(no subject)
Title: Gifts
Prompt from Daisy: Gidget/Nym's first date
“This is ridiculous,” Gidget muttered, eyes wide behind thin glasses as they darted nervously from side to side.
Beside him, Nym smiled and stepped as close to him as he could get without actually touching. “I thought that you might like it…”
“Sheer, utter, ridiculosity,” he continued, torn between grateful awe and complete flat-out confusion. When he’d agreed to let Nym pick out the time and location for their first date (“It should be something special!”), he’d expected something sophisticated or suitably hokey and romantic. This was Nym after all, and Nym practically existed to shock him at every available turn. But in this case….
“Geh.” He craned his neck to stare at the booth hailing the future Halo release, and wondered when heaven had been replaced with E3. “I can’t believe you found tickets on such short notice.”
Nym grinned and shrugged, trailing after Gidget as he followed his feet closer to the gaming screen. “You know. I have my sources.”
Such graphics. Such lovely, delicious graphics. “How much do I owe you?”
“Oh, nothing! It’s my treat.”
Eyes narrowing slightly, Gidget yanked his head away from the flat screen TV, staring down at the shorter boy. “It’s not a fucking ice cream; it’s an E3 ticket. How much do I owe you?”
“No, really. We’re on a date, and I want to pay for it. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Yes, I do mind,” he retorted, folding his arms. “Stop buying me all this stuff; it’s weird.” Posters, snacks, and now a ticket to E fucking 3. Even if Nym was filthy rich, even if he could afford it, the brunette’s compulsive habit of lavishing Gidget with presents and gifts was a little bizarre and more than a bit unsettling.
Nym sighed and braced himself for a repeat argument. “But I like it. Please? It really wasn’t expensive at all; I just thought that we’d have fun together. So come on.” He stopped at Gidget’s side again and cocked his head to the left. “I want us to enjoy our date.”
Staring at Nym’s wide smile, he wondered if he’d ever understand what went on in the other’s head. Rather than give himself a headache thinking about it, Gidget rolled his eyes, snorted, and gently brushed his shoulder against Nym’s. “Fine. But I’m buying the food, so don’t even ask.”
Title: Meeting again
Prompt: Val meets Gidget in high school
She couldn’t believe it. A tutor. An after school tutor! Val sighed and raised one hand to her temple, rubbing her fingertips in slow, soothing circles. With the other she held a tiny slip of paper. Reluctantly she scanned it again, re-reading the neat, block-text print .
Gidget Litch. Haskell Computer Lab. 4:00 PM.
Surprising a moan of frustration, she crumpled the note in her hand and smacked it against her forehead. The fact that her geometry teacher had all but forced her to accept tutoring lessons was bordering on embarrassing bordering on degrading. She had never been particularly good at math… something about all those equations… but a tutor? Think of all that time she’d be wasting locked up in the computer lab with some math geek. Of how stupid she’d feel in front of him. Of what would parents would think…
With a sense of dread, she tugged gently on the lab’s door handle, stepping inside and carefully letting it close behind her. The lock clicked into place, and she tried not to think about visions of herself locked in a high tower of Pythagorean theorems and graphs and perimeters. Instead, she slowly threaded her way up and down the isles, passing by the few busy students. She finally reached the back row and paused, nearly berating herself for not earlier seeing the “Lab Monitor” sign perched on top of a computer monitor. Positioning herself next to it, she rolled her head to one side and glanced into the face of the tall, red-headed boy fast at work typing on a small, black laptop. Blue eyes, glasses, long arms and fingers… all in all, not bad at all. In fact, he was pretty cute… as far as lab monitors went. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad…
With a sudden stab of guilt, Val realized that having such thoughts about her tutor was probably not the best way to get through this. At all. So shaking her head to clear it, she coughed politely and waited for him to introduce himself.
