Not!Football AU
Untitled Colombian Project (yes, still...)
The Theoretical SIG Sauer (w00t, productive day at work, I feel so accomplished!)
Chapter 3
Rating: R
Summary: In which anaile20gh gets what she wants. This only exists because of her and there may have never been a next chapter without her vivid imagination and her unbound enthusiasm. So you get a chapter all to yourself! :)
“Where are we going?”
The part of Xabi’s brain that’s in charge of kinetic processes is hopping mad with excitement after two days spent in lock-up; it’s fueling artificial energy into his attempt at walking briskly enough in front of Gerrard so as to avoid bumping into him.
“Away from the people shooting at us. Left,” he points with his automatic rifle towards his chosen branch of the concrete burrow.
Sure enough, an errant bullet destroys the nearest LED light above their heads, sending white hot sparks cascading all around them.
Xabi can’t quite see what Gerrard’s doing behind him, but whatever mechanism he’s just activated by shoving the butt of his gun into a spot on the wall opens a trap door into the ceiling. When Xabi spins on his heels, he’s faced with a rickety-looking iron contraption that looks like it may have seen better days as a fire escape ladder. His eyes follow it up all the way to what he truly hopes is anything but a dark, cramped ventilation duct Gerrard will inevitably want him to crawl through.
“Behind you...,” he shouts breathlessly in the very next instant and Gerrard’s instincts kick in, needing no further context to the warning. There are two shots, but Xabi has no idea who’s just shot whom until he sees the assailant who had crept in from behind the corner sprawled on the floor and Gerrard kneeling over his body, scavenging whatever weapons and information he can find.
“Start climbing and crawl as fast as you can, I’ll tell you when to stop.”
There’s a very brief debate raging in Xabi’s brain, one that’s not made easy by the lack of context, but it comes to an abrupt end with a fresh round of gunfire to which Gerrard responds in kind from his kneeling position around the corner. His mouth is already open to bark another order, but Xabi’s halfway up the shaky rungs by then.
Predictably, the ventilation duct is everything Xabi had imagined it to be, plus air that smells and tastes of age-old mold. He has the adrenaline pumping furiously through his system to thank for the speed with which he crawls to nowhere, in complete darkness at first. He stops for a moment when he realizes the gunfire has been silenced, thoughts of his next move should Gerrard happen to be dead crashing into each other like domino pieces. The next sound Xabi hears is the creak of a giant tin can being open and shut. The stairs being pulled back... which can only mean…
“Keep moving!”
He does, with a pang of disappointment, but grateful for the small wonders a thin ray of torchlight can do to one’s mental comfort when one is crawling on all fours through an airless ventilation pipe. Xabi doesn’t get the chance to curse Gerrard or whine a petulant Are we there yet???, or both, after the most unpleasant twenty minutes of his life because four thuds drummed in succession into the shaft extinguish the light and make way for a strident screech followed by glorious sunshine he sees falling on Gerrard right behind him. The first face that greets Xabi once he follows him through the now open shaft is Mohawk Man, who looks even more like the leader of a punk band called Mercenary Jackass now that Xabi can finally squint at him through daylight rather than neon. His thigh is bleeding, but Xabi seems to be the only one who pays any attention to it.
The heat blinds him even more than the light, but in the few seconds it takes his lungs to readjust to the humidity, the hotness and the smells of the jungle creeping in all around them, the two men in front of him are already exchanging supplies, ammunition and rapid fire questions and answers of which Xabi can barely make some sense.
Both bullets and answers come mostly from Dagger’s direction.
“Masche is down, not breathing. I’ll cover this flank, you need to be on the move while they’re still busy looking for you underground.”
“How many choppers?”
“One. Didn’t see the type. Sweeping options are pretty limited, but they’ll start soon. I’ll leave a South East trail.”
Gerrard nods once, his hands working on autopilot to organize all the possibly lethal knickknacks handed to him by his underling.
