H/C - Er ist weg - fürs Team

[nessaniel.livejournal.com]

Team: Morpheus
Challenge: H/C – Er ist weg/He is gone – fürs Team
Fandom: The Expendables
Titel: Hold him close
Inhalt: Barney and Lee try to survive the night and Lee stops running.
Anmerkung: Spoiler für den zweiten Film, also Achtung! Story is in English!


Hold him close

Lee is pretty sure that Barney will push him right down the stairs as soon as he sees him standing outside the tiny hellhole he calls a flat but he bangs against the door nonetheless.

„Open up, you bastard!“ he shouts. „I know you're home!“

There is no answer as far as he can tell, but Lee won't give up that easily. He might not be patient, but he is stubborn and he will break down the damn door if he has to.

„Come on, Ross!“ he calls again, kicking the door twice for good measure. „Have you fallen and can’t get up, old man?”

“Can’t you just wait for three seconds, Jesus!” comes the gruff answer and then Barney opens the door, throwing Lee a long suffering look. “What’s the matter, your hair on fire again?”

Lee rolls his eyes. “Very funny”, he says, pointing to the brown paper bag in his arms. “Are you gonna let me in, or what? This stuff's getting heavy.”

“I can’t remember inviting you here in the first place”, Barney answers and he actually finds the gall to look indignantly at Lee.

Ungrateful bastard.

“Well, I’m gonna come in anyways, so either you take a step back or I’m going to punch you and walk right over your twitching body!”

For a moment he isn’t sure how Barney is going to react, whether he will shut the door right in his face or not, and he honestly isn’t sure what he would do then.

But then Barney just throws up his arms in defeat and retreats back into the dark corridor.

“You seriously have no manners!” hollers Lee, as he quickly enters the flat – Barney might change his mind after all. He shuts the mud brown door behind him and follows Barney into the narrow, grey kitchen, hardly big enough for one person, let alone two broad shouldered men.

Barney doesn’t look at him as he sets down the paper bag on the kitchen counter (seriously, he has seen mobile phones bigger than this thing), and it’s ridiculous how he tries to ignore him when he is less than two feet away.

“I have no idea how you live here,” Lee snarls. He almost bangs his head against one of the blotchy plywood cupboards. “Not even Yin would fit into this flat!”

“I like it here,” answers Barney and of course he’d say that. He probably made extra sure that he had not the slightest bit more space than in his old plane, when he bought his new home. That’s just the kind of fucked up, psychological pain Barney is into for some reason.

“Yeah, because you have no taste,” Lee huffs. He throws him a quick glance, waiting for that typical quirk of his lips or maybe a roll of his eyes.

Barney stays completely still.

He doesn’t even look at Lee but keeps staring out of the dirty window as if he is waiting for someone to come walking up the street.

Someone who is late by a year and who will never ever come back.

Lee sighs. This is going to be a lot harder than he thought it would be, but he didn’t go shopping for nothing.

“What’s in the bag?” Barney asks right on cue, gesturing to the brown paper bag on the counter.

“Tea and biscuits, granny, what do you think?” Lee growls, pushing the bag down and revealing half a dozen bottles of the good stuff. He chooses the whiskey first.

Barney squints at him, immediately crossing his arms in front of his chest. If Lee was smart, he’d back off right now, but he has never been famous for his self-preservation.

“What, you have never seen a bottle before?” he quips. “Don’t pretend you weren’t planning on getting drunk tonight.”

“I was,” Barney says, and that freaking honesty of his is going to kill Lee one day. “But I was gonna do that alone. In peace, you know.”

“Yeah, and now you are not. Go, get some glasses, if you have any of those, you savage.”

It’s an offer, really, a strongly worded, thinly veiled offer, nothing more than that.

Lee feels awkward and not half as sure as he makes himself appear, trying his hardest not to let Barney see how afraid he is of what this night could have in store for them both. Barney has been withering away for a year now and this day, the anniversary of Billy’s death, might just be his breaking point. Lee has no idea how to help him, so he stands here in this drab kitchen, expensive whiskey in his hands and hoping Barney will have the decency not to shoot himself in the bathroom while Lee is sitting on his couch.

It’s terrible that this is the best he can do, but it just has to be enough. There is no one else to offer whatever it is he is offering – maybe help or sympathy or a shoulder to cry on (Yeah as if, thinks Lee).

Barney looks like he is only going to move if Lee kicks him right between the eyes.

“Are you deaf?” he says instead, hitting Barney in the shoulder with the bottle. “Come on, move, before you die.”

It earns him another dark glare but Barney turns with a sigh and takes two glasses out of the cupboard.

“Damn pain in the ass you are.”

“Look who’s talking.”

Barney snorts, pushing his way past Lee and that he stomps on his foot is probably not an accident.

He follows him slowly into the living room which is barely bigger than the kitchen and even bleaker with its dull black couch and almost no pictures on the walls. Lee can’t really blame him. When they returned from Albania, Barney had to start from scratch for probably the twelfth time in his life, with nothing left but the tattoos on his chest and Billy’s letter in his pocket.

“You need more stuff,” Lee says nonetheless as they sit down, the glasses clinking on the small table, because he has no idea how else to break the silence if not with mindless bickering.

“You into interior decorating now?” quips Barney. “Stop nagging.”

Lee grins. He fills their glasses with a lot more than is appropriate for this kind of whiskey but this isn’t about savouring the taste; this is about getting drunk off their asses and somehow staying alive until the next morning.

Billy wasn’t the first boy they lost, of course not. All of the Expendables put together could probably spend every other Tuesday getting drunk and remembering friends and loved ones who almost never died after a long fulfilling life.

But that is not their style.

Lee takes up his glass and waits for Barney to do the same but he is off staring into empty space again.

Lee kicks him in the shins

“Ow. What was that for?”

“Drink up.”

He waits until Barney is done growling at him and dutifully picking up his drink.

“Does this taste any good?”

“As if you could tell, even if it did.”

This finally gets him the thin-lipped smile he has been waiting for. Lee can’t help but grin back. For the first time today the silence isn’t completely depressing but that won’t last and Lee knows it.

He has no idea how to go on after they down the first round so he hastily refills the glasses and they drink until the bottle is almost empty with not a word uttered between them.

Maybe he should tell him that it’s not his fault.

That there was nothing they could have done to prevent Billy’s death. That it comes with the territory and that nobody could have predicted that. Even if they had somehow known that the supposed walk in the park would turn into a trip to hell, Billy would have gone with them come hell or high water.

It’s all hollow phrases and Lee hates himself a little bit since he can’t come up with anything better.

He looks at Barney, for guidance, probably, which is three shades of fucked up since it’s Lee who is supposed to help him through this and not the other way around.

“You…” he starts, not quite sure what he even wants to say.

You have to tell me what I can do, perhaps, or you must not beat yourself up over this
anymore or rather you need to smile again. Please.

Barney throws him a sad, tired glance from under half-lidded eyes. Lee feels like he is about to choke.

“I was too careless,” whispers Barney, thus breaking what’s left of Lee’s heart. “I am so used to surviving by now, you know. I should have known better. I should have been more careful with his life.”

Usually Lee would scoff and say something like “Shoulda woulda coulda” but Barney looks so hurt, so worn out and lost, that he keeps his mouth shut.

“It was his choice,” he says instead. It’s meaningless now, he knows that, and he also knows that it’s not the noblest thing to do, to put all the blame on a now dead boy who was barely more than a child. But if he can shift the guilt from Barney like that, so be it. Lee hopes that Billy will forgive him and considering how much the kid had loved the old man that’s probably one of the few really bulletproof things Lee has seen in his life.

“No it wasn’t,” answers Barney because he is more stubborn than Lee ever will be. Lee sighs, reaching for their glasses again and stops dead in his tracks when he sees the expression on Barney’s face. He seems about to lose it completely, eyes wide and full of tears, a look of utter desperation in them, a guilty, forlorn man right before his breaking point.

