Chapter Text
The Gray Man’s car broke down. That was how it started.
They were meant to be reliable, rental cars. They were meant to be disposable, the sort of thing that you don’t need to worry about breaking or being broken. Pay some extra money, get a new one without a torn fan belt or a broken window or blood on the fender. The last one was really better dealt with by leaving the car and walking away, of course.
The point was, the Gray Man’s rental car breaking down should have been no more than an inconvenience. He would call the company and get it taken care of. It would mean a wait, but likely not more than a few hours - long enough for an employee to bring him a new car. Or perhaps he’d simply request a ride to the airport instead. He could always get an earlier flight.
He was done here, after all. He’d disposed of the tire iron that had smashed Niall Lynch’s head in, and he’d disposed of the body in the necessary way - a warning to any associates. A reminder to those who knew what Niall Lynch had been about, who might know where the item was that the Gray Man’s employer wanted. Though his flight was scheduled for the next morning - though he had another night in the charming little bed and breakfast he’d found here - the job was done. He didn’t really need a new car.
Still, it was inconvenient to find himself on the side of a country road outside a country town, miles from anything of note. That, he thought, could in the end also be placed at the feet of Niall Lynch, who had chosen to found his kingdom in the secluded countryside. But it felt rather distasteful to blame a dead man.
He exited the car and placed a call to the company, who promised they would send an employee to pick him and their car up. It would be awhile, though. The rental company was near the airport, and he - well. He was not near the airport.
The Gray Man contemplated his surroundings. Scrubby fields, some trees, a distant house. A mile or two back, he’d passed a factory of some sort. Ideally, there’d be a diner nearby to feed hungry workers coming off late shifts, but he didn’t remember seeing one. Too bad. He wasn’t hungry, but there were a few flecks of blood on his shoes that he ought to remove before the rental company employee arrived. He’d been careful, but these things happened. A diner bathroom would have been perfect.
A few cars passed, none stopping or even slowing down. The Gray Man considered his options.
And then the boy appeared.
He was on a bicycle, an old and rusted thing that had certainly seen better days. He slowed down and stopped. The Gray Man took him in, and decided that his whole appearance, in fact, spoke of someone who’d grown up in a place that had seen better days.
His hair was the same color as Henrietta dirt, his skin tanned from the sun and dusted with freckles. His clothes looked exactly like the sort of clothes someone would buy from a thrift store - not to be fashionable, as seemed to be the thing these days, but because you needed to look decent and could not afford anything better. The sort of clothes that someone else has worn before, but decided were not good enough for them.
His eyes were blue, and he was thin, and he had a purpling bruise over one eye socket and down across his cheekbone. From a closed fist, the Gray Man thought.
“Car break down?” the boy said. His voice was soft, and thick with Henrietta drawl, the sort of thing that would have middle-aged ladies cooing over him if he were a bit more charming.
But he wasn’t. He held himself carefully, the tension in his body providing the subtle feeling of distance. It was the sort of thing that made someone seem unconsciously unwelcoming, a quiet wariness that would read to most as disinterest.
To the Gray Man, it read as caution. It read as something familiar, and he found himself inclined to like this boy. He’d trained that distance out of himself - not that he no longer felt it, but he no longer showed it. It helped if people liked him, sometimes. For work.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a rental. Someone will be out soon.”
“I could take a look at it,” the boy said. His eyes flickered to the Gray Man’s hands. He was standing carefully a few feet away, still on his bike, ready to pedal away in a moment if he needed to.
It was smart, though it would not have been enough if the Gray Man had had nefarious intentions. That was not the boy’s fault, though. His experience with evil had likely been more venal: untrained, harsh blows and harsher words. Enough to teach him to be wary, but not enough to protect him from everything.
“You don’t have somewhere to be?” the Gray Man said. Perhaps he should have refused, but he did not want to wait on the side of the road for hours.
“My shift doesn’t start for another half hour. I’ve got some time.” The boy gestured down the road, toward the factory. He looked young to be working - a teenager. Seventeen, maybe? The Gray Man supposed that was old enough to work in a factory. He was not entirely sure about Virginia’s laws on the subject.
“By all means, then,” he said, and popped the hood. The boy slid off his bike and propped it nearby, needing to kick a few times at the rusty kickstand before it would hold the bike up properly. He slid another look at the Gray Man, quick and wary, which the Gray Man would not have noticed if he hadn’t been who he was. Then he bent over the engine.
While the boy performed whatever arcane magics were necessary in a situation like this, the Gray Man watched the road. He watched the boy, really, but focused attention would seem odd.
The Gray Man didn’t spend much time around teenagers. They were another species whose lives did not intersect with his own very often - probably a good thing. Despite his unfamiliarity with teenagers as a category, though, he did not think this boy was a typical example. Oh, he seemed that way - unexceptional, quiet, a little awkward - but there were little tells here and there, tiny things that would have been difficult for anyone else to put a finger on.