“Alpha rendezvous point is about 30 clicks South West,” Dagger concludes.
“We’ll walk until Alpha can get a tracking signal and do our best to stay out of their way.”
“Who’s they?” Xabi asks, still a bit too dazed to think of more logical questions such as Who the fuck are YOU, people?
They go on ignoring Xabi’s civilian curiosity and his very civilian existence and Gerrard empties a pistol he pulls form his leg holster, throwing it to Dagger. The Dane finally acknowledges Xabi in mid-catch for as long as it takes to rip off a chunk of his right shirt sleeve soiled by the dead Slovakian. The bloodied shirt sleeve tears easily under his tattooed fingers and Dagger shoves this token in his backpack along with Gerrard’s empty pistol.
“Can you carry this?” he points to a bulky looking black backpack as Gerrard already slinks his on his shoulders.
“I’m not bloody incapacitated! Can someone tell me what is going…”
Xabi goes back to being ignored as soon as Dagger shoves the heavy pack into his arms.
“I’ll see you at the Alpha rendezvous spot. I’ll… try to get Masche’s body,” he says to Gerrard and the Scouser looks down at his rifle one last time for the road, shielding his eyes from Xabi.
“Try not to join him.”
One exchange of curt nods and Mohawk Man is off into the jungle. Xabi doesn’t even need to be yelled at to move, his still wired limbs follow Gerrard in the opposite direction out of their own accord.
There’s very little in the way of conversation to be had for the next exhausting, humid and miserable two hours that feel like weeks to Xabi, so he keeps his eyes trained on the widening sweat spot darkening the back of Gerrard’s tshirt, right between his shoulder blades. Xabi imagines it as an oil spill that will drown him any minute, then it becomes a shooting target luring Xabi to crave a gun for the first time in his life every time he trips on another mossy root on the jungle floor. The most satisfying by far would be to strangle him with his bare hands, Xabi thinks, if only he could believe for a second he had any chance of overpowering the anatomy textbook lithe muscles stretching minutely under the Scouser’s tanned skin.
He’s too lost in his murderous thoughts to notice the sounds of temporary absolution, but once Xabi sees the clear river bubbling through fallen tree trunks, his homicidal urges are replaced by a warm wave of relief.
“Fill up your canteens, we’re not staying here.”
“Oh, there’s a we now?” Xabi chuckles bitterly, wiping the sweat from his brow with his only intact sleeve. “You’re free to go wherever the hell you want, I’m staying right here for a while. Adios,” he spits out and it’s so satisfying, he wishes he could say it again without sounding too much like a drama queen.
“We have about four hours of daylight left,” Gerrard says, dropping his own backpack to the ground a little sluggishly. “A water course is the first place anybody would look for you, but you’re welcome to camp here if you don’t mind the wildlife coming out to hunt at night.”
“You know what…” Xabi stops for a moment, watching another dark spot on Gerrard’s tshirt, one that's a different shade of darkness and seems to impede his otherwise all business movements as he resupplies water from the stream. “I’m walking through a heat oven through the bloody jungle with no idea about who wants to kill me today, you’re bleeding from your side and I have a dead man’s fucking brains drying off on my neck. I think I’ll take my chances. I’m taking a break.”
Xabi’s proud of how resolute he sounds and it seems effective enough to shut Gerrard up while he’s frantically scrubbing the dried up blood from the back of his neck. The water cools him off both on the outside and the inside. It feels like he can’t drink enough, but once he does, he reaches for one of the military rations from his backpack, determined to enjoy life’s little pleasures.
Gerrard’s sitting on a rock a few feet across from him and Xabi watches quietly as he peels his tshirt off revealing a dark red stream gushing down his ribs. He’s not sure exactly what to do so he tries to keep himself busy with his early dinner until he notices Gerrard splashing alcohol on his fingers and attempting in vain to reach back towards the bloodied gash. Xabi walks to the water, his appetite thoroughly ruined, and strides back to Gerrard once his hands are washed. He can see how tense Gerrard’s wiry body is as soon as he approaches him, but gives him a reassuring hand wave as he grabs the alcohol from the Englishman’s open backpack and disinfects his own hands.
