(fic) Basic- part 4
Dec. 17th, 2009 02:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
squirrellysemanticsModern day AU - Basic training Fandom
ATLA- I do not own ATLA and make no money from this. Inspired by the dog tag pic by
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luco_millian . And holy crap you need to see the colored version. Rated R for now mostly for swearing.
Pairing eventual Sokka/Zuko
Needs to be read in order to make ANY sense whatsoever. Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3
Most of the platoon shuffled into the tiny classroom, still to a man bleary eyed from the long hike in full battle rattle the day before. Sokka hurried to snag a seat for himself and Zuko along the outer edge, eager to give his sore feet as much rest as they could get. This morning’s topic was ‘how to orient using map and compass’ which he already had more than enough experience in. If this was as useful as their other classes, they would probably be spending the next hour discussing the regulation way to fold a map.
A thermostat stuck on ‘goddamn hot’ and poor ventilation was going to make this a painful experience. He craned his neck around and got a little worried when he saw no Zuko. They had worked out the perfect covert system to keep each other awake which would be sorely needed for this hour long stretch of Pure Boring.
There was a nervous jiggle in his leg that he fought to stop. He still felt like last night’s whiskey had left cotton wrapped around his tongue. Zuko had muttered a terse ‘good morning’ before breakfast chow and disappeared in a swarm of green. Last night had been a little out of the ordinary. All right, a lot out of the ordinary but come on. They were two young guys - friends- being pushed to their physical and mental limits while isolated from anything familiar. After a few weeks in basic they were probably both ready to fuck a porcupine and they had been living in each other’s shorts since day one. It was just a kiss, right? No big deal. Not like they were getting naked with each other. He felt his face go red. Getting naked with each other on purpose. He flicked the back of his teeth and distractedly thought he could still taste the mix of flavors from the night before.
The guy who was supposed to be handling class today was this ginger haired, lanky limbed staff sergeant ambling to the front of the room. Sokka spotted Zuko sliding into an empty seat a row and a half back, leaving Sokka stranded with no backup. What the hell?
The sergeant clicked his little remote control to reveal the first slide from the overhead projector- an all white background with the words MAP READING in all caps- adding to the list of ‘Things that really didn’t need to be made into a Powerpoint slide’ series that Sokka had been cataloging in his head.
“Gennelmen,” the sergeant started in his slow Mississippi drawl. “How tuh reyad uh compass!” He clicked to the next slide that was blank apart from the five words he just said, again in all caps, written out as a translation for those who didn’t understand Southern. It did help since most people made the word ‘read’ one syllable instead of with the liberal amount of extra syllables this guy sprinkled onto his sentences.
This was going to hurt. They were only fifteen minutes in before his eyelids started to get heavy. What Sokka needed was a good firm poke in the side to keep from crashing and burning but his wingman looked like he was doing his best to keep his distance. The little pang of something he didn’t want to identify got shoved down deep into his belly.
God how many weeks had it been? Why couldn’t they fix the damn thermostat? Sokka tried to find that magic position that would keep him propped up and looking deep in thought rather than passed the hell out. If he could just close his eyes for a few seconds…
The fist pounding into the metal desk in front of him startled him to attention so fast that he barely avoided headbutting Zhao.
“Too many late night escapades, boy?” It was when Zhao spoke softly that he scared Sokka the most.
“No, drill sergeant.” Sokka could feel the man snort on him in disbelief.
Right next to his ear. “Front lean and rest. Now.”
Crap. Sokka dropped to the floor, assumed the just-starting-a-pushup position and held it, board straight between the bridge of arms and toes.
“You little fucks all need a lesson in helping out a fellow soldier,” Zhao rumbled ominously to the platoon. “You want some dickhead who fell asleep in land navigation to guide you into a mission? If this pansy ass son of a bitch can’t keep it up ‘till the end of class, then all of you are going to have some fun in the latrines today. ”
The low sonorous tone of the instructing staff sergeant resumed as if nothing had happened. “Make shuah you make ahjustments fo declination.”
The sweat was already dripping off of Sokka’s face. He had lost all track of time with his little nap. How much longer could it be? If it was under twenty minutes he might be able to make it. He felt Zhao’s booted foot plant itself firmly below his neck, adding a not-insignificant amount of weight to his shoulders. He breathed out slowly to steady himself, not looking forward to playing in poop.
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The metal frame protested mightily when Sokka threw himself onto his bed, grateful for the brief respite. He hoped Zuko would turn up soon. They needed to talk. There’s no way the guy could avoid coming back to his footlocker.
