Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Alright, you’ve obviously got something to say. Spit it out.”

The late afternoon sun suddenly felt hotter on Tank’s back. He picked at the seam of his pants, digging at the wrinkles that formed where his knee bent. His fingernails were just barely too short to catch and hold the fabric; they had been for as long as he could remember.

He tried to work up the courage to speak, and fell short, the breath he drew in with ambition being released in nothing but a sigh. His free hand moved to the dog tags around his neck. The sun had warmed up the metal a bit. His mind melted back to that morning, when a different hand held the metal tied around his neck. A hand now so maddeningly close. If he just moved his arm, in one motion, he could have that hand in his own in under a second.

But he stayed put, rubbing the words engraved on the metal. 

Tank had held every other part of him. He had dug his short fingernails into the skin of his back before. He had fallen asleep next to him nearly every night for months. And yet, that hand seemed so wholly off-limits.

Part of Tank wasn’t ready to wake up alone in his bed again. He knew it had to come someday, but it seemed so much worse to do it himself. At least, if things ended because they graduated and went different ways, then he could say it was just circumstance. It would be a few more years of seeing him, being equally driven insane and comforted by his face being there when he opened his eyes every morning, and then they would go their separate ways.

A few more years of this. Of Tank waking up with him draped over his chest, his hand around Tank’s dog tags. He somehow always managed to fall asleep fidgeting with them. A few more years of gently prying that hand off, and getting ready for the day, occasionally stopping to clutch the metal himself to savor the warmth still held in them. A few more years of glancing back before he left the dorm room, to see the slow rise and fall of the shoulders of the man still in his bed, with freckles and faint scratches in his skin. A few more years of wishing he had lingered there with him just a bit longer, because the heat of the desert was stifling, but the warmth of his body and the blankets felt like home, even though it always felt like he had to steal it in secret.

Sometimes he wished he had been sleeping alone in an army bunk the whole time.

Almeric sighed. “Well, if you asked me to come here just to enjoy the weather, then you could’ve just said that.”

Tank chewed the inside of his lip and turned, slowly and mechanically and forcibly, to face him. The soft face that greeted him first thing every morning still felt as imposing as the very first time he had seen it. He didn’t dare to look in his eyes. He looked dangerously close enough as it was, at the glare of the sun on his glasses. Tank knew that one glance into that green would break him completely.

Almeric raised his eyebrows, urging him to continue. The small smirk that accompanied it made Tank want to vomit. He spoke like he was forcing the bile back down his throat.

“What do you see me as?”

Almeric’s smile widened. “Oh, I’ve seen you as a lot of things.”

No. No. That’s not the answer he wanted.

Almeric seemed to understand, and his smile fell. He looked back out toward the rest of the campus. To Tank, he looked like something out of an old painting; the way the sunlight seemed to cup his cheek as it turned orange-pink with the time of day, and the way his arms were resting calmly on the back of the bench… it was like he owned the whole world beneath him.

Slowly, calculated but without fear, he turned back. “I don’t know,” was all he said.

Tank crumbled a bit, like someone had loosened all his muscle connections. His eyes wandered down to stare at the seat of the bench. There was paint chipping off of it, revealing the bare metal below, along with random letters and symbols scratched into it, likely by several classes of bored students over the years. One of them was two initials in a heart. It hit him like a stomach cramp.

Almeric lifted up Tank’s head with a finger beneath his chin. He had no choice but to look into his eyes. The green was washed out to a grayish color in the light.

He forced himself to break away, and went to stand up, already trying to form some kind of apology and excuse. He didn’t know why he bothered doing any of this to begin with; just wasting everyone’s time for nothing.

Something pulled him to a stop.

There was something warm in his hand.

He turned back to look. There, just behind him, were their hands, slotting together like they had been made for each other. A clean line from Tank’s shoulder to Almeric’s.

“Stay?”

There was something in Almeric’s voice that Tank had never heard before. That word was not a command. It wasn’t really a plea. It was something entirely different. Maybe it meant, “You can stay if you want to.” Maybe it meant, “Don’t go just yet.” Maybe it meant only what was said.

With lead in his shoes, Tank stumbled back to the bench. Almeric smiled again, this time somewhat differently. He leaned toward him, burying his face in the crook of Tank’s neck. There was no kiss to follow it; no hickey left behind. Just the smell of his hair, as Tank cautiously ran his fingers through it.

His hand flew to his dog tags. It seemed that Almeric had the same idea.

He didn’t retreat when he felt Tank’s hand already enclosing them, though. Instead, he took Tank’s hand, wrapped around the metal, and pulled it close to his chest.

Tank let his head lean into Almeric’s shoulder. He made no effort to push him off or pry his hands away.

From now on, he could stay a bit longer.