Aleksei Thompson

He didn't know what to feel, didn't really know what to think. It wasn't Gio much like Vyn had begun to fear. He'd explained, they'd believed, that he'd met up with his uncle who was a master hacker to help unravel the IP behind the messages on his old phone.

That had led him straight here and Aleks was only confounded by the naivety of Donnie's stalker. It was like it didn't even strike her that an internet trail would bring them back to her. Rei put it more accurately. Stupidity seemed more her forte than criminal stalking.

"What are you even doing here?" he cut his stare across to Rei who'd been standing over the collapsed blonde and quietly conversing with Donnie.

Rei glanced to him, the easy expression that had been gracing his face vaporizing once his gaze swiveled to him. "Gio called me over," he said, jerking a thumb back towards their friend who'd also been in conversation with Vyn.

"Why?" Aleks frowned. He couldn't wrap his head around the logic. With how tense Rei's threat had left him, he'd think him to be the last one Gio would call for help.

"Obviously even he can see who's the more reliable of the two of us," he remarked, tone caustic as he averted his gaze to Gio who had finished talking with Vyn and now rejoining the rest of them.

Aleks frowned at the jab but ignored it. With how long this feud had been going on between them, he'd learnt not to take most of Rei's words to heart. He'd heard him spout worse anyway. This one basically slid off his skin.

Rei's gaze was piercing, nailing Gio down to a spot so he had to stop a good few meters away from where he was with Donnie, all to his own devices since Vyn had to step aside to pick up a call.

"I didn't do anything," he said, shoulders somewhat slumped. "I wasn't colluding with anyone."

"I was at least ninety-five percent sure," Rei commented, raking his gaze blandly over Gio. "I wanted to keep things in check. On the off chance that the truth fell in five percent."

"You pointed a gun at me," he said, voice lapsing on a slight crack. No one was dense or oblivious enough to how the action had hurt him. "You couldn't just ask me point blank?"

"What would that have achieved?" Rei arched a brow.

"You don't trust me."

"Thought it was already pretty obvious," he said. "I don't trust anyone." Then his gaze fell on Donnie who was now arching her brow at him. "Maybe just you, love."

Aleks tried not to roll his eyes. Hard.

Gio's throat bobbed but he didn't say anything in the end.

"You're not off the radar just yet," he continued, either oblivious to the pain he was causing the younger man or just uncaring of it. Knowing Rei, it could only be the latter. "I still won't hesitate to gun you down if you try anything funny."

It was Donnie that finally gave in and rolled her eyes. "Back off, Rei," she commented lightly. "He's pretty much innocent."

"I don't know that," he said with a tsk.

Gio's lips parted to respond but then his gaze fell on the rifle at Rei's waist and then he snapped his mouth shut.

"She was threatening to flay him when you got in here," Aleks said. "I think it's safe to say he had nothing to do with this."

"Or maybe it's safe to say he'd outlived his use already," Rei snorted.

"No, it's alright," he murmured before bringing his gaze back to Rei's. "I got it."

"Okay," Vyn dragged out, stepping in before Rei could add on with something that would just make Gio bleed some more. "Patrol's on their way already. For like some five minutes."

"She's really going to jail," Donnie commented lightly, eyes dropping to her falling co-star who'd been knocked out cold by Rei. "How long do you reckon she'd get if she goes to trial?"

"Anything from five to seven," Vyn said.

Donnie just gave a stiff nod. Aleks didn't know what exactly she was thinking about. How the enmity Victoria had for her went to the extent of messing around this far or the various magazines and tabloids they'd noticed she obsessively hoarded like no man's business which they'd discovered when they went around scouring further inside.

"Why take her to jail?" Rei scoffed, eyes narrowing in challenge when their gazes found his, Aleks' expression contorting with a slight frown. "Can't I just flay her?"

"We live in a legal society, Rei," Aleks said, appalled that this was how he'd think to settle it and take revenge for Donnie.

"Sure," his smile was tight-lipped, tone taking a dismissive turn before he totally ignored him and turned to talking more with Donnie while they waited for the patrol to arrive so they could convey Victoria to the station in a tighter, secure wagon.

