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Sally was on the floor and Marty had never heard Grant so angry, never seen him so out of control as he held him back from attacking her again. This was unbelievable. This was not the Grant he'd known for almost three years so Marty snarled in her direction.
"What the hell did you do to him?"
The trading floor was in chaos, half of the traders standing around in shock while the other half were either trying to hold back Grant or bring some order back to the floor. Grant was screaming at him to let go but Marty couldn't do that, not while he was so angry, not while he strained against Marty with every intention of getting to Sally and... Doing what exactly? Marty couldn't let him go because he didn't want to find out.
The security guards rushed in and grabbed hold of Grant, dragging him away kicking and still shouting, filled with a rage that Marty had never expected to see in the mild-mannered derivatives trader. Marty collapsed into his seat as he stared around his small empire, seeing papers and equipment on the floor, and shock on the faces of those who remained. Sally walked away but he could see she was shaking, gripped by her own shock, and Marty followed her with his eyes until she turned a corner at the top of the stairs.
All he knew was that Jack Larkin was dead and Grant held Sally accountable to that fact.
Later that evening, after they had finished with their own wake for Jack, burning his boxing gloves in a drum outside of the GRC building in Bay Street, Marty made his way home. It didn't seem to matter that he was so drunk he ought to be comatose for his mind just kept churning around, reliving Grant's terrible day. The man had lost so much in such a short space of time that it was little wonder that he finally cracked.
At that moment, part of Marty hated Chris Todson almost as much as he hated Sally Ross. Chris had been the one to hire a hooker to pretend to be Grant's mother. Once Amber realized she was onto a good thing she made sure Grant knew the truth so she could carry on a different kind of business transaction that was far more her style, pretending to be his girlfriend instead.
Suddenly Marty hated himself more than any of them because he had laughed behind Grant's back, demeaning his relationship with a hooker who only wanted Grant for his money when he ought to have been helping Grant as a colleague - if not a friend. It was so easy to laugh at Grant though. All that incredible intelligence locked into a mind that could be so simple and accepting, so easily led. Yet when Grant finally did the right thing by society's standards and stopped paying Amber to be his girlfriend, he learned the hard truth that, for him and Amber, there wouldn't be romance without money changing hands - his to hers.
Amber had played him perfectly with her mothering and her pretense that he was her favorite, her... What had she called him? Pookey?
They'd all used Grant in the past though, used his inability to judge in social interactions against him, and then laughed at his confusion when his world crumbled around him. And he had been so confused after Amber's rejection, asking if he had made the right decision or if he should offer her the money again just for the small amount of comfort he had gained with her, for that sense of normality.
Only Sally receiving a call about Jack had torn him from his downward spiral of confusion, with his interest in Amber quickly forgotten the moment Jack's name was mentioned. His eyes had brightened, the smile coming back to his face as he approached her like an overeager puppy wanting to know when his best friend was coming home to play.
Jack was dead.
Marty knew Grant had thought the world of Jack, even loved him in some strange Grant fashion and now he was dead.
****
Grant was different when Marty saw him a few weeks later. His clothes were immaculate, his beard and hair trimmed short if not a little austere.
"Jansky! Did you escape or did they let you out?" Marty quipped, hiding his pleasure at seeing Grant behind his usual irreverent façade.
The coldness staring back at him made Marty shut up fast, and he flinched when Grant shoved the photocopier out of the small closet that Jack had given him to use as an office on that very first day.
Not long after, Sally regained control of GRC and on the way to celebrate with the others, Marty realized he had left his lucky pen behind, and he never knew when he might need to wield it, even in the bar close to the building. He stopped in the shadows as he overheard Grant talking coldly to Sally, suddenly understanding the rage and grief, and their part in Jack's death. Together they had taken back the money Jack had 'stolen' from Brunet's mercenaries and perhaps Sally had truly believed it would bring Jack back to Canada so they could tell him he had been cleared of murdering Brunet. Certainly she had convinced Grant of that at the time.
Any decent business person would have known Jack was only safe while he had the money and that once he had lost it, he was worth more as an example of what would happen to anyone stealing from the mercenaries than he was worth alive. Not only had Sally signed Jack's death warrant but she then went out and spent the money, buying back her own bank and making herself even richer.
If Marty wasn't such a cutthroat businessman himself then he might have felt sickened by her actions. Instead, he accepted what she had done and turned his thoughts to Grant. In one short working day Grant had lost almost everything - his paid companion, his best friend, his sanity for a while, and almost his job.
Marty couldn't do a lot about the first three on that list but, for as long as he could, he made a silent promise to try and keep Grant in his job.
****
Months past and life went on, and then he had to have that stupid idea for a book that caused him no end of trouble. Perhaps he should have considered the instability of those who might read his book and take it as some form of bible to riches. Perhaps he should have remembered Sally's brief but unrewarding stint as a teacher of finance to the needy back around the time when Jack was murdered. They'd ignored her advice and then almost lynched her when she saved them their hard-earned money by going against their wishes to back a bad finance deal.
