Claymore 1/1

[mangacat201]

Title: Claymore

Author: Mangacat(201)
Pairing/Characters: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7500

Disclaimer: Those are real people fellows, happily married (we hope) and splendid actors, not soldiers… still, can’t help it and spread a few white lies, right?

Warnings: danger in a war zone, language, barebacking

 

Summary: Sergeant Jensen Ackles – better known for his nickname ‘Claymore’ – is rather comfortable with his life. Well, as comfortable as you can be leading an EOD unit tasked with the disposal of land mines in an outback stretch of the Afghan desert. The arrival of rookie Jared Padalecki might just blow that one to kingdom come…

 

A/N: There fellas, another one for the au_bingo  prompt Other: Military. Please keep in mind that except for some cursory research into the Explosive Ordinance Disposal, I know next to nothing about military protocol. This was just an excuse to get them hot for each other and blowing shit up for insane_songbird ‘s birthday (which was in October. I know.). Have fun!

 

 
Art of course by the amazing insane_songbird 

The jeep rumbled along the desert road that was barely more than dust imprinted with tire tracks. The sun beat down on the vehicle with scorching heat, and the draft that moved the air through the open windows did nothing to relieve the occupants. The smouldering temperature made the air shimmer over the dunes and gave the whole country a resemblance to hell. When the car rounded another bend and followed a slope downwards, a small camp of about a dozen tents came into view, nestled against the hill that would protect it from the freezing winds that, paradoxically, roamed the desert at night. The countryside around was mainly monochrome… countless shades of brown. The men scattered around the tents perked up at the rumble of a vehicle on the road as if entertainment was kind of hard to come by in this godforsaken spot of the Afghan desert. The jeep stopped near the biggest tent, and a burly man with a ponytail stepped out to welcome the new arrival. He shielded his eyes from the glaring light and watched as the door opened, and a man got out, well, unfolded for the lack of a better description.

“Hey there, mate, how was the trip?”

“Dusty and unbelievably hot. Seriously, I know Texan heat, man, but this? Fricking overkill.”

The shorter man laughed and held out his hand for the other one to take.

“So they say. Chris Kane.”

“Jared Padalecki. I’m here to report to Sgt. Jensen Ackles.”

Chris nodded:  “Right, there was some news, but we weren’t sure when you were coming. Follow me then.”

Chris showed Jared a spot where he could drop off his gear and got him a bottle of water before leading him out into the desert along the hillside. They walked about half a mile to a spot where the hill sloped down naturally and was maybe two dozen feet high altogether. They stopped, and Chris shouted up the hill:

“Hey, Claymore, come on down; we got a newbie here.”

“Claymore?” Jared asked with a raised eyebrow.

Chris chuckled: “Don’t ask; he won’t tell you.”

Before Jared could needle the other man any more, a silhouette appeared on top the slope, haloed from the back by the glaring desert sun. When the man trudged down, his steps loosened gravel along the way, and the stones rolled and jumped down the hill. Jared couldn’t make out his features due to the sun’s position, but something about the man's strong, graceful movements ignited a spark in his gut. Before Jared could tell himself to stand down, however, the man was halfway down the slope, and a gravelly voice shouted the familiar warning ‘fire in the hole’. Only a heartbeat later an explosion rocked the ground, the shock running all the way through Jared’s body as the a column of sand and dust rose up on the other side of the hill. His ears rang for a moment from the sound even though he had covered them automatically. The man walking down the hill hadn’t even missed a beat and reached them now, taking off his helmet to wipe the sweat from his brow with one arm.

 

“Impressive, Claymore. Your timing is unbelievable, one of these days I’m going to find out how you do it.”

When he lowered his arm, Jensen nodded at Chris before training his eyes on the new addition to their team, and then he looked up. The new kid was built like a fricking tree and met his probing stare with an unwavering gaze and a salute.

“Sgt. Ackles, name’s Jared Padalecki.”

Jensen nodded; he’d gotten the message, but the grainy picture on the note hadn’t prepared him for the sight in front of him. It was going to be really hard to control himself around this one.

