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one.
GQ's not surprised when he starts getting tapped for missions that involve swimming a little more often, after Midway. For one, grim as it sounds, a chunk got taken out of the number of trained SEALs available, given how many of his guys got picked off or blown up during that delightful fuckin' disaster. And for two—
For two, he did what he was supposed to. Waller likes people who follow orders, and it turns out she really likes people who follow orders they're going to die of. Being willing to set off a charge that big two feet from your own face on somebody else's say-so lands you solid marks in Amanda Waller's book.
Just good luck, that he didn't die a fiery death in those flooded tunnels. And by "good luck", GQ pretty much means Killer Croc, so he's also not all that surprised to walk into the prep area and find Croc getting himself checked over.
"Hey, man," he says, and bumps Croc in the shoulder with a fist. "You coming with?"
"Yeah," Croc says.
"Sweet," GQ says. "They tell you where we're headed?"
"Nope," Croc says.
"Me neither," GQ admits. "Taking a boat, though, so you should be able to hang onto your lunch this time."
"Shut up," Croc advises him, and GQ grins and then holds up his hands, defensive.
"Touchy," he says, chiding, and then turns away to do a quick spot-check of his own equipment. Makes him feel a little ridiculous, having to wear a suit and a utility belt, a mask, all this awkward clunky shit—not that he's not used to it, he's a SEAL, he knows his way around this stuff. But next to Croc and his bare clean scales, GQ looks like a fucking Christmas tree.
He glances up, and the guy who was poking around the back of Croc's neck is giving him kind of a weird look.
"Well?" Croc growls.
The guy startles. "Yeah, yes," he says quickly, "you're—you're all set, Agent, uh. Agent Jones?"
Croc doesn't answer, just bares his teeth at the guy, who takes a big step back and swallows so loud GQ can hear it. Dude's hands are shaking, too, the tablet he's got in one of them practically waving around.
"Hey," GQ says sharply. "Be careful with that."
"Oh, uh, yes—yes, I will," the guy says, clutching it against his chest before he turns and hightails it out of there like his ass is on fire.
GQ watches him go and shakes his head, and when he turns back around, Croc's watching him.
"That's the thing, right?" GQ says, motioning sort of vaguely toward the nape of his own neck. "The control for the bomb in your head?"
"Yeah," Croc says slowly, pale eyes unreadable.
"Figured," GQ says, and shakes his head again. "Man, if that dumbass blows your head off because he's fat-fingered that fucking tablet, I promise to kill him for you. Okay?"
Croc doesn't say anything for a minute, just keeps looking at GQ. And fuck, was that the wrong thing to say? GQ's always kind of figured they're all on a timer, metaphorically speaking; if he doesn't get capped in the field, then one of these days Waller or Flag or somebody is going to take him out just to manage the security risk. He's pretty much come to terms with it, himself, but maybe that was a little too blunt.
Too blunt. For Killer Croc.
Okay, maybe that's not the problem.
"Sorry," GQ says, just in case. "Didn't mean to make you feel weird about it."
"Nah," Croc says after a second, blinking in a quick sideways flicker. "We're good." And then he adds, contemplative, "Make it hurt a little."
"If I have to kill him? Sure, man," GQ says with a laugh, "you got it."
He's almost forgotten about it by the time they're out there in the boat, easing closer to the drop point across a lot of cold dark water.
Wilson's at the tiller, and GQ's gone out with him before. Usually he's good for a little chatter, but he hardly says two words to GQ tonight; he's sitting in the stern of the sleek little speedboat with his shoulders practically up to his ears, and GQ can see the whites of his eyes in the dimness, the way his gaze is flicking around without settling.
"Hey, you're not the one going in there," GQ murmurs to him, nudging him with an elbow, trying to get him to loosen up. But Wilson just laughs, one short sharp huff, and doesn't meet GQ's eyes.
GQ doesn't figure it out until after they've drifted to a stop. Croc's the first one over the side, sliding into the water with the barest little ripple, and GQ catches a faint flash of paler underbelly before he's gone, totally invisible.
