by Abigail Roux
defensively as he walked around the end of the couch and looked down at Remy.
Remy looked up and glared at him. “What makes you so sure I won’t do the
honors myself, hmm? Look what I’ve fucking done, Gray!”
“You made your bed, Remy. I gave you options,” Gray clucked
disapprovingly.
“Options? Ha! ‘Drug and kidnap them, or shoot them in their sleep, Remy,
it’s your choice.’” Remy mimicked in an almost perfect imitation of Gray’s Deep
South accent. “Some fucking options!”
“Yes, well, you can’t have everything,” Gray responded flippantly as he
walked over to Carl and Thiago and checked both of them for a pulse. “Nice and
steady,” he murmured. “How much did you use?”
“Not enough to keep them down long,” Remy answered miserably. “Too
much would have changed the taste of the pastries.”
Gray sniggered and mumbled, “Death by muffin.”
“Salaud,” Remy muttered irritably as he removed himself from Brandt’s
limp body and stood up. He put his hands on his hips and looked around at the
destruction he had caused.
Nikolaus had fallen back onto the couch and remained where he had landed,
slumped over slightly and looking like he had simply had one too many cocktails the night before. Remy had managed to position Brandt beside the base of the sofa on the soft carpet, and now, at least, he looked peaceful. Shawn was laid carefully on the floor, his head on a pillow and one of his hands draped over his stomach as the other lay palm up, out to his side. Carl had managed to pull Thiago against him before
passing out, and now the Argentinean was cradled against Carl’s chest protectively as Carl leaned back against the chair.
Gray knelt next to the two of them and gently ran his knuckles over each of
their faces in turn, checking their temperatures and making certain of their
unconscious states. Remy looked at them all sadly and wondered if they’d be able to forgive him.
He doubted that very much.
“I know him,” Gray murmured as he pushed Thiago’s hair off his brow with
gentle fingers. “I worked with him in Florida once.”
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“Did you?” Remy asked absently as he looked down at Shawn. “He said he
knew a guy who’d worked with you, not that he did himself.”
“Yeah, well, Thiago never tells the truth unless he has to,” Gray replied with
a shrug.
“He recognized you in the plaza, even with that awful wig you were
wearing,” Remy told Gray as he glanced up at him. His hair was still slightly shaggy, but it was back to its natural strawberry blond as opposed to the red it had been the day before, as was the goatee he had always favored. “That’s why we had to chase
after you,” Remy told him. “He’s the one we tripped up.”
“Uh huh. He’s a real hard-ass,” Gray said as he stood up and looked at Remy
carefully.
“Who, Thi? Nah. He’s just a little… slow to warm,” Remy responded sadly
as he examined Shawn’s peaceful features. His chest constricted painfully as he
thought of the consequences of his actions. Fucking Brandt! Why couldn’t the man
have just eaten his drugs like a good little pyro and gone down like the rest of them?
Why did he have to be so fucking difficult? “Fuck,” Remy murmured softly. It came out as more of a plea than a curse.
He turned back to see Gray looking at him sympathetically. “You had to do
it. If you had waited any longer, you would have missed the timeframe. Then it would all have been pointless. We should restrain them all now,” the man added regretfully.
Remy’s stomach flipped once more. “Yeah,” he agreed sadly. “I’ve got some
rope in my bag. Stay with them,” he ordered as he walked off toward the bedrooms to retrieve several lengths of rope. He would need a good amount of it. He didn’t want to hurt any of them by tying them too tightly. Speaking of being hurt….
“Disarm them all, Boss!” he called to Gray as an afterthought. He didn’t
want one of them hurting him or Gray, either.
When he came back, Gray had carefully placed the assortment of weapons
on the table beside Remy’s little brown box of ‘parts’, and he was standing at
attention beside the sofa.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Remy asked as Gray looked at him in
amusement.
“Waiting for my orders,” Gray told him matter-of-factly.
Remy rolled his eyes and tossed Gray a handful of rope. “I thought you were
in charge,” Remy retorted caustically.
“I was. But this is your show, now,” Gray replied cheerfully. He was too
damn cheerful for such dirty work.
“Tie them in front,” Remy instructed.
“Won’t they be able to get loose easily?” Gray asked with a knowing smile
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and a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, but they also won’t be hurt by it,” Remy responded testily.
The two of them made quick work of tying up Remy’s five companions.
Gray reached Brandt first, and he quickly took the big man’s pulse before trying to tug him away from the sofa.
“Goddamn,” he breathed irritably. “Big fucker, isn’t he?” he said with a little
smile as he stood up and stretched his back.
Remy stared at them, but didn’t truly see anything. His eyes were unfocused
and his mind had gone blank.
“Dixie?” Gray ventured.
“You’ve got a nice voice, Boss. Has anyone ever told you that?” Remy said
distantly. “Very soothing.”