“Unless Mohawk Man packed a mirror for you in there, I think you need my help,” he says, waiting to feel the last waft of alcohol evaporate on his fingers, somewhat regretfully.
Gerrard acknowledges it silently by sitting down on his rock again, his back turned to Xabi this time. Xabi kneels by his side, his breath hitching in his throat at the sight of what must once have been deep trenches in the man’s back. There are old burn marks randomly sprayed all around his sternum and his ribs, all the way up to his muscular arms, as if someone had used his body as an ashtray. Xabi tries to keep his eyes on the bleeding wound instead, blood he can handle much better.
“My brother managed to shove a broken, rusty fork through his big toe when we were playing football on the beach one summer,” Xabi says conversationally as he softly cleanses the half-dry stream of blood down Gerrard’s ribs and back with the clean cloth he had prepared for himself earlier. “There wasn’t a lot of blood at first, but when I pulled the sharp bit out it started flowing out like... like a geyser.”
“Were you any good at it?”
“Obviously not, but he managed to keep his toe, so…”
“No… were you any good at football?”
“Nothing special. Mikel was always the talented one, he played for a local junior team for a while, he was a monster of an attacking mid. Then he became a poet, but the straight one of the family, which always confuses people… That’s my brother for you, walking contradiction.”
The tips of Xabi’s fingers are icy cold from the disinfectant and the slight tremor on the expanse of light golden skin they brush every now and then is the only reaction he can see. He wants to ask if it hurts, it must sting like fuck, but Xabi keeps his mind on sunny days at the beach instead even as he parts the small cut the bullet tore in his captor’s skin. Unlike all the other kids in their five-a-side, Xabi hadn’t even blinked at the sight of blood; he’d studied the sharp metal in great detail in the back of his frantic parents’ car on the way to the hospital and even kept the offending fork prong in a wooden box by his bedside for years to come.
“You can… You have to look for shrapnel,” Gerrard says, his voice gravely. “It didn’t hit any ribs, but if there’s any leftovers it might get infected.”
Xabi meets his eyes for a second, just enough to want to look away as fast as possible, and splashes some more disinfectant on his hand before he quite unmetaphorically gets under Gerrard’s skin, moving his index finger as slowly as possible into the open wound. His eyes are back on his impromptu patient’s face despite himself, but Gerrard continues to suffer through the process quietly; his nostrils flaring are the only sign of the intense pain he must be in.
Xabi exhales and leans back on his haunches, smiling crookedly at the twisted piece of metal he’s holding up to the sun.
“I feel like the… what do the English call it… like the tooth fairy. If you didn’t take my wallet, I could leave money for you tomorrow morning.”
Gerrard raises an eyebrow, probably wondering how his life has gotten to this, and busies himself with wrapping a tight bandage around his torso. That's something with which Xabi has zero experience, but which judging by the amount of scar tissue on Gerrard, he should be just fine with handling that part by himself.
“Thanks,” Gerrard mumbles into the neck of the clean tshirt he’s pulling over his head once he’s done bandaging his wound. To Xabi’s dismay, he also starts packing everything into his backpack and looks like he’s expecting Xabi to do the same.
“Did you get those scars in Afghanistan?” Xabi’s staring at his hands, dimly aware that he still has the other man’s blood on them.
He gets a withering look for that, but doesn’t give a shit really.
“The tattooed guy…”
“Dagger talks too much,” Gerrard cuts him off, focusing a bit too hard on opening the cap of the antibiotic bottle he’s twisting between his fingers.
“He didn’t have to say anything, really. I suppose when you were promising me pain the other day, I knew somehow.”