Fucking amazing. GQ shakes his head, and then eases into place to tip himself over the wale, and then Wilson grabs his arm.
"Jesus, GQ—you really doing this?" he hisses.
GQ blinks at him, and has to spit his mouthpiece out to answer. "What? The mission? Wilson, what the hell—"
"Getting into the water with that," Wilson says. "Fuck, you got a death wish?"
GQ stares at him. With—what, with Croc? Is that the bug Wilson's got up his ass? Seriously?
"You got some kind of problem with him?"
"With it, yeah, you bet your ass," Wilson says sharply. "Are you seriously trying to tell me you're okay going out alone with that thing?"
And the pencil-pusher from earlier had been one thing; if that guy was scared of Croc, who gave a shit? Croc probably was the most dangerous thing he'd come face-to-face with all year. But Wilson—Wilson is field, like GQ. Wilson should fucking know better, what the fuck.
GQ realizes dimly that he probably ought to be angry. There's a version of this conversation where he breaks Wilson's nose and they never speak to each other again. But as it is—fuck, it's so silly he can't help but laugh. Which turns into sort of an awkward snorting sputter with his mouthpiece dangling right in front of his face. "He's already saved my life like twice," GQ says, "and you're an idiot. Fuck you," and he jerks his arm out of Wilson's grip, taps the mouthpiece back into place, and goes over the side.
His suit is great, but he can still feel how fucking cold the water is, the sensation a layer removed from his actual skin. It takes a second for him to orient himself in the water, as always, to figure out which way's up and which way's down and point himself away from the boat in the right direction.
And then he feels a shift in the water against him, a ripple of pressure climbing the line of his leg and side. Croc. He twists and sees the dim glimmer of scales to one side, and grins into his mask.
As if there's any way he could be scared of his own personal good luck. He flickers one diving fin in Croc's direction, just to say hi, and then they strike out toward the objective together.
two.
GQ comes up with a splash and lets out a whoop.
He shouldn't, but man, does he ever love the missions that go down like that: sweet, perfect, every step toward the objective falling into place like gears meshing, click click click.
Doesn't hurt one bit that it's—what, his sixth? Seventh?—time out with Croc. They've started to get a real feel for each other, which only makes it all the sweeter. There actually was a fuckup in the intel this time; the blueprints they'd gotten in the briefing had showed an outlet drain where there wasn't one. But it hadn't mattered. He and Croc had looked at each other in the water, and GQ had gestured right and then left and then flashed Croc two fingers—they'd split to scope out their options in either direction, met back up in two minutes exactly, and improvised themselves a way to get the job done in even less time than they'd originally been allotted.
And now they're out, undetected, and the shitheads in the base behind them have no idea that in ninety seconds they and their scary demon-summoning altar are going to be blown to smithereens. Damn, what an excellent fucking day.
Croc comes up beside him—just the top of his head, those eyes, the spiky arch of his spine barely breaking the surface right behind.
"You beautiful fucking killer crocodile," GQ says gleefully, and slings an arm around his shoulders.
Croc eyes him, and comes up far enough to bring his mouth a half-inch out of the water. "You okay?"
"Me? I am goddamn spectacular," GQ says, and yeah, okay, he might be very slightly hypoxic, alongside all the endorphins. They'd done great, worked fast, but GQ'd had to spend a little more time submerged than had been advisable given his air supply.
But they pulled it off, and they made it out, and now Croc's mouth has twitched up just a little at one corner in that way that's as good as cracking up laughing from any ten other guys. GQ grins back at him, squeezes one of those huge scaly shoulders and then throws his fist in the air.
And then the watch built into his suit gives him a thirty-second warning beep. "And that's our cue to get out of here, Agent Jones," GQ says, and flops over backward, letting the tank on his back drag him under.
This right here, this is his favorite fucking thing in the world: the hard-earned exhausted warmth in his muscles, that satisfying feeling of a job well done in the rearview mirror, and the cool all-encompassing embrace of water—looking up through it at the wavering light shining down from the surface, dawn sky just starting to catch fire somewhere up there.
