Mr. and Mr. Oakley-Sivan

11--The Youth of Tito Gelo

1415: Flight No. 459, Heathrow Airport

"So. How many missions?" Tyler asked the second their asses touched seats J45 and J46.

"Can you wait until the plane's left the ground?"

"No, I'm impatient."

Troye rolled his eyes. "Three biggish ones and quite a few smallish ones."

"That's very vague, TimTam."

"If I'm not vague, the people around us will guess what we're talking about."

"What's the most damage they can do? Nameless boy on a plane talks about spies. Who'll believe you?"

Good point. "The fangirls?"

"True. When will you be less vague?"

"When we're in our hotel rooms."

Tyler raised an eyebrow. "You get until the drinks cart comes around. Then you spill."

Troye'd take what he could get. Procrastinator that he was, he still hadn't thought about what exactly he would tell Tyler. He could start with the Tsar and the panther, but not the ears in the croissants--surprisingly, that took place in Bulgaria, not France. The monarch under the bridge was a fantastic story to tell, but it's also doubly more classified than the US nuclear launch codes. How was he supposed to fess up to his double life if half of it was confidential? Not to mention all the ridiculous mystery novel names he'd devised to refer to each adventure.

He was still waffling between different stories and explanations when he found himself ordering an apple juice. Shit. The drinks cart is here.

Tyler twisted around in his seat until he was facing Troye and took an innocent sip of his ginger ale.

"You bastard. Go on, then. Ask a question," Troye grumbled.

"Are you trained in close combat?"

"Duh."

"Ever killed a man?"

"Not a man, no."

Tyler squinted at his friend. "Not a man?"

Troye cleared my throat. "Next question." His goal was to keep him asking questions so he didn't have to explain anything he didn't want to. Unfortunately, Tyler was asking just those sorts of questions.

"How long have you been a, um..."

"Spy? About three years, I think. Three years next month-ish."

"You were twenty-one when you started?" Tyler asked incredulously.

Troye hadn't really ever considered himself particularly young for an operative, but now Tyler was making him wonder. "Yeah. I found a body in a park. Turns out it was a CIA agent, and I had taken something from the scene of the crime that a drug syndicate wanted."

"What did you take?"

Troye's cheeks heated under his gaze. "A watch."

Tyler's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "You stole a watch from a dead guy? You got balls, Troye Sivan."

"It was lying on the ground, like, twenty meters away. I didn't know it was his."

"Unbelievable," he said, shaking his head in awe. "Why was it so important? Was there a compartment inside it?"

"Yeah, actually. There was. Piece of paper with all the syndicate leaders' names on it." Fancy that. Tyler had guessed correctly.

"So the CIA just, what, asked you to join? Presumably after you defeated droves of drug addicts and returned the list to them."