Title- Typical
Sum- One evening with a close call. Gatlex.
Content- Violence. Slight gore. Incest/generational kink mention.
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Gregor, known as The Businessman, is a highly respected druglord of the underworld for a reason. Top notch hit men, explosives, mind-altering gasses…. It makes for one hell of a party. But he's the only one remaining of his gang now.
Hindsight bias dictates they should've seen the last stand mentality shift into place before the missiles flew and bullets hailed. Rex had been able to jump in front of his partner to take the slew of rounds aimed at them, and get the block party around himself and Gatlocke once he saw the launcher flash in the corner of the room, but only just barely in time. His shield took off most of the bite of the explosion, but he hadn't been able to close all the gaps before flying debris and sheer force threw the both of them off their feet.
Rex gets to stumbling and limping horribly after he makes it out of the rubble and urges himself up, movng clumsily in thick snow. His ears ring and his lungs are full of smoke, but he tries to hurry. It's no matter that his vision keeps fading in and out, that dark wet patches are left behind in his wake, or that he has no solid sense of where to the point that even the notion of 'up' keeps changing with each step he takes.
He keeps it stuck in his head that he has to keep moving. He's good at this by now, working with Providence. Even when all other trains of thought fail, the objective in priority rings clear. Even if he doesn't know why, he still knows that he must.
A shot rings out, and his legs crumple from underneath him. Something in his head registers that he's been hit straight-on in the spine- and in the next moment of awareness, he's blinking ice flakes from his eyes.
A foot kicks him over and he hacks horribly from the blood flooding his windpipe. Gregor hovers over him with a glower to rival White's.
Rex's arms are clutched reflexively around himself, around the holes opened in the front of his torso, but his legs are twisted with one another, unmoved and numb even though the rest of his body fluctuates between grinding agony and beyond the semblance of sensation. If he were human, he'd maybe worry about never being able to walk again. But he's evo; this is either game over for good, or he'll regain use someday. And that's the real saving grace of his nanites: It's either full health or utter death for him. That simple. He'll never find himself in existential limbo of "but is this really living?" He just is or he isn't.
"…with a lot of your bullshit up to this point." The words swings into his consciousness, as if they had been passing him all this time and he's only just now caught on to them. Gregor is speaking, he realizes. The man has blood dribbling down the corners of his mouth and the side of his face is swelled where Rex got him full-on with a smack hand earlier in the evening.
"That's right, talk to me like you're my Daddy," Rex says lamely, voice hoarse from coagulating blood.
But Gregor's face twists and reddens, and the next thing Rex knows, he's getting a gutful of heel. His ribs crumble under the pressure, and it's only when he screams that he realizes they'd broken earlier when the pillar fell over him. Gregor grunts with every fall of his foot, and by the time he's finished, he's breathing heavily, and Rex can barely tell if himself is breathing at all.
He chokes on something that feels like a stone coming up his throat, and knows pieces of his ribs have lodged in his lungs. His body is almost like it's shutting down. He feels like he should hurt more, but instead he hurts less. Feels less. Knows less.
A pistol clicks near his temple.
"You know what happens to boys like you?" Gregor spits, and the pistol shakes with the tense vibrato in his words.
"Therein lies the fallacy." A new voice, low enough and yet near enough to hear. And Rex's heart sings with recognition.
There's the hiss of metal moving through air, in key with the sharp intake of breath from Gregor. And then, the air is replaced by flesh. And Gregor's breath is replace by snorts and choking noises. The pistol falls to the ground, useless.
Gatlocke continues, voice louder as he speaks over Gregor's struggling gurgles. "There are no boys like this one. He's unique. He also happens to belong to me. And I don't like people who break what is mine."
His voice is even, almost conversational, if not for the absolutely perceivable note of tightly coiled fury present, like the high shrill of a violin.
When Rex opens his eyes, his vision is blotted out almost completely by blackness. But through it, he sees Gatlocke, arm raised, blades advanced and pierced right through Gregor's thick gullet and lifting the man so that his toes only graze the white-powdered ground. Gregor is wiggling, kicking his legs fruitlessly, blood bubbling from his agape mouth as he clutches the blades to ease his weight from them, trying to pry himself free. But the end of the blades goes far beyond his neck, and he makes no progress in freeing himself, the shanks too slippery from his own blood that he cannot even grasp them properly.
Watery liquid runs down his legs, making yellow slush of the snow below his toes, accenting the hot, burned air with an acrid smell. In the orange, flickering light of the burning warehouse, his eyes are wide and unseeing, and his mouth moves like a dying fish's.
Rex wants to scream again. He shuts his eyes, trying not to vomit.
"Gat," he says as loud as he can, which is only shades above a murmur. He coughs haggardly, feels the spray of saliva and probably blood fall back against his mouth and chin. "Stop it…."
Miraculously, Gatlocke hears him. Must have. Rex hears the retracting chime of the blades, the crunch of metal fist into meat and skull, and the thud of the body not too far away thereafter. There are screams then, and Rex knows exactly where The Businessman has landed, but the noises are laced with the roar of flame, distant enough from Rex that he can tune it out. What's done is done. And Gatlocke has made it clear time and time again that while he can choose to comply, he cannot be controlled.
There's a metal hand against his face, ironically gentle in contrast to the brutality it doled. Rex opens his eyes to Gatlocke hovering over him.
"Didn't know you had a daddy kink," Gatlocke says.
It hurts to talk. It hurts all over now- now that his nanites have gotten to the healing process, piecing him back together and bringing him back into full, painful awareness. So Rex just smiles wearily.
"Or a getting-shot kink," Gatlocke goes on. "You're hardly that quick when I want your attention. Were you trying to make me jealous? Because you already know I have my own shield. My own brain to think about these things. My own boyfriend I would've liked to protect…."
Jesus christ, the guy loves his soapbox. Rex forces himself to talk, and finds it's easier now than it had been. "Got it, prick. Next time, I'll let you die."
The corners of Gatlocke's mouth quirk up, and it finally looks like the tension is easing out of him. "Shows how much you were listening. But you seem to have the gist, at least."
But he doesn't take his eyes off Rex's as they wait for the latter's bones to reset, for the wounds to close and push out all the lodged rounds. His hand stays pressed along the swell of Rex's cheek, thumb light brushing near a healing cut under his eye. Rex watches the smoke rise and the ashes and ice flakes fall.
A drug cartel taken down, an infrastructure aflame, a felon killed, the two of them bruised and bleeding and trading snarks like pillow talk as the adrenaline dissipates.
Pretty typical for a Saturday night.
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