Page 118 of Lone Star

“I told him.”

“Uh oh.”

Reese waited for an elaboration, frowning to himself.

“What’d Fox do to set you off?”

His pulse leaped again, a lurch and then a race. He hadn’t – Fox hadn’t…but that’s why he’d called, wasn’t it? Because he was…angry. Yes, he was angry.

“How’d you know?” he asked.

“Your voice. You sounded like you wanted to strangle him,” Mercy said, not without sympathy.

Reese took a deep breath – no doubt Mercy could hear it on the other end, and that was so unlike him, so discomposed and emotional and foreign. But he didn’t think he could help it right now.

As usual, nothing came out of his mouth the way it should have. “I hate Tenny.”

Mercy snorted. “Gee, I couldn’t tell.”

Sarcasm. Reese was learning to read it in others, even if he couldn’t deploy it.

“I hate him,” he repeated, and felt his face heat, afflicted again – still – with that useless emotion. It was tempered, now, though, by something else. Something bitter that made it difficult to swallow. “He doesn’t follow orders, and he put the whole op at risk tonight because he wasbored.”

Mercy chuckled. “Sounds like Fox, honestly.”

Reese couldn’t stop the growling sound that built in his throat. He tried to swallow it, not understanding it at all, but Mercy must have heard it, because he made an inquiring sound in response.

“Well, not just like him,” he amended. “Fox doesn’t ever risk the op – not without a good reason. What’d he do to piss you off?”

You’re angry, he remembered telling Badger once, an observation.

I’m fucking pissed off!

He’d never thought of himself as being such. His chest felt tight, so he took a deep breath. “It’s Ten’s fault he got shot. He went down, and I saw the shooter, and – I went to administer medical care.”

“Ah. Instead of going after the shooter.”

“Yes.”

Mercy hummed; he did that when he was considering things; his mouth always screwed up a particular way, and he glanced at the sky or the ceiling, whichever was overhead. “You feel guilty because you should have gone after the shooter.”

“He had to go out an upper story window to escape, which would have taken time. I could have caught up to him. He wasn’t as fit as me.”

Mercy chuckled. “There is something nice about somebody being as honest as you.” One of those statements that always left Reese frowning as he tried to understand. Sarcasm? Sincerity? It sounded warm.

Then he grew serious. “Listen, kid, you did the right thing.”

“I could have apprehended Luis.”

“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe he would have shot you, or maybe you would have tripped going up the stairs and fallen flat on your face. You can’t know for sure that you would have gotten hold of him. But you can know that, if you hadn’t helped him, Tenny would be dead now. That was the only certain thing in that situation: that Tenny was going to bleed out if you didn’t do something.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t thought of it that way.

“I know you hate him, but do you wish he’d died?”

He thought of wrapping his hands tight around the wound, of Tenny’s eyes, big and pale, begging. And of his own internal begging:don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.“No.”

“He’s not patched in yet, I know, and who’s to say if he ever will. Or you, for that matter. That’s not me pushing you one way or the other, by the way. You guys aren’t like any kinda prospects we’ve ever had around here. Whether you choose to become full-fledged brothers is gonna be just that: a choice. But you’re definitely friends of the club.”

---