Summary: The Gray Man's framework with Declan Lynch has been load-bearing for years. Then Adam Parrish takes a bullet in his foyer and refuses to leave.
🏷️ tags: cnc, violence, gore.
posting a chapter a day. complete at 15 chapters ✌🏽
navigation links: go back chapter one, two.
three | threat of rain
The front door is heavy from its steel core. The Gray Man would know; he installed it himself. Beyond it, a circular rag rug. To the right, a console table with a dish for keys.
A runner is scheduled to make a drop. The Gray Man looks for him on the dirt road in. Henrietta's outskirts are silent and dry. Heat lightning crackles on the horizon. No rain yet, just the threat of it.
The runner's a young thing. Nineteen, thin, a local. The Gray Man has the file but hasn't met him.
His arrival is no secret. His car runs smooth for being tri-coloured. He is warm-toned, his teeth mostly straight but for a snaggletooth on the bottom. The Henrietta in him drags his vowels around by their collars.
His arrival and entrance for the drop is routine for all of thirty seconds before the men hiding around the side of the house rush the door, and the Gray Man drops them. He executes the first with the gun he keeps on the stairs.
The second gets inside the living room, which is a problem. There is crossfire. The runner takes a shot to the gut the way a punching bag absorbs a boxer's blow. The shot is not the Gray Man's.
The runner doesn't crumple to the ground. He doesn't scream. He takes the shot without sound, regains his balance, and gets acquainted with the wall, pressing both hands to the wound.
This is the Gray Man’s first impression of Adam Parrish. A young man prepared for the inevitability of being shot who has finally found the opportunity to earn a perfect score on the final exam.
#
The Gray Man can only enjoy this thought for a fraction of a second before he is required to kill the second heavy. The body slumps across the rag rug. It will have to be rolled out of the way for the door to open, for the runner to leave through it.
This is the moment that matters most. Not the killings, which were inevitable. Adam Parrish's reaction to them. Or his lack of reaction.
Adam Parrish remains quiet. He takes a step towards the glass pane to the right of the closed door, grimacing as he realizes he can't walk normally due to the tear suffered in his lower-left abdomen.
He looks out the window and says, "Do you think there's more of them?"
Affect flat. The Henrietta drawl is present, but holds none of its prior warmth.
"No," says the Gray Man.
Adam Parrish searches at the dead body at his feet with his eyes. Finally, down to where blood is soaking his cherry-coloured t-shirt cola brown.
"Are you going to kill me?" he asks.
After a beat, he looks up. The Gray Man does not usually hesitate. He usually kills witnesses. Three bodies aren't much more difficult to dispose of than two.
Something about the kid makes him hesitate now, because the Gray Man's only seen this exactly twice in his life: once in the mirror, and once in a man he'd killed. The quiet. The drop, instead of the spike.
"I'm going to deal with these two. Kitchen’s down that hallway. Sit, keep pressure on it."
The kid says, "That's not 'no'."
He is bleeding onto the foyer and his pupils aren't dilating right. The Gray Man says nothing. The kid pushes off the wall and walks away.
The Gray Man watches the inverted triangle of sweat darkening his spine. As though he can feel the Gray Man's stare, Adam Parrish throws him a thumbs-up over his shoulder.
navigation links: go back chapter one, two | read the next chapter
🏷️ cnc, violence, gore, sex, but make it romantic 💞
fifteen | regroup
The Gray Man cracks into his Eton mess when Adam first says the word Harvard.
They're eating. Declan's at the Gray Man's feet, off-leash and off-duty. Dozing.
"Harvard," repeats the Gray Man. He crushes a spoonful of macerated strawberries against the roof of his mouth. Adam nods. He chews his meringue. Young teeth, surprisingly free of cavities. No fear of the toothache from the sugar.
They're in a quiet stretch. Adam couldn't come on jobs for a few weeks. Too much heat on the streets. Too much blood lost out the hole in his leg.
They're past that now. There is a new equilibrium in Henrietta. The Gray Man had gambled, killing Adam's old boss, but it's a gamble that paid off. He split his bonus with Adam.
