“You appear to be clean,” Carl announced as he placed the boot gently on
the ground and looked up to Remy. “Nice boxers.”
“You’re just jealous,” Remy responded absently as he pointed his finger at
Carl. “We have to check me over. Everywhere.”
“Shouldn’t we move first? I mean, if they’re following you,” Nikolaus said,
letting the consequences linger on his last word.
“No,” Remy and Carl answered simultaneously.
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“If they’re after us they’ll wait ’til dawn,” Remy explained. “If we move and
I am bugged–”
“Then they’ll be able to, and we’ll be forced to move again,” Carl finished as
he stood up and took Remy’s hand. Nikolaus trailed after them and stood in the
doorway of the bathroom as Remy discarded his dubious Superman boxers and Carl
stood watching and waiting, looking around the toilet idly for something he obviously wasn’t finding.
“What are you doing?” Nikolaus asked.
“We’ve got to search him,” Carl responded, gesturing vaguely at Remy’s
body. “Do we have shampoo or lotion or something?”
“You mean….”
“Yeah.”
“Fun,” Nikolaus said flatly. “Why don’t you just submerge him?”
“What?” Remy and Carl questioned together.
“Fill the bath and get in. Stay there for an hour or so. Even a waterproof tag
wouldn’t last that long,” Nikolaus said confidently, finally feeling useful again as his extensive knowledge of electronics came into play. “If it is… on your person,
anyway. Bugs aren’t made to swim. You’ll still have to retrieve it, but….”
Remy and Carl blinked at him, then shared an abashed look before Carl bent
over the tap and started the water running.
“Don’t make it freezing,” Remy requested as he slapped Carl on the ass and
winked at Nikolaus. “And can you put some bubbles in there? Had a hard week,
non?”
Carl swatted at him as he danced away in the small room. Nikolaus smirked
as he watched them. Remy smiled at Nikolaus brilliantly. “What would we do without you, Niko?” he asked affectionately.
“All die horrible deaths, probably,” Nikolaus responded flatly. “Bubbles
might help actually,” he added thoughtfully.
“I’m not fixing him a goddamn bubble bath,” Carl grumbled as he let his
fingers flit through the stream of water and then put the stopper in the drain.
Nikolaus watched as Remy’s hand gripped Carl’s shoulder for balance and
he stepped into the bathtub.
“Niko, will you rip those fucking things to shreds and search them, please,”
Carl requested maliciously, indicating Remy’s boxers. Remy looked at him with a
horrified face and whimpered. Carl shrugged and drawled, “Submerge, bitch.”
“What about my head?” Remy asked as he eased himself into the water and
hissed plaintively. Apparently, Carl had taken his orders to heart, and it was too hot.
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“Breathe through your nose,” Nikolaus responded in amusement as he took
Carl’s knife and delightedly ripped the boxers apart.
He had come to the conclusion during their time together, and in watching
the other man’s various interactions before and since, that Remy enjoyed making
others feel superior to him. Whether it was a way to force others to underestimate him or simply a part of his personality, Nikolaus had not yet discerned. The only thing Nikolaus did know was that out of the other five men, Remy was the least likely to cause an opponent concern, and the most likely to cause them damage.
Remy knew perfectly well what he was doing. He’d probably done this a
hundred times, but Nikolaus felt pretty sure that he was acting toward the benefit of Nikolaus’s ego, and possibly Carl’s as well, and Nikolaus for one couldn’t help but be a bit grateful for it.
He’d felt so entirely useless up to this point unless he was at a keyboard. Did
Remy even know he had this ability? The ability to make people trust themselves and him with hardly a second thought? Surely, he must know.
Nikolaus’s eyes followed the movement of the muscles in Remy’s back as
his own hands worked at feeling through the thin material, and he watched with some sort of voyeuristic interest as Carl’s hand ran gently down Remy’s spine. Remy
shivered and Carl let out a low whistle.
“Scars tell the story of our lives, don’t they?” Carl murmured as his finger
traced a faded line at the base of Remy’s spine. Nikolaus had noticed Remy’s
numerous scars as well, but had never had the nerve to mention them.
“Mm hmm,” Remy hummed uncomfortably as he settled himself. His
shoulders sagged slightly under Carl’s touch and he hung his head as if he were
ashamed. Nikolaus furrowed his brow, wondering what was wrong with his friend.
Carl noticed the sudden change, too, because he immediately removed his hand and
stood up; looking at Nikolaus worriedly as if asking what he’d done wrong. Nikolaus shrugged.
Remy looked up as Carl took a step away. “Please stay in here with me,” he
said in a small, ashamed voice. Carl and Nikolaus exchanged another look, and
wordlessly made themselves comfortable.
“Are you all right, Remy?” Nikolaus asked softly as he sat on the closed lid
of the toilet and leant his elbows on his knees. Carl sat himself down on the floor beside the tub and leant against the edge, looking as if he wanted to touch Remy to comfort him but was unsure of whether he should.