The only teenagers the Gray Man had been in any proximity to recently had been Niall Lynch’s sons, and this boy was an entirely different creature. He faced the world with a wariness and caution that was extremely recognizable, a wariness that spoke of familiarity with the less savory parts of the world. He was suspicious of the Gray Man, but still polite enough to offer help. He was careful enough to keep his distance, but not quite aware enough to understand the true extent of the danger he could be in.
Though, of course, he wasn’t. The Gray Man meant him no harm, had no intention of hurting him. It was curious, that’s all, that this Henrietta boy was observant enough to know something was off about the man on the side of the road.
It was curious. It was familiar.
After all, the Gray Man had spent his own childhood learning about the cruelty of man. He was well aware that he was not the only one for whom that was true. The fist-shaped bruise on the boy’s face could have been from a schoolyard fight, but the way he carried it said otherwise. The way he carried it said that it was not a badge of courage, but a stain of violence.
Perhaps he was going soft, seeing himself in the image of a strange boy. Perhaps it was the knowledge that he had just taught three other boys, about as old as this one, a brutal lesson in the cruelty of the world.
He wondered if they had found the body yet.
“That should get you going again,” said the boy, straightening up from where he was bent over the engine. There was grease on his hands now, and he fished an already grease-covered rag out of his pocket to wipe it off. Even then, there were streaks of it left. It didn’t seem out of place.
“That seemed easy. Thank you,” the Gray Man said, nodding in simple appreciation.
The boy ventured something like a smile, there and gone again in a moment. “It was nothing much. I work at Boyd’s auto shop in town - if you have more trouble, bring it by later.”
An auto shop and a factory. Busy, for a teenager, the Gray Man thought, aware that his own ideas of how teenagers spent their time were vague and likely incorrect. Two jobs seemed uncommon, though. Likely he needed the money.
“There’s a gas station a mile or two down the road,” the boy continued after a moment. His eyes slid away from the Gray Man, down to the ground, to the Gray Man’s shoes and then to his bike. An escape route. “Bathrooms are in the back, usually unlocked. You could clean up there.”
Perhaps another man would have been concerned. Perhaps the Gray Man should have been concerned - once word got out of the murder of Niall Lynch, this boy could tell anyone who asked that he’d met a stranger on the road not too far from the Lynch property with blood on his shoes. But there was nothing to be concerned about, not really. The rental car was under an assumed name, and he would be gone the next day.
If there was really a concern, he could take care of it now. The road was empty, the boy was defenseless. It would be easy. He wasn’t worried.
“Thank you,” the Gray Man said again, polite. He could hide the boy’s body in the woods, if he needed to. “Are you looking for a job?”
He could not have said what inspired that. He was, in some distant way, aware - the echo of his younger self in this thin and distant Henrietta boy, the wariness in his eyes. The observant nature and the cleverness, the work ethic and stubbornness of two jobs at seventeen years old. The knowledge of the darker side of humanity.
More practically, it would be useful to have someone around who was good with cars.
The boy’s eyes flickered from the bike to the Gray Man again, widening. He still looked as though he was about to flee. Smart.
“I have a job,” he said, but it lacked the ring of no that the Gray Man had expected.
“Of course,” the Gray Man said. “This would be more like an apprenticeship, in any case.” He was quite surprised at how appealing the thought seemed in that moment. He was not a lonely person - he had had students before, of course, though not in this particular field. But this was different, and he knew that. “On-the-job training, if you will.”
For a moment, he saw in the boy’s face the truth of things. He wanted out. It was written in the set of his jaw, the brief, intense flash of interest in his eyes. Then he shuttered his expression, smoothed it out, replaced it with polite caution.
The Gray Man approved.
“I can’t really up and leave, sir. I’m starting at Aglionby Academy in the fall.”
“Education is important,” said the Gray Man. “But if you change your mind, I’ll be here until tomorrow.” He gave the boy a number - not his. It would connect him to the main desk of the bed and breakfast.
From another angle, the Gray Man might be acting very foolishly. These were clues, breadcrumbs that could be used to trace him. But they wouldn’t be. That flash of interest had been enough to make it clear - interest instead of fear, despite the blood on his shoes, despite everything about the situation.
The boy likely wouldn’t call, but he wouldn’t turn the number over to anyone, either. It was safe enough, within the parameters of safety that the Gray Man considered important. It was unlike him, though. He knew that even as he did it, and he did it anyway, because the shadows in the boy’s eyes were so like his own.
“Thank you,” the boy said, somewhat uncertainly. He tucked the number into his pocket, along with the greasy rag, and mounted his bike. “It was nice to meet you, sir.” There was a significant amount of doubt in his voice. The Gray Man almost smiled.
