Chapter Text
Nick knew loud. It'd been his life for the better half of twenty years: gunfire, shouted orders, and the chaotic overlap of comms chatter. When it wasn't loud outside his head, it was loud inside. He preferred the former.
The camp mess hall, though, was loud in a way he'd been entirely unprepared for. There were too many voices--and all of them rose and fell without any sort of pattern. Chairs scraped against the wooden floor, and someone's laugh turned into a shriek on the far end of the large room. A plastic cup hit the ground and bounced.
Nick sat at the end of one of the long tables, back to the wall and forearms braced against wood worn smooth by hundreds of hands. His fingers lay curled loosely around a paper cup of something that'd long turned tepid. He was pretty sure he'd seen a fly go in but not come out.
Across the room, Poe hovered at the edge of a group of kids. He wasn't quite joining in, but he wasn't stepping away, either. He looked around the room, gaze flitting over people until he spotted Nick. Something like relief flashed over his face, and Nick's ribs hurt like he'd taken a punch. He had Eli's eyes. Nick kept forgetting; he'd remember it all over again, and it hurt just as much every damn time.
Eli was gone; Eli wasn't coming home again; their team was broken.
Eli's kid shifted his weight, eyes darting to the small girl--Tally--that'd grabbed his hand at the beginning. Nick wasn't sure if she'd let go for more than a minute or two the entire night.
Nick had already assessed the room once, but for a lack of anything else to do, he did it again: line of sight, exits, the door behind the serving counter and the windows along the far wall opening up to the tree line and the mountains in the distance.
The trees kept throwing him off. He waited for something that never came--there was no reason to wait for the flicker of a shadow in the wrong spot. His shoulders had been tight for so long he didn't think he remembered how to let them down.
"This seat open?"
The voice startled Nick from his musings, and he realized with a slow blink that the other man had managed to get the drop on him. Not many people were capable of that--hell, not even Owen or Digger could manage it.
"Sure," he said, jerking his chin to the open chair next to him. "Kelly, right?"
The man grinned around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. "And you're Just-Call-Me-Nick O'Flaherty."
He raised an eyebrow, deciding it wasn't worth a response.
Kelly sighed. "Yeah, not my best. Blame it on the kids--first day's always exhausting."
Nick smothered a smile behind his palm. He'd had met Kelly a couple hours before, along with the other dozen camp counselors in their bright red shirts. They'd spoken briefly as Poe had gotten his assignment and Nick had checked in with the head counselor, but nothing in the short time Nick had known him implied he'd be able to slip under his radar.
Nick scanned him, chin braced on his palm. He didn't see any tattoos, and the only visible scar was a thin line on the back of his hand.
"Do you always try and shoot lasers at new people, or am I special?" Kelly asked around a mouthful of food.
"I'm trying to figure out where you served."
Kelly raised an eyebrow. "What gave me away?"
Nick paused. He didn't exactly want to admit that Kelly had gotten the drop on him. "Didn't hear you coming," he said finally, holding his gaze.
Kelly didn't look away--if anything, he leaned closer. "Guess I made it through the O'Flaherty security perimeter," he said with a cheeky grin. Nick ignored the way his chest tightened at the sight of it. "But for the record, I didn't get the drop on you. I'm just not a threat."
Nick let his eyes skim over the man's body: lithe, a couple inches shorter than him, but muscled enough to make him dangerous. "Somehow, I doubt that," he drawled.
"Your brain is hardwired to ignore the background noise so you can find the signal," he said easily. "I'm just part of the background, Nicko."
Nick watched him a moment longer, smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't answer my question."
Kelly snorted and pushed up his shirtsleeve. A tattoo hugged the curve of his bicep--the anchor and ropes of the navy, but with minor adjustments: on second glance, the ropes appeared to be snakes, and the wings of the caduceus spread out from the top of the anchor. "Corpsman," he said, letting his sleeve fall and turning back to his food.
Nick knew a handful of corpsmen--one had been on his team, and if the others were anything like her, they were all crazy bastards. "Who with?"
Kelly glanced at him, and even though Nick had known him for roughly twenty minutes, the flat, innocent-like look on his face was enough to have alarm bells ringing in the back of his head. "Shockwave."
Nick blinked. There'd only been a handful of Recon teams when he was active, and the chances of running into another member was slim. "Small world," he murmured to himself; if Kelly heard, he didn't ask.
