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You sit at one of the many tables in the mess hall, with unfocused eyes almost like you’re dead, with bags under your eyes, hair barely in place, and robotic movements.
To anyone else, you were just a sleep-deprived soldier, but not to Roach apparently.
A soft kick under the table makes you look at the person across from you. Roach has that type of look you hate because is like he knows every secret you own and won’t expose them because it can be beneficial for him.
Is annoying, to say the least, but you are too exhausted and mentally unstable to say anything or care about it.
You two stare at each other for a moment or two before you sigh and look away, at the tray of food in front of you. You hadn’t touched any of it, to be honest, you felt kind of nauseous.
A tap on the table gets your attention again so you glare at Roach, who is again, calling for your attention but not moving to tell you what he wants.
Well, at least not at the beginning because then he starts moving his hands in the air in what you know is sign language, but your brain is too exhausted and confused to comprehend immediately so you must stare at him for a moment to understand.
“I’m fine”, you simply answered, and even you knew it was bullshit.
You were not fine and anyone from Pluto could see it.
Roach raises a brow before speaking in sign language again. As the first time, you don’t get it from one go.
“I just haven’t been able to sleep properly lately”, you say, in a nonchalant tone, like it was no big deal.
He asks another question, and you shrug for a moment before you sigh and let your head fall over your hands, shoulders defeated.
“I don’t know. Bed has always been shitty, so is not that. I have nightmares but is not anything I can’t handle. I have been under a lot of stress lately, but what’s new?”
You stay quiet for a moment, Roach still stares, not eating anything on his tray.
You sigh again, moving again to look at him properly. He is now looking at you like he knows something you don’t.
“What?”
He moves his hands again.
“How is Gaz?”, you asked, between offended and confused. You even frown. “I dunno, isn’t he on a mission with the captain?”, you make a face that gets a chuckle from him. “He says he is not the favorite, but whenever the captain has to pick someone, he always picks him”, you scoff. “They are both so insufferable. Price should just sign up the papers and officially adopt him”.
Roach moves his hands again; you can see amusement in his eyes.
“I don’t care if he is an adult, they act like father and son every moment of their lives, and, is disgusting”.
He signs something else, with a shit-eating grin on his face.
“No, I’m not jealous, why would I be jealous? Feeling something for Price will be like feeling something for my father, which ew, and Gaz?”, you stop, blinking and after a moment in silence, you scoff. “We are just friends”.
Roach laughs sarcastically, while you rub your face, between desperate for sleep and angry at everything around you.
You look at him again to catch some of what he is signing. When your brain caught up you make a face.
“What does me having shitty sleep has to do with Gaz being on a mission with Captain Dad?”
Roach sighs to you, like he is frustrated, you just look at him with utter confusion on your face.
He then signs something in a rushed matter and if he could speak, it would have been funny, but it wasn’t.
At least, not when your brain caught up.
You froze for a moment, considering the idea.
Roach is under the impression that your bed sharing with Gaz had something to do with lack of sleep and rest.
You mean, you did share a bed with Gaz, but it was because…well, you weren’t sure why. It just kind of…happened. You don’t even remember how or when you think it was after some awful mission. Exfil was taking its sweet time to arrive, and you were exhausted beyond exhaustion. Price gave the order to rest and so you did, but then again, Gaz had been in the vicinity and somehow, he ended up sleeping on your shoulder and you drooling over his head.
You swore you had the best sleep of your life. The occasion repeated itself more than once and before you knew it, Gaz and you were sharing a bed every night. It wasn’t weird, in the sense that all you did was sleep and snore and cuddle and wake up like you had the better sleep of your lives. The team knew and Price did too, but everyone acted like they didn’t care, which was what you wanted to believe too: that you didn’t care shit about it, you just were there for the good sleep and the cuddles (because he was a nice cuddler) and the unspoken comfort.
You didn’t care if Gaz slept next to you or not, except that at this very moment, he was away on a mission and since he left, you have been sleeping alone and you hadn’t even slept a bit. You just rolled in bed, had nightmares, or looked at the ceiling, only passing out because of exhaustion and then waking up feeling like shit and like something was fucking missing.
You didn’t get it, until maybe now.
It could be a coincidence of course, it didn’t necessarily mean something, but then again, Roach was insisting on it and usually, Roach wasn’t wrong on this sort of thing, even if you didn’t have the slightest idea of what the hell was whatever the fuck you were having with Gaz.
