Warnings: swearing, crude banter, guys being guys. (Or maybe more specifically, Shelley being Shelley.) You've been warned. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the writer.
Notes: First full-length Guns fic, you all excited? I know I am. This is the product of maybe four song-fic ideas (fangirl points to whoever names the song where the title comes from) and two other additional bunnies. Oh, for the record, the game being played is Call of Duty: World at War. Hopefully my gamerspeak translates, but don't hesitate to ask if you need me to clear something up. And... ah... I guess that's all! Please let me know what you think!
"Fuck!"
With a low growl, Alex launched his phone across the room and Chris looked away from the carnage on-screen just in time to see the phone bounce against the far wall and thump unharmed to the floor.
"AT&T dropping your calls again?" he asked, turning his attention back to the campaign at hand, his body twisting and turning just slightly in an unconscious mimic of his character.
Alex didn't answer. He crossed the room to survey the wall, huffing out a breath in annoyance.
"If there's any damage, you're paying the fine this time," Chris called over to him without taking his eyes off the TV.
"I paid last time."
"Well, last time was your fault too. You want to stop getting hit with fines, stop breaking the shit in our hotel rooms."
"Dude, last time… I barely even touched that TV, it's not my fault the base was unsteady. That was a bullshit charge and you know it."
"All I'm saying is, maybe it wouldn't have fallen over if you and Jay hadn't taken it upon yourselves to start a game of Frisbee two feet away from it."
"Well if Jay could actually throw worth a damn…."
Alex trailed off and Chris watched from the periphery of his vision as he dropped onto the bed beside him, checking over his phone for damage. For a few moments they sat together in a companionable silence, broken only by the clatter of machine guns, explosions and barked orders.
"So…" Chris started as he set up for the next scenario. "Was there any particular reason you threw your phone at the wall, or were you just testing its aerodynamics?" When he didn't answer right away, Chris turned to look at him, his face cloudy with concern. "It wasn't Dixie, was it? Did we just get fired?"
"No," he sighed, looking down at his hands as he twirled the phone between his fingers. "It was Katie."
"Ohhh," Chris nodded his understanding, ducking his head seconds later as a smoke grenade came crashing through the window. "Fucker," he muttered under his breath, and then continued the conversation as he re-spawned. "I take it she did not have good news for you."
"No, what was your first clue, asshole?" Alex muttered. "I should've thrown the phone at your fucking head."
"Hey now, don't take your pissy mood out on me just because you got dumped for the third time in the past four months. Sweet, sticky grenades."
Unperturbed by Alex's ire, he tossed one of the stickies, both men laughing uproariously as it got caught on a passing enemy, exploding him into scattered pieces. When the laughter died down, Chris resumed the previous line of conversation.
"You know what you need to do?"
"So help me god, Chris, if you tell me to pick up a ring rat—"
"You need to pick up a ring rat on this next tour. Who knows, maybe you'll even find the next ex-miss-Shelley." He couldn't suppress a grin as he saw Shelley clutch his head out of the corner of his eye. "What?"
"Dude, isn't the next loop in like Missouri or something?"
"Yeah? So?"
"Have you actually seen those girls? They're all either fat redneck skanks who think they're a hundred pounds lighter than they really are, or crackwhores with jacked-up teeth. Or no teeth. No way in hell, man. No fucking way."
"So you'll have to lower your standards a bit. Oh wait, you don't even have standards."
"I have excellent standards, I should have you know. Didn't you ever see Katie? She defined the phrase 'legs for days'. And anyway, I'm starting to get really tired of fucking the rats."
Chris looked away from the screen long enough to gape wide-eyed at Alex. "You? Tired of the attention? Are you feeling okay? Did that break-up hit you really hard or something?"
He shrugged and then gestured to the TV. "Watch out for that grenade." He nibbled on the side of his lip for a moment as he tried to sort his thoughts out. "I mean… it is nice, don't get me wrong. The fans got us where we are today—"
"—backstage and hardly on TV anymore, except for our five seconds promos and everything."
Alex snorted laughter. "Not that that's their fault. But it's so… easy. The ring rats…they're like dogs. I don't even have to do anything. I could be a complete dick to them and still take any of them back to the hotel with me. They follow me like dogs and then they get pissed when I treat them like dogs. Not to mention—"
"I think you've just sunk to new levels of assholery, Alex. You ever want to piss off our female fanbase, just tell 'em that. You'd never get laid again."
"Let me finish, fucker. I'd rather fuck somebody who doesn't know me. I'm tired of fucking rats who think my dick is some kind of magic wand, that my fucking them will magically make them famous and somehow give their boring, pathetic lives meaning. When all they're really doing is fucking some guy from Detroit that they just happen to see on TV sometimes. I'm no fucking hero, Chris. I don't want to be worshipped like one. I just want some pussy, seriously. I'm not here to change anyone's life but my own."
"…Well," He paused for a long moment and a bemused grin crossed his face. "Did you seriously just refer to your dick as a magic wand?"
"Um," he matched Chris's grin with one of his own and then looked down at the phone in his hands again. "Yeah, I guess I did."
With a shake of his head, Chris continued. "I think you're putting too much thought into it. Free pussy is free pussy. That's nothing to sit here and complain about. Thousands of men would kill to be in your place and have it thrown at them all the damn time."
"I… guess. And anyway, it's all the pussy I'll be getting for a while, it seems."
"You should definitely not look gift pussy in the mouth."
"There are so many different ways to take that, and none of them are right."
"Well, anyway, there's no shame in being a slave to your baser natures for a while now that you're single again. Granted, being with Katie never really stopped you on that account. What was that girl's name the other night? From the bar? She wasn't a fan, was she?"
