by G. D. Cox
Clyde bites his lower lip once more, then says, "There was me. Garcia, Kusanagi, Adams. Moore. Carter, Tsung and ..." Clyde makes a face. He shakes his head again. "I don't remember. There was an eighth guy. But ... I'm sure it wasn't you."
"Why?" Cole asks quietly.
Clyde rubs the pads of his right fingers across his lips, his expression now one of bafflement.
"I - I don't remember you at all. I've never met you until tonight. I'm ... I'm sure of it."
Cole gazes silently at Clyde. It seems Clyde recalls events as recent as three years ago, with accurate details of the mission right down to the number of agents involved and their names. For some reason, Clyde specifically doesn't remember him.
"Who was the principal for that mission?"
Clyde stares at him for a second. Then, his brow creased once more, Clyde mutters, "I don't know."
Cole tilts his head to the right, then asks, "Do you remember the mission to Croenia on Friday? To rescue Agent Dushku?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I remember."
"Who were the agents on the team with you?"
"Turner. Perez and Rahman and ..."
Once again, Clyde trails off into silence when he comes up blank.
"Me," Cole says. "I was the fifth member of the rescue team."
Clyde shakes his head yet again, although it's more of a distracted action than one of protest at Cole's statement.
"I just ... I don't remember, man. I just don't."
Out of sight of Clyde, hidden again by the bed covers, Cole's hands clench into fists that he tells himself aren't quavering. Clyde remembers missions where he and Clyde had to interact with many other people, except that in Clyde's current amnesiac state, he's replaced by an unknown agent with no name. What about events where it was just him and Clyde? Or intimate events associated with their sexual and romantic relationship? Their marriage?
"You don't remember our wedding ceremony at all, do you?"
Clyde looks away from him and to the side, shaking his head yet again.
"Dees' Steakhouse?" Cole pauses. "Our honeymoon in Bora Bora?"
Clyde glances at him with an expression so akin to pity that Cole almost can't bear to look at it.
"No," Clyde mumbles.
"You don't remember my parents. Or the family home in Lincoln Square. You don't remember this apartment. Or ... us."
Clyde lowers his eyes. It is an adequate an answer as any.
Cole feels his fingernails dig into his palms. He knows he's still sitting upright on the bed with an impassive face, but he feels like he's been tossed into a raging ocean in the heart of a dire storm, buffeted by merciless waves, sinking into the icy darkness below. Clyde may remember missions that included him, but Clyde doesn't remember anything about them as lovers. As the husbands that they still are. Clyde losing his memories of him (temporarily, just temporarily, god) doesn't change that.
Clyde's memories of him, of them are just ... gone.
He has to also curl his toes under the covers to stop himself from visibly shuddering.
No. No. Now is not the time to panic. They need to figure out what that box has done to Clyde, and fix it. Now is not the time to panic. Clyde - his best friend, lover, husband - needs him.
"Clyde."
Clyde glances up at him with those achingly familiar, large, wide-set eyes.
"We need to go back to HQ. Now. You need a more thorough examination and I need to alert Nate and R&D about the box. You remember the box you found in the bunker?"
"Yeah. And that ... that flash of blue light." Clyde runs both hands down his face and sighs heavily. "That's what's fucked up my mind, isn't it? Whatever the hell it was."
"Very likely." Cole says Clyde's name again. When Clyde glances at him, he gives Clyde a pointed a look and ignores the twinge in his chest that he has to even say what he does next. "I'm going to get dressed."
It's as explicit a warning as Clyde's going to get that he's about to leave the bed naked. Sure enough, Clyde hastily backs up against the wall again and averts his eyes, staring down at the carpeted floor.
Cole pushes the covers off his legs and swings his legs over the side of the bed. After he stands upright, he glances over his shoulder at Clyde ... just in time to catch Clyde quickly looking away from him again, averting his face even more. Surely Clyde must have seen the vertical, three-inch long scar on his lower back now (amongst other numerous scars). Surely Clyde must know by now that he's at least telling the truth about being stabbed with a kukri through his torso by a mercenary in Rio Rancho.