After a moment, Nick leaned back, looking over him with a new appreciation. No wonder he'd been able to sneak up on him. He'd heard stories of Shockwave's corpsman--a ghost that kept the team alive when the entire world was falling apart. Not that his own hadn't been up to the job--Char had saved their asses enough times to be embarrassing. But Shockwave's had been rumored to be a specific sort of crazy. Looking at him, Nick wasn't sure if the talk was exaggerated or not.
He dragged his gaze away from the enigma sitting next to him, eyes tracking over the small dining hall before landing on Poe. He'd settled at a table next to Tally, and a wide grin had spread over his mouth. Nick's chest ached to look at it. He wondered when the last time he'd smiled that widely was.
Movement in his peripheral shattered his thoughts, and Nick's attention snapped to the approaching figure.
"I thought this was a summer camp for kids, not therapy for adults who can't handle themselves anymore."
The man was in his late forties--Henderson, if Nick remembered correctly--one of the 'executive chaperones' who'd spent the afternoon complaining about the lack of high-speed internet in his cabin. He stood near the end of the table, looking at Nick with a mixture of disdain and performative concern.
"You alright there, O'Flaherty?" Henderson continued with a voice loud enough to draw a few curious glances from nearby tables. "You've been staring at the windows for five minutes. Just out the of the service, right? You're not gonna-" he glanced around after that, lowering his voice and widening his eyes with fake concern. "-snap and kill a kid or something? My son's in Poe's cabin, and I wanna make sure I don't need to be worried about the company he's keeping."
Nick refused to give them man the satisfaction of his hand tightening around the paper cup. Instead, he looked up. His gaze remained flat--the one he used when he was weighing wind speed and elevation before a three-hundred-yard shot.
"Henderson, right?" Nick asked, keeping his voice even. "The only thing you need to worry about is whether or not you're blocking my exit."
Henderson stared at him, like he wasn't sure if he was joking or not. Nick held his expression carefully, and he felt Kelly's shoulders shake on a suppressed laugh next to him.
"See?" Henderson asked, visibly rattled. "This is what I'm talking about." He turned to the table at large, like he was looking for an audience. "All that aggression isn't good for the boys. They need leadership, not-" he waved as well as he could at Nick with the tray in his hands. "-whatever this is."
For a moment, Nick entertained the thought of him meeting Ty. Tyler had been their leader out in the field, and for a moment he let the meeting play out in his head. God, that would be something worth seeing.
Next to Nick, Kelly let out a long, slow exhale. He didn't stop eating, but his shoulders squared as he leaned infinitesimally into Nick's space. Henderson likely didn't catch it, but Nick felt the unspoken protection like a physical weight.
"You know, Henderson," Kelly said with a deceptively light voice. The hair on the back of Nick's neck stood on end, but Henderson only turned his sneer on Kelly. "As a medical professional, I can tell you the most dangerous person in the room is usually the one who doesn't know when to stop talking." He set his fork down with deliberate care. "Nick's here for the kid of a fallen teammate. What are you here for?"
"To ensure the safety and development-"
"Then you're doing a lousy job," Kelly said bluntly. His smile turned into something cold, and his eyes glint like the edge of a blade. It was the look of a corpsman who had triaged men in the dark while under fire. "Because you're harassing a man right now who spent upwards of twenty years ensuring your safety. And, frankly?" he asked, cocking a finger for Henderson to come closer. He did, taking an uneven step. "You're making the kids nervous. Look at your son."
Henderson glanced over to find his son looking at him with a mixture of embarrassment and anxiety.
"If you have a legitimate safety concern, take it to the head counselor," Kelly continued, his voice dropping into a register that commanded authority. It was probably the same one he used when his hands were holding someone's life together. "Otherwise, take your tray to the other side of the room. You're ruining my appetite, and trust me--you don't want to see me when I'm hungry."
Henderson opened his mouth; under the twin stares of a Recon Marine and a Special Ops Corpsman, he snapped it shut. With huff, he retreated toward the windows.
Kelly picked up his fork again with a small, jaunty hum. For the first time all night, the silence didn't feel lonely. Nick let his breath out, shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch as he spun the cup in his hands.
"Crazy bastard," Nick murmured without looking at Kelly, impressed.
Kelly's cheeky grin snapped back into place like the last two minutes hadn't happened. "I prefer 'specialized asset'." He bumped his shoulder against Nick's, and it sent a jolt of heat through his chest. "But for the record? He was right about one thing."
Nick raised an eyebrow in silent prompting.
