Black Hawk Down fanfiction

Gary/Randy, NC-17

Summary: Gary undergoes the Delta Selection process, but one particular Delta guy causes him some serious stress. Follows from Why At The Time.

~*~

Gary sat staring at his plate in total, awful shock.

The mess hall was teeming with Delta guys and his table was teeming with his fellow Selection candidates, but none of that was sinking in.

Unlike most of the other guys in Selection he didn’t care that they were given very little instruction, and no information as to what was expected of them. Just do your best, they had been told. He had shrugged. That was instruction enough for him.

He didn’t wonder where they would take them each morning as they loaded them up in trucks and drove for hours away from Camp Aberdeen.

It had taken him no time to get used to walking for hours on end in the mountains with a forty pound rucksack on his back, moving from one rendezvous point to another, checking in with the cadre members of the Selection team until they were simply told to put down the ruck and sit down.

He had accepted that it made no sense that the Delta guys looked more like car mechanics than elite soldiers, with their wild hair, flannel shirts, scruffy jeans, stubble, and even gold-plated dog tags. Or that they didn’t seem to have ranks, and that some of them lacked first or last names.

He’d even started to deal with the daily written psychology tests that had sent him into nauseating panic the first time he’d sat down to take one.

He was especially stunned that he, Gary, hadn’t gone into cardiac arrest when he realized that the cadre members watched them every waking hour of the day, openly whispering about them in groups, even taking notes on them.

Delta Force Selection was his every waking nightmare, and easily the most fucked up thing he had ever experienced.

That is, until fifteen minutes ago.

At that time, he had sat down, and had laid eyes on the person sitting at the table in front of and to his right.

It was the guy he had come here for.

The guy he had spent the last month flat on his back with his hands down his pants, dreaming about.

Gary had wondered every moment of those four weeks whether the man was as beautiful as he remembered, whether his eyes had really looked at him that way.

Whether he had really wanted to fuck him right there in front of Captain Hayes, right on his big oak desk.

He had licked his own mouth, imagining it was someone else’s, firm and wet and open. He had dreamt of fisting light brown hair and watching the waves fall over his fingers.

He had dreamt of all kinds of other things he hadn’t even known he was into.

For the first ten days since Gary had been at Fort Bragg, the man had been nowhere in sight. But tonight he had simply shown up for supper, sat down, and began talking in a low voice with the guys at his table.

The man was as beautiful and fucking hot and physically magnetic as Gary remembered, except more.

But he had sat down, and had made eye contact, and seemed to have no idea who Gary was.

*****

Gary had been walking for over six miles on a twisted ankle. That morning they had brought them out to a different mountain range, and had told them the fun part of Selection was now over.

The fun part? What a bunch of fuckers.

The Stress Phase, they had called the next ten days. When he’d heard the term he’d thought they considered themselves very fucking funny indeed. So the torture of the past two weeks had been just a practice period to test their navigational skills? To see how many of them were really interested in staying? Ha ha.

Well… Now he realized they actually hadn’t been trying to make jokes at all.

They had been told that for the past ten days since they had started, those who had dropped out had done so voluntarily, their own fears and limitations their only stumbling blocks. But from here on out, though they could still leave by simply saying so, there was also the possibility of being failed out because they were now under a time limit.

So despite his throbbing ankle, he didn’t want to stop and check it himself. He was probably aggravating the sprain from Ranger School, but he estimated that the next rendezvous station where they checked in with cadre members had to be pretty close up ahead.

He kept going.

It wasn’t long before he saw the welcome RV station lights up ahead. He pushed out of the tree line and froze when he saw who was manning the station.

Randy. His name was Randy.

The fact that he had shown no acknowledgment of who Gary was at supper the night before hasn’t stopped Gary from eating his food really slowly and watching him from under his lashes.

He had listened to him talk in short, quiet sentences until he had heard someone call him by his name.

He had convinced himself that Randy just hadn’t seem him properly at dinner. There had been lots of people there, coming and going at Gary’s own table, and it wasn’t as if Gary had actually been sitting right in front of him.

Well, Randy was manning the station now, and he had no choice but to go up and run through the RV station check with him. The cadre members were all very professional and if he thought about it, this was the perfect context for him and Randy to exchange their first words.

