by G. D. Cox
Either way to Cole, no maybes about it, this is the start of something that will make his whole world feel reborn.
VIII.
THE FIRST BRUTAL BLOW to the decaying remains of Cole's world as he knows it arrives as two harshly whispered questions in a most familiar and beloved, raspy voice from across the bedroom.
"Who are you? Where the fuck am I?"
Cole, still bewildered after being awakened so suddenly by Clyde clambering off the bed, pushes the covers down to his waist and sits up on the bed and switches on the white, glass-globe table lamp on his nightstand. He sees that Clyde has scampered to the other side of the room, wearing black boxer-briefs he's sure that Clyde had not been wearing when they fell asleep together. He recognizes them as the pair Clyde had worn earlier in the day before he left for the top-level staff meeting at HQ. Clyde has always slept naked in bed with him since they became lovers.
Clyde's forehead is dotted and shiny with sweat. Clyde's wedding ring, hanging from its chain necklace around his neck, glints in the warm illumination of the table lamp. Clyde's chest is heaving as he glances frantically around the room, pressing himself against the wall as if he'd melt right through it if he could. As if all Clyde wants to do is get the hell away from him.
"Clyde -"
"Who are you?" Clyde demands louder this time, gesturing wildly at Cole, at their bed with both hands. "How do you know my name? Why - why am I in bed with you, huh?! I don't even know you!"
Cole has always prided himself on his incredible control of his facial expressions, of his body language and disposition. He's grateful for it now, that all Clyde will see is his stoic visage, his body and limbs relaxed in harmless posture, and not his goddamn heart fissuring right down the middle while screaming for Clyde, his best friend, his lover, his husband.
His husband who ... doesn't know who he is. Clyde doesn't know who he is. Clyde doesn't know who he is, what could have -
He sucks in a tremulous, deep breath that burns his lungs and his eyes. Oh god. Oh god, that box. That inconspicuous-looking metal box that Clyde came across in that bunker in Croenia days ago. That box and its weird flash of blue light.
What the fuck has it done to Clyde? What is it that the doctors missed when they examined Clyde after the team's return to HQ? What?
"Clyde, you really don't -"
"Who ARE you?!"
In the nerve-racking wake of Clyde's roar, he and Clyde stare at each other across the room, across this unfathomable gulf between them.
Cole sucks in another breath, a more stable one. He blinks hard.
"I'm Agent Phelan Cole of the Global Anti Terrorist Force," he says with an unwavering, low voice, maintaining eye contact with Clyde. It hurts worse than a blade across his throat to see the utter lack of recognition, of love in Clyde's eyes, to listen to Clyde pant so hard with terror, to know that this is real, this is actually happening and his own husband doesn't know who he is. "I'm your handler and your -" The luxurious platinum, court-shaped ring hanging from its chain necklace around his neck is suddenly as heavy as the sun's mass multiplied by billions. "Clyde, you're a GATF agent too. We're ... co-workers. I'm your handler and you're my asset. Have been for eight years. And we've been ... friends for almost as long."
Clyde stares back at him with humongous eyes full of fear, of desperation. Clyde presses himself harder against the wall.
"I ... I am a GATF specialist agent. Level 6. I've been an agent for - for ten years."
"Yes. You were in the agency for two years before we met," Cole says.
Clyde, still staring at him, wipes his nose with the back of his left hand and sniffles once.
"I ... I don't remember meeting you." Clyde's brows lower in a distrustful frown. "I don't remember you. Who the hell are you, man?"
The fissure down Cole's heart splits wider, wide enough that a bit of it shows on his face as a twitch of muscle in his lower jaw.
"You seem to be suffering some kind of memory loss, but I am telling you the truth. We can go right now to HQ to verify what I've said, if you want. Directly with Nathan Fabry."
Clyde's eyes widen once more at that. Clyde goes still and relaxes, just a fraction.
"Wait, you ... you know Nathan Fabry. Director Fabry."
"Of course I do. He's been one of my best friends since we met as Rangers. We joined the GATF together fifteen years ago."
My other best friend is you, Clyde. The only person in my life who's seen all of me.
