sevenorso

[sevenorso]

6/24/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Alton/Smokey/Moe; canon/modern era AU (post-death time travel) (692 words)

---

He stirs hours later, tugged softly back to consciousness by the sound of hushed voices over his head. He’s still laying on Smokey’s legs. If he wasn’t so wrung-out, the warmth of his thigh under his ear might be enough to bring him back to tears all over again. 

As it stands, he just lays there, breathing deep and emerging from sleep feeling like he weighs twenty tons. As he wakes he identifies Alley, talking low and gentle in that drawl of his to Smokey, who’s still got hands in his hair. 

“Moe’s got clean clothes for you,” Smokey murmurs, and Alton only registers that he’s talking to him because he resumes scratching lightly at his scalp. 

When he sits up, rubbing a hand over his face, he sees that Moe’s sitting against the headboard and leaning into Smokey. He’s looking at Alton with a wide-open expression that Alton can’t read. Maybe it’s pity, maybe it’s relief. He can’t say for sure. All he knows is that he looks remarkably better than the last time he saw him, gagging and bleeding from about fifty shrapnel wounds. Carrying him all the way back to that goddamn outpost might have been the longest stretch of ground he’s covered in his life. 

Alton hums in appreciation when Alley hands him a bundle, and as he changes he takes note of the room around him now that he doesn’t have tears blurring his vision and his frantic brain isn’t telling him to keep his attention locked onto Smokey. 

It’s relatively spacious, lived-in but not cluttered. A battered guitar sits haphazardly leaned against the wall beneath a window looking out onto the front yard. 

There’s two dressers; two different sizes of shoes in a cluster near the door. The jacket hooked on the back is too large to be Smokey’s. He looks back to the two on the bed, and the relaxed cut of Alley’s body against Smokey’s makes it clear that he’s the other occupant here. Alton may be exhausted, but he’s got enough left in him to mark the lack of a second bed and the comfortable way they sit together and draw the correct conclusion. 

“You two are—” he cuts himself off when he realizes he doesn’t know what he’s going to say next. Somewhere inside him something is howling, gnawing at his gut in protest and dismay. He has nothing to say to soothe it. 

“Yeah… Yeah. We are.”

And it riots even more a million miles away from his immediate awareness. Oh. He knows that that means something, that maybe he should go. You don’t belong here anymore, his howling says. He knows he hasn’t really belonged anywhere since the start of it all, but he kicks himself now for assuming that he and Smokey would just fall right back into their… their thing from before. Whatever the hell it was. 

He should go. He knows that. But he’s so damn tired, and he can’t seem to kick his brain into gear enough to puzzle out what he’s supposed to do here.

“You don’t have to—” stay with me. Let me into your bed. Give me all this pity. He can’t say all of that at once, so he grinds to a halt instead and does his damndest not to look into either of their eyes. 

“Alton,” Smokey breathes. “Come here.”

He knows that he shouldn’t. Knows that if he does, he’s taking something that isn’t his anymore, but he is so damn tired. 

He spares a glance at Alley, sees the expectancy in his eyes that mirrors Smokey’s, and so he complies. Lets them take his hands, lets them shift so they’re laying down and goes willingly when they fold him between their bodies, warm and solid and safe.  Something else cracks inside of him; it’s a miracle that he has anything left inside of him to crack. But it splinters soft nonetheless, and he thinks he feels something drain like a lanced infection as he falls back asleep with them pressed on either side of him like they want to stay here with him until the sky falls in again.

[sevenorso]

6/23/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Tabgrant; canon era post-war AU (605 words)

---

“Do you think it would help any, if I talked to him about it?” Ron says very quietly from beside him. Chuck didn’t realize he’d come up to the counter too, those silent feet of his the same as they ever were in the ETO. They’re both watching him, now. Chuck feels like he’s always watching him, really; like Tab’s just the middle distance he’ll stare into when he doesn’t have anything else to be looking at. As if his eyes belong on him. Once upon a time, way back in training, he’d squashed the feeling as quickly as he could and told himself that it was a bad fucking idea to go down that route. Now, though, Tab’s got his elbows up on their porch railing like he’s finally settling into the house as he looks out over their backyard. The setting sun lights the edges of him sharp and orange, and Chuck thinks more and more every day that the sight of him is as close to feeling home as he’ll ever get. 

Walls can do nothing to comfort a person in the wake of the sort of things that they’ve seen and done. A house can do no more than shelter you, give you a place to fill with your presence as you come as close to healing as you can. 

The feeling of it being filled, though? By the silent voice of your living? By the silent voice of another? That’s belonging. That’s settling. Chuck doesn’t think he could have come home and filled that space on his own, bum arm and half-bum leg aside. Pat was a godsend; he thinks Tab might be his goddamn other half.

It’s no less dangerous now, really, to look at another man like that. To look at Tab like that, as dependent as they’ve become on each other in the last few days. They wouldn’t even have the “desperate times” cover to keep them from being looked too closely at, if they were to linger too long in this house together, alone, in full view of the world. But nonetheless Chuck can trace the cut of Tab’s hands where they fold over each other, dangled over their railing, with his goddamn eyes shut. He can guess the tilt to his mouth as he watches the light drain from the sky. Knows that chances are his fingers will be twitching to light a cigarette any moment now. 

He wonders if Ron can feel his watching from his spot next to him. Wonders if Tab can feel it any, as heavy as his roommate and his ex-CO’s gazes sit on him from inside the house. 

“I really don’t know,” Chuck finally whispers back. He tries to find an answer in the figure of Tab’s posture, tries to gather all the little things he’s seen and heard and felt from him both back in Europe and since he’s dragged his ass out here to LA. He knows Tab doesn’t like Speirs; but maybe that’s a plus in this situation. “But I don’t know if you’ll make it any worse.”

Ron snorts half of a laugh. “Well, don’t put it past me.”

He pushes slow off the counter, movements oiled and cautious as he traverses the kitchen and steps through the back door. Tab turns his head just slightly as Ron approaches him, line of his shoulders tightening microscopically, and Chuck watches as Ron pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Withdraws two, lights them; hands one to Tab. They sit together a moment in silence, and then Ron says something to him. Tab snaps something back. 

[sevenorso]

6/14/25 Word Count Goal Fill

(Eventual) Speirton; canon/modern era AU (post-death time travel) (717 words)

---

He registers the pain four beats after the shocked look on Lipton’s face. When he looks down, he knows what is happening. Lipton shouts for a medic. 

He’s not surprised; he’s actually more shocked that he’s made it this far. He knows better than to question the powers that be, but all he can think is I have to leave them like this, though? Lipton’s shoving him backwards, leaning over him with his hands pressed firm over the bullet wound in his front. The sting comes from somewhere far away, and Speirs’ head is going worryingly fuzzy. He’s not making it out, that’s a certainty now; it’s been less than twenty seconds, and he’s already lost enough blood to make him dizzy. 