As he lay bleeding to death on the trading floor, the knife wound a dull ache in his back, all he could think of was the day he'd broken his promise to protect Grant's job, and then his pleasure at seeing Grant come back from the brink of insanity to rejoin the firm. They'd never been any question of him hiring Grant back on immediately, especially as no one else would accept all of Grant's weirdness. No one else understood Grant the same way as he and Jack.
When he awoke in the hospital, Barbara was seated beside him and for one moment he thought she had come back to him but, instead of relief, he felt numb. Until this moment he truly believed he wanted her back, wanted to patch up their shambles of a marriage, but now he realized that what he truly wanted was someone who could love him unconditionally. She had promised him for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health but, in truth, all she had ever appreciated was the money and the chance to spend it. Except he'd kept getting in the way, canceling vacations, refusing to pay out that little extra for a house two blocks further into the rich suburbs, or for the flashy car instead of a good solid family vehicle. For all his flamboyance in the money market, he'd always been pretty staid at home.
"I have to go," she said, and he knew she was referring to more than just leaving this hospital room.
He watched her leave and, strangely, he felt few regrets except for the loneliness that descended upon the darkened room. The slight squeak of the door and an increase in light made him turn his eyes to the door, expecting a nurse, and he almost groaned aloud when Grant sneaked through and slipped into the seat beside his bed.
"I know you probably can't hear me but I'll be here. So if you need anything then all you have to do is wake up and ask and..."
"Grant."
Grant's head whipped up, eyes round and large like a startled deer even though Marty's voice had been little more than a croaked whisper.
"You're awake." Grant's brilliant smile almost derailed Marty's thoughts, his mind fogged by pain killers.
"What....are you doing...here?" Marty tried to put his usual exasperated tone into his voice but it fell far short.
Grant took on his usual confused look, the one that always tugged at the heart Marty refused to admit to having. As he didn't have the energy to fight, he sighed and sank back against the pillows, barely noticing how Grant's warm presence and gentle voice dissipated the loneliness and lulled him back into a restful sleep.
****
His triumphant return to GRC was one of Marty's best memories of the place but not for the reason most would assume.
Weeks recuperating from the knife attack could have been soul destroying, stuck in his empty home out in the suburbs with just a paid nurse to wait upon him. Instead, Grant had practically moved in with him, tending to his every need, smiling in confusion when Marty took his temper out on him but genuinely providing him with a lifeline to the world. He made Marty laugh so hard he cried, he made him curse so hard that Marty was surprised the ground hadn't opened up and sent him straight to Hell, and he made him strong again, able to shake off the fear of knife-wielding strangers hiding in the dark, empty rooms by filling all those places with his warm presence.
Grant's medication actually seemed to be working too, the Haliperadol balancing his brain chemistry to reveal a person who was still brilliant and sweet and kind and gentle, and yet who had a better grasp of the real world than the Grant from before. Only the fact that he wanted to spend his time in Marty's world confused Marty at first until small things slipped out; a mention of Jack's arms enfolding him, how the scent of his cologne was far better than Amber's sickly perfume, and the gentle kiss on his forehead as he dropped off to sleep that Marty was convinced was a figment of his imagination while he was weak and tiring quickly.
He'd found himself leaning into Grant's gentle touches, and only protesting the occasional bear hugs because of his injured body and not because they were both men.
When he looked back through the years, it was so easy to see how Grant didn't care if someone was black or white, male or female. He didn't judge people by the color of their skin or their bank balance, nor by the wrinkles lining their faces or whether their genitals were on the inside or out. And he loved with a passion that was almost childlike in its intensity.
Memories of school locker room antics came back to him, and the teenage crush he'd had on one particular boy that he'd put down to hero worship. He had carried on denying his feelings through the years. He'd justified protecting Grant's position when he would have discarded any other person as soon as they became a liability by saying he was doing it for Jack, or for the good of the business, or for Sally once he had come to respect her again. He'd refused to consider that he had done it for himself, and for Grant.
Marty waved down all the well-wishers. "Okay, okay, that's enough! Playtime's over boys and girls. Let's go make some money."
He grinned as they grabbed phones and started to trade, his eyes catching sight of Grant retreating back to the desk he'd requested on the trading floor, no longer content to hide away in his tiny room. Marty grasped his arm before he could sit down and pulled him aside, drawing him up the few steps and fumbling with the door handle of the closet that used to be Grant's semi-private domain. He pushed the door closed behind them and smiled at Grant's bewilderment.
Marty pushed Grant against the door gently, bracing his hands to either side of Grant's head. "So here we are. Back in the closet."
"I don't want to be in here anymore."
Marty gave a soft smile. "You know what?" He leaned in, staring deep into endlessly blue eyes. "Neither do I," he breathed softly before closing that final inch and sinking into what would be the first of so many kisses he would share with Grant, for the rest of their lives.
END