The Gray Man asks questions about programs. Costs don't come up. Adam compulsively checks the bank account the Gray Man set up for him. He calculates the exchange rate himself when the wires come through, to check the math. He's fallen asleep to the bank app open on his phone, reviewing interest payments of pennies. He'll do well investing, soon enough.
He's been using his set of keys for about a month, and something about their jingling when he removes them to unlock a door, or a cage, made his presence seem more permanent.
"The acceptance came a month ago," Adam frowns as he scrapes the bottom of his coupe glass. He never brought up Aglionby Academy, but is smart enough to know that the Gray Man knew all about it. Knows his SAT score. Recognizes an LSAT prep textbook for what it is. Adam hasn't talked about it because he hadn't decided.
The Gray Man says nothing against it. He was always going to let him go—no, it's not his place to let Adam do or not do anything. He was always prepared to say goodbye.
"They're lucky to have you," the Gray Man says. His framework always included this. His building plans were for a person who could leave.
---
Adam leaves through the heavy front door on a gray day. The sky is low, overcast. If there were trees visible in any direction, their leaves would be the yellow of death.
He leaves with a nod. In the morning, he's there. In the afternoon, he's not.
The Gray Man retreats to the attic. Declan notes the shift in atmosphere, and becomes something like a person again. He cooks, passably. He serves meals. He takes them away. His voice becomes unused, because without the Gray Man to talk to, he has nobody.
On the third gray day, he gets dressed, and takes his phone, and leaves a ham sandwich and a glass of milk on the floor at the top of the stairs.
On the fourth day, the Gray Man finds the note Declan left on the table.
Moving my little brother to DC. Call if you change addresses.
There is no promise he'll be back, but like there will be blue sky again, the Gray Man is certain he'll return when he can.
When he needs to.
The house readjusts.
---
The radiators tick, tick, tick. The Gray Man keeps the house cool, because that is how he runs it.
He returns from a job, and an envelope pokes from the mailbox on the stoop. There is no address on it. No return address, either.
Inside, he plucks the gloves from his fingers. He drops his keys into the bowl. Locks the door.
In the kitchen, at the counter, the Gray Man opens the envelope standing up.
Inside, in a drawstring bag like the kind jewelry is sold in, the second set of keys.
A bag, and three Polaroids.
The first is a car, plates included.
The second is the layout of a house. A new build. One bedroom. Open concept.
The third is a photo of this new home's basement. Single, bare bulb. Cinder block walls. Gray as the day is long.
The implication is whatever the opposite of a threat is.
I carry this with me, it says. It is an invitation.
In the other room, the sounds of laboured breathing. The Gray Man will leave Declan to struggle through a rather inventive predicament until his breathing comes erratically. He, personally, cannot wait.
The Gray Man has the strange urge to show him the photos. He does not. He slides them back into the envelope, and takes it upstairs, and locks them away.
The wall is still there. It has to be—it is load-bearing. It is a matter of life or death, the wall, but there is a window in it now where there wasn't before. The window is the thing. It isn't going anywhere.
In the hallway between the attic stairs and the rest of the upstairs apartment, the Gray Man can usually see due north out one window and due south out the other end. Today he can't see anything. Fog descended overnight and stuck. It stuffs the windows with white, the kind you can't see through.
The phone on the credenza just rang and hung up. There is a gun in the drawer underneath. He put it there months ago. Hasn't touched it since.
He takes it out now.
The sword of Damocles has sharpened. The threat posed by the problem of a runner showing up at the door one day and never leaving is materializing. Adam's old boss poses a problem the Gray Man had overlooked.
His annoyance at losing a runner is one thing. The fact that he wants Adam back, specifically, is another. This wanting, apparently, has teeth.
The Gray Man not noticing this wanting is a failure on his part. He was so busy diagnosing Adam he didn't go outside and read the threat landscape. Adam had come to the Gray Man pre-loaded with problems the Gray Man had, for one reason or another, ignored. Dismissed. Failed to evaluate properly.
The Gray Man exits through the back door. The gun is a familiar weight, holstered against his flank. He walks the perimeter. It's been too long since he's done this. Searched for holes in the fence. Tire marks. Signs of life in the trailer across the way.