The private has gone quiet; good. Hopefully he stays that way, because Speirs doesn’t have much time, and it’s hard enough to cast about and gather his thoughts without the kid (all the replacements are kids, really.) starting his panicked rambling back up again. 

Speirs hisses through his teeth. He will not allow Lipton to see him cough blood; he swallows what wells up in his mouth as quickly as he can. 

“Ron—” Lipton’s voice is panicked, and Speirs pushes aside his surprise at hearing his first name from his lieutenant’s mouth. 

“Listen to me—” Speirs snaps, fisting his hands in the lapels of Lipton’s jacket.

“Sir—”

“Carwood!” he barks. “Listen to me. It has to be you. If it’s not you, they don’t stand a chance.” 

Hopefully that’s enough to make his final wishes clear, for what little good he might be able to do for his company in his final moments. Because even as he greedily takes in every detail of the man before him, holding tight to the little bud of admiration that’s grown steadily over the last few weeks as a final good thing to take with him into the beyond, his vision is blurring and spots of black are consuming him. The pain in his chest spikes with his heartbeat once, twice, and then he can’t breathe anymore. 

“Sir?” an incredulous voice comes from somewhere above him in the dark. That’s not Lipton. He realizes that his eyes are shut, so he opens them. 

Crouched above him is Talbert. He's not in ODs, his hair is grown out. He's not covered in blood and dead of a stab wound in a French house that's half rubble.

“Jesus fucking christ, Talbert,” Speirs sighs, and closes his eyes again. Last he checked, evisceration isn't a recoverable condition. And neither is a bullet through a lung or two, which means he really is dead. 

No more miraculous near-misses for me, he thinks wryly. Of all ways to go out.

Talbert’s still watching him, brows drawn together in concern. Speirs slowly draws himself to sitting, and scans their surroundings. 

“Is this—”

“America,” Talbert answers. “Twenty-first century.”

Speirs is half amused to note that he's using the same tone of voice he'd deliver status reports to him in, back when he was still his first sergeant. Before he got captured by Germans and Speirs more or less had to let them kill him. 

He was going to ask if this was the afterlife, or heaven (not that he really thinks he believes, after everything he's seen), but the picturesque street he finds himself on is as good as. The 21st century part checks out, too, when he takes in the cars parked along the street, and the cut of the streetlights that stand above them waiting for night to fall. 

He wonders if there's still some sort of chain of command here, then, given Talbert’s bearing. It's far less hostile than it was back in Europe, but he figures time heals all wounds.

Including his own, it seems, because even though his jacket is seeped in blood, his pain is down to a dull throbbing ache and when he pushes the fabric aside the entry wound is no more than a blemish spotting his ribcage. Beneath his own fingers he can make out the outline of handprints rendered in blood; evidence of Lipton’s desperate ministrations he's brought with him into this unexpected sort of afterlife. He frowns.

“Let's get you inside,” Talbert says off of a sigh, and gives him a hand to his feet.

[sevenorso]

6/13/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Happy birthday, Ed Shames. You were too powerful; they had to relegate your place in the show to about five seconds of screentime and a negative mention.

Shamecock; canon era postwar AU (1440 words)

---

“What are you doing here?” is all he can think to say. It’s the biggest question on his mind, anyways, so it doesn’t matter all that much that he can’t pick anything else coherent out of his racing thoughts. Edward Shames, here, all the way from (presumably) Virginia, on Peacock’s doorstep. Did he miss a letter?

“I came to see you!” and his voice is too loud, too raw. Peacock thinks he gets it now:

“Are you drunk?”

“No, I’m not—okay, maybe a little. But not so bad that I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Peacock’s not sure he’s ever seen him so unsteady on his feet. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, Tom, I’m sure! Look, I just—I just needed to see you, okay? I never got to say goodbye. It didn’t feel right. Please, let me make it right.” 

He has to be drunk. The desperation in his voice is nothing Shames would ever let slip out unless he wasn’t in complete control of himself, Peacock reasons. He’s not thinking straight; he’s being impulsive and unreasonable and ridiculous because this isn’t a foxhole in Belgium, this isn’t an abandoned high-end hotel in Austria, this isn’t fucking—

This isn’t something that happens, here. Not in this Washington college town, not in broad view of everyone and their mother on the street. It might be dark, might be raining, but anyone walking by or peering out their windows right now stands a good chance of getting a good look at their faces. A good look at which building Peacock lives in, if nothing else. 

But Shames is still standing there, hair plastered to his skull and looking up at him like he’s the one radiating light, not the bulb in the porch fixture. Peacock can’t take it. There’s too much in his chest clamoring for recognition, built-up anger and sadness and anxiety and whatever else you want to name. This is ridiculous. 

He huffs a sigh before he can stop himself, and notices the shiver that’s running through Shames’ frame as he stands straight-backed and incorrigible as always on his stairs.

“Just—come inside before you catch a cold, alright?” Peacock hisses, beckoning him through the door. He yanks it shut after him, and whirls to face him. 

He’s way too close. All at once Peacock’s a nervous replacement officer again, eyeing up the freshly-promoted lieutenant he’s billeted with and howling mentally at the brass because of all the officers here, he just had to get paired with one who looks like every late-night conjuring his hedonistic imagination has ever subjected him to. And he’s looking at him right back, eyes dark and with that challenging edge that had Peacock swallowing and steeling himself against when they’d first met, before he knew that that was just Ed’s resting face and—

Christ, he’s right here, Peacock laments as they stare at each other. Right here, and yet further from mine than anyone could ever get. He didn't think he'd ever see him again. He's had this conversation in his head nigh-on a thousand times by now, starting from the moment he stepped onto the train back to Washington, but words fail him now and all he can do is marvel at how it feels to be next to him again. 

He thought it'd fade with distance, or with time. But nope. He's just as hopelessly, stupidly smitten now as he was back when he was letting Ed kiss him silly in grossly lavish German houses and among impossibly green trees. It's like the polarity of his very blood has tuned to this man’s presence, and it could not possibly make him any more angry with himself that he let this happen.

Shames steps impossibly closer, and Peacock tears his gaze from his face in favor of tracking the path of the water droplets sliding down his neck, soaking into his collar, resting in the hollow of his throat—

No, not better, he howls at himself, and feels his face heat as he tries to find somewhere, anywhere, else to look. 

“Tommy,” Shames lows, and Peacock curses himself for how weak he is. That he’d do anything for this man in front of him, that he’s frail at the knees in a decidedly girlish way at just the way he says his name. His goddamn name. He scrabbles to get ahold of himself and yanks out of his space, shouldering past him into the hall. He doesn’t turn to see what his face looks like at the silent rejection, doesn’t want to look at the expression he’s making as he watches Peacock run from him. 

I’m not running, he insists. I’m getting him a towel, and making sure there’s enough space between us so we don’t do something we’d both regret.

Something Shames would regret, rather. He’s hanging by a thread of pride alone, just barely keeping from letting Shames do whatever the hell he wants to him. He doesn't think there's anything he could possibly regret in this moment; if nothing happens, he'll have been smart. If something does happen, he'll have one last memory to hold onto as he tries to double down on living an acceptable, normal rest of his life. And if it goes bad, well, that just ensures Shames’ll never show up on his doorstep without warning in the middle of the night again.

