#they have this pure masculine air to their friendship that they can't have with ko and private

[drawbauchery]

Search, Rescue, Pizza

fic by cartoons-tothemoon 

It wasn’t like Private was incompetent. He was a genuinely good agent, and as capable as anyone really expected a “new” recruit to be. There were even times where he was able to get the best of everybody else just because of his own understanding of their expectations of him and the skill he had when it came to reading his compatriots.

However, skill, experience, expectations didn’t determine how far removed from danger anyone could really be. If Skipper could be captured, even if it was during some off days, what does that say about the safety of everyone else?

Not the best of things to say the least.

———

Skipper didn’t know when Private was taken, but it had to be some time between walking home from a mission that left them overall in high spirits, and arriving at home only to realize something was off. Skipper generally lead the charge anyhow, and had been planning a movie night to celebrate the successful mission, but as he jammed his needlessly large bag of miscellaneous tools into the closet, he watched as Kowalski followed him to go to his lab for a quick five minute touch-up, and Rico walking as casually as he could so he didn’t look so whipped to Julien despite everyone knowing otherwise, but no Private.

Skipper peered through the doorway and glanced around their hall. Nothing. Nobody.

Maybe he got stuck talking to Marlene in the lobby? He was the one who delivered rent to her every month, he might just be getting a stern talking to right now, but it was nowhere near the end of the month just yet, and it’s not as if any noise complaints were reasonable at this point given that they practically had the floor to themselves.

“Hey, Rico. Private was behind you, right?” He asked, trying to sound casual, catching Rico seconds away from bolting to Julien’s room.

He shrugged. “Sh-should’ve been.”

“Should’ve been? Was he?”

“I d-don’t know, I w-wasn’t real-really thinking about it.” Rico sounded slightly a bit more terse at this, but he could tell that there was something about Skipper that seemed just a little off. Skipper wasn’t an inherently anxious person, but he was rather paranoid, and those two aspects tended to be a thin line to walk across. His bravado and confidence usually lead to him being perceived as more paranoid than anything else, but the tightrope he walked seemed to sway in the anxiety direction just then as Skipper began to tug at his lip, a nervous habit he must’ve picked up from SOMEONE, but Rico didn’t know who, though it did explain why Skipper seemed to be always sporting a split and bloody lip from a “recent scuffle,” something that seemed to make Private dote on him more than usual.

“L-Look,” Rico sighed. “He pr-probably got s-sidetrack-ked on the walk ho-home. He p-probably s-saw one of those dre-dresses or horse d-dolls that he l-liked and stop-stopped by a sh-shop. Sim-simple as that. Wouldn’t be the f-first time” On some level, Rico thought that statement was a lie, a reasonable lie, but still a lie nonetheless. However, the statement calmed Skipper down somewhat, worrying or speculating about where Private was, wherever he may be, didn’t find him. If he calmed down and remained rational, or at least, rational for him, he’d be able to plan from there, and find where he might be.

The question at this point was more to see if Skipper would take the bait for it and understand the hidden meaning. It’s not like Skipper looked to Rico for emotional guidance, and communicating with him was always far more difficult than someone as direct and open as Julien.

It seemed as if he did, at least, as he blinked once or twice and pulled his hand away from his mouth, opening and closing his fist a few times before digging through his pockets muttering, “he better have charged his phone this time around…”

Rico watched as Skipper nervously navigated his phone to contact Private, the only reason he did so was due to the fact he wasn’t sure if he was dismissed yet, and the last thing he really wanted to do was leave Skipper unstable like this as well as alone at a time like this.

Skipper pressed a button to put the phone on speaker, and listened as it rang.

RING….RING….RING…

Skipper felt his hand shake with minor violent tremors as he waited in anticipation. On some level, he knew it was stupid to be this worried. Rico was probably right. Hell, maybe Private even stopped by the theatre for some popcorn, you know, the authentic stuff for their movie night, and they were all going to have a good laugh about this as Skipper worried over nothing, before he’d make them run wind sprints and-

“Hello, you have reached the mailbox of the cutest cadet in your little cavalry. I’m afraid he can’t answer the phone at the moment, as he’s a little tied up at the moment, but please feel free to give me your message at the beep. I’m sure he would LOVE hearing it…

…BEEP.”

———

Savio was a unique sort of force to be dealing with in the first place, rather distant from the field that the task force played in, as well as being a threat they acquired as a team, rather than somebody’s illustrious past coming back to haunt them.

Which, being honest, was a breath of fresh air for Skipper.

