AN:Long overdue but my computer broke down, guys. So sorry. I feel so sad, all these years of writing and I still don't have a fanart piece...I would really like one. Like for any of my fics...sniffs and goes back to bed. Enjoy~

Rating: T


It really tells you that a man's life has gone down the drain when the bathroom becomes his only sanctuary in the house, Remy thought gloomily as he buried his face in his hands and slumped down against the toilet lid he was seated on. He didn't want to go out and confront the creature from the Black Lagoon. He didn't even want to think about the thing prowling around his bedroom.

Three days had passed and he hadn't slept a wink. Remy had locked himself into the bathroom as soon as the scientists left with the redhead and proceeded to scrub his skin off in the shower. Then he had camped out there without eating until he was on the edge of fainting and the phone ringing downstairs became unbearable. Then he proceeded to charge downstairs, stuff his face and grab the phone before charging up the stairs and diving into the bathroom again. Thankfully it was the holiday seasons and he didn't have to go back to work until the twenty-ninth.

There was a sudden rattle from the door and Remy resisted the strong urge to scream like a little girl as a shadow passed, obscuring the light from the bedroom. His heart jumped around erratically in his ribcage and Remy braced himself for the inevitable crash of the door breaking but nothing happened. The seconds ticked by and the creepy mouth-breather at the door emitted a disappointed hiss and retreated. He slumped back down on to the toilet seat and sighed in relief.

Remy looked around the master bathroom and mentally calculated the possible weapons he could make out of two rolls of extra soft toilet paper, an electronic razor and baby blue SpongeBob shower curtains. Oh wait, there was a pink bath scrub and two bottles of shampoo. They teach you in the academy how to kill a man thirty-seven ways with a ball point pen but not how to strangle a possible alien from outer space with toilet paper. Damn, extra soft and jasmine-scented too.

"God help me." Remy stared up at the ceiling and sent a rare prayer to the big guy upstairs. Normally he wouldn't have bothered as the things he had gone through in life sort of squeezed the religious guy out of his system. Remy didn't believe in God or Fate, he believed in his own two hands. But the situation wasn't normal and he needed all the mental strength he could get.

He reasoned that some time tonight he would have to go downstairs for another food run and eventually he would have to go to the supermarket to restock his rapidly diminishing supplies. It would be better sooner than later, right? Remy grabbed the long-necked shampoo bottle and took a deep breath as he inched toward the door. A lot of good a bottle of shampoo would do against the monster, Remy thought grimly. At least he could offer to wash its hair, not that it had any to begin with. His brain chattered cheekily in the background as he turned the knob.

The door clicked open with a soft sound and Remy braced himself as he stepped out into the bedroom, feeling incredibly vulnerable with only the blinking red lights in the darkened corners of the room. He never liked surveillance cameras. The second floor seemed empty and Remy cautiously slipped down the stairs toward the kitchen.

He jumped when something thumped in the darkness and Remy snapped the light on. There was a struggling deer on the floor of the kitchen, its neck oozing dark red blood all over the floor. He dropped the shampoo bottle with a loud clack and watched transfixed as it rolled leisurely into a darkened corner. A second later the bottle rolled back into the light and the shadows moved as the creature detached itself from its hiding place.

The deer was making low gurgling noises in the back of its throat, smearing more blood over the beige floorboards as it struggled to breath past the slash in its neck. Remy took a step backwards, eyes flickering between the thing and its prey. He held his hands up slowly, palms toward the creature.

"Okay, I'm not gonna disturb your meal, just..." He trailed off as it moved forward, slithering over the dying animal like a deadly snake. "Oh, god."

It stopped in front of him and lowered its head and Remy snatched his hand back only to receive an angry hiss. He put his hands up hurriedly, heart hammering in his chest. Remy's breath caught in his throat as the creature pressed its muzzle against his open palm. It was hard and smoothly cool to the touch, like the surface of polished marble. Something glistened wetly at the tip and he realized a tad bit too late that it was blood. The crimson smeared into the skin of his palm and Remy felt himself sway on the spot. The thing was watching him now, slick and deadly still. Remy honestly didn't know what to say and let his lips twitch upward in a dry little smile.

