Don't... 04 Backlash (33 page)

Jack scrambled
up, pulling Jan into him, and Jan fought. When that failed and Jan
tried everything in the world to twist away, Jack held tighter, his
gaze not leaving Gray’s.

“Yeah. I hurt
you too, soft lad. I know.”

“Out,” Jan said
with heat in his voice. “I want fucking out now, Jack. Let me go.
Let me go, please. Please just let me go, let me walk. Let me
forget. I don’t want to feel it anymore. I don’t want to remember.”
Jan pulled something out from his jean pocket. “It’s not working
like it did. Remember... I remember everything. I need it to work
again.... Make it work again... let me forget, please?”

Jack slipped a
look down as Jan rested his hand flat against his chest. He eased
his hand under Jan’s, and a moment later, Jan offered the heroin
vial over. As he did, Jan backed away. His back hit the wall, then
he eased down to bury his head in his knees. “Breathe... I just
wanted to breathe. Can’t breathe around you sometimes, Jack.”

Giving a groan,
Jack backed several steps away as Gray went over and crouched by
Jan.

“Hurts... so
fucking much. I keep putting my life in both of your hands, but
you, both of you—” Jan shrugged a tear. “—I thought I knew Jack,
but with Logan... everything keeps shifting and changing, where the
edges are filled with razor blades that keep cutting,.. fucking
cutting and slicing through my ability to breathe. And you... you
shift and changed just as much, only with no details, nothing to
hold on to, Gray. Scared... I’m so fucking scared all the time, and
there’s nothing to hold on to.”

A sound came
from the opposite wall as Jack slid down it and sat in much the
same way Jan did.

“
I love
his ass so much, Gray, you need to make him understand that.” A
sleeve rubbed over a very tired face. “But there are too many times
when I look at him, at you, and it’s like I’m trying to grasp at
echoes that cry the same hurt back at me and pull away out of
reach, back into secrecy. I don’t know you.
I need to fucking understand who you
are—
because I’ve
damn well lost everything I know about myself.”

“Caenarfon,”
said Gray, quietly, and Jan frowned at him. “It’s where I grew up.
It’s a port in Gynedd, North Wales.”

“I’ve... I’ve
been to the Caenarfon Castle.” He looked confused. “It has a good
mixture of medieval and Edwardian architecture. Great tourist
place... really scenic.”

Gray managed a
smile “Avoid Harlech beach.... Too many jellyfish.”

A sniff came
from behind them. “Cariad,” said Jack. “He calls me it sometimes.
Never clicked about the Welsh connection until recently. But I... I
caught the name and fell in love with it.”

Jan wiped at a
tear as he looked around Gray to Jack. “Do you know what it
means?”

“Lover,” said
Jack.

Gray eased down
so that he knelt in front of Jan, knees slightly apart. “My
father....” Gray rubbed at his head to ease his own hurt at looking
at Jan and seeing that lost look. “He works for MI6, last I heard
gathering intelligence for a ground operation in the battle for
Kobani.” He looked down. “I’ve never known a man like him.
Multilingual, so careful with leading others and subtly
manipulating their decisions, and intuitive... perfect for MI6
despite his aristocracy.” He looked up. “He can blend and shift
into obscurity like a hidden cell. In fact, one of his games as I
grew up was to switch cars, don prosthetics, and carry an egg
timer. If I didn’t locate him by the time it ran out, I walked home
from school that day.” He gave a snort. “And in the Welsh valleys,
that’s not such a good thing.”

Jan gave a
smile.

“Did he teach
you to fight?” That came from Jack.

“My mother
taught us both,” Gray said over his shoulder. “She brought out the
best and worst in us all. They met at an MI6 Embassy Ball. She was
the Staff Counsellor for the intelligence services, and he always
joked about how everyone hid behind their champagne glasses around
her because she knew all their secrets, fears, and fantasies.”

Jack fell quiet
for a moment. “Yet you don’t talk to them? You never talk about
them, about your youth.”

Gray wiped at
his mouth. “No, no I don’t.” He looked at Jan. “At twelve, I’d been
forced into the Army Cadets and was supposed to be on an
orienteering course. But it was one weekend I didn’t want to spend
away, not with my father due home a few days later. I didn’t know
he’d planned to come home early that day and spend some time with
my mother. He’d been away for a month, and the calendar in the
servant’s kitchen always had the exact time he’d arrive. So I
thought I’d make sure everything was in order for when he got
back.”