He drifts there and listens to the sound of his own breathing in his ears, lets the contented glow inside him fill up his chest. And then a shadow cuts through the water above him, familiar strong-shouldered silhouette against the rippling backdrop of sky, and GQ grins so hard his mouthpiece almost pops out.
Croc sinks a little closer, close enough that GQ can finally pick the shape of his face out of the dimness, and watches GQ for a second before he brings a hand up to swirl a finger around his temple: the universal sign for You've got a screw loose, pal.
GQ flips him the bird, still grinning, and then rolls over in the water and kicks out in the general direction of their extraction point.
three.
GQ squeezes his eyes shut and swallows down the taste of copper rising at the back of his throat, and tries to press one hand a little harder against the hole in himself.
He's not sure it works. Partly because he can't really feel that hand very well, and partly because everything just fucking hurts so much that he can't tell how much pressure he is or isn't putting on the wound.
He's been shot a bunch of times, but mostly in the limbs. Figures that the one time he couldn't swing any Kevlar—the entry point had been so tight a squeeze that he doesn't even have an air tank, had to slim everything down as far as possible—would be the time some asshole catches him pretty much center-of-mass.
Fuck, that hurts.
"Fuck," he hears himself gasp out. "Fuck, fuck," and the jagged, spasmodic movement just makes what has to be at least two broken ribs flare up with agony, but he can't fucking stop. "Fuck—"
There's a splash, a crack of bone, a terrified gurgling cry that gets cut off with grim abruptness. The guy standing over GQ was about to finish him off with a double-tap to the head, but makes the critical mistake of turning to see what happened to his buddy, and GQ chokes out a ragged, wet laugh when he drops out of view. Drag of his body sliding, a rushed, "What the fuck—oh my god, oh my god—" and then a sick sharp sound, and that's the end of that.
GQ lets his head drop back against the concrete under him and tries to catch his breath. How'd he even lose it? He hasn't moved in like five minutes; bleeding out doesn't exactly qualify as exerting himself. But fuck, somehow there just isn't enough air in here—
"GQ," Croc says.
GQ blinks up at him. When did he get here? "The hell you doin'? You're s'posed t'be out there—backup—"
"Can't back you up if you're dead, bro," Croc growls.
"Entry point's too narrow for your monster ass," GQ tells the blurry ceiling.
"Came in the front."
The front, sure. The front where GQ had not come in, because their intel had been completely and totally accurate about the part where there had been like thirty guys with semi-automatics and rocket launchers guarding this place. Okay.
"Missed check-in," Croc adds.
GQ laughs, except it's really more like a half-hearted breath hissing out between his bloody teeth. Yeah, he sure as shit had missed the check-in, Croc's not wrong about that.
"Nice of you t'think of me," GQ manages. "But I'm—waste of your—" Fuck, fuck, why can't he hold onto a thought for more than three seconds? "Fucked," he gets out instead, but he tenses up too much doing it and everything whites out hard.
He comes back gasping, thready and helpless, a weird pitiful sound that makes him wonder why nobody's had the kindness to shoot whatever animal's making it in the head, before he realizes it's him.
"Shut up," Croc is telling him, one big smooth palm settled heavily over the back of GQ's hand, and his scales are getting sticky, GQ's blood everywhere—he can't be happy about that at all, he likes to keep clean, to move without leaving trails in the water— "I mean it," Croc says, "shut your goddamn mouth and keep still," and GQ isn't talking. Is he? "You sure fucking are."
Huh.
"Dumbass," Croc says, shifting around—gathering GQ up, and aw, that's sweet, he's going to bring GQ's dead body back instead of letting it get buried in the rubble once this shithole comes down.
"Wait," GQ says, scrabbling at one of Croc's arms with his free hand. "Wait—code."
"What?"
"They gave me a—'s mine, personal—so they know you didn't kill me," GQ gasps out. "They got to know you didn't kill me. Fuckin' Wilson's—the pickup—you walk up holdin' my dead body 'n' he'll—shoot you in the face—"
"GQ—"
"Alpha tango november—"
Cool weight across GQ's mouth, immobilizing; Croc's hand. Not the bloody one, the other one. "GQ, I don't need it," Croc growls. "You ain't dying."