But Cole doesn't say any of that. Clyde is panting again, one hand pressed to his sternum like he's suffocating, like no air can go into his lungs.
"You're - you're naked. And so was I when I woke up and -" Clyde swallows hard enough that his Adam's apple bobs visibly with a clicking noise. "My shoulder -" Clyde reaches up with his left hand to the juncture between his neck and right shoulder, where Cole had bitten him earlier that night to Clyde's delight. "My ... my ass hurts." Clyde staggers away farther from the bed, colliding with the ornate dressing table, and Cole can see the fear surging back into Clyde's wide eyes and stiff limbs like a flood of icy water. "Did you - did you fuck -"
Cole would have thrown up at the palpable revulsion on Clyde's face if his acclaimed self-control had been anything less than what it is.
"We had sex, yes," he says with that unwavering, low voice, still maintaining eye contact with Clyde. "Clyde. We're lovers. We've been lovers for six years."
We're married. You're my husband and we vowed we would always stand together in the face of all adversity, and love and accept each other, no matter what may come.
But all this, Cole doesn't say either. Clyde is now pressing both hands to his temples, swaying and glancing here and there, everywhere except at him. Seeking an escape route. From him.
"Oh my god. Oh my fucking god, oh christ. This is nuts. This can't be happening. This can't be happening. No. No. No." Clyde paces the taupe-carpeted floor in front of the bed, gone pale as white candle wax deliquescing from looming fire, arms wrapped tight around a hunched torso. "I am not - I am not ... gay!" Clyde halts in his tracks and points a castigating finger at him. "I love women, all right?! I love women and their breasts and their curves and - and there's no way, no way I'd let a guy stick his dick in my ..." Clyde resumes pacing, pressing both palms to his temples again, eyes so wide and horrified. "I dunno what I'm doing here with you but I'm not - I am not a fucking fa-"
For some enigmatic reason, Clyde saws off his tirade right then and there, but Cole knows what Clyde had been about to say. He stares at Clyde, terrified inside, a boulder wedged in his throat like it's going to choke him to death.
This ... this isn't the Clyde Barnett he loves, who loves him, all of him, in return. This is Clyde Barnett before Clyde Barnett met Phelan Cole. This is Clyde Barnett who scrunches his face up in thinly veiled disgust at non-heterosexual people and any discussion of them, who only knows fags to be parodies of real men with limp wrists and lisps, who has no idea what love is. This is Clyde Barnett who would have strangled someone just for implying that he's a homosexual and ... oh.
Clyde's gone still again. Clyde has noticed the luxurious platinum, court-shaped ring hanging from the chain necklace around his own neck. Noticed the identical ring hanging from the identical necklace around his neck.
Suddenly, the necklace feels so much like a noose tightening around his neck, one he can't bear to take off unless he's already dead.
"We're married," he says, his voice still unwavering and low and not at all cracking. "Two years."
"Married?"
The way Clyde looks at him like he's a liar, the way Clyde says that word like it's scum he wants to spit out mangles Cole worse than spikes under his fingernails could.
"Yes. Nathan Fabry was our witness." Cole's throat works in a long, painful swallow. "And we visited my parents a few weeks later in Chicago to tell them about the ceremony in Nate's office. We had a private dinner in our family home in lieu of them being at the ceremony."
> And they're your parents too, he wants to tell Clyde but doesn't. You call them Pa and Ma too, because they want you to, because you're family too.
The information shocks Clyde like a slap to the face. That horrid expression disintegrates from Clyde's face. Clyde gapes at him, his broad shoulders drooping.
"What? Are you - are you serious? Nathan Fabry was the witness for our ... our wedding? And ..." Clyde draws in a breath that seems more like a labored gasp. "Your parents? You mean ... I've met your parents? And they're ... they're okay about ..."
"Yes," Cole says, when Clyde trails off. "They've always been accepting of me as a bisexual man."
And of you as a gay man and their son-in-law, he also wants to tell Clyde, but doesn't.
Clyde seems even more shocked now, leaning back against the wall as if it's the only thing stopping him from collapsing onto the floor.
"I don't ... I don't remember any of that. I don't remember anything you've said. I ..."