“I was a long-range sniper. Capturing one is every Taliban’s wet dream.”
It’s obvious Gerrard would rather leave it at that, but the surprise in Xabi’s eyes won’t let the ellipsis just hang in the air. “Some people’s special skills include crochet or playing the cello. Mine was blowing heads off from 1,200 yards,” he clarifies, popping two pills into his mouth. “Happy now?”
“Actually, no,” Xabi presses on, adjusting the straps on his backpack. “I’d like to know who it is we’re running from. I mean, how many people can possibly want to kidnap me in the same week?”
“I didn’t kidnap you.”
“You fucking shot me and tied me up to a chair. I’m pretty sure that’s the technical definition…”
“If I tell you, will you start walking and stop talking?”
There’s something in Gerrard’s voice that warns Xabi about a possible wind-up, his eyes are already trailing off towards the tropical treeline.
“Deal,” Xabi says in the off chance he’s not getting taken for (yet another) ride.
Then he hears it. Whatever it was that Gerrard was staring at before is not quite above them yet, but Xabi recognizes the rhythmical swish before either of them can actually see the source of the humming.
“Fucking move, Alonso!”
He does and fast.
“I think I liked you better when you used to call me Sir,” he growls at Gerrard’s retreating back.
Gerrard is leading them away from the water and into the thickness of the jungle, but it doesn’t take more than three minutes before the trees above them start swirling around under the helicopter pallets threatening to trim the lush Comino trees. The shooting starts again, although anybody who’s ever attempted to hit moving targets zigzagging through dense foliage would probably call it a crapshoot at best. Three minutes is all it takes this time though because Xabi recognizes vaguely another sound, this time thundering and sharp. He watches Gerrard making a beeline for the edge of the nearest clump of vegetation, escaping a fresh round of artillery from above, and he knows already what invisible choice lays before him. Once they’re past the last Cominos, they can finally see as well as hear the waterfall.
“They don’t have enough fuel autonomy, probably weren't expecting a chase. They’ll have to land in a few minutes and they’ll find a clearing soon enough,” Gerrard yells over the mayhem surrounding them.
“I hope you’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”
“Drop your backpack in first, it’s waterproof!”
When it becomes obvious Xabi has no intention of doing such a thing, Gerrard grabs his backpack without much debate and tosses it into the very last visible strip of smooth river they can hear tumbling off a cliff, right after his own.
“I’m not!” Xabi objects, horrified.
A bullet whistling closer to their heads than any so far this round sends him ridiculously close to the precipice and the sheer distance from which the vapor clouds seem to travel upwards from the void makes his stomach want to crawl out through his throat.
Gerrard shoots in the general direction of the propeller he can barely see through the trees, but it’s a half-assed effort, like he's just making a point.
“They need you alive! They’d prefer to catch me dead, I’m not turning into a target practice dummy for you. Now JUMP!”
“For all I know, they’re here to rescue me from you!” Xabi’s right arm flails about in exasperation. “I’m not jumping into an abyss because the man who bloody kidnapped me says so!”
He doesn’t get much time to even finish his tirade though.
“Take a deep breath, get as much air into your lungs as you can,” Gerrard instructs, seemingly on autopilot.
“When you hit the water start kicking up with your legs and grab the first rock you can reach as hard as you can. You have to fight the current, do NOT let go until I come to get you!”
“Are you deaf? I’m not going to hit any water because there is no fucking way I’m…”
Not for the first time this godforsaken day, events speed up beyond Xabi’s control. At least this time there’s an element of novelty when he feels Gerrard’s hand grabbing the back of his neck the instant before his mouth is on Xabi's, kissing him roughly, perhaps a little counterproductive to his breathe deep instructions. Xabi thinks he hears a bullet flying right above their heads, but that’s the least of his worries when he is literally swept off his feet and the solid ground he was standing on just a second before is replaced by vapor-soaked air.
to be continued
The Theoretical SIG Sauer (w00t, productive day at work, I feel so accomplished!)