When the Gray Man returns, Adam's waiting for him on the stoop.
He hands over the gun.
"Here," he says. Adam takes it. His hand drops with the weight, unused to this caliber.
"Something wrong?" Adam asks.
The Gray Man chews the idea. He will tell Adam the combinations to the locks. Today will include target practice. In the fog. Yes. He can stand more responsibility, more autonomy.
Without the gun on him, the keys in his pants pocket droop heavy. The Gray Man ought to get a second set made. He files the thought away for later.
"Not yet," the Gray Man says.
Adam is quiet. From inside, the sound of coffee beans being ground by hand.
The house is no longer as secure as it was. The Gray Man's closed loop has a leak.
Summary: The Gray Man's framework with Declan Lynch has been load-bearing for years. Then Adam Parrish takes a bullet in his foyer and refuses to leave.
🏷️ story tags: cnc, violence, gore.
posting a chapter a day to tumblr. complete at 15 chapters ✌🏽
prev chapters: one, two, three, four, five | chap title from this poem by Andrew Kane
chapter six | how to be a dog
In the basement, there's no way to tell what time it is. Above ground, it’s midday. Another thunderstorm is building outside that Parrish won't know about for hours.
The Gray Man shows Parrish the knife rotation on the peg board. He shows him the chest freezer. He notes the way the kid presses his narrow hips against the workbench when he leans over it and tugs the steel O-ring screwed into the stud. He's used to working with his hands. He only trusts what he can touch, and even then, the trust is limited.
They're in the basement because when the Gray Man asked what Parrish wanted to do, the kid said, "Army," and when the Gray Man asked why, he said it was the quickest way to make the kind of money he needed to never, ever have to come back here. When the Gray Man asked what sort of role, he'd said special forces, heavy artillery, and when the Gray Man pressed, Parrish said because it was the sort of job you can only do a few years because the headaches force you to quit, the cumulative concussive damage adds up, so the pay's insane. He said he's not concerned about accruing more traumatic brain injuries; he already gets headaches.
The Gray Man asked if Parrish would like to learn how to do what he does for work, and Parrish didn’t even pause to think about it.
"Yes," Adam Parrish said, "I would like that very much."
It is turning out to be quite an agreeable arrangement.
Today he is fresh from a shower, hair diligently combed. He hasn't left a fingerprint on a glass or a fleck of toothpaste on the mirror in over a week. He is wearing one of the Gray Man's shirts from his teaching days, back when youth's narrowness still clung to his bones. He looks elegant and spring-loaded. He can blend into the background, or catch and hold your attention with a look.
He is dangerous.
"Today's lesson," the Gray Man says, returning the bleach to the cupboard, "is about what this job is really about. It is about learning how to be a dog."
Parrish sits back in his seat. He squares his shoulders. The Gray Man knew he'd balk at this claim.
"I've been a guard dog. I've been an attack dog. I never forget, however, that I am not entirely any person's dog."
Parrish vibrates with the want to interject. I'm nobody's dog, he wants to say. The Gray Man can picture him in class, hand sullenly lifted into the air to post his disagreement.
"I'm mostly joking," the Gray Man continues, "but to be a dog is to learn control. Restraint. When to bite, and when not to. Today has nothing to do with biting. Today, you're going to learn how to dig a hole."
---
The Gray Man sits on the folded-down back of the truck and oversees Declan overseeing Parrish.
Declan's been wearing the collar so long, he's going to have a tan line when he takes it off.
If, the Gray Man thinks. If he takes it off. He wonders how he plans on hiding the line in DC.
Parrish asks practical questions. He was flat when the Gray Man passed through the kitchen with Declan's humanity—the folded package of his outside clothes, shoes with laces—and steady when Declan opened the truck door and folded himself into the jump seat in the back.
Parrish is waist-deep in his grave. Declan's taller, and also waist deep, so his grave’s deeper. Parrish spears his shovel into the clay and wipes his brow with a forearm. He frowns at Declan and asks, "Does he speak?"