However, it meant a new level of Hell for Private. Maybe it was because of how kind and innocent and unassuming he was back before they knew of Savio’s true cannibalistic, drug dealing, hitmen hiring nature, but he seemed to take a liking to him, and that’s quite honestly the last thing most people would want in the first place. The fact that he’d send him love letters and dead rats made the process all the more creepy, and Skipper knew this.

“D-Did he r-really r-record a v-voicem-mail mes-message in 2020?” Rico murmured. “The excess.” It was a withdrawn way of making light of the situation that they seemed to be stuck in, not in a mean, disrespectful way, just as a way to bring Skipper down from the state that he seemed to be in now, which rendered him as an irritable wreck, the littlest thing could set him off.

Skipper’s knuckles clutched his phone in his hands hard until they turned white, and Skipper eyed Rico. Rico didn’t know what he was looking for, advice? Consultation? Something? Anything? He was the wrong person for all these things and both of them knew it. So he gave him something he could work with. That’s all he could do, really.

“Y-you’ll be f-faster alone.”

That seemed to relax Skipper immensely. His grip loosened, he let out the breath he was holding, and he resolved to grab his coat and headed out the door. He gave a solemn nod to Rico, which was his way of saying, “hey, thanks for that back there,” and Rico returned it with a finger gun that said “no problem.”

It wasn’t very communicative, and it reeked of a weird machismo that didn’t permeate the group dynamic of anyone else in the group, but it was theirs, and it worked.

Skipper slammed the door and could be heard running down the hall, and Rico, a little shaken at the events that had occurred, simply watched the closed door with a blank expression on his face.

Skipper seemed off as of late. More secretive or less, he couldn’t even be certain of that. But, regardless, it wasn’t his place, and he was sure Private could handle it anyhow, so why try?

If Skipper really wanted to talk to him, he would. Not that Rico thought he was one of those people people talked to about things anyhow.

Rico pondered such a thing for a time, but shrugged it off to go see his lovely boyfriend.  There was only so much he could really do anyhow, so why stress? Was he worried if Skipper could handle it on his own? Maybe slightly, but it was also Skipper he was talking about. If he was the group’s Swiss army knife, Skipper was something else entirely. Not only capable of wielding the multi-tool, but so many other trades and tricks and hats that Rico was certain he didn’t know them all. That’s fine, he had some skills he hadn’t demonstrated to Skipper either. It’s not like he needed to know anyhow, that applied to him and Skipper. And besides, getting back to the matter at hand, If Julien was taken from him, he’d want to handle matters on his own, too. Nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with keeping it in the family, so to speak.

———

If there was one sort of unsavory character Private loathed outside of your general garden variety thug and the occasional badger, it had to be Savio. If Skipper and Hans gave off the vibes of feuding ex-lovers, Private was sure he and Savio gave off the vibe of a drunk guy flirting with a girl at the bar who’s clearly uninterested. That’s because that’s basically what those two relationships were, especially since Savio had cracked open the wine coolers.

Unlike most of their “visits,” Savio wasn’t so much as present. Private figured he had to be somewhere, but, as far as he knew, three random rough-looking guys had pulled him down an alley, put a bag over his head, tied him up, and were dangling him over a dangerous pit that Private figured was filled with the usual dangerous pit things - spikes, alligators, just being really deep and dark in general - but such items couldn’t be seen in the darkness of the warehouse.

Private figured it was Savio the minute the bag was removed from his head. Savio always picked seedy warehouses for kidnapping, considering he usually owned the companies that held the wares in the first place, so he didn’t have to resort to abandoned factories and the ilk like every other kingpin in the criminal underworld did, but, it’s not like knowing this really helped him. If anything, it reminded him of the dire straits he was in.

Savio was fond of him. It was a creepy sort of fondness that never brought him any sort of comfort, but, that just meant that the warehouse men had no predilections about roughing him up before dangling over the pit, and boy, could he really feel it. Especially in his head, if he wasn’t so aware of the dangers of concussions, he’d be trying less hard to stay awake in the hopes that sleep would dull the pain on its own.

He didn’t know what Savio was looking for, or even if these guys were working for Savio at all. But he wish he did. Ransom, victim, damsel…If he knew his role, it’d be all the better for him to understand what was going on, and his fate.

If only he hadn’t dawdled so much, maybe he wouldn’t be in this situation. Maybe if he wasn’t just regarded as slow and silly and cute, he wouldn’t have been captured at all. It wasn’t like Skipper or Rico were kidnapped. They were regarded as too dangerous to risk such a thing. Even Kowalski was considered far more capable than he was worth.

And that just left Private.

Poor, sweet, innocent, naive, helpless Private.

