by G. D. Cox
And that was pretty much that for his very first, very pathetic attempt to come out in any way to his dad. Or anyone else on the planet. In twenty-four years or so, he'll be able to think on it with a head shake and a wry smile to himself, a far more experienced, worldly and accomplished man with multiple long-term relationships with women and men under his belt. Not to mention a fulfilling marriage. To another man.
But at sixteen, no, he wouldn't know any of that was coming his way yet. Two years later, he still didn't know all that, although what he did know was that his application to the Military Academy in West Point, New York was accepted. For his parents, it was inevitable that he would succeed due to his far above average high school record, brilliant performance for his ACT and SAT Reasoning tests, his involvement in various community and athletic clubs in school along with plenty of letters of recommendation and a nomination by an Illinois Senator (who, in just four years' time, would vote against the Defense of Marriage Act with thirteen other Senators to Phelan's pleasant surprise).
The infallible faith of so many people in him scared him more often than not, more than he liked to admit. They didn't know what he was under all those academic and sporting achievements. They didn't know that he wasn't like most other guys.
For some inexplicable, crazy reason, that was more petrifying to him than facing down a loaded gun and getting shot.
"Pa, keep an eye on Ma, huh?" he asked his dad eighteen years after his birth, his arm around his mother's trembling shoulders while they stood near the boarding gate for his flight to New York. His parents had gotten gate passes to accompany him all the way here.
Ma was weeping silently, wiping her damp, more-red-than-blue eyes with some tissue paper. It was the first time that Phelan would leave home for months on end. For years. There was the possibility that he wouldn't be coming home for years more after that, what with his plans to become a Ranger. There was the possibility after that that he would never come home. That it wasn't him but his corpse that would, in a flag-draped casket.
But this was the path he'd chosen. This was what he wanted, what he had to do.
"Of course I will," Pa said gruffly, and both of them ignored the glistening of each other's eyes. "You'll be great, son. We know it. We believe in you."
Phelan, knowing now just how monumental and scarce such words were in this vast, unfair world, knowing just how many people would never hear such words from such loving, loyal parents, replied as gruffly, "Thanks, Pa. Thanks, Ma."
"I can take care of myself just fine! I've been taking care of the two of you for the last eighteen years!" Ma said, smacking him on the arm, smiling broadly even as she wiped away another tear and the three of them laughed together. It was a united sound that gave him strength, that told him, this isn't goodbye, this is just another stepping stone, another step closer to being one of the good guys.
The next four years at West Point passed by like seconds. For his parents, his teachers and instructors, it was inevitable that he would graduate with top grades, top fitness, earn his Airborne and Air Assault badges and ace all his training - including a stint in Chile to learn how to survive and battle in mountainous terrain, and the two-week Pre-Ranger course - to receive his choice of branch in order to be a Ranger: Infantry. There was the nineteen weeks-long Infantry Basic Officer Leadership Course in Fort Benning, Georgia. Then there was Ranger School, the sixty-two-day combat and leadership course with training in various camps in Georgia and Florida, the most intense and challenging Phelan had undergone yet. Then there were the three years of serving as an Infantry Platoon Leader. Then there was his application for a Ranger assignment with his Brigade Commander's high recommendation. Then the Ranger Board. Then the Ranger Orientation Program to weed out anyone who didn't have what it took to be in the 75th Ranger Regiment.
Phelan had what it took. He reveled in every second of the constant, punishing physical training that made him wiser, stronger, better. Even joked to his dad during a call home that it was probably some kind of sign from the universe that the remote training area for the program was called Cole Range.
"You were destined to be there and own the place, son," Pa joked back, his low, resonant and familiar voice a balm on the loneliness Phelan felt deep within his chest where no one else could see it.
Oh, he'd made friends in West Point, to be sure, as well as here in Fort Benning. He was indeed liked and respected by his peers wherever he was. The only problem was, he was also pretty sure that they liked and respected him because they didn't know that one little secret about him. That one little secret, that he had absolutely no doubts about now, not after catching himself also looking at other men the way straight men looked at women. Looking and thinking about men too while he had his hard cock in hand, clamping a hand over his mouth while he came.
