The Innocent (A 'Finder' Fanfiction)

Shadow of Pluto - 15 - Maxim

He gazed at the tip of his index finger for a while. Those little rings on there. So tiny. So unique. That very finger had touched the Chinese's skin. It was all he had wanted. Not because there had been any need for physical closeness. Not because of any longing. Those kinds of basic human instincts hardly every had any influence on his mind. No ... he had wanted to touch for a very different reason: To realize the other was real and to assure himself that he had been there in reality. It was not just wishful thinking.

If he had not been given that permission, he might have eternally doubted his memory. No matter how vivid.

'Fei Long Liu', that name spelled trouble if the wrong person found out he was here. And Maxim knew he should warn the man. But then he might leave, and he did not know if he wanted that.

Also – or even more – it seemed his brother needed that man's help.

So, if he warned that one to better depart right away, would Ryuichi leave as well?

Could he just not keep silent about it all and allow them to stay here, protected and save, for a little longer?

He hoped so. For he did not want his brother to disappear once again. He had been gone for years, in which Maxim had only watched him from afar, worried and cut off from the other's life. Nor did he want the Chinese to depart.

But why? Alex would ask a question like that. But all Alex understood was sexual tension and longing and ... maybe even love as it was taught by Hollywood Movies. All those alleged emotions did not ever sway Maxim.

He did not long, he did not crave sexual stimulant. He did not seek love. He did not understand it anyway.

But he comprehended beauty, perhaps more than any other man in the world. And no matter if one feared the man, despised him, hated him, even wanted to see him dead, one would have to be struck by blindness of the mind and eye to not ascertain how beautiful Fei Long Liu was.

With the memory of the touch still vivid in his mind, he walked down the hallways of those parts of the giant mansion he kept to himself. No one was allowed to enter. If he needed someone of the staff, he called for them, and if he wanted to grant any visitor access, he would ask him to follow his every step and to not even throw a glance sideways.

Into one small chamber he stepped, that he had unlocked before with a key he hadn't used in about a year. With the lights, he also switched on the equipment stationed here: A notebook and a strange keyboard with an odd shape and keys that were only marked with colored dots but not with letters. On the desk there was also a large black box with many cables and wires attached to it: it was a NAS with several hard drives in it that kept his files and backupped and rebackupped them all the time.

He sat down in front of the notebook after he had closed the door behind him. With gentle fingers, he flipped the device open, started it, waited for the inquiry of his password and typed it in slowly and deliberately. He opened only one program, which provided him with a list – just some numbers that would not mean anything to anybody. But he knew what hid behind each of them.

There and then he paused.

"You should not", he spoke out to himself aloud. Whenever he had used this system, the person he had spied upon had known about it. He invited them to spend some days with him, to take his beautiful horses for a ride, to swim in the blue of the Adriatic Sea, to eat in the most fabulous restaurants the country had to offer, or any city they could reach with his Yacht or private plane within a day. When he paid them, he made sure they knew exactly for what they came: for them to spend time with, for him to marvel at them, and for them to spend their nights in his guesthouse, where he would watch them like he was with them in that very bedroom.