"Which one?" he asked, his lips turning up into a smirk. Chris sniggered, shaking his head before quickly growing serious. "God, who the fuck keeps sniping me? But seriously, at least you can fuck around guilt free now."
"Who says I wasn't guilt free before?"
"And you wonder why you can't keep a relationship for more than six weeks. That or you've been letting slip that whole 'dogs' thing, I can't imagine that goes over well."
"I can't help it if I get bored easily. I like a little variety in my pussy, thanks. I don't know how you can do it with Anna. How long have you been with her now?"
"Two… two and a half years. Three years December 17th."
"My condolences. Remind me to buy you a cake or something. And you've never fucked around on her?"
"Nope."
"Never snuck off with a rat after a show or had a drunken fling in some seedy bar?"
"Dude, I said no. And I'm with you like 24/7, if I went off with a girl, you would know. I'm not as sneaky as you."
"This is true." Alex tilted his head towards the TV. "Jap."
"What? Where?"
"Behind that tree, right there. On your left. Your other left, retard. He's been camping you."
"Motherfucker. Why don't you go build a fucking tent, asshole!"
With a sigh, Sabin dropped the remote on the bed beside him as the game tallied kills and granted AP. He tilted his head to one side and then the other, working out the stiffness in his neck that had set in from prolonged gaming, and then stretched his arms over his head, groaning low in his throat. As he watched his AP levels rise, he failed to see Shelley watching him, gaze skating down Sabin's side and lingering just briefly on the barest sliver of exposed skin on his hip. It lasted only a split second before his face returned to its carefully composed indifference.
"Fuck, 48 points short. Hey, you wanna get in on this?"
"Sure. We gotta do Capture the Flag though."
"I don't know why you like that fucking mode so much. It's a pain in the ass."
"Well, you know me, I like a challenge."
"Yeah, well, you've made that abundantly clear in just the past twenty minutes. Other controller's in my bag. Left-hand pocket."
Alex slid off the bed, tucking his poor battered phone into his pocket as he crossed the room to the second bed, beside which Chris had dropped his bag. He knelt down on the floor beside it, working the zipper open with some effort; the pocket was full.
Instead of an Xbox controller, which he was expecting, he was confronted with a pocket full of rolled-up socks.
"Dude… you ball your socks?" he called over to Chris, who was aimlessly surfing through options as he waited for Alex to return with the second controller. At the question, he twisted around to look behind him and meet Alex's disbelieving gaze with a sheepish grin.
"Anna does it for me."
"Anna balls your socks," he replied, his voice thick with ridicule.
"You don't have to say it like that. And it's really useful, you don't have to worry about finding socks that match, they're all together already. Mock me all you want." And with that he turned back to the TV.
"Anna balls your socks," Alex muttered to himself. "Balls your socks off too, I hope."
"Did you say something?"
"Nope. You said left pocket, right?"
"Yep."
It figured Chris would bury the other controller with a pile of socks. Alex worked his hand deeper into the pocket, finding nothing more than socks and more socks. He'd almost dug all the way to the bottom – it also would figure Chris would say left when he really meant right, thank Christ he wasn't that disorganized in the ring – when his fingers brushed something that was not a sock, but not an Xbox controller either. It felt like a smallish box; he wrapped his hand around it, motivated by nothing more than pure curiosity, and pulled it out.
When he uncurled his fingers, a small black velvet covered box was sitting in the palm of his hand. A smart remark rose to his lips, something along the lines of "Oh Chris, you shouldn't have!" but he managed to bite his tongue just long enough to flip it the box open.
Nestled in the little jewelry box was a modestly sized diamond ring, glittering in the room's dim light. Alex was so stunned, almost shocked, by this unexpected jewelry that it took his mind a few extra seconds to figure out what it even was. Of all the things he never would have imagined Chris to be carrying around in his travel luggage, jewelry was probably last on the list. Candy, lube, porn, one of Joe's towels… Alex had even stumbled across some of his own stuff in Chris's bag now and again. Granted, some of Chris's stuff ended up in his, it wasn't terribly surprising, considering how much time they spent together.
But jewelry? Why—
Realization hit Alex with all the force of a car crash, twisting his guts into a hard knot. It wasn't any ring; it was an engagement ring. And there were only two reasons Alex could comprehend for Chris to have it in his travel bag. One, he didn't want Anna to find it; it stood to reason if she was balling his socks together, she'd also be putting them away, and Chris didn't want her stumbling across the ring in his underwear drawer while she was putting his clean laundry away.
Or two, he was planning on doing it soon. Very soon. As in, on this set of tapings soon. Maybe he was going to take her up to Magic Kingdom and propose in Cinderella's castle. How fucking romantic. Or even better, in the middle of the ring in front of—
"Dude are you having some issues back there? It's a controller, not a clitoris."
In one quick move, he snapped the box shut and shoved it back in the pocket, deep underneath all the balled socks.
"I can't find it, man. Did you maybe mean the right-hand pocket, you ass?" Over the sound of his heart pounding, Alex's voice sounded like it was a thousand miles away to his own ears, but when Chris looked over his shoulder and the expression on his face didn't change, Alex decided he was doing a fairly decent job at not looking, or acting, like his world was crashing down.
"I might have." And his not-at-all apologetic grin was so innocent of everything going on in Alex's head that he was drowning in the weight of it, out in all the open air. He stood up quickly, feeling his legs tremble under him as he crossed the room to the door.
"You know what, I don't feel much like video games right now, I think I might go for a walk and clear my head. I'll be back before the show." He walked out without a backward glance, so quickly the door shut on his last few words, leaving Chris blinking in confusion at the closed door.