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Title: 8 – McKnight’s Date
Author: Haleth
Fandom/Pairing: BHD. McKnight/Grimes
Rating: NC-17
Warning: The usual kink.
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.
Note: You can read McKnight’s version of the date, or Grimes’ version or both. Your choice.
McKnight’s Date
McKnight checked his watch for the third time. Six minutes. Not unusual for most people, but Grimes wasn’t most people. He was always on time. Or early. Lurking around the corner, not wanting to look too pushy, but eager to get on with it. He hoped it was traffic, but he knew it was just as likely that Grimes had chickened out.
McKnight wouldn’t blame him. It was bad enough to go out to a bar, but a bar where there were likely to be guys from the base was asking a lot. Going out in public was something they’d never done before, not since McKnight had walked into the bar near the base and seen him sitting at a table. Alone.
What had McKnight been thinking? Asking him to go out. Like it was a fucking date.
But then, what had McKnight been thinking when he sat down at the table with Grimes in the first place? He had to be honest with himself; he’d been wanting it for a long time.
It had taken him a while, though, to figure out Grimes. McKnight was a sociable enough guy. He had plenty of friends, or maybe they would be called buddies. He’d been in the army since he graduated from high school. He’d served all over, knew guys from all over. He was pretty good at judging which ones were straight, which ones were gay, and which ones were… different.
McKnight’s first time with a guy, his real first time with a guy, was well after he enlisted. He was a sergeant back then. He’d kept himself and his image clean, pristine in fact, since he joined. He didn’t want to break any rules, rock the boat in any way. He was going to succeed, no matter what. Except, there was always something to make you make an exception, wasn’t there?
The kid had been young and pretty, almost as pretty as that Blackburn kid. He’d made the usual eye contact and gestures. McKnight had seen them before from others but had to which he’d never responded. Something about this kid made him want to respond, though. McKnight was scared, or at least a bit nervous, but he figured, hell, he’d been fired upon on two continents by then, jumped out of airplanes, caught some shrapnel in his shoulder once. What could a pretty kid do to him?
Change his fucking life, that’s what.
The kid wanted to suck him. Okay, he thought. He wasn’t interested in sucking him back, but he could stand to be sucked, so they found a quiet spot and he flicked open his fly. The kid hit the floor instantly, so fast it made McKnight dizzy. Okay, so the kid was real eager to suck him. But when he put his hand on the bowed head, not for any real reason other than he had nowhere else to put it, the kid moaned and vibrated around McKnight’s dick. So he moved his fingers on the kid’s head and the kid started getting more and more excited.
By the end of it, McKnight was gripping the kid so hard he left fingerprints on his temples, and McKnight had been controlling it, moving that searing mouth up and down his cock. The kid was squirming, moaning, fuck, he was too loud. When McKnight came, the kid tipped back and caught the last couple of spurts on his face. He’d looked up dazed, McKnight’s come oozing down his cheek, on his knees with the stain of his own come seeping through his pants. Fuck, he’d come just from sucking McKnight.
He smeared the come across his face and sucked his fingers clean.
Then he said, “Thank you, sir.”
And that was it. McKnight was a changed man.
He tried to ignore it. He tried to pretend it was no big deal. But that whole thing with Claudia had been an exercise in denial. He knew that now.
He’d had a couple of experiences in high school, drunk football players, dares and jerking off, shit like that. Nothing serious. And he’d been sucked off by a few women. Well, mostly girls. He always wanted to fuck them, but they didn’t always let him, some of them sucked him. They weren’t all that great at it, except for one. But there had been that one skilled one, so he knew that the kid had been really good at it, and he tried to attribute the cravings to the proficiency of the blow job.
But he knew that wasn’t it.
He wanted to be ‘called sir’ again. More. A lot.
As he moved up in rank, and more and more men had to call him ‘sir’ all the time, he wanted to be really ‘called sir’ even more. So he started looking around, reading the signs. He was good at it. If there was someone of that sort around, he could spot them. He figured out how to attract their attention. How to signal his desires. Sometimes it worked out well. So well that he had to be careful.
