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Title: 27 - Empty House
Rating: NC-17,
Warning: Angst! Illness! Rank kink! And excuse the all-cap and bold parts, but when McKnight's in a bad mood he yells a lot, even in his head...
Disclaimer: Has absolutely nothing to do with the real life men the book and movie were based. It's only inspired by the movie and I make no profit. And I do not set forth this type of relationship as ideal or healthy for anyone. Although it works for these two.
Empty House
Roz flew out the back door and hurled herself against McKnight’s chest.
McKnight looked around to see who might be watching. Roz wasn’t usually all over him like that unless there was an audience.
Wait a minute. She was crying.
McKnight had pulled up in front of the dark cottage maybe a couple of hours after dinnertime. He was too fucking tired to haul all his gear down from Linda’s driveway. And he didn’t much care who saw his car parked all night outside Grimes’ home. Let the whole world see.
He was sick of the goddamn army and this fucking training program, and the goddamn fucking training exercise that had been extended 24 hours to make up for the day they’d lost to the fucking goddamn hail storm.
Who’d ever heard of a bunch of army captains – Rangers, at that – afraid of a little ice?
But even the Deltas wouldn’t go out in it.
“Aw, c’mon, Colonel, it’s too treacherous in the ravine,” one of them had said to him.
Treacherous? Had the stupid fuck never operated under treacherous conditions? What the hell did these candy-asses think WAR was?
And where was Grimes?
At least they called him ‘Colonel’. The Deltas took a perverse glee in calling the captains by their first names or, worse, nicknames. But they called McKnight ‘Colonel’. Especially now that he was one. A Colonel, that is.
The news had come through on the third day of the exercise. Promoted to full bird.
It was treated as cause for illicit celebration, in the midst what was supposed to be a Spartan training camp. Everyone had used it as an excuse to cut loose. McKnight had split a smuggled bottle of Jack Daniels with an ex-SAS weapons expert and a strapping young Delta from Wyoming, but all he wanted to do was call Grimes and tell him the news.
Where the hell was Grimes?
There wasn’t a single light on in the house. The cat darted out when McKnight pushed the front door open, a fat flash of white that disappeared into the shadows as fast as it had appeared.
McKnight dumped his gear in the hall and went to the kitchen. No sign of dinner, but Grimes usually cleaned up right after eating, unless McKnight was there to distract him. Maybe he’d eaten earlier. Maybe Grimes was hiding out somewhere.
McKnight checked the bathroom. It was clean, no big surprise. The tub had been scrubbed until the porcelain gleamed. The taps shone. A towel was folded neatly over rail. But the tub was empty and so was the shower stall.
Upstairs, in the bedroom, still no Grimes. The pillows and sheets and quilt were tangled across the bed, not fluffed and tucked in and folded the way they usually were. That was wrong. Grimes always made the bed, even when he was in a hurry.
McKnight sat on the bed and tugged at a twisted sheet. The bedding was different from when he left. Of course. Grimes would have changed the sheets. Maybe Grimes was doing the laundry. McKnight leaned to the side and breathed in. Something might be wrong, but the scent of Grimes comforted him.
There was another smell on the sheets, though. Something foreign. Medicinal.
Eucalyptus. That’s what it was. Grimes must have used it sometime. Did he have a cold? Was he sick?
Where the hell was Grimes?
McKnight went downstairs, and down again, to the tiny laundry room in the basement. He had to duck his head to avoid the floor joists. The door to the unfinished part of the basement was open, and the musty smell of old earth wafted through.
The washing machine was open and full of damp clothes, also a bit musty smelling. Maybe the machine was broken. Maybe Grimes was at Linda’s house, using her machine to wash fresh sheets for McKnight’s return. Or they were having tea and being worried about why McKnight wasn’t home yet. Maybe Grimes was waiting for him to arrive.
But instead of finding Grimes, McKnight got an armful of distraught teacher-librarian.
“Oh, Danny, I didn’t think you were ever going to get home.”
“Where is Grimes?” he asked.
“Linda called the base and they said you were delayed, but she couldn’t leave a real message to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” McKnight demanded. “And where the hell is Grimes?”
