SSgt. Hotness has been getting on my nerves lately, begging to get some proper closure, so that's this story: Head of Household. No one's going to read it, but here are disclaimers anyway: I did my best to make the military stuff accurate but don't hold your breath. If anything in particular rankles to such a point you must tell me about it, drop me a line. I gave some people a raise, tied loose ends and had a lot of fun. All the characters that appeared in the TV show remain the show's property. The rest are mine and you can't have 'em, a'ight?
PROLOGUE: FOB MAREZ - MONDAY
"No, wait, no I can't hold; I just, I need to-"
"You have insufficient funds to continue this call," a computerized voice cut in. "Please contact customer service to add money to your account. Goodbye."
"Damn it!" SSgt. Silas growled, slamming down the phone in its cradle. This was the third phone card he finished in less than a week, and still he couldn't get past the ageless female voice on the other end of the mysterious number. At least their hold music is good, he thought.
Fishing out his wallet, Silas called the number in the back of the card, and followed the monotone prompts that led to forking over his credit card number in exchange for very expensive call-time to Virginia. Getting in touch with people who didn't exist was a bitch; and expensive too.
Dumphy walked into the Morale Welfare and Recreation tent as Silas pushed back his chair. The tall, lanky, private jumped, startled. SSgt. Silas cringed at the blurted observation he could feel coming, even before it was uttered. As if he'd read the Sergeant's mind, Pfc. Dumphy opened his mouth and closed it again, before taking the first seat available in the long bank of phones up against a wall.
His second tour with the same platoon was almost at its halfway mark, the whole squad roasting in the unforgiving Mosul heat that he'd hope would desensitize him to Pfc. Frank Dumphy. And yet the 24 year old still rated high on his list of pet peeves; somewhere between chow hall pears that were usually too ripe and the freak September rains making Mosul not only hot as hell, but uncomfortably humid to boot. Silas didn't find him as outspoken and downright annoying as that first tour when the ninety day extension grated like ground glass underfoot, but the Eau de Annoyance was there, cloying and inescapable.
He walked past their new, private toilets toward the even greater improvements: trailers; real, honest to goodness, air conditioned, two-man trailers. The sun was baking his uniform as he stepped on the wooden shipping crate he and SSgt. Murphy used as a porch. He opened the door and let the cold air hit him in the face. There should have been harp music in the background, but the hum on the A/C's compressor was heavenly enough.