#graylan

(The one where Declan hired the Gray Man to kill Niall. Also on Ao3!)

Declan Lynch.

When Colin Greenmantle had faxed him the file, the name had jumped out at him. Holding the manila file folder in his hand, the Gray Man knew with a certainty cool and smooth as a river rock that fate had brought him back to this specific backwater of Virginia for a reason.

It was not that he had any compunctions about going after a former employer. In fact, it wouldn’t even have been the first time. He was loathe to burn bridges, but given the nature of the job for which Declan Lynch had hired him, he found it highly unlikely that the boy ever planned to reach out again.

After all, he’d only had the one father.

The struggle was brief and violent, the time elapsed between kicking in the door, throwing Declan against the wall so he bounced painfully off the window casement, and Declan rolling under his right cross to snap up with a left hook, no more than a breath, a couple of frantic heartbeats.

The gun wasn’t so much a surprise as a curiosity. But then time flickered and the gun seemed to jump from Declan’s hand to the Gray Man’s, as if the phenakistoscope of events had skipped a couple of frames, and Declan was on the floor, bleeding.

Looking up at the Gray Man, Declan’s heart banged in his chest. They had never met in person when Declan had reached out to the Gray Man, but looking at him, who else could this be?

Adrenaline was spiking through him, rattling his extremities against the carpeted hardwood. He watched those expert hands turn over his gun, and knew with the unshakable certainty of imminent demise that one of the last things his father had ever seen was those same hands wrapped around a tire iron.

Declan wondered for the first time what Niall had been thinking in his final moments.

If he were to overlay his present racing thoughts over his father’s last ones, at what exact point would they begin to align? It would be perhaps the first time in both their lives. Finally seeing eye-to-eye, right at the end.

Declan wondered if Niall realized, in the end.

If he saw the shadow of Declan’s hand in the Gray Man’s.

Declan Lynch laid out on the floor below him, gun in his hand, The Gray man hesitated.

Logically, he knew he was in a high school dorm. Had been hanging around campus all day, casing the place, mentally mapping his entrances and exits.

But the boy before him looked very young to have hired a hitman. Looked exceedingly young to have hired a hitman a year and a half ago.

What could have made someone so young go to such lengths to kill his own father?

The Gray man thought of his own brother.

Slowly, as though his body couldn’t quite believe the signals his brain was sending out, he lowered the gun.

The gravity of the moment oppressed. That this ruined dorm room held the only two people to know who had really had Niall Lynch killed oppressed.

“Don’t tell my brother.”

It was not the kind of thing the Gray Man expected to hear in the wrecked landscape of a high school dorm, gun in his hand, his prey broken and bleeding on the floor.

“Which one?”

Declan’s eyes glittered, almost black, as he wiped a thread of blood from his mouth.

“Take a guess.”

Brothers. The Gray man knew about brothers.

“What’s it worth to you?” He doesn’t do this. Hadn’t done this since the early days, when he was young and eager and not too picky about how he got his information.

But from what he’d heard, the eldest Lynch boy wasn’t too picky himself when it came to favors.

Declan paused, half-sitting up, and in that pause the Gray Man crossed to him, used his thumb to wipe away the smear of blood at the corner of his lips that Declan had missed.

Testingly, slowly, eyes on the Gray Man all the while, Declan dipped his chin and took the Gray Man’s thumb into his mouth.

The Gray Man let out his breath in one long slow exhale. Control. Control.

Growing bolder, Declan wrapped a hand around the Gray Man’s forearm. Pressed his mouth against the inside of the Gray Man’s wrist. Not kissing. Just skin to skin. Somehow it seemed even more intimate a gesture than kissing. Tender, somehow, in the way a snake sliding its glistening coils around a mouse is tender.

Grey

Finally off his feet for once in his goddamn life and relaxed back into a stack of lumpy pillows, Tim Gutterson reflects on all the ways he should have died before this moment. There was the bullets, the smoking, a few IEDs, more bullets, a lot of drinking, the occasional head injury, and different combinations of all of those. He shouldn't be here. He should be six feet down, not three feet up.

"You can raise the bed up if you want to see the TV," Raylan says idly. This, of course, means Raylan wants to see if some game or other is on, but some vestigial manners keep him from just grabbing the clunky hospital remote. Tim tilts himself up enough to assuage Raylan's guilt.

Click. Click. Click.

Raylan stops on golf.

Fuck.

They were getting old.

"Leg itches," Tim mutters.

"Happens when they shave 'em … or weed whack 'em in your case. Was like watching someone hack up steel wool."

Tim tugs up his gown and frowns down at the untouched leg hair on his thigh. It'd gone grey on him. He wasn't even supposed to make it to the age where his blonde went darker and he'd made it all the way to grey.

"Givin' me a show?" Raylan teases. He reaches over and brushes his fingers against the still evident muscle in Tim's thigh. "Might want to wait until we get home."

"Easier if I break your hip here. One stop shop."

"Never done the full act in a hospital bed." Raylan's fingers trail down to the four inches above Tim's knee that are as bald as a stripper's balls. "'D rather get home and us take our time."

Tim closes his eyes as Raylan's fingernails work magic against his skin. "We're so old."

"Not such a bad thing. Other than you gettin' parts whacked out."

Tim looks down at the bandages around both his knees. They told him he could go back to normal sooner if they both got replaced at the same time. He knew that normal was over though. Well, what he knew as normal. They'd stick him at a desk and—

Tim shivers.

Raylan's hands are exploring the length and breadth of his thighs "Love your fuckin' legs."

"'Cause they make great earmuffs?" He watches Raylan fight the laugh that slips out anyway. "'Cause for a while receivin's gonna be easier than givin'. Not fuckin' up my new knees on your precious hard wood."

"Other things you can do on my hard wood," Raylan says as he presses a kiss to Tim's thigh.

"You'll have to tell me after I rest a little more."

"You tired, Pawpaw Tim?"

"It's the morphine." Tim scowls and scratches at his right leg.

Raylan pulls Tim's blankets up to his chest. "It's the mileage, honey."

"Indiana Jones?"

Raylan shrugs and settles back down in the bedside chair. He snakes his hand under the blanket and rests it on Tim's thigh.

"I was a child! I was in love, Indiana!" Tim mockingly shouts and lulls his head to the side.

timtothnic