Work Text
Lieutenant Colonel Everett Young walked down the street, a spring in his step. The light of the day had all but faded, a chill beginning to pervade the air, but he was too pleased with today's physical therapy session to notice. It had been four months since his plane had been shot down, his emergency ejection system failing and his belt locking him tightly to the seat as he'd plummeted into the ocean below.
He'd separated his right shoulder, tearing muscles and ligaments alike in his survival-driven madness to escape his bonds and get to the surface. He'd been lucky, the doctors had told him, to regain full motion of the affected limb.
He didn't believe in luck. No, he'd put in the work, had followed every medical instruction to the letter, spent hours upon hours working his body back up to peak efficiency. Next week was his field-readiness evaluation, and he was confident he would pass with flying colours. So confident that today he'd forgone his car and walked the five klicks to the Air Force medical centre. After an intense physical therapy session the walk back had been a little more challenging, but he was pleased to say he'd made it without sweating through his clothes, his house coming into view around the corner.
He swung the small side gate open and began the circuit of his front yard, the muscle memory ingrained in the past three months to remain on the smooth paving stones as opposed to the uneven grass - lest he lose his balance under the sheen of his pain medication - still present even though he'd been weaned off the pills completely.
He was thinking about which of the women who worked at the clinic he'd ask out now he was back on his feet and willing to focus on something other than his own physical health. Jenny the physical therapist had already had her hands all over him. Pat at the front desk was cute in a sort of would-be-very-grateful way. Sabrina the pharmacist always smiled just so at him. Rachael the technician looked like she'd be willing to get down and dirty with more than just machines.
He was pulled from his thoughts when he reached his car, almost completing the right angle turn to take him up the path towards the wooden steps of his front deck before something at the very corner of his vision pinged his attention. Looking through the wide gates that would open to allow the car in and out, he saw a man lounging against the brick wall the metal hinges of the gate were attached to. His face was mostly in shadow, Young just about able to make out too-long-for-regulation hair hanging loose around a set of skinny shoulders.
If it had been a woman Young would have stepped closer and asked if she was alright. As it was, he was tired and not in the mood to be asked for spare change, his voice sharp as he asked, "Can I help you?"
The man didn't speak. Or move. Or in fact breathe, Young thought, straining to see any exhalation in the evening-cool air and coming up empty. In front of his own face, his breath clouded comfortingly in front of him, a faint fraction of warmth against his lips before the night snatched it away.
"Get out of here," he said after it became clear he wasn't going to receive a response. "The hell you doing 'round here anyway? This is Vet Town." As dubbed by the locals when the Air Force had set up its rehabilitation facilities here, buying several streets of houses to accommodate its injured officers. The lanky frame of the man separated from him by cast iron gates was not one that belonged to a military man, that was for damn sure.
It was always possible he was a for-hire visitor, Young considered with no small edge of discomfort. Officers could get away with more than enlisted personnel after all, and it didn't take much for adrenaline junkie pilots to get bored when grounded for so long.
Young didn't have anything against them - had turned a blind eye to those under his command fraternizing - but he held no interest in men himself. Even if they did have long hair and a body that was short and thin enough that he imagined if one closed their eyes and didn't allow their hands to stray from the trim waist, one could pretend it was a woman beneath them. "I'm not interested," he managed gruffly, hoping the guy would take the hint and fuck off.
He felt momentarily guilty about the long walk home the man must surely be facing. Had he been kicked out after the deed was completed, the officer unable to face what he was doing when the frantic burst of lust had faded? Young knew something about regret in that regard. He'd always struggled for control when it came to women. He would have offered a lift home had it been a woman before him. Hell, he might even have invited her inside. He'd only ever paid for lap dances before, but there was a first time for everything and it wouldn't have hurt to break his dry spell on someone without the room to complain about his performance.
A random man wasn't his problem, however. "I'm not interested," he repeated. "You hear me?" He took a threatening step forward.
The man peeled himself smoothly away from the wall, swinging slim hips around in a hasty if somewhat sensual retreat.