He was being careful in Somalia. The situation there was worse than bad; it was unforgiving. He couldn’t afford any mistakes. So, like Grimes, he’d turned off his desire. He knew now that Grimes had turned off his desire the whole time he was in the army. And he was glad of it. Because some guys wanted more than just be ‘called sir’, and they would have taken advantage of a guy like Grimes.
Eleven minutes. Where the fuck was Grimes? McKnight lit another cigarette.
Grimes had never told him outright, that he’d been laying low when they were in Africa, but McKnight’d figured it out. And he’d figured out that when he went to that bar, in search of Grimes, he’d known exactly what he wanted, because he’d seen the way Grimes interacted with lots of different men by that time. At war and in peacetime, officially and during off-hours.
Grimes had a bravado, a cocky, stick-it-to-the-man sort of attitude. And he was a bit of a fixer. He made connections and used the system. But there were lines he didn’t cross. There were things he never did, things that real fixers did. And he had a way of avoiding eye contact, the flicking down of his eyes, the tilt of his head, the spread of his lashes, shifting from foot to foot.
The sexual tension in Somalia had been incredible. All those kids, all those men, with no release except each other. Scared, adrenaline pumping, testosterone flowing, balls filling. Some nights he felt like he was wading through a swamp when he walked across the barracks. The smell was awful. But there wasn’t anyone he wanted, so it didn’t affect him. Until after the battle.
That’s when he realized that Grimes had been laying so low, even McKnight couldn’t spot him in a crowd.
He visited Grimes in the hospital tent. McKnight was just there to get his wound cleaned and re-bandaged. The medics were being such candy-asses about it, but he could understand. Enough men had died already; they didn’t want another one dropping from an infection. McKnight, for some reason he couldn’t pinpoint at the time, finished a quick visit with Blackburn and then went over to visit Grimes.
His foot was badly wounded. They’d patched it up pretty good, but the heat and the dirt had caused an infection. Grimes was responding to the antibiotics, but he was a little woozy from all the drugs running through the IV. He tried to give that smile to McKnight, the one he gave people to win them over. McKnight told him to cut the crap and tell him how he really was.
Then he’d looked up at McKnight through his lashes and McKnight had felt a tug in his dick.
McKnight dropped his cigarette butt, stepped on it, looked up and felt the same tug. The exact same rush.
Grimes was there, standing in front of him, wearing somewhat loose jeans that hung on his hips and a t-shirt that was possibly a size too small. His hair was still a bit damp from the shower, and he looked fresh-scrubbed. It made him look young.
It made him look appetizing.
“Okay,” McKnight said, mentally kicking himself for even having the idea that Grimes would cop out. He pulled the tickets from his pocket.
Grimes’ eyes tracked his movement. It looked like he was looking at the tickets, but McKnight knew he was looking at his shirt.
McKnight was in civvies. And Grimes had never seen him out of uniform before.
Well, he’d seen him out of uniform, as in naked. But even on his days off, McKnight wore an old, comfortable pair of khakis and a regulation t-shirt. That was what he always wore. Tonight he was wearing a pair of black jeans and a dark green button-up shirt with a couple of buttons undone because it was still pretty warm even though it was fall, and it was even warmer when Grimes’ eyes were burning into his chest like that.
“Sorry. Got delayed.”
“Traffic?”
“Your sister.”
McKnight nodded. Linda had decided to treat Grimes like a little brother. She fussed over him and told him to eat more and gave him that job and helped him figure out what to do with all Miss McCartle’s stuff. It was cool. He liked the idea of someone acting like that toward Grimes. Someone McKnight could trust. Because McKnight couldn’t do any of that. He couldn’t give him an affectionate kiss on the top of his head when he got up from the table, or tuck in his t-shirt for him, or laugh with him about a joke.
He felt like he was cheating Grimes. When most men get a lover, whether it’s a man or a woman, they get a friend, someone to hang out with and talk to and share things with, as well as someone to have sex with. At least they get someone they can have a few beers with and shoot the shit. He felt like he was only giving Grimes half a relationship. But Grimes didn’t complain, and maybe if Linda wanted to be his friend and do that other stuff with him, then it would be okay.
