dad?”
Since his parent’s divorce, Tom’s mother had been all about her work and his father had been all about his freedom. Getting alcohol while Tom was in his dad’s flat wouldn’t be a problem.
“Oops?” he offered and grinned to himself. “See you in a few, k?”
Tom hung up without answering.
**
Downstairs, Alex paused in the doorway to the sitting room, coat in one hand, putting his phone back in his pocket with the other. He’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a plain black T-shirt in place of his uniform and slicked some gel through his hair, but avoided the Lynx trap since Jack always called it the smell of teenage desperation. Living with a woman in her mid-twenties gave Alex a head-start on most of his peers.
Being a spy helped a bit with that as well.
“How’s Simon Cowell?” he asked casually, and Jack glanced up sharply.
“Hey.” She glanced at his jacket. “You heading out?”
“Yeah – friend of Tom’s is having a party, thought I should go with him. Y’know. Stop any international terrorists who might drop by.”
“It worries me that that probably won’t be funny by the end of the evening.” She glanced back at the screen, where Cowell was ripping into some other poor unfortunate. “I guess Tom’s more interesting than me and my one true love. Wait, Simon Cowell isn’t gay, is he?”
Alex grinned. “If I ever meet him, I’ll ask. I’ll probably see you tomorrow sometime, OK?”
“Give me a call if you need picking up.” She grinned at him. “I’ll have the painkillers waiting for you in the morning.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
“Don’t get AIDs!” followed him out of the house.
**
Tom was waiting outside the entrance to his dad’s block of flats and threw away the remainder of his cigarette as Alex approached. Alex hid a grin, knowing that Tom didn’t enjoy smoking but did it to look more adult than he was; in his drunker moments (which were rare around Alex), Tom had admitted to hating the taste and not enjoying the head rush, but nothing would make Alex mock Tom for it. They all had their own private little rebellions.
“Hey, Alex.” Tom grinned at him, unabashedly happy to see him. “Didn’t think I’d get you to one of these parties.”
“Yeah, well.” Alex thought of Grace’s terrified face as a gun pressed to her temple, and shrugged the image away. This was what normal sixteen-year-olds did. They didn’t fight terrorism or get held up in corner stores. “First time for everything, right?”
“Like this is the first time you’ve ever been to a party,” Tom scoffed, punching the button to call the lift. Alex would rather have taken the stairs, but he made himself stand and wait with Tom, keeping himself still by an act of sheer willpower.
“Not one like this.”
“Seriously?” Tom glanced over at him as they entered the lift.
“Seriously. The ones I get caught up in-” Tom didn’t need Alex to qualify how he got caught up in these parties anymore, and after two years he knew better than to ask for details- “are always a bit – off-the-wall.”
“Drugs and dames?”
“Oh, c’mon Tom, ‘dames’?”
“I was pushed for alliteration, shut up,” Tom grinned, letting them into his father’s flat and throwing his keys on the kitchen table as the door clicked shut behind them. “So, there’s JD, Smirnoff, Malibu, or gin. And I got coke as a mixer – what d’you want?”
Alex didn’t pause. “JD. When are we heading over to Felix’s?”
“Party starts at eight, so we don’t want to be there before nine at the earliest,” Tom pointed out. “Wanna watch Skins till then?”
**
They spent the next hour and a half watching episodes of Skins and downing JD and cokes like they were going out of fashion. Alex’s tolerance for alcohol was significantly higher than Tom’s, but even he was feeling happily buzzed by the time they left for Felix’s. Tom had been practically chain-smoking, or as near to it as he got – his dad tended not to care whether he came back to a flat which stank of cigarette smoke or not, and Tom took full advantage of it – but he changed his T-shirt to go out, pointing out in a voice which was only slightly slurred that “girls didn’t like the smell of stale cigarette smoke.”
Alex had raised an eyebrow at that. “Surest way to deal with that is not to smoke,” he pointed out calmly.
Tom just laughed, like he always did. “Yeah, well. Teen rebellion, y’know. I’ll get over it.”
“I hope you do,” Alex muttered, but didn’t push it. The short walk to Felix’s was more amicable than usual; alcohol made Tom, talkative at the best of times, even more so, and he chatted loudly all the way down the street. Alex, buzzed but nowhere near drunk (enough) yet, made sure he didn’t walk into the middle of the road and nodded at all the appropriate intervals.
Felix King wasn’t someone Alex knew particularly well, but then Alex didn’t know most people in his year particularly well, so that wasn’t a surprise. Not that it would matter at a party where it was more important that lots of people came than that the host knew everyone. Certainly, Felix wasn’t complaining. He gave Alex a grin, evidently already well on his way to being trashed, and smacked him on the back. “God, Rider, I thought you were a fucking hermit or something! Hey look, Luke! Rider turned up!”
“Awesome!” Alex had known Luke fairly well before what Alex thought of as the MI6 Affair, and the alcohol lessened any of the lingering mistrust his classmates still felt towards him. “Alex, come on, I’ll get you a drink...”
Alex glanced back at Tom, but he was talking to a girl a few inches taller than him and was making an admirable attempt not to be too obvious about staring at her cleavage – so Alex just grinned and allowed Luke to pull him away.