Aleks paused, deciding not to dwell on it even further since the man had dropped it in the end. No one was simple but he didn't even know the extent Rei's unquestionable morals would broach if allowed.

It didn't waste much more time and soon Vyn was handing a now cuffed up, still surprisingly unconscious Victoria Lee— Rei must have hit her really hard— to Kaiden who exchanged a few words before taking his leave with Jamison who seemed to want to strangle her himself for very possibly being the one to cause his sister's end.

They left afterwards, Gio falling in step with Vyn while Aleks just watched them from behind, gaze lighting on Gio's back and softening even more. He didn't let it show then but he'd breathed a sigh of relief when they'd realized upon walking closer and hearing that stalker's threats that Gio was as innocent as he'd claimed and had only been framed by her in a bid to tear their attention away from her and the case.

Their group couldn't stand any more division. They were torn at the core already. Five years hadn't healed that. He wasn't sure anything could.

Reinhardt Rodriguez

They came up at the rear of the group. He and Donnie. She wasn't there right then and he didn't count on any other person noticing since they were too absorbed in finally apprehending the cause of her woes. "What's wrong?" he finally asked when the silence got too hard for him to continue trying to ignore.

She snapped out of it immediately, her lips rising in a smile. But he knew that smile. It was the practiced, plastic one. The one she gave when she was basically shutting everyone out and just wanted to be left to stew. "Oh, nothing's wrong," she said. "Why would you think that?"

"Don't," he said, sighing when her shoulders slumped and she let the smile drop faster than anything. The quickest face change, if he ever saw one. "Don't do that."

"It's nothing important," she finally murmured, eyes finding the others in front before they dropped again. She was besides herself and idly rubbing the thumb and forefinger of her right hand idly against each other.

Rei wrapped a palm around her cold hand before she could rub the appendages raw. "It's me, Mads," he stopped walking, so she was forced to stop alongside him and meet his arresting gaze. "We weren't together long enough. But we'd loved hard." A pause. "You can talk to me. Tell me anything, remember?"

She hesitated before a thin smile, a much realer one this time, slowly cracked her lips. "Fine, I hate it," she finally confessed, the tension that she'd been packing in her nerves fading with that one simple sentence.

Rei waited.

"I mean, it's just unfair, unfair that she gets to get away with just five to seven years," she elaborated, gaze starting to sparkle with the fresh sheen of tears over them. "What about me? I feel scarred. She could get back into biz once she's out. She's young, hardly in her twenties yet. Who'd remember what she even did many years from now. Who'd remember me?"

Rei massaged the hand in his, giving quiet comfort, but didn't offer his opinion knowing she wasn't done just yet.

"It was daunting for me, Rei, so fucking horrifying," she mumbled, the tears finally escaping her eyes and ending up being aggressively thumbed away. "All those threats, the messages. I was scared out of my mind, watching my friends, mentees, co-stars dropping to their deaths one by one."

Rei's face turned rigid with the anger that started stealing its way back into his body, just wanting to rip the bitch a new one. And then rip Aleks for not wanting him to.

"She sent me the mutilated carcass of a pig," she sniffled. "At my own damn meet and greet. But all I could see was the way in which she skinned my own colleagues and not that dead pig. And how, any moment now, I might be the one getting ripped apart."

Rei was livid but still struggled to contain himself which was hardly manageable at the sight of his beloved brokenly shedding tears at how what she'd experienced had greatly affected her.

"I was so afraid, Rei," she continued, the tears flowing freer now with her not having the time to even stop it now. "I still am. When Vyn snapped the cuff on her, I felt like she was still getting away despite not, if that makes any sense? I suffered with all of her warped psychological attacks and she gets to get off with a light sentence?"

Rei swallowed, unable to stop the light from filtering into his expression upon discovering that she, to some extent, saw things the way he did.

"Now, I'm just being a whiny bitch, aren't I?" she continued at his lack of response, nearly believing she had fossilized him with her dark thoughts.

