The Bone Collector-The Watch #1 - ch. 3 (Patreon)

Another long one. Unbeta'd, Unedited. Enjoy. Please...GiftIn the six months gift had been in the program, there had never once been a pod meeting. That’s what they called them. Pods. Gift supposed it sounded better than barracks. There were ten pods, overseen by ten instructors—sort of like the graduate school equivalent of a resident advisor.And, of course, Park was Gift’s. Well, not just Gift’s, but still, it felt like Gift had his sole-unwavering-constantly-disappointed attention. He was in a program to learn how to handle dangerous psychopaths trained to kill, but to hear Park, Gift was in finishing school.Elbows off the table, Kla. Sit up straight, Kla. Fix your tie, Kla. Wrong fork, Kla. It went on and on. Clean your room. Do your laundry. Finish your homework. Call your mom.Gift sighed. A pod consisted of six handlers and six assets. All partnered on the first day of the program. Gift and Park had arrived two days after the program had started, so there was only one asset left who didn’t have a handler.Payton.Upon hearing Gift had been paired with Payton, Park had thrown what Dove had called a ‘full-scale hissy fit’. She said it was because Payton was the only one there who had already killed people. Plural.The details were sparse, with imagination filling in the blanks and rumors doing the rest and what had started out as conjecture was now The Watch’s own version of an urban legend. The theories were wild, ranging from him taking out bad guys vigilante style, to him secretly being a serial killer with a signature and everything whose family was too powerful to let him go down for his crimes.Gift had never had the nerve to ask Payton the truth but he suspected that it was somewhere in the middle. He shifted restlessly in his seat, doing his best to avoid looking at Park.Park hated Payton. Maybe hate was too strong a word. He was wary of him. Didn’t trust him. Something he told Gift almost daily. When Boone had insisted Gift not only partner with Payton but room with him, Park had almost come unglued. He’d lectured Gift about safety like Payton drove around parks in a white van marked FREE ANIME, like he might murder Gift in his sleep.The first night, Gift hadn’t slept a wink. Payton didn’t try to kill him. Instead, he’d crawled into bed with Gift and used him like a thermal blanket, assuring him it was nothing personal, but that he ran cold and just needed warmth.Gift had been too shy to say no. And by day three he hadn’t wanted to. Not because he’d developed some kind of feelings for his criminally deviant roommate, but because Gift had spent most of his life ignored and neglected by the people who loved him. He was what TikTok referred to as ‘touch-starved’. Having Payton curled around him some nights was just…comforting.Not that he would ever tell Park that.Ever.Like Ever.“You ready?” Payton asked from beside him, fidgeting with his tie, hung loosely knotted around his neck, his buttons opened revealing pale skin and the top part of one of several X’s he had tattooed in various sizes on his chest. Gift tried to pat down the other boy’s hair which was standing on end, as always.“Ready for what?” Gift asked.“To get Park to punch in your v-card,” Payton said, like Gift was an idiot. “I promised to help and I meant it.”Oh, yeah.That.Gift had asked Payton for help, but that was last night. He was a different person back then. A hornier person with the memory of Park’s hand still burning a hole through his cheek. Now, looking at Park actively not looking at him, getting Park to climb on him seemed as impossible as Gift climbing Mount Everest.He propped his head up on his hand, staring at the man who haunted his every dirty fantasy. Why did he have to wear his pants so tight? Didn’t Hugo Boss make a slightly larger size? Did Park really need to stand there in his crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow like some common hussy?“Careful, baby. You’re drooling on your Prada,” Payton teased, his amusement obvious.Gift looked down absently at his school bag sitting on the table they shared, relieved to see he wasn’t, in fact, drooling. He was, however, half hard behind his zipper though, but he figured it would go away before this meeting was up.“I can’t help it,” he whined. “Who has a right to look that good? His hair looks so silky and his skin is flawless. And who looks that good in gold wire-rimmed glasses. Nobody. Just Park and Harry Potter.” Gift’s gaze fell to Park’s feet, mouth falling open. “Is he not wearing socks? Even his ankles are sexy. It’s…malicious.”Dove snickered. “Are you going to sue for emotional damages?” Dove asked, from her desk behind him.