**
An hour or so later and Alex was far more drunk than he had been and enjoying himself far more than when he’d first arrived. The rest of his year was drunk enough that they forgot to pay attention to all the rumours about him, and he was drunk enough that he could push away the memories from earlier with ease – Grace’s terrified face, knowing that he wasn’t like her and never would be, never could be, wasn’t like any of them – and he was beginning to enjoy himself. Really enjoy himself.
Alice McLynn was helping with that.
She had practically cornered him, but he admitted his protest hadn’t exactly been – strenuous. He pulled her closer, biting gently at her bottom lip, soothing over the mild hurt with his tongue. She pressed herself against him, breaking their kiss for a brief laugh as his hands settled on her arse. Her kisses were knowledgeable, practised in a way Alex could appreciate, but it wasn’t what he needed today. Not today. Most other days, it might well be enough. But sometimes, he just needed something... more.
“Hey, Alice, I just gotta check on Tom. He’s a real lightweight, y’know? But I’d love to – pick this up another day.”
“How about tomorrow? Cinema’s showing Harry Potter Six.”
“Sounds great,” he agreed. “I’ll give you a ring, OK?”
She let him go with one more long, confident kiss and he grinned into it, hand tight at her waist, before sliding away from her into the main throng.
He was looking for someone specific, a boy he’d known a little before the MI6 Affair who was definitely ambiguous if not outright gay. And that was what he wanted. Something rougher, something a bit harder than he would get from a girl.
“Hey, Daniel.” He grinned, hand on the other boy’s hip, mouthing at his earlobe.
“Rider.”
“Why not try ‘Alex’?” he suggested.
“What do you want?” Daniel’s voice was resigned.
Briefly, Alex wondered how many other boys in his class had tried this on with Daniel, but he shrugged. “You suck me off, I’ll suck you.”
Daniel turned and glared at Alex. “I knew you were a sick bastard from the rumours, Rider, but-“
“Spare me. You’re straight or some bullshit, right?”
“No. I’m gay, not a whore. If that’s your deal, you can-”
“It’s a fucking blowjob, not-”
“Jesus, Rider, you arrogant shit, I just don’t find you attractive, OK?”
It was only when Daniel finished speaking that he noticed that Alex had manoeuvred them out of the crowd, into a darkened corner of the room, and Alex grinned at him. “Let me convince you.”
“Don’t you-”
Alex mouthed at Daniel’s neck, noticing that Daniel’s protests were markedly less forceful than they should have been were they real. “C’mon,” he said, never moving his lips from Daniel’s skin. “Give me a chance, alright?”
“L-like you c-could convince me,” Daniel forced out.
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure.” Alex slid a hand down Daniel’s torso, his touch sure. He bit hard on Daniel’s earlobe, fingers finding the button of his fly. “I don’t think you think I’m unattractive, Dan. I think you’re just worried that everyone’ll look at you different if you actually do something gay, rather than just tell them that you’re gay.”
“Valid concern.” Daniel’s voice was rough with arousal. “We can’t all leave school every two weeks.”
“Doesn’t the danger thrill you?” Alex grinned and forced himself not to think of the way the danger terrified him. He refused to admit, even to himself, that it bothered him less than the difference between him and this kid, whose most pressing concern was his friends not liking his sexuality. Alex worried that he would never react the same way as his schoolmates, as his peer group, that he would never be anything like a normal person again.
He refused to think about it for the moment.
“A blowjob’s a blowjob, right?” he said firmly, and sank to his knees.
Alex knew perfectly well what he was doing, having gained experience over the last two years of assignments, and he pulled out Daniel’s cock, stroking one finger up the main vein on the underside before following his finger with his tongue, teasing it to full hardness. Done, he took the first few inches of it into his mouth and sucked, knowing that a blowjob this skilled and thorough was a new experience for Daniel. He didn’t want to end this too soon, so he pulled back, teasing at the slit with the tip of his tongue. Daniel’s protesting noise was all he needed to be sure that he was doing well.
As a reward he sucked the rest of the head into his mouth, his teeth grazing the bundle of nerves just under it – very gently, revelling in the way Daniel’s breath caught – andthen followed that suggestively dangerous pressure with is tongue. He soothed away any pain with broad, loving licks, sliding down the shaft a little way and working his tongue against the underside.
It was evidently a shock to Daniel that Alex didn’t stop when his cock hit the back of the other boy’s throat, but continued to swallow. He hummed, low in his throat, and worked his tongue against the underside, sucking hardon the rest of it. Daniel wasn’t exactly hardcore; a few minutes later Alex was spitting onto the floor, uncaring of what Felix would say in the morning.
“My turn now, right?”
It took a few moments to get Daniel to come down off his post-coital high, but he nodded with good grace, dropping to his knees in front of Alex and taking his cock into his mouth. It was considerably less skilful than Alex’s had been, but it was what Alex wanted right now.
He let his head fall back against the wall, and forgot anything he didn’t want to remember for the next few minutes. The alcohol was buzzing through his veins, and he had something to lose himself in.
For the moment, it was enough.
