For the Red vs Blue Review Crew New Year's Challenge. I found the start of this in my folder and decided to revamp it. I'm not sure where it was originally going to go, but oh well. Unbeta'd, so tell me if you see something.
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New Years Eve. For some people, this night is a time of celebration, to send out the old year and welcome in the new. Most people use it as an excuse to get very, very drunk and have a party. This year, Blue base was celebrating it in the usual way.
…
A few minutes to midnight…
Tucker entered the stuffy laundry at a sprint and slipped on the highly polished floor. With a very manly "Eeeeeeeeep!" he slide along the ground, ricocheting off of walls and various other things until he somehow ended up wedged in the space behind the ancient washing machine (that only worked half the time and used up too much goddamn water). Fear and desperation allowed him to crawl along in the gap so that he was safely nestled between the wall and the dryer (which was about as useful as the washing machine when it came to clothes), facing the ugly grey wall.
Swearing, he mentally cursed Caboose and his monthly laundry/bathroom floor polish while he rubbed his chafed bottom, before struggling to pull himself into a slightly more comfortable position and attempting to catch his breath.
"Fuck, that was close," he coughed, bending over to clutch at a stitch on his side.
No sooner than he had said that, however, he was alerted to the sound of bare feet slapping hard against the unforgiving concrete ground, each thud growing closer to the laundry and his eyes went wide. He had been followed!
Terrified, he bent his neck so that he could peek out from around the dryer, and peer fearfully at the ajar door as if the devil himself were about to enter and damn him to an eternity in hell. He had heard it was nice there this time of year. Well, at least, nicer than where he was now.
And sure enough, no sooner than he had managed to control his gasps for breath, the door was thrown open with such force, one might have believed that it was in fact Satan, come for the apocalypse.
One would be wrong.
Close, but wrong.
"TUCKER!" Private Leonard L. Church bellowed, slipping on the polished floor much like Tucker had done and ending up in a heap on the floor, the resultant crash causing Tucker to whip his head back behind the dryer so fast that he banged it on the wall and very nearly gave away his position by crying out in pain.
From what he had seen, Church's usually pasty white face had turned a rather impressive shade of red under his crop of dark hair and his features had literally been shaking with rage. Tucker could swear he had even seen steam rising from the man's ears and nostrils.
Okay, so maybe it hadn't been the right time to tell Tex about his kinky dream involving her and a copious amount maple of syrup while Church was listening. Maybe.
But still, worth it, he thought, smirking through watery eyes.
Therewas a string of curses, many of them towards Caboose but most of them towards Tucker, and then a great crash, causing Tucker to nearly jump out of his skin and the ground beneath him to vibrate.
Cautiously sneaking another peek, he saw that Doc's homemade wicker laundry basket had gone flying, scattering dirty clothes (which still mysteriously managed to end up in the laundry, even though most of the equipment was either broken or useless) across the floor and seemed to have proved only to fuel Church's anger.
"Tucker, I know you're in here, so just give yourself up, you fucktard, and I promise I won't hurt you… much," Church said, his voice strained as though he was attempting to sound calm.
Tucker was going to fucking die. He wasn't even going to live to see the next year! How unfair was that?
Pulling back his head, Tucker felt like punching himself. He was a fish in a fucking barrel. Why had he been so stupid as to come into the one room in the whole base with no other exit? Not only that, but he had somehow managed to wedge himself into an extremely difficult position (he couldn't feel his legs) that would be hard to get out of quickly even if he was somehow able to make a break for it. Not that that was very likely before Church found him.
Overall, things were looking bleak.
Tucker cringed as more crashes echoed from behind his back, each of them making the vinyl floor vibrate as Church began slowly began dismantling the cramped and otherwise useless laundry in search of him. A particularly close crash made him flinch and he would later swear he had seen his short life flash before his very eyes. It was… disappointing.
He was completely frozen with panic when the moment he was dreading finally came; the light overhead was shadowed out, and Tucker looked up to see Church's insane looking face leering over him in the gap between the top of the dryer and the wall.
"Gotcha," the cobalt blue soldier hissed, and flecks of spit hit Tucker's face. The face then disappeared, and there was a horrible few seconds of silence. Then suddenly the dryer lurched back, as Church pulled on it and Tucker yelped pitifully. The time had finally come.
…and it was so not the way he had intended to go. Crouching pathetically behind a broken dryer, his legs numb, his head sore and his pride gone on New Years Eve? Lame. He had always imagined he would go out in some unimaginably awesome way, like surrounded by naked women or in some cool looking motorcycle accident.
Looking back now, his life seemed just as pathetic as his death was going to be. There was so many regrets and missed chances that he would never get back. Had he wasted his time here? Was he going to be remembered by anyone? It was funny how it took him having to be this close to death for him to think about these things.
Church was grunting now, an unpleasant sound that Tucker would definitely not have chosen for the last sound he heard on earth, as the dryer proved to be as heavy as it had always looked. Slowly but surely, however, Church was winning, and all of a sudden Tucker found himself on the floor, looking up at a red and huffing figure.
"Parley?" he said hopefully, raising his hands in surrender, but it was in vain. Church yelled, and Tucker closed his eyes for what was bound to be the last time.
…and nothing happened. To him, anyway. There was a thump, and a groan, and he opened his eyes to see Church on the ground behind him, clutching his head. He heaved a great sigh of relief, and even let out a shaky laugh before he realised that there was another figure looming above him, looking doubly menacing than Church.
"Tex?" he said weakly, not quite believing that it had been the bitchy Freelancer who had saved him.
"I can look after myself, you bastard," she said, giving Church's already injured body a kick in the groin area, and Tucker groaned in sympathy.
"Wait, I don't understand. Why did you save me? Wouldn't you be equally angry at me, maybe even more?" Tucker asked, trying and failing to regain his feet as his legs were still numb and his whole body was shaking from adrenalin.
"Oh, I am," Tex replied in extremely levelled voice.
Several minutes later, Tex left the laundry with a satisfied smug on her lips, clapping her hands together in a 'job done' sort of way.
Behind her, Tucker and Church, each groaning from their own individual injuries, lay on the polished floor, surrounded by dirty laundry and splinters of wicker from Doc's former laundry basket.
"Dude, truce?" Tucker suggested painfully, trying not to move too much.
"Fine," Church grunted, clutching at his family jewels, and Tucker winced, partly in sympathy again and partly because of his own injuries.
"10, 9, 8, 7…" The shout was echoed across the Canyon by Caboose, Tex, Doc and the Reds.
"Wait," Tucker cried, once again trying to get to his feet and failing miserably, "This isn't how I want to start a new year!"
"…3, 2, 1- HAPPY NEW YEAR!" The sounds of party poppers and celebration was rent through the air, and both the injured men groaned.
"This isn't how I wanted to start a new year either, Tucker," Church snarled, the words sounding like they were taking an painful effort to form. "But seeing as Tex is likely to forget about us and leave us here for the night, I might as well say it to someone: Happy New Year, you sick, twisted bastard."
"Right back at you, you pessimistic asshole," Tucker replied, regretting it when Church managed to aim a kick at his own groin, so that he now joined his blue comrade in the foetal position.
And it was this position in which Caboose found them both the next morning, as he prepared to do his monthly bathroom/ laundry polish.