He was gripping her shoulders too hard. She was a tough chick, but that was unfair. She was smaller then McKnight. Hell, she was smaller than Grimes.
Where. The. Fuck. Was. Grimes?
“Danny!”
“Sorry.” He let go. “Just… tell me where he is.”
“I can take you there. We can catch the tail end of visiting hours.”
Visiting hours. That could mean either of two things. Jail or hospital. Both bad.
“The doctor says he’s improving.”
Doctor. Hospital. Bad, but could be worse.
“He’ll be fine.”
But he was in the hospital. He couldn’t be fine, because when McKnight had broken his wrist he hadn’t stayed in a hospital, so Grimes was hurt or ill worse than that, so nothing was fine.
Why wasn’t she telling him anything?
Instead, she was guiding him to her car and saying something about Linda being with John and how he’d asked for McKnight.
McKnight heard a choked cry and it must have come from him because Roz had her arms around him and was saying, “Shh, he’ll be okay.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?” he asked.
“We don’t really know.”
“Well, then, how the fuck do you know he’s going to be okay?”
McKnight must have yelled that really loudly, because Roz jumped back from him and looked scared.
He got in the car quietly.
Roz started talking as soon as she started driving.
McKnight wasn’t sure she was in any shape to drive. She was gesticulating wildly and still half-crying. But she was in better shape than McKnight. His vision was blurring and he felt queasy.
“Linda found him in the laundry room.”
Found him.
That was wrong.
McKnight had a brief, blinding flashback to tenth grade, sitting at the kitchen table with his sister while she explained the difference between active and passive tense. Linda had done the finding. Grimes had been found. That was passive.
Had he been unconscious?
“He was having trouble breathing. He was very weak.”
He’d been tired when McKnight left. That was over ten days ago. McKnight had been gone eleven days. That was too long.
“When?”
“Yesterday. She took him to the ER.”
Grimes had been in the hospital since yesterday.
“He was dizzy. Having trouble staying upright.
It was a good thing McKnight was sitting in the car because he would have trouble staying upright as well.
“He’s been ill a while. He’s lost a lot of weight in the last week. I don’t think he’s been eating much.”
McKnight stuck his fist in his mouth to keep from screaming.
“Jesus, Danny, stop looking like it’s your fault.”
But it might be. Who knew?
Roz careened around a corner and the hospital loomed up ahead. “You weren’t even due home until late last night. It was just luck that Linda went over on her lunch break to discuss the offer.”
What offer? Fuck the offer. He wanted Grimes.
The brakes squealed as the car stopped in a visitors parking space.
“Danny, get it together. He can’t see you upset like this. He’s upset enough already.”
McKnight got it together. "I have to see him."
“We’ll try.”
TRY?
“They think he’s Linda’s boyfriend. That’s why they let her stay with him. She already told them her brother was coming. And…” Roz grabbed his elbow and directed him to the correct entrance. “We sort of told them that you used to be John’s commanding officer.
AM, McKnight thought defensively. AM his commanding officer. Active. Present tense. AND future.
Roz straightened his uniform as they waited for the elevator. “Try to look authoritative.”
McKnight straightened his back. Lifted his chin. He WAS fucking authority personified, and he was going to order the entire hospital to make Grimes healthy.
The car ride had already taken too long. He could have driven it in half the time. Wounded. Under heavy fire. Now the elevator was too damn slow. Someone got on or off at every fucking floor. He could have run up the stairs faster.
“Don’t worry about the bills. Linda has them covered.”
Hell, no, he wasn’t going to worry about money. He’d work until he was seventy to pay off the bills if it would make Grimes healthy.
Linda was leaning against the wall beside a closed door. If she’d been outside, she would have been chain-smoking.
“Danny, sweetheart, you made it.” She put her arms around him like when he was a kid, except she didn’t quite envelop him like she used to.
There were people all over the place.
“You okay?” he asked, knowing Linda would understand he was really asking if Grimes was okay.