“Why are we here?” Morgan groaned, dropping her head to her desk. “Like if they asked us to be here at eight, why are they all just standing around at eight-fifteen? What are we waiting for?”As if on cue, the door to the classroom squeaked on its hinges like something out of a horror movie and an older man in a black suit with a vaguely familiar face entered the room.Drake leaned his chair onto its back legs, swaying into their space. “What’s he doing here?”“Who is he?” Gift asked.“Kendrick. He’s the guy who thinks he’s in charge of the program,” Drake said. “He’s the reason we’re all here. We’re his science project.”“Oh,” Gift said as if that made perfect sense. Then it struck him how he knew him. “He came to my house. I-I mean Park’s house, when I was staying with him, before we came here.”“He did home visits with all of us growing up,” Remi said.Gift frowned. “Growing up?”Remi nodded. “We were handpicked for this pretty much since before we were placed. The assets because of our predisposition to violence and our lack of empathy or remorse. Nobody knows what the criteria was for us handlers, or why only forty-two of us made the cut. Well, technically forty-one, since you took someone’s place.”Gift winced, feeling a pang of guilt. Payton ran his finger along Gift’s cheek, startling him. When he snapped his gaze to his, Payton gave him a weird smile, one that was almost…flirty. “Don’t feel bad, baby. Whoever they cut probably wouldn’t have made it anyway.”What the fuck was happening? In all the time they’d been in the same dorm, the same bed, Payton had never looked at him as anything more than a…body pillow. Why was he being all creepy and weird?Gift’s gaze darted to the front of the room, breath catching as he noticed Park watching him…watching them. He sat on a desk, one hand in his pocket, studying Gift from behind those glasses, the muscle in his jaw ticking.Gift inched his chair away from Payton’s, then looked down at his hands. When he looked back up again, Park, along with Mac and Archer, two other instructors, were talking to Kendrick in hushed tones.“What do you think is going on?” Drake asked. “Did someone die?”Morgan snickered, her purple ponytail swaying. “Isn’t that the whole point of this program?”Sometimes Gift found it hard to believe it was Dove who was the asset and Morgan who was the handler. Whenever she opened her mouth, she said something horrible. Still, Gift looked around. Counting heads. Persephone and Diego, Luca and Jay, Moses and Lennon. Along with the six of them huddled together, that covered all of Peregrine Pod. With Park in attendance that meant everyone in their dorm was present and accounted for.If someone in the school had died, surely they’d have told them all assembly style. Especially when half the student body was hard-wired not to give a shit.Gift leaned into Payton’s space. “Should we be worried, you think?”Payton let his fingers trail along Gift’s shoulders.Gift gave him an incredulous look. “What is with you today? Why are you so…handsy?”Payton shook his head like Gift was stupid. “You said you wanted me to help you seduce Park, no?”“Yeah?” Gift hedged. “I-did say that.”Payton slid his gaze to Park, a smirk spreading across his face. “Consider this…recon.”“Recon?” Gift parroted.“Mm,” Payton said, still watching Park. “I need to know just how far away the goal line is. Judging by the look on his face, I’m guessing not as far as we thought.”Gift wasn’t following any of this. Not the weird sports metaphor or what Payton saw when he looked at Park. All Gift saw was the same disapproving look and bored expression. Nothing like that look he’d given him last night. Gift shivered. What would it be like to be under Park when he looked at him like that, like he wanted to eat Gift alive?Finally, Archer stood. “Alright, everyone settle down. Let’s get started.”The class quieted down.“What’s going on, A?” Moses asked, sounding almost as indifferent as Park’s face.“Is that how you address your instructors here?” Kendrick asked, looking down his nose at Moses.Moses stared hard at Kendrick until the older man looked away, clearing his throat. Lennon’s lips twitched with aborted laughter, side-eyeing his roommate.“What’s going on,” Kendrick said. “Is a little…friendly competition. A game, if you will.”Groans sounded around the room as students slumped in their seats like they’d just been told there was a pop quiz. Maybe it was the dorky school uniforms, maybe it was the class setting, or the rules, or the dorms. But despite most of them being nearing their mid-twenties, it felt a lot like Gift was back at boarding school with his high school friends, only those friends hadn’t planned on majoring in murder.“Settle down,” Park said, the slightest of smiles on his perfect mouth. Gift wanted to kiss that perfect mouth so badly it hurt.