A minute later when the boy refused to stop staring at the screen, fingers still flying over the keyboard, Val frowned in confusion. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. “Um… excuse me,” she began. “My name is Valerie Lopez… Mrs. Prisca probably told you though; you’re supposed to tutor me in geometry?” She ended on a hopeful note, but still he ignored her. “Okay, look, I-“
“Sssh.” She blinked in surprise when he stuck out one hand at arm’s length, holding up a single forefinger several inches from her face. With the other hand he continued to type, and Val felt herself rapidly losing an already unstable patience. Finally, at long last he finished, double clicking the mouse before turning to her with narrow eyes and an impatient look. “Yes?”
Val felt her temper rise dangerously as she started again, speaking slowly and deliberately. “I’m Valerie Lopez. Mrs. Prisca said that-“
“We’ve already established this,” he interjected with an air of vague boredom. “So let’s get down to business then. Get out your book and open it to the first chapter.”
Gidget shifted to make room for her and closed his laptop, and Val sighed wistfully as she complied, pulling her geometry book out of her backpack. It was going to be a long semester.
Title: Uncertain Pathways
Part BLAH in the Andy/Merrick arc
The path through the Boys Next Door’s underground caves was longer than he remembered.
At least it seemed that way as Andy stalked through the complex, turning here, twisting there, and all the while keeping his fists balled and his breathing even as he tried to ignore whatever the fuck kept burning holes in the middle of his chest. The mission, that damned mission was over at long fucking last, and now he could finally do what he’d waited for so God damned long.
Twin footsteps thudded behind him, and he whirled, slicing his arm through the air and catching Matthews right in the solar plexus. Beside him, Tad actually had the fucking sense to jump out of the way, skipping back a few steps and nearly tripping on that dirty, smelly-ass bear coat of his as he stared in surprise and watched Matthews lean heavily against his knees, attempting to get his breath back. Fucking idiot. Andy would have knocked some sense into the younger man as well, but God fucking damn it he was in a hurry and he’d wasted so many seconds on these fucking idiots already. Merrick could be waiting, could be pissed off and annoyed because what the fuck was taking him so long to walk down a damn hallway, God, just hurry the fuck up already. He doubled his pace, marching smartly around the honeycombed tunnels, up a level, past the artillery, through the elevated shaft and fuck were those idiots STILL trailing him? He ignored their presence, picking up speed again and refusing to even acknowledge the utter stupidity that evidently composed his subordinates, instead swearing that he’d beat the living shit out of them later. Up again, around the bend-
Tad coughed behind him as he jogged to keep up, feet heavy against the dusty floor. “Are you sure that you know-“
“Fuck OFF,” he snarled, gritting his teeth and wondering why the hell his hands were shaking again. Of course he knew where the fuck he was going; you don’t forget shit like that, especially not when you’ve been thinking about it every moment for three hundred and sixty five days. And God, now it was last week all over again, only squeezed, condensed, compressed into the six and a half agonizing minutes that it took to march from the drop off point to the medical wing. Six and a half minutes of worrying, of wondering, of listening to Tad fucking tripping over his own feet, of wanting to vomit bile and the contents of his empty stomach all over the stone walls just so that he could be rid of whatever the hell was buried in there, whatever it was that was driving him infuckingsane because there was no reason for it. None at fucking all, and since when was the base so damn big?
“He’ll be there.” It took Andy a moment to realize that he’d said the words out loud as he mumbled them incoherently under his breath, and even less time to recognize that he really didn’t give a shit. “He’ll be awake and fine and it’s stupid to even worry because there’s no way, no fucking way-“
They turned the final bend, and there it was: a metal door sheered right into the rock face, the words “Medical Ward” standing out in meticulously tiny red letters. There was hardly a pause in his step as Andy reached out and shoved the door open, ignoring the slam of metal against stone as it banged into the opposite wall. His shoulders tilted back and his head pitched forward as he stalked through rows of both occupied and vacant beds. And God, the closer he came the more he felt his stomach twist like someone was prying his organs apart with a fucking spike and fucking damn it, shut up, he’d gotten this far; he’d waited and paid, and he wanted everything to finally at long fucking last just stop and wait for him to catch up. He reached Merrick’s bed and froze.
It was empty.