“Scars are badges of honor, y’know. No need to be ashamed of any of them,”
Carl said softly.
Remy shook his head. “Yeah. It’s not that. I don’t mind my battle wounds.”
“What’s wrong then?” Nikolaus asked as Remy continued to avoid his eyes.
It was very out of character for the normally ebullient man.
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“It’s just, you get so used to being part of something. A team, I s’pose. And then you’re alone again,” Remy explained as he brought his wet hand out of the water and snapped his fingers, spraying droplets of water all over himself. “Just like that. I don’t feel like being alone anymore.”
He looked at them both with wide, pleading eyes, looking for all the world
like a lost puppy, and Nikolaus smiled fondly at him. Carl let his hand rest once more on Remy’s back and Remy smiled sheepishly at him.
“Dunno when I became so fucking dependant,” he muttered good-naturedly.
“Tell us the truth, Dixie,” Carl murmured in a coaxing voice as he rubbed
soothing circles over Remy’s shoulder blades. “Are you really okay? They didn’t hurt you at all?”
“I’m fine. Except for a pounding headache that I had for a couple days, I’m
just fine.”
“What about what happened in there?" Carl ventured as he nodded his head
in the vague direction of the other room.
Remy shrugged and sank his body into the water until only the front portion
of his face was still above water. Carl got up and sat on the edge of the bath, and Nikolaus moved to sit beside him in order to see Remy as he spoke.
“Shawn is very passionate,” Remy said as he closed his eyes and submerged
himself. He stayed under briefly, and then came back up and continued speaking as if he had never gone under. Water streamed down his face in fascinating
trails as he spoke. “He’s also very proud of his ability to control his emotions. Because of those two traits, anger is his standard fallback when he can’t properly express what he’s feeling,” Remy told them, sounding as if he had rehearsed the speech and gurgling slightly as water filled his mouth. He spit it out and sat up a little.
“Does he do that often then? Beat the fuck out of you when you do
something miraculous, like escape certain death?” Carl asked, his tone light but the undercurrent very bitter, in Nikolaus’s opinion.
“Not really. Once or twice.”
“How many times have you escaped certain death?” Nikolaus asked with a
laugh.
Remy shrugged. “Here and there,” he said vaguely, rubbing absently at a
circular scar on his thigh.
Nikolaus was pretty sure it was an old bullet wound, and it looked to be near
the femoral artery, if Nikolaus remembered his anatomy correctly. That had been a close one; it had probably bled fast and in quantities.
“So he’ll be okay then?” Carl asked as his eyes zeroed in on the movement
of Remy’s fingers as well. “The two of you will….”
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“He’ll be fine,” Remy said with a sweep of his hand through the air that
splashed both Nikolaus and Carl with water. “Sorry!” Remy exclaimed. He snickered and bit his lip quickly to stop it when Carl glared at him. He cleared his throat apologetically. “Sorry,” he repeated in a lower voice. “We’ll be just fine. He’ll probably sneak over to wherever I’m sleeping as soon as everyone’s asleep and
apologize ’til I have to clonk him upside the head to get him to stop. I remember one time we were on a mission and we got our orders mixed around. We ended up being
separated on different sides of this big compound down in South America, but we
could still hear one another through our comms. At one point, he stopped talking. Just completely stopped in mid-sentence. Then I heard guns off in the distance and then nothing. No contact for two days. When he finally came staggering back into the
rendezvous with a bottle of Jack Daniels to celebrate his safe return I nearly shot him just for the hell of it. Just to watch him bleed.”
“What had he been doing?” Nikolaus asked in amusement.
“He said he’d fallen into an old root cellar as he cased the entry point. That
he wasn’t watching his step as he talked to me and just fell. A root cellar that
apparently had a stash of Jack, because he was flat drunk when he made it back. We never did find out what the bastards were shooting at,” Remy added contemplatively.
“So that scene back there, that was normal?” Carl asked dubiously.
Remy nodded and winced as his arm hit the side of the tub.
“Tell us more about your plan,” Nikolaus said after several minutes of
Remy’s fussing with the stitches and Carl’s batting his hands away from the wound.
“Plan?” Remy echoed as he glared at Carl and poked him playfully in the
chest.
“You do have one, right?” Nikolaus asked in concern.
“Uhh… well, my immediate plan was to find all of you. After that I really
didn’t think much on it.”
“Oh, God,” Nikolaus groaned wearily as he rested his head in his hands.
“Mais excusez-moi for not reading your mind, ami,” Remy said sarcastically.
“I can’t do everything at once, non? You are a hard critter to track, by the way!”
“Track? You tracked me?”
“I tried to. Tried to catch up with you and let you know I had made it out.
Kept losing the trail. Finally, I had to guess ahead and I just went on to the airport.”
“Is that how you found us here?” Carl asked curiously.
“Ja! How did you find us?” Nikolaus demanded as it suddenly dawned on
him that Remy couldn’t have known they would travel on to Brisbane from Sydney.