Now’s not the time to toss out your goddamn self respect, he chides himself as he steps back into the hall with a towel. 

“Here,” he whispers, and holds it out to him. He doesn’t look him in the eye, doesn’t want to mark his expression, but he can feel his gaze heavy on him all the same. Just like he could in Europe, even from all the way across a room, keen and level and wanting—

“Thanks,” he says, voice gruff, and takes it from him. 

“What are you doing here?” Peacock asks him again, daring to look at him as he rubs his hair dry, runs the fabric over his face and across the back of his neck. 

“I’m on leave,” he says. “It was the first train on the timetable. It felt… It felt like a sign.” 

This hesitancy is new to Peacock; the intensity is not. His words are halting like he’s casting about for them, but the look in his eye isn’t much different from the one that tipped him off at the very start that maybe he wasn’t the only one imagining someone else’s hands on him when he took what time and privacy the army afforded to himself. 

“Was this before or after you started drinking?” 

Maybe it’s an unfair thing to ask, but he has to know. Was the idea to see him brought on by intoxication, or has he been half as broken up by the whole situation as Peacock has been? Has he been missing him since he realized he got on that train without any parting words? Has he been memorizing his address, staring at the scrawl of his handwriting on the back of that scrap of some map or other he still had tucked into his ODs, the one he gave Peacock to write his address on in a spare moment while celebrating Japan’s surrender? Always two steps ahead, Peacock had mused to himself, giddy on Austrian spirits and relief and Ed’s company. 

Peacock thinks he could recite Shames’ mother’s address (“because I don’t know where I’ll be, but she’ll be the first to know,” he’d explained. “If you write there, I’ll get it.”) faster than his own serial number (now irrelevant since his discharge) at this point. He wonders if Shames had to look more than twice at his writing before he found his way to him, half-drunk and fresh off the train.

“I—” Shames starts to respond, but trails off in favor of just staring at Peacock. Deep brown eyes sparking in some intoxicated emotion, searching his face as if he’s drowning and Peacock’s some last gulp of air. He finds himself unable to break from his gaze, unable to look anywhere else but at the face of this breathtakingly headstrong man as he stands before him, dripping on his hardwood floor. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” 

Try as he might, Peacock can’t bring his voice above a whisper. He swallows, and watches Ed’s throat work just as labored.  He doesn’t respond. Just snaps his eyes back to his, unblinking, and heaves a shuddering breath. Opens his mouth as if to say something, closes it again, and lunges forward to cross that immeasurable distance between them and kisses him.

[sevenorso]

6/12/25 Word Count Goal Fill

(Eventual) Alton/Smokey/Moe; canon/modern era AU (post-death time travel) (565 words)

---

...But he’s here. He’s right here in front of him, and when he meets Alton’s eyes he looks like he’s been shot all over again. 

He sees Alley look between them from the corner of his eye, and he lays a hand on Smokey’s shoulder for a moment and says something to him but Alton doesn’t catch what it is. Smokey grabs at his elbow a moment and murmurs something back, brow furrowed, but Alley just smiles and nods and disappears into the kitchen. 

“You gotta be exhausted,” is the first thing Smokey says to him after what feels like years. The first words to him out of his mouth after he had to watch him die, and go on spitting bullets at the Kraut tanks like it was going to solve anything. 

You have no fucking idea, is what he thinks to himself, but instead he just musters a nod and a tired smile and follows Smokey out of the house, down the street, and into another. 

He distantly marks other old faces that smile and greet him, and he thinks that he greets them back, but his focus is solely on Smokey in front of him as he leads him through this new house and up some stairs. 

He never expected to see him again. He really, really thought he could have gone the rest of his life without ever hearing his voice again, without ever feeling his steady and mirthful presence next to him. Thought he could just bury it and move on, think of him only as a war buddy who got dealt bad cards, another one of the endless faces that was dead and gone while he was not. He was going to maybe get home, maybe find the girl he went with before he joined the National Guard, get married and settle down and maybe get a horse or two of his own. Assuming he ever made it home, he was going to leave everything he saw and became in Europe on the other side of international waters and only crack it back open if he kept up with Malarkey or Grant or Lip. 

Smokey was going to be some never-was left (with far less ceremony than he deserved) on Belgian soil, just like everybody they lost over there. No more than a passing thought.

He knows now that he was a fucking idiot. Because seeing him again, staring at the back of his head and the hairs curling over his nape just past regulation length, noting the way he’s filled out now that he’s not stuck on at-best half-rations in an icy wasteland, has everything crashing down on him like he’s poor Bill fucking Keihn. Why did I think for even a second that I was going to be able to live without you?

“Hey Alton,” Smokey utters as he shuts the door behind him, and that’s Alton’s last straw. 

“Smokey—fuck, Smokey—”

His legs nearly give out under him, but Smokey’s there in a heartbeat with his arms wrapped around his middle and Alton knows he’s holding him too tight but some terrified animal part of him is howling that he’ll vanish from in front of him again if he doesn’t do something.

“You’re alright, I got you, it’s alright, it’s alright,” Smokey lows, and guides them to sit on the half-made bed set against the back wall.

[sevenorso]

6/10/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Tangrant; modern AU in which Grant owns a cat cafe (I'm not gonna bother to wave it off at this point it is what it is) (526 words)

---

“I have to go over and pick up that other cat, anyways,” Chuck says. “Want me to keep you company on your shift?”

Tab blinks at him. Is he serious? He can’t tell if he’s patronizing him or not. The way that Pat and Tipper laugh makes him think that he might be, because they’d definitely be the ones to know when he’s joking. He darts his eyes over to each of them in turn, but they’re both going about their business with no further comment. 

Chuck’s not one easily read, but the expression on his face is mild; just genially amused, with that little shadow-smile tugging at his mouth, and questioning. He thinks maybe he's not being made a fool of, here. Hopes so, anyways.

“If you wanna sit around while I answer emails, absolutely.”

Chuck’s smile widens, and so when he finishes up stocking the new dry ingredients they head over together. It takes every ounce of restraint Tab has to be normal about it; walking next to him down the route he takes at least once daily puts this stupid giddy feeling in his chest that sort of disappoints him with the childishness of it all. You’re really doing this, aren’t you, he scolds himself as they reach the shelter. You’re not even going to be a little bit normal about this.

No, he guesses as he lets them in, relocking the door behind them because it’s after hours and the last thing they need is someone wandering in here. I’m really not.

“Just lemme know when you wanna grab that cat,” he says to him as they travel through the darkened lobby, Tab stopping to scoop up the laptop from the front desk as they walk by. 

“I’m in no rush,” he smiles at him, and Tab’s glad that in leading him through the building he’s turned away from him because there’s no way he’s not blushing. 