It was fucking empty
Tad made some inane noise from several yards behind him, but he barely heard it, barely heard Matthews cursed mutterings or the steady “beep beep” from someone else’s machines or the drips from someone else’s IV because Merrrick’s bed was fucking cold and empty as though no one had even been there in the first place. Andy cocked his head to the side, and his shoulders spasmed, twitching and jerking in a counter-clockwise motion. He let it happen as he continued to stare dumbly at the smoothed-out sheets and the dormant equipment, jumping wildly to conclusions and trying desperately to figure out what the hell was happening, attempting to put two and two together but somehow ending up with five.
There was a mistake. There had to be a mistake. He jerked again and this time slid back about a foot, the worn heel of his boot screeching against the stone floor. Tad opened his mouth to say something utterly inappropriate and stupid and untrue, but Andy cut him off with the most threatening look he could muster, one of wild, red-shot eyes, and uncertainty as he felt the one thing his fucking life had been hinged on fall apart.
Something kicked in the place where his guts would have been, crawling its way up through his chest, and Andy thought that maybe he would really throw up this time. But instead he spun in a tight circle and turned to a dark-skinned boy sitting up in the next bed over as he picked at a cast on his arm.
“You.” Fists grasped the guardrail of the bed, turning white at the knuckles and red around the fingertips and the chipped, jagged nails. “Where’s the man who used to be in that bed?”
The patient licked his lips nervously, blinking ridiculously brown eyes. “Who?”
“Merrick Litch, you dumb fuck! Where is he?”
The boy ran his tongue over his bottom lip again and looked to Tad and Matthews as though to ask for help. “I… I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’ve never seen anyone in that bed. Maybe… maybe they cleared it out?”
No help at all. Hissing angrily, he turned away from the boy without a word of thanks, instead stomping through the ward and out the door back the way he came He wasn’t going to wait for that dumbfuckingass doctor to come in; he’d find Merrick himself. He had to be somewhere, somewhere he didn’t know of, maybe a new hospital wing or a makeshift facility. He had to be because he’d come all this way; he’d made a promise and Merrick wasn’t that much of a lame-ass to not even fucking wait for him. He’d spent an entire year suffering through women and nightmares and Tad and this fucking knot in his stomach that just wouldn’t fucking go the fuck away while all the while those stupid ass thoughts circled through his head, the what if, what if, what if, and “Will you fucking go away?!” he yelled, finally turning furiously and advancing on Tad. The teenager still lingered in the ward doorway, a look of confusion tinged with pity plastered across his stupid face as he made no attempt to move aside. His gray eyes flickered to the left, and Andy’s head snapped up in time to see Levin jogging toward them, his face red and sweaty. “What now.”
“The troop’s supposed to unload the equipment and present a report to the commanders,” Levin replied, voice steady despite his out-of-breath appearance.
“Tell them to fuck off.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t think that Commander Dickson would appreciate-“
“I don’t give a shit what the fuck Chad Dickson thinks when he’s not drunk off his fucking ass,” he snarled, chest heaving, fingers digging into his palms hard enough to draw blood. “I’m fucking done. You can unload weaponry without me babysitting your useless, girly asses.”
Levin’s eyes widened slightly at the unabashed insult to a superior officer, shocking no matter how true it might have been. Tad began to fidget with his God damned coat again, and from somewhere behind him Matthews felt the fucking need to voice his own opinion, reminding him that even so, they probably wanted to stay off of the leadership’s shit list.
Fucking hell.
He seethed as they retraced their steps and as they separated and tagged their gear, hoisting it onto runners who carried it down to artillery or storage or wherever they sent useless equipment. They’d dumped everything in the middle of one of the larger caverns, unconcerned with the high traffic or the younger soldiers who came by to check out the high-profile troop just returned from their kickass campaign. Somewhere near the entrance, Meyers was chatting excitedly with a short blonde, and nearby Chad was leaning against a wall, casually watching the entire process.
Motherfuckers. He’d served his time. Suffered for it. And now they were trying to keep him away from the one thing he came back for. fuck he still didn’t even know where Merrick was, what had happened, if he was even here and shut up. He threw a junker at Levin with particular force, nearly knocking the other man over before he reached for the next one. Don’t think. Just work. Work through it like he did last time and finish it and don’t lose it control. He was so close, just don’t lose it again, don’t fuck up, left hand over right and don’t think, don’t think, don’t think about what can’t be fucking true.