He caught
Jack’s soft snort. “I have control issues, Jack; I’m aware of
that,” he said with a trace of a smile. “I’d spent most of my life
looking up to my father. Such a strong-minded man, but stronger in
body, in how he made home safety a priority...” He let that trail
off. “Yet when I got home, I found him bound and on his knees at my
mother’s feet.”

“He’s a sub?”
said Jan, casting a glance at Jack.

Gray had caught
how quiet it was behind him. “I was twelve, Jack, I didn’t know the
D/s lifestyle then. But everything that he tried to explain after
that... I just saw him bound and naked on his knees at my mother’s
feet.” Gray gave an angered sigh. “Most kids see their fathers fall
at some point, but back then, he was my life.... He travelled the
world, buried me in languages, could bring cultures to life in the
living room without the aid of any artefacts, just the way he
spoke.... And the one person I trusted to lock the doors of a night
and keep my mother safe....”

Gray looked up
at Jan. “A year later, my mother was called away overseas,
something to do with MI6 that I’m still not given clearance to see,
even at my level. My father went with her. He came back. She
didn’t. My father lost his wife, I lost my mother, and for years I
let him know it was because he was too weak to look after her.”

The shuffle of
feet came from behind and Gray tilted his head in its
direction.

“Just a boy,
Jack,” he said in a soft tone without turning around. “I didn’t
know anything then; I certainly don’t know it all now. I spent a
long time hating my father, playing mind games with him that he’d
taught me, all to break someone down because of what I thought was
weakness. When for all of his life, all he ever did was love my
mother on a level it took me years to understand, respect, and
want.”

“What about
Ed?” Jan asked, looking so tired. “He doesn’t talk to your father
either?”

Gray gave a
bitter smile. “My mother was his daughter; she carried the Welsh
aristocracy and heritage, my father carried the Spanish. He got the
blame from all quarters. One quiet word from my grandfather had my
father packing his things and always... working.”

Jack came over
and his discreet brush at Gray’s cheek before he sat down next to
Jan had Gray looking down for a moment. It was his private way of
asking if he was all right.

“Have you never
thought of contacting him?” Jan wasn’t quite ready to look at Jack
yet.

“All the time.
But there’s too much damage done.”

“We learn, we
fuck up,” Jack mumbled, brushing a touch at the back of Jan’s hand
now. “No rules to say we can’t, just the space to fuck up and be
given the voice to say it.”

That had been
the reaction that Jack had been after, just to stop the silent
screams.

As Jan focused
on his own hands, Gray gave a heavy sigh. “Jack, with Martin—”

“He knifed you
at some point.”

Gray winced at
the hurt almost breaking free next to Jan.

“Your reaction
over the knife at Logan’s,” Jack said gently, and Jan looked hard
at Jack. “I’ve never seen you scared like that, mukka. Not until
then.”

Gray dropped
his head a touch. “I deserved it. I took something back then that
was never offered.” Gray snorted. “And Martin’s fucking loved it
ever since.”

The questioning
going on in Jack’s eyes said he didn’t understand. But then,
thought Gray, how could he?

“Back when you
were nineteen, I slept with you.”

Jack stiffened.
“You didn’t touch me until I was twenty.”

“I touched
Martin first.” Gray frowned sickness, mostly sadness. “But I
thought I was holding you.”

“You slept with
Martin?” said Jan, looking at him, his brow creased. “Christ, they
trip you up at every turn.”

“Finest hurt,”
Gray said quietly, casting a glance at Jack. “Martin, how he
plays....” Jan had seen it, but it was hard to explain to Jack.
“His kink is always getting you to agree to play, then making you
live through the sickness.” He wiped a hand over his face. “I
thought I slept with you that night; there was no sickness, only
with what came with knowing it wasn’t you.” And what came
after?

“You told
Martin how you felt? He knows how you feel about Jack.” That came
from Jan.

“I’d have let
Jack climb inside my soul if he’d asked that night.” Gray fell
quiet a moment, that tug on how Logan had fallen so easily now
biting hard at his own insides. How Martin lay there, holding on
and—

“
Awww, thanks, Welsh,
these moments are keepers.”
Martin kissed at Gray’s
neck.
“
This your
trust? Your compassion? Your respect?” Quiet. “Wanna see mine
now?”