Clyde glances down at his chest, at the wedding ring nestled in the light dusting of blond hair there. Clyde is surprisingly gentle as he grasps the ring with his fingertips and raises it nearer to his face to examine it. Cole can pinpoint the precise moment that Clyde realizes the monetary value of the luxurious platinum, court-shaped ring. The moment that Clyde sees the Latin inscription engraved inside that Clyde had chosen himself when Clyde's eyes widen yet again and his lower jaw sags (in that adorable way that, on any other night, he would have teased Clyde about).
Nunc scio quit sit amor, Clyde had murmured to him after sliding his wedding ring onto his finger, eyes more pink than blue, more wet than dry and beaming, beaming. Now I know what love is, and it's all because of you, babe.
In the present, Clyde is now staring at him, appearing more stricken and small than Cole has ever seen him. He yearns to kick away the covers and clamber off the bed too, to go to Clyde and draw Clyde into his arms. Pet that lush, golden hair. Shush him with a kiss to that high forehead. Murmur to him that everything's going to be okay, that they've got each other and they're going to be okay.
And he can't.
This Clyde will probably break his neck if he even makes an attempt to move off the bed, naked like he is under the covers. At this point in Clyde's career as a GATF specialist agent, he knows Clyde can kill a man in at least thirty other ways simply with his hands and legs. When Clyde's feeling trapped like he is now, Cole knows that Clyde will fight back and not hold back.
"This ... this isn't a prank. Is it?" Clyde stammers in a surprisingly meek, boyish voice.
Cole blinks, his mind going blank for several moments at the unexpected shift in Clyde's mood.
"No. It isn't," Cole replies, allowing a little, just a little of his distress to leak into his own voice.
Once more, Clyde glances down at the ring still held by his fingertips. Cole sees Clyde's brow crease as he thinks the situation over. He knows Clyde's quick and so often underestimated mind is weighing everything that's been said so far and comparing it all with ... with whatever Clyde remembers.
What does Clyde remember?
Cole doesn't look away once as Clyde glances at him, then at the ring, then at him again. Just once, Clyde's gaze goes lower than his shoulders before it whips back up to his face, as if looking at his nude body is a cardinal sin justifiable of a death sentence.
"What happened to you?" Clyde asks, just as meekly.
Cole blinks again, puzzled by Clyde's question. Then he glances down at himself, at his chest. Ah. Clyde is referring to that scar.
"You mean this?" Cole says, touching his dark curls-dusted chest, touching the vertically straight scar inches away from his right nipple. The scar itself is almost three inches in length, a bumpy mark darker than his skin that he forgets is even there these days. Three years ago, though, it was a ghastly, blood-gushing wound with an equally ghastly, blood-gushing twin on his lower back. A wound inflicted upon him in that fetid alley in Rio Rancho.
The alley had been narrow. The mercenary who'd stabbed him had been a malicious sonofabitch. In the claustrophobic space, the kukri screeched and scraped the brick walls that hemmed them in, hacking the air where he was mere seconds after he leapt away, farther and farther away from his gun that'd been kicked out of his hand earlier in the fight. The mercenary was wild-eyed and desperate, ravenous for his blood, lunging at him over and over like a mad dog in its final, seizing throes of rabies. He'd leapt back and rolled and skidded across pockmarked ground. Flung himself up onto his knees as swift as any man, any soldier could when confronted by his executioner and still, he was too slow.
The kukri was already making its imminent descent as he reared up. As he stared up at the mercenary's face muddied by blinding white light from behind, the kukri pierced his clothes, his bulletproof vest, his chest and cut clean through him in a diagonal path out his lower back. Any higher and it would have sundered ribs, his shoulder-blade, collapsing his lung like it was now, plundering his breath. Any lower and it would have made a new, sloppy landscape of his intestines and blood and bile. The agony hadn't hit him until his head fell forward to gape down in horror at his once intact chest, at the red disc of blood expanding across his once immaculate dress shirt from ground zero of the kukri's shining blade.
He'd remained crumpled on his knees as Clyde - living up to his codename of defying risks and always making his shot - had blown out his killer-to-be's brains with a single, high-velocity bullet from a Glock. Clyde was screaming. Maybe it was his name. Somehow Clyde screaming was clearer to him than the earsplitting sound of the gunshot and the startling mist of crimson from a hole in the dead mercenary's temple.