Quit it quit it quit it he chides himself. He makes for his go-to work spot on muscle memory before he realizes that maybe sitting on a concrete floor in a mostly-empty kennel room wasn’t what he signed up for when he said he’d keep him company. 

“I—uh, usually sit in with Trigger, when I can,” he explains as he comes to a halt at the door. “But there’s better chairs in the lobby and the break room if you’d rather—”

“In by Trigger’s fine,” Chuck puts him out of his awkward misery with a smile and as easygoing a tone as always, and Tab releases a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He didn’t anticipate it being this nerve-wracking to have him here; he feels almost like a kid showing off his bedroom to a new friend for the first time, which is absolutely ridiculous because Chuck’s been coming here since long before Tab was even back on US soil. He’s just as at ease here as he is at the cafe, occupying space comfortably and assured in that way of his, and Tab’s struck by how silly it is that he’s the one leading him around as if he’s the expert here. 

[sevenorso]

6/9/25 Word Count Goal Fill

(Eventual) Alton/Smokey/Moe; canon/modern era AU (post-death time travel) (600 words)

---

“Heard you were in. Welcome to the 21st.” 

The words mean nothing to him. He’s still trying to figure out if he’s about to wake up in the rubble of a landslide, probably too banged up to go on with the rest of the unit. He thinks he’s gonna throttle someone if they try to take him to an aid station or a hospital or whatever. 

Or maybe he really is dead.

He frowns. “I really—”

“Yeah,” Winters murmurs. “Yeah, you did. What happened?”

Alton scoffs, and resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Road gave out under the Jeep I was in, I think.” They both wince, and Nix looses a mighty sigh. 

“Jesus, that’s dumb.”

Winters makes to scold him, but Alton cuts him off before he can, because he’s right:

“Tell me about it.”

Nix gives half a laugh, quirking an eyebrow at Winters like see? and gesturing at the other couch. “They’re gonna be back any minute,” he says as Alton takes the cue and sits. 

Am I supposed to know who he’s talking about? “Who?”

“Smokey, Moe, and I think Popeye,” he answers. “I think that’s who they took with them, anyways. Serves that asshole right for swapping out the VAT for whatever the hell that gasoline was.”

Alton has to look to Winters to make sure he’s not yanking his chain because if anyone’s gonna know exactly what to say to knock him off this treacherous platform of sanity in the face of the situation (and maybe take some sort of pleasure in it; Alton’s always wondered if he’s some sort of sick fuck. He almost has to be), it’s gonna be Nix. 

Winters’ expression stays level, so either he’s in on it or Nix isn’t kidding. Alton can’t decide which is worse. He pushes the entire situation from his mind and asks instead:

“Where are we?”

The debrief that follows has his head damn-near spinning. Somehow of all the batshit and unexpected things he knew he’d encounter when he enlisted in the Airborne, dying and getting spat out 80 years in the future was not one of them. 

Winters is very intentional about mentioning the modern attitudes surrounding love and relationships. He doesn’t know if he looks like he needs the information, or if Winters is just that hung up on it. The fond look Nix is giving him is almost disgusting, but it’s really not all that different from the way that he looked at him back in Europe. He’s gonna have to apologize to Smokey for betting against him on that one—

The breath in his chest nearly vanishes when the name crosses his mind. He doesn’t even let himself consider that Nix wasn’t bullshitting him, that he really is gonna walk through that door any second. He doesn’t know what he’d do, doesn’t even know if he’d be able to look him in the eye and keep what’s left of his composure. 

He doesn’t get the chance to ponder it further or push it further away, because the door swings open to let in the sound of boisterous voices and cackling even though only three new people join them in the room and two of them worse for wear. 

They must’ve been drinking last night, Alton marks. No wonder Smokey’s the only one who looks functional here. Because he doesn’t drink; never has. Smokes like a goddamn chimney, hence the nickname, but always joked that once he started in on the alcohol he wouldn’t be able to stop so it was really better for everyone if he abstained and—Fuck. 

Smokey. 

[sevenorso]

6/8/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Tab/Grant/Christenson; canon era A/B/O AU (smh). NSFW implications. (599 words)

---

But no. He goes after strangers. God knows where he finds these nameless, faceless guys. He’d mentioned preferring locals, if there’s any around, or non-airborne alphas. Just to be completely sure that there’d be no way for them to go running to the brass, no chance of crossing paths again in the line of combat or whatever else. 

Liebgott tries to tail him, a handful of times. Just to be sure that someone would be around if the worst were to happen. But Tab must’ve gotten wise right off the bat, because Lieb always comes back bristling, reporting that he lost him. 

Clever Bunny, Pat had mused to himself the first time Lieb came back foiled. But why do you have to be so fucking stubborn?

Chuck’s thoughts on it all are largely a mystery; he’s a vault about damn near everything, even to Pat. He also avoids bringing it up, both because it irks him just thinking about it and because he’s not sure where ‘wanting another person’ falls on the list of things that are acceptable to talk about with your possible-mate without it ending in a fight. 

Pat reaches the end of his rope though one night as they settle in the Netherlands. He and Chuck are playing cards, lounging in the front room of the billet they’re sharing with half of the rest of the platoon, Tab included; the house is quiet now, though, as their friends either snore away in their beds, or stand their shifts on watch elsewhere in the town. 

They’re enjoying the quiet, and each other’s company, when Tab slips through the door, gives them each a stilted nod in greeting, and disappears into the house. 

If Pat didn’t know better, he’d say that his vision sparks red. He exchanges a look with Chuck and quickly confirms that he’s in the same boat, and huffs an exhale. The cards are abandoned; there’s no way either of them are focusing anymore tonight on anything other than the guilty and disheveled air of their friend as he vanished from their view, the angry mark high on his neck in full view even in the low light of the oil lamp between them on the table. 

—

“I hate that he’s doing this,” Pat utters into the dark as they bed down in the little room they’d managed to snag for themselves upstairs. He wraps too-tense arms around Chuck’s middle as he shifts against him, borrowing further into his side and the blanket he’d scored earlier that day out of one of the less-inhabitable buildings (Pat’s idly sad to find himself unsurprised at the sight of bombed-out houses now; he doesn’t think about what the structures might have once been, the people who might’ve lived there, where they are now. His eyes just skim over them. Just part of the scenery). 

“I get it,” he adds hurriedly. “I do. But I just… I hate it. I hate that he has to go and fuck strangers to keep from going crazy.”

Chuck’s silent beside him; Pat almost wonders if he’s beaten his record of quickest time to dead to the world. But he speaks up after a beat:

“Me too.”

Pat weighs the pros and cons of saying what he’s had buried in his chest since that night he dropped into their foxhole for the first time, bringing his body heat and a completely absurd revelation. His mouth decides for him, evidently too far ahead of his turbulent thoughts to heed any logical warning. 

“He should be with us.”

Chuck doesn’t even hesitate this time:

“Yes.”