“Uhh, why don’t you sit down for a bit,” Gray suggested uneasily as he
looked at Remy closely. “You didn’t eat a muffin, did you?” he asked suspiciously.
Remy sniffed and closed his eyes, trying to shake the somber mood that had
overtaken him. “No. I feel like something’s sucked my brain out through my nose,
though,” he said finally as he shook himself and looked at Gray ruefully.
Gray’s mouth quirked, and Remy looked away before he could see the
sympathy he knew would be there soon.
“Those drugs do things to people’s minds, Dixie,” Gray said thoughtfully.
“Isn’t this dude a little odd anyway?”
“He’s not ‘odd.’ He’s fucking insane,” Remy said as he bent and ran his
fingers through Shawn’s soft hair affectionately and checked his knots.
“Well, maybe I could tie you up too, y’know,” Gray suggested as he stood
with his hands on his hips and looked down at Brandt thoughtfully. “Maybe they
won’t believe him. Maybe he’s crazy enough he won’t even remember.”
“Would you remember my shooting you?” Remy asked wryly.
“Probably,” Gray answered in the same thoughtful tone.
“You can’t tie me up,” Remy told him. “You’d enjoy it too much.”
“True that,” Gray agreed happily. “So, who in this room haven’t you fucked,
huh?”
Remy stood and turned to glare at the other man.
“Wow,” Gray said in awe. “You do get around, don’t you?”
“You knew what you were getting,” Remy told him in clipped tones as he
walked over to the table and picked up his box.
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“Yeah, I didn’t get nearly enough of it, though,” Gray said cheekily, and
Remy couldn’t help but smile.
about you,” he added as he glanced at Gray.
“A little? Just a little?” Gray asked teasingly as he walked over and stood at
Remy’s shoulder.
“I was really fucking worried about you, all right?” Remy said testily.
“When I heard that goddamn song in my ear at that café I almost jumped out of my
fucking skin, I was so relieved,” he asserted as he fumbled absently with the box in his hands.
Gray slipped his hands around Remy’s body and slid them slowly down
Remy’s arms to take hold of the box and set it down on the table. Remy relaxed
backward into the contact as Gray pressed against him from behind. He let his head fall back against Gray’s shoulder and wished that he could relax completely. Let his guard down just for one fucking moment.
“I was in Mexico when I got word you’d been captured,” Gray murmured
into the side of Remy’s neck. Remy shivered and let his eyes drift shut. “Drinking boat drinks and working on my tan. Then I heard John had you– I almost choked on
my little pink umbrella.”
Remy snorted. “Did you know John was with us?” he asked as Gray’s arms
encircled him and pulled him close.
“No. That’s the one thing. I understand why it’s necessary, but it’s a damn
nuisance not knowing who’s on our side and who’s not. What if he’d killed you, huh?
Then what?”
“Then the Archer’d have to find another mole, yeah?”
“That’s not funny.”
Remy smiled sadly. It wasn’t funny, but it was true. He and Gray had spent
the better part of two months together, digging their way through the Organization and poking holes in the almost airtight defenses. Two months of bickering and slowly coming to terms with the fact that they were essentially the same personality split into two different bodies. Two months of arguing over who was in charge and trying like hell to hate one another. Two months of tense, really fucking amazing sex. The two months just prior to this assignment. The two months away from Shawn.
Remy closed his eyes as pain lanced through his chest and his veins flooded
with ice.
The Archer had sent Gray after Remy. Not Remy specifically, but after a
Class One agent susceptible to bribery, trickery, coercion, or all of the above. Gray had given Remy the details and convinced him that the only way to get himself and Shawn out, and get out in one piece, was to go this traitorous, godforsaken route.
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And Remy had done it. His goal had been to turn Shawn by any means
possible as soon as he could, but it just hadn’t happened that way. And now, now
Shawn was unconscious on the floor, drugged and restrained at Remy’s hands, and
Remy knew there was no hope. He had known the moment he’d returned to the group
several nights ago and been faced with Shawn’s rage that the man would never turn.
Now it was too late to go back. Now, whichever way Remy went, it was just too
fucking late.
Remy turned slightly and looked at the five men who’d trusted him with
their lives. They all slept soundly now, but soon they would awake. And they
wouldn’t be happy. And they wouldn’t understand why he had done this. There would be yelling. Lots of it.
“What do we do now?” Remy asked, feeling lost and forlorn. He didn’t like
this turn of events. Not one bit. He didn’t know where to go from here, and the
arguments he’d been thinking of using in order to defend his actions suddenly
sounded very weak.
“We need to go over what we’ll be telling them,” Gray told him softly.
Remy shivered as the other man’s breath ghosted across his neck, and he relaxed
further into the embrace. “You smell like sex,” Gray observed in amusement. “Up to your old tricks, I see.”
“Stop trying to distract me. And if it goes badly? If they won’t accept the
offer? Or they don’t believe what you tell them?”