But by now, he had his poker face down pat, one that easily rivaled his dad's. He was damn good at keeping secrets. He was a good guy, and he was a genuine, tough fucker who'd proven himself over and over.
It was inevitable that he would graduate as a new Ranger, donning his hard-earned Black and Gold and his tan Ranger beret, and receiving upon his shoulder the scroll of the battalion he would be assigned to on a sunny morning at the Ranger Memorial. Ma and Pa were of course there to witness it, flying in from Chicago for the ceremony. After it was over and they were hugging each other, Phelan discovered with a start that somewhere along the passage of his existence, he'd become taller and brawnier than Pa. His hands were bigger than Pa's. The muscle that once corded Pa's arms were now cording his, making them strong, strong enough to hold Pa and himself steady when Pa tripped on the sidewalk on their way into a restaurant in uptown Columbus.
There were wrinkles on Pa's and Ma's faces where there weren't before. Ma's long, dark hair was streaked with gray and white strands. Pa's thin hair - a forewarning of the future fate of his own still dark and somewhat thick hair - was completely gray. They walked slower now, still grasping each other's hands like they did when he was just a kid. Ma's joints ached and so did Pa's. They didn't see too well either, which was why Pa wore those black, browline glasses now and Ma would squint at the menu and then ask Phelan to help her read the words on it.
Ma and Pa were growing old. There was going to come a time when they wouldn't be able to fend for themselves anymore. There was going to come a time, sooner or later, when he couldn't be there for them when they needed him. The world wasn't going to get any better - this, he would be reminded of acutely as he watched the September 11 attacks live on television a few years from now - and it was still such a fucked up place with so much evil in it. So much evil, and fewer and fewer good people to fight it, it seemed to him.
More than ever, he had a duty to do something to help make this fucked up, evil-laden world a better, safer place for good people, somehow.
So when Pa had said that he was destined to be where he was, Pa might have been more right than he could have ever imagined. If he hadn't gotten into the 75th Ranger Regiment precisely when he did, he would never have been acquainted with Nathan Fabry, the man who would become his oldest best friend, the most terrifying bastard he'd ever met and the future director of the Global Anti Terrorist Force.
When they met in 2000, though, Phelan - or Cole, as he's more regularly referred to these days - had no idea that the Global Anti Terrorist Force even existed. It was such a classified military counter-terrorism and intelligence agency that only very select individuals vetted on a global level were approached for a position in the agency. Apparently, in Nate's books, he made the cut.
"You've caught the eye of some very powerful folks, Boots," Nate said to him over a couple of beers in a dimly lit bar in New York City, the two of them back on American soil after a successful raid in Afghanistan. "You thought the 75th was it for you?" Nate's ivory white teeth flashed in a wide grin that contorted the old scar marring his lower left cheek and jawline, a scar that did nothing to lessen Nate's neatly trimmed and goateed handsomeness. "Na
w, son, the GATF's got plans for you."
"What are its plans for you?" Cole asked, taking another sip from his half-full pint glass.
"I'll be the next director." Nate caught his eye with heavy-lidded, piercing, brown ones and said, "And I'll need someone I can count on to be at my side when the time comes."
Cole knew what Nate was asking of him. They'd only known each other for a year, but within that time they had regularly trained together as Rangers and saved each other's asses more than once from certain death. They looked out for each other. They trusted each other, enough for Cole to confess to Nate about his bisexuality (and receive a hard smack on the head for daring to assume the worst about Nate). Once Cole joined the GATF with Nate, there was no going back to the army. There was no going back to the life he knew. Ever. Yeah, the pay and benefits of a GATF agent were excellent, but if what Nate had told him so far about GATF missions was anything to by, the stresses and risks of mortality of the job were insane. And he'd yet to go off on the missions themselves.