"No, Mads," he said, lip quirking in the first truly delighted smile he'd felt in the past couple hours. "You're being human. No one should experience what you did and be told to just suck it up."

She remained slightly hesitant. "Aleks—"

"Fuck Aleks," he said coldly. "Aleks wasn't the one being stalked or harassed or threatened. It's easy for him to act up on his fucking high horse, defending perfect morals. You need closure, Mads. That bitch simply going to jail shouldn't cut it."

"You think?" Her expression warmed as though she hadn't expected him to see the same way she did. Like he could ever be against her. "Thanks, Rei. You have no idea. I thought I was losing it with how much misfortune I suddenly wished upon her. Is it wrong to want her to suffer like she made me?"

"No, it's called being perfectly human," he reassured, wrapping his arms around her. "Don't ever suck it up. Do you hear me?"

He didn't get to hear her reply when he heard Vyn calling out to them from a couple feet away, only just noticing they had stopped following a while back.

"Everything good back there?" her concern as the trio started walking back had Donnie stiffening from where she'd just started relaxing into his hug and slowly pulling back, her face getting exceedingly pale at the sight of Aleks not far behind.

"You okay, Donnie?" Aleks asked, reaching his hand out in comfort.

Rei pulled her a few inches back so she was behind him, gaze narrowing coldly at the arm he was sure to break if it even breached his sense of reasonable distance. "She's fine," he said, gaze scorching before he turned to reassure an even more worried Vyn. "Just needed a moment."

"Yeah," Donnie said, clearing her throat to get rid of the stammer her words broke in. "Yeah, that."

Rei cut her a glance to reassure her they'd talk more about it later, perhaps when they were alone, before glancing back to Vyn.

"Want to catch a break?" she suggested. "Could do you, us as well, a whole lot of good. I mean, if you're up for it? Just to let loose."

"I don't think. . ." she trailed, every bone in her body exuding her hesitance. "I'm really drained. I'm not up for much activity."

"Just something quiet then?" she suggested.

"I know a place," Gio piped up quietly, skittishly averting his gaze when along with the others, Rei's gaze turned to him.

If anyone else noticed, they didn't comment.

Vynessa Patel

The place Gio brought them to was an art studio. Well, not exactly despite the nearly demolished sign hanging outside that had been the one to mislead them.

"You want us. . ." Rei trailed, grimacing as he fought to keep his tone placidly neutral. And still ended up failing. "To paint?"

Gio glanced up too then, smile nearly faltering. "Not exactly. I come here to stress relief every once in a while," he shrugged, his blue eyes brightening the slightest bit as they found Donnie's eyes. "It's quiet, since you weren't up for much more upbeat scenes like drinking or going to a KTV."

"It's great," Donnie grinned, her first words to him since they'd apprehended the suspect. They hadn't had a chance to talk yet but Vyn felt it wouldn't be that far off as it stood especially after she had talked with Gio herself, having even apologized for not fully or unconditionally believing in him in the first place. "Let's do it." She walked in behind Gio, Rei letting her drag him in all the way.

"Has this place always been this bare?" Vyn couldn't help wondering as she followed as well, glancing across the open place. It must have been a studio at some point, she was sure of it, but now everything in it had been cleared out leaving the room to be one spacious large box, walls protected with white tarp and seats stacked against the wall with many other painting supplies.

"Not really, I had it cleared out," he paused. "I haven't been able to paint much since. . . well, since dad."

Vyn and Donnie shot him empathetic smiles, recalling painting had been his passion, the latter especially who knew the studio had been built for him by his dad.

"I'll get the stuff," he said, before withdrawing to disappear behind a door and returning wheeling out a cart full of paint balloons, exchanging a soft, easy smile when Donnie bounded over to the cart.

"This should be fun," Vyn chuckled lightly. After all Donnie had experienced and the fight that had filled them trying to hunt down her stalker, such an easy classic activity seemed like the perfect way to actually let loose.