“As I was saying,” Kendrick said, annunciating so they knew he was over their hijinks. “There will be a competition of sorts. Since none of you are anywhere near ready for a real assignment that could cause an international incident should you get caught, we’ve decided that each pod will work as a group to solve a mystery of sorts and eliminate the threat. Whoever silences their target—and gets away clean—first…wins.”“Is this like some simulation or do we actually get to merc somebody?” Payton asked. When Kendrick sent him a withering look Payton shrugged. “This is a school for assassins and I’m the weirdo for asking if we get to kill a real person? Okay.”“Yes, this is a real crime, with real victims. There is a real perpetrator and you will take him down,” Mac said, waving a file folder in his hand.“What do we win?” Persephone asked, her kinky, dark hair falling over her shoulders in waves.“Just…wins,” Kendrick said, shaking his head like her question was absurd.“So we don’t get anything for winning?” Drake said. “Not a plaque or an ugly gold cup we can stick in our trophy case?”“There’s a trophy case?” Kendrick muttered in Park’s direction.Park merely shrugged.“Not even a pizza party?” Morgan bemoaned. “We got pizza for reading twenty books over summer vacation in middle school, but the US Government can’t feed us for eliminating a hostile threat? Wow.”“You should take this seriously,” Kendrick snapped. “This might be a game to you, but it comes with real world consequences.”“Like what,” Remi asked just as Drake leaned his big body closer to him. Remi did his best to inch away from the much larger man while giving his attention to Kendrick.Kendrick fiddled with his tie. “Well, if you get caught…we won’t help you. We will disavow all knowledge of you.”“You can’t do that,” Lennon said.“Yeah, our parents are loaded,” Moses said.“People know we go to school here,” Diego added.“My mom has three TONY awards,” Dove said wistfully. “And I’m too pretty for prison.”Mac turned his back, but his shoulders were shaking. Gift assumed he was either crying or laughing, since it seemed like everybody hated Kendrick, it was likely the latter.It was Gift who felt like crying. Park hadn’t looked at him once since he’d moved his chair away from Payton.“It’s not working,” Gift whispered.Payton looked at him, distracted. “What?”“He’s not even looking in my direction,” Gift said, not even caring how pouty he sounded.Payton grinned. “Believe it or not, that’s a good thing.”Gift rolled his eyes. “How?”“Look at his body language,” Payton said, nodding towards Park.Gift hadn’t taken his eyes off Park since they’d walked in the room. “He’s…just sitting there.”“You need to get better at observing people or you're going to get us both killed on assignment,” Payton teased. “Look at him. Arms folded over his chest, hands white-knuckling his own arms, his foot bouncing. He’s agitated.”“So what? We’re all agitated,” Gift said, raking his gaze over Park, trying to see what Payton saw. “This is boring.”All Gift could see was a thin shirt pulled taut over well-muscled arms and Park’s knife-sharp jawline. He dropped his gaze to Park’s hands. He supposed his long, nimble fingers were squeezing his own arms tighter than usual.Gift’s tongue shot out, wetting his bottom lip. What would those hands feel like on his naked skin, not just his cheek but…everywhere.“Easy, killer. I can practically smell your boner from here,” Dove said.Gift flushed, shifting uncomfortably. “Shut up,” he managed.“He really makes you that horny?” Payton asked, studying Park like he just didn’t get it.Drake leaned back, dropping his gaze to Gift’s lap. “Clearly.”Gift slapped Drake's arm then leaned forward. “I’m a twenty-one year old virgin,” he whispered. “A strong wind makes me horny.”Drake barked out a laugh that he tried to cover with a cough, earning a number of reactions from those around them. Gift gave Drake a hard stare, but it was lost on him. He couldn’t care less about Gift’s embarrassment. Literally.“So are we reenacting CSI: Las Vegas instead of classes?” Diego asked, his expression borderline pissy.Diego was attractive but not in an overt way. If he were cast in a movie with a love triangle, Diego would be the one everyone knew was going to lose, not because of his heart, but because he was just not quite leading-man pretty.He was on the shorter side, maybe five-nine, he was slender, and had angular features that Gift thought made him look like a fox—the animal kind. He had hazel eyes and wavy hair the same mahogany color as the wooden bookcases. He wore his uniform with his tie too loose and his pants too low and his long hair fastened on top of his head in a style that was somewhere between Japanese Samurai and hippy man-bun.