Lar ||| Buffy & Angel

Reconnaissance
by Lar

EMAIL: HERE
RATING: R (language, violence, sexual situations)
COUPLE: Riley/Graham
DISCLAIMER: All the pretty people belong to Joss. Pity.
SUMMARY: Eleven months, and time changes little.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to Sam, Katie and Zahra for chat and encouragement. Thanks to ethrosdemon for beta as always.

-----

He got used to killing much faster than he's really comfortable with. If he thinks about it, and of course he doesn't. He had one moment there when they infiltrated the first nest, when the bullets tore into demon flesh and there was no whoosh of dust, just the meaty thud of bullets ripping holes in muscle and shattering bone. Wet, thick sound of blood hitting the dirt, bodies hitting the blood. One brief second when he hesitated, finger lightening its pull on the trigger because this was not what he associated with //slaying// killing.

Then it passed.

He killed most of the nest himself, his knife to their throats when the bullets ran out. Snapping necks when he lost the knife. Pulling the things off his men, not caring if one of the demons turned around and ripped his throat out before he could take it down. They sent him a medal from Washington. It sits in a black velvet box in his footlocker, and he refuses to look at it at all.

He's off the vampires, of course. Not something he can hide here in the company he keeps, and although he knows there's a place for special clientele like him... he can't go. Not Riley Finn, Decorated Hero. No, sir, no addictions here, sir. Just good old American boy next door. Solid and trustworthy and true. Apple pie. Baseball. Cornfields.

The scars used to itch at night. He doesn't remember when they stopped, but he thinks it's right after the award-winning massacre in that nest. Washed in blood, the whitened, raised patches are suddenly just skin again and no longer markers for his need and failure. They're battle scars, same as the ones on Graham and Tucker and all of the other members of the company. If his resemble specific dental patterns that any raw newbie can spot from 100 paces, no one is saying a word. Not to his face, and certainly not within Graham's hearing distance. Not since one particular newbie made the mistake of theorizing on the origins of Riley's scars and ended up with a cracked rib and a broken nose.

Poor kid, apparently he got disoriented in the woods. Fell into a ravine. Good thing Graham has happened along and found him. Sir.

Graham has been his point of reference since they arrived. When he isn't sure how his behavior is lining up, he looks to Graham for a reaction. Soon enough he gets the hang of it again, command of the platoon becoming easier with every order given. Every recon taken. Every report typed. He still looks to Graham for other things, and that habit has been easier to fall back on than anything. Warm body to respond to, mouth that meets his own, mutual need for the physical release. Blue eyes and dark hair and different/familiar enough to be just what he can handle. It's not love or anything resembling that emotion, but at least it's honest in its simplicity. Need. Release. Satisfaction on the physical level. Eleven months go by in a wet blur of jungle, blood and covert meetings in the showers in the middle of the night. When the moon is full, blood and semen both look the same when they spill, silver in that cold light.

He tells himself that he's over it all; that everything pre-Belize is dealt with. So he had a bad relationship. Not the first time he split up with a girl, not even the first time he said those words to one. Everyone gets fucked over; it's life. Eleven months to work through the break up, the vampires, to get back into what he is supposed to be doing with his life. His career, he's got potential, they all tell him that. Knows that they have their eye on him, or he'd never have been taken back in, let along given command of this unit. Every now and then, he thinks back to the Initiative //Maggie// and wonders what else they might have done to him that hasn't gone bad yet. If there's a few other little gifts under his skin, in his brain, that are made of better stuff than the one he removed himself.

//Chips all around, is it? Looks like someone bought the party pack// Spike's voice in his dreams, and he can't move again, stuck there, controlled by that little piece of metal and wire. In the dreams, when he pulls out the chip, he still can't move because there's not just one, there's a hundred of them, a thousand, and he wakes up sweating with his skin trying to crawl off his body.

But yeah, he's over it all. Sure.

-----

The packet of papers hits his bed and fans out, neat arc of white covered in badly copied typeface. Graham's face is carefully composed when he says, "Thought you might like to see this." He won't answer Riley's questions, just points to the papers and watches Riley as he scans them. Knows when Riley finds her name there, it's in the line of his jaw, and the way his tan is suddenly paler. The way his eyes go hard and cool and very much not-there.

Graham patiently waits for Riley to start again, to read every word this time and not just shuffle through it.

Riley taps the papers into a neat pile against the bed. Lines up the corners, all the edges just so. Then he carries them to the desk and deliberately tears them into strips. Pulls out a waterproof pack of matches and sets his little pile aflame. Graham considers offering his opinion, and then thinks better of it. The scars on Riley's neck are bone white, and they seem to float when he grinds his teeth, jaw working as he watches the ash rise from the burning papers. When the papers are gone, there's a pile of soot and a scorch mark on the metal desktop.

"I just thought you might like to know." Graham takes a step towards the door.

Riley stops him. "When does the team leave?"

"Tomorrow, sunrise. You're not on this team, Riley."

"I will be by sunrise."

---

But of course he's not, and sunrise finds him watching the chopper lift off from the pad, staring after it as it disappears and heads towards some much larger town, which the General refused to disclose to him. Final destination Sunnydale, something Brusher and the Colonel had tried to disclaim until he wore them down with his militarily correct insistences. The admission that he thought would bring him permission to join the recon team had earned him a polite explanation wrapped in the steel of an order he couldn't argue with. The brass pulled rank as no one had ever had cause to do with him before, and he'd felt himself shut down.

Now he watches the place where the chopper disappeared and wonders why he ever thought he'd go back there. Riley knows that he's being groomed for something more here, that they're testing him somehow and maybe his demands to be part of the recon are a piece of that puzzle. He thinks the fact that he accepts their refusal is a more telling bit of evidence that he's changing. Has changed.

//I'm an anarchist, sir.//

Long time ago and too far away to remember who he was when he spoke those words. When putting his fate in the hands of someone other than himself seemed the right thing to do, trusting some instinct inside that has whispered in his head for weeks now that she was the one. She was some higher force, and he was meant to be with her. He knows now that it was his own stupid, yearning heart telling him what he wanted to hear, overriding the logic portion of his brain as it reminded him time and again that he was just not enough for her and never would be.

The words of the report he burned into ash are imprinted on his inner eyelids and he can't erase those now. The things she's been doing, the *thing* she's been fucking....

Riley finds his way to the OC and starts trying to forget.

-----

Graham's hair is plastered to his head in the showers, the lines of his body starkly outlined under the fluorescent lighting while Riley pushes him against wet tiles and rolls his forehead against Graham's shoulder. Water, tepid and weak, dribbles from the shower head over them both. Mouth open, Riley breathes in the humid air, lets his fingers skate over the swell of Graham's hipbone and presses in again. Deeper. Harder. Graham rises on his toes with each thrust, silent and accepting of whatever Riley needs, of the thing he gives in return.

Acceptance in any form is precious to him now; Riley would see this if he applied the processes required to think it through. But too much tequila and too many memories have dulled his brain, synapses slow and firing at random. Warmth, heat, those things clear and strident as a need right now, knows on some instinctive level that this is something he can always claim here with Graham. And as he shudders against the body that still welcomes him inside, he tries to leave the place in his mind that tells him he wants more than this. More than heat, tight muscle, and groans that become his name at the height of climax. This is real, right here under his hand, around his body. He can touch this, feel it in his skin beyond the places where his heart tells him there should be more, something -- some one -- else.

This could be enough. And for now, it has to be.

-end-



back to top