"Man, I am—super fucking dying—right now," GQ manages, and it comes out slurred, wet, blood tacky on his lips. "This 's—the dyingest I've ever—"
"Nope," Croc says, sharp, and then he moves, GQ moving with him, and Croc's trying to be careful with him but jesus, it's like his guts are nothing but sharp edges, fuck—
He's in the water. He doesn't know where, doesn't know how he got there, numb except where he's on fire; but he's in the water, bobbing a little, ears under and everything muffled and quiet, and then up again and there are distant explosions somewhere, getting fainter. And he's—somebody's got him. Strong solid grip at his waist, a hand pressing down tight right where the worst of the agony knots around itself, chest against his back, brush of legs against his. Kicking, swimming. He should—he should be helping—
Fuck, oh, fuck, that just hurts worse; he grits his teeth, helpless, and at least his face is already wet, so if he sobs a little there won't be any evidence.
"Cut that out, you dumbass," somebody growls in his ear, and then GQ's gone again, swept away.
four.
Headquarters has pretty decent training facilities—including, of course, a huge-ass pool, with a section done in natural rock, no marks or guidelines, and an underwater stretch where you can't surface at all for a good twenty meters.
The day GQ's finally allowed back in it, after more PT than anyone should ever have to endure, he's so fucking excited he maybe overdoes it just a bit. He does all the stretches first, keeps to the regulation end and swims the width back and forth a couple times—the doctors have told him he needs to watch out for spasms, cramps, shortness of breath, and he knows better than to fuck around with that stuff in the water.
But he seems to have healed up pretty well, if he does say so himself. Yeah, his range of motion isn't quite the same, and it feels different—the scarred section over his ribs doesn't have the same sensitivity as the rest, a little bit numb and a little bit tingly, the sweep of water over skin cutting in and out like a bad radio signal for a handspan or so. But he doesn't spasm, he doesn't cramp, and he's only lost about forty seconds of underwater time. Not great, he's going to need to get that back, but he can still do over two minutes. Could've been a lot worse.
And he's so fucking relieved about it that he maybe spends a little more time in the pool than the doctors technically authorized. And he maybe swims a little further than he should.
He's doing fine. He gives himself a chance to get a sense for exactly how far below his usual baseline he is, where his new limits are. It's just that it feels so goddamn good to be back in the water again. He doesn't want to give it up.
He ducks into the underwater section, and twenty meters really is well within his current limitations. But then there is, all at once, a spike of pain in his chest. Nothing he can't swim through, just—sudden, a little worse than he'd thought it would be, and he twists involuntarily in the water and then isn't quite sure which way is up anymore.
He doesn't panic. He pauses, hangs in the water for a second to let his head clear, to give himself a chance to reorient, and then somebody grabs his wrist.
Somebody with big, smooth hands, and cool gray scales that are pale against the dark backdrop of rock. GQ closes his eyes and lets Croc draw him along through the water, and then they come up together at the far end, GQ tipping his head back and sucking in air a little more urgently than he should.
Croc waits until he's caught his breath to mutter, "Dumbass."
GQ snorts, still coughing a little, and shakes his head. "Yeah, yeah," he says, and then pauses and bites his lip.
He hasn't—seen Croc, exactly, since the shitshow that ended with a hole in GQ's chest. Not that he'd expected to; Croc had only just been permitted access to the pool facility on his own recognizance, as a reward for "good behavior" on his missions with GQ. He sure doesn't have free rein to go wandering around Medical without some asshole breathing down his neck.
But GQ doesn't really know whether—like—has Croc started running missions with somebody else, now? Did he get sick of waiting for fragile little GQ to heal up? It already had GQ on his toes, trying to keep up with the squad's fucking superpowered crocodile-man, and now that he's all banged up, still not a hundred percent and who the hell knows how long it'll take him to get back there—
"Better?"
GQ blinks, flurry of drops spattering off his eyelashes. "What?"