“I’m afraid not,” Archer said. “You will be expected to attend classes during the day. This will be homework.”More groans.Gift continued to stare at Diego. Their interactions were limited, but Gift thought he seemed okay. His sarcasm and skepticism made him the perfect counterpart for Persephone. She was beautiful, but she was cold blooded. If Gift was being honest, everybody in the school was beautiful.When he’d brought it up, Payton had just laughed. Dove had said it was pretty-privilege. When Gift had asked what she meant, she said pretty people get away with anything, even murder. The world just can’t fathom rich, beautiful people doing unspeakable things, no matter how much history has proven otherwise. It was just one more layer of protection to a cover that was already coated in teflon.“Only this place would make murdering some poor bastard homework,” Moses quipped, his South African accent pleasantly lilting.“Watch your language,” Kendrick snapped, leveling a glare at Moses.Moses sat up straighter in his seat, tilting his head to level an empty stare at Kendrick.“Kendrick keeps talking shit to Mos, I’m not sure he’s going to make it out of here,” Dove whispered. “I heard he once beat a teacher near to death with a baseball bat for giving him an A- on a test.”“I heard he ran her car off the road,” Remi whispered back.Moses Okeke—Mos to his friends—if he had any—was named after his adopted father, an international arms dealer. Raised in one of the wealthiest families in Johannesburg, Mos carried himself as exactly what he was, the heir to a billion dollar dynasty and he expected the world to act accordingly.But he wasn’t just arrogant, he was…fastidious. He wore the school uniform exactly as the handbook stated. He shined his thousand dollar shoes nightly, then placed them in a perfect line exactly one inch apart. He wore his hair shorn almost down to the scalp, his eyes were so deep brown you couldn’t tell where his irises ended and his pupils began. His skin was such a deep, rich obsidian it seemed to absorb the light around him, making Gift feel like he was in the presence of a God.But not a benevolent one.According to Payton, Mos was the worst of them. At least the worst of Peregrin Pod. His handler, Lennon, said he color coded his clothes, used gloves when he ate, and would only sleep in absolute silence, without earplugs.Almost as if she could hear Gift’s thoughts, Dove leaned in, her hair brushing his shoulder. “There’s a rumor that during the first week of school, Lennon left an apple core on his side table. They say he found it on his pillow beside his head, stabbed through with a knife.”“I heard Mos was just sitting on his bed. Staring. Waiting for him to wake up,” Payton said.“Creepy,” Remi whispered, staring in Mos’s direction, gasping audibly when he looked back.“But it was just a rumor,” Gift recalled.There were a lot of those at the Watch.About all of them.“After final classes, you’ll meet in the Peregrine Pod library where you’ll receive your case and the evidence you’ll need to start your investigation. You will receive no help from your instructors. This one is entirely on you,” Kendrick intoned as if this was a matter of grave importance.Gift didn’t know who he was trying to persuade. The handlers? They all knew their jobs were only as secure as the asset assigned to them.Putting neurotypical handlers in charge of neurodivergent assets with money, government clearance and a license to kill was the equivalent of handing a five-your-old a leash attached to a dog with a taste for human blood. It might be alright for a little while, but eventually, that dog was going to go rogue and that five-year-old didn’t stand a chance.“I’m bored,” Drake muttered. “I’d rather be listening to Pike drone on about inter-governmental relations.”Dove sighed, dreamily. “Yeah, me too.”Morgan rolled her eyes. “He’s not even cute.”That was a lie but Gift kept that information to himself because Morgan was scary. He lifted his head and accidentally locked eyes with Park. It was like being kicked in the heart. Why did he have to have this effect on him? Why wouldn’t it go away?Gift’s pulse raced, his mouth going dry. He couldn’t stop his tongue from darting out to wet his lower lip. Was it suddenly hot in there? It felt hot in there.This time when Payton reached out and stroked a finger over the back of Gift’s hand, he got to watch Park’s cold indifference flicker into something closer to confusion, then anger. Gift jerked his hand away, placing it in his lap. Payton just grinned in Park’s direction.“Is this your big plan?” Gift whined. “Just flirting with me until Park sends me back to Chiang Mai to be murdered?”Payton sighed, giving Gift a look of betrayal. “Oh, ye of little faith. This was just a little test. Now we can move on to the seduction part.”Gift refused to stop pouting until Payton explained himself. “How do we do that exactly?”“Step one,” Payton said with a grin. “Putting yourself in Park’s way.”Gift’s eyes bulged as Payton raised his hand and waved it obnoxiously.