“Call me Claymore, everyone does, and it’s much more likely to get you a response. We’re not too big on formality out here in bumfuck, nowhere.”

Jared grinned and nodded. He was pleasantly surprised with what he had seen of his new team so far. All the people working in EOD did have a special code of behaviour even in the military. Handling explosives everyday that could lose you a limb, or turn you into pink dust at random, would do that. Everyone dealt with the stress differently, but this squad looked like he might fit right in, plus his superior was definitely something to look at.

“Alright, Sir.”

“So, Padalecki, you got any experience with demining?”

“I worked in humanitarian in Chile for a while, but I’ve never done any demining in a war zone.”

“Well, alright, that sounds not too bad. It’s rather quiet around here, nobody in their right mind crosses that stretch of desert in front of us, and the back territory is tightly patrolled to protect our work. We have more camps along the line of the field to the west, but can you see that mountain range over there?”

Jared shielded his eyes with his hand and looked up north where Jensen pointed out a ridge that was distorted by the dust and the shimmers of heat pulsing in the air.

“Those couple of square miles are all ours.”

 

The kid couldn’t help but gape disbelievingly. Chris chortled at the look on his face and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Yeah man, exactly what we did when we first came here. There’s going to be a lot of shit still lying around here once our tour is over, trust me. Mostly Russian, which is straightforward enough, but there are some nasty improvised little buggers of the home-cooked variety in among those, so you really have to keep your guard up.”

Jared blew up his cheeks, and the other men grinned.

“Oh, this is going to be fun.”

 

Jared settled his bag onto his appointed cot. They didn’t exactly have the privacy of single rooms here, with the exception of the commanding officer, but at least the tents were partitioned, with linen walls that gave them just enough space to fit their cot and their luggage. Jared knew that his feet would hang out over the edge and into the corridor, but he had long since learned not be bothered by the hassle his non-standard height caused, and he wagered that if anyone had to go out for a late-night bathroom break, they could very well learn to avoid his feet on the way.

 

The heat weighed on him, and even though he had grown up in a state where high temperatures weren’t all that uncommon, this desert heat had a different quality to it. Besides, the drive had exhausted him, and since Ackles had told him to settle in while he did the follow up on the load of mines he had just safely detonated, there was no reason to rush. While he unpacked and stowed away his stuff as well as he possibly could, other members of the team started to trickle in to have a look at him. There was Hodge, for example, a tech who specialized in retrieving and detonating the bigger, anti-tank mines, and Carlson, who was in charge of the bigger equipment, like the armoured bulldozers. Demining had become a high-tech job, and nowadays they had a lot of help from heavy machinery, which made it faster and very much safer, but there was still a lot of terrain that posed a challenge to the technical help, and where they had to resort to demining by hand.

 

It was a tedious job that was more exhausting than terribly dangerous, but doing it the hard way provided a way for Jared to gain experience with all kinds of equipment and techniques, so he wasn’t going to complain. Besides, this stretch of the desert was not exactly in the crossfire of strategic advancement largely due to the unpredictable minefields that were dangerous to friend and foe alike, so it was unlikely that they would be involved in bigger skirmishes. It calmed Jared as well as his mother considerably, not that he wasn’t aware that letting your concentration waver in the quiet around here could prove to be just as lethal. Still, he wanted to get some professional experience out of this tour, which would have been a lot more difficult in the crossfire. Night fell fast out in the desert, and by the time he was done unpacking his stuff the light had waned, and everything around him took on a grey tinge, except for the area around the bonfire that had been started inside a stone crate.

 

Jared sat down among the men gathered around the fire and drew some more curious glances. He prepared himself for the inevitable evening of anecdotes and stories that were very much part of the system of weighing and measuring the new guys. It was the Sergeant who addressed him first though.

“So, Padalecki, I hear you know something about Texas heat?”

Jared grinned and let the South lilt into his speech for a moment.

“Sure I do. San Antone, man, born and bred.”

Ackles grinned back as he answered in style.

“Richardson, man, just the same.”

