Chapter Text
“Ryan!”
Ryan jerked awake with a start, his hand darting under the pillow to where he hid his gun before the door swung open to reveal Gavin.
“Christ, Gavin, what the hell do you want?” Ryan muttered, pulling his hand back to scrub at his face.
“You don’t know what day it is?” Gavin looked a bit hurt when Ryan’s eyes moved lazily to the calendar beside the door frame.
“May 23rd? Saturday?”
Gavin scowled. “No, it's my birthday, you arse.”
“I'm sorry. Happy birthday, Gavin,” he said, burying his face in the pillow.
“Thank you. Now get up, we’re busy today.”
Ryan frowned. They weren't. In fact, they weren't busy for another week, when they started the casino heist.
“Busy? How?”
“It’s my birthday!” Gavin threw his hands up in frustration, as though that would make Ryan realize what it was he wanted him to know.
“Yes, we’ve established that. How does that relate to you waking me up at, Christ, 7am?”
“On my birthday the crew has to do whatever I want, including you, so get ready.”
Ryan decided it was too early to argue with Gavin, so he groaned and climbed out of bed. Gavin grinned joyously before closing the door, presumably to wake up the rest of the crew.
~
When Ryan walked out of the bathroom he saw Gavin was the only one in the living room. He moved to the chair and plopped down to wait for the rest of the crew to finish getting ready, only for Gavin to stand up and tug on his jacket.
“Ready?”
Ryan looked around. “What?”
“Are you ready to leave? My plans are time sensitive so if you’re not ready to leave you should probably get on that,” he said, mildly annoyed.
“What about everyone else?” he asked.
“It’s just us for now. Come on,” he said, heading towards the door.
“Hang on, what exactly are we doing?” Ryan asked.
“You’re not allowed to ask,” Gavin said too quickly, which made Ryan stop dead in his tracks.
“Gavin,” Ryan said, and Gavin sighed and turned to face Ryan.
“I'll tell you soon,” he said. Ryan didn’t move still. “Promise,” he said, offering his pinky.
Ryan stared at his outstretched finger before grabbing his jacket off the coat rack. “Fine,” he said with a sigh. “Who’s car are we taking?”
~
Gavin drove them to a small breakfast diner. He got them seats right next to the window facing the street and told Ryan he’d pay. Ryan didn’t argue with that.
Gavin ordered a tea and waffles, taking the seat across from Ryan. They were quiet for a moment, Gavin staring out the window like he was waiting for someone.
“So, can you tell me now?”
Gavin made a face like he’d just been hit, then turned to look at his drink.
“Well…” he said. Ryan watched him expectantly. Gavin took a sip of his tea, slowly, before continuing. “I need a favor.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Oh?”
“Yes. See the museum over there. One of the people who work there, going by the alias Mark Nutt, has a hit on me.”
“Let me guess, you want me to take him out?”
Gavin nodded.
“Why does he have a hit on you?”
Gavin hesitated. “I’ll tell you after he’s dead...”
Ryan studied Gavin’s face for a moment. The lad had secrets, and there were red alarms going off on Ryan’s head, but he didn’t press him further.
“When do you need it done?” Ryan asked, sighing with resolution.
“Well, he’s planning the hit tomorrow, so today.”
Ryan groaned. “Jesus, Gav, some prep time would have been great,” he said, burying his face in his hands.
“It won't be hard. All you have to do is kill him, I’ll deal with the rest. I already have Kerry and Lindsay on call for cleanup, you just have to text them when you're done,” Gavin said quickly.
Ryan sighed. “Fine. I'm assuming he’ll be showing up soon, since you keep watching out the window.”
Gavin nodded bashfully, then pulled his wallet out. He produced a business card from the museum with words and numbers written on the back in pencil and a photograph attached.
“Here’s everything I’ve got on him. Today's Friday, so he works 8am-3pm, break at 10am, doing tours in the fossil section,” Gavin said.
Ryan studied the card for a minute, then checked his watch. It was already 8:30.
