The five important numbers of my life.

Chapter Title: 23.
Author: Darkling Willow
Pairing: Non
Rating: NC – 17. I'm giving it such a high rating, just because of language, and to cover my own behind.
Archive: Yes, please.

Feedback: Yes thank you very much. An author can only improve with criticism.

Disclaimer: This is an original work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

Authors Notes: This is just a long "stream of conscience" type of story, where a young man reflects over his life, and the one thing he misses the most.
Alright this story isn't really an AU/AR story, but there are things in it that have never happened in real life, but hey it's a story.
I do not know anything about the military, or its ranks, weaponry, or how life on a base is. I'm just making stuff up here, for your enjoyment.
My only intention here is to write a silly little piece of angsty prose, for others to enjoy.
No offense is meant by this story, to anyone in military service or anyone who has loved ones in service.
I (the author) live in a country that has no military and therefore have no idea how it works.
But I do have a great deal of respect for those who do serve their country.


Summary: The End.
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23.
We’ve been in the military for just over five years.
We’ve been married for three years, seven months and two weeks.
We have barely seen each other for the past three months, just fleeting moments at dinner time, in the barracks, a few quick gropes behind the mechanics station that are over far too quickly, because the action has escalated, and we are on high alert now, everyone around us tense and high strung.

Then there is a Thursday evening, the weather warm and damp, we’re both at base, and no orders for the next morning.

You fuck me into the matress, on the desk, the floor, against the door, hard and frantic, fifteen minutes later you’re repeating yourself, your arm wrapped around my throat so tight I pass out as I come.
It scares the shit out of you, but once I’ve come to again and gotten my breathing in order, we laugh about it, and you joke that it would be

“just our luck, in the middle of a fucking war, and I choke you to death while I’m fucking you.”

We both laugh, but it’s an empty laugh, we both know we’re the lucky ones.

Lucky ones because we’re not alone in this war, we have each other, and we’re both, amazingly enough, still alive.

You make love to me, when the silence between us becomes too depressing, slow and tender, I can’t help the tears that start streaming down my face, but you kiss them away, and when we both come, you fall down, crying in my arms.

Orders come in just after the morning bell.
Your unit has to go out at 1200 hours, I get my orders a bit later, we are moving out at 1600 hours.

You’re going to be late, but it’s like you can’t move, standing there in the doorway, all packed and ready, your corporal screaming his head off at you, to get your ass moving.

You don’t say anything, just look me in the eyes, giving me one of those curiously vulnerable half-smiles of yours, then you grab me tight and kiss me with the same passion you did the first time you kissed me.
My knees go weak, and I moan your name into your mouth as I kiss you back with everything I’ve got, just before I realize that most of my unit and all of yours are standing only a few feet away, and most of them are jeering at us, laughing hysterically.
We're not in the habit of displaying our relationship so blatantly in front of them.

You break the kiss slowly, rest your forehead against mine for a moment, and whisper,

“I love you, Lysander, more than anything.”

Your turquoise eyes swimming in tears, brimming over with emotion.

I barely manage to tell you

“I love you”,

before you break away and join your unit, taking the scolding from your commander with the usual casual dignity you’ve always had.
As your truck leaves the grounds I lock myself in the bathroom and cry quietly, you’ve never done that before, and I get anxious.

Just after 2 p.m. I have phonetime with my family, my mum only says her usual hello’s and we love you’s and we miss you’s, then tells me Mori wants to talk to me.

“Hey, Salamander, how are you?”

his voice is shaky and uncertain, something I’ve never heard before, Mori’s the confident one, the unbreakable one, the old nickname sounding strange and unfamiliar after so many years.

-“I’m ok. Heat’s killing me most of the time, but like they say, It’s a dry heat… sort of, the humidity is a thousand times worse.”

“And Bernie? He’s ok too?”

-“Yeah, he’s great, not here at the moment, but he’s fine. Why? Are you ok, Luce? You sound kind of… uhm, I don’t know, wrong?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just had this feeling for a few days and I can’t shake it. Just look after yourself, baby brother, and Bernie too. Ask him to be careful. Something doesn’t feel right.”

-“Ok. Honestly, we’re alright, Mori. We’re both fine.”

“Yeah, I guess you are… It’s just, you know… You know how I get sometimes with my gut feelings… Just promise me you’ll be careful. Both of you.”

