Title: Home Run - Chapter 10
Author: roomtable202
Fandom: The Unit
Disclaimer: This is intended as a fan fiction, on characters owned by their original creators and I am not making a profit out of it.
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It was most unfortunate that at his very arrival, before going to his apartment or calling nobody, he went to surprise Annie at the Capri Isle, something he had regretted deeply for any of his team mates could have prevented him beforehand and he wouldn't have risked making a fool of himself in front of so many of the unit's staff personnel. As soon as he approached Louis, the Capri's manager, to ask about Annie he was told point blank that Annie left for Chicago, moving home, no turning back as she was too upset yet about Hector' loss to go ahead with Charles. That was what Louis said, and knowing how the threadmills of gossip worked at the Capri with so much TOC staff around, Charlie understood immediately she had known he was MIA and had been afraid the history will be repeating itself with losing him too after losing Hector.
Nonetheless, he was highly experienced in making disappear in a cloud of smoke anything personal and focus on the mission in hand when needed, and he tried his best to hide his immediate gut reaction to anyone around. He stood stiff just for some seconds after Louis gave him the bad news and then relaxed his shoulders, took an apparently hassle-free stance, and sat there, on the table close to the phone, with a view over the rear door, drinking beer, his small notebook and a pen over the table, same place same position same neutral stare for many hours. But Annie didn't come back or called. Nobody else did approach him either.
During that night in the Capri Isle time spread for the count of a whole month. Time enough to experiment what was being left alone again, without Annie, the only person he thought on as his only family on earth since they engaged. He worked hard on convincing himself that it was best for Annie, that he should be happy for her for she had found the courage to move forward with her life, not just being part of his... one more of the women's of the Unit. For he loved Annie. He loved Annie freely. He loved her unconditionally. The only women that made him find new feelings inside him he didn't know he had and made them real; maddening as they were as all he wanted since then was to loose him in her fresh embrace, bury his face in her hair and her neck. No, he wouldn't do anything to look for her or try and make her come back to numb and wither away in those closed quarters while waiting for his uncertain return.
That was 7 days before. 7 days that he passed secluded in the Unit's quarters, doing endless and deathly boring physical tasks from well before dawn to dusk, a quick meal at the reg canteen and then the three "s" routine and no more. And all because of some trick Ryan was playing on him or maybe because Ryan, who knew absolutely everything of what happened related to the people under his command, wanted to keep him busy enough. Who could tell. But he certainly put to good use those 7 days focusing on the job in hand, eating and sleeping just enough, and folding reflexively inwards to try to guard his core.
When finally he was released by Ryan and could get back to his normal life, fuzzy logic told that he had sufficient time to cool down and get detached enough from his hard pressed feelings, but it was just then when all his inward hell broke loose. He felt totally overwhelmed the very same moment he climbed onto the driver's seat of his Wrangler and, as a recently acquired automatism during the last months, he started the engine thinking where he would take Annie for dinner. Then, it came the realization that Annie was not there for him anymore. He whitened, all his will and containment down the drain, and he barely managed to drive off the base to the Capri Isle, clutching to his only straw for he needed badly this last little hope of Annie coming back for him.
Bob had passed the last days lost in the company of Kim and the kids, getting hugely better. He had found impossible to contact Ryan, until Ryan asked himself to meet him at the unit. The debrief was short and easier than he expected but Ryan had barely given him the opportunity to straighten up things for Grey the way he wanted to; he made clear he knew the note's was in Brown's handwriting and he didn't want to know more, neither did he allow him to get into details about Grey saving his life and his leg. He was dismissed and due to duty the next morning; and that was all.
Bob stopped in the reg small room where they usually shared a beer at the end of the day to try and meet Grey but to no avail. Nobody there could give him any directions about his whereabouts. Luckily, contrary to what Kim had announced him in the hospital, he couldn't detect any hard feelings against Grey; most assuredly there had been some gossip talking among the staff, but among the people that might have mattered, it was just like any other day.
While having his beer on his own, Mack and Jonas still on deployment, it came to him how it was with Carlito the following weeks after that assessment mission in Israel, when Nicky died. Everyday after the training he, who didn't drink much usually, would sip a glass after another of whisky on ice, till he would turn on a taciturn mood, a state of torpor and stupidity, all of it without doing any fuss, slowly sinking deep inside himself almost in complete silence, and then he would get up and find a quiet small corner where he would accommodate in a bundle and sleep all the way through until he was sober enough again to get back to his apartment by his own means.
One of those days he couldn't believe his eyes when he saw him encase himself in an impossible space between a wall and a piece of furniture of the dorm, knees almost on forehead, like enjoying the tightly embrace of those two inanimate objects. Bob was somehow shocked when he recognised in that peculiar behaviour a mirror image of himself some 15 years ago, trying and finding there the artificial feeling of reassurance and protection than real life was not granting him.
All in all lasted a couple of weeks until Jonas talked him out of it, not even Hector had got through his shell during that time. Grey could be using the same routine now to find some comforting numbness again. He didn't feel responsible for the uncontrolled chain of events that Grey unleashed for his untimely freefalling after him, his getting hurt included, but he was truly sorry for him loosing Annie and was resolute to stand by him this time.