Work Text:
Goodkat thinks that maybe he’s getting too old for the job, that maybe he’s grown sloppy, when he walks into his apartment, hangs up his coat, and takes off his holsters. All without ever realizing someone was sitting at his kitchen table. Then again, it’s not just anyone sitting at his table, it’s Slevin, so maybe it’s just that Goodkat was too good at training his apprentice. He refuses to think of the other reason, because that way lies an empty apartment and working alone after twenty years of having another person at his side.
“How the hell did you find me?” Goodkat asks as he crosses to the fridge. He’s downsized since Slevin left him. He left Slevin. Whatever. He used to have apartments all over the country—and a few across the pond as well—but now he’s down to just this studio and the hotel rooms he checks into when he’s on a job. He hasn’t had a lot of those lately, if only because working alone after twenty years of having a partner feels kinda empty. Kind of wrong.
“I was trained by a world-class assassin...sir.”
Goodkat pauses with the milk in one hand and a glass in the other, and just stares at the kid. At Slevin. At the one person who managed to get under his skin.
“That you were.” He glances around the otherwise empty room, one eyebrow raised, then looks back at Slevin. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“In the ground.”
Slevin leans back in the chair, face unreadable. He’s relaxed and calm, but that’s a fairly constant state for him anyway. Goodkat knows better than to trust it, to trust anything this kid gives him. He did that once, and he hates where it left him.
Here.
“Did she see it coming?”
Slevin laughs like Goodkat’s just said something ludicrous, but then again, maybe he has.
“I didn’t kill her, but I was planning to. She wasn’t—” His gaze slides away; a deliberate tell that Goodkat recognizes. This is the truth, but Slevin wants him to think otherwise. “She wasn’t who I thought she was.”
“Nobody ever is, kid.” Goodkat pours himself some milk, then passes the carton over to Slevin, who sniffs at it warily before taking a sip. “I can’t just have you start working jobs with me again, like nothing happened.” For all he knows, the girl is still out there, alive because Slevin couldn’t pull the trigger. It can happen to the best of them, he should know. No, he’ll have to take the kid abroad, keep him off the radar.
Slevin smiles at him and reaches for something. Goodkat has half a second to curse himself for taking off his weapons before he realizes what’s in the kid’s hand, and he cracks a smile. Just a tiny one. Jokes on him, it would seem.
“Nice to see you’re still on top of your game,” Slevin says, smirking as he clicks on the television with the remote.
Goodkat can see the clock next to his bed from where he’s standing. It’s ten after five, which means it’s the local news. He’s more than a little surprised when he sees the girl on the screen. She’s still just as pretty as she was back in New York, fresh-faced with an air of innocence most people lose in adolescence. The only real difference is that now she’s dead. It’s as that information sinks in that Goodkat starts paying attention to what the newscaster is saying.
“—run incident earlier this week. The woman has since been identified as Lindsey...”
The woman drones on, but Goodkat’s attention has already shifted back to Slevin. Or Henry. Or whatever the fuck it is he’s calling himself nowadays. “You didn’t tell me you were in town.”
“She was crossing the street to get coffee. I think she knew, ya know? Like, she could sense that things had changed.”
“You were there?”
“No, I was up on the rooftop two buildings down, trying to figure out what to do. I saw her leave the hotel, saw the truck coming...and I just walked away. I liked her, Goodkat. But she wasn’t who I thought she was.”
He’s a sucker for the kid’s ‘ask me why,’ face, so he indulges him. “And who did you think she was?”
“I thought she was going to be the reason I could walk away from everything. That maybe she’d fix something I thought was wrong. With me. This.”
It shouldn’t hurt to hear that. Goodkat knows that, but that doesn’t take away the sting. He wonders, not for the first time, why the kid is even here.
“And she wasn’t.” Not a question.
“No, she wasn’t. She was a good reason to get away for a bit, to get some perspective. She was a nice girl. I liked her. And maybe, if my parents had never been killed, and you had never raised me, then maybe I would have fallen in love with her.”
“Henry—” He stops at the way the kid’s eyes go flat and cold at the name, and he sighs, because Jesus fucking Christ. “Slevin, what the hell are you doing here, kid.”
“That’s just it, Goodkat. I’m not a kid. I haven’t been a kid since the first time you let me pull the trigger on a gun. I’m thirty-two, not twelve, or seventeen or whatever age it is you have me trapped at in your head.”
