by Aiden Bates
Trent snickered. "Come on, it's not that bad. And you, you've got guns all over the place! And bombs! You haven't got a leg to stand on!"
Mal had to grin at that. "Okay, true, but it's different. I don't go carrying an arsenal to pick up eggs and milk! Are they afraid the orange juice is going to fight back? Do they think there's about to be an oatmeal uprising in Aisle Six?"
Trent laughed and tickled Mal.
The more Trent told him about Virginia Beach, the more real it became. Mal could see them building a life there together. He hadn't allowed himself to think about a future, other than the next job, since he'd been a kid. Now he could see a home, with a kitchen of his own, and play space for the kids.
Funny how his mind had already bumped up the number of children in his head.
He still couldn't make himself truly believe that it would happen, but he couldn't stop himself from imagining. And he supposed there was no harm in setting himself up for such a future. He could create an identity, just for fun. He could always delete it later. He set up a new name, Malcolm Donahue. And he set up a bank account in Virginia, one that got regular deposits from some of the other accounts he had in various places. Mr. Donahue needed documents, so he created birth records, educational records, and even a driver's license.
He laughed at himself. It was all astonishingly simple. It might be a little harder to get a physical passport that would pass muster, but not significantly so. He didn't take that step, though. Not yet. They weren't there yet. Everything he and Trent were talking about was still just fantasy.
Dropping out of his life to go tearing off to America on a fantasy would be foolish, and selfish in the extreme.
~
Trent sat down with Chief at breakfast. It had become their routine. Chief would update him on efforts to bring Mal to America, legally, and Chief and Trent would discuss other steps they could take. "What gets me," Trent said, around a mouthful of potatoes, "is that this can't be the first time this has come up."
"It isn't." Chief curled his lip. "How many American soldiers and sailors brought home war brides, or war omegas, they met through the French Resistance or through the partisans? Times were different, then. The US was a more open country, more hopeful. Less willing to use human beings as political pawns."
Trent wasn't so sure about that, but he kept his mouth shut.
"The thing is, someone decided a few decades ago that people who had been involved with violence in any way had no business coming to America or being involved with US military personnel. I have no idea what they thought was going to happen." Chief shook his head. "So now there are a bunch of regulations and even some laws in place. I'm having a lot of trouble finding kosher ways to get around them to bring your boy to America."
Trent pinched the bridge of his nose. Sure, Mal had been involved with violence, but he wasn't violent. He was no different than a child soldier, really. "He's probably perfectly capable of creating a new name and a new ID for himself, but I'm not so keen on knowingly bringing someone into the country illegally."
"Yeah, no. We'd all get into trouble for that one, and I'm not talking about a slap on the wrist." Chief's lip curled, and he gestured to the room around him. "You'd never throw your team under the bus like that."
"No." Trent shifted uncomfortably. Mal was carrying his child, which made him family. But the SEALs were his family too. It was a bad situation.
"We'll figure something out." Chief sighed. "It might take a while, but we'll figure it out." He took a bite of his eggs. "Have you seen what he's done with White Dawn? He's ferreted out so much dirt about them we might as well call him Ferret."
"I don't think he'd care for that, Chief." Trent poked at his meal. What if they couldn't bring Mal back? What about all the plans they'd made?
What about the baby?
"I've only just convinced him to start hoping," he said. "I don't think that's something he was ever really allowed to do before, you know? If I can't deliver, if I can't get him out and give him and our baby a chance at a real life, I don't know what I'll do."
Chief shrugged. Trent knew the Master Chief wasn't apathetic. He was working his ass off to help Trent. There just wasn't a whole lot to be said right now. "We're doing what we can. It's like any other enemy, Kelly. We give it our all. This enemy just happens to be red tape."
Trent huffed out a little laugh, but he couldn't quite think of it that way. This "enemy" was his own country's legal system, which was somehow intended to protect.
He needed to trust. He needed to have faith in the process and in the Navy. They'd always had his back before, and he'd had theirs. They wouldn't leave him in a lurch now, not him and not his child. His father had fought and died for his country. His uncle had fought. Trent had fought. Everything would be okay, eventually.
The other guys knew, of course. There weren't a lot of secrets a guy could keep, being in each other's pockets like this. Most of them were supportive, with a healthy side of good natured ribbing. Trent didn't begrudge them that. A few were less enthusiastic. Lupo, in particular, came down on the side of those who thought the child and Mal should stay where they were.
"Look," he said. "I love you, you're my brother, but I mean the law is the law. If they weren't about to lift a finger for my mom or my baby brother after my dad got deported, why should they do a damn thing for Mal and his baby?" He shook his head. "I like the guy, and I do appreciate everything he did for me, but I just don't see why the rules should be different for him than they were for my family."
Trent didn't have a comeback for that. He could understand, in theory, Lupo's feelings on the subject. He couldn't necessarily relate to them personally, and he didn't want to. The whole reason he was working to bring Mal and the baby over legally was so he didn't have to.