[sevenorso]

6/7/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Tab/Grant/Christenson; canon era A/B/O AU (I know I know). NSFW mentions. (658 words)

---

He really really wishes Tab hadn’t told him what it is that he does when he sneaks off on their downtime, because now when he notices him excusing himself, conspicuously bare of all identifying pins or patches or chevrons or anything else that could tip anyone off about what unit he’s in, all Pat can think about is him spread out on some commandeered mattress. Or worse yet, bent over a desk or pressed against the wall in some alley, entirely at the mercy of strangers to soothe the wildfire of his libido. 

“Why doesn’t he just ask one of us?” Pat asks Chuck one evening while they’re cleaning their guns on the steps of a house in their latest stopover town. They’re both watching Tab slip off again, tracking his progress across the square until he slips between buildings and out of sight, and Pat can’t help noting the line of tension that runs across Chuck’s shoulders as he turns his attention back to the sidearm in his lap. 

“That’s gotta be a heavy thing to sit with, you know? Dealing with someone on the day to day that’s fucked you stupid. He probably doesn’t want to complicate anything,” he answers. “That or he just doesn’t want any of us.”

“You’re telling me that in the best goddamn company of soldiers the army has, Tab can’t find someone to help him out?” He’s half joking, echoing some of the pep-talk words they get from superior officers with pretty much every briefing. Chuck cracks a smile and rolls his eyes, and Pat grins right back. 

“I think if Winters would take him up on it, he’d go that route.”

Pat scoffs. “Yeah, right. Like that’d ever happen.”

“Exactly,” Chuck laughs. “Hence finding people who won’t know him.”

It irks him, still. Even if he can kind of understand the logic there. All it takes is one mistake with the wrong guy and he’s screwed, literally and figuratively; with things being what they are, he’d be lucky to only be dishonorably discharged should his secret get out. 

Not to mention the sheer toss-up it is to find a partner for something like that that isn’t a complete slimeball. No one knows where Tab goes, really, so if something were to happen to him Pat’s not sure they’d be able to do a damn thing about it before it was too late. He figures these are the same thoughts that run through every other member of their company who are aware of his deal; every day he understands more and more why Chuck looks for him at every chance, marking his presence in their group whenever he can and keeping as close as he can justify. 

“Roe doesn’t do this, does he?”

He doesn’t see their medic very often, mostly because he manages to keep himself out of life-threatening trouble. He’s always making his rounds, ducking in and out of their throng with a quiet efficiency. He knows he’s Easy’s only other omega; which is part of why he’d been designated a medic, despite him being a crack shot with a rifle. Despite the designation he shares with Tab, though, Pat can’t see him getting wound up so tight that he has to find strangers to fuck on a frequent basis. He also catches him watching Tab with a concerned expression more often than not, zeroed in on him when he steals away. 

“Not that I know of,” Chuck shrugs. “But he’s got a suppressant ration. Tab’s stuck scrounging, and I think he’s riled up easy to begin with.” Riled up. Sure. That’s one way to put it. Pat won’t hold it against Tab to do what he needs to do to keep his head on straight; he’s exhausting as a sergeant when he’s all on edge anyways. But he can’t think of anything he wishes for more than him not having to do this sort of thing at all.

[sevenorso]

6/6/25 Word Count Goal Fill

If I was more put together, thematic-wise, I'd have done something about Normandy. Oh well.

Tab/Grant/Christenson; canon era A/B/O AU (smh) (799 words)

---

They’re taking up one man’s worth of space in a two-man foxhole, so Tab slides in unimpeded. He jerks to a halt, though, when he looks to them. There’s no doubt that he’s noting how they’re pressed close together, Pat’s face resting in the crook of Chuck’s neck with his arms wrapped around his back, hands palming the back of his skull with his fingers tangled in his hair. Chuck’s got a leg thrown over his waist and his arms around his shoulders, tucking him close. The position probably isn’t very tactically intelligent, but they’re off rotation anyways.

Pat doesn’t think Tab realized that he’s in here too, given both the guilty cut of his features in the low light and the way that he’s never come to Chuck when Pat’s already holed up with him. Unless being sprung from the hospital’s made him want to get to know him better, Tab doesn’t seek whatever he’s seeking from the others when it comes to his sleeping arrangements. Which is fine, really; just because they’re both close with Chuck doesn’t mean that they’re automatically affectionate with each other, too. 

If Tab was paying attention to scent as he picked his way through the dark, which he almost certainly was given that he really only goes to 3 members of their company like this, he should have known that Pat was in the foxhole, too. He wonders what that means for his and Chuck’s scents; have they mingled that frequently that they’re indistinguishable as two separate people when they’re together? His stomach does a funny little dance at the thought. He can’t say he hates that idea.

The moonlight’s just bright enough to illuminate the way Tab crouches stock-still, eyes darting between the two of them. He huffs an exhausted exhale, and settles back on his heels; Pat shifts to look up at Chuck for a cue. He finds nothing but silver eyes set in a placid expression, holding Tab’s gaze steady and questioning.

“You can tell him if you wanna,” Tab sighs. Pat watches him look away, working his jaw. “Should I go somewhere else?”

Chuck’s eyes flick down to Pat and he quirks an eyebrow, so Pat answers for the both of them:

“Nah, stay if you want,” he tosses him a little smile. Tab returns it, and unslings his rifle from his back and leans it up against the wall of the foxhole with theirs. Pat waits patiently to be let in on whatever information Tab's just given Chuck leave to tell him.

“Tab’s omega,” Chuck says. “Presented in Aldbourne.”

If this weren’t Charles Grant speaking, fiercely pragmatic and even-keeled beyond belief, Pat would be laughing at him. Telling him “good joke, man, but next time at least try to make it plausible.”

But his lowered voice is cut and dried, dead serious in the dark around them. And Tab’s tugging on his lower lip, eyes still fixed pointedly to the ground. Pat guesses that if it weren’t so damn dark, he’d be able to see his signature wildfire blush sweeping across his soft features. 

“You’re serious?” he asks anyways. 

Tab scoffs, and nods derisively. “Unfortunately.”

“Jesus,” Pat can’t help but mutter. “How the hell…”

Suddenly the additional layer of simmering crisis in England makes sense; if he presented in Aldbourne, there would have been a mad scramble to keep it under wraps in the face of the whole situation with Sobel and their imminent deployment.

“Winters and Roe, mostly,” he says. His voice is weary, edging further into miserable the longer they sit here, so Pat decides he doesn’t really need to know all the details right this minute. Sometime in the future would be nice, but for now he’s more than willing to shift and allow Chuck to gently tug Tab toward them, guiding him into place to nestle between their bodies. 

Pat’s struck by how easy it all is. Sure, he thinks based solely on everything they’ve been through at this point he’d consider anyone in the company closer than a brother. But the way Tab fits in between them, taking Pat’s place with his nose tucked into Chuck’s collarbones when they both direct him there and his back curled against Pat’s chest, feels like stepping into a warm bath. Or slipping under clean sheets. Or a thousand other things that feel far, far away from their hole in the dirt, camped along the outskirts of some no-name town they’re probably gonna have to shoot the shit out of in the morning. 