Something tugged at his shoulder, and he twitched violently, cursing at how damn tense he was as he did so. To his surprise Tad was standing there, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. “Lieutenant Black?” Wondering what the hell the younger man could possibly want, he opened his mouth, but slowly closed it when he saw that Tad was pointing into the steadily flowing stream of people who were filtering in and out of the large cavern. A group of men moved, a glimpse of wine-red hair caught his eye, and Andy dropped the gun on Tad’s foot.
As the crowd moved back and forth, he could make out Merrick standing - standing - there quietly, arms at his sides as he stared over the top of yellowed glances, eyes visible between sheets of long, red hair that fell over his face and down to his shoulders. Andy noticed that his mouth hung slightly open, the tips of his teeth just visible past thin lips tinted the exact shade of pale red that he remembered. He stood there and Andy stared stupidly, and God, this was it, this was what he’d been waiting for: coming back and finding out that for the first time in over a year, things were all right for once. The rest of Special Ops were around him somewhere, unpacking and watching and talking and whatever the hell they wanted to do, but he couldn’t care less. Merrick was here and okay alive and now he was walking toward him with slow, careful steps, and Andy quietly unsung his guns and let them tumble carelessly to the floor. Somewhere there was war and revolution and stupid shit like guns and warpaint, but here there was him and Merrick, and quite frankly the rest of the badass world could go take a flying leap because this was all he really needed.
Merrick had increased his pace, arms swinging as he marched smartly in a bee line toward Andy, jaw still clenched, eyes still wide and intense, locked on his face as he stepped closer and closer until they were nearly chest-to-chest. Andy parted his lips as he ignored the tremors that ran through his jaw. And for the first time in recent memory he smiled, feeling it grow slowly, uncertainly, step by step as though he were just learning how to for the first time. “Merrick.”
Without a word, Merrick pulled back his fist and punched him across the face.
Prompt from Daisy: Gidget/Nym's first date
“This is ridiculous,” Gidget muttered, eyes wide behind thin glasses as they darted nervously from side to side.
Beside him, Nym smiled and stepped as close to him as he could get without actually touching. “I thought that you might like it…”
“Sheer, utter, ridiculosity,” he continued, torn between grateful awe and complete flat-out confusion. When he’d agreed to let Nym pick out the time and location for their first date (“It should be something special!”), he’d expected something sophisticated or suitably hokey and romantic. This was Nym after all, and Nym practically existed to shock him at every available turn. But in this case….
“Geh.” He craned his neck to stare at the booth hailing the future Halo release, and wondered when heaven had been replaced with E3. “I can’t believe you found tickets on such short notice.”
Nym grinned and shrugged, trailing after Gidget as he followed his feet closer to the gaming screen. “You know. I have my sources.”
Such graphics. Such lovely, delicious graphics. “How much do I owe you?”
“Oh, nothing! It’s my treat.”
Eyes narrowing slightly, Gidget yanked his head away from the flat screen TV, staring down at the shorter boy. “It’s not a fucking ice cream; it’s an E3 ticket. How much do I owe you?”
“No, really. We’re on a date, and I want to pay for it. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Yes, I do mind,” he retorted, folding his arms. “Stop buying me all this stuff; it’s weird.” Posters, snacks, and now a ticket to E fucking 3. Even if Nym was filthy rich, even if he could afford it, the brunette’s compulsive habit of lavishing Gidget with presents and gifts was a little bizarre and more than a bit unsettling.
Nym sighed and braced himself for a repeat argument. “But I like it. Please? It really wasn’t expensive at all; I just thought that we’d have fun together. So come on.” He stopped at Gidget’s side again and cocked his head to the left. “I want us to enjoy our date.”
Staring at Nym’s wide smile, he wondered if he’d ever understand what went on in the other’s head. Rather than give himself a headache thinking about it, Gidget rolled his eyes, snorted, and gently brushed his shoulder against Nym’s. “Fine. But I’m buying the food, so don’t even ask.”