Rei didn't think so. His face was scrunched up like a little paint had now become his mortal enemy. "I don't see how—" he broke off mid sentence when a paint ball came hurtling straight at him, drenching his white button up and some of his khaki pants with glaring red. "Mads." But he hardly sounded mad.

"Oops?" she grinned at his drawn expression, immediately arming herself with a couple more paint balloons when he rolled up the sleeves of his long sleeve and strode over, already won over once they saw him picking up a balloon and bouncing it lightly in his hand, a teasing smile on his face as he stared at Donnie who immediately made a break for it, zigzagging around the room.

The next half hour was filled with their fervent chasing around the room and the sound of exploding paint, only strategizing back to the cart that now seemed to be filled with the neverending balloons Gio had tied up but never thought he'd be using so quickly.

Vyn cackled with laughter every time she got a balloon in. But her aim only ended up marking Gio or Aleks. Rei was perfect at evading them and somehow also protecting Donnie while he was at it. He hit every target he shot his paint balloons at. She'd been shot only once, Gio twice or thrice while Aleks was now an array of something similar to a color palette.

And all the while Donnie didn't seem to be able to aim well enough to hit anyone else but Rei. That was only because he let himself be defenseless around her and let her have her fun. Maybe he'd surmised being on the end of her paint explosions was all fine and good as long as that smile, the one that had nearly vanished due to the antics of the stalker, remained on her face.

Vyn was breathless, collapsing to the ground in laughter and not even guarding against Donnie who jubilated her downfall with a, "score!" when Gio aimed fast at Rei and shot him down with purple paint.

Rei extricated himself from where he'd been doing battle with Aleks, the latter who was now spent at not even being able to get a balloon in edgewise with his opponent and darting around the room while beseeching for a timeout.

Aleks instantly collapsed against one of the wall of tarp splotched with all the varieties on a color wheel which he nearly brought down.

Donnie couldn't seem to catch her breath from where she was laughing at all their antics nestled on the paint soaked floor with Vyn, watching as Rei turned the full extent of his attention on Gio.

"I'd been going easy on you," he remarked lightly, sounding more amused than anything.

"I didn't collude with anyone," Gio said, breathless from running around for so long but still holding on to a blue paint balloons, unhesitant to aim if Rei tried to rebut his innocence. Not even if he might miss. Which, being real, was most likely.

Rei just smiled. "Sure," he raised his hands in surrender.

So, Gio backed off too.

Vyn found herself shaking with fits of laughter, Donnie joining in as well when Rei turned around and hurled the last paintball on him straight at an unsuspecting Aleks, coating him in paint that instantly flattened his hair further, yellow dribbling down his face.

"You're playing dirty," he groaned, wiping his face down with his palm so he could see.

"Bite me."

"That's unfair," Aleks said, turning to Gio to ask if he had somewhere they could all wash up.

"Sorry," Rei sounded anything but, a sly smile curling the edge of his lip as he basked in the other's colorful misfortune. "Couldn't pass that up."

Giovanni Jensen

He didn't think he'd be that lucky to find evidence so fast. It was like Donnie's stalker wanted to be found in the first place. Anyway, he was glad Rei had answered his text since he hadn't thought he would or that Vyn or Aleks would be close enough to come to his aid by the time he shot the text minutes prior. But it was too late to try to text them instead so he'd just hoped Rei did come.

And he had. Smacked the darn woman unconscious as soon as he got there quick enough to hear her tirade and all her talk of flaying him. It was quite anticlimactic how easily she'd fallen.

"Hey," he sidled up to Rei's side where he was hanging out after he'd handed over the clothes he'd stepped out to get for Vyn and Donnie who were still drying in the inner room in their bathrobes.

"Want one?" he asked, offering up his packet of cigarettes, one hanging loosely between his lips.

"No, that's okay," Gio said, lip twitching. He still had his whole life ahead of him and didn't want to take the chances with his perfectly working pair of lungs. He watched him tuck the pack back into the pockets of the sweats Gio had handed him, the only clothing item he had that could actually fit him. Plus, it wasn't even his.

Rei lit his cig and smoked quietly while they waited for Vyn and Donnie to finish dressing and for Aleks to finish scrubbing the paint off his skin.