Grimes gave him a careful smile.
Motherfucker. He liked it when Grimes was being surreptitious. It was exciting. It was naughty. McKnight hadn’t been naughty since fifth grade. Something happened in the summer between fifth and sixth grades. He started being just plain bad. Linda had sorted that out by high school, though, and then he was a bit devilish and even wicked at times. But never naughty.
It felt good.
And Grimes was still smiling that smile, carefully bland and not sexy at all, which made it all the hotter. “Cool,” he said, taking a ticket from McKnight. “I’ve never seen George Thorogood and the Destroyers before.”
Never seen George Thorogood? That threw McKnight for a bit of a loop. Everyone he knew had seen George Thorogood at least once. Even his sister.
It was a big bar. Had to be, since it was a big event. Even with the two bars running across the back and down the middle, the hundreds of tables, the cavernous space, The Destroyers were guaranteed to pack the place.
McKnight knew how crowded it would be, so he’d told Grimes to get there early. They went in and got a table about half-way back, which wasn’t bad. The sound system could have handled a room twice the size, and McKnight didn’t like to be too close to the speakers anyway. It made his ears buzz too much.
He ordered two beers and they sat back. McKnight realized they would look a bit odd if they just sat there. They would have to talk.
“So, how was work?” he asked. Stupid thing to say, but it was better than nothing.
Grimes eyes lit up. He was loving his new job. He told McKnight about his progress that day, and about the computer that was arriving next week so he could keep track of everything, and about how the phone company was going to have to string a special wire over the stream so he could get access to the internet.
“Internet. What do you need that for?” McKnight didn’t have much time for that sort of thing.
“To look things up. Say I find a letter from a writer I’ve never heard of. I can search for it on the internet and find out who he was, if he’s still alive, if he’s popular. Then I know where to put the letter.”
Grimes had this amazing system going for sorting all the crap that filled the cottage. Papers, books, letters, little boxes of things and gadgets and decorations, china, silverware, more papers and letters. McKnight was impressed by how much Grimes could keep track of without a computer. The computer would make the job go faster.
Maybe he should accidentally cut the phone wire. Or spill coffee on the computer.
McKnight had encouraged Grimes to keep the night job. It was selfish of him. He wanted the cataloguing to take as long as possible. He felt a bit guilty about that. But since he didn’t know what would happen when Grimes was finished the job, if Grimes would move back north or take a room in a house full of other people or what, he felt like he should hinder Grimes a little bit.
He was happy one part of the job was done, though. He knew Grimes had managed to clean out one bedroom.
And that both of them were going to sleep in it. Together. Tonight.
Heady. That’s how the thought made him feel. Sleeping with Grimes. Naked Grimes in his bed. Sleeping. Lying still. And McKnight could hold him. Well, he could hold him as well as possible with the stupid fucking cast still on his arm.
He remembered Sizemore cutting his cast off. He could do that…
No. The doctor said there was ligament damage. They’d done an MRI. It had to be kept immobile for another week.
Grimes would kill him if he disobeyed orders. Doctor’s orders, that is.
Grimes was talking about a box he’d found that afternoon and McKnight was listening, but he was also trying to figure out how he would be able to sleep comfortably, keep the cast out of the way and get maximum skin contact with Grimes. And Grimes knew which ear was bad, so he made sure he leaned toward the good one and he got a bit too close, so McKnight could feel the heat of his breath.
McKnight shifted in his chair. His dick was getting really hard. He’d have to find something else to think about.
He turned and looked to the back of the bar and softened a bit.
Struecker was there. Fuck. He knew there would be guys from the base, but why Struecker?
Grimes noticed his gaze and looked over. He froze. Like deer-in-the-headlights. Then, all of a sudden, his shoulders relaxed.
“I’m going to say hello to some friends,” he said. And then, under his breath, he added, “sir.” He got up and walked over to some guys McKnight barely knew. McKnight looked at his beer so he wouldn’t look at Grimes’ ass.
Struecker came over. “Evening, sir.”