Hodge threw in: “Dear heavens, they have got to quit sending us Texans. You guys are seriously overbalanced here.”

“Maybe that’s because Texas is a BIG state with lots of virile young men to join the forces.”

“Oh, shut your big trap, Kane, before you start waxing poetic again. We’ve all heard it often enough already.”

Chris pulled a face and a round of snickers could be heard over the flames, but then he grinned and winked at Jared good-naturedly.

The evening went on with more friendly banter and exchange and Jared was grateful that he felt instantly comfortable with his new team mates. It was imperative that they were able to rely on each other, especially in their line of work, and he’d much rather trust someone he actually liked. Although the like could actually turn out to be a problem, since Claymore’s piercing eyes, and his raucous laugh had drawn his attention away from the conversation more than once over the course of the evening.

 

The land might look derelict and hostile at first glance, but the sky at dawn, turning from that soft mauve colour to the brilliant, endless blue surely was beautiful. Jared stood outside the tent stretching the sleep out of his muscles and gazed up at the sky.

“So, first day, where do you want to go?”

The voice startled him, and he turned around sharply to catch the Sergeant’s eye.

“You’re letting me choose?”

“Well, first day, you get to play however you want, but that means for all the others you do as I say, when I say it and refrain from whining about it.”

Jared grinned and shook his head slightly.

“Should have known that there was a catch.”

“No catch, just me keeping things in order and making sure that everybody gets the same deal. You’re going to go through all the different technical fields, of course, but I want to gauge your capability at my own pace, and I don’t want any hassle to go with it.”

“Ah, well, I guess for today I’d like to go with the heavy machinery then. Big toys have always had a way of attracting my attention.”

 

Claymore blinked at him for a moment before his face straightened out again. Jared was sure he must have mistaken that sunburn for a blush, which in turn made him zero in on those freckles that stood out in stark relief. They were both silent, until the moment stretched into serious awkwardness, and Jared caught himself out and out staring. He coughed and berated himself for such a loss of control, while Claymore seemed to recover faster and confirmed his request:

“Uhm, alright, the trucks it is. You’re with Kane and Carlson for the day, and don’t let them needle you too much. But I suggest you gear up fast, they like to start before the big heat goes up.”

Jared nodded and threw in a salute for good measure, before he went off to find his comrades for the day.

 

Jensen couldn’t help but spend the whole day pondering the rookie. From what he had caught in the breaks, Padalecki seemed to show confidence and eagerness, paired with a competent ability to pick up technical stuff fast. They all had gone through extensive training before being let anywhere near a war zone, but the reality was still a completely different thing from boot camp, however you looked at it. Everyone reacted differently to the stress that came with this job. Annoyingly, Jensen couldn’t seem to keep his main focus on the professional evaluation when it came to Padalecki though.

It’s more that stretch of skin keeping you occupied, you moron.

He made sure to avert his eyes from where they'd been glued to the rookie’s ripped stomach on display as he stretched languorously in the morning sun, hoping to distance himself before the newcomer could turn around to catch his commanding officer staring like he wanted to throw him to the ground and get it on right there.

 

Jensen was used to compartmentalizing his thoughts away for work, because if you didn’t stay focused on what you were doing right the fuck now you might - in his line of work - suddenly end up being Long John Silver. Still, keeping your thoughts and feelings locked in the back of your head doesn’t make them go away; it just puts them in a loop, until there’s a helpful operator on the line to work things out. Normally, Jensen liked to work shit out of his system, before it got piled into a stinking heap that would blow up right in his face, but Padalecki was posing an entirely new challenge. Sure, being who he was in the military had always meant that he was aware of certain boundaries, and it hadn’t ever stopped him from casting appreciative glances if they were unobtrusive and discreet, but up to now he’d always managed to stay in control and - most of all - detached. Then rookie Sunshine I-smile-for-dimples had shown up and crashed through all his professional defences with a snap of his fingers, and it riled Jensen up like nothing else. And considering their interactions, he couldn’t even be sure that he was the only one feeling it, which was so not helping. Still, Jensen was resolved to keep his wits about himself at all times; he wasn’t going to allow this to go any further.

