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Lar ||| Buffy & Angel
Bitter Nectar
by Lar
Email: HERE
Website: http://biblio.obsessedmuch.net.
Disclaimer: Riley's not mine. Damn it.
Rating: R
Summary: "We do not remember days; we remember moments." (anonymous)
Notes: Set in Belize, before "As You Were" but some time after "Into The Woods."
Author's Notes: Thanks to Sam for initial read-through and as always ethrosdemon & Vic for superior beta-duty. Written for Moe's Riley-Fic contest: http://www.geocities.com/rileytheguy/
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Riley lays on his back so the beads of sweat roll off his face, into his hair, and down his neck. The t-shirt he wears is soaked beyond saturation point; a little more perspiration won't make a difference now. He watches the branches of the trees above him and tries not to breathe in too deeply. He hates the smell of rotting fruit from the jungle floor, although he likes the Morpho butterflies that eat it. Doesn't mean he stops hating the scent, no matter how pretty their iridescent blue wings are when the butterflies land.
He watches the canopy, waiting for a glimpse of the T'chokal that's been hiding here during the day and then slipping into San Ignacio at night, eating its fill of stupid tourists and any natives unfortunate enough to have no shelter from the darkness. The demon is hard to spot at night, impossible to track since its body temperature is too close to human to be able to use the infrared. So his platoon is lying outside the ruins of Xunantunich, hoping to catch sight of the T'chokal in the canopy. It likes the sun, or so the research says. Riley can't imagine anything wanting to get any warmer than the ambient temperature of the jungle, but he's stopped trying to think like whatever he has to kill.
There's a crackle of sound from his radio and he keeps his eyes trained on a clump of green that seems a little denser than the surrounding foliage. Pulls the walkie-talkie from his pocket and thumbs the button. "Finn. Go." Voice low, a harsh whisper.
He winces at the volume of the voice the blares from the speaker, despite the good news it delivers. "Blue Team took it out over by the caves. Mission accomplished. Bring 'em in, sir." That's Newsome, the radio man on Riley's team. All of 20 years old, and slightly overeager in Riley's opinion.
"Roger that. Red Team out." He clicks the safety back on the rifle and lets his neck muscles relax. Closes his eyes and swipes his arm over his forehead, pushes sweat into his hair and lets the arm rest over his eyes. If he lays there with his eyes closed and ignores the shrieking of the parrots, he could almost get himself back to July in Iowa, about five years ago.
Humid, sticky, heavy air, close to a solid thing when you move through it. All that's missing is Walter and George, a pickup baseball game with whoever else is too hot to work the fields but just fine with sweating out six or seven innings on the diamond. Cold beer in the ice chest, scavenged from Geo's father, who believed any boy who could work ten acres could drink a goddamn brew at the end of the day. Cheap, pisswater beer, but back then it was perfect.
"Hey, Captain. You comin' in?" Riley looks out from under his arm to see Newsome standing over him, radio on his back. Bright red bandana tied like a do-rag around his head, and no matter how many damn times he's been told about bright colors as attractors, Newsome seems to think he knows better. Young, dumb, gonna live forever: Riley's seen it too often. Shipped home plenty of Newsomes in body bags.
"Private, if I see that thing on your head again, I'll set fire to it. Am I clear?" He heaves himself to his feet and slings the rifle over his shoulder, picks up his radio again and calls the code - mission over, report to home base. Sees Thompson and Maguire step out of their stand about 20 feet away from him and waves. The rest of the team, Jones, Black, Wysczyzki, slip up silently. When Riley turns back to Newsome, the bandana is gone.
The rain starts before they get another thirty feet towards camp.
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Newsome drops three mangoes on the table and sits on the rickety chair with his back to Riley, pulling a knife from a sheath he wears under his arm. Riley leans over and taps him on the shoulder as Newsome starts to cut into the first one. "It's not ripe, Private. Toss it, eat the other two."
The private's eyebrow rises as he looks back at Riley, and if it wasn't so hot, if Riley wasn't so tired, he'd call the little bastard on that. Instead, he shrugs. "Suit yourself, boy. You have watch tonight, and you'll stand it no matter how sick that makes you." He snags one of the other, redder fruits for himself and eases his own knife from his pocket, unfolds it and slices in through the outer skin. The scent hits him, sweet and ripe, flesh juicy, bright orange, and fresh. He's eaten enough pre-packaged food to last him several lifetimes. Cuts the halves into quarters and bites into one, lets the sticky wetness run down his chin to the green t-shirt he wears. It's already stained; a little fruit juice won't make it worse. His taste buds prickle at the flavor of the fruit, and he swallows the mouthful.