Title: Meeting again
Prompt: Val meets Gidget in high school
She couldn’t believe it. A tutor. An after school tutor! Val sighed and raised one hand to her temple, rubbing her fingertips in slow, soothing circles. With the other she held a tiny slip of paper. Reluctantly she scanned it again, re-reading the neat, block-text print .
Gidget Litch. Haskell Computer Lab. 4:00 PM.
Surprising a moan of frustration, she crumpled the note in her hand and smacked it against her forehead. The fact that her geometry teacher had all but forced her to accept tutoring lessons was bordering on embarrassing bordering on degrading. She had never been particularly good at math… something about all those equations… but a tutor? Think of all that time she’d be wasting locked up in the computer lab with some math geek. Of how stupid she’d feel in front of him. Of what would parents would think…
With a sense of dread, she tugged gently on the lab’s door handle, stepping inside and carefully letting it close behind her. The lock clicked into place, and she tried not to think about visions of herself locked in a high tower of Pythagorean theorems and graphs and perimeters. Instead, she slowly threaded her way up and down the isles, passing by the few busy students. She finally reached the back row and paused, nearly berating herself for not earlier seeing the “Lab Monitor” sign perched on top of a computer monitor. Positioning herself next to it, she rolled her head to one side and glanced into the face of the tall, red-headed boy fast at work typing on a small, black laptop. Blue eyes, glasses, long arms and fingers… all in all, not bad at all. In fact, he was pretty cute… as far as lab monitors went. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad…
With a sudden stab of guilt, Val realized that having such thoughts about her tutor was probably not the best way to get through this. At all. So shaking her head to clear it, she coughed politely and waited for him to introduce himself.
A minute later when the boy refused to stop staring at the screen, fingers still flying over the keyboard, Val frowned in confusion. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. “Um… excuse me,” she began. “My name is Valerie Lopez… Mrs. Prisca probably told you though; you’re supposed to tutor me in geometry?” She ended on a hopeful note, but still he ignored her. “Okay, look, I-“
“Sssh.” She blinked in surprise when he stuck out one hand at arm’s length, holding up a single forefinger several inches from her face. With the other hand he continued to type, and Val felt herself rapidly losing an already unstable patience. Finally, at long last he finished, double clicking the mouse before turning to her with narrow eyes and an impatient look. “Yes?”
Val felt her temper rise dangerously as she started again, speaking slowly and deliberately. “I’m Valerie Lopez. Mrs. Prisca said that-“
“We’ve already established this,” he interjected with an air of vague boredom. “So let’s get down to business then. Get out your book and open it to the first chapter.”
Gidget shifted to make room for her and closed his laptop, and Val sighed wistfully as she complied, pulling her geometry book out of her backpack. It was going to be a long semester.
Title: Uncertain Pathways
Part BLAH in the Andy/Merrick arc
The path through the Boys Next Door’s underground caves was longer than he remembered.
At least it seemed that way as Andy stalked through the complex, turning here, twisting there, and all the while keeping his fists balled and his breathing even as he tried to ignore whatever the fuck kept burning holes in the middle of his chest. The mission, that damned mission was over at long fucking last, and now he could finally do what he’d waited for so God damned long.