He can feel Clyde's eyes on him as he strides to the walk-in closet. He doesn't know what it means that Clyde is looking at him now, naked like he is and utterly unashamed of it. (And why should he be, considering Clyde is his husband who's seen him like this countless times in the last six years?) He doesn't dare to hope (not too much, not too much) that this is an indication that while Clyde may not have any memories of him right now, Clyde's feelings for him are still inside Clyde, somewhere, somehow.
"Uh ... are my clothes in there too?"
At the doorway of the walk-in closet, Cole turns his head to glance over his shoulder at Clyde again. He catches Clyde swiveling his head away from him. He sees the smooth skin of Clyde's neck flushing, even in the dim lighting of the table lamp.
"Yes," he says, before turning his head back and entering the walk-in closet. He leaves the door open.
When he exits the walk-in closet in a white dress shirt and dark gray suit trousers, Clyde waits in a corner of the bedroom until he walks back to the bed and sits on the side of it, fastening a dark red, silk tie around his collar. (And god, how masochistic is he that it's the tie Clyde bought him for his birthday last year?) Clyde moves as elegantly as he always does past the bed and into the walk-in closet, his large eyes constantly flickering between him and the walk-in closet's open door.
Until the walk-in closet's door shuts, Clyde doesn't show his back to him. Not even once.
IX.
CLYDE BARNETT IS TWENTY-six years old and attired in a shabby, white tank top, faded jeans, a dusty, black leather jacket and socks and he is fucking pissed off. These fuckers who shot him in the leg and kidnapped him to wherever the fuck this place is took his boots, his wallet and his belt and all his tools and haven't given them back yet. His bandaged thigh hurts from the goddamn bullet graze to it and fuuuucck, whoever walks in through that locked steel door is going to be in deep damn shit. He's going to butcher them.
"Who the hell are you guys, huh?!" he bellows at the two-way mirror spanning the entire length of the wall to his left, raising his shackled wrists and struggling against the metal cuffs and chains tethering him to the floor. "You think you can do this to me?! I got RIGHTS!"
Shockingly, nobody answers him. For the twentieth time.
He bares his teeth in an audible snarl and slams his hands onto the bolted down table in front of him. Damnit, even the chair he's sitting on is bolted to the floor. Whoever the hell these people are, they know enough about him to rifle through his clothes and remove all his picks and knives and chain him up. Whoever they are, they're not taking any chances with him. They even shot him with a tranquilizer dart after shooting him in the leg. Jeez, talk about overkill! All he was doing was having a beer and minding his own business, for fuck's sakes!
He hadn't recognized the suited stooges who'd approached him at the bar. Their suits were expensive, tailored shit, no doubt about it, and he could smell the 'factory produced henchmen' stench steaming off them. Before any of them could even say, "Mr. Barnett," or, "Hey, you bastard," or reach into their jacket for their gun or something, Clyde was sprinting away and out the back door of the bar like an innocent soul out of hell. (Not that he's all that innocent to begin with, but he's a good guy. He is!)
The suited stooges were damn fast and persistent pests. He has to give them a tiny bit of credit for being able to keep up with him in the shadows of the night, even when he ricocheted off a brick wall and somer
saulted high onto a fire escape and kept going up. They chased him across several rooftops and didn't falter even then. He didn't know who they were and he sure as heck wasn't going to stop for them. So, it wasn't a surprise when they pulled out their guns and started yelling and shooting at him. (Took them longer than he expected, actually, and in hindsight, those bullets were probably and purposely missing him, just intent on slowing him down.)
Then one of the bullets got him along his outer left thigh. Stung like crazy and made him trip and tumble on coarse cement. Two suited stooges were on him in seconds, trying to press him down on the rooftop and handcuff him and aw, hell no, he wasn't going down that easy. He slammed a fist into one of their faces and felt wet warmth spray across his knuckles and fingers. Drove a knee into the other guy's solar plexus and then kicked the heels of his trusty combat boots against another stooge's chest, sending the stooge sailing through the air into yet another stooge. He scrambled up to his feet, ready to sprint again.
