slightly.
“If you hate the name ‘Archer,’ then what do your subordinates call you?”
Carl asked curiously.
Brandt shifted beside him and studied his hands as if he had never seen them
before.
“I don’t know,” Thiago said with a shrug. “Shitface over here is the only one
I ever deal with directly,” he added as he nodded at Gray.
“You know, there is just too much Kincaid love in this room right now,”
Gray said in exasperation as he threw his hands up and let them flop back onto the table. “Jesus fucking Christ. No, no! Don’t everyone rush to adore me at once, now!”
Thiago grinned at him and watched Carl put his arm around Gray and
squeeze him consolingly. That was new. Maybe the others would be accepting of
Gray after all, especially considering that they now knew he was technically on the same side as Thiago and Brandt.
“We just call him the Archer,” Brandt answered softly. Carl turned to look at
him, but Brandt didn’t look up.
“And what do they call you?” Carl asked in a soft voice.
Brandt shifted under the man’s intense scrutiny. “Pyre,” he said hoarsely.
“My code name is Pyre.”
Carl simply nodded and looked at Gray and Remy in turn. “And what are
your code names, may I ask?” he asked in the same strangely calm voice.
Remy and Gray looked at one another blankly for several seconds, and
Thiago wondered what they were thinking. Were they sensing the same strange vibe
that he was? This was getting too confusing too quickly, and Thiago wanted it
stopped. Now.
“Escuche, we don’t have the time for this right now,” Thiago said as he
stood slowly. “We can go over all this later, but right now we need to clean up and clear out. Shawn? Who’s coming after us tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” Shawn said as he looked up at Thiago warily.
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“Shawn,” Thiago growled warningly.
“I can make an educated guess, Thiago, but I don’t know,” Shawn growled
in return. “I’ve not been in contact since the cabin was blown.”
“I still want to know who blew up the fucking cabin!” Nikolaus demanded
with a huff.
“I did,” Remy murmured in answer.
Everyone stared at him in shocked horror.
“What?” Shawn finally breathed.
“I blew up the cabin,” Remy answered calmly. “I had to convince you that
the Organization was–”
“I fucking asked you,” Shawn hissed. “Right to your face!”
“I lied,” Remy responded flatly as he crossed his arms over his chest and
looked down at Shawn blankly.
He was barraged by a flurry of questions, and he ignored every single one of
them as he stared at Shawn unerringly.
“Wait, wait,” Brandt muttered as he stood up and leaned over the table to
look at Remy keenly. “Just answer me one thing,” he requested. Remy nodded and
looked down at the tabletop. “Did you mistime it?”
Remy looked up at him slowly, his eyes black and hard. “No,” he answered.
“So you set that charge, and then put yourself right smack in the blast
radius?” Brandt asked with what might have been open admiration. Remy nodded
curtly. “Marry me,” Brandt requested with unholy glee.
Remy cracked a smile and Carl laughed softly at Brandt’s side. Shawn and
Nikolaus both sat motionless, staring at Remy disbelievingly. Thiago rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. Nothing Remy did surprised him, now.
“Shawn,” he sighed. “Make your educated guess.”
“What?” Shawn asked dazedly as he tore his eyes away from Remy.
“Who is coming for us?” Thiago asked slowly.
“My guess would be that it’s Mikhail,” Shawn answered in a distant voice as
his eyes were drawn back to Remy.
“Is that the dude with the last name I could never pronounce?” Remy asked
idly. Shawn nodded. “Well, fuck me,” Remy breathed.
“Chamov. He’s one of the best,” Shawn said with another nod.
“Gray?” Thiago ventured after a tense silence. “You and Remy go on
upstairs, get some sleep. Shawn, you too. We leave at first light.”
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“But–”
“Wait a minute–”
“I still have questions.”
“I don’t care,” Thiago answered. “Later.”
“What do you plan to do?” Remy asked curiously.
“We have to move, we’ll plan the rest as we go. Go on, all of you. Carl,
Brandt?”
“Hmm?” they both answered distractedly.
Thiago stared at them curiously for several seconds. After a moment of
thought, he said, “You two go rest up as well. We’ll need you keeping watch tonight.
Niko? We have some things to take care of.”
Thiago watched the others shuffle out, and he took special notice of the long,
tense look Gray and Remy shared before Gray nodded to Thiago and ducked out of
the room. What the hell was that about?
Thiago followed them to the staircase to make certain that his orders were
followed.
Carl waited until the others passed by him, and he fell into step with Brandt
as the man trudged up next to him. Thiago couldn’t help but feel sorry for Brandt.
“Does anyone else feel like they’ve just been sent to bed for being naughty?”
Thiago heard Gray ask as he reached the top of the stairs and looked back at them all.
“Keep moving, Boss, I’m tired,” Remy growled as he pushed Gray on the
ass and caused him to stumble away from the stairs.
“Yeah, hissy fits of massive proportions such as the one you just threw tend
to take a lot out of you,” Gray responded wryly. Remy kicked him in the shin. “Ow!”