Twin footsteps thudded behind him, and he whirled, slicing his arm through the air and catching Matthews right in the solar plexus. Beside him, Tad actually had the fucking sense to jump out of the way, skipping back a few steps and nearly tripping on that dirty, smelly-ass bear coat of his as he stared in surprise and watched Matthews lean heavily against his knees, attempting to get his breath back. Fucking idiot. Andy would have knocked some sense into the younger man as well, but God fucking damn it he was in a hurry and he’d wasted so many seconds on these fucking idiots already. Merrick could be waiting, could be pissed off and annoyed because what the fuck was taking him so long to walk down a damn hallway, God, just hurry the fuck up already. He doubled his pace, marching smartly around the honeycombed tunnels, up a level, past the artillery, through the elevated shaft and fuck were those idiots STILL trailing him? He ignored their presence, picking up speed again and refusing to even acknowledge the utter stupidity that evidently composed his subordinates, instead swearing that he’d beat the living shit out of them later. Up again, around the bend-
Tad coughed behind him as he jogged to keep up, feet heavy against the dusty floor. “Are you sure that you know-“
“Fuck OFF,” he snarled, gritting his teeth and wondering why the hell his hands were shaking again. Of course he knew where the fuck he was going; you don’t forget shit like that, especially not when you’ve been thinking about it every moment for three hundred and sixty five days. And God, now it was last week all over again, only squeezed, condensed, compressed into the six and a half agonizing minutes that it took to march from the drop off point to the medical wing. Six and a half minutes of worrying, of wondering, of listening to Tad fucking tripping over his own feet, of wanting to vomit bile and the contents of his empty stomach all over the stone walls just so that he could be rid of whatever the hell was buried in there, whatever it was that was driving him infuckingsane because there was no reason for it. None at fucking all, and since when was the base so damn big?
“He’ll be there.” It took Andy a moment to realize that he’d said the words out loud as he mumbled them incoherently under his breath, and even less time to recognize that he really didn’t give a shit. “He’ll be awake and fine and it’s stupid to even worry because there’s no way, no fucking way-“
They turned the final bend, and there it was: a metal door sheered right into the rock face, the words “Medical Ward” standing out in meticulously tiny red letters. There was hardly a pause in his step as Andy reached out and shoved the door open, ignoring the slam of metal against stone as it banged into the opposite wall. His shoulders tilted back and his head pitched forward as he stalked through rows of both occupied and vacant beds. And God, the closer he came the more he felt his stomach twist like someone was prying his organs apart with a fucking spike and fucking damn it, shut up, he’d gotten this far; he’d waited and paid, and he wanted everything to finally at long fucking last just stop and wait for him to catch up. He reached Merrick’s bed and froze.
It was empty.
It was fucking empty
Tad made some inane noise from several yards behind him, but he barely heard it, barely heard Matthews cursed mutterings or the steady “beep beep” from someone else’s machines or the drips from someone else’s IV because Merrrick’s bed was fucking cold and empty as though no one had even been there in the first place. Andy cocked his head to the side, and his shoulders spasmed, twitching and jerking in a counter-clockwise motion. He let it happen as he continued to stare dumbly at the smoothed-out sheets and the dormant equipment, jumping wildly to conclusions and trying desperately to figure out what the hell was happening, attempting to put two and two together but somehow ending up with five.
There was a mistake. There had to be a mistake. He jerked again and this time slid back about a foot, the worn heel of his boot screeching against the stone floor. Tad opened his mouth to say something utterly inappropriate and stupid and untrue, but Andy cut him off with the most threatening look he could muster, one of wild, red-shot eyes, and uncertainty as he felt the one thing his fucking life had been hinged on fall apart.
Something kicked in the place where his guts would have been, crawling its way up through his chest, and Andy thought that maybe he would really throw up this time. But instead he spun in a tight circle and turned to a dark-skinned boy sitting up in the next bed over as he picked at a cast on his arm.
“You.” Fists grasped the guardrail of the bed, turning white at the knuckles and red around the fingertips and the chipped, jagged nails. “Where’s the man who used to be in that bed?”
The patient licked his lips nervously, blinking ridiculously brown eyes. “Who?”
“Merrick Litch, you dumb fuck! Where is he?”
The boy ran his tongue over his bottom lip again and looked to Tad and Matthews as though to ask for help. “I… I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’ve never seen anyone in that bed. Maybe… maybe they cleared it out?”
No help at all. Hissing angrily, he turned away from the boy without a word of thanks, instead stomping through the ward and out the door back the way he came He wasn’t going to wait for that dumbfuckingass doctor to come in; he’d find Merrick himself. He had to be somewhere, somewhere he didn’t know of, maybe a new hospital wing or a makeshift facility. He had to be because he’d come all this way; he’d made a promise and Merrick wasn’t that much of a lame-ass to not even fucking wait for him. He’d spent an entire year suffering through women and nightmares and Tad and this fucking knot in his stomach that just wouldn’t fucking go the fuck away while all the while those stupid ass thoughts circled through his head, the what if, what if, what if, and “Will you fucking go away?!” he yelled, finally turning furiously and advancing on Tad. The teenager still lingered in the ward doorway, a look of confusion tinged with pity plastered across his stupid face as he made no attempt to move aside. His gray eyes flickered to the left, and Andy’s head snapped up in time to see Levin jogging toward them, his face red and sweaty. “What now.”