If he loosened the ropes around his wrists, he’d fall into the pit. If he fell into the pit, he has no idea what was lurking for him down there, or if the fall would be enough to kill him alone. And it’s not like he could swing to avoid the pit entirely given that the idiot henchmen never removed the bag from his head, honestly, how unprofessional…

Though, given his lack of sight, he was able to focus more on what he could feel, and at the moment, he could feel the tension on the rope getting more taught as something seemed to put a weight on the rope. It made his heart stutter in his chest from the fear of the whole ordeal, but there was no point in making a sound outside of the startled gasp that was muffled by the canvas bag over his head.

He felt whoever was climbing down the rope climb down to his level, based on how they hung on the rope. They wrapped their legs around them, and seemed to have one hand on the rope, and the other…sawing away at the rope that held his tied-up wrists. Private felt the rope becoming looser with each methodical swing of the blade, but it didn’t make him any more certain that he’d be safe. He could still fall, and he had no idea who this really was either. He supposed he HAD to trust them, if only because of what the alternative would mean for him.

He felt the rope loosen at last, and even though he tried to swallow it, he couldn’t help but give out a short scream before the figure had caught his wrist, which alerted the henchmen based on their muttering.

“Well, well, well, looks like we got some unfinished business to tend to.”

“Skipper?”

The figure, now better known as Skipper, swung on the rope with Private in one hand and the rope in the other, landing on the other side on his feet, even if Private didn’t do the same, and seemed to charge forward to fight the henchmen. That’s how Private was able to recall the events anyhow, given that he was only able to get the bag off after Skipper had already had the one of the other henchman in a sleeper choke, and the other was down, leaving only one to go. As soon as the henchman fell to the ground, Skipper was able to avoid a swing from a pipe by moving in close, landing a kick to the stomach, a knee to the groin, and an uppercut to the chin to take the guy out for good.

Skipper shook his knuckles distastefully as he breathed a sigh of relief.

“That’s always a good way to blow off some steam,” he muttered, and turned around to be met with Private running into his arms for a hug, almost knocking him off his feet. There seemed to be something very poetic about the idea that he was able to take down men twice his size in practically an instant, but Private could knock him out, and he’d fall apart. Of course, Skipper wasn’t really a poet, so such a concept kind of eluded him.

After a few moments of holding him close, Skipper pulled back. Private’s injuries were luckily, rather mild. A split lip here, a large bruise on his forehead there, and some tears in his eye. All things rather easily fixed, though, despite this, Private avoided eye contact.

“Let’s get out of here.”

———

On their way home, they got sidetracked. The whole atmosphere seemed to be off since they left the place, with Private refusing to even look at Skipper, though holding on to his shirt with a wrought-iron grip and Skipper feeling the need to fidget in a way that didn’t register as suspicious. Private wasn’t a fan of when Kowalski began picking at his nails as a nervous tic, and worked hard to break him of the habit. He was sure that Private wouldn’t be a fan of something that actually caused him to bleed.

They stopped by a pizzeria. To clean their wounds, to decompress, and to grab a bite, considering that they were both rather certain that Kowalski, Rico, and Julien were probably all asleep on the couch right now, even if they didn’t mention it to the other. Private sat down at a booth and after Skipper ordered two slices of pizza for the two of them and a lemonade for Private, he returned to the table with a small first aid kit to care for their wounds.

Private seemed tired. He seemed distant. This seemed very unlike him. He usually bounced back from kidnappings and similar incidents no problem, but tonight…felt different. Hurt differently. Skipper dabbed at Private’s forehead with more hesitance than he had before. Private sipped his drink.

“Are you alright?” Skipper asked, pulling back.

Private looked at him for the first time that night and nodded slightly.

“Are you sure?” He asked with more hesitance. These were very hard questions for him to ask in the first place, but the last thing he wanted was to neglect Private at a time like this, even if he considered this whole thing to be outside of his wheelhouse.

Private hesitated, but nodded again.

Skipper took a stab at the issues. “Kidnapping gotcha’ down?”

Private mumbled something before slumping onto the table.

“What was that?”

“I’m not worth this!” He said, a little louder than necessary before returning to his position at the table and crying. Skipper jumped at the loud response, but felt his heart go out to Private when he realized what was going on.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not worth ki-kidnapping…I’m not WORTH rescuing…This all happened because I was slow and distracted and, and-“

Skipper carefully lifted his face off the table, in a compassionate move that surprised even him.