He has a second to take in Tab’s scent, the subtle loamy vanilla of it set aside Chuck’s ever present softened and sparking smoke, before he’s dead asleep and dreaming of woods they don’t have to crouch through with rifles at the ready.

[sevenorso]

6/5/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Tab/Grant/Christenson; canon era A/B/O AU (in the midst of exercising brain-demons. Bear with me). Gets close to NSFW. (557 words)

---

They stop over in some obliterated town, looking markedly similar to Hagenau and most of the others that came before it. They unload the trucks, are directed to billets, and told they move at 0800 the next morning. 

“Looks like we’re gonna have some down time,” Chuck says, casual and matter-of-fact. But the glint in his blue, blue eyes is nothing but pure mischief; pure lust.

No more than five minutes later, Pat has him against a door in a hallway in some bombed-out house, the second floor silent save for the distant sounds of gunfire and the chatter of voices from the floor below where a group of guys scavenges for anything left in the rubble. There’s dusky light leaking in through a handful of holes in the walls, impromptu windows born of artillery strikes and general wartime inevitabilities, but there’s more than enough of a barrier between them and the elements at large, and Pat can brace a hand against the plaster beside the doorframe to better press Chuck against the wood at his back. He licks and sucks a wandering path up his neck, stopping just short of making any lasting marks and making him shiver under his touch. 

He smiles against his jaw when he gives a breathy, laugh-tinged “fuck,” and reaches past his hip to fumble with the doorknob and give them a surer shot at privacy to finish wherever this may lead. 

The door creaks open, complaining raspy but it holds up well enough and Pat herds Chuck through it. He doesn’t quit kissing him, fallen into that hazy in-between place in his mind where he can comfortably dwell in the moment, marking only the noises Chuck makes and the way he moves against him. 

He doesn’t realize Chuck’s stopped cold until he barks his name and yanks at his arm, forcing him to break his focus on his neck. He stumbles, and makes to look at his face and ask him what the fuck happened, when he realizes that the room they were about to shut and lock the door to is already occupied. 

He whips his head to scan the darkened space when he catches a very familiar scent. And sure enough, bent over a desk against the wall, not ten feet from the door, is Tab. 

Time freezes for a second, and Pat’s angry before he even takes full stock of the situation.

---

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? the only part of him left that is thinking rationally, a shred of a fragment, really, says. He’s not yours. He’s not yours at all. 

But he’s more theirs than he is this fucking asshole’s, that’s for damn sure. 

Pat takes about two steps toward them before Chuck’s throwing all of his weight against him, manhandling him out of the room and back into the hallway. He thinks maybe he growls something at Chuck, maybe tries to break his hold and arrow back for their first sergeant, but before he can muster enough strength to rail against the iron hold on his arms Chuck has him against the back wall of another room across the hallway; this one empty for sure. 

He slams the door behind him, twists the lock harder than he needs to, and pins him to the no-doubt hideous wallpaper with an arm across his front.

[sevenorso]

6/4/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Tabgrant; canon era postwar AU (510 words)

---

“Did you ever think about what you’d do afterward, back there?” 

Tab’s poking at the fire, arranging the coals in some pattern only he can decipher as the light dies steadily. He doesn’t look at Chuck, eyes cast forward. His iris catches the glow of the embers, and the planes of his face look starker than they ever have in the severe light. 

“I don’t know,” he says, because he really didn’t. “Maybe in an abstract sort of way, like what kind of job I was gonna get that stood a chance at measuring up to carrying a bazooka. But it always felt absurd.”

Tab just nods. He’s worrying the inside of his bottom lip between his teeth again, slow and subtle but Chuck’s been watching him do it since Toccoa, since they were just eager boys entering their life’s great adventure. He knows the shift of his skin, ensnared in the bite of his own teeth, like the back of his hand. He knows that he shouldn’t, but he does. 

“Did you?”

“I didn’t think I was going to make it out at all,” he whispers. “Especially after the whole SS situation. Something about that… I don’t know. It should have felt good. To beat them like that. I kind of…” he trails off, and heaves a sigh that sounds as if it brings air up that’s been sitting at the bottom of his lungs since he was 15 years old. Chuck knows the feeling. 

“I think part of me accepted that I was going to have to die if I wanted to make it out. Like it was never going to end. It was all I was ever meant to do, and I’d pretty much already done it. So what was next, you know?”

He doesn’t. Chuck has no idea. For him, war was always just what he was doing. Just where he was, just his job in that moment. A job he took immense pride in, sure, but a job nevertheless. He’s never been sure what his higher purpose is, or if he even has one. Has always just taken one day at a time, done what needed doing, had as much fun as he could along the way. 

So he just nods, slow and considering so Tab knows he’s heard him. He remembers, idly, that shortly after the “whole SS situation” was when Winters was promoted to XO and taken out of Tab’s direct chain of command. He’s not about to bring it up, or suggest that that was the breaking point; he’s not that cruel. 

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, Chuck,” he chokes out, hand falling still where he still prods at the sputtering fire with a charred stick. He looks up to meet his eyes, and he looks as lost as an Indiana boy can be deep in the redwoods of California on the other side of a second war to end all wars. 

“That makes two of us,” Chuck murmurs back, and holds his gaze like a bird in hand. 

[sevenorso]

6/3/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Tab/Grant/Christenson; canon era A/B/O AU (I have demons to exorcise). Gets close to being nsfw. (536 words)

---

He backs himself against the far far wall of the billet, and Pat takes about two seconds to feel bad about it because he almost looks scared of them. But there’s the slightest touch of the scent of arousal under every inhale he brings through his nose, and he knows for a fact that it’s not him or Chuck. Pat thinks that if he breathed any deeper he’d lose his mind.

They stop just inside the threshold, across the room from where Tab stands wired with the hint of a tremor wracking his frame. 

“Tab,” Chuck lows. “You have to stop.”

“What—”

“You gotta quit putting yourself at strangers’ mercy. We’re right here.”

Something flashes in Tab’s eyes amid the cornered-animal anxiety. Pat can’t pick it out; what he can pick out, though, is his scent. It gains strength the longer he stands there, arousal coming off of him in waves that permeate the room and have Pat fighting the growl that wants to build in his throat. Their first sergeant, their Bunny. He’s right here. 

You’re right here, and you want it. Please let us give it to you. We’re yours. You’re ours.

His eyes dart between the two alphas standing before him like he’s drowning; whether he’s looking at them like they’re life preservers or sharks in the water remains to be seen. 

“We’re sick of seeing you with people who aren’t Easy,” Pat rumbles. It’s an effort to get the words out while he keeps himself perfectly still and his scent under control. He wants to lunge for him, wants to hold him and never let him go. “We’re right here. You’re ours.” 

Tab lets out a little gasp, the back half tinged with a whimper, and Pat can see the shiver that runs through him even from here. He marks Chuck’s shaky sigh beside him at the sound, the way he’s gritting his jaw and keeping his eyes trained on Tab like the sight of him alone is sating some deep-seated hunger inside him. Pat can relate. 