Gary nodded to himself, sliding the ruck off his shoulders. He would smile and formally introduce himself as the guy from Ranger School, and thank Randy for recommending him for Selection. If he did that, Randy would remember him.

And if somehow they didn’t connect, if he had imagined the whole thing, if the guy didn’t look at him the way he had in Ranger School, then he would just nod politely, take his instructions on where to rendezvous next, and quietly leave.

And then die of a broken heart somewhere in the woods.

He took a deep breath, released it, then took one step after the other out of the tree line.

As he approached he noticed that there was now a handful of men by a campfire. They had been asked to take off their rucks and sit down. It could mean they were done for the day, and Randy’s RV might also be the last one for him.

Or, seeing that this was the Stress Phase, it could also mean that those guys were just done.

He walked slowly until he was standing four feet in front of Randy. Randy had his head down, writing on the ubiquitous clipboard all the cadre members carried.

Gary stared at the top of his head, breathed, licked his lips. He opened his mouth.

“Randy.”

Randy looked up at him. Gary’s chest constricted, his heart thudding painfully, waiting for something. A flicker of heat in those marble eyes. Simple recognition. Anything.

There was nothing.

Time passed in excruciating seconds. He realized his heart wouldn’t wait until he entered the woods again. It would thud until it broke right there. And frankly, that would be a welcome relief.

He felt a flush begin to creep up his neck. It was probably too dark for Randy to see him coloring, but he still wanted to kick himself.

“What?” Randy asked in his quiet, even voice.

Gary started to lick his dry lips but stopped when he felt his tongue trembling. He said the words they had been told to use when they needed it.

“I… I require medical attention.”

Randy’s eyes slid down his body. Slid. Gary felt heat bloom in his chest and crotch. He pressed his lips tightly together.

Randy looked back up, directly into his eyes. “No you don’t,” he said, then turned away. He rested his hip on the hood of the truck and went back to writing on his clipboard.

For long moments Gary didn’t comprehend what Randy had said. Then it slowly sank in, and it was so bizarre that he just stood there staring with absolutely no idea what to do.

At that moment another candidate crashed out of the trees and stumbled toward Randy. Gary watched in growing distress as Randy casually told the guy to take off his ruck and go sit down. The man let out a huge sigh of relief and did as he was told.

Gary stared in confusion.

Randy looked up from his clipboard. “Grab your instruction sheet. Show me where you are on the map, and show me where you’re going.”

It was the standard instruction every cadre member gave at the RV stations. It meant you were going another six miles to the next station. It meant you were not stopping, not sitting down, and definitely not getting medical attention.

Gary tried to stop his hands from shaking as he retrieved his instruction sheet and quickly plotted out his coordinates on his map. He walked over to show Randy, but kept a good body distance.

Keeping his eyes on his map, he pointed at it in quick strokes to hide the trembling in his hands, and spoke fast to hide the similar condition of voice.

Randy nodded and pulled back.

Gary stuffed the map in his pocket and stumbled back into the trees.

*****

He had had it easy that first time.

He had encountered Randy every goddamned night for five nights in a row so far. As he staggered out of the trees in truly refined pain on the fifth night and saw him at the station again, he whined silently.

Randy had never once displayed any kind of emotion towards him. Gary, on the other hand, was cycling them all. From anger to frustration to resignation, with a thick layer of confusion over it all.

And what was even more stressful was that Randy had never once been the cadre member to end Gary’s excruciating day. He saw him do it for other guys. But whenever he arrived, Randy would ask him for coordinates, mark that he had cleared his RV, and send him on his way.

This RV, Gary could have sworn, was supposed to be his last of the day. But sure as hellfire, Randy just stood silently with his head bent close to the map as Gary reeled off his coordinates, making no move to ask him to sit down.

He stared at Randy’s head the entire time.

He knew the positions on his map by heart. And even though he burned with frustration, he would still rather stare at Randy's beautiful hair than at the sheet of paper.

“What the hell is his problem,” someone growled from the side of the RV truck.

Gary whipped in the direction of the voice to see a forceful looking Major standing next to it. It was the Major who headed the Selection detachment. Randy’s boss.

Randy never looked up from his clipboard, marking Gary’s coordinates.

“Him?” Randy said. “He likes to stare at me.” He wagged his pen at Gary without looking up. “You’re all set, Ranger.”

