Soldier Boy
Riley laid back on his bed and tried to go to sleep. He just couldn't get the last few months out of his mind. No matter what he did, how hard he trained, worked out, fought, they kept floating around in the back of his mind. Coiled like snakes, waiting to strike the moment his back was turned, full of poison and pain.
What had gone wrong? Besides Professor Walsh and wasn't that such a reassuring person to bring up? She turned out to be mad as a hatter at the end. Gone mad and dragged every one of them down with her. Experiments on Hostiles were one thing. They were demons and evil. But experiments on some of her own? Making something like Adam? Who knew everything to do to him and the others, like...
Forrest.
He rolled over, hugging his pillow to his chest. It still hurt to think about his friend. His best friend. Yes, he still had Graham, good old stoic Graham, but simply put, Graham wasn't Forrest. He wasn't the first person Riley had met when he joined up. He wasn't the person who helped make some of the stranger training classes more bearable. He wasn't the person who Riley had shared... things with.
Things like those first nights they hit Sunnydale to patrol. Back in the Times Before Buffy. It was even Forrest who gave that little phrase the capitals. "TBB, man." he'd say bitterly when Graham would wonder aloud where some joke came from. Things like staying up after their shift was done and talking into the dawn about why they were doing this, what sort of lives they had before, what they could look forward to after their tours of duty.
Talks that had led to something else. Quiet, stolen, desperate moments of comfort and joy. He remembered being fascinated by Forrest's dark skin. The way it seemed to just glow in the moonlight, glisten in the water of the shower room. He'd turned a thousand different shades of red when Forrest had caught him watching the darker man soap up. Watching with wide and nervously hungry eyes as the bubbles slid and draped around the strong body.
"Farmboy, liking what you see?" Forrest had said, his smile a tease.
"What? Oh... God... Sorry. I was just... zoning out. Y'know, um, thinking." He'd stammered out and went back to his own cleaning.
Forrest had just smiled knowingly at him.
God, it still hurt. Hurt to think that most of their last words had been fights about Buffy. Hurt that most of their last interactions had been near fist-fights over the Slayer. Hurt to think about what happened to his friend. That horrible amalgam of parts and violence that Forrest had become.
His dreams were filled with that image, that patchwork parody of humanity. Filled with guilt over letting his friend be killed and resurrected and killed again. They numbed him daily, making even normal tasks seem heavy and hard to do. Cold emptiness filled his stomach when he woke in the night, biting back screams.
If only he could focus on the good, those moments, sweet and fevered and so confusing. He had to or he was sure he would go insane. Lose what ever little grasp on his life, his missions, his own fucked up sense of redemption. Those moments... he closed his eyes.
Moments full of hesitant, on his part, kisses. Tasting each other that first time, high on adrenaline filled triumph over flushing and capturing their first vampires. Hands touching softly at first, growing more insistent as the fled to Riley's room. Skin sliding across skin as shirts were, at last, abandoned. Shy laughter at the way his own hands stood out in the night, across that dark chest. Riley's own moans echoing in his ears as fingers, deadly demon killing fingers, stroked him through his pants and nimbly removed them.
Falling back onto the bed, clothes thrown away. Sweat and lust and something unknown filling his nostrils. Fingers and tongues touching, exploring, catching places that sent shivers and sparks along both bodies. Grabbing and holding and... oh yes, God... stroking each other closer to something that wasn't evil at all. Wasn't bad or wrong, no matter what his father or Dr. Walsh might have said. Was full of fire and life and... oh fuck. Coming in shaky waves, grunts and groans, shuddering and held and finally more soft, shy kisses and sleep.
Riley bit his bottom lip and moaned quietly. Cheeks red with tears and shame at making a mess of his boxers. At wanting this brief respite from the pain. Something to stop the demons in his mind, keep them at bay. All of his life a waste, The Initiative, Buffy, Forrest.
He rose and headed to the shower room of their newest base. Going through the motions again, in some tiny despot-ish South American country. It was supposed to help, supposed to keep his mind focused, his soul fulfilled. Happy little life of a soldier boy.
Water flowing over his body, there was only the taste of bitter ashes in his mouth. Opening his eyes under the torrent, he wasn't surprised to see Forrest, grinning with mismatched skin and stitches. Wasn't surprised to realize he'd brought his sidearm to the shower with him.
Graham woke to the echoing sound of a gunshot.