Covert rescue operations in war-torn countries with the possibility of zero backup? Assassinations of entire terrorist cells? Abductions of enemy secret agents and key figures, recruiting them into the GATF if possible? And agents had no culpability if they had to resort to torture of enemy combatants or worse to obtain crucial intel and achieve mission objectives? And all this was sanctioned?
Jesus.
The more things changed, the more things stayed the same, didn't they?
Cole stared back at Nate who awaited an answer. He thought about the men he'd befriended in his battalion, in Ranger School and West Point. He thought about his high school friends, those with whom he still kept in contact. He thought about the people throughout his life who'd placed so much faith in him to do the best he could in everything he put his mind to, to be good. He thought about his parents who were still in Chicago, still living in their single family, A-framed home on a serene, tree-lined street in Lincoln Square with its limestone stairs, oak hardwood porch deck, brick-paved backyard and two-car garage.
He thought about how he will never speak to so many of these people again. He thought about how the GATF will remove all public records of him, how it will erase him from the eye and mind of the world until it's as if he never existed. He thought about how his parents will have to speak of him and to him in constant secrecy, only on heavily secured lines, only coming home when he won't be endangering them in any way. He thought about how GATF enemies may hunt him down, hunt his family down anyway despite every precaution.
And he thought about a mild, spring afternoon over twenty years ago on the whorled, hardwood floor of his childhood bedroom, playing with toy cars with Pa. Seeing Pa smile at him with those shiny, proud eyes.
"Where do I sign up?" Cole said to Nate, his lips quirking up in a slight smile.
Nate's response was to grin at him again, an even wider, triumphant grin that seemed to glow in contrast to his dark skin. He huffed out a laugh (just like Pa, Ma would say) when Nate slapped him on the upper back and cheerfully ordered another round of beer for them. Heh, of course Nate knew he was going to say yes. The asshole wouldn't have bothered to ask otherwise. Nate knew him too goddamn well already.
Funnily enough, the first year in the GATF was almost a breeze compared to everything else he'd endured in the army. Within that year, he and Nate established that they were not to be messed with and took their roles very seriously, especially Nate as the agency's new director. Cole had private concerns that other GATF agents would cry favoritism due to his close friendship with Nate, but Nate silenced any accusations soon enough by assigning him some of the most arduous missions in the agency's history. He didn't let Nate and the GATF down. Not once.
In the seven years after joining the GATF, while Nate became known in the agency - and to other military and spook agencies privileged enough to know of it - as the scariest muthafucker to walk the planet, Cole cultivated his own formidable and no less impressive rep. His friendship with Nate that once seemed a disadvantage was now an advantage instead. Sometimes just being known as Director Nathan fucking Fabry's right-hand man was enough to get knees knocking and things done fast and fine. Nate gleefully fanned the flames after a mission in Yokohama, Japan involved a five hour-long clash with ninja assassins who were armed with honest-to-god poisoned, steel shurikens and ninjatō and electrified whips.
"Yes," Nate would say with his now patented glower, "Agent Cole did indeed incapacitate the lead assassin by throwing his tie clip through the fucker's eyeball and into his brain."
It was true. He was just glad Nate usually skipped the details of how he also had fractured ribs, poison surging through his veins and blood pouring into his eyes from a head wound that rendered him temporarily blind when he threw his tie clip. It was luck, really. He was more annoyed than anything else that yet another three thousand-dollar tailored suit was ruined in the line of duty and that he had to lose one of his favorite tie clips inside a ninja assassin terrorist's mangled brain. (Ma bought it for him for his thirtieth birthday.)
By the time he was a top-level GATF agent - with Nate being Level 10 and him being Level 9 below Deputy Director Aini Bhargava - he was ranked as the second scariest muthafucker to walk the planet. He was also being frequently cajoled by the first scariest muthafucker to become a handler and finally take an asset under his wing.
"Come on, Phelan," Nate would growl at him, aiming at him that glower that'd caused newbie agents to piss themselves before. "Stop with the self-deprecating bullshit about how you wouldn't be a good handler and just pick an agent, already. Do you know how many damn requests I'm sent everyday by agents begging me to assign them to you?"