Naturally, the Navy decided to help things along by pulling the team back to Virginia only two days after Mal and Trent had their talk. Chief gathered them in a conference room near their barracks to break the news. "Men, we'll be shipping out to Virginia tonight. You've gotten exactly as much notice as I have. You know the drill. Be ready to go at seventeen hundred hours."
The news hit Trent like a sucker punch to the gut. He waited for the rest of the team to clear out, and then he approached the Master Chief. "Chief, what about Mal?"
Chief tilted his head, just a little bit. "What about him?"
"Well, we can't just leave him here." His hand twitched at his side. He couldn't imagine going back to the States without Mal beside him. He just couldn't. Maybe their first meeting hadn't gone all that well, but ever since their second, Mal had become a major center of Trent's life.
"We can and we will." Chief pressed his lips together. "We may not like it, but that's the job. You wouldn't be able to bring him with you on deployments from Virginia, either. We'll keep working to bring him home from the other side, don't you worry, but we will follow orders and we'll follow them to a T. In fact, it's even more important right now that we follow orders and give them nothing to hold over our heads. More importantly, it's imperative we follow orders and give them nothing to hold over his head. Do you understand?"
Trent sighed. "Yes, Chief. I understand."
"All right. Good man." Chief patted his chest. "You're dismissed. Go to your boy. Explain what's going on. Make sure you've got a way to keep in touch with him, and make sure he's got what he needs to keep in touch with you. We're not going to let a little thing like the end of this deployment stop us."
"No, Chief." Trent scrounged up a grin and a salute and took off.
Mal was home when Trent got there, and he knew something was wrong right away. "You're never here this early." He sucked in his cheeks. "You're shipping out."
"What, you're psychic now?" Trent scratched his head.
"Just able to string two thoughts together." Mal snorted and let Trent inside. "I knew this would happen." He slumped his shoulders in defeat. "It was foolish to think it wouldn't."
"Well, it is part of t
he job. I'm a SEAL. Shipping out is what I do." He stroked Mal's face. "And when you make it to Virginia, I'm still going to be doing it."
Mal glared at the wall for a minute. Were they about to have another argument? Trent knew his lover had a hard time with the idea of leaving his current lifestyle behind. "Forgive me if I'm not feeling particularly confident at the moment."
"Yeah, well." Trent couldn't argue with that. He wasn't feeling all that confident himself, but he couldn't let Mal see. The guy hadn't had hope in a long time, maybe not in forever. Trent had to give Mal something to hang onto while he was gone. "It doesn't look great at the moment, but you know me and Chief are going to be working on this no matter where we are."
Mal screwed up his face. "Why would Chief be involved?"
Trent blinked. "I'm one of his men. We all help each other out."
"Okay, but won't this cause a problem for him? I don't want to get him into trouble. Or you," Mal added, "but you're kind of tied up in this."
Trent grinned. "It's America, not Stalinist Russia. It's going to be fine. We'll exhaust all of the possibilities we can find, okay? And we'll track down everything we can find. But we need to be able to stay in touch."
Mal nodded, and then he blushed. "That's a new one for me. Usually I'm trying to stay out of touch. It makes me too easy to track." He laughed a little bit. "It's such a weird thing to get used to."
"I can't even imagine. I'm used to covering my tracks, but that's a little extreme." Trent ruffled Mal's hair, and they made sure to exchange contact information.
Then Mal did something Trent didn't expect. He set Trent up with another account, a secret account he said couldn't be tracked or traced. "For my own peace of mind, keep anything sensitive on this account, okay? Use the other one to prove a relationship if that's what you're trying to do, but keep anything you wouldn't want your worst enemy to see on this account."
Trent committed the account and password to memory, although it seemed a bit odd to him. "Don't you think you're being paranoid here? We're lovers and parents to be. We're not super spies."
"I kind of am, remember? And something about this whole White Dawn thing has me very uncomfortable. I'm having trouble tracing the money, which is frustrating as all hell, but it seems bizarre that this organization could be as big and as violent as it is and neither of our bosses has heard of them before." He made a face. "Let's just try to be careful."
Trent still thought Mal was being ridiculous, but Mal knew more about this type of security than he did. And Mal might have a point. Organizations didn't get that big without showing up on someone's radar. How did the FBI not know about them, for example?
They made love one last time before Trent had to go. It seemed a little cliché to Trent, but he didn't want to pass up what might have been his final opportunity to bury himself inside of Mal and forget about the rest of the world for a while. They dispensed with the condom, because the horse was already out of the barn, and spent an hour committing every inch of each other's body to memory.
Trent returned to base, and packed up his few possessions. SEALs traveled light, for obvious reasons, but he'd picked up a couple of knickknacks here and there while they were in Souda Bay. At seventeen hundred hours they took their last meal on shore, then boarded ship. Their time in Greece was over.
The ship would take about a week to get to Norfolk. Trent and the rest of the SEALs helped out on board as much as they could, but the crew was a well-oiled machine and most of their job consisted of not getting in the way. Trent had a lot of time to think about Mal and everything he was missing about his time in Souda.
