#hinx

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Commander James Barnes/Howard Carter (Rusty Quill Gaming), Commander James Barnes & Sasha Racket Characters: Commander James Barnes (Rusty Quill Gaming), Sasha Racket, Howard Carter (Rusty Quill Gaming), Hinx - OC Additional Tags: barnes and sasha deserve to be friends, Gift Giving, barnes just wants to find the perfect gift for carter, hinx is my new goblin oc and i love them dearly, goblin week, ive only just met them and they are a joy, look i love knives and so does carter, and sasha for that matter Summary:

Summary: Felix finds Hinx after Hinx falls off the train.  (Also on AO3.) 

Author’s Note: Title based on a Kipling quote from The Jungle Book:

“These are the four that are never content: that have never been filled since the Dews began-

Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the Kite, and the hands of the Ape, and the Eyes of Man.” 

***

Dear Felix, the text read, because of course Bond addressed his texts like letters, the absolute bastard. Or maybe he just did it to Felix, yanking Felix’s chain about his age. He still had the same little shit tendencies that Felix had first seen in him in Montenegro. 

Dear Felix, 

Something potentially valuable fell off my train. If you’re done enjoying the lovely charms of the Mediterranean light, you may find something else waiting for you in Algeria. 

Best, 

Bond.    

The ‘light’ that he meant was, of course, Lucia Sciarra, one of the most perilous and informative women Felix had ever met. They’d had to fend off twelve different assasination attempts before this Spectre group got tired of hitting themselves in the face with a Felix-shaped wall. Lucia had been pleased with their success and even more pleased when Felix had given Ms. Montes a call. South America wasn’t a bad spot to get lost in, and he was sure that Camille could handle her. 

Felix should probably wait for whatever Bond was doing to properly explode before he left Italy. In fact, he should probably finish his paperwork from the last little gift Bond had sent him. 

Instead he booked his alias a flight to Algiers and put one of his doctor contacts on standby. Hopefully whoever Bond had drop-kicked out of his train was still alive. 

***

It took some gossip and some wheel-greasing, but gunfire in first class wasn’t too frequent, so it was a matter of hours before Felix was driving a Renault alongside some train tracks, looking for an “enormous man” who had apparently started a fight and then fallen out while the train was at speed. 

The train hadn’t stopped during the incident; apparently the driver had been told to “be on time, no excuses.” 

Landmarks were hard to come by out in the Sahara. Sand dunes, train track. Train track, sand dunes. 

Felix stopped at a suspiciously man-sized dimple in the ground. A suspiciously man-sized trail led away from it.   

He followed the trail to the lee of a dune, where a man with too many muscles to be allowed was lying face-up in the shade, a metal chain coiled next to him. The angle on his legs didn’t look good. His collarbone was definitely in the wrong place. Still breathing, though. 

Familiar, too. He’d been an enforcer in the Philippines, threatened to gut Felix with his thumbnails once during a CIA operation. It had been kind of hot as well as kind of bloodcurdling, which was probably one of the reasons Felix worked in espionage instead of in the church like his mama had wanted.  

“Hey, big man,” Felix said, approaching carefully. 

The man’s eyes opened, flicked to him, closed again. 

“I’m offering you a choice,” Felix said. “You can stay here and dehydrate to death, or I can tranquilize you and bring you back to my hotel. Blink once for dying of thirst, blink twice for me to give you a shot of Miss Goodnight.”

The man blinked twice. 

“Good,” Felix said. “I’ll stab you with a needle and you’ll wake up somewhere more comfortable.” He kneeled down, carefully to stay out of grabbing distance. “Five, four, three...” On three, he leaned forward and stabbed a hypodermic full of horse tranquilizer into the man’s neck. 

The man’s eyes closed and didn’t open again for two days. Just as well; Felix would take all the prep time he could get with this one. He was going to be a challenge.  

*** 

Hinx woke. His ear itched. His hand was jerked to a stop in the act of reaching to scratch. 

He did a full-body flex. Legs immobilized in casts, chest and shoulders cradled in a tight-fitting sling, hands somehow attached to the sling at the wrists. His entire body ached; even stretching had tired him out. 

Also, he had a blanket over his legs, but underneath that he was only wearing his underwear. 

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” someone said next to him. 

 Americans. Shit. Grudgingly, Hinx opened his eyes.

A bearded man in a tan linen suit sat across from him, looking far more amused than anyone who knew who they were sitting next to had a right to. 

Hinx glanced down at his restrained hands. His steel thumbnails were gone. 

“Yeah, we took off your fancy acrylics while you were in surgery,” the man said. “Turns out falling off a train fucks your body right up, by the way.” 

