Chapter 17 CATCHING THE FALL
Watching Jan head out as Ray left him alone to take the night off, more if he called it, Gray eventually turned away and headed into the kitchen. After staring down at something next to the microwave, he picked it up and turned it over once, twice, before he headed back into the Oval.
Jack still knelt in the corner. He still kept his hands locked behind his head. Still rested his head down against the panelling even if his body language said he fought against walking.
Keeping it quiet, Gray went over and placed the Polaroid photo close to Jack’s knee, out of alignment with the skirting board.
Then after drifting a touch down the back of Jack’s neck, letting him know he was here despite how Jack shifted, shaking his touch off, he slipped Jack’s iPhone from his pocket and headed over to a drawer in his desk. Bluetooth headphones came out, and Gray synched them to Jack’s phone before he headed back over.
Headphones slipped on, blocking out any other noise for Jack, Gray set his playlist to repeat, then rested the phone next to Jack’s Polaroid.
One last drift of finger down Jack’s neck, a watch on how his touch was still shaken off, Gray sat at his desk and sent a message to Simon to delete the repaired onboard camera footage. Simon was too sharp not to tie Jack to it all, as Ray had been, but that knowledge, like so much more, wouldn’t see the light of day. If Ray hadn’t been able to repair the footage, the MC would struggle too, and it would stay that way.
He had potential biological warfare and a Substantial threat upgrade to UK streets to oversee, a pounding in his own head… heart, but… routine.
The corner was one that had played out so many times before in Jack’s youth when he’d stood shouting at the world, not understanding why the ground shifted under his feet and left him stumbling.
So back to Jack’s youth it was. The corner it would be as Gray checked on the status on the security alert upgrade and what measures were being put in place by each department. It was a more brutal routine that put Jack’s will up against Gray’s with silence the weapon, only Jack was older, with so much more damn coldness emanating from his corner. Maybe rightly so, too.
Sometimes the corner was the only part of them to rely on when the world did crumble underfoot. And Jack’s world seemed to be crumbling so badly into unknown territory, taking Gray right along with it.
Jan sat outside the MC psych unit, staring over to the reception. Halliday’s car sat in his reserved space, but no call had been made to talk to him. He had been Jan’s first thought, but…?
Giving a rough sigh, he wiped a hand over his face. He wouldn’t go behind Jack’s back, not this time. And with Gray back there, the look in his eyes and such an old knowledge over handling Jack, he trusted Gray’s way of walking Jack back through to where his head needed to be, at least enough to try and reason what was wrong.
So sitting here on the car park for the past half hour it had been, trying to sort his own head and heart.
“Fuck.” Jan rubbed at his temple. He hated making the call he was going to make, but pieces needed to be slotted into place for everyone’s peace of mind. Not knowing them and having to scramble around and wait was only going to dig between them more.
So this would be Jan’s call, and he needed Jack and Gray to trust him to do it.
Turning his radio off, he tugged out his phone and thumbed in a number.
Someone picked up a moment later. “Lo. Lucy here. Who you want talk to?”
Jan managed a smile hearing Lucy’s voice. It had taken her so long to find it in the MC psych unit, but then she’d seen her mother raped and murdered, a butterfly stuffed into her hip and coated in semen to make her lose it.
“Hey, Lucy. I’m Jan.” He kept it as formal as she’d tried to, a whisper off someone coaching her behind her on the phone. “May I speak to Raif, please?”
“ Dad .”
He winced at the shout, but he’d have loved to have seen Raif’s smile hearing that fall from her lips. The one complication had been that Lucy’s language had regressed, making her sound younger than her years, but he knew Raif would take anything offered his way.
“Okay, Okay, Voodoo. Right here. I’m sitting right here. Give me my phone, honey.”
Raif came more fully onto the line. “Jan? Hey. What can I do you for?”
Jan frowned. “Any chance you can meet me in the carpark, away from Monique?” He kind of kept to his word over keeping his distance.
