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Liam Robert Sullivan was no longer serving in the Marine; he had no part in the military. Liam hadn’t been for years.
The only constant was that he was still in the closet, hiding. He had pushed that part deeper into himself. Except this time, caged in a prison, he couldn’t run from himself.
Liam sat on his bed in his cell reading the frail news article he had saved. As proof that the world outside was changing. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy has been set into action’, read the title. Capt. Fajardo had brought it to him months before.
There was hope for soldiers like him, Aaron, Jones, and Cope.
Footsteps echoed on the floor. Liam hastily hid the piece of newspaper under his hard mattress.
Everyone in prison had secrets. No one of Liam’s inmates or the prison guards suspected him of being gay. What they knew was that Liam had been a Marine who had gone too far in a bar fight.
Here Liam had time to replay and no duty to distract him from all the death that had been put into his pack. The ones he had told himself he could not carry. The one he told himself that it was okay to let go. The thing he could not do completely to this day. The thing he had hoped that Cope would learn before being surrounded by it. To not suffocate with its burden.
Sometimes in his dreams, Liam talked to his younger self. He tried to stop him from becoming a Marine. Stop him from going into the military, a path that would turn into his whole world. The one that would bring him a family, but for the cost of pretending to be someone everyone wanted him to be. A warrior, not a lover. People like him could not be both, not in the Marine.
Then, in the dream Liam would meet the man who still believed he could be a lover and a Marine at the same time. He would meet the man who ran away scared of losing the Military. Scared of being caught. The mistake that led the NCIS to Aaron and putting a target on himself in the process.
Some nights Cope would enter the dream. Cope would start as the boy he meets for the first time at boot camp. The ‘younger brother’ that had appeared at the worst time. The one he saw himself in and who he stayed in the military for when he should have escaped before it was too late.
Liam wanted to warn him. That there was no path for someone like him in the military. He wanted to scare him off. Pack his bag before it was too late. Before he found a family in the Marine.
Liam made it more difficult for him. He played mind games. He tried to separate Cope from his friends. Despite it all Cope stayed. He wouldn’t cast away his friendship, and he wouldn’t stop seeing the best in people.
Cope saw the best in Liam, yet had trouble seeing himself belong.
Cope, despite all Liam had done, had seen him as the man he wanted to be but wasn’t. The prime example of a Marine, a ‘poster boy’. And somehow in the end, Cope had won.
After all he had done to torment Cope, Liam wanted to be that man for a bit longer to prepare him for the future in the military. Liam turned into the instructor, mentor, and ‘older brother’ he never had in the limited time they had. Someone who saw him for who he was and told him that he belonged. Someone who prepared and warned him of the path ahead. Cope would become better than him. He had to be to survive.
However, in the depth of the dream Cope would become just like Liam, all the worst part of himself, he would make all the same mistakes. He would become a monster, far from the boy he had been before the Marine.
On occasion, Cope would become a better man and Marine than Liam. Cope would then stand before Liam, not recognizing him. For now, older and wiser, he saw all Liam's faults. He would see the warrior, murderer, and the scared runner, who hides from the world.
“You don’t deserve being a Marine,” Cope would say in his dream. “How could you abandon your lover, the one you would have married if you could, and hit a civilian into a coma. You act like you don’t care. Do you not have any remorse? You are meant to protect this country from people like you.”
Liam had one month until he got out from prison. One more month where he was stuck with his thoughts. He had one month until he had to figure out what he would do with his life now that he didn’t have the Marine. Liam could, would, find Aaron. If Aaron ever wanted to see him again.
Liam had no family to go back to. He would never be accepted. His parents had told him not to come back home once they discovered his sexuality. The military was, ironically, the one who took him in and raised him into a man when his birth family wouldn’t. He’d been lost; the Marine gave him a purpose, a home, and a family.
“Sullivan,” a guard said. “You have a visitor.”
The guard led him to the visitor’s hall. It was only on rare occasions that he got visitors. His friends from the military visited from time to time. Though they were far spread. Most of them were stationed abroad, others were busy, some simply didn't want to. And one, who wanted to, but was kept far away.
“Pvt. Cope has stated an interest to come and visit you. I have suggested against it. As it is not a good idea having him associated with you, further than boot camp, especially this early in his career,” Capt. Fajardo had said at her first visit. Liam couldn’t help but agree. He wasn’t sure if it was a professional judgment, that it was a bad idea that Cope did get associated with someone who has been on NCIS radar and with a criminal record, or his personal feelings, that didn’t want Cope to see him like this.
“How is he,” Liam had asked.
“He is doing well. He has potential to go far,” Capt. Fajardo had answered. “It is also well known at the station that he was the youngest to graduate boot camp this year. There had been a mishap in paperwork and, long story short, Pvt. Cope was 17 when boot camp ended. His mother came and signed his papers so that he could continue.”
The fact did not ease his conscience. Had he known that fact in the beginning, then he might have been ‘nicer’ to Cope, or he might have tried harder to get him to leave.
Capt. Fajardo waited by one of the tables in the hall.
“Capt. Fajardo,” Liam greeted.
“Sgt. Sullivan,” Capt. Fajardo said. This was the first time he had been called Sgt. or anything close to a military term except for jarhead and other slurs, since Capt. Fardo’s last visit a couple of months earlier.
“You know you don’t have to call me that anymore,” Liam said.
“Once a Marine, always a Marine,” she answered. She put a folder on the table with the familiar Marine seal on it. “I have done research, some paperwork. I believe that once you have been discharged from here and if you get an approved physical and psychiatric check, as well as other things, then you can come back to the Marine Corps.” She said straight to the point. “You will be working under me or wherever your expertise is directly needed. I could not protect you before. But I believe with the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy we have more room to work with. The investigation on you has ended and will not continue if you return. However, your record from now on must be spot clean. And if you decide to return there will be a long way and a lot of work to get your reputation back up. That is, if it ever will be as good before your ‘discharge’”
Capt. Fajardo let the information sink in before continuing.
“I can understand if you don’t take the offer. You have already given a lot. The Marine… I would understand your choice to lead another life.”
She pushed the folder with the contract towards him.
“Read it, think about it, don’t make this decision without caution.”
Capt. Fajardo left not long after. Liam was once again cut off from the military world. Except now he had another piece of paper of hope in his hands. He needed to get discharged and meet all the standards for re-enlistment.
Liam didn’t have to think any longer. He had kept his ‘thoughts’ for company for years already. Besides, where else would he go?