Title: On the move
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teen?
Length: 1600ish words
Content notes: Injury, mostly off-screen violence.
Author notes: Zazu/Ascot - set in my spies!au which I should probably be calling a man from uncle/leverage fusion!verse at this point, heh. Technically right after this previous ffwks fic but I think it stands alone.
Summary: Zazu's having such a bad night that his decision-making skills might possibly be called into question...


oOo

Zazu managed to not panic long enough to get Ascot back to their last safehouse, get all their shit in the van, then call in a favour and find a trustworthy doctor who could treat Ascot. He even managed to get them to said doctor, an hour north, while Ascot alternatively dozed and winced next to him.

It was three in the morning, local time, when they pulled up behind the very classy looking house which backed onto a lake, and he could hand Ascot over for treatment.

Normally he would have stayed and monitored what was going on, but – well, for one thing, he was hardly hygienic.

For the other, he wasn’t sure he could actually keep from freaking out while his husband got stitched back together.

Anyway, he’d blown an identity, a burner phone, and a whole con Eagle was running to get hold of this woman’s name, and he trusted Eagle and Geo to not screw around with this kind of information. So instead of lurking he headed out to sit on the edge of the lake, in the shadows, and have a small breakdown where no one was watching.

It was like his brain was out of RAM – like he’d managed to overclock himself hard to get them here, and now they were, his brain had overheated and just frozen up. Bluescreened. Whatever you wanted to call it, he tried to think about what to do next, and just – there was nothing.

His hands were shaking, and there were flakes of dried blood on them. He stared down at them, and bit his lip.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know running around committing industrial espionage and other criminal activities could be dangerous, but – but still.

His husband had been shot.

Zazu scrubbed one hand on his trousers, roughly, then over his head, before laying his head on his knees and trying to breath evenly.

It was the first time they’d been in that much physical danger since – well, since they’d ended up getting married back in Vegas, probably. (Which counted, even if they’d both been using false names. They’d meant it, and that was the important bit.) Right now… right now he was feeling an absolute failure of a shit spouse, because intel was his job, and he’d missed what a colossal heap of shit their last job was likely to become until they were in the middle of it, and then the guns had come out, and-

The only consolation was that he and Ascot hadn’t been the actual targets of the… confrontation. They’d ended up in the middle of a dispute between two gangs, and as far as he could tell they were mostly limited to at least the one state. Retaliation for getting involved was unlikely – but not impossible, which was why he’d intended driving south fast. Only the doctor had been north-west, and now he had time to think, he was leaning towards heading towards the northern border instead, where he would be better able to communicate if Ascot ended up needing hospital treatment – fears of sepsis were running through him as fast as his choked-up brain could run anything. He spoke a couple of languages other than English, but the only other languages he was really fluent in were coding ones.

…Something else to fix after they were safe. Not now. But still he found himself pulling his SIM-less smartphone out of his pocket, wondering if there was an app for that yet – there had to be.

It wouldn’t teach him how to have a medical conversation in the next couple of days – so north, where English was more likely, seemed safer right now.

“Okay,” he muttered, closing his eyes. He was spinning his wedding ring on his finger. Problem one: they probably needed to ditch the van; Ascot had bled on it, a little, but he’d been bleeding that much partially because he’d been completely unable to find a position in the seats which didn’t pull at his side – they weren’t very adjustable, and Ascot’s legs barely fit in the footwell even with the seat back as far as it could go.

Pulling another cheap phone out of his pockets, the only one left that hadn’t ever been turned on, Zazu set it up to run as a hotspot, and turned to the internet; there had to be a better solution.

---

By the time Ascot was released – with a course of antibiotics, a set of painkillers, and a set of dissolving stitches keeping him together – Zazu had a plan.

It was a terrible plan, in so many ways – but it was a plan.

Ascot slept through the two hours drive further east, where a gloriously dodgy used-car lot was just opening up by the time they got there, and happy to take their blood-stained van in part-exchange for a larger one with equally dubious provenance. He woke up enough that Zazu had to talk him out of helping as he got all their stuff out of their old van and into the back of the new one, but the slight, surprised relief on Ascot’s face as he relaxed into the passenger seat on the new van was enough to make it worth every moment of lugging cases back and forth.

(Most of their belongings were actually Zazu’s computer stuff, anyway, so he had no one else to blame for the multiple boxes of parts and tools and so on.)

After that, it was another three hours, and Zazu was really starting to flag by the time they reached his next target – one massive big blue store with an iconic yellow logo.

Ascot blinked out of another doze, peering out of the windscreen with a look of confusion. “…Uh, Zazu? I know you like the jam here, but-“

“Flat-pack van conversion!” Zazu announced, probably far too brightly, and certainly too loudly. “I mean. There’s a camping store not far away, I was going to head there next for a couple of things, but without tools-“ he waved at the back of the van, then the store. “My tools aren’t the kind you want for diy furniture or… whatever people put in these things, but we can buy kitchen stuff and mattress and bedding and everything here and then – give me an hour to nap and I should be able to manage flat-pack instructions and we’ll be just two people going on holiday in our van conversion! And we can stay in nice quiet places with no internet or cctv while you heal up and I work out the best way to get us across the ocean.” He paused. “I mean. If you’re okay with living in a van with me for a couple of weeks, or-“

Slowly, Ascot grinned. “We never did get a honeymoon,” he said, quietly. “And I’m sure Caldina jokes about married couples finding out if the marriage is going to last by putting furniture together.”

Zazu stared at him. “Ascot, I have to tell you, this would be a shit honeymoon. You just got shot!”

“Mm. Only a little.”

Snorting, Zazu had to shake his head, and that was apparently what Ascot had been waiting for – he reached out, looking please, and lay his hand on Zazu’s.

“Thank you for looking after me,” was all he said, but it was enough to make Zazu bit down on his lip, eyes suddenly prickling hot.

“I would just have bought some kind of RV,” he said, in a rush, “like, a proper one, only I couldn’t find anywhere close enough that would sell me one for cash without it looking unsanitary. This seemed easier than bleaching something to shit and then having to breathe in the fumes for weeks- if we were doing this properly-“

Ascot patted his hand, and Zazu managed to stop reeling off the spec for his ideal RV, as discovered during the half hour of research he’d done that morning before deciding this was the only way forward he could actually grasp with no sleep, no time, and less than two grand available in cash.

“They’ve got a restaurant, I think?” Ascot asked, looking out at the store with interest. “I’ll buy us lunch, and you can grab a catalogue and draw me some diagrams of how this van thing is going to work.”

“…I do like drawing diagrams,” Zazu said, with a short laugh, rubbing his hands over his hair, then yawning widely.

“Or we could just hide in there until everyone goes home and live in the fake rooms for a while?” Ascot added, grinning too much for someone who had a hole in their side.

…Though he did also have those good painkillers too.

“I’d rather deal with the flatpack stuff,” Zazu promised, making himself unbuckle his seatbelt and reach into the back for a change of t-shirt. “But if you think you’re going to do anything but watch me and supervise-“

“That’s why I need the diagram,” Ascot agreed, nodding, and Zazu nearly hit his head on the ceiling as he laughed again, helplessly, a little of the tension finally leaving his shoulders.

This was an absolutely ridiculous idea. He was going to wake up tomorrow – wherever they ended up by that point – and judge himself so hard for this. But right now?

Right now making somewhere safe and moveable to keep Ascot comfortable and protected, warm and fed – that was the only thing he really cared about.

Even if it meant facing multiple items of flat-packed furniture in the back of a van while horribly sleep-deprived.