‘Sir’ coming from Struecker didn’t have the same ring to it.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Good. How’s your arm?”
McKnight shrugged. “They say it’s healing. I don’t have any reason to not believe it.” And wished Struecker would vanish into the smoky air.
“Say, is that Grimes?” Struecker asked.
McKnight coughed. Fuck. He couldn’t lie, could he? “Yeah, he’s doing some work for my sister.” There. It was out of the way. The truth and a good cover story at the same time.
Struecker bought it. He sat down and they talked a while about this and that, things happening on base, the bunch who’d been shipped in the previous week, and what a bitch it was that McKnight was stuck teaching kids the theory of maneuvers instead of running the field exercises like he usually did.
The whole time Struecker sat there, Grimes was talking to his friends. They kidded each other and told stories and they all looked so normal. Grimes looked so normal. Looking at him there, in the bar, McKnight almost couldn’t imagine Grimes on his knees with his jeans shoved down and his hand on his cock.
Fuck, he shouldn’t have thought of that.
Then the opening band came on, and Struecker moved away. Grimes moved back to the table, and watched the show. McKnight mostly watched the show.
The opening band was good. There was a woman singing, and that seemed to excite a lot of the men in the audience. She was tiny, but she had a huge voice, which is what you need for blues-tinged rock. McKnight looked at her, then he looked at the groups of men, many of them from the base, scattered around the room whistling and clapping.
To start with, the men had no idea how ridiculous they looked. They were getting all excited about a woman on a stage, for Christ’s sake. She had no interest in them. She was busy singing. McKnight had never been one for getting excited about something that was impossible. He never went to strip bars. He didn’t even like porn. And this woman wasn’t exhibiting herself like a stripper, she was singing. This was art, for fuck’s sake. The catcalls cheapened it.
Plus, she wasn’t just short; she was petite. Waif-like. That made the voice all that much more impressive, and the idea that she’d actually want one of the soldiers that much more absurd. Next to most of them, she would barely come up to their sternums. He couldn’t imagine the mechanics of such a thing. He liked being bigger than his partner, but that much bigger? Insane.
McKnight clapped with everyone else after the last song and looked over at Grimes. He looked a bit upset about something. McKnight hoped one of his friends hadn’t said anything to him to upset him. McKnight would have a tough time explaining why he’d felt the need to pound the hell out of someone he barely knew.
Grimes gave him a tentative smile. McKnight felt it from across the table.
McKnight had to go to the john and pull himself together. No one else saw the smile. Everything was fine. He should stop avoiding the people he knew in the bar. He was being stupid. He was afraid someone would figure out Grimes was with him, instead of only with him, and he hadn’t said hello to at least a dozen people he knew. He had to act more naturally, or they would suspect something. He washed his hand, straightened his collar.
It was nice to wear a shirt with a collar again. The sling had confined him to t-shirts, because the buttons would get caught on it or the collar would get bent and press into his neck. The sling itself pressed into his neck, but Grimes got this ointment from a health food store that cooled it down and soothed it like magic. Or maybe that was because of Grimes’ hands on his skin.
Now the cast didn’t feel heavy at all and he didn’t need the support. Now he could move his shoulder and arm around. He could rest the cast on Grimes’ head or shoulder and Grimes seemed to like it. He rubbed against it like a cat.
He stopped thinking about it, because he had to go out and talk to people. He adjusted his cock, turned around and saw Captain Steele.
“Captain,” he said.
“Colonel.”
They were both in civvies. They could have dropped the ranks, if they’d really wanted to. They’d known each other long enough.
“I didn’t know you were a George Thorogood fan,” McKnight said as amiably as possible, even though the sweat was starting to make his neck itch. He wasn’t usually uncomfortable around anyone, but Steele had always made him a little nervous. McKnight didn’t think Steele resented his superior rank, but something was imbalanced between them. Steele was such an overwhelming figure of authority, he even made Lieutenant Colonels nervous.
Steele shrugged. “I like the music well enough.”
Weird, McKnight thought. First Struecker, now Steele. He didn’t think Christian types would be into songs about drinking and hard living and womanizing. But then, this was a big event, and most units weren’t very busy. They were experiencing as close as it gets to downtime. Made sense that so many guys would come out to the show.
