Grayson Saucy Side: Villainous (Patreon)

AU where Button is a bad, bad Ment and Gray is . . . still Gray. Contains minor spoilers for Grayson's powers.

You’ve always considered membership to the Art Institute of Chicago to be one of the primary perks of living in the city. Back in high school, you and Sally made weekly pilgrimages. Sally would lecture you on the brushstroke technique of this or that dead painter, and you'd tease Sally about being short enough to live inside one of the Thorne Miniature Rooms.

The museum holds a fond place in your heart, which is why it’s so ironic that you’re now robbing it.

You’ve committed plenty of heists in the past. Being a Level 10 Empath makes you an expert at telling people what they want to hear and learning their secrets, which comes in handy when one makes a freelance career from performing cooperate espionage. Nick wanted you to join Unity, but you were never one for rules. Besides, after your recent gig for a company rhyming with “Snoogle,” you’re pretty sure that your yearly income now tops his. It pays good to be bad.

Burglarizing a public institution is new, however, and something you would’ve never considered had Sally not come to you in tears. She’d been commissioned to duplicate a famously lost Rubens by a wealthy client, who had then been passed off her work as authentic and donated it to the Art Institute for a charitable tax write off. Your first impulse, which was to congratulate Sally on her forgery skill, had been the wrong one.

“I’m not like you!” Sally protested. “I don’t want to be tied up in illegal activities, always worrying about my past catching up to me. I wish that the piece would just . . . disappear.”

Being a good friend and an even better thief, you agreed to make her wish come true. Which is why Sally is now nervously waiting in a rental car outside, and you’re suspended upside down from the Art Institute’s ceiling, your face inches away from her accidental forgery.

You let out a long whistle as you eye the naked woman carrying a jug. Thankfully, the art isn't a sculpture, otherwise her nipple would be poking your eye out. Ruben, or rather Sally, really knew how to paint ‘em. You begin to hum a nameless tune as you carefully rewire the alarm attached to the painting’s back, careful not to jostle the frame. The three nightguards usually patrolling this wing may be all passed out in a janitorial closet, sent napping by your empathic suggestion to “sleep,” but triggering the alarm will alert the whole building. Last time you tried to control more than twelve people at once, you got a nose bleed. You have no desire to gush blood all over a masterpiece, even a forged one painted by your best friend.

A heavy sigh from behind makes you twist mid-air, your movement causing your rope to sway like a pendulum. You curse—the only thing worse than being caught with your pants down is being caught hanging upside down—and shift your weight in effort to avoid crashing into the still-booby-trapped frame.

Your body freezes mid-swing, hovering at a forty-five-degree angle with your nose mere centimeters from the aforementioned nipple. Rather than be relieved that you didn’t set off the alarm, you’re annoyed. Only one person could stop your movement without a single touch.

“Hello, Fortitude!” you chirp with false cheer. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Grayson sighs again. His hand glides across the small of your back as he uses his telekinesis to gently lower you to your original position. As glancing over your shoulder would only set you swinging again, you patiently wait for him to spin your body around so that your eyes are directly parallel with his.

“UCRT agreed to let your activities slide so long as you ran all of your jobs by Nick,” Gray says in a disproving tone. “We’d rather know what corporations are up to than not, so you’ve been granted relative carte blanche to use your empathy. But last time I checked, “art theft” wasn’t part of corporate espionage.”

You shrug, the motion causing you to sway once more. Gray catches your shoulders firmly, and you repress a shiver. The sensation of his hands on your body isn’t at all unpleasant, although you do wish his touch were under less condemning circumstances.

“I’m diversifying my skillset,” you say, tongue-in-cheek. No need to get Sally in trouble as well.

Grayson sighs. That makes, what, his third? His gaze runs up the length of your rope, to the grappling hook coiled around a steel ceiling beam. “I don’t suppose there’s an easy way to get you down from there?”

“There is.”

When you don’t immediately drop, he crosses his arms over his chest. You try to ignore the cold that follows his hands abandoning your shoulders. 

“What are you waiting for?” he asks.

“Am I being arrested?” Your utility belt has two buttons: one which will disengage the grappling hook and set you down on the floor, and the other which will pull you up to the ceiling so that you can escape via the same air vent that you entered. Which button you push depends on Gray’s answer.

“I wish I could arrest you,” Gray groans, raking his fingers through his hair. The disheveled look is cute on him, even if his unmarked UCRT fatigues rather ruin the look. “But no. Sally filled us in on what happened. She saw men get out of an unmarked SUV and enter the museum, and was worried that you’d been caught.”

Sally called UCRT? Over a decade of friendship, and she rats you out to your big brother’s Micky Mouse clubhouse? Oh, you and she are going to have words once your feet are back on solid ground.

Gray must’ve picked up on your disgruntlement, because he adds, “She thought you were in danger. For good reason: her patron was Bruno Ricci.”

You shrug again, trying not to smile when Grayson immediately reaches back for your shoulders in order to still your swaying. “I mostly deal with copyright disputes turned ugly,” you remind him. “Ment mobsters are supposed to be your business.”

“Which is why Sally should’ve brought this forgery business to UCRT’s attention instead of asking you to break into a museum.”