Then one of them shot him in the ass with a tranquilizer dart. It stung just as much as the bullet to his thigh. Whatever drug it had, it affected him within seconds. He was already tottering around after yanking the damn dart out of his right butt cheek, still trying to run, and he tried to swear at the stooges as he keeled over onto his left side, glaring at them standing around and waiting for him to go down.
He doesn't remember blacking out. One minute, he was folded up on the rooftop, paralyzed while they surrounded him like featureless shadows in the night and reached down for him. The next minute, he opened his eyes and found himself hunched over and drooling on this very table in front of him, his wrists shackled and his thigh bandaged under his jeans in this windowless room with its steel door and digital code door lock. (And fuck, he's just realized that somebody took his jeans off while he was unconscious to treat his leg, fuuuck, it had better be a woman who did it.) It's obviously an interrogation room, much nicer than the ones he's graced with his presence in various police stations across the country. That is, if he still is in the States.
Is it Elmahdi and his goons behind this, still angry over that misunderstanding in his casino in Houston? (He wasn't going to take that much from Elmahdi, just enough for him to survive for a bit longer so Elmahdi's just a greedy asshole.) Is it Speranza, still mad over him borrowing the Lamborghini in Vegas? (Come on now, he gave it back afterward. Yeah, okay, he left it downtown in the middle of the night and Speranza never actually got it back, but it's the thought that counts.) Is it Jung and his cult, still furious that he chose not to kill that old man despite them hiring him to do it and claiming the guy was a war criminal? (Hey, he may never have finished high school but he's not that dumb, he's not going to just kill anybody without doing his research first, and that old guy was not a war criminal. Just some dude Jung hated like crazy for some reason, and that's not good enough an excuse for Clyde.)
Regardless of who's actually behind this shit, he does not appreciate being chained up like an animal like this. They should have at least given him some water. Or do they think he's so dangerous that they can't even leave him alone with a cup?
Huh. Maybe he ought to take that as a compliment -
A sudden, beeping noise coming from the door's digital code lock pops him out of his ruminations. His head whips up. He goes rigid on the chair. He glares at the door and clenches his hands into fists on the table. There's probably somebody watching him right now through the two-way mirror as the door opens. Yeah, okay, they want to see a show? He'll give them a show, chained up or not. He's fought his way out of far worse situations than this.
He tenses up, ready to lunge forward as much as the chains will let him at whoever is coming in once they get near enough and ... ah, shit. He wrinkles his nose at the Glock 22 pointed at him by the man in the suit who comes in first. Not one of the stooges who chased him, Clyde is certain. This man reeks of 'higher tier dog'. The man is lean and about six feet tall, with curly, sandy brown hair, even darker brown eyes and very pale, smooth skin. The man's thin lips are straight but his eyes are narrowed at Clyde, as if they're glinting with amusement. What, does the guy find the situation funny or something? He doesn't.
Clyde purses his lips and glares at the man. Then, he shifts his glare onto the second man who enters the room and ...whoa, okay. This guy is even taller, broad-shouldered and hulking, dressed all in black in a long leather coat Clyde must admit looks pretty damn fine. The guy's black hair is cropped really short. He's got a neatly trimmed goatee thing going on and whoa, that is one mean-looking scar trailing up from his jawline to the middle of his left cheek. Looks like he got sliced by a blade in a fight. Now this guy? He reeks of 'boss at the top'. The guy responsible for all this shit happening to him.
"Fuck you, you ugly, scuzzy, dick-smelling sonofabitch," Clyde snarls at the guy, because while he's a veteran at escaping from hordes of armed henchmen, he also has next to no sense of self-preservation when he needs it most. (Which explains a lot about his life, really.)
The sandy brown, curly-haired stooge, still aiming a gun at him, raises an eyebrow high. The damn glint in those dark brown eyes is even more pronounced now. Well, fuck him too.
The boss man flicks his left hand at his side, a gesture that prompts the stooge to lower his gun and holster it. Clyde narrows his eyes at the boss man who stares right back with heavy-lidded, brown eyes. If this guy thinks he's going to just sing whatever tune he's ordered to, he's got something else coming his way.
"It was nice knowing ya, kid," the stooge says to him with a mellifluous, baritone voice. Then to the boss man, he says, "Director Fabry, sir."