Declan looks to the Gray Man, who nods.
"Yeah," Declan says, still digging.
Parrish guzzles water, then splashes some on the bandana he'd asked for and ties it around his neck. It's a black and red slash at his throat. Declan's digging slows while Parrish does this, his eyes flicking up to watch, then down, into the dirt, then up again.
Parrish notices too.
"Can he look me in the eye when I'm talking to him?"
Declan looks to the Gray Man. He raises his brows.
"If he tells me to," Declan says. The sweat cuts rivulets through the reddish dust collecting on his exposed muscles. His white singlet is the colour of rust. His hair is henna'd, his extraordinary teeth white as picket fences in his voluptuous mouth.
"Or if you do," Declan adds.
"Look at me when I talk to you, Declan," Parrish says. The sharpness to the command is not offset by the country inflection he puts on the name.
The disdain leaking from Parrish is palpable. Look at me when I'm talking to you, a line learned. From the Father or Mother? Something about the exchange screams Mommy-issues to the Gray Man, but that's a little of himself leaking out, perhaps.
Declan keeps digging. Parrish waits.
"Declan."
Declan pauses. Looks up.
Parrish holds up the water bottle. "Want some? Don't look at him. You can answer to me like you answer to him, right? So look at me, and answer me. Do you want some?"
Declan swallows and nods. It costs him something to not look at the Gray Man for the answer. He has never been shared before.
On their way back, as Parrish checks the tools over for nicks, he says, "How did you know he wanted this?"
The Gray Man unwraps his fingers from where he grips the leather steering wheel. Re-wraps them.
"I lived somewhere else then, but I had a basement pretty much the same," he answers truthfully. "I took him down to it, and he looked like it was a place he wanted to stay for a while."
Summary: The Gray Man's framework with Declan Lynch has been load-bearing for years. Then Adam Parrish takes a bullet in his foyer and refuses to leave.
🏷️ story tags: cnc, violence, gore.
posting a chapter a day to tumblr. complete at 15 chapters ✌🏽
prev chapters: one, two, three, four
five | the situation
Adam Parrish is a queer creature.
Three days after the incident, a gray day overcomes the Gray Man. He wakes and knows it's so. He doesn't do gray days with other people present.
It is afternoon, no longer what anyone would call morning. The post-storm humidity coats the house’s surfaces. Everything is tacky. The Gray Man cannot bear the thought of getting up from where his legs are stuck together inside twisted sheets and moving elsewhere, but he does it.
He finds the kid on the sofa, and so takes the leather wingback across from it. The coffee table squats between them.
Adam Parrish hasn't left. The Gray Man hasn't formally recruited him either. He simply hasn't sent the kid home, and the kid simply hasn't gone anywhere else. That he has switched sides in a gang war appears not to have occurred to him. Only the Gray Man can tell that Adam Parrish, nineteen, a whip of a man, is a thinking man. He's thought about this switch of sides and determined to treat it as a non-event.
"I'm making coffee," says the Gray Man, "and then I'll introduce you to him properly."
Parrish nods once. He takes his coffee black even as the Gray Man doctors his own with cream and cane sugar. The Gray Man leads him to the attic. Parrish is breathing hard, liquid seeping from his pores by the time they finish their ascent. He hasn't complained about the bullet wound verbally, so his body is doing the complaining for him.
The Gray Man takes out Declan's paperwork, slaps it on the desk, and takes a seat across the room.
Parrish sits and reads. His fingers twitch like they're seeking a pencil to take notes.
The Gray Man knows when he reaches certain clauses.
The medical authorization, on page three, is notarized.
The handwritten schedule, in Declan's hand, of when his presence is required at home for the next calendar year, and what actions the Gray Man should take if he were to choose to keep him during those periods of time.
The exposure clause: No person, under any circumstance, including emergency, may see The Property's face while inside The Framework laid out in these pages.
The continuity clause, releasing the property absolutely, in the event of the Gray Man's death.
