Lovino shrugged, shivery, pulling the oversized parka tighter around himself. Fuck this 'spring' weather, he thought, fishing the phone out to check the time. It was getting dark, shadows creeping and growing around the corners of buildings, the wind sharper; the bastard was late.

His patience was seriously wearing thin when a black SUV pulled up brusquely, half-climbing the sidewalk with a screech of tyres and the driver leaned over to unlock the door.

"What the fuck," was all Lovino said grimly, not meeting the other's gaze as he settled in the passenger's seat and patting around for the seat belt.

"Sorry," Valentin offered with a toothy grin. "Got delayed."

A moment passed - Lovino sighed deeply, pulling down the mirror and running a hand through his damp hair.

"Are you mad?"

"Fuck you!" he snapped. "We're gonna miss him, and just now when we finally-"

The other snorted. "Oh. You're nervous. But you've done this before, haven't you?"

Lovino's lips tightened, waiting for the 'you've got quite the bad reputation, after all' cliche, but it didn't come.

"I hate this stakeout thing, the waiting and the-... The fucking papers! I wish I could have just grabbed him by now, it's not like we're in some sort of doubt here!"

"Yeah well, gotta do it by the book."

The car pulled into a back alley, all but blocking access on one side. Lovino checked his watch, then peered at the lights coming from under the door and sole, grated window on the side of the building.

"He's working late," his companion noted. "You were worried for nothing."

And now they'd have to wait some more, and Lovino hated waiting, and the tension building up in anticipation of the rush of adrenaline, and this guy he had yet to see in real action to know if he could rely on.

"You guys have a big budget I see," he commented, clicking his seatbelt open and fidgeting in the seat to make himself more comfortable. He wanted a smoke, but didn't feel like getting out ahead of time. What if it looked suspicious?

"Why don't you turn on the radio?"

"I never used-"

But Lovino saw that there was a CD left in and jammed his thumb into the play button. Immediately, the speakers exploded into some heavily bass-boosted Turkish hip-hop out of which he could only make out 'sweet like hot baklava' and possibly some curse words.

"Ohhh, nice," he laughed despite the nerves, while Valentin reached out quickly to turn down the volume.

"It's Adnan's car," he grumbled irritably.

"Yeah, yeah. This is *your* song. Matches you to a tee. Sweet like hot baklava. Very bad for the teeth though."

Valentin shot him a glare, eyebrows drawn together darkly. "What the fuck, I'm not *sweet*! And this is not my song!"

"It is now," Lovino informed him, with a grin. It was a good sign if he could get him all worked up and so easily. "Your turn."

"What?"

A few meters away, the door opened and a bald, bulky man stepped out, keys in hand.

"Make me mad," Lovino said. "Now."

For a moment there was silence and he thought Valentin's mind had gone blank, which was a bad sign. If he was panicking-

"You're short."

"...what the fuck did you just say?!"

"You're short," the other repeated, and this time he laughed too.

Lovino turned away and burst out of the SUV, handcuffs at the ready; in but a few strides was upon the man, throwing his whole weight at the mass of him and effectively slamming him against the hood of his own car. The keys flew from the man's hand and clinked through the grate of the sewer as Lovino shouted the charges at his thrashing form.

"Your have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law-"

Too bad it wasn't so easy - the mass of muscle and fat still put up a fight.

"YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO GO FUCK YOURSELF!" Lovino roared, sending a direct punch to the man's jaw and finally getting the cuffs on him after he'd blacked out.

"It's alright, boss, you got him," Valentin said quickly, helping him get the all but limp man to his feet. "And I didn't mean it. Come on, you're taller than me."

Lovino only huffed, not entirely cooled off.

By the time it got dark, he began to worry about the strange youth he'd left back home with the old Greek woman, so he headed home with hurried steps, hood pulled low almost to his mouth, one hand clenched onto the handle of the short sword at his belt under the cloak.

He hated this place - the former 'Rome of the East' with its golden domes - and couldn't imagine what it might have been like before the fall, in those times now only whispered of in corners.

His family's enemies had done well, having him tricked and sent here.

Lovino knew he was sentenced unless his luck were to miraculously change - doomed to work for meager pay for the old merchants who hadn't gone back with the last ships, to live in two shabby rooms among strangers and now end up with even more trouble on his hands thanks to a certain courtier he'd (more or less inadvertently) crossed. 

He abhorred the idea of having someone forced into servitude under his roof, a complete wild card.

Had the Wallachian been put there to... do what?

To kill him in his sleep for the courtier’s entertainment?

Lovino could imagine that fat fuck telling the boy as such. ‘Bring me the head of that knife-wielding Italian and maybe we’ll let you go home.’ It would have been most convenient, if filthy infidels were to slay each other.

He slipped through the gate and crossed the barren courtyard with a heavy heart, peering curtly at the barely lit windows. 

In the small armory the blades were gleaming, freshly sharpened as he'd ordered. Maybe with a bit too much skill for someone supposedly a noble, with delicate hands unused to labor. Maybe a skill born out of fondness for the steel and for the sharp things, he thought, and thoroughly counted them.

None was missing. 

Well.

If the hostage was indeed as savage as the Turks had relayed, he didn’t even need a blade. 

There were so many ways to kill a man if one was hellbent on it, and Lovino couldn't give him an ounce of trust, just like he hardly trusted the Greek hag whose words he barely understood. 

Pulling his hood down and unclasping the heavy fabric, he followed the smell of warm food into the other room, where the servant stirred into a pot above the stove. She was alone, muttering something while she fingered the wooden cross hanging on a string around her neck, and startled when Lovino all but crept up on her.

He couldn’t help it that his steps were light, sin of a sinful trade.

“Signore,” she croaked out, butchering the word as she wiped her hands off her skirts. “Dinner?”

“Where is he?”

For a moment he worried that the little bastard had run away, for all of the courtier’s threats. Or maybe that was the ploy – do what he was told, feign obedience and acceptance, and then run away and have Lovino blamed for letting him escape. And then, forget having his throat cut in his sleep or being smothered, or poisoned, or the like; his head would soon be drying out stuck in a pole just outside the city walls.

The old woman motioned with her head to the bedroom. “He didn’t eat,” she grumbled. “Doesn’t listen to me! Is he not slave now?”

‘Do with him what you will, punish him however you see fit, just don’t kill him. We will take him back in a while, he just needs to learn his place. Worry not, he is unused to hardship so it should not be hard to break him.’

Right. Lovino doubted it.

He pulled the curtain back and saw the hostage sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed, not bothering to acknowledge him in any way, probably still sulking after five days during which no harm had come to him, no one had as much as spoken to him harshly and he’d barely done any work.  

A big orange cat nestled in his lap, and was being petted with slow, soft strokes, the youth’s pale fingers carefully threading its fur and rubbing between the twitching ears.

Eyes closed in content and purring low, the cat ignored him too.

“This is my room,” Lovino snapped. “And I see you brought a cat in here and getting cat hair all over my bed! Who allowed you?!”

The Wallachian looked up now, with a tilt of head, his face utterly unreadable. And then he finally said, eyes wide and all serious: