AN: *peeks at the real world from my fluffy and safe AU*
Hi and hugs to y'all. Here's yet another AU of mine.
The events from s06e01 did happen and also s06e04 is quite important. Carlson, a Green Team member, challanged Clay there. Tbh Carlson was behaving like an ass there but in my headcanon he only afterwards learnt about Clay's injury ... aaaand subsequently Steve Carlson joined Bravo! Now, five years later, Bravo recruits another rookie. Let's see what he thinks about his new teammates ;)
2027
Virginia Beach
Jason Hayes, as in the Jason Hayes, the Chief instructor of Green Team, with all his imposing presence and arms crossed on his chest said: "I don't like it, Carlson, I don't like it one bit that you suggested Philips for Bravo."
And well, Andrew Philips was finished even before starting his DEVGRU career. Bravo 1 told him he'd probably pick him but who could disobey Jason Hayes? Technically, Bravo 1 could disobey him, right? Philips tried to reason in his own mind.
Bravo 1 just laughed and smirked: "You suggested him too, Jace. Oh wait, wait you are actually mad at Carlson that he was the first to suggest Philips?"
"Hey I didn't want to step on your toes," another man, apparently it was Carlson, said.
"I'm supposed to have the best ideas and to save your asses, even if I'm not on Bravo anymore," Chief instructor Hayes growled.
Bravo 1 was just outright laughing and Bravo 2 threw his hands up: "I'm out of here. I'm so out of here."
x-x-x
"So, Philips, he's good, right? And I'm asking you specifically, Jace," Bravo 1 said.
Philips dashed behind a corner because he really wasn't prepared for his instructor's answer.
"He is. I trained him."
"That's what I said-," Carlson began but was interrupted.
"You are running hills, Steve," Bravo 1 announced.
Philips unobtrusively returned to the spot from where he could listen to the discussion.
"But why," Carlson whined.
"You spoiled Jason's recommendation for us."
"Damn right, kid, let him run hills," Hayes laughed and fist-bumped with Bravo 1.
"OK, let's do a couple of team training scenarios and officially break him the news," Bravo 1 decided.
x-x-x
Philips wouldn't admit it but his legs were shaking. These men here, standing around and laughing, they had his entire career in their hands. And well, he himself had it in his hands too, he really had to succeed in this round of training raids, breaches and assaults.
Philips couldn't wrap his mind around it. He was really being drafted to Bravo. To Clay Spenser's team. That man was a legend. Philips heard about so many crazy missions and operations Spenser and his team had pulled off. Right now he really should concentrate on the next training raid, calm down his breathing, kill the right targets so that Bravo doesn't have any reason to turn him down.
x-x-x
Bravo 1 took his helmet off and uttered "not bad". Well, that is hopefully enough right?! Philips mulled over it. Seeing any SEAL team work is like watching a fine-tuned machine but these Tier 1 operators are on yet another level. It felt almost surreal, on the one hand he was part of the team and tried so hard to do everything right, on the other hand he felt like his mind was removed from his body and he was just quietly observing the whole team and the way they all worked together.
One thing surprised him, though. In all the training scenarios, Bravo 1 never kicked the doors. Philips knew that team leaders weren't supposed to enter first, so it made sense. However, his team leader in regular SEAL Team always found some doors to kick. But maybe his old boss was the exception here.
Though upon further consideration this seemed to be something like an inside joke for the men from Bravo? Bravo 3, Quinn, said repeatedly to his team leader: "I'll kick the door for you, Blondie."
Philips shrugged. This door-kicking thing wasn't even remotely on the list of pressing issues he had. There was only one pressing issue on the list. Is the draft official now?
x-x-x
It was! He joined Bravo and now he gets to call them Clay, Omar, Sonny, Trent, Brock and Steve instead of surnames or their call signs.
Philips stepped into the briefing room for the first time. The other SEALs slowly filled the room. He was intently listening to the briefing the CIA agent had for them but didn't say anything. His task was to keep quiet and keep asking stupid questions to a minimum because otherwise, he was sure, calls for a case of beer would skyrocket.
The mission objective and execution seemed clear enough. Saving three hostages held in a millionaire's palace.
"Helo or going on foot would be too obvious. Though the river just behind the palace is a decent opportunity. We'll go by boat, leave it 1 mike from the target and will swim underwater from there," Omar, the 2IC, suggested and demonstrated on the map.
"For the record I hate underwater approach," the team leader said but nodded to Omar's plan.
"And I hate jungle," Sonny said, everyone replied: "Yeah, Sonny, we know." As if it was an inside joke. Though Blackburn returned to the first statement.
"Will it be a problem? The underwater approach?" he asked sternly and looked Clay in the eyes.
"Nope, merely stating my preference. We'll have wetsuits, so no problem," the team leader said.
Blackburn nodded, satisfied.
Philips looked around in confusion. This was a weird exchange, right? What do wetsuits have to do with-
The mission was exhausting but everything went smoothly. And hopefully I didn't do anything stupid or anything that would require too many cases of beer, Philips hoped. They boarded the C-17 and all the men went to a cooling box and took a bottle of beer. It had the ideal temperature, Philips sighed in contention. Then he saw Clay taking not only a bottle of beer but also scooping a handful of ice cubes from the box.
Sonny unobtrusively approached Clay and offered him an ice pack. Philips thought hard trying to remember if Bravo 1 got injured on the mission but he came blank.
Clay made his way directly to Philips.
"Got a sock, Philips?" he asked.
Philips scrambled to his backpack and took a clean sock out of it.
"Nice," the boss said and put all the ice into the sock.
Philips was about to open his mouth and ask but Clay was already retreating and still holding the sock with ice in his hand.
"You know you could just take this ice pack," Sonny said and shook the ice pack in front of Clay's face.
"The offer is tempting, Sonny. But have you ever heard the saying that a good operator will use everything in his toolkit and not be baited by shiny things offered by strangers…"
"Ok, be ungrateful to your battle-boo," Sonny pretended to be shocked.
"Besides, this way, we found out that Philips has clean clothes!" Clay laughed.
x-x-x
Sonny put the ice pack away.
"I'll let it slide for now, Goldilocks, but only because you seem very happy. But remember when you'll have a warm mush and a useless wet sock out of that you'll gladly come for my ice. Nah, scratch that, you'll holler for me to bring you the ice because you wouldn't want to get up."
Small smirk appeared on Clay's face, indicating acknowledgement of the truth behind what Sonny said and also such a deep deep understanding between the two that Philips had to blink a few times to make sure he wasn't sleeping.
"I will, thank you," Bravo 1 said with a boyish smile.
x-x-x
Something clicked und unclicked, Sonny was holding something with a boot at the end and carefully put it into a box fastened to the floor. It was a LEG!
Philips fell down from the hammock.
"Another one," Trent announced dryly. "Clay, I really thought you'd be the only one to ever fall from a hammock."
"Hey, I had a concussion back then, everything was spinning," Clay protested.
"You should have told me something back then," Trent gently reprimanded even years later but then loudly announced. "I don't care. I don't care if the next rookie will be handpicked by you and Jason, he'll have to go through my personal I'm-not-gonna-fucking-fall-down-from-a-hammock test. I'm too old to deal with injuries this team is capable to inflict on itself outside of the battlefield," Trent grumbled.
x-x-x
"I'm not injured. Just didn't pay attention and I was surprised. I thought… it was black tape on your leg when we changed from the wetsuits and now…," Philips quipped.
"He's funny. I like him," Omar decided. "To mistake a prosthetic leg for a tape on a leg is a feat."
x-x-x
After a while, Clay groaned and in a bit rough voice called him. "For god's sake, Philips, I can hear you thinking from the other side of the plane. Shoot away."
"I'm- I'm- I'm sorry, I just didn't know. Nobody at Green Team said anything… So, is there something I should know?"
"That was a reasonable question," Sonny pondered. Which was definitely uncharacteristic: saying that Philips did something right, but of course here it was: the whole plane blasted: "Case of beer for the first reasonable question!"
"Well, nope, you don't have to know anything. There are just some screws and pliers in my med kit. Otherwise, robot leg does everything a leg should do, it just hurts sometimes and doesn't like water. Yeah, there's just the ice, after a long day. Also, I'm not sleeping with it and I'm not kicking doors," Clay explained matter-of-factly, already lying down in the hammock with his arm flung over his eyes.
Philips nodded rapidly.
Now it made sense, Clay saying he hated approach by water and Blackburn interrogating him. Philips thought.
Was the leg from plastic? Maybe plastic and metal? Plastic definitely swims and floats differently than a human body. And yeah, all the fine parts probably shouldn't come into contact with water anyway. Oh, of course, hence the wetsuit reference. It's ok in wetsuit.
x-x-x
"You know, we sometimes ask, just to make sure. And we've trained him so well, that when we ask, he doesn't attempt to shoot us," Trent remarked dryly.
Carlson made a face, it was clearly a difficult process to get there. "You don't. You just rather don't try to ask," Carlson pointed in his direction. Well, Philips was perfectly ok with never asking his superior how was his missing leg doing anyway.
x-x-x
Trent, maybe because he was the team medic, was making a round on the plane, occasionally asking some questions.
"Alright, kid?" Philips heard and immediately bolted from his hammock but then he saw that Trent was not standing near him. "Carlson, yeah probably meant Carlson. They are probably still used to call him the kid. And well, Philips certainly wasn't complaining. Though a new rookie on this team almost certainly meant that Carlson will gladly pass the being-nicknamed-the-kid-torch to him very soon."
x-x-x
Philips almost fell from the hammock for the second time because he noticed that it was Clay whom Trent was addressing as the kid. That man had balls calling his team leader like this.
"Why is not Carlson called the kid? Or do you have another nickname, Steve?" Philips asked.
"Listen, Albert Philstein, there was no time for nicknames. When Stevie Wonder came, Ray was retiring, Clay was returning, Jason was thinking about retiring and we were still getting used to this one," Sonny enumerated in one breath and at the end of his speech pointed at Omar.
"He's the kid, because we all were already here when he came, he made it from Bravo 6 directly to Bravo 1, just Clay things," Brock decided to offer poor Philips an explanation.
"Don't worry, now you are the kid," Carlson announced to him.
"Yup, we missed the opportunity with Carlson and now as my 2IC-to-be he really shouldn't be called the kid, so get used to it, Philips," Bravo 1 stated.
x-x-x
"Wait, I'm confused," Philips said and looked at them all.
"Apparently," Omar said dryly.
"Steve will become 2IC…"
"…because I'm retiring," Omar supplied. "Done my twenty in DEVGRU. Will be doing private security for interpreters in the Middle East."
"Yeah, so Sonny is Bravo 3 why won't he become your 2IC?" Philips directly addressed Clay.
"I'm his battle boo, not interested in being 2IC," Sonny said. That certainly was a statement.
"Sonny prefers fights and weapons," Trent said.
"I don't do leadership things, ok," Sonny stated again.
"But you could, you know. You're just lazy," Clay murmured and lightly kicked Sonny's hammock next to him.
Carlson shrugged and Philips understood that this was not for discussion.
x-x-x
Everyone was slowly settling into the hammocks; if they are lucky they could still get a few hours of sleep before they touch down in the US.
"You know," Spenser unexpectedly returned to the previous discussion, "the equation is simple: Sonny wants to stay Bravo 3, Sonny stays Bravo 3."
Sonny grinned but before this, Philips caught the microsecond long glance Sonny sent to Clay. It was gratitude, understanding, respect there…
Yes, 2IC position definitely not for a discussion, Philips made a mental note. He also made a note that he should get used to the glances shared by Sonny and the team leader. They understood each other without any words.
x-x-x
A few hours afterwards Sonny woke them all up with his terrible singing: "Good moooorning, sunshines!"
Someone threw a baseball cap at him.
Philips sat up in the hammock.
Clay was also up.
Sonny came to him with the prosthetic leg, he was grinning and saying – in Philips' opinion – totally inappropriate things like "Time to attach the Chinese listening device, Blondie."
Clay pulled his right pant leg above the knee, there were some rustling sounds, some clicking but Philips didn't want to stare much (and also didn't want to fell from the hammock for the second time, seriously, the sleeping in hammock thing needs some time to adjust to).
x-x-x
They landed, all Bravo men stood up, put backpacks on and with a slight smile or smirk exited the plane. The mission was a success.
"Philips, kid, I hope you counted in a case of beer for falling down from the hammock, for first landing with Bravo and for the first mission completed with Bravo," Omar said.
Oh yeah, they won't let it be. Soon his wallet will bleed out, Philips thought.
"Maybe we could erase one of the cases," the boss said.
Philips' eyes went wide. "What for?"
"For not being all weird about it," the boss said and gestured towards his leg.
"So… are we going home or going to base to tell Jace about our mission?" Trent asked.
All the men exclaimed loudly: "To base, to Jace!"
Clay laughed at Sonny: "But you'll explain this to Stella, right? I called her from the plane that we are two hours out."
"Don't worry, Goldilocks, I'll use all my charm."
x-x-x
Philips looked at the group of these rough muscular men, laughing at the moment but capable badass tier 1 operators the next.
He still couldn't believe he belonged to them.
"Hey, kid, where do you think you are going. We all are going to base!" Bravo 1 ordered.
"You tell Chief instructor Hayes about all missions like this?" Philips decided to ask.
"Sometimes we do, but are not usually rushing there immediately after landing," Omar explained.
"This time we have to report about his student's first mission with Bravo. And to show him that you are safe and sound," boss said.
"Imagine, kid, now you can call Chief instructor Hayes just Jason," Sonny whispered as if he was telling him a secret.
Philips opened his mouth grateful that he's not in the hammock because he'd certainly fall from it for the second time.
I do think that - weren't it for all this *gestures wildly around* - the TV series would show Clay returning to Bravo or at least trying to even with his leg amputated.
And also Stella asking Clay: "you want to go back to operating" was a genuine real question. It was a real possiblity. So... I ran with it.
Maybe in fact I wrote the whole fic just to see caring!Sonny ;)