“The troop’s supposed to unload the equipment and present a report to the commanders,” Levin replied, voice steady despite his out-of-breath appearance.
“Tell them to fuck off.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t think that Commander Dickson would appreciate-“
“I don’t give a shit what the fuck Chad Dickson thinks when he’s not drunk off his fucking ass,” he snarled, chest heaving, fingers digging into his palms hard enough to draw blood. “I’m fucking done. You can unload weaponry without me babysitting your useless, girly asses.”
Levin’s eyes widened slightly at the unabashed insult to a superior officer, shocking no matter how true it might have been. Tad began to fidget with his God damned coat again, and from somewhere behind him Matthews felt the fucking need to voice his own opinion, reminding him that even so, they probably wanted to stay off of the leadership’s shit list.
Fucking hell.
He seethed as they retraced their steps and as they separated and tagged their gear, hoisting it onto runners who carried it down to artillery or storage or wherever they sent useless equipment. They’d dumped everything in the middle of one of the larger caverns, unconcerned with the high traffic or the younger soldiers who came by to check out the high-profile troop just returned from their kickass campaign. Somewhere near the entrance, Meyers was chatting excitedly with a short blonde, and nearby Chad was leaning against a wall, casually watching the entire process.
Motherfuckers. He’d served his time. Suffered for it. And now they were trying to keep him away from the one thing he came back for. fuck he still didn’t even know where Merrick was, what had happened, if he was even here and shut up. He threw a junker at Levin with particular force, nearly knocking the other man over before he reached for the next one. Don’t think. Just work. Work through it like he did last time and finish it and don’t lose it control. He was so close, just don’t lose it again, don’t fuck up, left hand over right and don’t think, don’t think, don’t think about what can’t be fucking true.
Something tugged at his shoulder, and he twitched violently, cursing at how damn tense he was as he did so. To his surprise Tad was standing there, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. “Lieutenant Black?” Wondering what the hell the younger man could possibly want, he opened his mouth, but slowly closed it when he saw that Tad was pointing into the steadily flowing stream of people who were filtering in and out of the large cavern. A group of men moved, a glimpse of wine-red hair caught his eye, and Andy dropped the gun on Tad’s foot.
As the crowd moved back and forth, he could make out Merrick standing - standing - there quietly, arms at his sides as he stared over the top of yellowed glances, eyes visible between sheets of long, red hair that fell over his face and down to his shoulders. Andy noticed that his mouth hung slightly open, the tips of his teeth just visible past thin lips tinted the exact shade of pale red that he remembered. He stood there and Andy stared stupidly, and God, this was it, this was what he’d been waiting for: coming back and finding out that for the first time in over a year, things were all right for once. The rest of Special Ops were around him somewhere, unpacking and watching and talking and whatever the hell they wanted to do, but he couldn’t care less. Merrick was here and okay alive and now he was walking toward him with slow, careful steps, and Andy quietly unsung his guns and let them tumble carelessly to the floor. Somewhere there was war and revolution and stupid shit like guns and warpaint, but here there was him and Merrick, and quite frankly the rest of the badass world could go take a flying leap because this was all he really needed.
Merrick had increased his pace, arms swinging as he marched smartly in a bee line toward Andy, jaw still clenched, eyes still wide and intense, locked on his face as he stepped closer and closer until they were nearly chest-to-chest. Andy parted his lips as he ignored the tremors that ran through his jaw. And for the first time in recent memory he smiled, feeling it grow slowly, uncertainly, step by step as though he were just learning how to for the first time. “Merrick.”
Without a word, Merrick pulled back his fist and punched him across the face.