“Don’t tell me that your feelings are hurt, Cookie Monster,” you purr. "It's okay. You don't always get picked first in dodgeball."

He glares, then breaks into a reluctant smile. “It’s hard to take you seriously when you’re hanging upside down like that.”

Fair enough. You press the first button on your belt and the grappling hook disengages with a whir. Gray catches you on instinct, stiffening as he realizes that he’s cradling you in bridal position. The red emergency lights prevents you from discerning his blush, but you have no doubt of its presence across his cheeks. Giving into an impish urge, you wrap your arms around his neck before he can let you go.

“If Sally told you about her artwork, then you know we can’t just leave it here,” you say casually, as if unaware of Gray’s accelerating heartbeat against your back. “What’s your plan?”

“My plan would’ve been to inform the Art Institute’s Board of Directors that the painting was evidence needed to apprehend a Ment villain,” Gray states. “Which is true.”

You pout. “Are you calling me a Ment villain?”

“No. I’m calling you a Ment who illegally used empathy to knock out three guards, and thus made a protocol handover impossible. Ricci would be our target.”

“If UCRT requisitioned Sally’s piece, it would just alert this Ricci guy that Sally had snitched,” you argue. “Your upfront methods would’ve gotten my best friend killed.”

“Our methods would’ve ended with Ricci in prison,” Gray shoots back. There’s a crackling heat between you, as neither is willing to concede to the other’s point of view. After an angry moment, that heat transforms into something more seductively self-aware. 

Gray's Adam's apple jerks as he dry swallows, and his head tilts closer. You look down, but his thumb gently tilts your chin back up. You stare at each other, wordless yet saying more than ever before.

A shrill screech shatters the moment's potential as the museum's alarm goes off.

Gray releases you and unleashes an eloquent stream of profanity. You make a mental note to research British curse words as he grabs your arm and yanks you around the corner, just in time to avoid the dual glare of two flashlights. Gray’s hand covers your mouth, his breath hot against the nape of your neck.

“You missed one." His whisper tickles your earlobe.

You squirm to break free, but his hold only tightens. “Shhh,” he warns.

Stampeding footsteps echo through the hallway, growing dangerously loud near the alcove where you and Gray are tucked away. There must be at least five people. Not just a solitary guard, then, but Ricci’s men, likely here to steal back Sally’s painting before it’s revealed to be a forgery.

You stop struggling, pressing your body against Gray’s in an attempt to take up as little space as possible. Despite the danger, that self-aware edge from before returns.

Trapped in near darkness and unable to make out more than blurry silhouettes, your other senses take on electric hyperawareness. The alarm falls silent, and you can hear the thrum of Gray's pulse and the rasp of his breath. Your body tingles where Gray touches: your lips beneath the callouses of his palm, your cheek against the prickle of his stubble. You bask in the warmth of his body, the rigidness of his arms encompassing your torso, and the hardness of his thigh pressed between yours.

Being unable to see Gray’s face is likely a blessing, because this time you wouldn’t have the willpower to look away.

Gray removes his hand from your mouth with a reluctant slowness that indicates you’re not the only one who was enjoying this forced proximity. “You disabled the cameras, right?” he asks in a low voice.

What does he take you for, an amateur? He smiles at your glare.

When you can no longer hear the footsteps of Ricci’s men, Gray tugs you back into the previous room where Sally’s art still hangs on display. He grabs the frame's side and yanks it off the wall, shrugging at your offended gasp.

“They already know someone’s here,” he says as a new alarm begins to blare. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” you demand. “We can’t go back the way I came—my grappling hook isn’t strong enough to lift two.”

He doesn’t reply, instead pulling you over to the other wall. His eyes close. The drywall ripples.

“Let’s go,” Gray repeats. He pulls you close, ignoring your protest, and then . . .

Then, for the briefest nanosecond, you’re inside the wall. Or rather, the wall moves around you. You can’t breathe, and only Gray’s hand squeezing yours prevents the surge of panic from overwhelming you. As suddenly as it happened, however, it stops. You and Gray stand outside in the Art Institute gardens, plaster coating both your bodies to ghostlike effect. You glance back at the building behind you, its concrete façade showing no indication of having just let two humans and a nude reproduction pass through it.

Gray leans Sally’s artwork against a nearby tree before dropping to his knees with a coughing wheeze. “I hate doing that,” he sputters.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” you say, tentatively patting his back.

“Yes, well.” His cough releases a cloud of white dust. “It’s not my first choice.”

You don’t respond immediately, chewing your lip in contemplation. Gray hid with you from Ricci’s men, which means . . .

“Was this an unsanctioned mission?” you ask him.

He turns away and grabs the artwork. “We’re done here,” he says gruffly.

“Grayson!” There’s an urgent need for you two to leave the garden. You realize that, and yet you’re unable to follow until you know. “Did you break protocol to save me?”

At first, you think he's not going to respond. His back is turned towards you, shoulders wide and lonely. A sigh wells up inside you, a sigh that contains years of "what ifs" and "maybes" and "we could bes". 

Finally, Grayson looks at you. His eyes burn blue with an intensity that you’ve never before witnessed, and your longsuffering sigh catches in your chest. 

In his gaze, you read the answer.