Gary couldn’t move. Everything in him had stopped. It wasn’t until he heard the Major laughing derisively at him that he was able turn his face away.

His face was burning, but not with humiliation.

Alright, with humiliation.

But also with the most intense anger he had ever felt so suddenly.

He breathed through his clenched teeth as he stuffed the map in his pocket and turned away from the station.

His face burned hotter and hotter, and mostly because he was ashamed of the fact that despite his seething rage, at the end of the night he would still get his kit from under his bunk and head for the showers. Not to shower.

He would mute his cries by stuffing his mouth with the T-shirt he had kept from Ranger School, before unzipping his fatigues. Then he would fist himself until the ache that heated his body all day would finally pulse out of him.

Because whether he thought about Randy with confusion, irritation, or outright hate, it only seemed to matter that he think of him at all.

*****

By the tenth night in the woods, the last night, the forty-straight-miles-in-one-day night, Gary was in a fucked up place.

He hadn’t understood what it meant to be physically wrecked, to be past broken, until now.

His feet stumbled over rock and twig, and sometimes he found himself on his knees with no idea how he had gotten there, and he would have to crawl to a tree and leverage himself back up.

Other times his hand would grip a tree branch to pull his body forward for the next step, and then he would have to stand there prying his hand off the branch because it felt so good to rest it there.

It was dark among the trees and his flashlight hung from his hip, but there was no way in this life he could summon the energy to reach for it and turn it on. He pushed branches out of his way and pressed on, panting loudly so he could hear his own voice and know that his body hadn’t collapsed and was actually lying in the dirt miles back.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he understood that he was bordering on delirium, and if that son of a bitch was at his next RV, he would… he would…

He had thought about it until his brain was frying. It was one of two things. Either Randy had met someone else between meeting him and him showing up at Selection...or Randy really, truly didn’t know who he was!

That was it, wasn’t it! He couldn’t know who Gary was, and treat him like this.

Sure, Randy was polite to him, just as he was with all the other candidates. He listened, offered help when appropriate, instructed. He never got upset, or irritated, or annoyed. But he just somehow managed to flawlessly merge that attitude with being such a complete bastard to him, that if Gary didn’t know any better he would swear it was all in his head.

So maybe it was.

Gary swatted at a branch whipping at his arm and heard a soft whining close by, then realized he was whining, and he was leaning against a tree, staring at lights through the woods. The RV.

He pushed away from the tree.

He was delirious. That was the only reason he would ever call Randy a bastard. He knew that if Randy was at this RV, once he laid his eyes on him he would forget all his resolution and it would hurt and hurt that he treated him like this.

Randy was at the RV, and it did hurt to look at him.

So Gary walked very slowly toward the clearing. The ground tilted dangerously under his feet. He needed to conserve his energy and not let Randy’s presence make him any more upset, because he couldn’t see a campfire with guys around it so he was sure to be moving along to the next station.

He dropped his ruck and stumbled toward his instruction sheet taped to the side of the truck.

Randy remained leaning against the grille of the truck, watching him.

Gary retrieved the sheet, blinked several times to make the print come into focus despite his spinning head. He checked the coordinates and plotted them on his map. It took him a long time.

When he was done he gritted his teeth and stepped up to Randy, extending his arm with the map in it. He stood swaying from a safe distance.

Don’t say a fucking word to me.

He slowly indicated his points on the map, breathing shallowly as the spinning in his head got worse and was now almost hypnotic.

He saw Randy nod and bend his head to the clipboard.

On the third try, Gary was able to stuff the map back into his pocket.

He swallowed big gulps of air, bent and gripped his ruck, and slowly hoisted it onto his back. He surprised himself by stifling the loud wince that tried to escape him.

It was alright. Once he started walking again he would be fine, and he would make it to the next RV.

“You look done in,” Randy said quietly to his back.

“I’m fucking fine,” Gary spat before he knew it.

“Are you sure? You don’t want to withdraw or anything, do you?”

You motherfucker!

Had he said it out loud? Gary had no idea, and he was beyond giving a fuck if he had.

He concentrated his entire being on putting one foot ahead of him and taking one step forward.

“Hey, Ranger,” he heard Randy say. “Put your ruck down, walk through those trees and sit by the fire. You’ve successfully completed the physical phase of the course.”