My heart aches for a moment, becomes heavy, as my brother speaks, and the feeling doesn’t go away when he continues,

“Ahh, you know what!?... don’t listen to me, I’m just being a worrywort, being stupid. I love you, Salamander, and I miss you guys. I’ll hear from you later, ok?”

-“I promise, Mori, I promise. Bye, I love you.”

My voice betrays me so I can’t speak louder than just above a whisper. My heart is still heavy when I hang up and walk back to the barracks.
Mori’s feelings have never failed us so far, we figured that out years ago.

I spend the next couple of hours sitting on my bed in the barracks, all packed and ready to go, waiting to get out there, into the action so I can stop thinking.
Action is only pure instinct, you don’t have to think when you’re out there.

My unit is getting ready to go out, we’re loading up on the trucks, when your unit comes back in.
I only see a handful of your troops, I can’t find you there.

I’m next in line to get up on the truck, when a heavy hand falls on my shoulder, it’s your corporal.

He’s only a year or two older than you, from York, his dad’s a welder, and he’s covered in dirt, blood and dust, and his cornflower blue eyes are sort of dull, sad and on the verge of tears.
He grabs my hand, the left, the one with my wedding ring, and places something cold and metallic in my palm, he then closes my fist around it and whispers a shaky,
“I’m sorry”
before he walks away.

It’s the commercial dog tag you bought before we went to basic training, we both have one, engraved with our names and each others, so there would never be doubt who we belonged to, and your wedding band.
It’s caked in blood.

My commanders see it, they tell me I should stay behind, but I tell them I’m fine, stuffing your dog tag and wedding ring into my breast pocket and jumping up on the truck.

I’m numb, cold inside, like I’ve just fallen through the ice on a lake, suspended in that moment just before you drown, when everything is just magical.
When we reach our destination, and start prowling through the town, I’m on autopilot, I’m a robot with a semi-automatic weapon, stone cold dead.

We get a call from another unit, they’re under fire, and we’re running to reach them.
The enemy has ceased firing when we do, the other unit doesn’t know where they went, and my sergeant calls in for orders, we are to meet up with a second company further away, so the other unit joins us and we head back down the way we came.
I’m third in line as we make our way stealthy, and in order, but I’m not quite there.
There’s no action so I start to think.
As we come to a corner, thirty or so yards away from the second company’s position, it hits me.

You’re dead. You died today.

I misunderstand my commanders, and I barrel out into the open, round the corner like a brass band on a parade, it’s an ambush I should have seen a mile away.

I feel nothing as the bullets rip into me, I hear nothing as both the enemy and my fellow soldiers, my brothers in arms, start firing, my sergeant dragging me to cover, I close my eyes, and long for you.

When I wake up in a military hospital in England, it’s all over.

They buried you before I woke up, they’ve lost, grieved and moved on.

All I have, to say good bye to, is a marble headstone, and a flag your father brings me when I get home from the hospital.
My mum gives me back your wedding ring and the dog tag, telling me that none of the three bullets I took went anywhere near my left breast pocket, where I’d put them.
She wants to believe you were watching over me.

Mori sits with me far into the night, allowing me to scream and yell at him, and cry in between, while I try to come to terms with the fact that I’ve lost you.
He tells me that it’s better this way, it’s better that I didn’t get a chance to see your body, it’s better that my last memory of you is a night of great sex, and a beautiful kiss good bye.
It isn’t until seven years later that Mori tells me he saw your corpse, and that the RPG that killed you had fucked you up badly.
I never get him to tell me any details, but then again I never push him very hard, because I know he’s right, my last memory should be of that last whispered,
“I love you”, your turqoise eyes spilling over with love and gratitude that I’m yours.

I don’t get over you for another four years, and even then it’s still hard, but I finally take off my wedding ring, wear them both on a chain around my neck, with both of our commercial dog tags.
I have dreams, full of turquoise eyes, impish grins and your voice, I always wake up hot and hard, gasping for air and my heart empty with longing, even after I’ve found someone else.
I never talk about you with them, those talks I keep for Mori, he understands me, and he knows how deeply it hurts.

I spend a couple of years fighting to be allowed back into active duty, never satisfied with the desk jobs, and un-active posts they give me, and finally the military has to admit they’ve got no reason not to let me back in.
I make it a career, it’s the only place that seems to make me happy, it’s the last place I was truly happy.

It’s the closest I’ll ever get to home again, because my heart was always with you.