Gray rubbed
distractedly at his stomach, and Jack shifted, gently easing the
tail of Gray’s shirt up to expose above his hip. A touch brushed at
the two scars marking there.

“
Seen
these so many times over the years...” Jack followed his touch with
his gaze, then glanced at Gray. “He did that?
I
did that?”

“I took
something that night I shouldn’t have, Jack.”

“Bullshit, you
know full well if it had been me, I’d have been there beneath you.”
He kissed his lips. “So you think you deserved... this?” The anger
bit through.

Gray let his
shirt fall back over the scars. “I could have killed him that
night,” he said into the quiet. “It was there; it would have been
so fucking easy to slice that knife across his windpipe, but—”

“You left,”
said Jack, with a frown. “I remember waking and not seeing you
again for a few months.”

“I went home.
And for a while back in Wales, I didn’t exist beyond those borders.
Jack, you’re a switch in every sense of the word, and it came so
fast that night,” said Gray. “It was as if something snapped, like
it did with Logan. You were there. Not fully, but enough to hold
on.”

Gray looked
away. “So I let you fall, this time back to sleep, then patched
myself up. Sheets were cleaned, blood stains removed... you wiped
down. What had happened was my fault, and I left with what I’d
stolen.”

“You didn’t
steal, Gray,” Jack said angrily. “It was given, always, just not by
me that one time.”

“Worst part
being, Jack, and Martin saw it... If I’d have known—” Gray
shrugged. “—I still would have slept with the pretence, with
Martin. That’s the sickness: that I loved you enough to have wanted
to lie with Martin again, despite the knife wounds, the blood—his
laughter. It’s when I knew I needed to back away, because I would
have fucked that bastard over and over again just to have had five
minutes of pretending to hold who hid beneath.”

Jack wiped his
thumb over Gray’s cheek, the troubled look in his eyes easing.

“Despite
everything,” Jan mumbled eventually, “the scars, the walking, the
fights.... How you loved him has never changed.”

“You can’t stop
who you fall in love with, Jan,” said Gray. “There were two times
where I thought I could, but it only hurt more.”

Jack seemed to
search for something. “After that... the night we first slept
together when I was twenty.” He shifted to his knees, body now
close to Gray’s as he cupped his face and made sure Gray stayed
with him. “You’d looked so torn for a moment, saying we all had
fears... we all had flaws... you were warning me there.” Jack
searched his eyes. “Damage had already been done....” He rested his
head against Gray’s. “You said you needed me to trust you, mukka...
mostly because you were lost in an apology for already holding me
when I wasn’t there, for saying you’d loved me when I wasn’t there
to hear it....”

“Jack—” Gray
winced as a hard kiss bruised his lips.

“No wonder you
didn’t fucking touch me for so long.” Jack sighed as his hand
slipped around Gray’s throat, cheek now against cheek. “When I was
twenty and you woke and found me wrecking your room after we made
love... Christ, mukka, what went through your mind? Did you think
you’d slept with Martin that night too?” A kiss came at the curve
of Gray’s throat. “Yet you still came close, you still held me
and... and that was the first night you taught me to go casual with
a photo and calm life...”

“Jack—”

“
I once
said I’d never apologise for loving you,” Jack said, now back
against his lips. “But because I know it will piss off every bone
in Martin’s body—I will apologise for
him,
for hurting you. For the damage he’s done.”

Jack’s kiss was
so soft, but Gray pulled away after a second. “Jack... that’s not
it.”

“Gray, it’s
okay; it’s—”

“I have a
boy.”

After stilling
his wipe of Gray’s cheek, Jack pulled back.

Gray frowned at
Jan, finding it so hard to look at Jack. “He’s seventeen now,
and—”

Jack sat down
on his knees. “A son?”

“Trust...”
mumbled Gray, rubbing at his head. “Fuck... I couldn’t risk telling
you, Jack. Not with Martin. Not with...” He gave a hard sigh.
“Doesn’t matter, doesn’t count anymore.... I’ve held him three
times,” he mumbled. “The last when he was four weeks old.” He
shrugged. “I turned my back on mine thinking he’d catch my backhand
blow at some point. Everything I’d done up to that point in the
army, what MI5 and beyond were teaching me... my father.... He’d
barely weighed anything in my hands, and I backed away knowing
things break when I get too close.”