“Were you watching at the airport and you never showed yourself?” he asked angrily.
If that had been the case then Shawn’s outburst would be nothing compared to what
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Nikolaus would do to him!
“No! I tried to get there, I really did, but I got held up in San Francisco. I had to trail Shawn’s alias. That’s how I found your connecting flight and then the hotel.
He always uses the initials S.B. no matter which name he uses. That’s how I found you. I was gonna wait ’til morning to show myself, but I was too short on blood and rest. I needed a bed.”
“You’ll get one, mate. Soon as we get you debugged, that is,” Carl promised
as he tugged lightly at Remy’s hair.
“You’ll still have to search me, even if we have shorted it.”
“Yeah. We’ll make it fun though,” Carl said with a wink.
Remy smiled and sank down a bit in the water as Nikolaus and Carl sat
quietly pondering their own thoughts. Remy submerged himself once more, and
Nikolaus counted absently as he remained under. He stayed down; his face
completely calm as little bubbles trailed toward the surface from his nose, and
Nikolaus and Carl exchanged several worried looks as the seconds ticked by. When
he finally came back up, breaking the surface of the water smoothly and barely
making a sound as he wiped at his streaming face, Nikolaus estimated he had been
under for almost a full three minutes. He was beginning to see more and more of the agent in Remy as he observed him. He wondered if that particular skill was the
training or the swamps.
Remy wiped at his eyes and then he looked back up at Carl.
“You heard me when I came in,” he said to Carl with certainty. “I tripped
over the fucking doorjamb. It barely made a sound, though; you must have terrific hearing! I thought you were going to disembowel me when you came stalking in with that big fucking knife.”
“I never saw you,” Carl responded, though he didn’t sound very surprised at
the revelation. Perhaps he’d already figured that out, though. Nikolaus hadn’t even known Carl had gone into the other room.
“Good thing, too. I saw how you handled Shawn and Thiago. It was
impressive,” Remy said with admiration. Carl smiled softly and stared at the surface of the water. Nikolaus had no idea what they were talking about, but he had the
sudden idea that he needed to leave the room and let them discuss the subject.
Remy was due for a nice cavity search anyway.
VI.
BRANDT wasn’t certain what to think of Shawn at the moment. The man was a
wreck; a completely different person from the calm, controlled man with whom
Brandt had worked the last three months.
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Shawn’s outburst had been similar to the ones Brandt’s various fires and
explosions had produced, but there had been an intense anger present in this one that had never before surfaced.
Brandt had been instantly turned on, and he had stayed that way.
But he also felt badly for Remy. The kid hadn’t deserved the verbal pistol
whipping Shawn had given him, and Brandt found himself just a bit fucked off with Shawn at the moment.
“Fuck!” Shawn shouted angrily as he paced up and down the length of the
room. Thiago and Brandt sat side by side on the bed and watched him with interest.
“Did you hear what he said? He said the Organization marked John to throw us off.
Throw us off!” Shawn roared as he tugged at his hair until his knuckles turned white.
“That means the bastards really did set us up! I can’t believe it!”
“So you believe what he said now?” Thiago asked shrewdly.
“Of course I do,” Shawn snapped dismissively. “Remy doesn’t lie. Ever. He
plays with the truth. Stretches and bends it, but he never breaks it.”
“I meant McTiernan. You believe what he told Remy?”
“Like Remy said, he and John have the same philosophy on the truth,”
Shawn answered dismissively. “I can’t believe I missed it when he said it!”
“I think we all missed it,” Thiago said nonchalantly, “what with him
professing his undying loyalty and your calling him a traitor and a whore and… what else was it?” Thiago asked Brandt as he held out his hand expectantly.
“A liar, I think,” Brandt supplied helpfully, his glittering eyes never leaving
Shawn.
“That’s right,” Thiago said with a nod. “A traitor, a whore, and a liar. Yeah.
That distracted us all from the real meat of the conversation, I think,” Thiago said acidly.
Shawn paused in his pacing long enough to give them both a withering glare.
“Enough comments from the peanut gallery please,” he growled. “Remy’s fine. He’s
fine,” Shawn murmured as he ran his hand though his hair.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Brandt mumbled. “I know I’d hate you after that.”
Shawn stopped again and stared at Brandt with wide, surprised green eyes.
“Yeah?” Shawn asked combatively. Brandt had never seen him like this. He
nodded, regardless of Shawn’s threatening glare.
“He came through hell just to get back to you. And you went and….” Brandt
finished with a sweeping gesture toward the wall and looked at Shawn in disgust.
“You’re pissed at me?” Shawn asked in mild surprise. Thiago and Brandt
both nodded and continued to stare at him.
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“You don’t really understand what you have there, do you?” Thiago asked as
Shawn stared back at them.
“’Course I do,” Shawn spat. “I’m not blind. I’m not stupid either. The two of
you may not understand, but Remy certainly does.”