This was written as part of Live Journal's Spy_Fest 2011 group/community/thingy :P Give the others a chance too (I'll link from my LJ)

Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

"Sleeping With Giants"

Disclaimer: Any mention of 'Stormbreaker', 'Alex Rider', any associated entities, or any copyrighted material pertaining therein is reasonably protected by the Fair Use Rule of the United States Copyright Act of 1976, and is not intended to infringe upon any copyrighted material. The song is not mine either, and is credited individually in the contents of the story.

Summary: [Y/A] Alex has a choice to make.

Warnings: Slash. YG/AR. Mentions of death. Language? Spoilers.

Rating: R.

A/N: Yeah, not sure how well this turned out, but lj user="nuclearxsquid" seemed to like it! Thank you to Akuma_River and Star_Faerie for beta'ing this for me. Your help was much appreciated!

XXX

Words: 3,044

Chapter 1

Oh, we stood there, awkward and youthful, we tangled;
A piece of my soul escaped.
Oh, we are restless and tired of sleeping with giants,
It's been a lifetime, a lifetime we've waited for.
A simple question, kid, "are you with me or not at all?"
Are we wasting time or is it wasting us?
It's been a lifetime waiting for now…? - The Academy Is.

It was cold in his room.

By room, of course, Alex meant cell. It was four-by-four, with white painted walls lined with lead, and it had one tiny window right up by the ceiling. Wind whipped in and out of his cell through that window, and Alex clutched his legs against his chest, rubbing his calves to try and warm himself up. Tired, brown eyes gazed at the door intently. Alex wasn't sure what it was made from, but it was strong and hard, and he had broken two of the fingers on his right hand the last time he had attempted to beat his way out of his cell. He couldn't reach the window, and he couldn't break through the walls or the doors, and his guards shoved his food in through the cat flap in the door that only opened one way.

Alex shivered, huddled up on the floor. There was no furniture, he had been considered too much of an escape risk, and had consequentially only been allowed a pillow that was literally the size of his hand and couldn't suffocate him and a plastic blanket that refused to knot or twist and so he couldn't hang himself with it. It wasn't big enough to cover him, and Alex had taken to wearing it around his shoulders like a cape, to keep the chill off his back, and to rub it in the faces of whomever must be watching him that he was still a hero, still a good guy, no matter what they thought. He was like Superman, or Batman, or… Alex Rider. He was good, and he saved people, and yeah sometimes there was collateral damage, but shit happens. He wouldn't be here forever. They couldn't keep him here forever.

Good guys always win.

He was getting free. Soon.

Alex scoffed lightly as he thought that. He'd been there for months now, trapped and caged like an animal, having to listen to insults hurled in through the cat flap at 'feeding time', forced to admit to himself that no one was coming to save him, and damn, but he was all out of ideas for saving himself.

If he didn't get out of here soon… Alex clenched his hands, fingers curling angrily into his palms, nails biting into skin. His eyes were shut tightly, and he forced himself not to cry. He had wasted enough tears and anger and fear on this failed mission already; they didn't deserve anymore. They weren't worth it, he thought.

"To Hell with them all," Alex hissed, mutinously. His eyes flickered open, and his hands and arms relaxed, allowing his legs to slide out in front of him, stretched across the dirty, stone floor.

Treason. Traitor. Scum.

The words echoed around his cell, the cat flap swayed lightly under someone else's pressure, and Alex took a deep breath, resolving himself. At least they never came inside, he thought. Usually, his captors like to beat him, torture him, do other things to him when they could get away with it, but not here. He'd been here for months, and so far, he hadn't seen anyone but Crawley. No one came into his room; no one spoke directly to his face. If Alex didn't know better, he'd say that door didn't even open and they had thrown him into his cell, unconscious, through the tiny window: dropped, like a baby giraffe, and then trapped, like a criminal.

Alex ignored the sandwich that was thrown onto the floor. He ignored the foam cup of water that was pushed through the flap, and then tipped sideways, spilling across the floor. It always spilt, always, no matter how fast Alex dived forward to catch it. He had learnt after the second month to push away the panic within him, the terror of being left to dehydrate to death, and he had stopped throwing himself forward, stopped scraping his hands and knees on the stone, and had started letting the water fall. Someone always came at dusk and brought him a bottle on a string anyway, waiting while he drank, and then tugging the bottle away in case he tried to use it to stab himself or choke himself or shove it up his arse just to alleviate the boredom. He ignored the water; they'd bring more. He ignored the sandwich; his last one had someone's spunk inside of it.

He couldn't ignore the taunts though. Voices he recognized, faces he could probably remember, people he had worked with, stood outside of his cell, calling him names and promising him the death penalty.

"That's abolished in England!" Alex had shouted back, during one of the early visits, back when he had actually tried to defend himself.

They had shouted back about extradition, about how he was a murder and a traitor to England, America, Australia, to everyone he had ever worked for. Apparently America would happily stick a needle in the arm of a fifteen-year-old boy, or refuse to wet his head and give him the chair, if they even did that still, because he had it coming. Alex had stopped responding once they had started dragging his father into it.