“Yes. I don’t know. The tests look good. His ECG is okay. His heart rate was elevated yesterday, but it’s better today. He’s breathing easier. A lot of the scary stuff has been eliminated.”
Scary? What, like cancer scary?
“His bloodwork came back normal. Perfect, even.”
Perfect was a good word for Grimes.
“White blood cell count, red blood cells, oxygen levels, everything is good. Actually, he’s remarkably healthy.”
Remarkable McKnight would agree with. Healthy? If he was so healthy, why the hell was he in the hospital?
“They were testing for everything yesterday. Leukemia, mono, everything. I was so scared. He was so scared, when you didn’t come home. I didn’t find out about the mission being extended until this morning. Oh, Danny.” She squeezed him tight, giving him a shoulder to dry his eyes on if he needed it.
He didn’t. Yet. He would if he didn’t see Grimes soon.
“Doctor Bandhu is with him now. She specializes in environmental illness.”
Environ…what?”
“She strongly suspects an allergic reaction.”
“Grimes isn’t allergic to anything.”
“Well, allergies can develop in response to excessive or sudden exposure. She is fairly certain mold is the culprit.”
Mold. What the fuck? Grimes was fastidious. Even the smallest microorganism didn’t stand a chance.
“Fatigue. Sleeplessness. Loss of appetite. The headaches. The cold. We thought it was a cold. All progressive, and then the headaches got worse.”
Headaches. Grimes had headaches and no one told McKnight?
“The doctor thinks it’s been bothering him a long time and then got worse in the last couple of weeks.”
Jesus. Fuck. Goddamn. It was McKnight’s fault. “Mold,” he said. “In the basement. It gets worse when it gets wet.” Anyone who had lived in an army camp for more than a week knew that. “There was a flood in the basement, from the garden hose left running.”
All McKnight’s fault. He should have made sure the tap was turned off. But Grimes had been sprawled in the mud, jeans ripped to shreds, ass hanging out, and McKnight had wanted more.
FUCK.
“Ah, Linda, close at hand as always. This is your brother, I take it?”
Dr. Bandhu was tiny and dark and possessed the sort of cultured voice that always made McKnight feel inferior. Bombay by way of the UK.
“Yes, Doctor, this is Danny,” Linda said.
“Colonel McKnight,” McKnight said, extending his hand firmly and trying to look like he was in charge.
“Most delighted to meet you. Mr. Grimes has been asking for you.”
Aw, shit. Outed at the hospital.
“I only wish my husband and brother got along so well.”
Linda nodded her head furiously. “Oh, yes, John is like the younger brother Danny never had.”
Elbow to the ribs. Real subtle.
“Yeah, he’s just like… my brother.”
McKnight didn’t really think he would convince anyone of that, but if it got him in to see Grimes…
“That’s wonderful. He might be sleeping. If he is, let him rest. I had him up and about, testing his balance and reflexes. He’s quite exhausted.”
Not half as exhausted as he was the last time McKnight tested his balance and reflexes.
But McKnight smiled benignly. And tried not to rush the door too obviously. He paused. “The basement isn’t usually so wet. There was a flood,” he began to explain.
“Mr. Grimes is way ahead of you,” Doctor Bandhu said, nodding like a doctor. “If you don’t mind, I have a colleague at the university who would like to take a few samples in the basement. He’s a talented young mycologist and quite keen on these sorts of situations. I’m sure he can discover the source.”
“Of course, that would be wonderful. We’d like to solve the problem,” Linda said.
“So,” McKnight said, wanting to get the facts right, “if it is mold, and we get rid of it, Grim…Mr. Grimes will get better?”
“He’s already getting better. I am almost certain that if he can stay away from the source of the irritation, he’ll make a full recovery. An extended trip to the seaside, perhaps some time in a very dry climate, is what I usually recommend. Even keeping the house clean and dry will result in considerable improvement. We’ll know for sure once my colleague isolates the source.”
Mold allergy.
RPGs, shrapnel, burns and a nasty tropical infection hadn’t put Grimes out of commission for long, but mold would.
McKnight was wasting time. He went into the room.
He couldn’t see Grimes immediately. There was a hideous gray and pink striped curtain in the way. At least Grimes would think it hideous.