The boss man - no, Director Fabry sits on a chair facing Clyde while the stooge leaves the room and shuts the door behind him with a beeping noise. Fabry does so as if he owns the whole place (wherever the hell they are), leaning back in the chair with his shoulders squared and head held high, looking down a protrusive nose at him like he's some brat.
"Director, huh?" Clyde sneers, wrinkling his nose again. "Of what? The Dingleberry Association of Butt-Munching Kidnapping Cocksuckers?"
Fabry stares at him for several more seconds. Then, in one swift move, Fabry's leaning forward with his forearms on the table, shoving his face at Clyde's. Clyde isn't easily intimidated but, shit, he'd be lying if he said he doesn't feel a little bit like pissing himself with Fabry's face suddenly just inches away from his, with a stare that seems almost physical, like a large hand clamped around his neck. He's already giving himself a mental pat on the back for not flinching, for glowering back. (His toes curling in his socks on the cool floor under the table doesn't count.)
"I'll have you know, son," Fabry says with a voice that reminds Clyde of the deep purr of a deadly big cat, "that I am one handsome, irresistible muthafucker and I know it."
"Eat a backpack of flaccid dicks," Clyde spits out, narrowing his eyes even more in scorn.
The insult seems to glide off Fabry like water off a duck.
"Anyone tell you that you're rather fixated on cocks?" Fabry says, staring unblinkingly at him.
For a long second, Clyde sees only blood-red.
"Go fuck yourself," he grounds out through his teeth, baring them like an aggressive lion would.
Fabry doesn't blink at all.
Clyde doesn't realize just how clenched his hands are in fists on the table until Fabry is sitting back in his seat once more, steepling his fingers in front of him and smirking at him.
"Oh, I would if I could. Like I said, I am one handsome, irresistible muthafucker."
And Clyde can't help but like the guy a bit now. Guys like Fabry, they honestly don't give a fuck what other people think of them. They think they're seriously hot shit and give as good as they get and hey, he can relate to that, he -
You think you're like him? You're not.
His fists begin to tremble.
You'll never be a man like that. You're a faggot. A cocksucking faggot, that voice in his head - that sounds just like Pop - says and
his lips twist up into a contemptuous smirk even as his fists tremble even more. Fuck him, fuck that alcoholic, kid-beating piece of shit in his rotten wooden coffin in that rotten cemetery in St. Louis. Fuck him and fuck this guy too.
"Yeah, a muthafucker who needed at least five goons to catch me - and by the way, fuck you for allowing them to shoot at me with bullets and tranqs, what was up with that, huh? -and now another goon with a gun just to face me." Clyde raises his fists with his knuckles facing Fabry, the chain linking the cuffs around his wrists jangling against the table. "And I'm in chains here. Who's the real muthafucker here?"
Fabry's smirk is gone. Fabry is staring at him again, expression stony. Clyde lowers his hands back onto the table and leans indolently back in his seat too.
Inexplicably, this is when Clyde starts to feel nervous about the guy, like he's seeing Fabry for the first time. Like he's suddenly in a cage with a gargantuan beast and has no weapons at hand. Even if he's a beast himself, he ... he's no match for Fabry, that much he knows. Not like this. If he's a lion, then Fabry is a goddamn fire-breathing dragon.
They stare at each other across the table. For a minute, the only noises in the room are the clinks of the chain against the table and floor when Clyde shifts his knee against it. Clyde can hear the blood rushing through his ears, his heart thundering in his chest. He lets none of it show on his face. At least, he hopes so. Just how good is Fabry at reading people? Just how much does Fabry know about him?
"In April of 2002," Fabry says, still staring at him with that stony expression, "you had a disagreement with a certain Johnny Lando in Detroit over the bill in his drinking establishment, which resulted in you being accosted by his thugs outside The Old Centaur on Michigan Avenue at approximately 1:47AM after said disagreement. During your brief incarceration in the soundproofed basement of said bar, you were tied up with ropes to a bolted down chair while three of those thugs worked you over. In retaliation, you removed the fingernails from your left hand and incapacitated all three men by employing those fingernails as projectile weapons into their jugulars and eyeballs."