“Then you’ll come with me and be done with this bunch,” Gray said
confidently, and he kissed Remy’s jaw affectionately before releasing him and
reaching around to pick up the little box. “And if I wanted to distract you, I’d just wave something shiny in front of you. Or food.” Remy snorted in response, and Gray gripped his shoulder comfortingly. “I know you love him, Dixie,” he added
sympathetically. “But this….”
“I know,” Remy said sadly as he finally turned to look at Gray. “This is more
important.”
Gray nodded and smiled at him, and Remy’s lips quirked into a little half
smile. Remy was glad to see the cheeky Southerner again, despite the circumstances.
He liked Gray, he really did. He enjoyed his company and he thought of him as one of his few friends. Now that he had drugged and hogtied his only other friends in the world, Gray might very well be his last friend.
“So how much do we tell them?” Gray asked cheerfully as he shook the box
a little and looked at it curiously.
“Hey, careful with the goods there, Boss! They’re fragile!”
“Sorry! What’s in there, anyway?” Gray asked as he looked at the box more
warily and held it out to Remy.
“None of your business, ya bastard,” Remy said as he snagged the box and
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held it to his chest protectively.
“Mm hmm,” Gray responded suspiciously. Remy glared at him self-
consciously and set the box down gently on the table once more. “How much longer
do we have?”
Remy looked at his watch and tried to estimate the doses he had
administered. “Hard to tell, really. Niko was going to town on those fucking doughnut hole thingies, and he’s a little guy. But Shawn and Thiago barely ate anything that I brought in, I had to slip it into their drinks later as we all sat around. I think I gave Shawn too much, actually. It made him sick. Carl ate later too. He ate a lot since his eggs went cold, but he’s a big bloke. Brandt, well, I shot the fuck out of Brandt. He’ll be out a good while.”
“But they’re all okay, right?” Gray asked in concern as he walked back over
to look at the assortment of bodies they had collected.
“Yeah,” Remy said confidently as he walked up to stand beside Gray.
“So?” Gray said expectantly.
“So what?”
“So what are we telling them?”
“The truth,” Remy answered with a shrug.
“How much of the truth?” Gray asked persistently.
“Oh. Not all of it. They can’t know that I… that we….”
“That we’ve been working against them from the start and that you’re on the
Archer’s payroll?” Gray supplied in amusement.
“Now I remember why I didn’t like you,” Remy mumbled as he cast a
sideways glance at Gray and grimaced.
“Seriously. Which ones would have a problem with it?”
“All of them. Niko would be crushed to know it. Brandt and Carl and
definitely Thiago would all be severely fucked off that they were left out of the loop.
Shawn would kill me.”
“Oh, come on,” Gray said with a tilt of his head and a smile. Remy looked at
him seriously and the smile faded.
“I’m serious, Boss. He’ll kill me if he finds out. When he finds out, rather. I
have to turn him, but I have to make him think it was his idea… or that I was… I
dunno… forced into it. Oth
erwise he’ll hunt me down no matter where I run.”
“You were forced into it, in case you’d forgotten. I’m a persistent bastard, remember? And from what you told me this morning about your triumphant return, he didn’t seem to think that the threat of John torturing you was enough force. What would be acceptable to him? You don’t have any family to threaten. You don’t give a
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flying fuck for your own safety.”
“I could tell him the truth,” Remy said softly.
“You’re talking in circles again, Dixie,” Gray told him with a soft smile.
“No, you’re right. I have to coerce him into it. He can’t know why… he….”
“Why is it so fucking hard for you to say?” Gray asked irritably. “He was on
that list, Remy. We both saw it. He’s marked, and whether he lives through this or not, they will kill him. He can’t go back to the Facility. He can’t resurface on the Organization’s radar.”
“I know,” Remy said sadly.
After several moments of contemplative silence, Gray clucked his tongue
and asked, “Just how exactly did you plan to move them?”
Remy turned to look at him in surprise. “You said you were bringing a
crew.”
“I did?”
“Gray! We can’t move them all by ourselves!”
“Well fuck, Remy, thanks for pointing that out!” Gray shouted as he put his
hands on his hips and turned to face Remy square on. Remy turned as well and
pointed his finger in Gray’s face.
“You said–”
“No! You said you’d take care of it. I said I was bringing reinforcements,”
Gray said heatedly. Remy flailed his hands and made a gesture that clearly said
‘well?’ Gray thumped his chest and shouted, “Reinforcements!”
“One worthless bastard is not ‘reinforcements!’” Remy squeaked. “The ‘s’
implies multiples, Gray!” he shouted angrily, spitting out the other man’s name like a curse.
“You’re the super agent, Remy,” Gray shot back. “I’m working without a
fucking net, where am I supposed to get reinforcements?”
“You’re the fucking loner! Jesus! Not only am I without a net but I’m with