Satisfied, Young turned away and proceeded up the path next to where his car sat. Now he was off the meds, he had a six-pack waiting for him in his fridge and yesterday's football game recorded on his TiVo. David was expecting his call and would have waited on seeing the game so they could watch it together. He would call his friend up and they'd spend a pleasant evening drinking and talking trash.
He got to the top of the wooden steps and froze, taking in the sight of the skinny man leaning against the inside of his porch. He was sure he'd switched on the timer for the porch light when he'd left this morning, but everything was dark and still as he and the stranger eyed one another.
Warily, Young drew himself up to his full height. "You picked the wrong neighbourhood to mug people."
Still, silence. It was damn unnerving, the air between them suddenly too thin. Young gritted his teeth. This was ridiculous, he chided himself. The guy couldn't be more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. There was no way for Young to lose this fight, even if the other man was armed. The space between them was a short enough distance to allow Young to lunge if a weapon was produced, and no street-thuggery would match up to his military training. Sure, he'd been out of rotation for a few months, but you know what they said about getting back on the horse and all that.
"Come on then," he taunted, sneering as he dragged his eyes contemptuously over the figure before him. "Are you even packing?"
A soft exhalation of amusement reached his ears, a huff through the nose that continued to produce no visible vapor despite the declining temperature.
The moment Young decided enough was enough and it was apparently going to be up to him to make the first move - on his own property, ambushed in the dark, by someone not from around here, he assured himself, the military police wouldn't be able to find fault with him no matter how much they wished it - the stranger was... no longer there?
Young frowned at the empty space that had, only a few seconds ago, contained a man. Not much of a man, granted, but a man nonetheless. There was nowhere he could have gone so quickly. The only avenue of escape would include vaulting over the deck railing and landing on the grass below. Even if the man had managed to time his retreat so perfectly with Young's blink, the deck was getting on and creaked something rotten. If it had been Young's house as opposed to supplied by the Air Force, he would have replaced the planks by now.
He ran a suspicious eye over deck, lawn, path, gates, car. Everything was exactly as he'd left it, untouched and stationary.
Scowling, his good mood ruined, he turned away, focused on just getting through his goddamn front door.
Behind him, the deck creaked.
He froze. It went against every scrap of his training, the ability to override his freeze-flight-fight response an integral part of what made him such a good pilot. But right here and now, standing in the chilly night air on a rapidly aging wooden platform, an instinct buried deep in his hindbrain screamed at him not to move.
Fingers, somehow colder than the air surrounding them, curled around the back of his neck.
He tried to strike then despite the voice in his head pleading with him not to, lashing out in a manner decidedly uncontrolled and far too animalistic for a decorated officer. If he moved in such a way during his evaluation next week, they'd fail him.
His elbow was caught at the joint, the raw strength behind the action easily stopping his attack in its tracks. Then he found himself unable to move again, this time straining against the hold to no avail. In his mind he thrashed wildly, but in reality he was as still as a statue as the hand slid up his arm, along his tricep, onto his pectoral, settling directly over his heart.
Pinned at the chest and at the neck, he was helpless to resist as a lithe body pressed itself against him, connection points at the back of his knees and the length of his thighs and across his buttocks and the small of his back and the intimacy of his scapulas and the slight soreness in his right shoulder complaining at the chill that followed the pressure. The rasp of stubble across the sensitive skin of his neck made him shiver, though not to the extent the lack of accompanying breath did, his system reacting to the failed expectation with nausea.
He tried once again to escape, to hit back or push away or something, but he was held immobile by some utterly foreign force, suddenly incapable of even drawing breath, the burn of his lungs barely being allowed time to register before a tongue dragged its way wetly over his exposed skin. It left a tingling trail in its wake and Young found himself mentally sagging without providing his body permission to do so, a comforting fog settling itself over his mind like a thick sweater. Apart from a single spot on the side of his neck, his body was wonderfully warm and relaxed.
The mouth pressed closer, right over the cold spot. It did nothing to warm it, but Young didn't mind. A powerful punch of pleasure hit him square in the gut as the sensation of sharp teeth sliding into his flesh overcame him.