He watched the boy bike away toward the factory, and then he called the rental company back to tell them he no longer needed help, climbed back in the car, and drove to the gas station to clean the blood off his shoes.
He did not expect to hear from the boy again. He weighed the variables, considered his actions, and put the incident out of his mind. It had been out of the norm for him, and that made him a little uncomfortable, but he understood the emotions driving it. The feeling of kinship toward a young boy with bruises on his face and a cautious air around people. He understood it, even if he was not entirely comfortable with the reminder that he was still haunted.
But it didn’t really matter, because nothing would come of it.
Of course, he was wrong. The phone in the charming little room he’d taken at Henrietta’s third-finest bed and breakfast rang very late that night.
The Gray Man had spent his day getting his affairs in order - not that they’d really needed it. He’d done what he came to do, and all that was left was checking in with his employer. That was easily accomplished, and the rest of the day spent eating at pleasant little cafes and packing his luggage. Not that there was much of that, either.
It was lucky that the proprietors were still awake, and able to transfer the call. It was lucky that the Gray Man was awake, considering how near the clock’s hands were to midnight. Or perhaps it wasn’t luck at all.
The boy’s voice was steady, but the Gray Man could hear a tightness in it. Whether that was from tears unshed or pain unvoiced, he couldn’t tell over the phone, though it would have been clear in a moment had they been meeting in person.
“Your offer,” the boy said, “is it real?”
“Yes,” the Gray Man said. The unexpectedness of the call piqued his interest even more than their meeting on the side of the road had. He could guess why, but it was a strange marvel that such a cautious boy would consider taking such a leap.
“Where would we go?”
“Away.”
The Gray Man listened to the boy breathe for a moment. He was, the Gray Man thought, the sort of person who wanted plans and facts, which the Gray Man would not - at least at this moment in time - give. It remained to be seen whether that would be too much for the boy.
“And I’m not going to end up dead in a ditch somewhere?”
There was no amusement in his voice. The question was an honest one, which pleased the Gray Man. He also quite liked the way the boy’s Henrietta accent curled around the words dead in a ditch. This really was an awfully charming town.
“I can’t make any promises,” said the Gray Man. Honesty, he thought, was the best way to get started. “But probably not.”
There was another moment of silence. It was an agonizing moment of decision for the boy, he was sure. For the Gray Man, it was a quiet moment of contemplation. He had truly meant the offer, or he would not have extended it, but now that it might be accepted he felt an uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty.
He could not be said to be good with teenagers, having had little practice. This life of his could not be said to be a good life, exactly, though it suited him quite well. He generally did not work with a partner, and he had never trained someone.
Still. It could be very interesting, perhaps even rewarding.
“Okay,” the boy said. He gave a location. When the Gray Man arrived, it turned out to be a pay phone - likely one of the last remaining in the town. The boy had walked a long way to get to it. There was a newly-made bruise on the side of his jaw, overlapping with the last one, and the Gray Man could see from the way he moved that he had more hidden bruises, or perhaps a cracked rib. A black eye was forming as well.
Much later, the Gray Man learned what had happened that night, the events that preceded the phone call. Having found the boy’s Aglionby Academy acceptance letter, his father was furious. He expressed that fury with fists and spat-out words, making it clear that he would not support this choice - that they could not afford it, that the boy was wasting his time and his parents’ money, that he was meant for nothing. The boy, unable to fight back, could only accept the anger.
Later, the Gray Man thought that it would have turned out differently if they had not met on the road. The boy was stubborn, determined, ambitious. His father’s anger would not have crushed his dreams. The Gray Man understood anger like that - if it had not been the school, it would have been something else. The father’s anger would have cooled, and the boy would have found a way to that expensive, exclusive school, and on to greatness. The Gray Man’s place in this narrative had occurred entirely by chance.
But there he had been, offering a way out. And in the panic and pain and fear of that night, the boy had grasped what seemed like the only opportunity left to him. His determination had narrowed down to the simple need to get out, by any means necessary, and he’d dialed a hit man’s number because nothing else had been available.
It was pathetic, really, how some people treated their family. The Gray Man had no regrets about helping this boy walk away from his, and the sight of new bruises layered over old was enough to settle his doubts about his own offer.
The boy dealt with the pain well, pretending it wasn’t there. That was a good sign. His eyes were bright with something that was only steps away from panic, and he climbed into the Gray Man’s rental with nothing but the cheap clothes on his back.
“What’s your name?” the Gray Man asked. It hadn’t mattered before. It did now.
The boy barely blinked. Panic or not, he was resolute now that his decision was made. That was also a good sign.
“Adam Parrish,” he said.
The Gray Man nodded. He glanced at his luggage in the back, making sure it was all there, and then he drove to the airport.
He couldn’t take a strange teenager back to his bed and breakfast, after all. Too suspicious. It was best to get started as soon as possible.