Too bad for Nate, he was immune to that patented glower. (It came with the territory of being Nate's best friend and having seen Nate drunk off his ass wearing only tartan boxers and a lopsided Santa cap during their Ranger days.) He refused to pick anyone. He didn't want to be a handler. He was doing just fine as a senior agent and didn't need a partner, goddamnit.
But Nate, the asshole, picked one for him whether he liked it or not.
And he met Agent Clyde Barnett, codenamed Long-Shot.
The twenty-eight-year-old man who swaggered into Nate's office in the GATF's imposing, towering and tech-cloaked headquarters in the center of Manhattan was the opposite of Cole in almost every way. While Cole had dark brown, thinning albeit styled hair, Barnett had luxuriously thick and spiky, blond hair the color of wheat at sunset. (Cole would later find the comparison rather apt after discovering that the younger agent hailed from Missouri.) While Cole was clean shaven with a face he'd ofttimes been told was classically handsome even with his slightly crooked nose (as a result of it being broken once in close combat), Barnett had a rugged yet very attractive face with large, wide-set blue eyes that reminded Cole of a lethal big cat's and a prominent yet charming nose that was very likely broken in the past too, judging from the side view of Barnett's face.
While Cole was typically attired in tailored suits with silk ties and Italian leather shoes, Barnett was attired in a custom-made, sleeveless, high-necked outfit of leather, spandex and synthetic fibers courtesy of the agency's intimidating, state-of-the-art Research & Development department. It had a black-and-red color scheme and was ballistic-and-stab-resistant. It was experimental and loaded with R&D's latest developments in streamlined, tactical protective gear. It was also skintight and allowed Barnett to flaunt a lean and fit torso, a splendid pair of muscular, smooth arms and an equally splendid pair of long, strapping legs in black combat boots. It was a body that, according to Barnett's GATF profile, was the result of iron-handed training since childhood in gymnastics, equilibristics and impalement arts (with various blades, bow and arrows) throughout a tour with the long disbanded Circus Majestico plus a troubled life of petty crime after leaving the circus at nineteen, always on the run from the law and criminals alike until the GATF snatched him up when he was twenty-six.
The one thin
g they had in common that Cole immediately noted upon standing up from his seat in front of Nate's desk was their height. Barnett was about five-foot-eleven, an inch shorter than he was.
The moment their eyes met across the carpeted floor of Nate's extensive and grandiose office, Cole fell. He fell hard.
Soon, however, he would find out what his new asset thought of men who weren't absolutely one hundred percent heterosexual. There were words that sometimes spewed from Barnett's lips that, from anyone else, would have earned from Cole a fist pounding to the face and then some. There was so much hostility from Barnett at the mere mention of the word 'gay' that Cole was damn glad for his mastery of an impassive face and of his temper.
See, this was far from the first time that Cole had come across a homophobic person. There were a fuck ton of them in the army. The Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy alone was proof of what the military and so many people in it thought about gays, bisexuals, lesbians and trans people (although three years from now it would be officially repealed, to Phelan's very pleasant surprise). It was one of the reasons he only came out to his parents when he was twenty-four, then later to Nate before they left the army and joined the GATF where he neither concealed his sexuality from his peers or broadcast it either. He didn't want to lie anymore about such an integral part of his being, but he wasn't interested in trumpeting it to the entire world either. It only mattered to him when the ones closest to him knew and accepted him as he was.
And Barnett? Well, Cole would be fooling himself if he said he didn't care about Barnett's homophobia, if he said something in him didn't ache every time Barnett's face scrunched up in thinly veiled disgust at any talk about non-heterosexual men. He'd be lying if he said he didn't care about losing their handler-asset relationship that'd turned out to be exceptional with a hundred percent mission success rate, about losing their friendship. And there really was one between them, slowly though determinedly sprouting like a tenacious Redwood tree from its seed in mercurial land despite Barnett's internalized homophobia.