“Meet me back here at 10:30am,” he said, standing from the table.
Gavin grinned wide. “Lovely Ryan. Good luck.”
~
Gavin was right, it wasn’t hard.
He then dug his sniper rifle from the trunk of his car and got a vantage point of the museums designated smoking area, and waited.
At 10:05am he came out of the back door and quickly dug through his pocket for a smoke. Ryan waited a moment in case someone followed him out. When no one did he took him out.
Ryan sent a text to Kerry and Lindsay reading simply ‘Cleanup.’ and fled the scene.
True to his word, Gavin was waiting for him when he came out, sitting at the restaurant sipping tea with a cup of coffee sitting adjacent to him.
Ryan sat across from him and grabbed the cup. It was warm, not hot, so he’d been waiting for some time.
“There’s sugar in it already.”
Ryan took a sip and found it perfectly done, two and a half packets of Splenda, two teaspoons cream. He gave Gavin an odd look, and he shrugged shyly. “I remembered from this morning.”
He nodded slowly. “So, tell me, why didn't you just tell Geoff about Mark? You've obviously knew long enough to gather all this information about him,” Ryan said, tossing the card and the photo back on the table.
Gavin shrugged. “Figured I’d cut out the middleman. He’d have had you do it anyways,” he said.
“Or Ray.”
Gavin didn’t have a retort to that, so he just stayed quiet.
“I haven’t been in the crew for long, so I'm still considered an at-risk member. If you're going behind Geoff’s back to do something you should probably tell me before I lose my job.”
“No, it's nothing like that,” Gavin said, fiddling nervously with the edge of the card.
“Then what's it like?” Ryan said when Gavin didn’t continue.
“What I tell you, Ryan, you cannot tell Geoff,” the lad said with an uncharacteristically serious look in his eyes.
Against his better judgement, Ryan nodded. “Okay.”
“Pinky promise,” Gavin said, offering a pinky.
Ryan frowned. “Seriously?”
Gavin nodded, deathly serious. Ryan frowned before locking pinkies with him.
“My father is the Don of a big mafia in England, and right now he and another big gang are fighting over territory in London. It's pretty big, and the guy you just killed was sent by the rival boss to take out a hit on my head.”
Gavin paused as Ryan absorbed the new knowledge. The Free mafia was one of the biggest in England, possibly the world. Suddenly Ryan felt a thousand connections being made in his head. Gavin’s money, for one, and his in depth knowledge of the politics of the criminal underworld.
“I thought you filmed TV pilots,” Ryan said, even though that was the least important of the millions of questions he had floating around in his head.
“I did, but when your father's a mafia boss it’s kind of hard to have a normal life,” he said.
“So why can’t you tell this to Geoff?" Ryan said.
“These gangs, their ruthless. It’s not like the crews here, they’ll stop at nothing to get what they need. They see the people in their command as disposable pawns, so they attack with all they’ve got. No strategy, just blood,” Gavin said with a distant look in his eyes. He shook his head. “I don’t want Geoff getting wrapped up in this, and you know he will. You know how he gets.”
“Well, what's your plan then? I'm sure the guy won’t just stop after one failed try,” Ryan said.
Gavin looked down at his tea and shrugged. “Haven’t really thought that far ahead. I was kind of hoping you'd just take them all out for me.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows at that. “Were you, then?”
“Not for free, I’d pay you. It’d be just like this, I do all the information gathering work and you just shoot at them,” Gavin said, meeting Ryan’s eyes.
“Gavin, I really do like my job,” he said. “Maybe Ray will help you?”
“Ryan, please,” Gavin pleaded. He grabbed Ryan’s arm tight, giving him a pleading look.
“Fuck me,” he muttered. “Fine, I’ll do it. But when this inevitably comes out, you're taking 100 percent of the blame.”
Gavin smiled wide, genuine, leaning back in his seat. “Of course, lovely Ryan!”
Ryan might’ve smiled back if he hadn't just agreed to place himself square in the middle of a mafia war for Gavin’s sake.