“Yes,” Tab breathes, and slides a fraction of an inch down the wall like he’s losing strength in his legs. The room’s swiftly filling with the scent of his need. “I am. I’m yours. Do something about it.” 

His voice is high and desperate and borders on a whine, and it’s all the signal that they need. Pat has a moment where he has to resist the urge to drop his jaw and gape at him in incredulity; he expected him to put up more of a fight, maybe give them more bullshit excuses or tell them to fuck off. He’s been so evasive, avoiding them and everyone else in the company staunchly when it came to his sneaking-off or their trying to help him. But apparently, all it takes is for Pat and Chuck to corral him in a room for more than half a second and not let him blow them off. All it takes is telling him that they want him.

They’re at his side in a heartbeat, just in time to catch him as he collapses. Chuck gathers him into his arms as he keens and presses his face to his neck. 

[sevenorso]

6/2/25 Word Count Goal Fill

Tabgrant; modern AU in which Grant owns a cat cafe (just roll with it) (694 words)

---

(For vital context: Torch (full name Blowtorch; Smokey named him) is a cat)

When he and Trigger pad out to the living area one morning, it takes Tab about two seconds to spot Torch on the kitchen counter. Where he is absolutely not allowed. 

“Excuse me,” he lows, trying to stifle his smile at the stupid little kitty face peering at him in the light from the rising sun through the window over the sink because you’re not supposed to laugh at kids who are being naughty. It reinforces bad behavior, or something. 

Maybe that’s why he was a hellion child at home; he always had siblings egging him on with wild cackling, and his relatives always said that he inherited his horrible poker face from his mother. 

He rounds the corner into the kitchen, and the cat doesn’t move. Just watches him, and gives a little good-morning chirp. He hushes him, even if he knows he doesn’t understand; Chuck’s still sleeping as far as he can tell. Torch just chirps again, kneading his paws against the countertop as he blinks at Tab and swipes his tail around lazily. 

Tab watches him, eyebrows raised, and he’s about to pick him up and relocate him but he catches sight of one of Chuck’s glass bowls, sat by the sink for future washing. It’s a little too close to the edge, and Torch’s tail is getting a little too enthusiastic. He clips it once, twice, pushing it closer to the edge while he watches without comprehending exactly what he’s looking at, and then one more nudge is all it takes to set it teetering—

“No no no don’t—” he hisses, lunging for the bowl, but he’s half a second too late. It shatters on the floor; Torch goes trotting away across the countertop and into the living rom. Tab groans and shoos Trigger back away from the glass. 

“Everyone okay?” Chuck says from the doorway behind them, voice rough, and when Tab looks up to give him a wry smile and joke that Torch ought to lose treat privileges for the day he loses nearly all the breath in his chest. 

He hadn’t really made the connection between the long- and fluffy-haired youth he’d gotten to see glimpses of when he helped Chuck clean out the spare room and the man standing before him now; his hair’s gotten darker in adulthood, sure, but it still has that half-frizzy wispiness to it where it lengthens on the top of his head. 

How did it never occur to me that he…

Tab’s struck speechless. Can’t even finish a coherent thought. He isn’t ashamed to admit it. He can’t begin to articulate how endearing it is to see him like this, still most of the way asleep and ruffled in a way that reminds him he usually goes straight from his room to the bathroom in the mornings. Clearly the pomade he spotted (and thought nothing of, at the time) in the cabinet over the sink gets used daily. 

“You got that okay?” Chuck utters as he drops a hand down to scratch at Trigger’s ears where he’s come to sit at his side, canine smile stretched wide and adoring as he wags his tail and greets him.

He snorts a little laugh, eyes half shut as he gazes at Tab with an eyebrow raised. He’s been caught staring; what else is new? He searches for something to say, express the appropriate amount of embarrassment or play it off or something, but all he can focus on is trying to figure out what it would feel like to have his hands in his hair. To scratch lightly at his scalp, card the strands through his fingers, play with it idly where he might lay on him, head in his lap or on his chest or—

Enough! He’s standing right there, you fucking freak, he berates himself and tips Chuck an apologetic half-smile. He knows that he’s blushing, for the amused look on Chuck’s face if not the heat that blazes across his cheeks. 

“Yeah, I got it,” Tab says, and sighs at the mess. “That cat’s a little shit.”

“It was Torch, wasn’t it.”

“Yup,” and Tab goes to get the broom. 

[sevenorso]

6/1/25 Word Count Goal Fill

(Eventual) Alton/Smokey/Moe. Could kind of be Alton/Speirs if you squint; canon/modern era AU (post-death time travel) (544 words)

---

He turns to leave without any words, so Alton calls after him, voice drawling:

“What, all that German silver starting to weigh you down? You’re looking awful slow.” 

Speirs halts. Completely still, like a wildcat sizing up prey. If Alton had a shred more self-preservation instinct, he might be nervous. But as it stands, he just feels a low tug of triumph in his gut, and can only half-stifle his grin when Speirs whirls, sneering, and shoves him by the shoulders against the wall. 

Alton just goes easy, letting him pin him to the crumbling plaster. Looks down to watch his face, careful to keep his own expression perfectly placid. He expects Speirs to say something; put him on latrine duty for the comment, demote him, chew him out about respecting the rank, snuff him out with a bullet or a blade or his hands. Something. But Speirs just watches him back, jaw clenched and teeth bared with a wildfire in his eyes. 

He marks the subtle flash in his stare like he’s rifling through the courses of action he could take in his mind and he’s finding them all lacking for one reason or another. Alton waits, letting the silence crackle and thrash between them until it’s clear that Speirs isn’t going to do anything but snarl anytime soon. 

He wonders if that’s a bad sign, that he just glares at him instead of laying into him like the superior officer that he is. Even if it was just one of those dark, cryptic two- or three-word sentences that he loves so much. But he gets nothing. His chest rises and falls in an incensed rhythm.

“Feel a little better, now?” Alton whispers, tightening the reigns on his expression as Speirs seethes against him. 

His words seem to shake him out of his stalled fury.

“Gather your men, Sergeant,” he grits out, and yanks himself back out of Alton’s face. 

“Yes sir,” he responds, and salutes him in earnest this time. Speirs just eyes him, gaze sharp enough to draw blood, and huffs an exhale through his nose.

When he turns on his heel and leaves, he looks just slightly looser. Whether that’s from imminent exhaustion or the effects of just a touch of venting, Alton’s not sure. Either way, though, he considers it his fault. Nicely done, More, he scoffs at himself, and gathers up his things to go find his squad.

When they stop and camp later that night, there’s some scuffle down the line that Alton can’t find it in himself to be nosy about. He hears a gunshot, but a medic goes bolting past so he settles for keeping on alert and straining his ears to be sure he hears anything that could be considered a call for help. 

“What was that?” Mal asks, hushed, from beside him. He sits up with him, leaning into his shoulder to peer over the rim of their foxhole toward the commotion. 

