by Aiden Bates
He knew he was being foolish. His lifestyle didn't lend itself to close, long-term relationships or even to close short-term relationships. It definitely didn't lead to romantic relationships with guys who had a security clearance in another country. SEALs were super patriots, too. They were the least suitable for relationships with guys like Mal. Even the logistics wouldn't work, never mind the ideology.
That didn't stop him from fantasizing as he drifted off. Sure, he believed in what he did, but did that have to mean he spent the rest of his life getting quick, harsh one-night stands and nothing else? Tonight had been tender. How often did warriors ever see tenderness? And okay, it had been kind of hot to have sex on the deck of a destroyer, under the stars.
But that kind of tenderness was a rare commodity in Mal's life. Maybe it would have been kinder to not have that. Trent didn't really feel all that tender toward him. He couldn't. Did Mal even feel that way about Trent?
He was here, wasn't he?
Ugh. He clutched at his stomach and rolled over. He was being ridiculous. Maybe it wasn't fair that he, and Morna for that matter, had to spend their lives alone. A lot of things in life weren't fair. The work they did let thousands of other people find their love and build their families in peace and happiness. That was more important than two individuals pairing off, wasn't it?
It would be selfish of Mal to turn away from his work to seek out the kind of love and affection he craved. Sacrifices had to be made. He hadn't necessarily chosen to make them, but how could anyone see what he'd seen and not jump into the fight?
They couldn't, not and still look themselves in the mirror.
Mal would continue to fight against terror and oppression. Sure, it would be lonely, but it was worth it. Trent would keep working for the American government, until he retired. Then he'd find someone suitable. Sure, he could be a tender lover, but he hadn't even known Mal long enough to actually love him.
Mal needed to get his head out of the stars. There was plenty of work to be done here on the ground. He needed to put his nose to the grindstone and do it.
~
Trent headed into the briefing room. He'd showered, but he could still smell Mal on his skin. It had to be psychosomatic, right? The kind of soap they used on ship would take anything off of a guy, up to and including the outer couple of layers of skin. He didn't literally have Mal's scent on him.
He just wanted to.
He slid into his seat beside Toledano. "Where were you last night?" Toledano leaned over and hissed into Trent's ear. "You sneaked out of your rack."
Trent squirmed. "It's not like I had an assignment."
"You had something." Toledano wrinkled his nose at him. "Let me guess — that Irish guy they brought on board."
"Oh my God, Toledano, would you shut the fuck up?" Trent glared at his friend as others filed in. "We're here on a job, dude. You get that, right?"
"Oh, I get it. Do you?" One side of Toledano's mouth slid upward in a kind of smirk, but there was no malice to it. Toledano was just being Toledano — nosy, and probably a little bored with life on the ship.
Mal followed Chief in, which probably gave him no end of pleasure. Trent and the rest of the SEALs frowned to see Mal coming into the room, but they held their tongues. If the Master Chief wanted them to know why he was bringing someone who was basically a civilian into the meeting, he'd tell them.
Mal sat down across from Trent, but there was no flirtation here. Instead, he was purely professional as Chief cleared his throat.
"Men," he said looking around the table. Five men were missing from the team, and Chief couldn't make his eyes linger in their spots for very long. The empty spaces felt weird to Trent too, like missing buttons on a favorite shirt. They would come back, Trent was sure of it, but it still didn't sit right to see those chairs empty.
"Men," Chief tried again. This time he had an easier time sticking with it. "I'd hoped to be on our way to Crete right now, but our associate here has picked up on some unusual traffic in the area of Kassandreia. He ran it by me and Lt. DeWitt, and we think it's likely to be relevant to our current operation, so we need to make a quick stop and check it out."
"Of course." Trent kept his face still. He wasn't about to complain about getting another day with Mal, not after last night. "Just one question."
"Yeah, Kelly?"
"Where exactly is Kassandreia?"
Mal's lips twitched, like he was trying not to grin. A couple of the other guys didn't even try. They just snickered.
Chief grinned. "Oh my God, Kelly, you can't find a town of twenty six hundred people in Greece? The fuck is wrong with you?" He nodded to Mal, and a screen descended from the wall. Mal pushed a few buttons on a keyboard Trent couldn't see, and a map appeared. "Kassandreia is a small town in the Kassandras peninsula. It's not far from here, and we'll be able to get in and scout it out pretty quickly."
Mal took over. "From what I can see, the land is marshy in the town itself, but the peninsula has good agricultural properties and a plethora of antiquities. The economy is mostly dependent on tourism now, although I think there are still some agricultural enterprises in the area."
Van Heel chewed on the end of a pen for a second. "What exactly did you pick up on, Irish?"
"That would be good to know, wouldn't it?" Mal smirked. "I found messages going back and forth between phones ID'ed as belonging to two men who were at the site you gentlemen just raided and another individual located in Kassandreia. When I investigated the site in Kassandreia, it turned out to be a hotel located near an archaeological site."