Slevin stands as he speaks, and Goodkat is surprised because somehow, over the last seven months, he’s managed to forget that Slevin actually has a few inches on him. The kid is leaner, sure, but when they stand face-to-face, he doesn’t have to look up to meet Goodkat’s gaze, and that’s more than a little unnerving. Then the brat slumps. Not a lot, but enough to bring them eye-to-eye. When Slevin smiles, it’s a slow thing, lips tilting up just a little, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“My mistake,” Goodkat says, and he swears his voice didn’t just drop. “Ki—Slevin. What—”
Which is as far as he gets before Slevin closes the distance between them, lips soft and undemanding as they brush against Goodkat’s. He doesn’t make the mistake of trying to hold on, of trying to keep Goodkat in place, which is good, because none of this is what Goodkat was expecting.
“Jesus,” he says when they part. “You—” He doesn’t know what to call the kid anymore, and it’s got him feeling more off-balance than the kiss.
“Call me Slevin. I like it. Or,” he whispers, leaning in again. “You can call me Kelevra.” He mouths the words against Goodkat’s jaw, grinning when Goodkat laughs aloud.
“I’ll call you ‘fuckhead’ before I call you a bad dog while you’ve got your tongue in my mouth.”
He doesn’t resist as he’s backed toward the bed, eager hands tugging off his tie, his suit jacket, his button-down. He goes down easy seconds after Slevin pulls his belt free, lets his trousers pool at his ankles and watches as Slevin steps back to strip off his own clothing. Goodkat toes off his shoes and waits, fine with letting the kid take the lead for the moment. He doesn’t know how this will play out, but for twenty years, he’s had this kid, this young man, at his side, and dangerous as it is, Goodkat trusts him.
“Christ, Goodkat,” Slevin says, then he’s nudging Goodkat further up the bed, sliding them both out of their boxers so that when he straddles Goodkat’s hips, they’re skin-to-skin.
Goodkat doesn’t hold back the groan that’s tearing its way up his throat, doesn’t fight the urge to palm the smooth curve of Slevin’s ass, but he doesn’t do anything more than that. Not because he feels like he’d be taking advantage. Yeah, sure, he pretty much raised the kid, but Goodkat’s not his father, he’s not even a father figure. He’s just the man who made it possible for this stupid, beautiful kid to avenge his parents. No, he waits because that’s what he does. He lets his prey come to him to be destroyed. He won’t destroy Slevin, though. Not unless the kid begs him to.
“I want—I want you to fuck me,” Slevin says. He’s breathless, almost shy-sounding, like he hasn’t been since the day he told Goodkat it was his birthday. The first one of his new life. Back then, he had been afraid Goodkat would change his mind and decide to kill him. Or maybe just leave him on the streets to die like the bums they pass by every day without really noticing. Now...now he’s just afraid Goodkat will refuse him. Like that’s even a possibility anymore.
“I can do that.” Goodkat watches him, reads in the subtle shift of Slevin’s shoulders, the way his eyes dart around the room, never quite settling in one place, and he sighs. There’s a bottle of lotion on the bedside table, just out of reach, so he shoves his hips up, tipping Slevin off his lap and makes a grab for it. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure,” Slevin says, then he hisses as Goodkat reaches down and presses two fingers inside him.
Slevin’s tight. Tight enough that Goodkat is fairly certain he’s never actually gone this far before, done this with another person, and because he’s not really a monster, not where Slevin is concerned, he eases one finger back out and strokes him from the inside out. Slevin’s good at hiding his feelings most of the time—or not hiding so much as ‘mis-broadcasting’—but right now, all of his defenses have been stripped away. Or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to hide from Goodkat.
Goodkat slides the second finger in a moment or two before Slevin is actually ready, just to watch the way his lips go tight, flattening out in a thin, white line as he fights to relax. He presses his fingers in deep, twists his wrist, then searches for Slevin’s prostate, riding it hard once he’s found it. He’s just as sensitive to this as Goodkat knew he would be. He remembers those years when Slevin would wait until he was sure Goodkat was asleep to jerk off, muffling his cries with a fist, or a shirt. He recalls the way Slevin would sit so carefully the mornings after his more vocal nights, and he knows the kid was doing this to himself.