Chapter 3
Rating: R
Summary: In which anaile20gh gets what she wants. This only exists because of her and there may have never been a next chapter without her vivid imagination and her unbound enthusiasm. So you get a chapter all to yourself! :)
“Where are we going?”
The part of Xabi’s brain that’s in charge of kinetic processes is hopping mad with excitement after two days spent in lock-up; it’s fueling artificial energy into his attempt at walking briskly enough in front of Gerrard so as to avoid bumping into him.
“Away from the people shooting at us. Left,” he points with his automatic rifle towards his chosen branch of the concrete burrow.
Sure enough, an errant bullet destroys the nearest LED light above their heads, sending white hot sparks cascading all around them.
Xabi can’t quite see what Gerrard’s doing behind him, but whatever mechanism he’s just activated by shoving the butt of his gun into a spot on the wall opens a trap door into the ceiling. When Xabi spins on his heels, he’s faced with a rickety-looking iron contraption that looks like it may have seen better days as a fire escape ladder. His eyes follow it up all the way to what he truly hopes is anything but a dark, cramped ventilation duct Gerrard will inevitably want him to crawl through.
“Behind you...,” he shouts breathlessly in the very next instant and Gerrard’s instincts kick in, needing no further context to the warning. There are two shots, but Xabi has no idea who’s just shot whom until he sees the assailant who had crept in from behind the corner sprawled on the floor and Gerrard kneeling over his body, scavenging whatever weapons and information he can find.
“Start climbing and crawl as fast as you can, I’ll tell you when to stop.”
There’s a very brief debate raging in Xabi’s brain, one that’s not made easy by the lack of context, but it comes to an abrupt end with a fresh round of gunfire to which Gerrard responds in kind from his kneeling position around the corner. His mouth is already open to bark another order, but Xabi’s halfway up the shaky rungs by then.
Predictably, the ventilation duct is everything Xabi had imagined it to be, plus air that smells and tastes of age-old mold. He has the adrenaline pumping furiously through his system to thank for the speed with which he crawls to nowhere, in complete darkness at first. He stops for a moment when he realizes the gunfire has been silenced, thoughts of his next move should Gerrard happen to be dead crashing into each other like domino pieces. The next sound Xabi hears is the creak of a giant tin can being open and shut. The stairs being pulled back... which can only mean…
“Keep moving!”
He does, with a pang of disappointment, but grateful for the small wonders a thin ray of torchlight can do to one’s mental comfort when one is crawling on all fours through an airless ventilation pipe. Xabi doesn’t get the chance to curse Gerrard or whine a petulant Are we there yet???, or both, after the most unpleasant twenty minutes of his life because four thuds drummed in succession into the shaft extinguish the light and make way for a strident screech followed by glorious sunshine he sees falling on Gerrard right behind him. The first face that greets Xabi once he follows him through the now open shaft is Mohawk Man, who looks even more like the leader of a punk band called Mercenary Jackass now that Xabi can finally squint at him through daylight rather than neon. His thigh is bleeding, but Xabi seems to be the only one who pays any attention to it.
The heat blinds him even more than the light, but in the few seconds it takes his lungs to readjust to the humidity, the hotness and the smells of the jungle creeping in all around them, the two men in front of him are already exchanging supplies, ammunition and rapid fire questions and answers of which Xabi can barely make some sense.
Both bullets and answers come mostly from Dagger’s direction.
“Masche is down, not breathing. I’ll cover this flank, you need to be on the move while they’re still busy looking for you underground.”
“How many choppers?”
“One. Didn’t see the type. Sweeping options are pretty limited, but they’ll start soon. I’ll leave a South East trail.”
Gerrard nods once, his hands working on autopilot to organize all the possibly lethal knickknacks handed to him by his underling.
