Uhh, I wrote a thing? It's kinda short but I was reading a bunch of Arthur/Eames stuff and Inception is a badass movie, so.
Also it’s been actual eons and I missed you guys.
So here's this.
♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤
"Do political moves always end up like this?"
Hamlet shrugs as best he can with his hands tied behind his back, and grins even though the black bag over his head hides it. Horatio knows exactly what expression he's making anyway.
"More or less," he says.
Horatio gives an annoysappointed sigh, pulling the bag off Hamlet's head a little more roughly than strictly necessary. Hamlet figures he deserved it. He does not, however, believe he deserves the cold look of protective fury on his boyfriend's face as Horatio begins sawing away at the ropes binding his hands.
"You could have died," Horatio growls, and Hamlet rolls his eyes.
"That's a bit dramatic, Horatio."
"You, Hamlet, emo prince of poetry and seduction, have absolutely no right to call me dramatic, ever. And I'm not being dramatic if I'm right. Which I am."
This is true. Attempts to hold Danish royalty for ransom are nothing new, and the success of doing so with his mother decades before has painted Hamlet as an easy, lucrative target. What kidnappers never seem to understand is that Hamlet was trained much more extensively than the queen in diplomacy, which included lessons such as escaping handcuffs and leaving coded distress signals.
Ah, politics.
Horatio rifles through his bag as Hamlet rubs at his bruised wrists, then tosses him a handgun. Hamlet slides it beneath his belt at the small of his back, a comforting weight that makes him dangerous. Not that anyone would dare to touch him now; Horatio, ambidextrous and armed with four times more guns than Hamlet, would put a bullet in their kneecap too fast. Hamlet loves him so much.
They move through the building with practiced precision. Hamlet doesn't even try to be subtle about ogling his boyfriend when Horatio stops to hack his way through a security keypad on a door. Determination and adrenaline look good on him, and if it means that their six goes unguarded for a moment, well, Hamlet never protested watching how efficiently Horatio incapacitated an opponent.
The relative safety of the building's underground parking lot comes all too quickly, but Hamlet has trouble being disappointed when Ophelia comes flouncing out of their nondescript truck to wrap him in a hug that smells like expensive perfume and feels like a python.
"Getting the layout of the building was so easy," she gushes, finally letting go to allow Laertes to give Hamlet the obligatory man-hug. "The blueprints were just out on the internet. Page four of Google, they're such amateurs!"
"Bad at ransoming, too," Laertes grunts. "Fifty grand for the Prince of Denmark? Come on."
Hamlet snorts. "And they call themselves a mafia. No one out-mafias Italy. Right, Horatio?"
The universe proves Hamlet's point in a way that he will later look back on and wonder about karma. Four armed guards ("goons" as Laertes calls them, because he's a goddamn nerd) come running and yelling all at once with their guns raised, and the boys all shoot a collective look of appreciation at Ophelia, who winks and then puts on her best damsel-in-distress face.
"Put your hands behind your heads!" orders a guard who seems to have deemed himself the leader. His voice is trembling, and Hamlet briefly feels sorry for him. This poor man is probably younger than him. Well, he thinks, occupational hazard.
He drops to the ground in a feat of pure muscle memory when he hears a click from somewhere behind him. Small discs, sailing two at a time and painted Ophelia's trademark pink, connect with a metallic sound to their targets' presumably bulletproof armor, and the guards barely have time to look at one another before Ophelia presses a button on a handheld control and all of them go stiff with electrocution.
Hamlet grins and springs to his feet, clambering into the truck as Laertes hits the gas. Ophelia takes shotgun to argue with her brother over the best way to get onto the highway and preferably not attract the attention of the authorities. Horatio wordlessly hands Hamlet a larger gun: a fancy-looking semiautomatic rifle that, given Horatio's attention to detail and general nerdiness, is quite possibly a genuine WWII M1 Carbine. Hamlet would ask him later, and probably also initiate something sexy as an apology for being reckless.
For the moment, he decides that the best way to get back on Horatio's good side is to put the Carbine to good use, so he leans out the window and directs bursts of ammunition at the tires of the first car tailing them.
It is Horatio who hits his mark, no more than ten seconds later, and he pulls himself back into the car to reload and accept Ophelia's bet money with a smile. Hamlet rolls his eyes fondly (of course Horatio had money on himself in a gunning contest) and keeps shooting.
It is around five minutes afterward, when there are no more vehicles chasing them and the rope burn on Hamlet's wrists is beginning to affect his aim anyway, that Horatio takes the Carbine out of his hands and pulls him into a kiss.
Hamlet knows that Horatio will taste the pungent blood in his mouth, gained from his "inability to shut the fuck up" and "tendency to insult his captors" and the subsequent punches. Hamlet would do it all again. The man he saw has been wearing an eye patch (an actual eye patch, like a comic book villain!) and the pirate jokes would not have made themselves.
"You're a fucking idiot," Horatio says into his mouth. "What the hell were you thinking."
It's not a question, and Hamlet gets the feeling that responding with a truthful "I wasn't" is not going to get him laid tonight. So, instead, he pulls a rookie card. "It's not my fault my alias was shit."
Ophelia makes an affronted sound and climbes halfway over the center console to point an accusing finger at him. "You take that back! Zachary Lilly was a lovingly crafted character and it's entirely your fault that you didn't play him right. You were supposed to be straight, Ham! I even named your girlfriend Harriette!"
Before even making his point, Hamlet punctuates it by biting at Horatio's ear, then says, "In what universe do you expect me to pass for straight? And give up my gorgeous Italian wet dream of a boyfriend for a basic white girl? What part of that alias was a good idea?"
Horatio rolls his eyes but, to his credit, gracefully accepts the compliments. Hamlet is about to remark on this progress when Horatio opens his damn mouth. "Your alias is allowed to cheat on me with his equally imaginary girlfriend. I thought you were an actor."
"I am an actor, a damn good one! There are just certain characatures I cannot effectively convey. Let's change my name to Lilly Zachary next time so I can play straight and still flirt with the waiter. Then I'll feel even more like I'm cheating and we can have awesome make-up sex when I return."
"It says a lot about you that you pass better as a woman than you do as straight."
"I love you too, darling."
~~~
Queen Gertrude is immediately fussing over a rip in Ophelia's dress when they get out of the car, and Ophelia looks so upset about it too that Hamlet can't muster the heart to remind them that they're not blood-related. Hamlet's brief engagements to first Laertes and then his sister had inducted them into the family quite thoroughly.
Finally, Hamlet's mother bustles over to him and holds his face in both hands, checks for injuries even though Horatio had already done so much more clinically, and then pulls him into a smothering hug. He nuzzles into her shoulder and breathes a deep sigh.
Now all he has to do is explain to her what he, as Zachary Lilly, had been doing that would put him in a position to be kidnapped. As far as conversation topics go, not-very-legal unconventional weapons is not a great one to discuss with one's mother.
He's grounded for a month and Horatio doesn't even attempt to break in through his window for two weeks.
The fully-functional flamethrower now stashed beneath his floorboards is entirely worth it.
♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤
I'm definitely gonna do more of this AU (and maybe pair it with sugar daddy!Hamlet because that there's a quality idea). I really like it. I have an entire multi-play story that's been cooking for months. Thoughts?
A related but separate point: BAMF Horatio. With guns, and extremely protective. Squee.
I'm off on a road trip for three weeks, so we'll see if I get anything done. I'm honestly not sure. Welp, for the moment, faeries, may you always have an impeccable alias and/or alibi.