Barney can't quite remember when he accepted the truth about himself.

It was sometime after Lee joined that Gunnar came along. They found him fighting in underground matches, wanting to feel something more than the false high that meth gave him; and to be honest, Barney was rather impressed by Gunnar's skills too. Jensen didn't give a shit whether he lived or died and at that point, all he wanted was a team that was willing to follow him to hell and back.

Two weeks after, he got a call from Bonaparte. There were these two guys looking for work, any job they could get. Said they were ex-military, missed the blood and the bullets, all that typical shit that came with attempting to adjust to civilian life after years of warfare. They possessed the credentials to match too.

Hale Caesar, the name was as legitimate as you could get, joined that week, and Toll Road, real name unknown, joined the following Monday.

That totalled five.

Problem was he was still one short. Odd numbers made him antsy. Of course the fifth member could cover everyone's back, but who would be covering theirs? No, Barney thought, he needed that sixth member. It didn't matter if he had to fly them all the way to fucking Singapore or China to find who he was looking for, he just wanted six.

The Expendables had started out with five, back in the good old days when it was him, Stonebanks, and their three bunk buddies from their Nam days. They were just men in need of work back then and that fact still held true now.

Lady Luck seemed to have rolled the dice in his favour that year. He got an entire team and a miracle of miracles happened: China came to him. Yin Yang joined the week before the mission was set to begin. Now he had his six man team and all that weight was freed from Barney's shoulders. No more nagging thoughts when he was trying to fucking sleep, no wondering how fast they'd die if their numbers totalled five.

The night before they left for Afghanistan, however, everything turned into a mess.

He'd seen the way Gunnar acted around him and Yang. The possessiveness, his constantly watching them, how he hung off Barney's every word as if Ross were God and Gunnar had just discovered religion. If Barney was being honest with himself, he'd seen the changes and done nothing. He figured it was just Jensen trying to find his place in the team, an attempt to figure out who his partner would be and how this whole team thing worked.

It seemed it'd been a long time since Jensen served. In all honesty, Barney had never bothered finding out if he had. He just took the guy at his word. Whatever training Gunnar had been given proved him a force to be reckoned with and that'd proved more than enough for Barney.

That said, nothing he did seemed enough for Gunnar, until Afghanistan. Until everything changed and he realised just how bad he'd fucked up, and just how much he was enjoying it.

"You look tense." Gunnar sat on the couch, eyes glazed over like he'd just doped up, and cracked open the can of beer he'd almost forgotten he was holding. He took a sip, cringed at the taste, and shoved the beer between his thighs. "We leave tomorrow, right?"

Barney paid his first comment no mind. It wasn't any of his business if Barney's muscles were seizing up and aching, or if his hands were getting tight again. "Yeah. Take-off is at zero nine hundred."

"Good." Gunnar nodded, idly thumbing the neck of his beer. "That's good. Gives us time to prep."

"What do you want, Gunnar?" Barney asked.

It was a rhetorical question. Going off the look in Jensen's eyes, Barney knew exactly what he wanted. If he lied to himself, pretended he didn't want something similar, it'd keep things from getting complicated. If he didn't lie, he'd wake up the next morning feeling like a piece of shit who'd taken advantage of a user for sex. Or, and it was a big or, he could let himself be used and feel no guilt whatsoever.

"What do I want?" Gunnar said, mulling over the words in his head. It wasn't often someone took the time to ask him that. Normally they just told him where to go and what to do, and to be honest he was fine with that, but this team, this whole Expendables thing, felt different. "I want—I want to get help, for starters."

Some nights he didn't care if he lived or died once he was high. So fucking high his past seemed like it'd happened to someone else. Tonight, for the first time in a long time, he wanted to live. Wanted to be able to see Barney's wrinkled vagina-like face and hear that deep rough voice in his ear.

"I want you," he added, and quickly sculled the rest of his beer. No one needed to know what'd been said between them and he prayed Barney would keep it that way. "Just for one night, then never again."

He'd get addicted to Barney. One taste was all it'd take. God knew if he let himself get within two feet of Barney, in a way that wasn't akin to how friends were meant to act, he'd be hooked and all these memories of his time as a would-be Expendable would be ruined. "But want doesn't get," Gunnar said, mostly to himself, "and I like it here. I don't wanna screw this up."

"Gunnar."

Jensen blinked through the meth haze and looked up, more than a little surprised and just a tad curious why Barney was now standing there with his shirt off. "Hmm?"

Barney sighed to himself and reached for Gunnar's free hand. He was going to regret this come morning, Ross knew that much, but he had a feeling it'd work out alright. Nobody would know but them so long as Gunnar kept his mouth shut and let Barney take control. "Want gets for one night. Two, if you're lucky. I know you like this place, and you ain't gonna screw anything but me."

"Barney." He couldn't. He'd wake up in the morning needing a fix and this small miracle of miracles would come crashing down around him. It was just the meth, he told himself. He was dreaming or something…except for one small problem with his supposed dream: his boss smelt so clean. There was no gunpowder, no sweat, no Old Spice. "You're my boss, y'know."

"Stop complaining and take your damn clothes off." Now he just had to tell Tool to keep the rest of his merry band of assholes on the ground floor, Lee included. "I'll meet you in the bathroom in five minutes."

"I—"

"You got problems, Gunnar, a lot of problems, but getting your dick wet isn't one of them."

A/N: Written for Trope Bingo Round 10: Friends to Lovers/Friends with Benefits.