"Good job?" He ventured, breaking the silence. It seemed to preen with satisfaction as it nosed against his sides and rubbed like an over grown cat. Remy totally didn't piss himself and personally, he considered that a job well done.

They stood awkwardly in the hallway, Remy's heart about to jump through his mouth when something moved outside the window. Remy leapt back when the deadly tail suddenly rose and the creature in front of him gave a earsplitting screech and made to break the newly resurrected window.

"Hey hey hey! Over here, there is a thing called the front door!" Remy snapped his fingers in front of its face like it was a particularly bothersome pup and ran to the front door. He unlocked it just in time to feel something breeze past his face. Snow swirled in the darkness and Remy fought off a shiver as he heard the inhuman cry again. His hand was still wet with blood from the deer and there was a generous amount smeared on the doorknob and he growled in frustration, throwing up his hands and slamming the door. Remy stomped to the phone, wiping his wet hands with a tissue. It didn't help much to clean up the blood but at least it wouldn't smear on his phone.

"Hello, Natasha there? Who the hell is this? Well if you know what I'm talking about, your pet science project has just left the house. No I have no fucking idea where it went." He dialed the number that hot redhead had slipped him the afternoon everything spiraled out of control. The man on the other side had a ridiculously cheerful Indian accent and was telling him to wait. Remy cursed under his breath and balled up the bloody tissue.

Cradling the phone between the crook of his neck and shoulder, he wandered back into the kitchen to wash his hands. The animal on the floor was thoroughly dead and Remy skirted around gingerly to the sink. The man on the other side of the line was silent for too long and Remy hung up impatiently, muttering under his breath about crappy secret agency hotline services. The water was ice cold and he shivered as gooseflesh rippled up his arms. Remy dried his hands and glanced out the foggy window. He couldn't see anything clearly, just vague shapes slashing through the swirling snow. An idea raced through his mind and Remy nearly toppled over the dead carcass in his haste to get to the front door.

The porch lights. If he cold open them, he would see what was going on. The sound of shrieks and cries filled the air as he flung open the door. A blast of cold air hit him and he realized that he was still in his boxers and an old Red Sox t-shirt. The lights flickered for the longest moment as he waited tensely for the scene to unfold. The bulbs hummed in the cold and stayed on as one last flicker shuddered though its circuits. Remy's mouth dropped open.

There were half a dozen black shapes silhouetted in the snow, their shadows stretching into strange and terrifying shapes on the ground beneath them. Only one stood facing away from the house, head raised high and tail poised to strike. For a moment, Remy's brain refused to connect the dots. There was no way in hell that the thing in his house would go into the trouble of protecting his human ass against whatever it was that hid in the woods behind the house. There was no way.

But there it was, unfolding right in front of his eyes. Remy watched as one of the creatures leapt toward his own and watched in fascination as the slightly bigger creature smoothly dodged out of the way, tail piercing the smaller creature cleanly through the skull. It roared and slowly raised its struggling captive before flinging it off to the side. Remy felt his gut lurch. It was purely a show of male dominance and who was the bigger and badder monster here.

The rest seemed to hesitate before moving all at once. Four tackled Remy's monster pet (wait,since when had it become 'his'?) and the last one made a mad dash for Remy, which all in all was a shitty choice for him. Remy flailed as he made a mad dash for the front door, managing not to slip on the frozen slush on his porch and crack his skull on the railing. It slammed shut with a loud bang just as the creature collided with the firm wood. He hurtled backwards, knocking into a table, and pain exploded in his hip as he went down. The door shook violently and Remy gritted his teeth against the throbbing pain in his leg as he shuffled quickly toward the cabinet in the hall.