Buelen, who'd been fidgeting with his pen ever since he sat down, pursed his lips. "Yes," he said slowly. "The thing is, if their economy is mostly tourism, wouldn't most of their hotels be near archaeological sites or beaches?"
"You'd think, right? This particular hotel, however, is closed for renovations after a fire in April." Mal folded his hands together on the table.
Buelen narrowed his eyes. "You could have led with that."
"I could have." Mal smiled sweetly.
Chief elbowed him. "Enough. We're going in to investigate only. We're going to have to put in at Souda Bay, and I don't want to have any kind of an incident from taking prisoners. We'll split the squad. Six will go east, six will go west. We'll circle around the building, do our thing, and meet up back in the front. Got it?"
Trent didn't think it sounded good. He thought it sounded perfectly awful. It was the kind of plan that people came up with when they didn't have enough information and were stretching to come up with something. "Mal," he said, turning his head to aim it toward his new lover. "What can you tell us about White Dawn? Are they more of these keyboard warrior types, or are they something to be afraid of?"
Mal narrowed his eyes at Trent, and Trent's body got warm all of a sudden. That wasn't appropriate. He needed to keep his mind on the job, not on Mal.
"Well, considering they weren't even on our radar yesterday, I can hardly call myself an expert." Mal lifted an eyebrow at him. "That said, I did spend a bit of time awake last night, and I might have done some digging.”
"These guys do have a certain contingency of keyboard warrior types, mostly in Central Europe and poor Northern parts of the United States. That part of their operation is hard to distinguish from others like themselves. They post hate, mob women online and try to silence them, and have a lot of difficulty with science and facts. We haven't paid much attention because they're so hard to pick out from the others, and frankly the keyboard warrior types aren't something we worry about." He took a deep breath and rubbed at his temples.
"As it turns out, they do have a more real-world aspect to their operation." Mal pushed a button, and an image appeared on the screen.
Trent looked away. He was no stranger to bloodshed. He'd seen bombings and he'd seen their aftermath, but everyone had something that affected them more than other people. For Trent, it was kids. Seeing nine dead dark-skinned children lying on a beach, with the let
ters for WHITE DAWN carved into their chests, wasn't something he could handle right now.
Mal's voice shook a little as he picked up his narrative. "These nine bodies were found on a restricted beach near Sete, France. Local authorities managed to hush it up before the media caught wind of it because they didn't want to 'cause a panic.'" He glared at the screen. "I'll reserve comment on motivations. None of the bodies were ever claimed, and they were quickly cremated. European members of White Dawn seem to have strong feelings about immigrants and refugees making Europe 'unclean’, so there's no real reason to think they're being set up for this."
Hopper raised his hand. "What would guys like this be doing working with ISIS?" A couple of the other guys nodded. Trent didn't join in, but he shared the sentiment. He got the whole enemy of my enemy sentiment, but some lines just didn't cross easily.
Chief tugged at his collar. "I'm not sure I necessarily understand it myself. Of course, the day I can fully understand the mindset of one of these sick fucks is the day I need to retire."
The corners of Mal's mouth twitched, just a little. "Try not to think about it that way, Chief. Don't think about it in terms of skin color, or religion. What's the objective of the European white supremacist in the twenty-first century?"
Buelen lifted his chin. "An ethnically-pure Europe." He looked around. "They don't like immigration, especially not from Muslims."
"And what is it that radical Islamic terrorists operating in Europe want?" Mal scratched at his beard.
"They want Europeans to blame all Muslims for their acts. They want Europe to become unsafe for Muslims." Robson's jaw twitched.
"Right. So their interests coincide, for now." Trent shuddered as he spoke. All the world needed was for two varieties of bad guy to hop into bed together.
"Shouldn't this be something the higher-ups decide?" Van Heel scratched at his short brown hair. "I mean don't get me wrong, I'm all for going in and busting up some neo-Nazis or some ISIS goons. Whatever the job is. But it's not our job to decide what the job is, man. If we do that, we're not soldiers anymore. We're vigilantes, right?" He glanced over at Mal. "Er, no offense."
Mal held up a hand to show none was taken.
Chief tilted his head to the side. "Son, no one's saying we're just unilaterally taking responsibility for wiping out neo-Nazism in Europe. That's crazy talk. We did come here with a mission, and that mission was to deal with the terrorists looking to shoot down a damn plane. We're just following the evidence here. Now, I for one am not about to go marching back to Virginia Beach and looking our superiors in the eye and telling them, 'Well, yeah, we dealt with the immediate thing, and there was some evidence of another problem, but you didn't say anything about these guys, just the missile launcher, so we just came back home like a bunch of Marines fresh out of basic.’"
Trent snickered. The other guys joined in, even Van Heel, whose brother was a Marine.
"We're going to investigate. We're going to find out what we can find out about these sons of bitches and we're going to report back. We are not going to cause an international incident. Are we clear?"
"Aye, aye, Master Chief!" The SEALs answered with one voice. Mal didn't join in the otherwise universal shout, but he nodded and murmured his assent. That should count for enough.
