Fort Lenordwood, Missouri was hot as hell in the spring, and even hotter in the summer which happened to be the time that Jensen Ackles arrived for basic training (11 page)

“Seventy!” King cried. “Twenty seconds, come on Furry. You got this!”

That seemed to push Brendon harder than anything else. His Drill knew he had it. He pushed out five more push-ups.

Ryan let out a rebel yell. Kenneth cheered and Patrick just smiled.

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The other three went through their push-ups easily, not coming close to Brendon's seventy-five but happy with their own scores.

They moved over to where Connelly was standing.

He didn't say much, just looked at Brendon and nodded. That seemed to do the trick.

Brendon was off doing sit-ups like a shot. Kenneth held his feet tightly, shouting encouragement at the little blond.

“Seventy,” Connelly called. “Fifty-five seconds.”

“Come on, Furry. You can't fucking quit now!” Ryan snarled when it looked like Brendon was going to have a hard time finishing.

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Connelly looked down at Brendon and said the only thing that would have made Brendon mad enough to finish.

“You gonna go back and tell that girl that you couldn't fucking finish, Furry?”

Brendon growled and pushed out the remaining eight sit-ups with ten seconds left to finish.

Kenneth hated sit-ups nearly as much as Patrick hated the run. Ryan knew this. He patted Kenneth on the back and nodded. “Fifty-three, you can do it, Kenneth. We know you can.”

Kenneth snorted. “Thanks, mom. If I do this will you have warm cookies and milk waiting for me?”

Ryan chucked him in the back of the head with a laugh.

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Brendon was still breathing hard when he grabbed Kenneth's feet. Their eyes met and a pact was made. No one, absolutely no one would flunk this fucker.

Kenneth finished with the bare minimal sit-ups required. He wasn't bitching, a go was a go.

They all flew through their sit-ups and push-ups. That was the easy part.

The run came next.

They all hated the run, every last one of them. The monotonous circling was enough to drive anyone crazy. Patrick's normally reserved demeanor was tense.

Ryan knew it was because this was his last chance to graduate with this class. He had to pass this one.

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Grabowski was the grader for this run. He looked over at Patrick and nodded. Like the other two, he greeted Brendon with encouragement. “Thirteen minutes, Furry. That's all you need. Do this and I'll personally give you a coin. You gonna do it, Furry?”

Brendon nodded. “Yes, Drill Sergeant!”

They were off with little fanfare. Ryan and Brendon were in the front. They kept pace with each other. Kenneth and Patrick were behind them. Way behind them.

“If Patrick fails we all do,” Brendon said suddenly.

“He's not…” Ryan looked at Brendon, for the first time seeing the man behind the boy.

He nodded and they both slowed way down. People passed them easily.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Patrick barked.

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“A perfect three hundred will suck if you're not beside us at Graduation,” Brendon said, dropping beside Patrick.

“We're finishing this together,” said Ryan. He felt the sudden urge to cry. He started to wonder if they could sound any more like girls than they did right at that point.

“This is a bad fucking cliché,” Kenneth said, but grinned at the other two.

Patrick growled and pushed himself a little harder.

“Come on, Smith!” Grabowski yelled when they came around past him. Ryan happened to look over and he could have sworn the Drill Sergeant was grinning.

This was no longer about Brendon scoring perfectly. This was about four boys who grew up together. If one failed they all failed, and that was not going to happen.

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Grabowski was shouting out times as each soldier passed. When the four of them passed he shouted the time. This time Ryan looked over and smiled when Grabowski grinned at him.

He noticed that the other two drills came over and stood with Grabowski the timer.

On the last leg of the two miles Patrick was huffing and just wanted to do nothing more than sit down.

“You will not fucking walk!” Brendon barked. This run was actually pretty easy for him.

“Fifteen minutes flat. We can fucking do this in fifteen minutes.”

Ryan had run behind Patrick. “You slow down and I'll run your ass over, Patrick, so fucking move!”

“You're not fucking quitting, Patrick. We're not letting you.”

