A/N: Hi guys! Two chapters in a month, maybe I am turning over a new leaf! Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. I'd love to respond to you all, but a lot of you weren't signed in, so sorry about that. To those of you who were signed in, I'll try to respond this week!

More good news, I'm off on holiday for a week from Friday, so hoping to get some writing done while I'm away to post when I come back. Anyway, enjoy the chapter, and let me know what you think!

As usual, I do not own anything you recognise.

-o-O-o-

Bright sunlight was streaming through a window, when David woke. He was curled up under a thick duvet in a bed he didn't recognise, and didn't remember going to sleep in. The last thing he remembered was…

It's just painkillers. Don't worry. Just relax.

Interrogation. Right. Okay, so he had been drugged. To do what, exactly? It seemed a little over the top to knock him out just to move him to a bedroom.

Slowly, he sat up, and became immediately aware that he wasn't alone in the bed. Or rather, he was the only one in the bed, but Thanatos was lying still fast asleep on top of the covers.

That narrowed down the options, then. He had either been rescued, which would explain the bedroom, or Thanatos has been captured and this was some sort of set up to convince him that he'd been rescued.

David slipped out of bed silently. A quick check around the room showed no one hiding, no cameras, and his shoes by the bedside table. One point for the rescued column. An inventory of his body let him know that at some point, his ribs had been wrapped and burns dressed, but that wasn't really telling him much at this point, apart from that it would be easier for him to move around.

He pulled on his shoes and turned to shake Thanatos awake. Carefully, he reached out a hand to prod at his teacher's shoulder, mindful that at any point he could have to throw himself back to avoid a knife to the neck. Thanatos didn't move.

David frowned and reached out to give the man's shoulder a firm shake, but still he didn't wake. The man was unconscious. One point for elaborate set up, then.

Quickly, David patted the unmoving body down, but couldn't find a single weapon. It was looking more and more likely that Thanatos had been overpowered, and that he hadn't, in fact, been rescued.

There was a metallic clinking noise from beyond the door, and soft voices. Armed guards, maybe? He should wait for Thanatos to wake up, but he had no idea when that would be, and in the meantime the guards could come in here and do whatever they liked. At least if he acted first, he'd have the element of surprise.

He crossed silently to the door. The thick carpet was going to stop him seeing under the door, and there was no keyhole, so he was forced to press his ear to it, which provided limited results. Carefully, and as quietly as he could, he opened the door a crack, surprised to find it unlocked, and hoping that the guards wouldn't immediately start shooting.

He peered through the crack in the door, and blinked, quickly pulling the door open all the way.

"What the hell is going on?" he asked mentally adding a trillion points to the rescued column. There were, he was sure, limits to how far MI6 would go.

"Breakfast," said Sasha, with a smirk. "There are plates on the counter."

"Are those pancakes?" asked David, his eyes lighting up.

"With crispy bacon and maple syrup" confirmed Sasha. "Matt is apparently a really good cook."

David's desire to know more about the two strange men sitting at the table briefly warred with his desire for food, before he grabbed a plate and sat down next to Sasha. It had been far too long since he ate, and assassin or not, he was still a teenaged boy.

Halfway through his second pancake, he flicked his eyes up to study the two men, before grunting a "Who are they?" to Sasha.

"Tom and Snake," said Sasha, pouring herself a cup of coffee. "They both seem to know Thanatos but call him Alex. Snake is SAS, and Sir swore that he could trust Tom with his life, although he was less sure about ours. I'm leaning towards trusting them at least until we finish eating."

"Glad to hear it," grinned the soldier, Snake, from the end of the table.

"How did I get here?" asked David. "And what's up with Thanatos?"

"Thanatos rescued you," she said. "You were both drugged, but Thanatos reacted violently and we had to sedate him."

"You sedated him with a soldier in the same flat?"

"It was necessary."

"How?!"

"He lost it – attacked Matt with a knife. We managed to lock him in the closet for a bit, but when we opened it to check on him, he was trying to tear his own throat out with his fingers."

Sasha shuddered, remembering the awful sight. It wasn't something she ever wanted to repeat.

"Snake sedated him – he's a medic apparently – and patched him up. We put him in with you to sleep it off. He should be – better be – waking up in about an hour."

David nodded, and mentally reviewed the information and what he knew of Thanatos. Alex was his real name, he knew, and it looked like these two had known Thanatos before he became an assassin. SAS would fit, he guessed, but he was at a loss to explain the younger of the two men. He looked around Thanatos' age, and David was fairly certain that there had only ever been one teenaged spy.

Well, two, he amended, catching sight of Matt sitting next to the soldier. But the kid had been ineffective at best, from what David had managed to piece together.

"Nice pancakes, kid," he praised, as he grabbed a fourth and slid it onto the plate. "Where did you learn to cook?"

"My mum taught me," grinned Matt. The brat seemed a lot more bearable now he wasn't constantly looking as if someone was going to attack him, David noted. "She's a chef at restaurant in Waterloo."

"That's awesome," said the black-haired stranger – Tom, wasn't it? "Do you enjoy it as well?"