No matter how often he eats mangoes, he still longs for the taste of something more familiar instead. Now his sense memory fires up from that warm sweetness. He's spent the better part of the last eight days thinking about being anywhere but here, and today the taste of mango stirs a painful longing for his mother's homemade peach ice cream. God, he'd sell Newsome to the closest Maranthik demon colony for one dish of that, sweet and soft and full of gritty sugar and chunks of the peaches that she spent the morning peeling. He closes his eyes and takes another bite of the mango and tells himself it's peach-flesh on his tongue. Wills himself back to sunset in Huxley, post-barbeque on a Friday night. Sees the old ice cream tub, the grain of the wood, the coarse crystals of rock salt inside. Imagines his father lifting it to the picnic table he'd built by himself. He recalls his grandmother prying off the lid and dishing it out quick, everything melting almost as fast as they could eat it. They'd eat the whole batch in one sitting.
Newsome gags and spits, swearing as he scrapes his fingers over his tongue and around his mouth, digging out as much of the mango as he can. "Fucking turpentine," he says, spitting again, and Riley raises an eyebrow at him.
"Told you it wasn't ripe." He jabs one of his uneaten sections with his blade and offers it to the boy. "Here, this one's fine. Get the taste out of your mouth."
Riley watches Newsome devour the piece of mango to the skin, teeth scraping every morsel he can manage before he tosses the rind to the table. He looks on as Newsome picks up the third mango and eyes it suspiciously. Riley hides a smile and spears his last chunk of quartered fruit, eating slowly.
Private Newsome holds the lone remaining mango out to him. "Is it safe?"
Riley grins around the mouthful of soft fruit, back of his hand not even close to covering it. Nods and waves his hand, gets out of the chair and picks up the discarded skin of the ripe mango. He points to the rich, red color with his knife blade. "The red ones, Newsome. Stick to the red ones," he says, folding the blade away and pocketing it.
Riley heads back to his tent, still tasting mangoes and wishing for peaches.
-----
One summer they'd shipped out from Pease, New Hampshire to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Special assignment, very low-key observation. The transport broke down in Philadelphia, and they were stuck there for three hours. Hot, humid, and all of them sweating and uncomfortable in the dark uniforms. Graham found the vendor first. The rest of the platoon bought him out of his stock.
Lemon ice, and not prepackaged junk, the real thing. Homemade, with little bits of zest and rind in the ice, crunch of sugar that hadn't dissolved scraping over his teeth, sharp bite of lemon that he never managed to find again. Riley thinks maybe it was the water there, or the exact ratio of juice and rind to sugar, but nothing ever managed to hit him like that, all sweet-sour and so damn refreshing.
They get some lemons down here, some limes. Not the same, though, and even if they could make ice, he'd take a bath in a tub full of it before he'd waste it trying to make frozen dessert. Riley won't even attempt to ruin that memory with something pathetic, not when he knows that even a glass of his grandmother's lemonade would fall short. Grins to himself at the sacrilegious thought, knows his grandmother would do everything in her power to not just match that vendor's lemon ice, but to improve on perfection. Something in her is all steel under those soft gray curls and pretty ruffled aprons, some drive to be the best. He's all too familiar with it: if you can't be the best, then get out of the game.
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Back out on patrol again, final sweep of the ruins and the cave to make sure the T'chokal was operating alone. His platoon is on the final perimeter and the rain makes it next to impossible to see anything more than five feet ahead. It doesn't ever do anything other than pour here. Drizzle is a word for other countries. Belize takes its rain seriously and offers it up in sheets of gray that plaster hair and clothes to your body and turn the floor of the jungle into sucking puddles of mud. Working in these conditions makes him almost wish for a transfer back to the coast where the worst thing he had to worry about was sunburn, the damn sand fleas that left half his men covered in red-ringed bites, and a few of the privates' unfailing ability to get drunk and talk too much.
There's a shift in the canopy, and Riley's finger twitches on the trigger, tracking the shape as it moves. It's nothing but a capuchin monkey, and he shakes his head. Too jumpy for his own good. Even as he's lowering the rifle, something tingles up his spine, some weird sixth sense that he prays is wrong but knows at once is dead-on accurate. The scream is high pitched and fades too damn fast to a choking gurgle. By the time he's made it to the body, Newsome's been eviscerated and the T'chokal is moving towards the rest of Riley's platoon. Riley fires a shot in the air, pauses, fires another and then follows the trail. He doesn't get far before he hears the sound of the rest of his men taking out the demon. He heads back to Newsome's body.
The rain chooses that moment to stop, cut off abruptly. In the heat, the smell of the dead man's blood hangs suspending in the just-rained humidity, copper scent inhaled with steam and all the other scents of death and decay of the tropics. Riley spies the bandana, twisted into a rope and tied around Newsome's forehead to keep the rain from running into his eyes. He squats beside the body and uses his own knife to cut the straps of the radio from Newsome's back, lets the body roll over face first to cover the injuries, hide the damage. He realizes his mouth is watering from the smell of the blood and forces himself to swallow down hard so he won't be sick. Coppery taste on his tongue just from the scent of it and he remembers that, too. Recalls the nights he laid in a bed in Sunnydale, beside a girl who smelled like vanilla and pennies, and he longs for those mangoes again, and thoughts of peaches and homemade ice cream.
end
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