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They were fifty feet away from Grabowski when others who had already finished their run began to shout encouragement at Patrick. Even King and Connelly were shouting at them.

They made it to Grabowski, who yelled. “Done.”

Patrick was huffing even worse as he jogged off the track. The other three were right behind him but looked back at Grabowski.

“15:12.”

They cheered and thumped Patrick on the back.

After the last man finished Grabowski walked around congratulating each of them.

When he got to Brendon he stayed longer.

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Ryan couldn't hear what was being said but he saw Phillip shake Murray's hand. He noticed tears welling up in Brendon's eyes. He would ask about it once they got back to the barracks.

Back in the barracks all four men were gathering their stuff for a shower.

“What did Grabowski want?” Kenneth asked.

“He shook my hand and said he was proud of me,” Brendon whispered and then held out his hand. In his palm was a silver coin.

Getting a coin from someone like Drill Sergeant Grabowski was a huge honor. It meant even more because Brendon had given up his goal of a perfect PT test to make sure Patrick finished the race.

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***

They were woken at three the next morning. Ryan wasn't surprised when they were ordered into BDUs. Their BCT was almost over. In six days they would all be heading to their individual schools. They would no longer be together and Ryan was extremely sad about that.

Kenneth. Patrick. Brendon. They were all his best friends. They were men who had taken everything BCT had thrown at them and come back for more. He was pretty certain that while high school friends were easily forgotten those three men would forever remain his driving force.

They were in formation and marched to a clear, open field. Once there they were ordered into an ‘open ranks’ formation.

Drill Sergeant Grabowski cleared his throat. “Eight weeks ago you came into this not knowing what to expect. You were all different people and acted like such. Over these last eight 195

weeks I had the privilege to watch you all grow and become a working machine. This is one of my best classes. I have been honored to be with each one of you.”

Ryan glanced down the line. Patrick was biting his lips to keep from crying. Brendon actually was crying and Kenneth kept blinking like he wanted to cry, but not in front of them.

“Now you men are United States Soldiers,” Phillip said, his voice strong and proud.

“Repeat after me!”

All of them stood a little taller.

As I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death! I will fear no Evil!”

“As I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death! I will Fear no evil!”

Phillip's face grew hard. “For
I
am the baddest motherfucker in this valley!”

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They repeated it at a dull roar.

“HOOOAH!” Phillip yelled.

“HOOOOAH!”
It was the first time they had been allowed to use the term. Each man was nearly giddy that the Drill Sergeant demanded they say it. It meant in
his
eyes they were
soldiers
.

Ryan on the other hand was crying like Brendon. All those weeks had changed him.

Suddenly it wasn't all about him. It was about the guys who he served with. The guys who he cried, bled and sweated with. This was what it was all about.

Grabowski, King and Connelly had done their jobs and done them well. They had broken each of them and remade them into men who would gladly die for each other. It seemed odd to Ryan to think of the Drill Sergeants as anything but evil bastards who wanted nothing 197

more than to kill them in their sleep. Now he thought of them as men who built character and team mates.

Grabowski was standing in front of Ryan. “Congratulations, Private First Class Gracin,”

he said, in his soft oh-so-sexy voice. He held his hand out and Ryan took it. He could feel the plastic tag slide into his hand. As he walked away he smiled one more time at Ryan. King and Connelly both congratulated Ryan and moved down the row with Grabowski.

“Congratulations, Private Smith.”

Ryan was crying. He didn't care who saw. They had made it. They were Soldiers.

Together. Even stoic Patrick was crying.

After the ceremony they were sent back to the barracks to clean and pack their bags.

Three days after, he was about to get the shock of his life during ‘Family Day’.

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***

The day was beautiful. Ryan knew that each man was excited to see girlfriends, parents or siblings. It saddened Ryan some that no one came for him. He had called home and told his parents he was graduating, but they claimed they didn't have time to come and watch it. So, unlike his friends, Ryan would be back at the barracks. Thankfully he wasn't the only one.

Drill Sergeant King came in smiling more than normal. Following him was a four-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl.