"The food or the cooking?" grinned Matt. "Honestly, I love what she cooks. I wanted to be able to cook for her in return sometimes, then found out I loved cooking as well."

"You want to follow in her footsteps, maybe?" asked Snake.

Matt looked down at his plate and shrugged. "It'd be nice, I guess?" he said, hesitantly. "I don't think my dad would like it though."

"If this is the same guy who coerced you into going on a mission with a dangerous assassin for MI6 and threatened to punish you because someone broke into your room, you should tell him to go fuck himself," said a voice from the doorway.

"Sir!" yelped Sasha. "You're awake!"

"Obviously," grouched Alex, crossing to the table and taking a seat. "Congratulations on not killing each other." He turned wide brown eyes to Tom. "Coffee?" he begged, pathetically.

"You are twenty-one years old and an international assassin. You should be ashamed of yourself," grinned Tom, before getting up to fix the requested drink.

Alex simply hummed noncommittedly and rested his chin on his hand. After a moment or two he became aware of the others at the table staring at him.

"What?" he asked, confused.

"You're acting weird," said Matt, bluntly.

"Or, we could just be a little over sensitive to things after last night," said Snake, smoothly. "I'd like to run some tests, if that is alright."

Alex scowled for a moment then sighed and ran a hand over his face. "After breakfast," he said, turning his full attention back to his coffee. "I'm sure it can at least wait until then."

The boy was on the far side of the square and had attracted quite a crowd. With dark eyes, tanned skin and a brilliant smile, he probably would have even without the magic act. He realised why, when being sent on this mission, his handler had questioned him so intensely about whether or not he had ever been attracted to males. He wasn't. Although even so, he would admit that the possibility of those sinful lips around him would have turned him if anything could.

He watched for a few minutes, before the boy began bowing extravagantly and packing away the magic paraphernalia he had been using. There was a nice set of throwing knives there, the man noticed. The boy had been juggling them as if they were cheap toys but they were obviously not designed for magic tricks. The kid slung the worn navy holdall over his shoulder and sauntered off, the man following unnoticed.

Quickly, the boy moved away from the crowds, until the man knew he'd be made, but that wasn't such an issue now.

"You know if you wanted an autograph, sweetheart," said the boy, turning to face him, "You could have just asked."

The man withdrew a handgun from the small of his back. "I just need to ask you a couple of questions," said the man. "There is no need for you to get hurt as long as nobody does anything stupid."

The boy frowned. "You know what, I think we'll be asking the questions, thanks."

The man didn't even have time to be surprised before the blow fell.

Adán raised an eyebrow at Ciro as he dropped the collapsible baton back into his rucksack. "Nice of you to show up," smirked Adán.

"He followed you from the square," said Ciro. "He's got a couple of knives too, and it looks like it wasn't a chance encounter. You couldn't have waited until you were somewhere a bit more private to confront him? Now we have to carry him."

"Quit whining," instructed Adán with a roll of his eyes. "We'll cope. Grab his legs, will you?"

Ciro glared but complied and between the two of them they managed to hoist the larger man off the ground.

"Hope no one sees us like this," he grouched as they began to move. "That would be awkward to explain."

"We'll be fine," said Adán. "You worry too much. How was the take?"

"Tourists were a little thin on the ground but we did okay," said Ciro, thinking of the pilfered wallets in his rucksack. "We should be able to get the new IDs in another day or so."

"I feel like a trained monkey," grouched Adán, slightly out of breath from the weight. "We were trained as assassins, not thieves!"

Ciro ignored the familiar complaint. They hadn't done a job since they left the others. They had had one lined up, but it had quickly been revealed as a trap. Ciro had put his foot down at that point – no more jobs until they found out why people were looking for them. Or, well, one of them. So far whoever was searching hadn't seemed to work out there were two of them – the advantages of having an identical twin he supposed.

Adán grunted as Ciro dropped the legs and let his twin take the full weight. Two minutes later, he was helping to lever the body over a half wall and hiding it behind the large pile of rubble. Not exactly the most private place, but it wasn't overlooked by any windows and the builders, or demolition men or whoever were responsible for the mess hadn't been around in the month they'd been here.

Between the two of them, they bound the stranger with zip ties around his knees, ankles, elbows and wrists, hands behind his back. Adán was kind enough to prop him against the wall before Ciro shoved a piece of cloth in his mouth as a makeshift gag.

"How long do you reckon he'll be out?"

"Not long now," said Ciro. "I didn't hit him that hard."

"You sure about that?" asked his twin, nudging the man with his foot.

"Yes," said Ciro, with a roll of his eyes. "He's already coming around. Quick – swap jackets with me and go hide."

Adán rolled his eyes but complied quickly enough, swapping out his leather jacket for Ciro's worn hoody. Ciro watched protectively as he scrambled up the remains of pipes and walls to perch on a roof two stories up, where he blended into the shadow of a chimney.

Ciro turned back to the stranger. He just had time to twist his face into Adán's seductive grin before the man's eyes fluttered open.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," he smirked. "Now, where were we?"

-o-O-o-

A/N: Don't forget to review and let me know what you thought! The plot for this fic seems to be rapidly expanding which is… fun if a little annoying. Which characters are you most interested in catching up with next chapter?