You stayed in silence for a long moment, until Roach kicked you under the table again. You looked at him and he looked at you. He was trying to make you speak, but you honestly couldn’t.
“Are you implying I have feelings for him?”
Roach shrugged with a smile on his face.
You scoffed.
“I don’t”.
He raised his eyebrows; you frowned.
“I swear I don’t. I mean, why will I feel anything for him?”
He signed a couple of reasons and to be honest, it angers you.
“I don’t!”, you suddenly said.
Your tone got the attention of other people in the mess hall, so you backed up quickly.
“I don’t”, you simply said again, before you stood up and left.
You are thinking about this moment later that day when you are lying on your bed. You tried to sleep a while ago, but you weren’t succeeding very much. You roll over the bed and instantly grab a pillow to sink on it.
A familiar nice smell hits you and you smiled and squeezed it tightly on instinct.
You were falling asleep when the realization hits you, making you open your eyes and stare frozen at nothing.
“Fuck”, you mumble against the pillow, groaning.
It was Gaz’s pillow.
You may have feelings for him after all.
He sits in one of the airplane seats, with unfocused eyes almost like he is dead, bags under his eyes, cap on in his lap, still like a statue.
To anyone else, he was just sleeping in a plane full of soldiers. Price is close to him, snoring softly, hat over his face, arms crossed over his chest, boots firmly planted on the plane’s floor. Laswell was at the other side, still awake, faint blue light over her face. She looked like she was tired but couldn’t sleep.
Just like him. He looked like he was sleeping, but he had been staring at the nothing for the past…four hours. He isn’t sure anymore, he lost count.
Sighing annoyed, he moved.
He sat a little better in the seat, not like they provided any comfort, but he was not exactly complaining, even if his arse was sore.
He looks at the soldier across from him, sleeping too, head on the shoulder of the soldier beside him. The other had his head over their head and both were snoring.
It was amusing, but Gaz was too exhausted and sleep-deprived so the only feeling he got from the view was jealousy.
He was jealous he couldn’t sleep shit.
“Can’t sleep?”, a soft voice asked beside him. He turned his head a little.
Laswell looked just as miserable as him, except that she was hiding it much better.
He sighed.
“Somethin’ like it”, he simply answered, accent thick with exhaustion.
“I thought that you will be used to this by now, Sargeant”, she said, amused.
“I’m not”, Gaz smirked, even if he wasn’t in the mood to talk or to be funny.
He was dying to sleep, but he couldn’t get any.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be at base soon”, she then looked at her watch and moved back to her phone.
Gaz wanted her to be right, but this was a long-distance flight, and he was in no way, closer to base.
He was miserable though, and he still didn’t know why.
He hasn’t been able to sleep since he left base. At the start, he thought it was because he was well rested or that he had too much adrenaline, but usually, the adrenaline wore off sooner after entering the plane to become exhaustion and sleep. And hell, he was exhausted. The mission had been complicated from the start, they changed the plan four times, and, in the end, they got what they wanted, but hell, he had run more in one mission than he ever did in his military career.
It was rather fun, so he wasn’t complaining at all. He was just complaining about the fact that when he came back to the silence and quiet to rest, he couldn’t sleep. It had been like that for a few days, and he didn’t have the slightest idea what it was. He ignored it at the start, and adrenaline helped in some way, but then…then it became too much and now he is exhausted out of his mind, and he can’t even close his eyes.
Is almost like something is missing.
It was all rubbish, or at least, that’s what he wanted to believe, because, c’mon he was a soldier, he was adaptable by nature, and he knew how to sleep anywhere at any time, it was ridiculous that his brain was starting to get annoying at a moment like this, at this specific time where he needed sleep the most.
He sighs again, fidgeting with the cap in his lap.
“Why aren’t you asleep, Laswell?”, he suddenly asks, because the woman beside him is still awake, scrolling mindlessly through her phone, begging for rest like he is.
She chuckles before answering.
“I can’t sleep”, and her tone is exhausted but defeated at the same time as she was used to it like it was a normal issue.
He waits for her elaboration, and it doesn’t get long for it.
“I can’t sleep when I’m away from home”.
And he gets it, he does. When he left his home to join the military against his mother’s wishes, he was homesick too. But after a few months and after years of being away from home, he got used to it. He doesn’t miss his family like he did at the start, he doesn’t miss his room, he didn’t miss his mum’s cooking or the laughs after an F1 race on the lounge.
“Aren’t you usually away from home?”