“Is that Grimes I saw sitting with you?”
Motherfucker. He knew this whole date business was a bad idea. “Yeah,” he said casually. “He’s working for my sister in town, so he came with me.”
Steele’s eyes narrowed, and he gave a curt nod. McKnight almost expected him to say ‘carry on’, but the rank thing prevented it.
Back in the bar, which was even more crowded than before, McKnight avoided the gaggle of young soldiers at the rear of the room and headed over to a table full of noncoms. He said hello and all that, was his usual friendly self. One of the sergeants had a girlfriend plastered against him. Another one was actively trying to get another woman, probably the girlfriend’s friend, to sit on his lap. Another woman leaned too close to him. For some reason, it made McKnight queasy.
It wasn’t even the fact that they women. He’d been with women. They didn’t bother him. It was the fact that they were hanging all over each other. It was blatant, and he didn’t think it was right to do that kind of thing in public. That was for private.
When he went back to the table, he spotted Sanderson. What the fuck was he doing here? This wasn’t Delta territory.
Then he thought about Steele.
No.
Way.
That was… unthinkable.
Grimes had been so matter-of-fact about it, but McKnight still didn’t really believe it. He’d believe it if he saw Sanderson and Steele standing together. Or sitting at the same table.
He kept an eye out, but for the whole night they didn’t so much as acknowledge each other. Either Grimes was wrong, or they were smart. Smarter than McKnight. Because he was sitting at a table with Grimes.
He was sitting on the other side of the table from Grimes, and although they’d had to push in closer as the bar filled up, they weren’t close. They weren’t touching. He didn’t need to touch Grimes in public. Flaunting a sexual relationship was obnoxious. But pretending they didn’t know each other would be even worse.
Grimes was watching him. He tried to stay casual. There was a rustle of activity near the stage, the experimental thwack of a drum stick on the rim of a snare. The house lights went out, and the whole bar was dark. A familiar riff filled the air. The crowd turned to the stage as one, and the riff was repeated. McKnight couldn’t help smiling. Bad to the Bone. Thorogood was starting with oldies. And McKnight liked this one.
The stage lights came up as the drums joined in and the flash of a spot reflecting off the metal slide sticking out of Thorogood’s pocket made McKnight look away. He looked at Grimes.
Grimes was smiling. Enjoying the feel of the room and the music and being out for a change, McKnight supposed. He looked back to the stage. Wasn’t that often the Destroyers came this way. He should pay attention. It wouldn’t do him any good to be watching Grimes. But he couldn’t help looking over every now and then.
It was, as he expected, a great show. And by the time Thorogood came out for the encore and did an even longer than usual version of One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer, the crowd was ecstatic. It must have lasted fifteen minutes. It was great. The whole band was adding extra riffs and the way Thorogood deadpanned, “Look man, I’m outdoors” made McKnight laugh out loud. Thorogood started talking in the middle of it, riffing on this all the shit that happens to guys in everyday life.
McKnight looked over at a group of young Rangers, guys who had been in Somalia. This would show them. George could rap better than half that crap they used to torture McKnight with in the hangar. They looked suitably impressed. It was funny. They’d survived so much more than what George was singing about. And they were standing there just like everyone else, laughing and applauding. They looked so alive.
He looked over at Grimes suddenly and Grimes was looking at him, grinning. He looked, fuck, like a kid. McKnight had never thought about the age difference before. But Grimes was what? Fourteen years younger? Fifteen. Shit.
He looked more than alive. He looked young and vital and strong and mouth-watering.
He also just happened to look about the age McKnight had been the first time he saw the band, way back when they were the Delaware Destroyers.
There was the usual hanging around after the live music was over, but McKnight didn’t want to hang around for last call. Struecker came over again, which pissed him off. At least Maddox wasn’t there. He didn’t want Maddox giving him those funny looks. Not here. And not while Grimes was around.
“I’m beat,” he said. “And I think I had a beer or two too many. You okay to drive, Grimes?”
