#TeaserTuesday - Dartmoor X 6/20

 

I might be keeping most of Dartmoor X under wraps for the time being, but there are smaller, secondary stories playing out along its sidelines, and one of them involves Reese's little brother. To absolutely no one's surprise, Tenny doesn't handle change well, despite all pretense to the contrary. 

**

Tenny pulled the door shut after them, and squared off from him, arms folded, feet braced apart so he blocked the hallway – and the only means of escape.

Gray was several inches shorter than him, and his gaze fell automatically to the patches on the front of Tenny’s cut. He wasn’t an officer, but he and Reese had some specialty patches, only shared by a few members. The blood-tipped dagger that Mercy also wore. The skeletal tree that marked him as the blood relative of another member. Another that he, Reese, and Fox shared: the number six-hundred. Two of the bullets that were used to mark ten kills on behalf of the club.

Mercy had been coaching him on this sort of thing. Thinking of it was calming, and gave him hope that, one day, if he worked hard enough, and studied all the lore, he might be patched in.

He had no idea what he was supposed to do with himself otherwise.

From the patches, his gaze shifted upward, and he saw, with a jolt, that Tenny’s expression had changed once again. What he witnessed now was Tenny’s true expression, he thought. The real him, under all the theatrical layers and facades. A cold, flat stare, his angular face made harsher by its complete absence of warmth or humor. It was more chilling and unnerving than any display of anger; more devastating than any sneer or insult.

His tone, likewise, had gone flat. “Who left you on duty with him?”

“Ava.” Belatedly, he realized that Tenny wasn’t going to accept that answer. “Mercy, too,” he added, and that was true. Both of them had told him to stay here and watch Alex.

Tenny’s gaze narrowed. “They’re optimistic about you. I’m not.”

Gray’s breath accelerated along with his pulse; he bit back a dismayed sound, but not quickly enough. Tenny’s head cocked a fraction. He’d heard it.

“They think the other night was a fluke. That you accidentally killed that guy.” He spoke quietly, whispering, really, but the words landed like blows. “However little I think of you, you’re his brother.” Head tilt toward the door, and Reese. “And Hunter trained you. He might have been older, and less careful when he did, and he might have given you more leeway than he did Reese.” A muscle jumped in his jaw, a fast flash of rage, amidst that awful blankness. “But. You were trained, and trained well. People like you don’t kill on accident, even if you are young and stupid and your face is terrible.”

Gray swallowed again. Yes, his face was terrible, but there was nothing to be done for it. “Believe what you want, but it was an accident.”

“No, it wasn’t.” The worst part was that Tenny didn’t sound angry. Jax would have been: would have been spitting he was so angry, red in the face and hands cruel on Gray’s arms, and ears; his fingers would have pinched his chin until he was helpless but to twist away – then, of course, things would get worse. But Tenny was matter-of-fact. “Oh, I don’t think you started your day wanting to kill anyone. I think you’ve been working very hard these past few months to be a good boy.” His tone turned mocking, before it was ice-cold again. “But at some point between turning up at the barn and the moment you did the deed, you started jonesing for a kill.”

“No.”

“Maybe,” Tenny continued, as though he hadn’t spoken, “you thought you could buy yourself some trust and loyalty. You know the club’s uncertain of you, so you thought you’d dispatch a potential threat and then be applauded for it.”

“No, I didn’t. I–”

“But you thought wrong. Because the Lean Dogs aren’t like your old master. They aren’t like mine, either. You can’t pack up and leave town once the job is done. There’s no underground bunker protected by government money to keep you safe from local law. You killed someone, a civilian, and now the FBI is here. What will you do, I wonder?” He cocked his head to a birdlike angle, as though Gray were a fascinating puzzle. “A repeat performance? Or will you open your stupid gob and incriminate us all?”

“No,” Gray snapped, louder and more forcefully than intended.

Tenny’s brows lifted in the barest show of surprise.

“No,” he repeated, quieter. “I’m following orders, just like I was the other night. What happened to the detective was an accident. One that won’t happen again.”

“Do you swear?”

“Yes.”

Too late, only after Tenny smiled nastily, he realized the last question had been mocking. “I don’t like you.”

“I know that. I’m not stupid.”

“You are, but you notice things, so maybe you’re not useless,” Tenny amended. “You are to me, though. Trust is the only thing that matters in this world, and I can’t trust you at all, so I don’t need you, and I don’t want you around.”

Gray took a deep breath, and drew himself up to his full height. “Well. Mercy and Ava told me to stay here, so I’m staying. You might be a patched member, but you don’t outrank Mercy. If he wants me to leave, then he’ll have to tell me himself.”

Tenny’s smile was all teeth, and all ill-intent. He reached out to flick the end of Gray’s nose – hard. It hurt. But Gray refused to give him the satisfaction of flinching. It was far milder than any of Jax’s little tortures.

He said, “If you’re trying to fuck over the club because your dad and brother are dead, that’s your business. But if anything you do hurts him” – Reese again, another tilt of his head – “I’m gonna make what happened to your dad and brother look like a weekend at a spa.” Slowly, as though he was stupid: “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Gray wanted to scream at him. Wanted to strike at him. To pummel him until he understood that what he was saying was lunacy: why would Gray want to hurt the people who’d welcomed him in, clothed him, homed him, and offered him a chance at a future? What would possess him to betray his only chance for anything like a real life?

But if he’d learned anything in his time with the Lean Dogs, it was that after a lifetime spent beneath Hunter’s care and tutelage, he’d come out the other side without knowing a damn thing about humans, and their reasons for doing things.

He forcibly throttled his surge of violence, and nodded. “I understand.”