“It was not a hissy fit!” Remy yelled and Gray thumped him on the nose.
“Ow! Dickface!”
“Fuckhead!”
A sharp growl from Shawn stopped the argument. Carl snickered as he got to
the top of the stairs and watched Gray limp away to the smallest bedroom.
“You rarely see a good kick to the shin from a trained agent anymore,” Carl
teased. Remy looked at him and blushed. “That’s old school smack down,” he said
with a wink.
“That’s playground smack down, you twisted fuck!” Gray called as he
slammed the door behind him. Even Thiago could hear the smile in the other man’s
voice, though, and he snickered uncontrollably as he walked back into the dining
room to speak to Nikolaus.
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XXXIII.
SHAWN and Remy stood in the hallway with Carl and Brandt, both of them avoiding
looking at one another. They may as well have been shuffling their feet and blushing.
Carl rolled his eyes and gave Brandt a discreet shove toward the bedroom they’d
shared with Nikolaus last night. If Shawn and Remy needed time alone in separate
beds, then they’d have that option. Besides, Carl wasn’t tired and he wanted Brandt’s company.
Brandt opened the door and stepped through, going directly to stand in front
of the window and look out on the courtyard below. He looked sad, and Carl’s heart ached for the normally ebullient man.
“Hey, Wally,” Carl said softly as he closed the doo
r to the bedroom behind
him and stepped into the room.
“Yeah?” Brandt said in a slow, sad voice.
“I have something for you,” Carl murmured as he walked closer to Brandt
and stood beside him, putting a gentle hand on the small of the other man’s back.
“Please don’t kill me yet,” Brandt requested miserably as he pressed his
forehead to the glass of the window and closed his eyes.
Carl frowned and started rubbing slow circles on Brandt’s back with the tips
of his fingers.
“I couldn’t tell you any of it,” Brandt insisted miserably.
“I’m not going to kill you, Wally,” Carl whispered with an indulgent smile
and a little laugh. “I understand why you didn’t say anything. If it had been me, I wouldn’t have said anything, either. That’s your job, to protect your loyalties,” he whispered in a soothing voice as he closed in and spoke into Brandt’s ear. “I’m not angry. Come here,” he coaxed as he tugged at the back of Brandt’s shirt.
Brandt shivered and turned to look at him, his brown eyes huge and
strangely innocent. How Carl could think that someone like Brandt was innocent in any sense of the word was beyond his comprehension, but there it was all the same.
Carl looked into the other man’s eyes and smiled reassuringly. A flash showed in
Brandt’s eyes as he smiled tentatively back.
There was his Brandt.
“You have something for me?” Brandt asked in something close to his usual
carefree tone.
“Yeah,” Carl said excitedly. He’d been so concerned about the other man’s
mental state he’d almost forgotten what he was supposed to be doing! He dug around in his pocket and retrieved the little gift box. “I saw it this morning while we were out,” Carl told him as he held it out in the palm of his hand, his casual tone
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completely disregarding the fact that ‘out’ had been a body dump. “I knew you would want a replacement.”
Brandt looked at the box for several seconds and then back up at Carl with a
smile that lit up his entire countenance. Carl grinned back at him.
There was his Brandt.
Carl knew Brandt had guessed what he was being given. He knew because
he and Brandt had melded somehow. They were one now, even if neither of them had
really realized it before. They walked the same path, even if one side of the path was engulfed in flames and the other was covered in ice. They were the same, and the
knowledge made Carl happier than he had been in some time. He was no longer
alone, and Brandt was the reason for it.
“Are you asking me to marry you then?” Brandt said with a cheeky, almost
shy smile as he took the box from Carl and sat on the bed to unwrap it.
“I’m not really the marrying sort,” Carl murmured, and he stuffed his hands
in his pockets and watched Brandt open the box with a small smile on his face.
“What’s wrong, Trigger, I’m not your type? I can baaaa with the best of
them. I’d even wear wool for you,” Brandt teased as he let the paper fall to the floor and held the box in the palm of his hand.
He looked up at Carl with a smile, and Carl felt the overwhelming urge to
kiss him. Not the fierce, primal kisses they had always shared before, but a slow, tender kiss. One that would convey the emotions Carl was feeling.
Brandt’s smile slipped slightly as he saw the slightly stricken look Carl had
acquired as he thought. “What–”
“Do that again,” Carl ordered quietly as he took several steps and took
Brandt’s face in his hands.
“What, baa like a sheep?” Brandt asked in confusion.
“Smile for me, Brandt,” Carl whispered as he leaned over slightly and
looked Brandt in the eyes. Brandt blinked and opened his mouth to say something,
then snapped it shut again as a slow smile spread across his face.
“You called me Brandt,” he said with another shy smile, and Carl kissed him
gently.
Brandt’s hands moved slowly up Carl’s forearms, rubbing up and down
several times before he wrapped his fingers around Carl’s wrists and tilted his head slightly to allow Carl better access to his mouth.
Carl’s pulse raced as he slowly slid his tongue over Brandt’s. “Is that not
your name?” he asked breathlessly.