Croc looks at him, unreadable, and then drifts a little closer, extends an arm just far enough to rub the backs of two knuckles against the thick pink spiderweb of scarring. It's just like with the water, scrape of scales fading in and out and in again as GQ's damaged nerves flicker halfway to life; it makes the sensation almost prickle, electric, and GQ tries not to shudder and kind of fails, unexpected heat climbing up his spine.
"All right?" Croc says again, lower.
"I, uh. Yeah," GQ manages. "Yeah, mostly. Pretty good. Thanks—thank you for—I mean, right now, I guess. But I remember. I know you got me out."
Croc looks away. "Sure," he says, and then that pale stare flicks back to GQ and he adds, "You would."
"For you? Yeah," GQ says instantly, and then stops to think about it. "Well, I'd try. Probably couldn't manage the princess carry, I guess, but I'd do my best. You know Wilson came to see me in Medical? Swear to god he was looking for bite marks."
It's a rumor that likes to go around a lot—that Killer Croc isn't too picky about what kind of meat is available, when he's hungry. GQ gets asked about it sometimes, hushed whispers from jackasses who have better shit they should be doing with their time, and he likes to stare them down without confirming or denying. But the truth is he doesn't know for sure either—and that somewhere deep in his fucked-up heart of hearts, he thinks it would be kind of awesome, if Croc swam him all the way to the extraction point, trailing his blood that thick in the water, half-wanting to take a chunk out of him the whole time but not doing it; taking care of him instead.
Is that weird? It's possible that's weird. Good thing he doesn't have a psych review for a while.
Croc doesn't laugh, just looks at him for a while and then says, "Nah. Too skinny."
GQ grins. "Aw, c'mon, this is all muscle!"
Croc tilts his head, unblinking. "Got better things to do with you than eat you," he rumbles at last, and he's definitely talking about partnership, about professional—mission things. Yeah. Totally.
GQ swallows and tries not to do anything incredibly stupid. "Yeah," he manages, and okay, gold star, that was only medium stupid. "Well, I'm—I'll get recertified soon, so. Not that you have to wait around, or—"
"Good," Croc says, interrupting and clearly totally ignoring GQ's second sentence. "Getting bored without you."
"Aw, honey," GQ says, breezy, like his heart's not pounding in his chest; and then he has to duck back under the water just to wash the heat out of his cheeks.
They don't get out of the pool for another hour. Which GQ knows is stupid, the doctors would be pissed as hell if they knew, but—
But it's not like he's going to fucking drown, with Croc right there. Swimming about twice as long as he ought to with a newly-healed chest wound, in the same pool as the killer crocodile-man he wants to bang like a screen door: somehow, impossibly, one of the least dangerous things he's ever done.
and one.
It's a pain in the ass, getting back into shape for fieldwork. GQ has to sweat and scrape and claw for every last inch of it, and sometimes it hurts so much he almost wishes he'd just pensioned himself out to pasture instead.
Almost.
But he gets better. It starts to hurt less. He regains nearly all his lung capacity, which, considering his busted ribs had punctured one of them, is pretty goddamn impressive. He fights his way to the point where recertification is a realistic possibility instead of a pipe dream, and runs himself through the qualification tests until he knows he can nail them.
He saves the best for last: strength, speed, overall fitness; yeah, sure, whatever, but the one he really can't bear to fuck up is the swim test. That's the one that matters. That's how he's going to know whether he's really himself again.
He gets one of the doctors to give him the specifications he needs to meet, and structures his pool time around working up to them—and then overshooting them, just to be sure. When he thinks he's there, he runs through them twice on his own: once just to see, and the second time to make sure the first time wasn't a fluke. He goes and schedules himself for recertification, and then he visits Croc.
Croc hasn't been working with anybody else, GQ knows that now; he goes back to prison when Waller can't use him, that's the rule, and he knew that and still held out.
The place is almost as familiar to GQ as HQ, now, and he gets waved inside without any trouble. At the absolute least, Waller believes in carrots just as much as she believes in sticks: Croc's cell is a little bigger these days, the water nice and deep and murky, and of course that beautiful bigass TV looms over the whole place from its fixture near the ceiling.