"You are staring out the windows too much." Kelly leaned in, like he was sharing a secret. Nick found himself copying without too much thought. "Try staring at me instead. I'm much more interesting, and I promise not to report you to the head counselor."
Nick blinked once before looking at him--really looking at him: the ruffled blond hair, the cheeky grin, and the glint of something dangerous in his eyes that was like a siren call to Nick.
"I'll take it under advisement, Doc."
Maybe summer camp wouldn't be as bad as he was expecting it to be.
...
The mess hall had been a chaotic roar, but the campfire was something else entirely--the searing light of the fire turned everything else into dusty shadow, and the crackling was just loud enough to obscure the sound of footsteps around him. Nick forced himself to sit still on his log, focusing on the rough bark scraping along the bottoms of his thighs and the way the firelight danced off the faces of kids vibrating with sugar and excitement.
Nick's attention fell on Poe across the campfire, seated with the other kids from his cabin--Henderson's son included. Poe shot him a nervous look, and Nick tried for a reassuring smile. He wasn't sure he hit the mark.
"Alright, settle down, you monsters!" Kelly's voice rang out. He clapped his hands together to quiet the last of the talkers, standing near the center of the pit. Illuminated as he was by the fire, he looked like some ancient, mischievous spirit. "For our first act, Cabin Three is going to perform 'The King's Royal Bath'."
Poe's cabin stood, and Nick leaned forward as he watched Eli's kid settle at the center of the makeshift circle. He looked a little less like he wanted to bolt into the woods, but that could be attributed to exhaustion of the day. Kelly threw a makeshift robe over Poe's shoulders and sat him down on a plastic crate in the middle of the dirt circle.
"Poe is our King," Kelly announced to the crowd with a sweeping bow. "And we are his loyal, albeit slightly incompetent, valets."
The skit was a disaster from the start, which was clearly the point. Kelly began 'preparing' the King for his bath, sending the other five kids from the Cabin to grab buckets of imaginary water to fill the crate. He mimed checking the water with a finger, shrieking and jumping back as if he'd been scalded. A series of giggles rippled across the campers.
"The water is prepared, Your Majesty!" Kelly cried, kneeling in the dirt. "But we must scrub!"
Kelly produced a handful of neon sponges from behind his back. The group leaned over Poe, making exaggerating scrubbing noises as Poe began to shake with laughter.
The skit wasn't over, though: Kelly pulled out a bottle of bubbles and started blowing massive, shimmering spheres over Poe's head. He handed it off to another kid as he grabbed a bucket that'd been sitting off in the shadows. For a moment, Nick tensed--he wasn't about to douse Poe in freezing water, was he?
When Kelly tipped the bucket, a mountain of white feathers and tiny scraps of paper exploded over Poe.
The group erupted. Poe sneezed, buried in white fluff, and laughed so hard he fell off the plastic crate. Kelly immediately dove into the dirt next to him, pretending to 'save' the King from the feathers. The two of them looked like the harrowing survivors of a pillow factory explosion.
Nick found his eyes on Kelly more than Poe--covered in feathers, dirt on his knees, making a series of increasingly ridiculous clucking noises to make Poe laugh. A sudden ache bloomed in his jaw, and Nick realized he was grinning.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd watched someone like this--not for tactical analysis or for signs of an ambush or because he was checking them over for wounds--but because they were a goddamn delight. Kelly was a Recon Corpsman; he'd probably stitched people together with bullets whistling over his head, and here was committing to a bit about a Royal Chicken.
Adorable.
The word felt dangerous for a man who knew how to handle a scalpel and a sidearm, but when he looked at Kelly--curling his upper lip around a white feather in an attempt to hold it there as a mustache--Nick couldn't find a better fit.
As the skit ended, the boys began to scramble back to their feet, and Kelly bent over to wipe the feathers off Poe. He shook himself like a dog to get his own off, to the great delight of the assembled kids.
Somehow, he caught Nick's gaze from across the fire. Nick didn't look away or try to hide his smile. Kelly's expression shifted for a second to something warm and knowing. An 'I got you' that didn't bother Nick in the slightest. He winked, and Nick's heart did a strange, clumsy thud against his ribs.
"You okay over there, Irish?" Kelly called out. "You look like you're having a stroke. Or you're actually enjoying yourself. Hard to tell, with your face."
"Jury's still out," Nick called back, voice steady in a way that didn't match the thrumming pulse beneath his skin.