He had said 'no'. He'd said it before, over and over, to Blunt and Mrs. Jones, and anyone else who would listen, but he had always ended up carrying out his mission. He had always succeeded at his mission, and that was why he had said no and meant it this time. He wouldn't be responsible for that man's death. Or imprisonment, death, imprisonment, death, which would be worse, Alex wondered.

Wasn't there a right to be free from false imprisonment? And a right to life? Did traitors even have rights, or were they worse than animals, (no? animals had rights). Alex frowned. Here he was, being penalized for saying no, for turning down a job that he didn't believe in, and he'd been stripped of his rights, punished and threatened and caged for trying to do the right thing. He wasn't human anymore, wasn't anything but a prisoner. He had tried to do right by a murderer, and now the murderer had more rights than him. Alex chuckled softly in amusement, pleased to notice that there was only silence outside of his cell now. It was good that Yassen was still free. They would have been crueller to Yassen than they had been to Alex. They hadn't hurt Alex beyond his initial arrest and the verbal abuse he tried hard to block out once a day.

Alex was only fifteen, Alex had never intentionally killed a person, Alex had completed many successful assignments in the past year to protect his country; Yassen was just a murderer. Who Alex happened to be sleeping with.

That was probably the fact that had MI6 all in a tizzy. It didn't really have anything to do with Alex refusing an assignment. Not really. It was more about Alex refusing to be the honey in the fly trap. That was the saying, right? MI6 planned to trap one fly in particular with honey, because vinegar sure as Hell hadn't been working. Yassen was alive. Alex had thought Yassen had died saving his life back on Airforce One, but he was alive and safe and happy, and so what if occasionally he broke into Alex's home in Chelsea to watch him sleep or press soft kisses to the teenager's forehead? It wasn't like Alex's knowing about all of this and never mentioning it to his bosses mattered. No one was getting hurt, after all!

"Yassen Gregorovich is alive," Alan Blunt had told him, months ago, in another life.

"We want you to help us catch him," Mrs Jones had said.

Neither of them missed Alex's soft, "oh, I know", in between their sentences, damning, condemning, so soft and innocently spoken, so naive.

They had explained the mission to him. He was to wait until Yassen came to him, seduce him, and then while Yassen was asleep and relaxed, with his guard down, Alex was to subdue him and then call for MI6. Blunt was advocating paedophilia, because Alex was only fifteen after all, and underage sex, and entrapment. They were probably going to bring Yassen up on charges of statutory rape on top of the numerous murder charges he would undoubtedly face. They could do all of this in the name of good, but Alex couldn't say no? They had nodded their heads, solemn and silent and sent him home. Two days later, Yassen had visited him, and Alex had slept with him, but not because Alan Blunt had told him too. Alex had done it because he wanted to, because Yassen wanted him and he wanted Yassen. Because it wasn't like it was their first time together, so the knowledge of this new, refused mission didn't change anything between them, not even once he had told Yassen about it, lying tangled and sweaty in the aftermath.

Mrs Jones had appeared at his house the following day, listing the charges against him. Treason. Traitor. Murderer. They were even trying him for the failed attempt on Mrs Jones' life when Alex had briefly been a member of Scorpia.

"What the hell?"

"Just do what we want, Alex. Just say yes and we can put all of this behind us." She had smiled at him empty and hopeful all at the same time, saccharine words dripping venom and making Alex's throat close up in panic.

"No."

"No."

"No."

He didn't remember how many times he had said it, but the word was permanently ingrained in his brain by now, stitched onto his tongue, the first word that came to mind whenever anyone shouted something through the cat flap or the wind blew up his dirty shirt. No, he wasn't a traitor; he had never betrayed England by falling in love. No, it was too cold and the blanket wasn't helping. No, he wasn't eating anything someone had spat in. No, no, no…

There was nothing else to do now but to remember all of the times he could have said no. Jack would have been deported; he would have ended up in a home for boys. Would they have imprisoned him then as well? Would he have ever met Yassen then?

Yassen had told him, years ago (was it really only last year?) that this life wasn't for him, that this world wasn't his, would never be his. Part of Alex wished he had run then, run and never looked back, but then where would he have ended up? Just as dead inside, trapped in some orphanage instead of this cell? Alone, unwanted, unloved—no, Yassen loved him, but Yassen wouldn't have known him if not for Stormbreaker. Maybe this life was better? All of the pain, and strife, and toil, all of it had resulted in Yassen, and even if MI6 took him away, Alex had been happy for a little while.

"You're playing with giants," Yassen had whispered from behind him, face against Alex's neck and arms around his waist. They stood together, in the airport and Alex's hair was dyed brown and cut choppily, and his clothes were hanging off of him, and he had nearly been eaten by crocodiles, but Yassen had known it was him straight away.

"You're dead," Alex had whispered, eyes closed, trying to cling to the dream.

"I'm sleeping with giants now," Alex had said with a grin, the first time Yassen had taken him to bed. The Russian had smiled warmly, blue eyes bright and pink lips parted. Alex ran his fingers through cropped blond hair, pulling his head up for a kiss, and Yassen met him willingly, hungrily.