"I just wanted to thank you," he explained, averting his gaze and looking out at the streets in easy focus now that they were chilling out on the patio. "For coming. I didn't think you would."

"I wasn't going to at first," he murmured.

Gio accepted the silence that filled the air around them, not sure he could even trust his voice.

"I was only willing to shoot you because it concerned Maddie's safety," he said. "But I care about you. I care about all of you. That's a lot because I can count on one hand only a couple other people."

"Really?" Gio asked, sure this was the first of it the other had let himself reveal. At least to them. "Even Aleks?"

"Sure," he said, grimacing as though the words left a sour taste in his mouth. The admission probably did. "Even him."

"Can I ask. . ." Gio trailed and upon seeing Rei's gaze remained as blank, open as ever, plowed through with it. "Why you hate him?"

Rei paused, gaze turning vacant as he turned it to the road ahead of them, unseeing. "Not necessarily him," he explained. "Just his father. He was part of the founding circumstances for why I came to band with you all later on."

Gio didn't push anymore like that. If his reasons for hating Aleks' father and by extension, Aleks himself was anything like Gio and Donnie's losing their father and mother over the schemes of the latter's higher-ups, then he didn't want to bring that kind of pain upon another by recalling it.

Even if he was mad curious what could have made the man in front of him the distraught person they'd met back then.

"I don't hate him. Not really, I think," he continued. "It's just pent-up and I have no one else to take it out on. Least of all his father who caused it in the first place."

"It's alright," Gio shrugged, not wanting him to share if he wasn't ready to.

"But Aleks is okay, to an extent," he said. "I don't hate him. I just have to work through the shit his father caused me first."

Gio just hummed in silence, forcing down his even more niggling curiosity at his words.

"Aleks isn't a piece of shit," the man himself appeared from the door behind them, Vyn and Donnie chatting behind him. "What? You're badmouthing me again, around you?"

Gio felt his lip twitch but couldn't exactly fault the other's reasoning even with his new insight. In fact, Rei was always throwing barbs at the other and doing his best to claw at his throat it was no wonder there wasn't a clue to what he really felt.

"So what if I am?" he snorted, turning fully so he was squarely facing Aleks, posture relaxed. "You're looking a little blue. Are you alright?"

Aleks' brows wrinkled, his confusion apparent as he turned around to check if he was talking to Donnie right behind him instead, whose attention was now arrested by Rei's "concern". "What?" he asked.

"Or green?" he commented, tone light with tease. "I think maybe a little yellow too."

Aleks' expression swiftly descended to annoyance. "And who's fault is that pelting me with darn who knows how many balloons?" he scowled.

"I see a little pink too, could be red even," he said with a hack snort. "Don't you see a little pink, Vyn?"

"Yeah, I see it," she joined the teasing with a light chuckle. "Though it should be red? It's a little to bright for just pink."

Aleks shot her a dry look as though he couldn't believe she'd decided to join him in this, finally huffing at the amusement in Donnie's eyes despite her refraining from partaking and heading ahead on his own.

Gio hurried after him while the others trailed behind, if only to offer some balm for his wounded spirit.

So, apparently, Rei didn't hate him as much as they, Aleks included, had been led to believe. But the man himself didn't know that.

Donnie Ramos

"That was fun," she said once they were away from the others and headed back to Rei's own penthouse.

"Only because you hardly got pelted at all," Rei said with a hack snort, dissolving into short laughter when she shot him an affronted glare. "Do you feel any better?"

"Yeah," she said, sinking into the feeling of the woolen wine jacket he'd gotten her. "Much better. Now I just want to sleep for days."

Their walk back was quiet as they headed out into the denser parts of the main road and finally hailing a cab back. Donnie paused, her eyes widening in alarm, when the car suddenly screeched to a sudden stop before they'd barely begun their journey, the cab driver meeting her gaze in the rearview.

"Donnie Ramos?"

Rei's hand was on his rifle in that split second.