“You should be worrying about yourself! Not me!” Private accused. “You look like you got totaled in that fight, your knuckles are bruised, your lip is split, your face is scratched, and it’s all my fault!” Private leaned back and continued to sob into his hands. Skipper brought his finger to his lip in a self-soothing motion. He didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know what to do…What would Private do if this was him? Would he ever be in a scenario where this would be him? Would he even be able to face him like that…

Skipper sighed, quietly. He got up from his side of the booth, and moved to Private’s side, where he had himself pressed up against the wall. Skipper bumped his shoulder against Private’s to make his presence known, but that didn’t stop the crying. What could he say to comfort him? That if he wasn’t taken a civilian would be? That would be comparing him to a civilian instead of a fully trained soldier in his own right…he wouldn’t dream of demeaning him like that…he pondered more.

“I saved you because I wanted to,” was what he settled on after an agonizing set of minutes. He stared straight ahead as he said it, not trusting himself to look at Private. This got Private to lower his hands and sniffle, not cry.

Skipper continued on. “If I really thought you weren’t worth it, I wouldn’t have rescued you the first time that this happened. But you are worth it, so I-we do.”

Private wiped his eyes.

“You’re valuable to the team in ways we don’t often acknowledge. You’re people smart, you know what people are thinking when I myself…can be a tad insensitive. You think outside of the box, I can’t think of how many missions were saved because you think so differently from us. You’re artistic. You’re sensitive. You’re compassionate.”

Skipper turned to Private then, seeing him staring at him with big blue eyes so filled with…something for him. “Quite frankly, why wouldn’t I want to save you?”

Private blinked a few times, and Skipper was nervous that he was going to cry again, but he simply rested his head on Skipper’s shoulder and closed his eyes.

“Thank you.”

Skipper himself, once he realized the situation he was in, contemplated things. He grabbed a sip of the lemonade, wincing when he remembered the cuts on his lips. He was going to have to get used to that. Private didn’t seem to respond in the slightest to the stinging sensation. He must’ve been tired.

Skipper sighed. What a night. What a town. What a place for them to be.

A few minutes later, some greasy teen who was clearly giving Skipper a look that read something Skipper didn’t understand, or didn’t trust, dropped off two paper plates with some greasy pizza on them, and walked back to the counter.

He was perceived. He was perceived and he was known. He didn’t know what he was perceived or known as, but he was nonetheless. It didn’t matter what they were or who or their situation or anything because this teen clearly had their own their own ideas. Surely, they must. And yet, the world didn’t stop.

The world didn’t end. Sure, the world seemed to be holding its breath, but that was purely because it was dawn. What about the world didn’t seem to be at a standstill at dawn?

Well, if the teen had their own ideas about who they were and who they must be, then was it so wrong for Skipper to allow himself to follow such roles? To conform to the ideals of a single member of the masses just once?

Of course, that was the justification he gave himself in order to allow himself to stroke Private’s head in a soothing, comforting sort of way, after he had long since fallen asleep.

The city that never slept seemed to be allowing them to have their moment, just this once. Skipper never felt more tired, and yet more awake at the same time, as he made a silent vow to make sure that Private never felt that he wasn’t worth saving ever again.

(Gosh, I’m so sorry this took so long! This was supposed to be for Valentine’s day believe it or not. I’m glad I got to show Rico and Skipper being buds, in which their dynamic is like they’re straight dudebros, but also gay which makes them more aware that they’re doing this machismo thing on some level? Like they clearly care, but they also don’t want it to look like they care due to some baggage they have surrounding masculinity or something? I don’t know how to describe it, I think that might be a fun dynamic to play with.  Also it’s MY fanfic and I get to project the nervous tics! As well as applying stuff from my Tae Kwon Do class! Also this was supposed to be way less…sad? I dunno. I don’t know much at all.)

(Also! Apparently I’ve written 15,000 words of pining penguins? Wow…So this is my life now, huh? Could be worse.)

#cartoons-tothemoon #fics #pom #i can DRAW AGAIN #the matching pic was either gonna be this private #or rico and skipper being straight masculine bisexual bros #i love the emphasis on their friendship it's so cute #they don't WANT it to be cute but it IS #and you're right like #they have this pure masculine air to their friendship that they can't have with ko and private #they gotta maintain that dudebro-ness while also taking care of their boyfriends #and like what can i say about the rest #thank you for taking my favorite cliche and writing a beautiful thing with it #it's ;A; so romantic #skipper's whole speech and private quietly listening and taking everything in #don't quote me on this but i THINK they've got a crush on each other...? #also where did savio go #i'm gonna need some savio #and more troll voicemails #OH ONE MORE THING: NERVOUS TICS GOOD