“Alpha rendezvous point is about 30 clicks South West,” Dagger concludes.
“We’ll walk until Alpha can get a tracking signal and do our best to stay out of their way.”
“Who’s they?” Xabi asks, still a bit too dazed to think of more logical questions such as Who the fuck are YOU, people?
They go on ignoring Xabi’s civilian curiosity and his very civilian existence and Gerrard empties a pistol he pulls form his leg holster, throwing it to Dagger. The Dane finally acknowledges Xabi in mid-catch for as long as it takes to rip off a chunk of his right shirt sleeve soiled by the dead Slovakian. The bloodied shirt sleeve tears easily under his tattooed fingers and Dagger shoves this token in his backpack along with Gerrard’s empty pistol.
“Can you carry this?” he points to a bulky looking black backpack as Gerrard already slinks his on his shoulders.
“I’m not bloody incapacitated! Can someone tell me what is going…”
Xabi goes back to being ignored as soon as Dagger shoves the heavy pack into his arms.
“I’ll see you at the Alpha rendezvous spot. I’ll… try to get Masche’s body,” he says to Gerrard and the Scouser looks down at his rifle one last time for the road, shielding his eyes from Xabi.
“Try not to join him.”
One exchange of curt nods and Mohawk Man is off into the jungle. Xabi doesn’t even need to be yelled at to move, his still wired limbs follow Gerrard in the opposite direction out of their own accord.
There’s very little in the way of conversation to be had for the next exhausting, humid and miserable two hours that feel like weeks to Xabi, so he keeps his eyes trained on the widening sweat spot darkening the back of Gerrard’s tshirt, right between his shoulder blades. Xabi imagines it as an oil spill that will drown him any minute, then it becomes a shooting target luring Xabi to crave a gun for the first time in his life every time he trips on another mossy root on the jungle floor. The most satisfying by far would be to strangle him with his bare hands, Xabi thinks, if only he could believe for a second he had any chance of overpowering the anatomy textbook lithe muscles stretching minutely under the Scouser’s tanned skin.
He’s too lost in his murderous thoughts to notice the sounds of temporary absolution, but once Xabi sees the clear river bubbling through fallen tree trunks, his homicidal urges are replaced by a warm wave of relief.
“Fill up your canteens, we’re not staying here.”
“Oh, there’s a we now?” Xabi chuckles bitterly, wiping the sweat from his brow with his only intact sleeve. “You’re free to go wherever the hell you want, I’m staying right here for a while. Adios,” he spits out and it’s so satisfying, he wishes he could say it again without sounding too much like a drama queen.
“We have about four hours of daylight left,” Gerrard says, dropping his own backpack to the ground a little sluggishly. “A water course is the first place anybody would look for you, but you’re welcome to camp here if you don’t mind the wildlife coming out to hunt at night.”
“You know what…” Xabi stops for a moment, watching another dark spot on Gerrard’s tshirt, one that's a different shade of darkness and seems to impede his otherwise all business movements as he resupplies water from the stream. “I’m walking through a heat oven through the bloody jungle with no idea about who wants to kill me today, you’re bleeding from your side and I have a dead man’s fucking brains drying off on my neck. I think I’ll take my chances. I’m taking a break.”
Xabi’s proud of how resolute he sounds and it seems effective enough to shut Gerrard up while he’s frantically scrubbing the dried up blood from the back of his neck. The water cools him off both on the outside and the inside. It feels like he can’t drink enough, but once he does, he reaches for one of the military rations from his backpack, determined to enjoy life’s little pleasures.
Gerrard’s sitting on a rock a few feet across from him and Xabi watches quietly as he peels his tshirt off revealing a dark red stream gushing down his ribs. He’s not sure exactly what to do so he tries to keep himself busy with his early dinner until he notices Gerrard splashing alcohol on his fingers and attempting in vain to reach back towards the bloodied gash. Xabi walks to the water, his appetite thoroughly ruined, and strides back to Gerrard once his hands are washed. He can see how tense Gerrard’s wiry body is as soon as he approaches him, but gives him a reassuring hand wave as he grabs the alcohol from the Englishman’s open backpack and disinfects his own hands.