"All right. We'll approach at night, so we're not as obvious. O'Donnell, you mentioned you didn't get much sleep last night. I can't give you orders, but I'm going to strongly encourage you to get a nap between now and then. We can't have anyone on the team who isn't pulling their weight." Chief turned to Mal, jaw set.
Trent blinked and decided he hadn't heard what he thought he'd just heard. There was no way Chief would be putting civilians on a team.
Chief looked around. "All right. Here's how it's going to go. Trent, you're going to lead the first team, the East team. You'll be taking Mal O'Donnell, Adami, Floyd, Van Heel, and Toledano. I'll take the second team with Morna O'Donnell, Buelen, Tinker, Robson, and Hopper. We'll head west. Meet up at twenty-two hundred and we'll head out. We'll go in ready for trouble, because we're not stupid, but we're not going to look for it."
"Roger that." Trent frowned. "Wouldn't it be better to leave the civilians on the ship?"
"When I find some civilians I'll be sure to wrap them up all nice in cotton wool, sailor." Chief gave Trent a pissy look. "In the meantime, I'll remind you that these folks are the whole reason you gentlemen were able to survive that last encounter at all. So let's not go calling names, 'kay?"
"Roger that." Trent kept his face neutral. He wasn't going to get anywhere by arguing, and he sure as hell wasn't going to get anywhere by questioning Chief's authority in front of the other men.
"All right. Let's break and prepare. O'Donnell, remember what I said about that nap. Meet me at nineteen hundred, with your sister, and we'll see what we can do about getting you kitted out."
The meeting broke up. Trent waited for Chief to follow the rest of the men out, but both he and Mal waited with Trent until they were alone.
Awesome. Trent's insides were doing an unpleasant little dance, one he couldn't quite fight down. Why was it he could walk into a firefight with a building full of terrorists with perfectly steady hands, but the thought of talking through a disagreement with Chief made him want to throw up? Never mind having to have this talk in front of Mal.
Chief lifted his chin and met Trent's eye. "I get the feeling you've got something you want to say, Kelly."
Trent rolled his shoulders. Cowardice hadn't gotten him anywhere before. It wasn't going to get him anywhere now, especially not with Chief. Somehow Trent didn't think it would earn him any points with Mal, either.
"I'm uncomfortable bringing the O'Donnells on this mission."
"I can see that." Chief crossed his arms over his chest. "I've been around for a day or two, you know."
Trent's cheeks blazed, and he couldn't make himself look at Mal. "Chief, I didn't mean to seem insulting. It's just — they're civilians."
"They did our job for us back in Alexandroupoli." Chief tilted his head. "Mal here has done more to get us intelligence about these White Dawn bastards than our own guys have done in a while. And they've both given us the slip before. I don't think they exactly qualify as 'civilians’, do you?"
Trent huffed out a little laugh. "Okay. Maybe not civilians, but Chief, they're not SEALs. They haven't trained with us, they don't know what we're talking about, or what we're going to do. I'm worried about friendly fire, on both sides. I'm worried about their ability to follow commands. I'm worried —"
"I'm worried about you not being able to set aside your personal relationship with Mr. O'Donnell long enough to work together." Chief smirked at him. "Unfortunately, we're short handed. They're here, they're willing, and they're experienced. They seem to be pretty good at what they do, and we've worked with locals in the past. This is what's happening, Kelly." Chief smiled at him, thin and a little harried. "I'll see you at twenty-two hundred." He turned on his heel.
Mal looked over at Trent. He slumped his shoulders, free from outside observation now. "I'm sorry," he said in a quiet tone. "I'm aware you don't want me here."
Trent grabbed his arm. "That's not it, Mal. That's not it at all." He leaned against the table. "I want you here. I like having you here. It's a little weird, and I won't pretend it hasn't been a little strange to get used to, but yeah. The thing is I like having you here." He gestured to the ship. "Out there? No. Hell no. The absolute last thing I want is to have you out there with bullets flying."
Mal scoffed. "You do know I'm out there in firefights on the regular, right?"
"Yeah, but not when I'm around." Trent braced himself on his arms.
"Historically that hasn't been the case." Mal winked. "I'll see you at ten." He sauntered out the door.
Trent watched him go. Since when did he get all protective of any one guy, anyway?
Chapter Six
Mal had always been more of an earthbound guy. He flew if someone
made him. He'd take a ferry if he had to. He wasn't necessarily phobic about flying, or about water, but he didn't seek out those experiences. He tried to stick to larger, more stable vehicles.
When he got into the small landing vehicle the SEALs used, which was essentially a large rubber raft, he vowed he'd avoid the sea for the rest of his days.
He didn't show his discomfort. After everything he'd had to deal with from Trent, he couldn't let any kind of weakness show at all. At least Trent thought Mal had some redeeming characteristics. Some of these other guys couldn't stop looking at him like a slab of meat, and meat of dubious origin at that.
He tried not to take it personally. They didn't know him, and they were used to working with known quantities. Throwing a random person into the dynamic between Mal and Morna could only mess things up for them, too.