“Mine? Now?” A pause came, and Jan caught a shift of blind at one of the flat windows to the MC psych flats. “Sure. On my way down.”
Jan hung up and eventually Raif made his way over the carpark. The door opened a moment later, and his Merc shifted under Raif’s all-muscle weight.
“No Gray? No Jack?” Ray looked behind into the backseat. “No Ray and his munchkins hiding in the back trying to pike Jack from behind in the behind?”
Jan stayed so quiet on hearing that. “How’s Chase?”
Raif gave a sniff. “Still the same. Still lost to his coma. But…” He shook his head. “I get the feeling you’re not here to talk about Chase and Ash, right?”
Jan looked at him. “You’re bound by client confidentiality, right?” he said eventually.
Raif tilted his look Jan’s way. “Is that what you need to be? A confidential client of mine?”
Jan nodded. “All expenses covered plus your normal hourly rate. But I only need information. Nothing more. No contact, no disturbing the waters.”
Raif folded his arms as he eased back into his seat. “I have to ask: does this intel go against any laws?”
Jan looked his way sharply. “What? No. Just intel on whether a kid is out there, nothing more.”
“Good, because I’d have taken the walk if it was. Ex-MI6 here: I work within the law, not around it.”
Jan nodded.
“So give me a name, give me a reason.”
Jan walked Raif through it. “Gray said you’d be the best one to make the call and get Jude’s name out on the street, find out if he’s out there. No contact.”
Raif glanced hard at Jan.
“Fuck. You’re kidding me? Martin has a kid?”
As he sat working, Gray flicked a look at the time on his laptop. Over thirty minutes it had taken for Jack to ease away from the corner and sit with his back pressed into it. Head down in the arms across his knees, it had taken him another thirty minutes to take a drink of water from the bottle Gray had placed at his side.
A look at the Polaroid never came, neither did a move to shift it back into alignment, but it felt like the avoidance was deliberate, stubborn.
Antibacterial handwash stood watch close by, but that stayed purely a guard to the quiet as well.
Jack kept his headphones on, the playlist halfway through it second run, and occasionally, every now and again, a twist of head to the side would come Gray’s way, as if to check he was still there. Even that was in question.
Gray briefly closed his eyes.
Now after checking to make sure Jan was on his way back home, it touched two hours, and as Jack eased to his feet, Gray closed his laptop and went over. He kept his body in close, letting Jack know he wasn’t to leave the corner until he’d found his voice, but also to let him know there’d be no repercussions, no anger, just Gray’s stay with him.
No shift in body came to push him or his touch away, and after a moment, Jack went to speak, then tightened his jaw and looked away.
Gray didn’t rush him. He gave him time, space….
“I don’t know how I feel about you and Martin touching.”
Jealousy wasn’t Jack. He simply repeated a line he seemed to have been repeating over and over since he’d sat on the bench after losing Martin, and that killed Gray how it had rebounded around and around his head without him being able to sort it.
“But it….” Jack frowned. “It’s not because you two touched.” He looked his way, seemed to try and order the sock drawer inside his head. “It’s because he allowed you in to touch.”
Gray returned the frown, and Jack shivered with it.
“I sat on the bench after I lost him, and it felt like my skin had been stripped raw, leaving me open to the dirt and grime that digs too deep to get at and scrub clean. But I thought it was because I’d lost him. So after each failed therapy session, change in meds, blood tests… sticking to them and it still not working, I pushed to try and get him back to stop the crawling under my skin. And I swear, wherever I went, whether it was back to the factory or sitting outside my mother’s home, I handled it. I wouldn’t have taken the walk there if I thought I couldn’t handle it, but all of Halliday’s care… you… Jan. Seems I’m in a good place with you all. Martin never once turned his head my way.”
Gray eased a touch under Jack’s T-shirt at his side, stroking lightly at the skin. Fuck. That’s where he’d been walking to… down hell’s memory lane and all its triggers.