Ryan smiled. At one point he would have sworn that King was just a machine assembled at Drill Sergeant School but seeing him with his children made the man seem….human.

The Drill Sergeant laughed at something his daughter said.

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“Privates, I know it's hard to imagine that anyone ever willingly had kids with Drill Sergeant King,” Connelly said.

“Hims MY daddy,” the boy said, grinning wildly.

Jamie King stood off to the side. Ryan thought she was really pretty.

They had been in the formation for a while now. Parents and family members were mingling alongside each other, not saying much of anything, just grinning at their loved ones.

“DADDY!!” came the loud cry of a dark-haired little girl. Ryan figured she was Connelly's daughter, even though she didn't look one bit like him. That's when it hit him. The little girl was the spitting image of….

“Smidge!” Phillip said, wrapping his daughter into his arms.

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Ryan must have swayed or something because Patrick whispered 'steady' to him as he watched the two in front of him embrace. He noticed a pretty, petite, dark-haired woman standing at the side smiling at the two. He wanted to seriously cry. Then he wanted to beat the living shit out of Grabowski. What was it with him and finding the wrong freaking men every single fucking time?

***

Ryan didn't feel like going to the ‘Davis Club’ with the others who didn't have family show up. Instead he went back into the barracks. It had been nearly eight hours since he saw Phillip and his family together. He was still fucking miserable. Kenneth, Brendon and Patrick had almost stayed with him until he threatened to kick their asses. He wasn't a fucking girl, for 201

God sakes. He was thankful that Graduation was tomorrow. He couldn't stand the thought of seeing Phillip again.

The man, who had kissed the hell out of him, fucked with him and in general made his life unbearable was fucking married with a kid.

He noticed the Drill Sergeant's office door was open but didn't go in. Instead he just went back to his stripped bed.

He lay down on the bed that had been Patrick's and thought about his life. He didn't hear the heavy footsteps that stopped just outside his door.

***

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Phillip stood just outside Ryan's door. He smiled to himself thinking of the first time he had seen Ryan. He had decided to run over to reception and see what the new recruits looked like.

Bob had laughed about Ryan, calling the blond a little ‘twink’. Phillip agreed, but Ryan was easily the best-looking twink he had ever seen. Even if he was a four-eyes.

Ryan had run off the bus with his hair flying. Phillip remembered how his breath had caught. He had never seen a more beautiful man in his entire life. Right then and there he prayed that Ryan would be assigned to anyone but him.

When he noticed that Ryan had been assigned to his platoon he wanted to kill someone-

- or bend the young recruit over the couch in the office and fuck him senseless. Ryan nearly made his military bearing a complete sham. It had been over since Phillip had seen how beautiful Ryan's green eyes were. They were so clear and so youthful that it almost hurt Phillip to look at him.

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King and Connelly had teased him unmercifully about his 'crush' on the raw recruit. He had to make sure that it wasn't found out by the other recruits.

That would have been a very bad thing but it didn't stop him from kissing Ryan when he noticed him in the ‘Davis Club’ - a place where he shouldn't have been but had followed the four in like a guard dog.

The whole set-up during the combative came from Connelly. That fucking bastard.

Once Ryan's body touched his, Phillip had been a complete mess. After that it was less about teaching and more about rubbing against that hard body.

To say that he had taken advantage of his position above Ryan was a gross understatement.

“Freckles,” he said.

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He watched as Ryan surged to his feet. After eight weeks of hearing his voice Phillip knew that it was a conditioned response. “At ease,” he said quietly.

“Drill Sergeant Grabowski.” Ryan greeted him, his tone a bit icier than normal.

“PFC Gracin,” Phillip replied. “Why didn't you go out with your friends?”

“I didn't feel like going to the Club, Drill Sergeant.”

Phillip thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “Come to my office.” He about-faced and walked into the office, not paying attention to whether Ryan was on his way in or not. He wanted to be alone with the kid. He wanted to be able to look at him without disguising his looks, but most of all he wanted to be able to have the moment alone with Ryan that he had wanted since the first time he saw him.