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Ian crouches behind an old, rusted vehicle, back flat against the metal. It's hot through his regulation uniform, the sturdy cotton blend no match for the high summer sun. Sweat sticks it to his skin, makes it a struggle to fish around in the cargo pocket of his pants for his radio.
It's too late for that anyway, he realizes quickly. Footsteps sound nearby, just on the other side of his refuge, and voices come with them: two, three maybe, whispering observations and orders.
"Are you sure he came this way, soldier?" The voice was light, high, young. A woman, or a boy perhaps, of high rank. "I don't have to tell you what will happen if he escapes."
Ian stays still. Stops himself from looking, breathes slow and quiet. Waits.
"He's around here somewhere, captain." A deeper voice, older, sure. "Don't worry, we'll flush him out."
The confidence in that statement might have left a different soldier afraid. The enemy was already so close, so confident; a different soldier might just give in to the inevitable, stand, and surrender.
But Ian Gallagher isn't just any soldier. And he isn't going down without a fight.
He waits a few careful breaths longer. Hears two sets of footsteps break off, each in it's own direction. To search or to trap, he can't be sure, but it hardly matters now. Only one pair if boots crunches past the nose of the broken-down vehicle he hides behing, kicking up a cloud of dirt, and only one gun's muzzle glints in the sun.
He sticks out a leg between the two advancing on him, braces himself, and waits for impact.
“The fu—?” comes the deep voice form earlier as a shin catches on Ian’s ankle, the words cut off as a heavy body bangs down into the dirt.
“Stay down!” Ian barks, scrambling to his feet. He grabs up his gun, a too-large thing he was stuck with after losing his pistol in an earlier skirmish, and takes aim right at the center of the cloud of dust created by the fall.
Then the dust clears.
And his enemy looks up at him with familiar blue eyes, eyes that dart up and down Ian’s frame with cold calculation.
"Well," he drawls, having regained his breath with surprising speed, "look who we have here.”
He grins, broad and open, completely unconcerned that he’s flat on his back with Ian’s gun trained on him.
“GI Gallagher,” he greets easily, as if they had met at the store and not on opposite sides of the battlefield. “All alone out here in the open."
Ian snorts.
"Looks to me like you're the one who's exposed," he says back, raking his own gaze over the other man’s prone form. "Major Milkovich."
That grin widens.
"So you remember me,” the other man says. “Good"
"What can I say?” Ian returns with a shrug, keeping his weapon level. “I like to know a man's name before I kill him.”
"That so?” Milkovich asks coyly, shifting slowly onto his knees. He rises on them, hands still spread to the side, bringing his face level with Ian’s aimed gun.
“You gonna shoot me, Gallagher?” he prompts, scooting forward. His knees drag through the dirt until Ian stops him, tapping the side of his head with the muzzle of his gun before bringing it back in front of his face.
Milkovich halts obediently, but his smirk is anything but.
“Do you even know how to use that thing?” he questions, nodding at the long barrel. “Shotguns ain't regulation, Army."
Ian clenches his teeth.
“As far as I know,” he grits out, adjusting his stance and readying his trigger finger, “I point and pull the trigger.”
Milkovich’s lips just spread wider, a flash of white teeth behind them.
“Mmm,” he hums, and shuffles one knee closer again. He laughs when Ian prods the center of his forehead with his gun, and doesn’t back away.
“You can pull my trigger anytime, soldier,” he adds, almost a purr. He presses his head more firmly against the weapon that threatens him, looks up at Ian through his lashes. He licks his lips, bites one obscenely, then pulls back just far enough to rise further onto his knees.
Ian is frozen. His finger is on the trigger, but he can’t make it pull. All he can do is watch as his enemy moves, as the gun traces over a temple and down a smooth cheek, never parted from pale, sweat-damp skin. And then the gun is at Milkovich’s lips, and they’re opening. He drags that the tip of that wet, pink tongue along the rim of the shotgun, dips it just inside where it's filthy, and warm, and open, and he--
Gags, quite loudly, drawing away at speed.
"Mickey," Ian says, breathless, shocked. "Did you just--"
"Yup," Mickey chokes out, retching dryly. He sticks out his abused tongue, drags it back in through his teeth, and shudders.
Ian blinks at him.
"But you knew that it was--"
"Paper mache," Mickey finishes for him, wiping a hand over his mouth. "Yup."
"And you still--"
"Jesus Christ Gallagher," Mickey cuts in, face and neck redder than the sun can account for. "You always interrogate a man when he's tryin' to be fuckin'--"
"Kapow!"
Mickey’s brow wrinkles, and Ian can feel his doing the same. They turn to the side, away from the old van, to where Franny stands proudly with her own glitter-encrusted weapon.
"Got you Uncle Mickey!" she cheers, pumping the thing in the air in victory. It’s small compared to Ian’s carefully crafted twelve-gauge, or even compared to the fake, now-crushed Glock in Mickey’s back pocket. But it’s serviceable, a mimic of the revolver Sandy always favored, with one major alteration:
A tiny, plastic lightsaber stuck on the end like a bayonet.
"Good fightin’, little Red,” Mickey congratulates, stepping forward to ruffle her hair. She beams up at him, ever the proud niece.
“Which part did ya get me with?" he asks then, poking at the flimsy addition to her weapon, and her beam turns into a pout.
"Doesn't matter!" she claims, but he shakes his head.
"I mean, it's gonna be the difference between dead or mostly dead, so yeah,” he argues, albeit with a smile. “It matters."
"You're not dead, silly,” Franny counters. “You're just out! You gotta go sit with Uncle Lip now!"
She waves her toy toward the house, where Lip sat in a lawn chair with Freddy on his lap. Mickey grimaces at the little wave his brother-in-law offers when he sees them looking, and turns to Ian with a plaintive look.
Ian just shrugs.
"Sorry, Mick,” he says, not sounding it at all. “Rules are rules."
Mickey narrows his eyes, opens his mouth to argue—
And abruptly things better of it.
“Esteemed General Gallagher,” he says, turning to Franny again, “I’m afraid I’ve been wounded most griv—” He frowns. “Gre…” Shakes his head. “Pretty fucking bad,” he finishes instead as she giggles. “If I could head inside to see a medic…”
Franny snaps to attention, her little brow furrowed.
“Report to the medic tent at once Major Milkovich!” she orders, then turns to Ian. “And as for you—“
"Bang," Mickey deadpans, aiming his decimated toy gun vaguely in Ian’s direction. "Oh no, accidental discharge,” he says to a gaping Franny. “Guess your Uncle Ian has to come with me."
“You should be more careful with guns, Uncle Mickey," Franny scolds. “Now I have to beat everybody by myself.”
She turns on her heel and stomps away in a huff, leaving them both swallowing laughter as they watch.
“You heard the kid, Gallagher,” Mickey mutters once she’s out of earshot. “Time to play doctor.”
He turns and heads toward the house, tossing a smirk back over his shoulder.
“And you better bring that gun of yours with ya,” he adds with a wink. “For safety."
Ian nearly crumples said gun in his hand in his eagerness to obey.