“Dunno,” Alton shrugs. He can’t seem to coax his voice to sound even a little bit interested; at this point, if it weren’t for the possibility that the situation spills over to where he’s dug in with Mal, he’s not sure he’d have it in him to pay attention at all.

[sevenorso]

5/30/25 Word Count Goal Fill

(Eventual) Tabgrant; modern AU in which Grant owns a cat cafe (it's a whole thing just roll with it) (714 words; 631 new)

---

“I could use a lead adoption counsellor,” Alton offers, raising his eyebrows incrementally as he studies Tab. “You’d help adopters, run some of our computer stuff, help look after the animals and the building. It’s not glamorous, but it’s a liveable salary.” 

“I—yeah, yes, that’d be awesome,” Tab mentally curses the way he trips over himself, and eagerly shakes the hand that Alton offers as he grins. 

“Alright, let’s go see the dogs,” and he leads Tab into another room lined with kennels. 

“The town’s quiet enough that we’re not completely slammed,” Alton explains as he stops just past the threshold, allowing Tab to meander in past him. “But we get enough drop-offs that we never have enough hands. We have more cats than anything else, which is pretty typical. Have a handful in here, though,” and he gestures to the few kennels that have tenants. 

Tab’s heart damn near breaks as he takes closer looks at them all; there’s a young brown-and-ginger pitbull positively vibrating in happiness to see them, nose pressed against the door of his cage and tail wagging at mach jesus and everything. The cage next to him has a scraggly, senior-looking dog who looks nearly as excited for guests, albeit far calmer. How on earth these cuties are languishing in a shelter is beyond him; if he could, he’d take them all home tonight. 

He must have the sentiment written on his face because he catches Alton’s expression out of the corner of his eye, all sympathetic smiles and eyebrows raised just slightly in amusement. Tab can’t find it in himself to care; especially when Alton hands him the kennel master key and lets him release the enthusiastic pitbull to greet him properly. 

“Hello hello hello,” he coos at the dog as he rushes forward to meet him, fending off licks meant for his face as he pats him. 

“That’s Reese,” Alton supplies, scoffing a laugh. “Because he’s orange and brown and Moe’s unoriginal.”

“I like it,” Tab remarks, and grins back at the canine smile his new friend gives him. “I think it suits him.”

“It does,” Alton allows, and laughs again. “The only trouble with him in terms of adoption is how much energy he has and his breed; supposedly he’s a rottweiler-pitbull mix.”

“Heavy-hitting sweetheart, then,” Tab says, voice still stuck in baby-talk as he babbles nonsense at the dog. 

“Yup. Apparently he’s too sweet to be a guard dog like his original owner wanted, though. And the breeder wouldn’t take him back, so now he’s here.”

“Christ.”

“Right. And then we have Milo, who’s only crime is being old…” 

Reese gets returned to his kennel and Alton gives him the crash course on all of the dogs lined up in the room, one by one as they make their way to the end. He seriously considers finding a pet-friendly place and breaking his lease at least seven times by the time they reach the back of the row. 

“This guy’s probably our biggest problem at the moment, and not just because he still needs a name” Alton explains. There in the furthest kennel from the door, bracketed by a handful of empty spots on either side, is a massive, gorgeous German shepherd. He sits curled against the back wall, ears pinned to his skull as he growls low and warning when Tab and Alton get close. “It’s been tricky just getting close enough to feed him. Some asshole thought it’d be a bright idea to pick up a puppy from a breeder and train it to be an apprehension dog based solely on what he thought that process should look like. Apparently the dickwad’s girlfriend made him give him up because he was ‘too mean.’”

Tab doesn’t think he looks mean at all; just scared. When he looks closer at the dog he can see a minute tremor running through him, from the end of his nose to the tip of his tail where he has it tucked tight against his side. He stays perfectly still when Tab takes a single tentative step closer and crouches low to the ground two or so feet from the kennel door; the dog’s mouth twitches just slightly, like he wants to bare his teeth but fears the consequences. 

[sevenorso]

5/29/25 Word Count Goal Fill

(Eventual) Alton/Smokey/Moe; canon/modern era AU (post-death time travel) (592 words)

---

He’s dead. He’s got to be dead. He’s still in his fatigues, but he’s sprawled out on asphalt and decidedly no longer on a mountain. 

He realizes he’s yelling. Howling in anger up at this clear and sunny sky because he’s just abandoned Grant and Lip and Mal. Fuck, Mal. He’s gone and done exactly what he promised he wouldn’t; died in some stupid fucking accident. 

The war was damn near over. And I just had to be in the jeep that went off the cliff.

“FUCK!” he curses the sky, and whatever’s up there no doubt pointing and jeering and laughing at him. He takes a second to scrub a hand over his face. He releases a heavy sigh, finally sitting up to cast his gaze around, and then catches movement in the corner of his eye. 

The last thing he expects to see after he’s died is a street. A residential street with no signs of bombing or bullet scars or men in pieces. 

Captain Winters is also a little bit of a surprise. 

“On your feet, soldier,” he murmurs, face looking far less haggard than the last time Alton saw him. He’s got his mouth pulled in a small, sad little smile, and he helps him to his feet. 

His head is spinning; he wonders if you feel residual effects from car wrecks even after they’ve killed you. He thinks if you still have to worry about shit like that in the afterlife then what’s the fucking point?

Winters leads him into one of the neat little houses that lines this street he’s magically found himself on, and he has no time to wonder if Winters being here means that everyone’s here because he steps across the threshold and marks at least seven of his fallen friends. Among them, curled together on a sofa and out cold, are Skip and Penkala. Alton doesn’t think his heart is beating anymore; there’s no way that it could be. It has to have given out under the strain, the endless fucking misery that’s been heaped onto it since Aldbourne, since Normandy, since fucking Bastogne. 

He’s so incredibly glad that they’re asleep. He doesn’t know what the hell he would say to them; not when he feels like he knows them better than he knows his own mother through all of Malarkey’s stories. 

Looking at the two of them now, at such perfect ease tangled up together, he suspects stronger than ever that there were parts of those stories that Mal was hiding from him. The thought cuts him at the knees; remembering the dull look in Mal’s eyes is so much worse now that he has some brand of confirmation. 

There’s some dam giving up water in his chest, and he idly watches it seep through minute cracks, worrying yet largely dismissible. They can be patched before the threat of flood grows stronger, he promises himself, but only opens them up further as he scans the array of sleeping faces before him as he follows Winters through the room. 

Lieb, Skinny, Shifty, Tab, Skip, Penkala, Compton, Web. 

No Smokey. 

“You got a shower?” he lows to Winters. There’s no opportunity to try a louder voice, a stronger one, if he doesn’t want to risk waking his sleeping friends. He doesn’t know if he could muster one anyways. 

“Yeah, right through here,” Winters murmurs back. “There’s clean towels in the cabinet.”

He thanks him quietly, and ducks through the bathroom door. The dirt still coating his hair, his skin, is starting to itch.