"Sleeping with giants," Alex whispered to himself, huddling up again in his little cell. It was starting to get dark outside and colder inside, and a bottle came through the cat flap. Alex scrambled for it, drinking as much as he could in one go and pouring the rest into the little foam cup to save for later. Someone tugged on the string, and then the bottle was gone, pulled out of the flap, and Alex was left alone again with his little foam cup of water and his ghosts and giants.

Life would have been different if Ian hadn't died. If Yassen hadn't killed him. Life would have been different if his father hadn't worked for MI6 or gone deep cover for them and joined Scorpia, or met Yassen, or met Helen Rider, or… had Alex.

He shook the thoughts away. There was no other life, no other way, or choice, or what if. What he had was what he was stuck with, and the only change in Alex Rider's life from now on was needle or electric chair. He'd just have to man up and deal with that.

He slept soundly that night, and woke up, forgetting his dreams of Ian and Jack, Tom and Yassen, and the jolly green giant, who had kept trying to suffocate him beneath piles of sweetcorn and peas. Isolation turned people crazy, Alex thought to himself.

He was going crazy, he acknowledged as gun shots echoed through the corridor and through his little cell. He had started hallucinating. The next thing, Alex would start seeing a helicopter hovering outside of his cell window, with Yassen dangling from it upside-down. Or maybe Jack, inflating the tires on his bike, cause god knows Alex was always puncturing them. Or Tom, holding a football in one hand and Alex's homework in the other: "teacher asked me to give this to you. Feeling well enough for a game, mate?"

But Tom and Jack didn't come. There was no football, or homework, or bicycles.

Yassen stood in the open doorway of his cell, with a gun held limply in one hand. The other hand stretched out between them, and Alex watched warily, a soft smile on his face.

"You're not real," he told the apparition. "Does thoust see what I see before me? Or something like that. I missed the week we were doing MacBeth," Alex told his ghost with a small shrug.

Yassen responded, voice soft and his face relaxing in amusement. "Did you mean the scene where Banquo's ghost appears? Because then, what MacBeth says is, 'which of you have done this'."1

"'Thou canst not say I did it: never shake thy gory locks at me.'1 Are you here to torment me too?" Alex tilted his head to one side, considering Yassen who was still standing with his hand out, before he shakily pulled himself to his feet. His legs were stiff and his feet tingled, but Alex forced himself to walk forward. These last months, he had grown used to sitting or crawling, but even if Yassen was nothing but a ghost he wouldn't stand for Alex showing weakness before his enemies.

"I am here to rescue you, Alexander. Are you coming?" Yassen glanced over his shoulder, but there was nothing behind him but corpses.

"You're a ghost." Alex told him simply. He raised a pale hand, and passed a hairbreadth from touching Yassen's. "You're not here."

"I thought I was a giant?" Yassen questioned, as his hand came closer to Alex's, and finally caught the smaller appendage in his grip. "I told you it was too dangerous for you to be playing with the big boys, Alex."

Alex tugged his hand away, crossing them both over his chest, looking petulant and afraid. "I said no this time. They didn't accept my answer. They never do."

"I will. If you say no to me, I'll leave you alone. I won't force you to do anything you don't want to and I won't punish you for refusal, Alex. You know I won't." Alex bobbed his head, understanding, acknowledging. "So, Alex, one question. Are you with me or not at all?"

Alex looked around himself, at his little four-by-four cell, at the tiny window he could never quite reach and through which light didn't filter, just the cold. He looked the hand-sized pillow that felt like rock, and he tugged his plastic blanket off of his shoulders and watched as it fluttered to the ground. He stepped on it as he walked forward, nearly slipping in his sock feet, but he grinned anyway, because even if he fell Yassen would be there to help him up.

He was finally getting what he wanted.

Alex smiled at his lover, light and happy and excited, and reached out for the offered hand, squeezing it hard before raising it to his lips for a soft kiss.

"I'm with you." Alex tried to say more, but the words got tangled up in his mouth and he blushed brightly, scratching at the back of his neck with his free hand.

Yassen turned them around, and shoved Alex up against the wall. Their mouths met, hard and hot, wetly sliding against one another's, tongues and teeth clashing and Alex forgot about his cell and his ex-colleagues, and his death sentence. He clung tightly to Yassen, kissing back just as hard, and grinding his crotch up against the elder man's.

He felt like he had been waiting for so long for this.

"A lifetime," Alex whispered as Yassen led him through deserted corridors and out onto the street. Alex glanced back at the Royal & General, surprised that no one had tried to follow them or catch him, and when they were far enough away Yassen reached into his coat and pulled out a black plastic box. With one press of a button, MI6's headquarters exploded, raining fire and rubble down onto surrounding buildings and people, and Alex closed his eyes and likened the noises to fireworks.

He was free.

Yassen took his hand again, and begun leading him away. Together, they left everything behind.

The End

1 - taken from Macbeth, Act 3, and Scene IV.

That was fun :) And it appeared to have been enjoyed at LJ's Spy_fest, so hopefully you'll enjoy it here as well!