“Unless Mohawk Man packed a mirror for you in there, I think you need my help,” he says, waiting to feel the last waft of alcohol evaporate on his fingers, somewhat regretfully.
Gerrard acknowledges it silently by sitting down on his rock again, his back turned to Xabi this time. Xabi kneels by his side, his breath hitching in his throat at the sight of what must once have been deep trenches in the man’s back. There are old burn marks randomly sprayed all around his sternum and his ribs, all the way up to his muscular arms, as if someone had used his body as an ashtray. Xabi tries to keep his eyes on the bleeding wound instead, blood he can handle much better.
“My brother managed to shove a broken, rusty fork through his big toe when we were playing football on the beach one summer,” Xabi says conversationally as he softly cleanses the half-dry stream of blood down Gerrard’s ribs and back with the clean cloth he had prepared for himself earlier. “There wasn’t a lot of blood at first, but when I pulled the sharp bit out it started flowing out like... like a geyser.”
“Were you any good at it?”
“Obviously not, but he managed to keep his toe, so…”
“No… were you any good at football?”
“Nothing special. Mikel was always the talented one, he played for a local junior team for a while, he was a monster of an attacking mid. Then he became a poet, but the straight one of the family, which always confuses people… That’s my brother for you, walking contradiction.”
The tips of Xabi’s fingers are icy cold from the disinfectant and the slight tremor on the expanse of light golden skin they brush every now and then is the only reaction he can see. He wants to ask if it hurts, it must sting like fuck, but Xabi keeps his mind on sunny days at the beach instead even as he parts the small cut the bullet tore in his captor’s skin. Unlike all the other kids in their five-a-side, Xabi hadn’t even blinked at the sight of blood; he’d studied the sharp metal in great detail in the back of his frantic parents’ car on the way to the hospital and even kept the offending fork prong in a wooden box by his bedside for years to come.
“You can… You have to look for shrapnel,” Gerrard says, his voice gravely. “It didn’t hit any ribs, but if there’s any leftovers it might get infected.”
Xabi meets his eyes for a second, just enough to want to look away as fast as possible, and splashes some more disinfectant on his hand before he quite unmetaphorically gets under Gerrard’s skin, moving his index finger as slowly as possible into the open wound. His eyes are back on his impromptu patient’s face despite himself, but Gerrard continues to suffer through the process quietly; his nostrils flaring are the only sign of the intense pain he must be in.
Xabi exhales and leans back on his haunches, smiling crookedly at the twisted piece of metal he’s holding up to the sun.
“I feel like the… what do the English call it… like the tooth fairy. If you didn’t take my wallet, I could leave money for you tomorrow morning.”
Gerrard raises an eyebrow, probably wondering how his life has gotten to this, and busies himself with wrapping a tight bandage around his torso. That's something with which Xabi has zero experience, but which judging by the amount of scar tissue on Gerrard, he should be just fine with handling that part by himself.
“Thanks,” Gerrard mumbles into the neck of the clean tshirt he’s pulling over his head once he’s done bandaging his wound. To Xabi’s dismay, he also starts packing everything into his backpack and looks like he’s expecting Xabi to do the same.
“Did you get those scars in Afghanistan?” Xabi’s staring at his hands, dimly aware that he still has the other man’s blood on them.
He gets a withering look for that, but doesn’t give a shit really.
“The tattooed guy…”
“Dagger talks too much,” Gerrard cuts him off, focusing a bit too hard on opening the cap of the antibiotic bottle he’s twisting between his fingers.
“He didn’t have to say anything, really. I suppose when you were promising me pain the other day, I knew somehow.”