"Help! Somebody help me! Goddammit, who the hell is watching these cameras?!" He screamed randomly and made a mad dash for the guns and various knives that he had conveniently placed all over the house. There was a small 9mm under a stack of newspapers in the cabinet and Remy made a wild grab for it. He braced himself and turned toward the door. It was strangely silent outside and he felt himself calm as the old military training kicked back in. He had always been the kind of guy who was able to focus better with adrenaline coursing though his body and a dangerous situation bearing down upon his head. It made him feel so fucking alive.

The door creaked again and Remy kept his finger on the trigger as he slid closer and unlatched the door. There was a slow groan from rusty hinges and something toppled heavily into the house. The top half of its grotesquely elongated head was missing, showing a mass of slimy grey brain matter. It bled a dull grayish green onto the carpet and Remy stared. For one tiny second, his mind had been convinced it was Clyde and his stomach clenched in disappointment. Snow swirled past and melted at his bare feet, the cameras in every corner blinked serenely at him and something slid out of the shadows and was limping back toward him.

He raised the gun without thought and the creature slowed. He caught sight of the faded red tatters of the flannel shirt around its neck, the half-melted snow on its body and the long gash oozing green stuff onto his sizzling 'WELCOME' mat. Something made him release the gun. He took a few uncertain steps toward it and saw that there were more gashes in its side and it was bleeding the same dull emerald-colored stuff that was eating up his welcome mat faster that Benny could inhale pizza. Remy swallowed past the knot in his throat and twitched his arms in a jerky 'come in' motion. The thing raised its head slowly and slid inside the house, where it sat down and remained uncharacteristically silent.

Ok, so now there were two dead carcasses in his house. And this one was blocking him from closing the front door and letting all the nice warm air out. Fuckity fuck fuck. He cursed under his breath and turned toward the other live monster currently occupying the room.

"It's dead right?" He asked gruffly. The thing didn't even bat an eye at him, not that Remy knew where its eyes were. So he took that as a yes.

Taking a deep breath and grabbing the gun again, he slipped on a pair of old combat boots and proceeded to manually maneuver the carcass out of his doorway with his foot. That took a long time. And by the time it had rolled to a stop at the foot of his porch, Remy was sure one of his balls had fallen off from frostbite and overexposure. He turned to go when something silver caught his eye. There was a small silver loop pierced into the base of the creature's tail. He squinted at the thing and saw a neat microscopic serial number carved perfectly on its surface. There was no way something like that was natural, so the only other explanation was that it came from somewhere else, a lab maybe.

The realization hit him like a punch to the gut. MR001 wasn't the only experiment they were doing, he was part of the goddamn experiment as well. That seemed to explain the absence of a rescue team when his house just so happened to be attacked by half a dozen of those tagged monster. So they sent them, but for what reasons?

There is a connection between you and the creature. We want a natural testing environment. He won't hurt you.

So the true monster wasn't the thing in his house but those scientists. How fucking poetic was that?

Remy sneezed and his laments came to a screeching halt. Ok, he had a wounded pet monster to tend to. It was no use wasting his time thinking about things he couldn't intervene. He jogged back to the house, feeling considerably safer than before. That was odd.

It took him the whole night to clean up and to reenforced the idea to Clyde that he did not like the thing to eat raw animals that bled everywhere. And yes, Remy had started calling it by 'Clyde' rather than 'it', he figured it was a good way to start mending the relationship between him and the thing.

"A little help here, ya lazy brute." He was wheezing pathetically by the time he dragged the deer out by its back legs, leaving a wide streak of blood behind him and the creature was just lying there, bleeding onto the marbles. Remy was suddenly glad he had gotten marble for the hallways after he realized Clyde's blood would probably burn a hole into wood or carpet. The front door was slightly ruined but usable so there was no harm done. The welcome mat now read 'WE ME', with the middle three letters burnt out. He hurled the deer carcass off the steps and wiped his forehead with a grimace. Remy put his hands on his knees and doubled over, panting for breath.