McKnight just wanted it gone.
He had to calm down.
He closed his eyes and counted to ten.
Grimes looked too big for the bed. But everyone looks too big on a hospital cot. His face was set in a grimace of pain, no matter how hard he tried to pretend everything was okay when McKnight approached. He saluted weakly, IV tube flapping in the air. He was flushed, from the fever and the hot sun. The newly-shaved sides of his head were paler than his face.
“How are you making out, soldier?” McKnight asked.
“Fine, sir.” When it was obvious it wasn’t.
Grimes looked down at his leg, awkward and elevated, blood and infection seeping through the bandages. “I’m better than a lot of guys,” he said quietly, “Colonel.”
McKnight blinked.
“Colonel,” Grimes repeated, gesturing at McKnight’s insignia.
Grimes was awake.
“Yeah, I, uh…” McKnight struggled to stay in the present, maintain his focus on Grimes, in front of him on the hospital bed, not on a cot in a medical tent outside Mogadishu. It was hard for McKnight not to confuse the two, because the memory of Grimes in the medical tent was so clear, so sharp, McKnight could taste the salt in the air, smell the almost overpowering disinfectant, feel the sick churning in the pit of his stomach when he saw Grimes helpless, ill, weak, in pain, wounded.
“Yeah, I got promoted.” Which was, really, so unimportant.
“That’s wonderful, sir.”
Grimes looked genuinely pleased.
He also looked wrong, so very wrong. He was lying on his back with wires protruding from under the blue hospital gown and into his arm, and his hair was combed back neatly.
Grimes never lay on his back, unless McKnight ordered him to. He slept on his side.
And Grimes slept naked. Except when he was alone. Then he wore a t-shirt. Usually a t-shirt that was a little too small. The gown was loose. And Grimes was on his back, so he should not have been wearing anything because, as much as he liked the look of Grimes in nothing but a tight t-shirt, and it was a great look on him, McKnight always ordered Grimes to strip before ordering him to lie on his back.
The wires were just… wrong. So wrong. Tethering him to the bed. Restricting his movement. Hurting him. They couldn’t be comfortable.
And Grimes never combed his hair back; it was allowed to go wherever it wanted. Grimes was comfortable with it like that, and McKnight loved it. The crazier the better.
Grimes noticed McKnight staring and touched his hair, gave a shy smile. “The nurse,” he said. His voice was quiet and a bit rough, but steady enough. “She took a comb to it.” He ran his hand through it, messing it up a bit. That was better. More like Grimes.
It could be that Grimes had to spend a lot of time getting his hair to stick up just right, to give him that tousled, boyish, carefree, recently-fucked look. If that was the case, McKnight didn’t want to know about it. He preferred to think of Grimes’ hair as a naturally occurring phenomenon.
It was perfectly plausible. When Grimes was concentrating hard on something, he tended to grab the front part and hold on, which made it stand up. Grimes also had a habit of mussing up his own hair when he was nervous or agitated. And McKnight had a similar habit of running his hands through Grimes’ hair every chance he got. And when Grimes actually was recently fucked…
It was natural.
What wasn’t natural, or what McKnight was not accustomed to, was the stubble. Under normal circumstances, Grimes shaved meticulously. It looked as if he hadn’t shaved for at least two or three days. The stubble was a reddish-brown, glinting copper in the harsh light of the fixture above the head of the bed.
“Your beard is really red,” McKnight observed.
“Now you know why I shave it,’ Grimes said.
McKnight did no such thing. He was wondering why Grimes shaved at all, because he would look fucking hot with a beard. It was McKnight who had to shave; if he let his beard grow, he would look like a bear.
McKnight really wanted to touch the bristly hairs. “I think you should let it grow.”
Grimes flushed.
That was better. He’d been too pale. And the circles under his eyes were too dark, his cheeks were a bit gaunt, his lips dry and chapped.
But he was still beautiful.
McKnight really wanted to feel that beard. On his upper thighs.
Grimes’ hand closest to McKnight stirred on the sheet. McKnight had the urge to hold it, like it was the right thing to do, but it had a huge bruise on the back, purplish/yellow and swollen.
