Chapter Text
Cam couldn’t actually convince himself that what he was doing made any kind of sense, so he just tried hard not to think at all.
When Jones had dropped from his bunk this time, his whole body had seized up, expecting to see Jones taking another languid, eerie and listless sleep-walk across the room.
Instead, Jones had sunk down further into a crouch by his head, resting his elbows on the edge of his bed. Very much awake. The eye contact punched the breath out of Cam as he scrambled to sit up, his heart pounding against his chest. Jones raised one eyebrow, smiling slightly, and nodded towards the showers, pointed.
Then smooth as anything, he pushed back from the bed and walked off, before Cam could even shut his mouth. He moved on instinct, jerking up - before he could really process what was happening, his bare feet were cold against the floor, he was halfway to the showers after Jones.
And it was stupid, so stupid, ridiculous - the showers were open, anyone could walk in, but somehow he was still moving, coming up to Jones where he was leaning against the wall in the back corner. He was smiling somehow still, watching Cam approach, still smiling while his eyes slid down Cam’s body, slowly, unhurried.
Cam stopped a foot away, because even over the rush in his ears he had to check, had to hear Jones say it outloud.
“You’re…are you, are you actually….awake?” he said, watching Jones’s face carefully, and watching it contort briefly into a grimace.
“Awake? God, Cam, this whole place, this whole thing is one long nightmare…maybe we're both just dreaming,” and he reached out, put his hand on Cam’s hip, “The two of us in here…. it doesn’t even really even have to be real.”
Jones pressed his thumb against the waistband of his brief, and all this was just too crazy to really be happening. He felt almost apart from himself, like he was watching himself from the ceiling, letting Jones pull him in. Maybe it wasn’t happening.
“It’s real,” he said, mouth dry, almost to himself. His eyes dropped to Jones’ mouth, so close now. There was a buzzing in his ears. “It’s real enough.”
Jones’s other hand came up then he was gripping Cam by the hips, pulling him in, and they were kissing. He held the back of Jones’s neck, pressing him against the wall with his body, leaning against him. It was too slow almost, almost too soft, there was a buzzing in Cam’s ears. He could barely only hear the sounds of his own breath through his nose, pulling in air as his mouth opened over Jones’s.
A squeak of rubber behind them sent a bolt of lightning through Cam’s body. Jones shoved him, hard and Cam pulled his hands back, adrenaline flooding through him, the sense of unreality snapped away. He turned around.
It was Sullivan. Sullivan was there, too real and still a nightmare, standing behind them. Back lit by the hallway light, somehow perfectly dressed in his fatigues already, perfectly pressed and crisp. Something was falling inside Cam, something twisting in his stomach and wooshing, Sullivan couldn’t be there, couldn’t be looking at him like that, his mouth tight and furious, his gaze pinned directly on Cam, face harder than than Cam had ever seen it, fury and something else in his gaze. He couldn’t be there. But he was. Somehow, he was.
Jones had pushed off the wall, he was standing at attention next to Cam, but his body was trembling. He was shaking. And Sullivan wasn’t saying anything, just staring at them. The silence, Cam thought he wouldn’t be able to bear much more. Finally Sullivan spoke.
“So….” he said, quiet, almost too quiet to hear, “two faggots…alone in my showers. In my barracks. In my fucking Marine Corps.” His voice was dangerous. He came closer.
“Now, I know one thing. I know that I didn’t just see what I just fucking saw. I know that. It would be fucking impossible to see what I saw.”
His whisper was a furious snarl now, and he was advancing on them. He looked demonic, like something out of a fairytale. And Cam was naked, felt completely naked, because now he knew, Sullivan knew, he’d seen, he knew for sure what Cam was.
“It would be fucking impossible for two of my recruits….” and he was almost a foot from them now, he leaned in, “to be so fucking stupid….so be so fucking sick…” and he cut himself off, pressing his lips together, closing his eyes and breathing in deeply, like the thought of it even was too disgusting, nauseating. He turned around.
“I can’t stand to look at either of you. You have no fucking idea what you’ve done. You better be fucking gone by the time I turn back around,” he said, walking into the hallway. “Do you fucking hear me? I want both of you fucking gone.”
Jones jerked into movement, almost running, back out of the showers towards his bunk. But Cam couldn’t move. He was frozen.
“Cope,” and Sullivan still didn’t turn around, wasn't looking at him, “Did you hear me? I said get the fuck out.”
Sullivan turned his head, looking back over his shoulder slightly to where Cam was still standing, his body like a puppet, all the strings cut.
“Don’t think for a fucking second that this is over. I’ll deal with you later,” and then he was gone, moving at a march, out of the showers, around the corner, gone.
The room was tilting. Cam didn’t know how he got back to his cot. He was there, and he still wasn’t, and finally when his head was on the pillow, he took one breath in and it all caught him on the exhale, a torrent. He was choking on sobs, heaving, feeling everything that had just happened rush through his body. He flung his arm over his mouth and choked into the crook of his elbow, he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t fight it.
He could feel a vision of his other self, his truest self, crouched next to him, forehead on his shoulder, crying too.
It wasn’t fair. He didn’t think about this often, but the box of unthinkable thoughts was cracked open now, and he could admit it to himself. He didn’t want this, didn’t want to be like this, hated that he was. Hated that look in Sullivan' s eyes when he saw them.
What finally finally pulled him into sleep was that it all wouldn’t matter soon - he was fully out now. The arrest, or whatever other public expulsion, was coming and then it would be done. It would all be over soon.