 

“Padalecki, you’re on ground duty from now on.”

“Seriously? Why would I…”

Jensen’s sharp look made the kid snap his jaw closed immediately, remembering their deal.

“You’ll be assigned to a certain patch of the grid we’ve laid out in the strategy centre; I’m going to show you in a moment. You told me that you did humanitarian already, and I guess they started out with demining by hand too, so I’m going to have a look at you and see what you can do.”

“Alright, Sarge.”

Jensen watched Padalecki leave to get ready for their day in the glaring sun. He was glad that the rookie had accepted his judgement without much fuss, but part of him had been gearing up for a challenge of his authority. Just looking at Jared, he knew the guy had it in him to up and go lone wolf; all the people in this business had that kind of place somewhere inside. There might be cheerful exterior and good-natured banter going around in his team, but underneath they all needed nerves of steel, and a very particular brand of recklessness. Jensen knew that if he drove Padalecki to the brink, like he was planning to, he might be in for a lot of trouble. Still, his own lone wolf  was waiting for it, craving the stand-off, pushing boundaries and issuing the challenge to the younger, the less experienced, the stronger by nature, but not in mind. He rubbed his hand over his face in exasperation. To hell with the metaphors, he was just too goddamned horny for this place.

 

Suiting up in full-body protection that felt like it weighed a ton – which it didn’t, but it was still a good deal more than normal people lugged around on their bodies as clothing – was uncomfortable under chilled training conditions. In the middle of the Afghan desert, with a long day ahead of them, and an endless number of explosive devices to dispose of in the smouldering heat, it was pure torture. Jared was sure that he must have lost his body weight in sweat by now. He had always been prone to sweating, but this was just ridiculous. Either way, if you valued your limbs, you didn’t go and demine a rocky mountain ridge without the right gear. He had spent the past two weeks doing just that, every day, digging out mines, levering them open and disarming them, then putting them together into a stack to be safely detonated, just like Claymore had the day he’d arrived. Jared was grateful for the experience he could get, but he felt like he was in the playpen, kept away from all the more dangerous sections that the Sergeant was handling himself. Sarge was also operating with the robots if anything self-improvised came up, and Jared craved to show his skills in the high risk areas as well, and he had been pondering how to go about dropping his thoughts. Claymore was famed for his strict discipline, and so far he hadn’t shown any sign of wanting to assign Jared to a different task. Jared knew that it was his CO’s way of testing his limits out one way or another, but he couldn’t help feeling like he was falling short of expectations every day he got up, only to be assigned a new, crappy piece of desert. Claymore was a consummate professional towards him in every way, but Jared still couldn’t shake the impression that he viewed him as nothing more than a rookie that needed to be coddled and protected while he made his first baby steps. He knew that he was way past that stage in his training already and longed to prove it. When he got back got back to digging and poking after his break, Jared opted to try to approach his superior about a little promotion soon- that is if he was going to get through the day that is. The gruelling work made him seriously crave the cold of the night.

 

The evenings at the campfire had become a custom that Jared had gotten used to pretty fast. The morale of the squad very much depended upon the fact that they could unwind after their exhausting days. Telling each other stories over the flickering flames, and exchanging friendly banter, served to get them to know each other better, and Jared was glad that he seemed to fit in well. But – despite the mounting tension on Jared’s side in their work relationship – he'd actually struck a real connection with Claymore of all people. That is, if he could put his upstairs brain into gear long enough to disregard how gorgeous the man was. But no matter how much Jared tried to keep his professional distance, because firstly that was his commanding officer, and second, having the hots for the man wouldn’t get any easier if they spent all their downtime together too, they still were well on their way to becoming friends. It was just easy to talk when they were not under the strain of field work where Claymore was absolutely relentless about concentration and keeping yourself in line. Over the three weeks he'd been working with him, as Jared looked at Claymore’s sparkling eyes and the endearing smile lines around his face, the man was beginning to turn into Jensen in his mind, and he realized that one way or the other, he was seriously screwed.

Part 1B