“But security….” So much anger crept in Jack’s look. “Gray, you’re my greatest fucking threat at times, and Martin? He let you get close. He let you and bloody Cutter close through Joanna, and I had no fucking clue.”
Gray looked at him.
“And if he failed over letting you in,” Jack said quietly, “what defence do I have left against anyone else? What use is he as a defence anymore even if he does come back?”
Now Gray started to see the real core turmoil, to understand.
This had always been about security, but not Gray’s loss of it.
Jack’s .
What they’d taken from him: routine. Safety in numbers….
No wonder it had taken so long to sort it in his head. Every routine he’d known: dropping his photo, the need to clean, talking to Gray, it all became another outlet to ignore in order to trigger Martin, get his core security back. Because he hadn’t touched that photo in months. He’d missed nightly showers after workouts…. He was back to denying OCD routines, but this time not to hide from the hurt, to displace his own head enough to draw Martin out. Only finding out about Jude… it really had displaced Jack’s head. No. He wouldn’t have spoken to Halliday about it because Halliday would have tried to be the cure he wasn’t looking for at each no show under Halliday’s therapy. He’d needed Martin back, only now, the anger of Cutter, supposed secrets, sleeping with a woman, having… Jude?
“Just feels…” Jack frowned so badly. “Reactions and my skin crawling. It’s all I’m running on, and I’m scrambling around trying to build my own defence system up. So yeah.” He nodded. “I push into your security, dig so deep under your skin because… because fuck you for taking that barrier from me. Fuck Martin for allowing it. Fuck you for feeling for each other and making me feel like I need to step up to be my own security and steal files when a familiar name crops up. That I want to break Chris’s neck for threatening mine. That’s what Martin was designed for. It’s what you are designed for. It’s what I love you for.”
Gray roughly slipped an arm around his neck, pulling him close, so damn close.
He hadn’t meant for this. Christ, if he’d known… he’d have denied Martin’s touch at every goddamn turn.
“With the kid?” Jack returned Gray’s hold. “I’m scared, just so fucking scared, Gray. And it’s got fuck all to do with him carrying Cutter’s blood.”
Gray frowned as he looked at him.
“What if he’s got the best of Martin, eh?” he said quietly. “What if he’s got the best of me and he’s turned out okay no matter how dark it’s got for him? But by starting that search, we fuck up his life?” Jack buried his head in Gray’s shoulder. “I mean… this place. It takes the best down and locks them in padded rooms. Look at Jan… Light. And me… I can’t even get my own head to stop thinking I need to step up and be what I wasn’t bloody designed for, all to survive against you.”
“Fuck.” Gray brushed his nose along Jack’s cheek. “I swear to God I’m not your threat anymore. All my push on security over the years… Christ. I never meant to tear yours down, stunner.”
He kissed at Jack’s cheek, unable in many ways to look at him. Jack had such a big bloody heart, and Gray should have known his head would rather keep Jude away than risk seeing him lose his own head to all the details playing around here. Gray had done the same with trying to keep Light away. “I know what I’ve done,” he said quietly. “You have my word we’ll make sure any checks on Jude take into account everything playing around him, even if that means staying out of his life. I’d have never taken a step into it without your say so. But please… please for god’s sake, stop and think. Slow your head down, slow your reactions. Lost….” He kissed Jack’s jaw and screwed his eyes shut over where Jack’s head had gone. “I really don’t give a fuck about Chris. I could have lost you if that crash had turned out differently. We could still lose Jan because of it. And yeah, in the back of all that, there’s Martin to think about. A kid.”
Jack groaned, sounding so pissed off as a cough drew Gray’s attention back to the door.
Jan stood leaning against it. He looked pale, cold, and Jack groaned again in Gray’s throat for a moment before he pulled away.
“Soft lad—”
Jan didn’t back off, but he didn’t come over either. “It’s all good, Jack.”