"No, no, no," the man waved his hands frantically. "My daughter's a huge fan. She knows all your songs and has watched nearly all your movies. Could I, perhaps, get an autograph?"

Donnie dropped her hand that had been feeling up the maskless lower half of her face, putting a gentle arm on Rei, the tension fleeing his body like a switch had been flipped.

"Of course," she turned a smile on the older man, accepting the pink notebook he had to ruffle through his glove compartment to obtain. "What's your daughter's name?"

He paused, hardly able to contain the shit eating grin that made him look much younger. "Amelie," he informed. "Her name's Amelie."

Donnie returned his smile before neatly scrawling a message for the man's daughter in her pretty penmanship. The man was besides himself with gratitude when he accepted the book back from them, finally starting the car again and getting it back on the road, darting fervent glances back at them through the rearview up until he was stopping them at their destination.

Donnie couldn't stop her easy smile as she walked into the house with Rei. Nice to know she still had her whole life in front of her, despite Victoria wanting to put a damper on that.

"Should we talk?" he asked tagging after her to the doorway of her room, watching her settle into the bed and kick of her sandals. "I mean, it's fine if you feel much better and want to put it all behind you. But if you still want to—"

"I want to," she said, eyes narrowed as she slowly slipped off the jacket. "I'm not hateful or anything, right? I just want. . . Is it wrong to want her to feel the pain I had?"

"No, it's not," he reassured. "You can hate as much as you want, hurt her as much as you want. So long as it'll help you be better, feel better in the long run."

"Yeah," she said, not sure when he'd crossed the threshold of the doorway to come crouching in front of her and take her hands between his. "Yeah, that'd really help with the weight in my heart."

"Then we'll do it," he said. "I'll get her so you can vent as much as you'd like. It'll be hard but anything so long as it could help you put this dark episode of your life behind you."

"Thanks, Rei," she said, going over the thought in her head but finally just going ahead with it and placing a hand in his hair, gently sifting through the strands of his slowly growing buzz cut. "I'm really happy, happy that you're here with me."

He met her gaze, held it hard, as though the image of her stroking his hair would disappear into fractioned smithereens if he didn't focus hard enough. "I'm happy as long as you're happy," he said.

She smiled, cheeks heating when her cognizance finally caught up with what she was doing, withdrawing her hand.

Rei gently caught hold of her fingers before she could draw it back all the way. "I still love you," he said quietly, gaze piercing with the intensity of his emotions. "I don't know how it's possible to love you even more with each passing moment. But I do."

Butterflies were making a happy mess in her stomach and leaving her unable to form much of a coherent sentence. There was one sentence she could manage, though. And it was the one that mattered most to him.

Mattered most to them.

"I also still love you," she said. "I never stopped." The follow-up sentence was hardly at of her mouth before he rose so he was bending over her and crashed his lips on hers, fervently kissing with all of his pent-up passion as his hand came to cradle the back of her head.

Donnie matched his heat, fingers coming to latch onto the soft strands of his hair as she sunk back into the warm, moist, familiar feeling. She pulled back, slightly breathless as her hand came to clasp around his gentle hold on the front of her shirt.

"Mads," he groaned. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"Sorry," she said. "I'm really too spent."

"Okay," he said resignedly, perking back up so he could steal a kiss from her reddened lips. "Get some rest."

Donnie's lip twitched when he just kept peppering her face with kisses and made no move to leave. She refrained from asking how many cold showers he would take when he begrudgingly slipped his lips from hers minutes later. Or how much he'd have to. . .

Her face turned beet red when they dropped to his lower half. She glanced back up quickly, mortified, when he let out a husky chuckle.

"Night, Mads," he said before finally taking his leave.

Maddie changed into a silk nightgown before curling up on the bed that suddenly felt all the more spacious to her. She'd been tired but unlike she had been expecting, sleep didn't find her easy that night.

–

This chapter is inspired by Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. The song's upbeat and lively theme was used to show their team's willingness to pop right back up even after a setback and seen in their playing around during the paintball fight and the light teasing post it.

Don't forget to shoot a vote and let me know what you think :))

Love,
Evy.