“I was a long-range sniper. Capturing one is every Taliban’s wet dream.”
It’s obvious Gerrard would rather leave it at that, but the surprise in Xabi’s eyes won’t let the ellipsis just hang in the air. “Some people’s special skills include crochet or playing the cello. Mine was blowing heads off from 1,200 yards,” he clarifies, popping two pills into his mouth. “Happy now?”
“Actually, no,” Xabi presses on, adjusting the straps on his backpack. “I’d like to know who it is we’re running from. I mean, how many people can possibly want to kidnap me in the same week?”
“I didn’t kidnap you.”
“You fucking shot me and tied me up to a chair. I’m pretty sure that’s the technical definition…”
“If I tell you, will you start walking and stop talking?”
There’s something in Gerrard’s voice that warns Xabi about a possible wind-up, his eyes are already trailing off towards the tropical treeline.
“Deal,” Xabi says in the off chance he’s not getting taken for (yet another) ride.
Then he hears it. Whatever it was that Gerrard was staring at before is not quite above them yet, but Xabi recognizes the rhythmical swish before either of them can actually see the source of the humming.
“Fucking move, Alonso!”
He does and fast.
“I think I liked you better when you used to call me Sir,” he growls at Gerrard’s retreating back.
Gerrard is leading them away from the water and into the thickness of the jungle, but it doesn’t take more than three minutes before the trees above them start swirling around under the helicopter pallets threatening to trim the lush Comino trees. The shooting starts again, although anybody who’s ever attempted to hit moving targets zigzagging through dense foliage would probably call it a crapshoot at best. Three minutes is all it takes this time though because Xabi recognizes vaguely another sound, this time thundering and sharp. He watches Gerrard making a beeline for the edge of the nearest clump of vegetation, escaping a fresh round of artillery from above, and he knows already what invisible choice lays before him. Once they’re past the last Cominos, they can finally see as well as hear the waterfall.
“They don’t have enough fuel autonomy, probably weren't expecting a chase. They’ll have to land in a few minutes and they’ll find a clearing soon enough,” Gerrard yells over the mayhem surrounding them.
“I hope you’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”
“Drop your backpack in first, it’s waterproof!”
When it becomes obvious Xabi has no intention of doing such a thing, Gerrard grabs his backpack without much debate and tosses it into the very last visible strip of smooth river they can hear tumbling off a cliff, right after his own.
“I’m not!” Xabi objects, horrified.
A bullet whistling closer to their heads than any so far this round sends him ridiculously close to the precipice and the sheer distance from which the vapor clouds seem to travel upwards from the void makes his stomach want to crawl out through his throat.
Gerrard shoots in the general direction of the propeller he can barely see through the trees, but it’s a half-assed effort, like he's just making a point.
“They need you alive! They’d prefer to catch me dead, I’m not turning into a target practice dummy for you. Now JUMP!”
“For all I know, they’re here to rescue me from you!” Xabi’s right arm flails about in exasperation. “I’m not jumping into an abyss because the man who bloody kidnapped me says so!”
He doesn’t get much time to even finish his tirade though.
“Take a deep breath, get as much air into your lungs as you can,” Gerrard instructs, seemingly on autopilot.
“When you hit the water start kicking up with your legs and grab the first rock you can reach as hard as you can. You have to fight the current, do NOT let go until I come to get you!”
“Are you deaf? I’m not going to hit any water because there is no fucking way I’m…”
Not for the first time this godforsaken day, events speed up beyond Xabi’s control. At least this time there’s an element of novelty when he feels Gerrard’s hand grabbing the back of his neck the instant before his mouth is on Xabi's, kissing him roughly, perhaps a little counterproductive to his breathe deep instructions. Xabi thinks he hears a bullet flying right above their heads, but that’s the least of his worries when he is literally swept off his feet and the solid ground he was standing on just a second before is replaced by vapor-soaked air.
to be continued