Hinx rolled his eyes. Like he was some kind of idiot who would accidentally fall off a train. “Pushed off,” he rasped. 

The man obligingly held a cup of water with a straw to Hinx’s lips. 

Could be drugged. Hinx slurped anyway. Tasted fine. Tasted like the best water in the universe, in fact, and the man had to pull the cup away after Hinx drank half of it. 

“Easy,” the man said. “You’d better pace yourself or you’ll vomit.” 

Hinx stared. The man had a CIA look about him, with his linen suit and his odd sense of calm. Usually the CIA wanted you to spill your guts, either metaphorically (by talking) or literally (by getting waterboarded until you retched), or both. 

The man gave him a small smile, one with a reassuring hint of steel in it. “I like the low and slow approach,” he said. “And you, my good man, are an ideal candidate for it.” His eyes met Hinx’s and flicked down over the fractures and the breaks. 

Hinx wouldn’t be moving under his own power any time soon. 

“My name’s Felix,” the man said. He put a hand out, touched his index finger to Hinx’s, like a handshake for invalids. “What’s yours?” 

Compliance or non-compliance. This was the moment of truth, the touchstone on which their relationship would be built. Felix already knew his name; what he wanted to know now was whether Hinx would admit to it. 

“Call me H,” Hinx said, tapping his index finger back against Felix’s.  

“H.” Felix’s smile widened. “You know, I love meeting letters of the alphabet. I think we’ll be good friends, H.” 

The elating thing was, Felix seemed to believe it. He had made lots of friends this way, his confidence said, and he knew how to bait, how to wait, how to get the snapping crocodile to purr. 

Hinx found himself smiling back, sharklike. “I agree,” he said. His muscles might be out of commission, but his mind was sharp as ever, and it could be used for cutting just as well as steel could. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then, H,” Felix said, clapping a friendly hand on Hinx’s wrist. “Better let you get your rest.” 

And then he left. 

And Hinx was alone. Alone for the next who-knew-how-long, until Felix saw fit to visit again. Hmm.  

Hinx wriggled his toes in his casts. Twelve weeks to recover, maybe. Twelve weeks to see whose will was the strongest, to see how he and Felix could shape each other. 

If he became Felix’s friend, what might Felix become in return?  

“I need to be able to go everywhere with this man,” Drax instructed his documents guru, Gala Brand. He gestured at Hinx, who was standing a step behind him and to his right. He’d been lucky to snap Hinx up; apparently Mr. Blofeld’s benefits plan wasn’t very competitive. (Drax quietly patted himself on the back for providing his employees with excellent dental, not to mention access to a manicurist who wouldn’t raise an eyebrow over Hinx’s metal fingernails.) 

“Any limitations on this?” Ms. Brand asked. She was a weedy, gun-shy recruit, but luckily for her, Drax had hired her for her forgeries, not her marksmanship.   

“I don’t care what you have to do,” Drax answered, scowling. “Hinx is the best bodyguard in the business, and with the Moonraker project so close to completion, it needs all possible protections. As do I.” He glared. 

Ms. Brand nodded, unmoved by his temper. “All right,” she said. “I think I know just the thing. I’ll need photos.” She waved Hinx over to the greenscreen, picked up her camera, and snapped a few shots of him. “And then some of you, Mr. Drax. Yes, very good. And then a couple with the both of you. No, closer than that. You need to put your arm around his shoulder and both of you need to smile.” 

Drax draped an arm around Hinx’s broad shoulders, and maybe, just maybe, he leaned in a little bit to enjoy the muscles. Mr. Hinx was a strong man. Drax couldn’t be blamed for appreciating him. 

“Perfect!” Ms. Brand said, beaming with rather uncharacteristic good humor. “Congratulations on your marriage, Mr. Drax and Mr. Hinx. I’ll have all of the required documents ready for you to sign in the morning, complete with doctored honeymoon photos.” 

“You--” Drax stopped his harangue before it could begin. This was actually rather good. He cleared his throat. “I mean. Of course. Thank you, Ms. Brand. Obviously that will be the most expedient method.” Drax walked out of Brand’s office with Hinx following behind. “Not one word,” he warned Hinx, even though Hinx hardly ever said anything. 

Hinx didn’t need to say anything. The crinkling around his eyes said enough. God, he looked almost as hot when he was trying not to smile as he did when he was stabbing someone’s eyes out. 

“Don’t think this means you’re getting access to the marital bed!” Drax said. 

Not yet, at least. Marriage aside, surely Hinx would never respect him in the morning if he didn’t play hard to get.