#garrette

===== Part of the family business,” Garrette answered briskly to Eugene’s invasive questioning about how he had become what he was. A spy. “C’mon, there’s got to be more n’ that. Did you do it for revenge? You do it to impress some lady and ended up sticking to it when she didn’t suit your fancy,” Eugene persisted with his questions, unconvinced of Garrette’s claim even as the spy rubbed the bridge of his nose irritably between his forefinger and thumb.

"What more is there to say? My mother was an agent working as a mostly freelance assassin. My father was a secretary who worked within the base of one of her employers," Garrette crossed his arms, nudging the empty air with his shoulder in an indifferent motion, "They met, they fucked, they had me and I followed the trade left by my parents to become a spy myself. What more can I say about that?"

Eugene held his arms up and outward as he drew a blank on how to answer Garrette. He blew an empty whoosh of air from his mouth, and promptly shut it when no words came out.

"… Alright, since we’re apparently playing twenty questions, tell me about yourself?" The spy’s question felt like the relief of air that filled the lungs of a drowning man, and Eugene recovered, shoring up his own defenses against any question Garrette would ask that would pay him back tenfold.

Garrette looked to one side, drawing Eugene’s attention until he saw nothing particularly out of place in his messy little home. When he looked back, he jerked where he sat, surprised at Garrette’s sudden look of determination as he stared Eugene in the eye, unblinking and intimidating for a man of his size.

"Tell me about your parents," he asked quietly, still staring hard into Eugene’s eyes seemingly prepped for him to somehow avoid the question. Eugene shrugged his shoulders much the same as Garrette had moments ago, slumping in his posture, which was a telling sign to Garrette that he would answer truthfully, no longer afraid of the oncoming interrogation. “M’dad and me have never been all that close,” he explained, motioning his hand to express how he and his father were on and off,” I love him, sure. But we’re a sort of … We’re indifferent to each other. Mostly. Uh. You get it?”

"I don’t. I didn’t meet my father until I was at the cusp of adolescence." Garrette raised one hand to silence Eugene’s cutting remark on the Spy’s unspoken details of his own life, "Hush, boy. It’s my turn to ask the questions now."

Eugene shrugged his shoulders once more as he turned his upper body to Garrette, planting on hand on the bed and the other behind himself, “Boy? I’m probably older than you, you bloody spook!”

"Back to the question at hand, if you will? I will not be pleased until I at least hear about your parents’ occupations?" Garrette remained as hard as stone as he swerved the focus back to Eugene. The man, in turn, bristled yet stood his ground, rolling his eyes to the ceiling before he explained his parents in brief. "Mum said dad was in the army once. I think she said she used to be a nurse and that’s how they met," Eugene squinted his eyes, as if it would help him visualize what all his mother had told him, "S’been years since she told me and she’s dead now. Me and dad still ain’t on speaking terms even after mum passed.

Garrette hummed thoughtfully, processing the information and adding Eugene’s sincere expression after he’d spoken to the equation. “I would have thought that my threatening to fuck your mother’s corpse would have been the one thing that would bring you two together, if not for your mutual hate of me?” The spy laughed after he’d spoken, an empty one, yet his reminder of what he had promised in the past surged like a hot spike driven through Eugene’s gut, boiling his blood and flooding his ears with the rhythmic beating of his heart. There was the anger that Garrette had had the innate ability to draw out of Eugene, and it was the very same emotion that had left Eugene’s feelings muddled, impossible to process and interpret. True, there was no one else on earth that he hated more than this particular spy.

And for good reason!

There was also that damned knot in his heart that throbbed in yearning whenever Eugene thought about Garrette. He’d asked Garrette questions of his past, searching for one good trait of his, something that was good enough that his mind would have to forgive Garrette for his transgressions. He drew a blank, Garrette having responded to him with barely any such information that Eugene could use. And then he’d had the guts to bring that up.

"You know what? Scratch that," Eugene fought the quaver in his voice and the trembling, tingling feeling in his fingertips that was a precursor to a sucker punch aimed for Garrette’s nose, "You just reminded me. I was wrong about me and my dad and mum and you." The last word of Eugene’s sentence was spoken with such venom that Garrette did a double take, surprised to hear the hate he hadnot heard Eugene speak with while they were seeing each other. Whatever that meant with both grown-ass men too stubborn to talk about how they really felt about each other.

"I told my dad what he told me. He says he’ll wait for you. He pulled out his biggest gun… One even I haven’t ever seen him whip out, I don’t even know where he stored it so well that I didn’t see it once as a kid… He says it’s for you, if you ever fucking come near his house and my mum’s grave," Eugene’s intense glare turned grim, "He’ll blow a hole so big in your gut, no way respawn could find all of the pieces to put you back together again." He mimicked the shape of a gun with his fingers, shut one eye as if he were aiming, and uttered a ‘K-pow’ sound as if he’d fired a gun.

Garrette looked at him, touched his hand to his chest where he had assumed Eugene had implied to have struck him, then laughed wholeheartedly. It was a laugh that encompassed something that Eugene found to be very dark, making him feel very small. And that pissed him the hell off.

"I’m honored," Garrette sharply cut off his own laugh, yet that curve of a smile that had spread like a fresh wound remained. Eugene huffed after he’d paused, trying to regain his bearings as he readjusted himself until his body lay close to Garrette’s, feeling the warmth of his hips and chest, and the excited breath of air that Garrette breathed at their proximity.

Without warning, Eugene grabbed Garrette by the sides of his head, tugging hard on the blue fabric of his mask that concealed the face of the man that he loathed and ached for.

"Good." He finished their game of twenty questions by biting viciously into Garrette’s neck. Not willing to let any sound resembling a whimper while he was still apparently competing with Eugene, Garrette grasped the back of Eugene’s neck, pulling him hard against himself as he too bit Eugene, though on his ear.