Grimes shrugged, but McKnight could tell something was up. Something had upset him again. “I only had one beer. I’m fine. You trust me to get you home in one piece?”
For some reason, Struecker found that uproariously funny. A man’s sense of humor changed after serious combat, McKnight had always found. Either Struecker had been effected by Somalia, or he hadn’t seen nearly enough combat yet.
It was time to leave.
The air in the parking lot was cooler than the bar. It wasn’t a huge parking lot, and some cars were blocked in by late arrivals. McKnight had known that was going to happen, so he’d parked around the corner. It was an industrial area, and not a lot of people parked around that particular corner, because it was dark and isolated and a bit scary.
Maybe he’d parked there on purpose.
They walked the block and a half in silence, the lights and sounds of the bar fading with every step. McKnight tossed the keys to Grimes, who unlocked the passenger side first. He leaned in and pushed the seat back as far as it would go.
“Sir,” he said. Formally.
It went straight to McKnight’s dick, which had never really been soft all night, because his mind kept wandering and at some point Grimes had pushed his chair in and his knee was touching McKnight’s and he had looked like he hadn’t even noticed but McKnight had fucking noticed.
He got in the car and sat back and Grimes shut the door and walked around. Grimes got in, started the motor, fiddled with the heat control, turned on the radio, turned it back off again. Then he turned around and slid sideways.
The car was a Crown Vic, so it was spacious. As Grimes slid across the seat McKnight silently thanked himself for not buying one of those newer cars with a console in the middle. Grimes slithered down like liquid. Had he practiced? His mouth was inches from McKnight’s crotch.
“Good boy,” McKnight almost whispered. His ears were still ringing a bit from the loud music and, he suspected, something else. Grimes nuzzled him before he pulled the zipper down. The jeans were tighter than McKnight’s usual uniform trousers, but Grimes managed to get most of him out in the air without too much trouble.
“Sir,” Grimes breathed over him, hot and moist, and followed the word with his tongue, licking at the slit and circling the head.
McKnight looked around. No one. They were alone, but still in public and Grimes was taking the head of his cock between his lips and squeezing it while his tongue flicked around. His arms fell down and back naturally, and he was clasping his forearms behind him with his knees spread wide on the floor of the car, his ass pressed up against the glove compartment door. The t-shirt rode up and exposed a line of pale skin McKnight wanted to touch, so he did.
Grimes moaned and swallowed – swallowed – McKnight’s cock. Fuck, they hadn’t been doing this enough lately. McKnight raised the casted arm and rested it on Grimes’ shoulder, put his other hand on Grimes’ head. His fingers rifled through soft, new waves of chestnut. Chestnut. Where did that come from? Normally he would say brown hair. But it wasn’t just brown, so he couldn’t call it that.
Grimes’ head started moving up and down, lips slipping up and down McKnight’s cock, tongue twirling. McKnight could see his fingers tightening, squeezing his forearms and digging in a bit. His shoulder blades stood out under the tight t-shirt. McKnight reached down and brushed his fingers across them. Grimes made a noise, almost as if he was choking, moved up quickly, then resumed sucking.
McKnight rubbed harder, ran his hand up to grip Grimes’ shoulder. His drew his thumb across a cheekbone.
Grimes did choke. He lifted his head and heaved a deep breath. “Sorry, sir,” he whispered.
McKnight grabbed him by the front of his t-shirt and hauled him up. Grimes looked terrified. McKnight leaned forward and kissed him, mouth open, tongue searching. He tasted the tang of his cock and the beer and Grimes and he wanted more. He gripped the front of the t-shirt with his good hand, angled the cast so his fingers pressed into the back of Grimes neck. Held him there and kissed him.
Until he had to come. It was imperative. He stopped kissing and leaned back, panting. Grimes was panting too, with his mouth hanging open and looking thoroughly shocked. His eyes flicked down and he dove on McKnight’s cock. He was fierce, and it only took a minute or so before McKnight was pumping come down his throat.
Maybe they should go out more often.
End
Also see Grimes’ Date, in which you’ll see a recounting of the same date from the sub perspective, or move right on to After The Date.
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