“Yes, Payton,” Kendrick said, clearly irritated.Gift didn’t miss the way Payton flinched when Kendrick said his name. Still, it didn’t stop him from saying, “I understand that this is a test and all, but like the others said, our parents have lives, reputations, fortunes to protect. I’m sure they would be none too pleased to hear that we were left to stalk, hunt, and kill a civilian with absolutely no faculty supervision.”“Well, you need to learn to work on your own,” Kendrick blustered. “There won’t be anybody to save you out in the real world.”“That’s not true,” Luca said, speaking for the first time, earning the attention of the entire room.Luca was a blonde surfer boy with hair that had been permanently damaged and bleached from a life in the ocean and a golden tan that never seemed to fade. Gift’s gaze slid to his handler, Jay. Jay was pretty in a leading man kind of way. He had jet black hair, a permanent five o’clock shadow and eyes so crystal blue that Morgan had sworn at first they were contacts.“Excuse me,” Kendrick said.Luca and Jay were the outliers in their pod. The quiet ones. Nobody knew much about them other than the same mini-bio they’d all gotten upon acceptance. They were an odd match. Luca’s father was a silicone valley tech mogul and Jay’s parents owned one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in all of India.“I said, that’s not true. The sole purpose of pairing us with handlers is so we have an ally, a contact, a helping hand. The reason you shoved us into families with money and connections is so that we are less likely to be found out and you're less likely to end up looking like our government is doing shady things on foreign soil. Don’t you think throwing us to the wolves as first years is a bad look…”“For you,” Jay finished staring down Kendrick.Kendrick looked from one instructor to the other as if waiting for them to help him out, when they all remained silent, he finally gave a heavy sigh. “Ugh, fine. I’ll allow the head of your pod to act as an advisor and to keep an eye on you.” Kendrick pointed his finger in Park’s chest. “But you are only to intercede if it's a matter of national security.”“That seems fair to me,” Payton said, a smug smile spreading across his face. “Thank you, great leader, for your benevolence.”Kendrick huffed out a breath through his nose like an angry bull, but didn’t engage.“Hey, Park,” Dove called, voice saccharine sweet.  “If we win, will you throw us a pizza party?”Park grinned at Dove. “You got it. Don’t fuck this up.”Gift felt like someone reached into his chest with both hands and now rung his heart out like a wet dish rag.“Park!” Kendrick snapped.The whole room snickered. Park gave Kendrick an apologetic look, then turned back to the students. “Don’t fuck this up…please?”Then he turned and walked out without so much as a backward glance at any of them.“We’re due at the Canin pod in five minutes, sir,” Mac said, sweeping his hand in front of him.Kendrick’s eyes made one last sweep of the room, and then they were gone. Almost immediately people jumped up from their chairs, slinging bags over their shoulders.“This is such bullshit,” Morgan said. “We have less than zero time for a social life as it is, and now we have to spend our nights playing Nancy Drew?”Dove scoffed. “Speak for yourself. I look great in knee socks and a snazzy cardigan.”“Me too,” Mos said, his voice so neutral nobody knew whether to laugh or not.“Anyway,” Drake said, dragging the word out. “We’re more like the Scooby Gang, no?”“Like the cartoon dog or like from Buffy?” Remi asked.Drake gave him a weird look, then snorted, patting his curls. “You’re such a little nerd.” Remi gave him the finger, then turned, waving at Lennon. Before they could exit the room, Drake called out, “Meet me at the library before our murder mystery theater begins. You know the spot.”Remi flushed, pushing caramel curls out of his wide green eyes. “Yeah, right.”“See you there,” Drake called.Remi didn’t dignify it with an answer, but there wasn’t a single person in that room who didn’t know Remi would be there waiting if and when Drake decided to show up.Gift felt sorry for him. He knew what it was like to be in love with an asshole.Speaking of.“So, now what?” Gift asked Payton.“Now what what?” Payton asked.“Now what’s step two?”“Patience, grasshopper. We don’t want to spook him.”“What is he? A horse?” Morgan asked, shoving a breath mint into her mouth.“Well Gift is hoping to get mounted,” Drake said around a laugh.“I hate you all,” Gift muttered, making a run for it. “I have to go. I’m late for Suri’s class,” he called.“Wait for us,” Dove hollered, grabbing Morgan’s wrist and hurrying to catch up.They were barely down the hall when Gift heard Payton shout, “Hey, me too. Why am I being left behind? I’m helping, remember?”