“I was thinking of retiring,” Goodkat says, and he presses a third finger in just as Slevin opens his mouth to reply. He’s rewarded with a sharp, broken moan, and he can’t help but lean in, trying to capture the sound with his mouth.
“Retiring? You? Where will you go?”
Slevin’s eyes go wide as Goodkat spreads his fingers, working him hard. He’s soft and warm inside, slick with lotion, and Goodkat thinks that he’ll have to research this online later, figure out what other things he can do to make his boy cry out.
It turns out, sliding down the bed and taking Slevin’s cock in his mouth works pretty damn well for the time being. He has to pull back so he doesn’t get a mouthful of come, but he manages to get his free hand on Slevin, and he works him through his orgasm, careful not to miss a single thing.
When he pulls his fingers free and reaches for the lotion once more, Slevin huffs out a laugh. “Fuck,” he whispers. “You’re gonna kill me.”
“Nah, kid. Just not possible.” Then slicks himself up, drags Slevin’s hips up off the bed, and starts pushing in.
Slevin’s boneless, lying half in his lap, eyelashes fluttering as he breathes through the stretch of being filled. When Goodkat is as deep as he can get, he just stops, fingers digging bruises into Slevin’s hips as he struggles for control. It’s been a long time since Goodkat has allowed himself any kind of intimacy. Fifteen years at least, because that last time, the kid had tracked him down and sat outside the room Goodkat was in, greeting him with a betrayed expression when Goodkat stepped out of the hotel room, the hooker’s perfume clinging to his clothes and skin. So it’s been a while, to say the least, and the kid is hot and tight and slick, and Goodkat... Goodkat is only a man. Only human. A world-class assassin, yes, but human all the same.
When he’s pretty sure he won’t go off like a teenager reaching second base for the first time, he pulls back, then shoves in hard. He keeps one hand on Slevin’s waist, and sets the other against the mattress by Slevin’s shoulder, bracing himself. Slevin stares up at him, eyes dark, fathomless, and this time, when he reaches for Goodkat, there’s no hesitancy. He’s no longer the kid Goodkat’s been training, he’s no longer the son of murdered parents, a victim whose would-be killer suffered a moment of weakness. Now he’s the man Goodkat has been partnered with for the last decade. He’s sure and strong, and he pulls Goodkat down into a kiss that is bruising. Demanding.
“I wanted this, that day,” he says, like he’s remembering the same thing Goodkat was. “I’ve wanted you for so long, I thought maybe I had been conditioned. Not by you, just…circumstance.”
Goodkat stills, stares down at him, and says, “And now?”
“Now I think I’m ready to retire. I hear Paris is lovely this time of year.”
“Is it?” Goodkat pulls all the way out, and Slevin rolls to his stomach without prompting. “I haven’t been to Paris in a while. Never did a job there. Might be a good place to settle down.”
He doesn’t give Slevin a chance to respond. This time, Goodkat’s thrusts are hard and fast. He shoves in deep, one hand braced against Slevin’s back, holding him down, while the other molds itself over the curve of his hip. It only takes a few more thrusts and Slevin moaning out his name for Goodkat to come, and then he’s emptying himself into Slevin, thighs trembling from the intensity of it.
He slips out as he softens, soothes a hand down Slevin’s back when he hisses at the sensation, and he rolls to his back, stretching out. He’s never been one to smoke after sex—or smoke at all—but he thinks now would be a good time to do so. Slevin stays on his side of the bed, but he reaches out, latching onto Goodkat’s hand with steady fingers.
“I wanted to love her. Loving her would have been easy. Simple. But watching you walk away that day? Knowing I was the reason you looked so disappointed? I knew it was only a matter of time.”
“I’m sorry,” Goodkat says, because he is, in a way. Slevin’s a good kid. He deserves to be happy, to settle down and maybe start a family. Goodkat’s too old for that shit. Too old and too tired. He squeezes Slevin’s hand.
“Get some sleep. We’ll have to clean this place up before we can head out.”
“I’ll need some time. Need new identification.”
Goodkat doesn’t even have to look as he opens the nightstand drawer. There are two passports inside it, and he pulls out both, passing one over to Slevin.
“I had it made. Just in case.” Goodkat doesn’t saying more. He already sounds like enough of a sap as it is.
Slevin doesn’t say anything more, either. But he shows his appreciation later as they shower, then again, after they’re done cleaning. He’s a pretty grateful kid.
Goodkat is fucked.