Croc's in the water when GQ arrives, instead of lounging on the couch, which is totally appropriate; GQ waits for the cell door to rattle shut behind him and then wades right in, grinning. These jeans needed a wash anyhow.
"Hey," Croc says, mild.
"Hey," GQ echoes, and flicks a handful of water at him. "Almost ready."
And it's just two words, but Croc knows what he means anyway; there's only one thing GQ's been trying to get ready for, lately.
"Yeah?" Croc says, and GQ has a half-second's warning in the way the scales around his eyes move, the sudden intensity of his stare, before Croc comes at GQ in a rush of water and yanks one of his ankles out from under him.
GQ yelps, already laughing on the way down, and only just shuts his mouth in time before the water closes over his head. Croc tugs on his foot and he tugs back, and his shoe pops off—he twists around and kicks the other shoe at Croc's head, and of course the water slows it down so much it just bounces off in slow motion, harmless.
The floor of Croc's cell comes down in stairs, and then drops off sharply about ten feet in, just past where the end of the couch is up top; Croc sweeps up in a rush of tingling bubbles to tag GQ on the back of the head, and then flips in a turn like an Olympian and is off into the deep end. GQ surfaces for a second, just long enough to get himself a fresh breath of air, before he plunges back down to follow.
And Wilson, that fucker, would probably have a heart attack if anybody dropped him in a closed pool with Killer Croc—but all it does to GQ is make him feel alive again. He can't keep up, but then he never could; and Croc in the water, just plain enjoying himself, is fucking beautiful to see. Who else gets to see this? Nobody. And knowing that makes GQ feel like the luckiest fucking person on the planet.
They play tag a little longer, interrupted only by GQ popping up for air, and then after the third or fourth time, Croc comes up at the same time and dunks him, the asshole. GQ lets himself go under and then grabs Croc by the leg and pulls, and if nothing else the water evens out the strength differential a little—Croc's mass doesn't count for quite as much in the water, GQ actually has a chance in hell of being able to push him around for a second. And then—
Well, all right, so GQ might be a little hard in his jeans at this point. Not, you know, full-on—wet denim is really not comfortable—but sort of. And he's not surprised about it, it's—he was already fucking stoked, and swimming with Croc always makes his heart pound a little harder, and Croc's just screwing around but he's still touching GQ; the way he pulled GQ in here, just that one hand on GQ's ankle and all Croc's strength behind it, dragging GQ in the water with him like maybe he wanted to—anyway. Not a surprise, overall.
But then GQ's on his way back up, Croc right next to him, and GQ was almost directly underneath Croc to start with, so it's—they're close enough to brush as they pass in the water, and the point is: GQ knows what it feels like to have somebody else's cock against his thigh, and that was it right there.
He lets out a surprised stream of bubbles, just plain old fucking startled, and then has to really kick against the weight of his sopping jeans to get up in time to suck in a breath. He coughs a little and then twists around, and Croc's just coming up behind him, slow—doing that thing he likes to do where his eyes, the ridged slope of his head, break the surface, and nothing else. He's not touching GQ anywhere, but he's not out of arm's reach, either; waiting, GQ thinks, a predator's patience, with space left for GQ to freak the fuck out.
GQ does not freak the fuck out. He's just—surprised. When he'd thought about it, which he'd tried not to do too often, he'd kind of figured he had to be a little too ... pink. Too small, too squishy, unappealingly breakable. Croc seemed to like him, they worked together pretty well, but it would only make sense if Croc had a different idea of what "hot" meant from most people. It would only make sense if GQ had managed to go head over ass for basically the one person he'd ever met who didn't give a second thought to GQ's face.
But now he's kind of thinking he had the wrong end of the stick.
Maybe.
"Uh," he says after a second. "You—want to tell me something? Because if it's just, you know, a physical thing, or tag gets you hot, or—"
Croc comes up just far enough to say, "Doesn't work like that," low, breath ruffling across the surface of the water.