Mal was such a study in contradictions. He was brilliant, but had never
set foot in a school. He was strong and determined, but he couldn't see a life for himself outside of the Wolves. He'd sat around and dreamed of a life in Virginia with Trent, but as their gray ship sped toward Norfolk, Trent wondered how much Mal believed and how much he'd just been indulging Trent.
The week stretched out, an endless march of blue skies, swelling seas, and seamless days. The SEALs trained as best they could on board ship, but the close quarters and limited space left all of them chafing at their confinement. By the time Norfolk was in sight, Trent was ready to kiss the ground.
From Norfolk, they boarded a van to take them back to Virginia Beach. Once in Virginia Beach they debriefed, and went through a medical debrief as well. Then they were released.
Trent was home.
He got into his Jeep and drove the short distance to his condo. He didn't live on base. A lot of guys did, and that was fine for them. Trent had gotten a place in his uncles' complex. He wanted a place near them, just in case, and he wanted a place where he could retreat from military life.
The condo wasn't much. His uncles had sold the house where they'd raised Trent and his cousin after Jimmy had graduated from college, on the grounds they didn't need so much space and they were getting old enough that they didn't want to have to maintain a full-sized house. It was enough for Trent, and if it was going to be just him and Mal he suspected it would be enough for him too.
Mal would probably be okay with Trent’s condo. A guy who thought squatting in abandoned hotels without electricity or running water probably wouldn't turn up his nose at a two-bedroom condo with two bathrooms and an updated kitchen. At the same time, they were going to have a baby. Maybe it was time to look into something a little bigger.
Maybe Trent was putting the cart before the horse.
He slung his duffle bag into a corner of his condo. He dug his service weapons out and stowed them in his gun safe. Then, he stripped down and took a good, long shower. He'd showered on board, and even in Souda, but Trent had a ritual he performed every time he came home from a deployment. He locked up his guns, and then he took a shower.
He couldn't really wash away everything from the deployment. He couldn't scrub off the memory of seeing Lupo take that bullet, or of watching Baudin go down the way he had. All the soap in the world wouldn't erase the feeling of Baudin struggling under Trent's hands while Mal dug the bullet out of his shoulder. Trent could pretend, though. He could go through this ritual, this almost magical rite of purification, and the memories would somehow be stored in the back of his mind. He could crawl into his oversized, indulgent bed and let the memory foam mattress soothe him without jerking awake six times as memories overtook him.
Some guys drank. Some guys used drugs. Some guys lashed out against family members. Some guys sought relief in anonymous sex. Trent showered. Everyone had his own way of dealing. Trent's might be seen as healthier, but it was just another coping mechanism. He knew it, and he didn't care. As long as he woke up healthy and ready to do it all again tomorrow, that was what mattered to him.
Chapter Eleven
Mal knew, right down to the minute, when Trent's ship was due to arrive at Norfolk. He also knew, right down to the second, when the ship docked. The Navy was a bit of a challenge to hack, but it wasn't like Mal had shrunk from a challenge before. Sailing across the open Atlantic was scary. They used to give people wakes, before they set out, just because they weren't likely to survive the trip, didn’t they?
But the ship docked at Norfolk. Mal didn't expect to hear from Trent right away, and he didn't. He heard from Trent some ten hours later, when Mal was just sitting down to dinner with Morna. Just woke up. Made it safe to Virginia Beach. Thinking of you.
Mal sent him back a selfie of himself and Morna up on their roof deck. They wouldn't be staying long, but he might as well send a memory of the last place he and Trent had been together.
He and Morna packed up that night. "It's been nice to stay in one place for so long," Mal sighed. "You know, at the same address. Sleeping in the same bed. You know."
Morna curled her lip. "Ugh. Next thing you know you'll be wanting to get a house with a garden, maybe grow some roses."
"Roses aren't an inherently bad thing, Morna. They look pretty and they smell nice, unlike your laundry h
eap." He gave his sister a significant look, but he had to sigh in the process. He knew he'd never be able to tell her the truth. If things came through and he was able to go to Virginia — or he decided to run off to Australia or South Africa — he would have to keep it a secret even from her.
"So buy them at the store. It's not like it's really your money." She scoffed. "You took it from some bastard who didn't earn it anyway. Who's your target this week?"
Mal grinned. "Oh, Luke Smolak. He earned my ire while I was researching that hotel where White Dawn was staying. Turns out he donates an absolute ton of cash to organizations that try to 'honor traditional American values, and bring back America's strength.'" He snorted. "He's been donating an awful lot to Red Beard dot org for the past few weeks. He'll never know the difference."
Morna scratched at Mal's beard. "Yeah, sure, unless he meets you."
"If he meets one of us, it would be because things had gone very badly for him, very quickly." Mal waggled his eyebrows. "If he makes that connection in the ten seconds before he dies, he's welcome to it." He didn't have to fake his laugh this time. "Alright. Where to this time? I kind of feel like we've worn out our welcome in Greece."