“Yeah, but I get to be at home more than normal at least for someone with my job description. My brain gets used to it fast and when I’m away for more than a week, I just can’t sleep. Usually, I just miss my wife’s arms wrapped around me”.
For some reason, that felt too personal, too intimate, and for a moment, Gaz regrated asking, but then he caught up: he didn’t have arms to sleep in back at the base, but he did share a bed with you from time to time, well, most nights, but it was because it was automatic at this rate and he never truly put too much thought into it.
It was just sleeping for sleep’s sake and because there was something warm about you, something safe.
His brain automatically associates Laswell’s words with you and for a moment his brain is super confused. Laswell is married and has a kid, of course, she will miss her wife, her home, and her family. He didn’t have any of that, he was single, away from home and the base was mostly home and the task force was his family now. He didn’t have a relationship with you outside of comrades and teammates and he was sure that it would never change because you just shared a bed.
Why was he making a big deal of this?
What was happening?
What was his brain implying?
Yes, his sleeping problems started when he left base, same time he stopped sleeping next to you, but what the hell does that have to do with it? It could be a coincidence. He slept well before you why will he sleep badly after you?
“That’s cute”, he says, with a chuckle. Laswell chuckles too.
“I know. Looking at their photos helps the brain to go to sleep”, she says, almost like she knows something he doesn’t.
She then showed him her phone and indeed, she hadn’t been scrolling mindlessly through her phone, she had been scrolling through her gallery full of pictures of her kid and another woman with dark skin and hair like his.
“I guess that it gives me enough serotonin to calm me down so I can go to sleep thinking I’m safe”, she shrugs. “Human brains are such sappy idiots”.
“Humans in general are”, and they both chuckle.
Gaz keeps the conversation floating for a while until Laswell starts blinking heavily and he gives her a break so she can sleep. She falls asleep a second later, snoring slightly, like Price on the other side of him.
He then is left with his thoughts his sleep-deprived mind, and Laswell's words in his head.
He sighed defeated before he got his phone from his back pocket and unlocked it.
He felt like a puppy with separation anxiety he couldn’t believe how low he had come.
He taps his gallery app and a bunch of pictures hit the screen in little squares. Most of them are silly photos, of the places he has been, or of the Task Force doing stupid shit he can use against them in the future.
His eyes stop in one, though, and he taps it to enlarge it.
An automatic smile comes to his face before he can register or stop it.
There you are, smiling at the camera beside Soap making silly faces. He passed the photo and there is another one of you laughing your arse out. If he doesn’t remember badly, the photo was taken after Soap made a very bad joke, and you laughed because you always laughed at his jokes, even if they were awful.
Your laugh was always serotonin for him.
He finds a few more pics with you on them. His favorite one, is one of the two of you, sleeping. Roach took it a few months ago, he thinks, after an awful mission. You two sitting next to each other, he had his head on your arm and your head was over his. He had the cap covering his face slightly and you were drooping over it.
He gives a tap to the heart section under the photo and that’s when it hits him.
His first reaction is denial, but then he lets his head lean back against the plane wall and he just lets the feeling wash over him.
He was in love.
He was in love.
He is in love.
He turns the phone off and closes his eyes with it against his vest. He puts the cap over his face.
He falls asleep with a smile, or at least, that’s what Price says when he wakes up.
He is sore and numb when he arrives at base and starts walking away from the plane. Laswell and Price are too engrossed in some silly argument if it was soccer or football. The three of them stop when Ghost materializes in front of them.
Ghost geets the group and joins the walk to wherever they are going when Gaz turns his head and sees you on one of the hangars with Roach. You look like you are discussing something of some kind, and he doesn’t realize he is staring until he remembers his thoughts on the plane, and you turn to look at him too.
You make eye contact and for a moment your face has something different, something he can’t tell but that he thinks is related to serotonin mixed with something that reminds him of the sun.
He doesn’t stop though, and you don’t approach. When he turns away, Price is bashing US culture and Laswell is rolling her eyes.
After a long ass meeting with Command, he is dismissed and he finally can shower, eat, and sleep.
Is not until he gets to the last part, that he realizes that he is in his room and not yours and that his bed is too empty.
His feet get him into your room a second later and when you open your door, you look as miserably as he does.
“Hello”, he greets.
“Hi”, you simply say.
For a moment you stand there looking at each other until he breaks the distance to hug you.
When your arms wrap against him, his brain remembers Laswell’s words.
She was right.
This was home.
He was home.