“Trouble with the IV,” Grimes explained. “I guess I was a bit dehydrated. They had to put the needle in my elbow.”
McKnight tried to keep his cursing inaudible.
“Please, don’t be upset with me, sir.”
McKnight stopped cursing. “I’m not upset with you, I’m upset with me.” And whoever fucked up the IV and collapsed the vein in Grimes’ hand, but that was for another time. He had to concentrate on Grimes.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, sir.”
“I should have been there.”
“You weren’t even due back until last night. That was almost twelve hours after I…” Grimes couldn’t say it.
“Collapsed,” McKnight said for him.
Grimes had collapsed.
Fuck!
Grimes pouted. “I hate being weak.”
“You’re not weak. And it’s not your fault,” McKnight said quickly. Grimes always wanted to be perfect. He tried so hard to be perfect.
Except for his hair. Grimes was always perfectly shaved and clean, but he didn’t spend a lot of time trying to make himself look pretty. And his clothes were usually plain and a bit worn and nothing really special. Which was a good thing for McKnight, because if Grimes ever put the sort of effort into his appearance that he put into keeping the house clean, if he ever decided to do his hair or dress really sharp and stuff like that, McKnight wasn’t sure he would survive it.
“I’m so behind in all my work,” Grimes pouted some more.
“Fuck the work, it’s not important.” And Grimes was really going to have to stop pouting; it was making McKnight hard.
“There are clothes in the washing machine!” Grimes was getting upset.
“I’ll deal with them. I’ll deal with everything. Just don’t worry. You need to concentrate on getting better, and I’m going to take care of you and everything. I’ve got two whole weeks of leave.”
Grimes brightened considerably.
“And I wish I didn’t have to go back that soon,” McKnight grumbled.
“But you have to,” Grimes said. “Even more than before. I mean, now that you’re a full colonel.” Grimes’ eyes danced over McKnight’s shiny new insignia.
Motherfucker.
Sick, in the hospital, IV in his arm, hooked up to the fucking heart monitor, barely a day after collapsing from whatever it was, and Grimes was getting turned on by McKnight’s new rank.
That was oddly reassuring.
McKnight slid his hand under Grimes’.
Grimes winced when he bent his fingers to hold on, but he kept holding.
“Do you need anything?” McKnight asked.
“Yeah. To sleep with you tonight.”
“I can see if they’ll let me stay until you fall asleep,” McKnight offered.
“That’s not what I meant,” Grimes said, “Colonel.”
“Stop it soldier,” McKnight said, mock serious. “You’re getting my dick hard.” Much more sincere.
Grimes smirked. “Good, then I’m not the only one.”
McKnight groaned as his dick got harder.
Grimes was a kinky little…
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“What if I can’t live in the cottage anymore?”
“Shhh, don’t worry We’re not going to have to move.”
McKnight was going to find out what did this to Grimes. And then he was going to destroy it, one cell at a time if necessary.
“Your sister said we could stay with her for as long as it takes.”
Yeah. Well. For as long as it took McKnight to get fed up with living in a house where he couldn’t bend Grimes over the kitchen table whenever the urge struck.
“Sir?” Grimes asked tentatively.
McKnight looked at the closed door. “We’re still alone.”
“I wanted to tell you.” Grimes was so quiet McKnight had to lean down to hear him. “I was good the whole time you were gone.”
McKnight bet he was.
“Until I got sick, and then I didn’t have enough energy.”
McKnight didn’t want to think about Grimes getting sick. He didn’t want to think about Grimes alone and tired and sick and alone in their bed, too exhausted to do anything by lie still. He didn’t want to think about what could have happened if Linda had not shown up when she did.
He just wanted to climb into the bed and hold Grimes but this was a hospital and he was in uniform and it was against regulations.
“I was a good boy,” Grimes assured him.
McKnight leaned down he rest of the way and kissed him on the forehead.
“I never doubted it for a second,” he said. “You’re always so good.”
Continued in: 28 Sleep Better
Back to: Soldier Porn
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