Something caught his eye, or the lack of something. The five bodies lying in the snow were gone, only the one at the bottom of the porch remained. Remy frowned, suddenly feeling the hairs at the base of his neck rise. The wind howled and whipped snow into his face but underneath it all he thought he could hear a soft oddly familiar trilling purr somewhere close. Suddenly extremely nervous, Remy jumped up the stairs and locked the door behind him.

The creature in the hall raised its head and Remy put a finger to his lips. He then proceeded to lock all the windows and doors. It was probably nothing and he was probably still paranoid over the second attack but he still stuffed the gun into the pair of jeans he slipped on.

Clyde refused medical assistance with an annoyed hiss and a threatening wave to the tail and Remy wasn't really keen to play doctor anyway so he gave the thing a wide berth. Now, he realized, it was no longer bleeding. The wound had sluggishly congealed and he was moving with more confidence, even trying to follow Remy into the kitchen again. Remy shooed it out and proceeded to clean the tiles and scrub away the remnants of blood with a bucket of dishwashing fluid, carpet cleaners and bleach. The stuff was probably going to make the skin of his palms peel off. He sighed and stared scrubbing.

"Hey ,kid." Benny gestured at him to come over with a bright green oven mitt. Remy sighed and shuffled unenthusiastically over to his side and stared blandly at his tiny man of a boss. Benny scowled and shoved him into a chair.

"Listen, Olivia and I, we heard about your daughter. If you want to take a few days off to take care of her, it's fine. All you have to do is ask, alright?"

Remy blinked up at him in surprise and realized he was kind of just floating around the bar oozing a haze of unhappiness out of every pore like a depressed sponge and not really helping out at all. And he was wearing the largest purple bags under his eyes known to man. The second feature mainly resulted from not being able to fall asleep for more than two hours at a time.

"Sweetie, if you're having trouble, maybe you should find someone-" Olivia started. Benny rolled his eyes and dropped into the stool next to him.

"Stop trying to set him up with your random friends, Ollie." Benny said with annoyance. "Not every problem gets solved if you hook up with a woman."

Olivia scowled and walked over to peer closer at Remy's tired face. He had about three days of stubble on his face and the recently acquired scar on his left cheek didn't exactly help.

"Are you taking drugs? Self inflicting harm onto your pretty face? Or are you trying to regrow America so Lewis and Clark can discover it again?" She gestured to the dangerously lush shrubbery that had sprung onto the lower half of his face. Remy snorted and let her fret over him like a mother hen.

"All I'm saying is that one of my good friends is coming over for the New Years party in two days and she's single, you are single, so why not?" Olivia shrugged and pulled out a tray of chocolate chip cookies. The bar was nearly empty and they had a moment of free time to relax and talk. Remy chose a particularly large cookie and shoved the hot sweet treat into his mouth without hesitation- and proceeded to burn his tongue.

"Whaaas 'er -hhhot hot hot, name?" He fanned his open mouth with enthusiasm and winced at the pain. Olivia rolled her eyes fondly.

"Lex Woods." She said.

"Ohhh, that Miss Woods..." Benny smirked and batted his lashes at Remy with a sly look. "She's a real looker, fierce and dangerous too. She's a specialist or something, a guide if memory serves accurate. You'll like her, pumpkin."

Remy nodded absently and stashed that particular piece of information to the corners of his mind. It wasn't like he had time or energy to start dating again, with all the shit going on in his life. Besides, he only needed his daughter anyway. Speaking of which, he hadn't checked on her for almost three days. Remy made a mental note to drive by and check on his girl's status, feeling an overwhelming wave of guilt for letting it slip his mind. Goodman had assured him she would be in good hands but he still felt worried. Yes, that was it. He would check on her as soon a possible. Everything else could wait.

AN: I absolutely loved every one of my reviews and I have read them over and over again to motivate me to write despite my busy schedule as a student in a country where tests are taken almost every week and the has shortest summers between school days. Special thanks to Rendianami for the lovely LONG review! I loved it!

PS: Lex from the movie AVP makes an appearance in the next chapter. Reviews will help speed me along. Love you guys!