Shit, thinks Lee, someone help him, please, but before he can do anything, Barney lets out a harsh breath.

“He wanted to leave, you know,” he croaks. “Told me the night before we went on that mission. Had a girl in France, he said. Wanted to finish the month and then go and meet her. Marry her, probably.”

Lee gulps. He hadn’t known that. Barney had never told him.

“I could have let him go, you know. Right after Church came to me, I could have told the boy that he should leave. Pay him upfront and make him go. Make… make him life his live.”

A whole year of silence and despair and guilt, Lee thinks, and he hates himself for not noticing any of this sooner.

He reaches out to touch Barney or maybe refill his glass, it doesn’t matter, he just wants to do something to help him through this, to make him stop hurting so badly, but Barney avoids his hand by turning his head.

“I didn’t though,” he murmurs. “I allowed him to come.”

“He was part of the team,” Lee says quietly. It’s useless though like screaming against a storm. Barney doesn’t even notice him and instead heaves a sigh as if he is about to confess the gravest sin of his entire life.

“It was selfish of me. I wanted to keep him around, you know. Kid didn’t make me feel so old and lonely.” He says it with a bitter laugh but he might as well have put a bullet right through Lee’s chest. It’s not meant as a reproach, Barney would never say something like that, but Lee still feels terrible. He hadn’t neglected Barney back then when Billy had died, of course not, but he obviously hadn’t understood how truly desperate his best friend had been.

And now he is sitting here and it feels almost worse than a year ago because he knows that he could have spared Barney a lot of pain if he hadn't been such a coward.

If he hadn't been running away from all that anguish, from his own feelings and from the fear that overcame him when he had seen Barney crash his plane into the side of a mountain, ready to bury himself in the same earth that Billy was sleeping in.

Lee had been terrified then, afraid that this might just be exactly too much sorrow for Barney to carry on and he is still terrified now. He isn't good with pain (neither is he with love, but that's not the point or rather it's not the point tonight), never has been.
But this is Barney. Lee has taken on a lot of shit for this stupid idiot already and he won't back down now.

He heaves a sigh, drinks some more whiskey and then he turns to look at him. Barney's eyes are still shiny with tears that he won't allow to fall. He is staring at the ceiling, biting back sobs and if Lee hadn't been already determined to fix this somehow, this view would have done him in.

"Look," he says, voice harsh enough to startle Barney into looking at him. "He is gone, that kid. And there is nothing we can do for him now. There's also nothing I can do about you feeling old or whatever, since you're a fucking dinosaur, that's just the way it is. But what I know is that you aren't lonely and as long as we are here to remember the kid, he won't be gone completely, alright? So stop blaming yourself. It's fucking annoying."

Lee feels like there should be music playing right now. Something loud and screeching to drown out that awkward silence between them. Barney blinks at him. He isn't on the verge of tears anymore but just looking utterly confused as if he can't believe all the schmoopy shit that Lee just sprouted.

He can't quite believe it himself, to be honest and before Barney can say anything, Lee puts his arms around him and pulls him into a tight, awkward embrace. It feels a lot like throwing a punch but maybe that's just Lee's own issues.

Barney crashes into him like a felled tree, his movements sluggish from the whiskey and he barely avoids headbutting Lee before he lands on his shoulder.

"What the fuck, Christmas," Barney mumbles into Lee's shirt, but he shifts a bit closer and links his hands behind Lee's back anyway. He's warm and Lee can feel the slight tremors running through his entire body.

"You're so ugly when you're crying", he answers. "I don’t wanna look at that."

"I'm not crying!"

"Did I say you were? No I didn't. Just in case. I really don't want to see your ugly mug when it happens."

Barney snorts. "You are so full of shit, Christmas."

"Shut up, old man."

And for probably the first time in his entire life, Barney Ross does as he's told. He shuts his mouth, closes his eyes and grips Lee's shirt a little bit harder.

Some moments later he starts crying and Lee holds him till the next morning.

It's not beautiful. And it's certainly not healing. But it's a first step and Lee is actually really happy that he was there to take it together with Barney.

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