“Really?” Jack stopped a few feet away to dig his hands into his pockets. “It’s okay for you to not feel okay. I just… I just really need to know us will be okay.”
Jan glanced around the office, shrugged. “After what I just heard, it’s all we can be, right? Okay?”
Jack dipped his head, searching Jan’s look, then shook his head. “No. You don’t have to be okay. You can shout, get angry, call Halliday in, get me arrested and call me a bastard as often as you need if that’s what gives you any peace.”
“Gray said it earlier. I need to do any of that, including calling you a bastard over this, we’ve got a problem we can’t come back from, Jack. I mean you said it: how we all know what’s at the core of who we sleep with here.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah, I know, soft lad.” He gave a shaky sigh, a deeper dig into his pocket. “So, if I stand here knowing I’m a bastard amongst everything and that I’ll try to make it right with Chris, would you still allow me in close enough to hold you?” A frown. “Because I kind of really need to find a way to hold you.”
Jan looked down and shook his head. “Can’t just be about what you need. Fucking scares me knowing what you did need when you went after Chris. Fucking kills me kno—” He stopped that there, and yeah, it looked like it hurt too much with it all still running around in his head. “I’m really scared how Martin’s going to react when he finds out about Jude, Jack. He nearly killed me when it came to Light.”
Jack frowned a lot of hurt, a lot of… responsibility?
“So could you trust me a little now?” Jan said quietly. “If you’re struggling with security, take up the offer from a soft lad. Let me handle this with Jude. Not Gray, not his security, just me and Raif.”
Jack glanced back at Gray for a moment. “Raif?” He found Jan again. “You?”
“Raif,” Jan said quietly. “But me mostly. When it comes to security, there’s four of us in this: you, me, Gray, and Martin. And me? I don’t want this coming back and catching us out when Martin does come back. I don’t want any more poisoned gas down my throat.” He dug his hands in his pockets. “All Raif’s been asked to do is find out if Jude’s alive. No contact, nothing more. But knowing if he’s out there will be one less knife for Martin to come at us with. Would… are we okay with that? You can find a way to tell Martin when he does come back and work this out between you over what needs to be done. Jude is yours and his to handle, okay? Always.”
Jack went to say something, looking a little angry, but after a moment, he gave a rough sigh, and took the last few paces to Jan.
Yeah, Jan may have been a soft lad, but Gray saw what he’d done. Jack was used to pushing back with Gray, so Jan’s softer control on security was just what Jack needed to help calm his own disturbed waters. He eased a touch around Jan’s waist now, almost seeming to settle with Jan there. “Yeah. We’re good with that.” He gave a shake of head. “I’ll even try and go easy on Light. At least we’ve got another few days of freedom there, right?”
Jan pulled back and looked at him. “Change of plan. He’s back early tomorrow.”
“Fuck?” Jack gave a rough sigh and glanced back. “Any chance we can change the locks? Maybe move to a different asylum to give his head and mine a rest?”
Gray offered a ghost of a smile seeing some of the old Jack filter through. The new, colder one was… threatening to take everything out of his world, and the look Jack gave Gray now didn’t help, the hurt in those eyes.
“About Chris. I’ll put it right through the MC, with whatever way they decide to take it,” said Jack.
Gray shook his head. “You mention nothing outside these walls. I’ll handle Chris.” He always had handled this side to Jack and Martin.
Jan looked away from them both, but he didn’t let go of Jack.
And that look right there: always about the man and his choices behind the cologne. Because Jan hadn’t gone to the police: he hadn’t called in Halliday. He’d done what Gray was doing—pulled the circle tight in order to protect against more damage, even if that damage came from the inside.
Having Light back tomorrow wasn’t going to help, not with him being around Jack, not with Jack knowing Simon had seen the onboard camera footage. But like keeping a tough eye on Light, especially outside of the manor even if it was playing chauffeur to and from the airport, Gray would handle that too. Always .