“I can’t remember,” Brandt responded in the same tone.
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Carl smiled again and kissed him once more. He pressed into him this time,
and Brandt wrapped his arms around Carl’s neck as Carl pushed him slowly back to
lie on the bed. Brandt groaned and gripped him tighter.
“You didn’t open your present,” Carl murmured in between slow, sensual
kisses. He slid his hands up Brandt’s forearms, which were still wrapped around his neck, and he pulled at them to bring Brandt’s hands down to the bed. He laced their fingers together and allowed his thumbs to rub lightly back and forth along Brandt’s wrists as he pinned Brandt’s hands down.
Brandt looked up at him longingly. “I’d rather do this,” he said in a low,
growling voice.
Carl had always wondered which activity held the highest rank on Brandt’s
Big List of Fun Shit. Apparently, sex was higher than fire. Today, anyway.
Carl let go of Brandt’s wrists and slid his way slowly down Brandt’s body
until he was standing at the edge of the bed with Brandt looking up at him curiously.
“Pyre, huh?” Carl asked he unbuckled his own belt and let his jeans fall to
the floor. He stepped out of them as Brandt watched him hungrily and then pulled his flannel shirt over his head without bothering to unbutton it. “Do you like to burn, Wally?” he asked in a low, seductive voice as he stood naked at Brandt’s feet.
“Are you going to make me?” Brandt breathed as he disrobed slowly, staring
at Carl’s eyes and moving as if in a daze. Carl reached down and pulled Brandt’s
jeans off for him. He gestured for the other man to scoot to the head of the bed and crawled onto the bed after him, settling between Brandt’s legs comfortably. “Are you sure you’re not very mad, Trigger? I wanted to tell you, I just…,” Brandt murmured as he licked his lower lip nervously and looked up at Carl with worried eyes.
“You know better. Don’t make me take your treat away,” Carl threatened
cheekily.
“Mmm, I thought you were my treat,” Brandt responded with the same
cheeky tone as he rotated his hips and groaned slightly. Neither of them was much on foreplay. They both preferred to have a nice, satisfying fuck and then revel in one another’s presence after. Carl smiled and said nothing, and as they looked at one another, Brandt’s eyes suddenly cleared and he whispered, “Fuck me, Trigger.”
“No,” Carl said as he leaned over Brandt and stroked him in a lazy rhythm.
Brandt groaned and thrust his hips upward into Carl’s hand.
“Please,” Brandt breathed as his hand came to tangle in Carl’s long hair.
“I won’t fuck you. But I will make love to you, if that’s what you want,”
Carl whispered to him, his lips ghosting over the tender skin of Brandt’s collarbone as he spoke.
“Oh, God, yes. Please,” Brandt groaned with more passion than Carl had
expected.
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Their encounters had never been anything but fast and hard. In fact, as far as
Carl was aware, all of Brandt’s encounters had been brutal to some degree. To
this day, the thought of Brandt trying his best to fuck Remy through the wall could make Carl instantly hard.
“Where’s the–”
“No, no lube. Nothing. I want to feel you,” Brandt said in a hoarse voice as he wrapped strong arms around Carl and pulled him closer for an open-mouthed, wet kiss.
Carl gave Brandt’s cock several more strokes before tearing away from the
kiss regretfully and sliding down Brandt’s body.
“Never on a warm up, remember,” Brandt said plaintively as he rose up onto
his elbows to watch what Carl was doing. “You’ll hurt your jaw,” he warned
cheekily.
“Have I ever sucked you off, Wally?” Carl asked as he bit at the soft skin
covering Brandt’s hipbone.
“I, uhh, holy hell, that feels good,” Brandt moaned as his eyelids fluttered.
“You’ll come on the warm up, all right,” Carl growled evilly.
Brandt’s eyes fluttered closed and both hands reached to press against the
headboard as Carl did his best to make him scream. Finally, he was writhing and
thrusting into Carl’s mouth almost uncontrollably.
“Please,” he gasped as he opened his eyes and looked down at Carl
pleadingly. “I want you inside me. I want you to feel me come, Trigger. Please!” Carl closed his eyes and moaned as he raised his head. That did sound like a good idea.
But if Brandt didn’t come for him, he needed something else to use as lube.
Brandt’s breathing was still erratic as he tried to calm his overheated body,
and Carl crawled up to kneel beside his head. Brandt needed no prompting, and he
immediately rolled to the side and took Carl’s throbbing cock into his mouth. His hand slid around to rest on the back of Carl’s hip and he pulled at him, urging Carl to thrust forward, to fuck his mouth as he moaned and sucked.
Carl cradled Brandt’s head with his hand, desperately trying to hold back,
and after only seconds, he knew that he couldn’t take any more and he pulled at
Brandt’s curls to make him stop.
Brandt looked up at him, licking his lips slowly, and said, “Fuck me. Make
me burn, Trigger. I’ll make you feel it, too.”
Carl repositioned himself between Brandt’s legs and locked eyes with the