Adam's skin has a glassy look to it, and his hair is thick with grease at the roots, and his body odour colours the attic in a way the Gray Man distinctly dislikes. As though sensing the Gray Man's increasing upset, Parrish shuffles the papers back into their manila folder. When he twists around in the chair, his face is a treatise on revulsion. It is his first real reaction since his arrival on the doorstep.
"Questions?" the Gray Man asks. Revulsion was expected. There is a limited library of reactions the majority of the population experience when it comes to what he and Declan Lynch engage in.
Parrish brandishes the folder. "Why would anyone want this?"
The Gray Man sees then that the revulsion is not for him. It's for Declan.
He thinks of the thin file on Adam Parrish locked in the bottom drawer of the desk the boy sits at. He is nineteen, and an only child, and a survivor. His frame for what a person does to survive a family does not have a slot for this.
✍🏽 i read, write and scream about all things queer, erotic, and horror.
i am currently writing an original fiction novel trilogy, tentatively titled Blood Thirsty Animals (not a typo!) follow my journey to publishing over on substack.
i've been a Drarry stan since time immemorial. it should go without saying: fuck JKR.
i’m also a horror fanatic, kink enthusiast, and have severe Captive Prince brainworms 🪱
my fanfics are (mostly) on AO3, with some scattered to the winds here.
i am generally okay with podfics, translations, etc, but please send me a quick message first.
🏷️ cnc, violence, gore, sex, but make it romantic 💞
fourteen | passing him back and forth like a joint
He leaves Declan later, leads removed, sequence finished. Upstairs, Adam sits in the chair. He flicks his eyes up to the Gray Man, then the clock over the opening between the living room and hallway.
"Done?"
"Done."
Adam puts the book aside. He stands, stretches, and goes downstairs.
The Gray Man, alone in the living room, sits in the chair. The leather is warm from Adam's body.
He thinks, we're passing him back and forth like a joint.
He didn't see this coming. He isn't sorry for it. Declan has never been more attended to. Two sets of hands, two people who can read him, a system that has never been more stable. He's been in Henrietta more days than DC for three months now. He's bound to let the lease go on his place there soon.
Downstairs, the most dangerous element of the new shape they've made. Adam's voice arrives to the Gray Man's ears as a rumble lacking words, but they're the ones the Gray Man knows. Good boy, that's a good dog.
The wasp on the screen gives up and goes. The chair is warm. The light is gold.
Adam does not know Declan hasn't cried since before his mother went non-verbal. He is learning that he can administer the care he was raised to believe he was not deserving of.
The Gray Man, who built this framework around the project of not becoming his brother, sits in the cuck chair, and listens to his plan at work in the basement, and the slow, steady thudding of his own heart. He has been wrong many times in his life. He wonders, watching the gold light shift across the rug, if one of the things he was wrong about may have been himself.
🏷️ cnc, violence, gore, sex, but make it romantic 💞
thirteen | cuck chair
Summer's heat is gone, but the temperature in the room is elevated. The screen-mesh vibrates as wasps head-butt it, trying to get in. Gold light catches the dust motes floating above the rug.
Adam is in the wingback chair across from the sofa. His thigh scarred badly. Declan's nose has set crooked. The Gray Man's ear is what it is.
The Gray Man sees Adam in the chair when he comes up from the basement to refill a water bottle. The stim sequence has another quarter-hour to run. Declan is on the mat, leads taped in the correct placements. The hum of the machine is the only sound from below.
Adam holds a glass of water to his throat. Condensation runs from it onto the shirt. A book is spread face-down on the chair's arm. He has been reading while he cools off. He has taken a break in the living room and not upstairs, because he wanted to be within earshot of the basement, probably. He wants the Gray Man to know he's heard what's happened in his absence.
They catch each other's eyes as the Gray Man passes. He runs the water in the kitchen until it's properly cold. Fills the bottle.
On his way back to the basement, the Gray Man smiles to himself. The chair, in the intervening weeks since The Incident, has become a thing. Adam installed himself in it to watch the front road. Lately, he sits in it doing paperwork, after dinner. The Gray Man's interior has supplied the word for it—cuck chair—and the word amuses him because when the Gray Man takes a moment to step outside himself and look at his life, he sometimes finds it amusing.