And—wait. What? "What?" GQ says. "What doesn't work like that?"
"My dick," Croc says, giving him a look like he's being a dumbass on purpose. Which he isn't; GQ is only a dumbass by accident. "Doesn't work like that."
And jesus, GQ just does not have the self-control not to glance down through the water, at—that's got to be it, that pale solid line, and wow, that is such a weird color.
"How—does it work?" he manages after a second, his whole face going hot at once.
"In or out," Croc says. "But it's always like this."
And okay, GQ had already noticed there was sort of a slit low on Croc's belly, had already figured there was an in-or-out element; Croc spends a lot of time basically naked around GQ, and, well. Can't sue a guy for being curious. But it still takes him a second to parse that, and then he nearly chokes on his own tongue. "You're—are you trying to tell me you're always hard?"
Croc watches him silently, apparently considering that a sufficient answer in itself, and oh, fuck, the denim is not doing its job anymore, because jesus. Every single goddamn time they've ever been around each other, ever been in the water together, Croc's been—jesus, jesus, that has to be the hottest thing GQ has ever heard in his entire fucking life.
"Okay," he hears himself say. "So—you, uh. You remember how you said you had better things to do with me than eat me?"
"Yeah," Croc growls, drifting closer, eyes intent on GQ's face.
GQ swallows, licks his lips, and this should feel so much scarier than it does, but—
But in the water with Croc has never once been the wrong place for him to be.
"You maybe want to give me a demonstration?" GQ manages, and he's hardly even finished saying it before Croc's wrapped one huge hand around his belt and tugged him in sharply, kicking hard at the same time, and GQ's being powered backward through the water and then all at once his back comes up against the wall. And fuck, he was already hot for this, but it's sixteen times better, having something Croc can shove him up against, pressing close between GQ's thighs—
"Oh, fuck," GQ gasps, squeezing his eyes shut and digging his fingers into Croc's gigantic fucking shoulders.
"You like these jeans?" Croc rumbles into GQ's collarbone.
"Uh," GQ says, and then gets enough of a grip to remember the problem with Croc tearing his pants off him. "Wait, no, I—I need something to walk out of here in, man." He swallows hard, and dares to add, "Next time?"
Croc huffs, wordless, but something about his gaze softens a little. "Fine," he allows, at last, and then he pins GQ against the wall and takes the rest of him apart.
It's—it's like the very best missions, the ones where the intel is half bullshit and they're making it up as they go but they're good enough to pull it off. Everything's getting rewritten on the fly; GQ's never tried to kiss somebody with a mouth as wide as Croc's, with pointed teeth, with lip-scales—but he ends up running his tongue around the edges of them, fascinated, until Croc makes a sharp sound deep in his chest and jerks his hips. And Croc's cock—no, no way; say that five times fast, GQ thinks—Croc's dick is super weird, but not in a bad way. Pale instead of flushed, and not nearly as hot against GQ's ass as GQ would have expected, even with the goddamn jeans in the way. But plenty fucking hard, and the denim isn't giving him so much as a second's pause, either; apparently Croc's dick is built just as tough as the rest of him. He holds GQ in place and moves against him and GQ tries not to make any noises that are too embarrassing, and then Croc shudders, tensed and pressing close, whole body shoved up against GQ, and then—
"You have got to be kidding," GQ croaks, flushed and dazed and hanging on to Croc's shoulders pretty much for dear life, because that unmistakable hardness isn't faltering one bit. Jesus.
"Told you," Croc mutters into the crook of GQ's neck, hoarse and crocodile-smug. "Doesn't matter. Stays like this."
"Holy shit," GQ swears at the ceiling, blissful and reverent. "Man, you're not just good luck, you are the best goddamn thing that's ever happened to me."
And it's a joke except for all the ways he suddenly needs Croc to know it isn't; but Croc lifts his head just then, looks GQ in the eye, and yeah, okay, he does know.
"You too," Croc says quietly, and GQ grips his shoulders a little tighter and thinks to himself distantly that he's getting in the water with Croc every chance he gets, after this.