"Well, stick around," Kelly said with a grin, turning back to the kids after letting his gaze trail over Nick--pointedly. "I've still got 'Attack of the Killer Marshmallows' to perform."
Nick settled with his back to the dark, and for the first time in twenty years, his shoulders didn't feel pinned to his ears. He grinned as the kids from the next cabin swarmed Kelly, tugging at his shirt and asking if they could use real marshmallows this time.
By the time things wrapped up at the campfire, Poe seemed to be nodding off. Nick curled a hand around his shoulder to guide him to the cabin, steadying him when he tripped over a root.
Cabin Three was a rustic wood-and-screen structure that smelled of cedar and teen boys. Inside, five other boys were already scrambling for bunks--their voices echoed off the rafters in a way that made Nick flinch.
"Eyes on me!" Kelly's voice cut effortlessly through the noise. Somehow he'd beaten them inside. "I'm Kelly, and I'll be your Supervisor for the week. This is Nick, and he's your Assistant Supervisor. Piss either of us off, and you're sleeping outside with the bugs. Understand?"
A neat chorus of 'yes, Kelly's came from the boys.
"Bottom bunks are for the heavy sleepers, top bunks for the ones who don't roll around. Pick your poison."
Nick stood near the door, feeling twice as large as anything else in the room.
Poe had claimed a corner bottom bunk, sitting on the edge of the thin mattress and staring at his duffel bag like he'd forgotten how zippers worked.
Nick cleared his throat as he approached, standing there awkwardly. "Need help?"
Poe looked up, eyes wide and glassy. Nick stiffened at the distress there. "I can't find Seymour."
Nick hissed out a short breath between his teeth.
"He was in the side pocket," Poe said, voice trembling. "I had him earlier, but I- I don't know where he went."
A sharp panic worked its way into Nick's chest. He could handle and ambush or a broken limb, but he didn't know what to do with a grieving twelve-year-old who'd lost a stuffed animal. He looked over his shoulder to find Kelly, but he was busy refereeing a pillow fight on the other side of the room.
Nick knelt down, wincing at the way his knees popped, and settled a hand over Poe's. "Hey, look at me," he said softly.
Poe raised his eyes, water beading along the lower lashes. The resemblance to Eli was so striking in the dim light that Nick needed to take a breath just to keep his own voice steady.
"I'll go look around once everyone's settled," Nick said, trying for a gentle tone. The last time he'd used that voice, it was when Ty was bleeding out under his hands. "If I can't find it, we'll do a sweep of the camp in the morning. Tactical search, right?"
Poe sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Dad said the bear was over 'overwatch'. So I wouldn't be scared at night."
It hit Nick like a punch to the gut: unexpected, painful, stealing the breath from his lungs. I've got overwatch, Nick. Go to sleep. Eli's voice rang so clearly through his head he could've sworn it came from somewhere behind him.
"Tell you what," Nick said, awkwardly patting his hand. "My bunk is right across from yours. I've got the overwatch tonight. You don't need Seymour for that."
Poe looked at him for a long moment, sniffling as he searched Nick's face with a gravity that no eight-year-old should have. Finally, he gave a small nod. "Okay. Thanks, Nick."
He stood, turning to see Kelly leaning against the center post of the cabin with a soft, unreadable expression on his face. Nick stopped near him on his way to the entrance.
"Who was the original supervisor in here?" he asked quietly, because there was a zero chance they'd put two people as capable as Nick and Kelly in the same cabin together.
A grin spread over Kelly's mouth, and he let out a short chuckle. "Henderson."
Nick hissed a breath; he hoped his expression conveyed gratitude. Kelly's smile widened.
"I'm going to find Seymour," he said.
Kelly didn't ask. He just jerked his chin to the entrance. "Go on. I'll keep the hyenas from eating each other while you're gone."
Nick didn't stop to question why he trusted Kelly so implicitly after just meeting him. He stepped into the cool night air instead, shoulders dropping as the cabin door closed behind him to block out the sound of rambunctious kids. He stopped as he caught sight of the sky, breath tight in his throat as he studied the smear of the Milky Way and the countless pin-pricks of light against the dark sky. He hadn't seen a sky this clear since his deployment.
It didn't send him into a spiral like he worried it might; instead, it calmed something inside his chest. Nick blew out a soft, slow breath and smiled at the stars.
"Miss you, brother," he said quietly, finally acknowledging that hard thing inside his chest. If his eyes watered, there was no one around to see but him and the thousands of stars overhead.