@fidelesir replied to your post “So, there’s this bakery, right? You know the one. You must know the...”
Hold on wait is Graves /literally/ a mob assassin
Well... no. I mean, Newt doesn’t think so? That kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life, not to random uni students who spend all their time crying over essays in a bakery. Mob assassins belong in newspapers and stories, not lurking somewhere by the croissants waiting to walk Newt home.
“Why, exactly, are you walking me home again?” Newt asks, stuffing no less that three failed drafts in his book bag and rescuing his highlighter from the floor. “Not that I mind you walking me home. Because I don’t. And mystery, mystery is cool. But. Why?”
Graves raises an unimpressed eyebrow. Over by the coffee machine, Jacob busies himself with rearranging the espresso cups just so and studiously avoids all attempts to make eye contact.
“It is not safe to walk alone,” Graves says, again, and Newt nods. Again.
“Sure, sure,” he says agreeably. “But why?”
Graves scowls and sweeps out the bakery in an over-dramatic flare of crisp pinstripe. Newt waves a hurried goodbye to Jacob (now actually counting the coffee beans with extreme nonchalance and still not looking up) and scuttles out after Graves.
Graves won’t give any further explanation, despite Newt’s masterful attempts at getting him to elaborate (”say, hypothetically, if you had a reason for doing the things you do, what part of that reason would involve walking me home?” “no.” “but -” “no.”) so Newt chalks it up to just Graves being Graves. Like the way Graves stares up at the window of Newt’s tiny apartment like it personally offended him, and declares it a potential safety hazard.
“Graves,” Newt says. “It’s a window.”
Graves glares. “It’s a target. I will get you kevlar.” He deposits Newt by his front door, waits until he has confirmed that Newt has locked both locks behind him, then turns smartly on his heel and leaves. Newt unlocks his door and sticks his head out to watch the man go, admiring both the tailored cut of his suit trousers (so worth watching from behind) and the weird juxtaposition of the sharp man in his sharp suit in Newt’s rundown apartment block.
He was joking about the kevlar. Definitely. Probably. Does Graves know how to joke? He must do. Which is more likely, that Graves was joking or that he’s actually going to get Newt a bullet proof vest to wear?
... Yeah, don’t answer that.
Still, Newt resolves to ask Jacob about it the next time he’s in the bakery, he does, he really does, except that the next time he goes to the bakery it’s cordoned off and there’s four police cars pulled up outside. Newt stares, mouth open. There’s armed police at his bakery. There’s - he can see them, they’re armed, those are guns. Guns! At Jacob’s bakery!
His brain catches up to his eyes and Newt goes white. “Jacob,” he says, gripping his book bag tighter. “Oh god.” He stumbles off the curb and towards the nearest police officer, because what if there’s been an accident, what if Jacob’s been hurt, what if -
Graves cuts across in front him, takes his hand, and spins Newt round to walk with him away from the bakery, all without breaking stride.
“You have the survival instincts of a baby elephant,” he snarls, quick marching the pair of them down the street. Newt cranes round, trying to both look at the bakery and not fall over, because a Graves on a mission is a Graves who can move and Newt may potentially be struggling to keep up.
Behind them, one of the policemen is saying something into his radio. The left-most police car has its lights on and is pulling out. Graves curses and pulls Newt down a side street.
“Graves, what the hell?” Newt gasps out breathlessly as he starts sprinting in a desperate attempt to keep him arm attached at the shoulder like it’s meant to be. Graves, the suave and sophisticated fucker that he is, runs with a smooth and elegant lope that puts Newt’s shambolic flailing to shame. “Graves why are we running, why are we - ow, stitch - Graves I think the police car is gaining on us why.”
Graves glances back once, verifies that yes, the police car is gaining on them because Newt’s top speed appears to be shuffle, swears violently, and hoists Newt into a piggy back.
“Graves!” Newt yells. “Graves. Why, godammit.”
They dive into what appears to be an unused warehouse (who knew they were just lying around for dramatic police chase purposes? Not Newt, but now he does) and Graves kicks the door shut behind them. He doesn’t loosen his grip or let Newt down.
“We will leave the city,” he says decisively, completely ignoring Newt’s question.
“We will not,” Newt replies hotly. “We have a seminar at three and an essay due on Monday. Graves, seriously. What the fuck is going on.”
Graves pauses. There’s the sound of hammering on the door, but it seems to be holding for now. Newt waits him out, because he’s been asking why for a while now, and he’s yet to get a straight answer, but really? He kinda feels like the situation calls for one.
“... You are one of Jacob’s friends,” Graves says. Asks? It’s hard to tell.
“Yes,” Newt answers patiently. “Jacob. The baker. Who runs the bakery. Who may or may not be bleeding out or in hospital right now.”
“He is alive.” There’s another pause, a longer one. Graves shifts on his feet, almost hesitant. Then: “You are a student,” he says finally. “You are actually a student. It is not a cover.”
“What? What - of course I’m a student, what else would I be?”
Graves mumbles. One of the hinges has come loose on the door and Newt can hear at least three people outside trying to break their way in. Newt grits his teeth in frustration. “Graves, I can’t hear you, and shouldn’t we really be going?”
Graves clears his throat and drops Newt on the floor. He reaches into the pocket of his suit jacket, his amazingly tailored suit jacket that Newt had noticed before had weirdly deep pockets but never actually noticed had suspiciously deep pockets, and pulls out a gun.
“I thought you were trainee,” Graves says, louder. “Weird English trainee with no common sense that Jacob told me to protect.”
Newt stares. His mind reels. Reels. It’s still reeling when the police break the door down and Graves forces him to his knees, one hand in his hair forcing his head back and the other holding the gun to his temple. It reels while the police shout and Graves swears, and he’s pretty sure at one point Graves threatens to kill him if they shoot, and all he can think is he carried my book bag when he walked me home.
It’s still reeling after Graves has escaped. Shock, the police are saying. They call him a hostage victim. The papers print grainy CCTV photos of Graves dragging Newt down the street. HIT MAN FLEES CITY, the headlines proclaim, and the articles go into sordid detail on just how far reaching Jacob’s network had been and how extensive an operation he’d been running out of the bakery on the corner where Newt used to eat cake and write essays and try to teach Graves the wonder of actual conversation.
“I can’t believe you thought I was a trainee,” he tells the photo he cut out and stuck to his wall. “I spilled coffee on your shirt so you’d have to change it and I could see you topless! And you were an assassin!”
He sits down hard on the edge of his bed. “Holy shit,” he mumbles to himself. “An assassin.”
He just. He’s a uni student. He’s not even a particularly good or conscientious uni student. These things aren’t meant to happen to random uni students. The guy you thought you maybe a little bit were falling in love wasn’t supposed to pull a gun on you and use you as a human shield to escape.
Even after Graves threatened to shoot him in the head, he’s still the guy that walked Newt home every night and made faces at the lack of real food in his kitchen and caught Newt looking occasionally and went just that tiny bit red and flustered and what’s wrong with Newt.
Because maybe he’s still a bit in love with his assassin, and that feels suspiciously like the lack of survival skills or common sense that Graves keeps telling him off for, but. It doesn’t make it any less true.
In Which Jacob’s Bakery is a Front for the Mob
one | two | series tag