Talking in the showers proved to be an impossibility since it had been ridiculously crowded. The whole platoon took lots of the time to boil themselves, the only way to remove the horrendous odor of human waste that penetrated every pore.
Sokka looked at his watch and slumped in resignation. Zhao had made him switch guard shifts to tonight to make sure he understood how egregious his infraction had been and he needed to get to his station on time or wind up in deep shit. For the third time today. The possibility of catching up on sleep was looking grim.
Head hanging low, Zuko finally returned. Sokka swung his legs to the floor and sat up wearily. “Hey,” he started softly. “I got screwed into doing CQ duty tonight but I have to ask. What’s going on? Don’t disappear on me.” He licked his lips, trying to figure out a way to say what he wanted to say. “I need you, man. You’re my buddy.”
Those crazy-intense eyes went wide in shock, like Zuko had been expecting something, anything else.
The tinny little alarm on Sokka’s cheapo watch went off. “Damn it. Now I really have to go.” Sokka kept looking back at the other man as he gathered his things. “Talk? Soon?”
He could feel Zuko’s stare boring holes into his back as he hauled ass for desk duty.
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Propping his head up with his hands, Zuko lay on his bunkmate’s bed, ruminating on the man’s parting words. If Sokka was on CQ, he wasn’t going to be back anytime soon. It was next to impossible to think though, with the huge racket going on next to his head.
It was only a couple more minutes before lights out and the clowns from his platoon still had a bunch of their mattresses piled on top of one another in the center aisle. The rest of the guys lined the aisle like spectators, hooting and hollering taunts, goading Jenkins to ‘man up’ as he stood nervously waiting in front of the mattress pyramid. Zuko watched Jeter let out a loud whoop of a cry from the opposite end of the room then sprint down the aisle as fast as he could, straight up tackling Jenkins into the impromptu safety cushions. There was a burst of awe and laughter from the other guys at the hard hit. They had all taken turns nailing each other for the past half an hour. Idle hands and all that.
Jeter helped Jenkins, only a little worse for wear, to his feet. “Nice work guys!” Jeter said with a broad grin. “We have to do this again in a couple of nights when I don't have any night duties. “ Amazing how the other guys followed his lead without hesitation. In no time flat, the mattresses were back in their bunks, bed sheets tucked into tight corners in a hurry.
Lights out. You could still hear the scramble of feet as people rushed to their beds in the semi-darkness.
The relative quiet finally let Zuko clear his head. Why was he such a colossal fuck up? Once he had burned off the whiskey last night, he had been certain he had been a total moron, slipping in a moment of weakness, possibly screwing up the only bit of luck he had in this fucking place.
He and Sokka had been very lucky when they had been assigned as buddies. They had hit it off right away which was rare for such a pair of opposites and rarer still for himself in general.
Sokka’s response had caught him off guard. Most guys would have flipped out if their guy friend had planted one on them in the shower. Zuko had stayed up all night running through possible consequences in his head. Sokka could have woken him up with a fist to the face, demanded a transfer, gone running to tell their CO about the queer boy who touched him. The last thing he would have expected was the sadness. It had been almost forlorn. /Don’t disappear on me/
The situation appealed to his dark sense of humor. His father had forced Zuko to enlist to ostensibly toughen up his son, to beat the mama’s boy out of him before Ozai would let his son be seen standing by his side in front of the family’s private military company. And look what happened.
The need for sleep began to dull his thoughts. Feeling entitled to be a little lazy, he jammed Sokka’s pillow under his head. He let the distinct smell of the pillow’s real owner wrap around him as he drifted away.
He didn’t know how long he had been asleep when he felt the blanket getting thrown over him, pinning him underneath. He struggled but it was like fighting the inside of a giant wooly condom.
“Time for a little party.” He was pretty sure it was Jeter’s voice he was hearing but there was nothing visible through the blanket. “You fucked up today. “ Zuko kept silent and struggled harder, trying to get a grip on the blanket to at least see his attackers. The blanket held him so tightly to the mattress he had no room to even kick out properly. A punch caught him under the ribs, unseen and but not completely unexpected.
“Sokka’s your battle buddy,” Jeter continued softly. “It was your responsibility to watch out for him at all times, brother. And you failed. We all wound up spending the day up to our necks in shit for it. This isn’t just some petty nonsense. What happens when we’re deployed? How can we trust you with our lives if you can’t handle the easy stuff?”
‘We’? ‘We’ was not sounding good at all. Either Jet was batshit crazy or this was going to hurt. A lot. With a start he realized that these were not two mutually exclusive things.
