MB Saucy Side: The Shattering (of British Composure)

A "What-if" Set Post-Aeon Graduation

Featuring: Gray and Button

“What the fuck were you thinking?!”

Gray’s enraged bellow draws the attention of a janitor the hallway beyond your office. He marches to the door and slams it shut with echoing force before stomping back to you. The closed door means that the only source of light is the lamp on your desk, but it’s enough to clearly discern Gray’s thunderous glare.

You’ve never seen Gray this upset. In fact, you struggle to recall if you’ve ever witnessed him mad. Annoyed, yes. Distraught, on multiple occasions. Irked, peeved, chagrined, bothered . . . you’ve memorized the way each expression darkens Gray’s face. Memorizing Gray is all you can do, since he refuses to view you as more than his best friend’s kid sibling.

You thought you knew all there was to know about Grayson Black. But “Ferociously Irate” Gray is new.

“A child’s life was in danger,” you retort, refusing to be cowed by his looming displeasure. You squarely meet his eyes, their sky blue darkened to the point of complete combustion. “I had no choice but to go in.”

“You could’ve called me!” Gray explodes. “Or Nick, or Sally. Even Zarneki. Anyone on the team would be better suited to face a Level 10 telepath.”

“Everyone else was busy!” Your fingers curl into fists. Why doesn’t Gray understand? Haven’t you proved yourself by now? Of course you assessed the risk of entering the building—the Ment you’d been sent to take into custody had a twenty-foot brainrange and a history of controlling Lo-Pos. And you would’ve stayed safe in the van, had not a kid wandered into UCRT's active apprehension.

Gray sighs and turns away from you. He rests his forehead against the windowpane, contemplating the abandoned streets below—it’s 4 am, well past the time most reasonable people have gone to bed (and around the time other unreasonable people are just waking up).

After a moment's silence, you go to stand beside him, ever careful to keep a foot of distance between you. 

Your twentieth-sixth-story office view is respectable, although it doesn’t compare to the panoramic elevation of the main UCRT offices. It took you two years to work your way up to the highest MIV floor. Despite Gray’s disturbing lack of faith, you’re not about to squander that hard-earned window by behaving recklessly in the field.

“Alerting anyone on the team risked drawing Walker’s attention,” you explain. “I saw the kid enter, and your last report placed Walker at the opposite end of the building. I was well out of his brainrange.” Your fists clench tighter as you resist the urge to gently touch Gray’s arm. Given the futility of your feelings, one would think that you’d get over this all-too-familiar ache. Yet you can’t help but yearn to comfort the man you love . . . even if Gray’s constant withdrawal from your proximity has made it clear that he desires no such closeness.

“None of the intel suggested that Walker had an accomplice,” you finish.

“But he did. When I saw you being controlled—” Gray’s voice cracks. Reflected in the window’s glass, misery and fear hardens his profile into that of a stranger. A stranger infinitely more vulnerable than the “Fortitude” mask you’re accustomed to seeing at work.

Gray isn’t angry. He’s terrified.

This realization makes your pulse quicken to a frantic thrum. You always knew that Gray cared for you, even considered you family. But that grimace on his face now is the bleak wretchedness of a man who almost lost the person he loves. You know the look, because it’s the same one you saw reflected in your mirror when Gray went dark for three weeks during a mission and Unity had declared him “Missing in Action.”

Hope flutters. Weak and almost forgotten, but there. Hope, and something new:

Courage.

Gray’s stubble prickles your palm. His breath exhales in shock against the back of your hand, before he stops breathing altogether.

I’m safe, you think. You saved me.

He leans into your touch. You two stare at each other’s reflections, meeting eyes via glass in a way neither of you know how to do in person. Then his large hand covers yours, pressing it closer against his cheek.

“You made the right call,” he says. “I know that. A kid is alive thanks to you. But when Walker threatened to use you against me . . . I would’ve let him. I would’ve done anything, sacrificed anyone, to make sure you came back to me.”

All of a sudden, his hands are on your shoulders, turning you around so that the two of you are face-to-face. “I didn’t know that I had that side,” he say, anguish roughening his admission, “and it scared the hell out of me.”

Fear is familiar to you. It’s a second shadow, accompanying you each and every time you step foot outside your house: the dread that maybe today will be the day that a Ment uses you again against Nick, or that a telepathic child will accidentally cause your brain to shut down by trying to make you perform the Chicken Dance as a prank. You’re accustomed to fear. And when you’re used to something, it eventually stops being as scary.

Your greatest nightmare in this moment isn’t being irreversibly taken over by a Ment. It’s the possibility of not telling Grayson how you feel.

“Maybe we can be brave together,” you say aloud, despite knowing that Grayson can hear your every thought. You take a deep breath, preparing to confess the next part as well.

Gray beats you to it. 

“I love you,” he admits. “More than I believed possible. Which sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. It’s so true that it hurts, and I didn’t ever want to say it because you deserve someone so much better. Someone who’s not a Ment, who—”

Your lips cut off his words.

Your first kiss with Grayson Black lacks the practiced finesse of a polite after-date peck. It’s inelegant and abrupt, almost juvenile in its desperation. Teeth knock, tongues tangle, and his hands on your shoulders squeeze too tight. He pulls you close then closer still, until you can no longer discern between the tempo of your heartbeat and his.

None of this clumsiness matters. All you know is that Grayson Black is kissing you back, and thus it’s perfect. Gray swallows your sighs and releases them back as throaty growls of his own. His hands pull you closer still, as if in an attempt to intermesh your very souls, and your shared moans crescendo until eventually neither of you possess enough oxygen to even whisper “more.” Your lips break apart, but Gray doesn’t release his hold around your waist.

Forgetting to breathe is an amateurish mistake to make when kissing. But kissing Gray, after years spent longing to kiss him, leaves you near delirious. You can barely recall your own name, let alone how lungs are supposed to function.

Gray answers your unspoken thought: “Your name is ‘Beloved.” Then his cheeks redden enough to be visible even in the office’s dim light. “That was cheesy, wasn’t it? I’m not trying to act like I’m from a Hallmark movie, I swear. And maybe it wasn’t okay for me to read your thoughts. I almost lost you today, but that doesn’t make it okay for me to—”

Your lips once again seal off his apologies. The upside of being mind blind is that you don’t need to waste breath telling Grayson how you feel.

He knows.