Notes: This is all of course headcanon that I'm throwing together, but I role-play Sergeant Doyle, and wanted to have tangible written-out headcanon for him, so I've decided to devise a group of ficlets or drabbles or what-have-you. Just for the sake of having them and wrapping my mind around each memory or faucet of his personality.
(His first name, Rick, is headcanon'd as well; I thought it was fitting enough.)
1993.
"Fucking hell," he mumbles, pressing all of his body against the bar while the rest of the place erupts into a panic. He's breathing through a bloody but unbroken nose, face flushed red and eyes clenched shut after another kick to his ribs. He'd say he regrets throwing his weight into someone else's problems, but hey, here he is: on the raw end of multiple feet slamming roughly into him, an old man flummoxed behind the bar, and a polite civilian clawing into one man's shoulder and ripping him away from Doyle's huddled figure. That guy gets shoved into a table and flips over it like an ungraceful hefty's trash bag.
Meanwhile, he's hoping his tooth isn't loose, even though his shoulder is in more screaming agony than anything else. Mr. Hero, he thinks rolling his eyes when they all back away a few steps to bask in his leaning figure. They're all drunk as hell, and he's a little drunk himself, but fuck it. He staggers up to his feet and Mr. Offender's about to say something cheap, when Doyle spins on his heel and swings a bottle down over the guys head. It shatters and brown crystal shrapnel spits down all around them.
They're all surprised enough that he kicks one of the men's legs out from under him, swerving — intoxicated, but light on his feet — before he barrels into another and cracks him across the face with his elbow. He feels fingers reach through his cropped hair, hoping for something long enough to grab, but he's on them next; between the knee into their gut and the way he slams their body into the edge of the table, he hasn't got a chance. Despite himself there's some satisfaction in the way all the breath and spit gusts out of their mouth.
Fuck— headlock. He feels the biggest guy's arm coil around his neck and he's breathless, cramming his fingers between his skin and the other's, wrenches to try and loosen the hold. Hazel eyes search the bar wildly and his shoulders screaming beneath the skin... but his mouth is a neutral, determined line.
Amateurs. Fuckin' amateurs, thinking they could start shit and finish it.
In a rush of motion and air and fallen bottles he slips free and the big man is falling as a statue does, lacking any motion in his muscles, boneless and KO'ed. Doyle's so wrapped up in slouching into a chair that he almost forgets the bystander who leapt into the fray for him, now pushing one of them over with a well-aimed shove of his boot.
"Are you alright? Fuck man, your nose," a breathless reply comes. He's a Hispanic man with a well-groomed beard, collar button-up shirt. His eyes glint the bar lights above as he crouches down toward the off-duty soldier.
Doyle hisses, doubled-over now that the adrenaline is surely wavering. "Not the nose. Shoulder." Correction. "Collarbone."
"Should I call an ambulance?" Old man over the counter speaks up, over the small roar of the people in the bar. Doyle stares pointedly at the groaning figure on the floor before his eyes sweep back to the guy who'd lent him a hand.
"How much you had to drink?"
"Just a beer."
Dazed, he stares at the floor for a moment, wiping blood on his sleeve, jaw clenched. The rest of him's starting to hurt more than the actual break now.
"Could you give me a lift to the hospital?" It's all a short-breathed effort, but the guy nods.
"... Sure thing."
The guy's name is Elias, and they become casual friends in the car ride between the bar and the hospital. When he gets there, it's a long and studious process for his doctor: he removes the shirt, the dogtags, lets them look at the discolored flesh along the bone, ask him about his medical history and everything inbetween. He just nods and replies on point, slipping a playful joke toward a nurse that bites her lip and tries not to invest her smiles in a tipsy patient. Before he's ran through a machine, the doctor adjusts his glasses and taps his board on the counter with a knobby forefinger, noting, "You're in the army, that right?"
"Yeah."
"Mn."
They explain to him, after hours of waiting (hours of devising ways to escape hypothetically in his head) that it's not a simple fracture. It'll need surgery, something Doyle lays his head back and darkens at. Surgery is not exactly the highlight of this year so far. But more importantly, it means he'll have to inform his family. His parents... Parent. He forgets sometimes that Jeff was dead. When he calls his mother, it starts awkward but neutral. Of course, in record time, she finds ways to make him bitter.
"It happened fast," he grumbles into the phone, "Pam, I'm just some crazy drunk looking for a fight. No. Fu— no. Goddammit, do you have to talk to me like I'm 13? I didn't start that shit. Look, if this is going to be a problem, I'll get Kenny on the phone; he'll be nice enough not to preach at me while I'm hunkered up on a hospital bed pissed off and achey."
He hangs up, chews his lip, and calls his uncle. It's 11 at night, but the other answers like it's Christmas. He tells Doyle it's not a problem, the kids are all asleep, Sheela's there, don't worry about Doyle's mother— 'you know how she is'.
For once, he feels secured to the world he knew when he was young.
"Ah... Thanks, Kenny."
"No problem. I'm just glad you're here," Kenny replies in his good-natured way.
Doyle presses the phone against his cheek, just a little, eyeing the wall.
"Shouldn't be. I shouldn't be over here right now," he admits, tired, "Y'know?"
A breath, pressed with faint static by the receiver. "... Ricky. Talkin' Somalia again. I told you, that shit'll eat you alive if you keep your head in it. We're all wanting you here, man, away from all that. You gotta rest, man."
"... Yeah."
"Especially now that your collarbone is shit."
A short, nearly humored laugh.