“Let’s just call this a little warning. Or we’ll make sure you won’t be around to let us down again.”
What Zuko sometimes lacked in common sense he more than made up for in self-preservation. He curled up into a ball to shield his head as blows began to rain down from many hands.
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Sokka’s ass was dragging pretty badly as he stumbled back to his bunk. Still no sun to be seen but he didn’t need much light to know exactly where his bed was. His gear got carelessly jammed into his foot locker and he didn’t bother undressing as he flopped down into bed. That he didn’t scream like a little girl when he landed on a warm body in a space that was supposed to be unoccupied was something that he would look back on later with pride. Pride that he would never, ever in his life share with anyone else, but pride none the less.
Too exhausted to rise, Sokka rolled off the invader, yanking down the blanket shielding whatever ballsy fucker was in his bed. “Zuko!” He kept his voice to a low hiss of surprise, not wanting to wake the rest of the barracks.
It took a moment for Zuko to respond, wincing slightly as he tried to shift in place to let them meet face to face. Sokka forced the man to keep his back turned so he could examine a fresh bruise on a section of pale skin that had been exposed where shirt had come undone.
“What is that?” Sokka couldn’t stop himself from talking louder. “What happened? I know you aren’t dumb enough to play that stupid tackling game.” Sokka refused to be shushed, getting angry as he watched Zuko breathe in abortive little gasps.
“It was nothing I didn’t deserve.”
This made Sokka even angrier. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Zuko let out a slow breath with effort. “I got a little… out of control yesterday. I thought you’d be pissed about it.” It felt a little easier to handle it like this, in the dark, close but not. “And I added on to the stupidity by letting you down today. Jeter and his little cadre gave me a beat down to remind me of my duty.” He jerked violently as Sokka pulled the loose shirt higher, revealing more bruises.
“Idiot,” Sokka muttered, not sure himself who he was talking about. He felt Zuko shiver under his hands as they ran over ribs, checking for fractures. “That didn’t hurt did it?”
“N…no.” There was a pause. “It didn’t hurt.”
“Good.” Satisfied nothing was broken, Sokka smoothed the shirt back into place. He inched closer to whisper into Zuko’s ear, making sure the words stayed close between them. “Believe me. You’ll be the first to know when you’ve pissed me off. Now try not to move and get some sleep.” Sokka rolled out of his bunk and started to wearily climb to the higher mattress, frame creaking all the way. “We’ll take care of Jeter tomorrow.”
______________
The next day was wonderfully uneventful. This made the showers at the end of the day a pleasure rather than an escape.
Sokka took his time, watching Jeter finish his shower out of the corner of his eye. Glancing at the clock on the wall, it looked like now would be fine for setting things in motion. He stuck his head under the spout one last time and spun the tap to shut everything down. Settling his runty regulation towel around his hips he tried to look casual as he wandered up to the man toweling himself off.
“Hey, Jeter. Could I talk to you for a sec?”
Jeter regarding him dubiously. “I gotta be ready for CQ duty in about 5 minutes so keep it short, yeah?”
Sokka nodded. “This won’t take long. Just wanted to say that while I understand and appreciate the thought behind the discipline you handed out last night, let’s just say that I’m less than pleased with your methods.”
With a scathingly opinionated eyebrow, Jeter padded closer to Sokka, completely nonplussed by his lack of clothing. “You got something to say? Come out and say it.”
This brought a devilish smile to Sokka’s lips. “Fine. You fuck with Zuko, you’re fucking with me. Got it?”
“That’s it?” Jeter let out a brief snort. “That’s all you got?”
“Ooo, wait. One more thing.” Sokka stroked his chin thoughtfully then snapped his fingers in decision. “Mustard!”
Jeter sneered at him, trying to mask his confusion.
Zuko appeared at Sokka’s shoulder, casually tossing him a massive container of mustard while he held onto his own gallon bottle of ketchup. Together they flipped their respective containers and blasted Jeter with a flood of yellow and red goo.
The two adjourned to the locker rooms, leaving Jeter a sticky, sputtering mess.
“Good luck trying to get to the duty desk on time, you cock,” Zuko muttered to the air.
“That went well.” Sokka was almost humming in pleasure as he finished drying himself off. “Nice job on smuggling that stuff out of the mess hall, by the way. How’d you do it?”
Zuko shook his head and smiled a real smile. “You don’t want to know.”
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Date: 2009-12-17 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-12-17 07:10 pm (UTC)"You must remember this. A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh."
TY!
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Date: 2011-05-13 04:50 am (UTC)Also? This story is amazing!
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Date: 2011-05-13 11:04 am (UTC)