Gary had no idea how, but someone was suddenly at his side and caught him when upon hearing those words, he simply collapsed.

He remembered being semi conscious by a campfire, tasting spiced wine being dribbled onto his lips by warm fingers. He remembered hearing voices laughing, and someone saying, “That Ranger’s gonna weigh a ton,” and more laughter.

He remembered being gently pulled to his feet, then falling over a hard shoulder, and thinking, After all I’ve been through, I deserve a softer shoulder than this.

And that was all he remembered.

*****

When he woke up, it was dark and he wasn’t in his bunk. He was in a bed.

He lifted his head slowly, since it was all his body would let him do, and peered into the dark around him.

He was in a hotel room.

He fumbled for the lamp next to the bed and pulled its cord. It flicked on and illuminated a folded sheet of paper propped against it.

He opened it, and it read, Courtesy of your friends.

There was a phone number to call when he woke up, and an instruction sheet with the rest of the schedule for Selection. It was the first real schedule he had ever seen at Selection.

It told him to return his equipment, and not to worry about cleaning any of it. It gave him his scheduled time for meeting with the group’s psychologist for an evaluation, and advised him to hang around for the Commander’s Board interview.

Gary laid back down and stared at the pool of light near his arm.

One hundred and sixty-six men to start. Fourteen to finish.

They had been told about the psychologist and the final interview with the Board, and that candidates were still failed out even at those stages.

At this point, he wasn’t too sure he cared whether he failed out or not.

The psychologist’s evaluation would be a beautifully ironic place to fail, wouldn’t it? He had lived so many years of his life afraid of what people might think of him, and now he was going to fail because he cared too much that one man didn’t think of him.

He let out a deep breath and pushed the sheets off his body, and was midly surprised to see that he was naked.

He sat on the edge of the bed and scrubbed his hands through his hair. Since he was in a hotel he might as well enjoy the facilities. A shower, then.

He didn’t have Randy’s T-shirt with him, but perhaps this was as good a way as any to start pulling away.

He dropped his hands, then yelped in shock to find Randy standing less than a foot in front of him.

He fell backwards on the bed but managed to catch himself on his elbows. Then he jerked and cried out in surprise as Randy suddenly dropped to his knees and gripped his thighs.

Gary’s legs automatically unhinged and spread.

“Goddamn it, Ranger,” Randy whispered thickly with what sounded like appreciation, then pushed his face into his crotch.

His mouth closed, hot and wet and completely, over Gary’s cock.

Gary jerked right off the bed. “Jesus!”

Randy’s hands gripped his hips and pushed him right back into the bed. His mouth pulled back smoothly against his suction, trailing saliva, until his lips were covering only the head of Gary’s cock.

Gary shrieked incomprehensibly at him and instinctively pulled his hips back as hard as he could, gripping the edge of the bed.

Randy pressed forward with him, sucking down his stiff cock until it bumped the back of his throat.

Gary barked this time, and gripped Randy’s shoulders. Randy pulled his head back, sliding his hand along the shaft to replace his mouth. He pursed his lips and sucked on the swollen head, licked it, then swiftly penetrated the slit with his tongue.

Gary immediately spurted into his mouth.

Randy flattened his tongue, squeezed and pulled on Gary’s cock. He spurted again, right into the middle of Randy's tongue.

Gary opened his mouth and howled.

Randy’s hand shot up and clamped over his mouth, loosening to let him gasp.

Gary fisted the sheets out from the corners of the mattress, staring down with glazed eyes as he spasmed and emptied out while Randy caught every drop.

His eyes fluttered closed when there was nothing left. Randy lifted his hand from his mouth, moaned quietly and licked him for a long time.

Gary remained immobile, sitting with his eyes closed. He felt Randy slowly straighten and lean forward, closing the space between them until their mouths were too close not to kiss. Yet he didn’t get kissed.

“Don’t fucking fail,” Randy whispered, then flicked his tongue over Gary's mouth and pulled back.

Gary kept his eyes closed, hearing Randy move towards the door, hearing the door thump shut.

It took him a long time to force the air out of his chest, and when he did he shouted and swore obscenely.

God fucking help him now. He wasn't going to fail the evaluation or the fucking interview.

He was going to pass with flying colors, join Delta Force, track that man down, and kick his fucking ass.

~*~

part 3 - The Hot Seat