He'd toppled over onto the ground, onto his left side with the kukri still impaling him. He was a boneless, masterless puppet whose strings were snipped, gone from limitless energy to a lucent ghost, his heart a failing motor pumping its crimson-oil through a failing body. Something metallic and warm filled his mouth and trickled out the corner of his lips, dripping onto the ground. Clyde reached him then, going down hard on the padded knees of that experimental, black-and-red outfit, lifting his upper body off the ground and into the cradle of strong, muscular arms. Clyde was pleading with him to stay awake, to not close his eyes, to keep looking at Clyde, keep looking at me, don't sleep, don't shut your eyes, don't leave me.
He tried. He really tried. The pain was so extreme by then that maybe he was screaming himself as Clyde did something to his chest and back. Clyde was screaming again, at someone else, not him. He tried to say Clyde's name. His vision swam with Rorschach splatters of darkness and the world spun and spun and he blacked out, the last thing he saw being Clyde's pallid face and glistening eyes.
When he woke up two days later in the ICU of a hospital over four miles away from Rio Rancho, he was lying on his left side under multiple blankets that cloaked him to the waist, bolstered by pillows. He had staples on his chest and lower back under snug, sterile bandages. Drainage tubes snaked out of his torso and one horrid tube that was connected to a ventilator was worming down his throat, secured to his face by adhesive tape. For the longest time, he was paralyzed, unable to move even a finger. Then he realized that he felt no pain whatsoever, that fantastic painkillers were likely glutting his veins. It was probably the reason he didn't try to yank out the tube in his throat, the reason why he could lift his hand at all to touch Clyde's bristly face while Clyde sat slumped and asleep at his bedside with that golden head resting upon his thigh.
Clyde had clutched his trembling hand and kissed its palm, its knuckles, the back of its fingers. Clyde had stood up to lean over him and kiss his forehead, then his stubbly cheek above the adhesive tape. Clyde then pressed the nurse call button that would summon a nurse accompanying Dr. Alain Bertillon, the GATF's lead trauma surgeon, and the medical team dispatched by Nate via a GATF jet from New York within minutes of receiving word of his grievous injuries.
Thank fuck, Clyde had whispered, red-eyed and smiling, thank fuck you're okay, you
tough-as-boots bastard.
Clyde, his Clyde, would never have forgotten how he received this scar upon his chest.
"Three years ago, we were in New Mexico chasing down an eco-terror group who'd been secretly developing entomological bioterrorist weapons and were planning to release these insects across California. They'd hired mercenaries to defend them, and you and I were part of an eight-member team that took them down along with the eco-terror group." Cole rubs at the scar with his thumb. "Do you remember this?"
Clyde frowns and bites his lower lip. It's such a familiar action, such a Clyde thing that seeing it on this Clyde feels like a lance to Cole's throat. But maybe, just maybe, the Clyde he knows and loves is still in there somewhere in this stranger who wears Clyde's face, already embarking on a return.
"I remember the mission, yeah," Clyde says, still frowning. "I remember infiltrating that warehouse with Garcia, Adams and Kusanagi. And the mercenaries had -" Clyde's eyes go round as they flit down to Cole's chest then back up to his face. "Kukris. They were armed with kukris."
"Yes. One of them attacked me in an alley near the warehouse and stabbed me clean through with one."
Clyde's eyes become even rounder, glossy with dismay. They flit down another time to Cole's chest and dwell there a bit longer.
"Fuck. That must have ..."
"Hurt like hell? It did." Cole lets his lips quirk up, even as he feels a twinge deep in his chest. "But you got to me in time. You saved me."
Clyde is now wincing in empathy. It's a far cry from the revulsion that had plastered itself across Clyde's face earlier.
"Fuck," Clyde mumbles. He crosses those strong, muscular arms over his chest in a semblance of a hug and says, "I don't ... I don't remember that either, and that's just ..." He shakes his head, frowning again. "Something like that? How can I not remember something like that?"
"Do you remember the members of the team?"