Emily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2011-07-02 06:46 pm
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2011-07-02 06:46 pm
Westen - Take a Fall
Fandom: Original
Title: Take a Fall
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iluvroadrunner6
Rating: PG-13/Light-R just to be safe
Characters: Andrew Westen, Nicky Wallace, Riley Gordon, and a couple unnamed NPCs.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
thenewpub Prompts:
Content Warning: Violence, a smidge of torture.
Summary: The punch blindsided him, and the first thing he felt was the gravel beneath him cutting into his hands and knees.
Author’s Note: This is based on an original concept I have for a novel, if I ever develop the attention span to write one, and this possibly could be part of it. These are all original characters, from my own head, so any critique would be lovely.
Disclaimer: It’s mine. Don’t you dare take it.
The punch blindsided him, and the first thing he felt was the gravel beneath him cutting into his hands and knees.
Westen wasn’t a pushover. All his years in the army hadn’t made him a slouch, but when Nicky slammed that fist into him, he went down, hard. It was like getting hit by a sledgehammer, which can be expected when you’re dealing with someone who can do what Nicky can do, but the problem was, Westen had thought they were friends. Outlier or not, there had been some real bonding there.
He was starting to miss the bonding.
The gravel cut and dragged as Nicky forced him to his feet again, and slammed him up against the nearby wall. He was right there in Westen’s personal space, lips inches from his, and if this were a woman, it might have been hot, but for the time being, it was just making Westen really, really uncomfortable. “Dude. I don’t swing that way, and usually you have to buy me dinner before you make this kind of move, not punch me in the—”
“Shut up.” The whisper was a low hiss, and Westen did as he was told to avoid getting punched again. When a guy can toss a tractor over his head without breaking a sweat, you tend to try not to piss him off. “We need to get back in there to get the canister. I can get you in, but you need to take a fall.”
First of all, the words ‘take a fall’ were not in Andrew Westen’s vocabulary. He had never taken a fall in his life and he wasn’t about to start now. But there were taking falls, and there were taking falls for the sake of a mission. Westen had never botched a mission in his life either, and he also wasn’t going to start now. If it was his pride versus his job, it was his job.
It was probably why he was the one who was volunteered to go for this.
He gave a subtle nod, bracing himself for the next punch to come, before his eyes flew open again. “Do you think you could hit me not quite as—”
Nicky didn’t wait for him to finish. The punch landed, and he went flying to the ground again. His face hurt. His face really hurt. He skidded as he hit the ground, and the world was swimming in front of him. He tried to struggle to get himself up again, but it was clear when he could barely get his weight on his hands that that wasn’t going to happen. He collapsed back down into the gravel, before closing his eyes and letting everything go black.
“Told ya I’d bring you the leader, didn’t I?”
“Get him inside. He’s bleeding all over the driveway.”
As he felt himself get manhandled and dragged into the complex, just before he passed out, there was only one thought that crossed his mind:
This so wasn’t how you took a fall. Just for the record.
***
“I thought we didn’t want them alive.”
“He’s their leader. We might be able to … interrogate him for information.”
“It’s a waste of time. We have the canister, we should just kill them and be done with it.”
There was a pause. Westen wasn’t fond of pauses.
He had been conscious for maybe five minutes, but he hadn’t moved. There was something in his instincts that was telling him that if he moved, he would be dead, and he needed to get as much information as they could. They wanted to get information via interrogation—he just wanted to get information when they thought no one was listening. They always told you so much more that way. The only problem was the context, and that wasn’t what he was getting. He didn’t know enough about Warner’s underlings to be able to put the pieces together. So, until then, he was sleeping—or at least faking it.
“No. We need him. Just fix him so that we can move on.”
He felt the soft brush of fingers against his thigh, brushing their way upwards until they landed just over his heart. He willed his heartbeat not to speed up and give him away, but there was the tiniest of flutters as he worked to control everything else and just not react. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but it was worth it when he felt her fingers point down, and the next thing he knew he was moving.
Not far, they had him strapped down to the table, but straight up into a sitting position as it felt like a shot of adrenaline was sent through him. Across his body, he could feel cuts and scrapes reforming and patching themselves, and by the time he caught his breath, and could focus again, he his fight-or-flight response was ready and rarin’ to go.
“Don’t bother to struggle.” The woman was tall and—actually rather mundane looking. Dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin. Nothing out of the ordinary about her, but he’d felt her ability and knew that there was much, much more to her than met the eye.
“What’d you do to me?”
“I fixed you,” she snapped, before shoving him back against the table. “Be grateful.”
He grinned. The smartass came out in him first, and it couldn’t really be helped. “Untie me and I can be very, very grateful.”
She snorted. “Just wait here. They’ll be in for you in a second.”
He sighed dramatically. “Fine. I can thank you without getting untied, but I’ll have you know that I’m not very into this kind of thing, so I won’t be calling you mistress.”
“What part of the words ‘Shut up’ do you not understand?” she glared, her hands landing on either side of his feet. “I fixed you. I can kill you just as easily.”
“And I find that so incredibly sexy.”
Her hand raised again, poised to grip his ankle, and just as she did, the door to the room opened and a really, really big guy wandered through it. He was twice the size of Nicky. Westen was really starting to dislike this plan of his.
“We’ll take it from here,” he said, his voice low, deep and ominous, just as it should be.
Her hand dropped and she shook her head. “You never let me have any fun.”
“Can I for one say—”
“Silence.”
One word, no tone, but it did the trick. Right. Silence now. Talking later.
The table started to wheel out of the room, and he sighed heavily, before closing his eyes again. Yeah, really disliking this plan.
But when you’re already in it, what can you do?
***
The wheels squeaked as they moved him down the nondescript hallway throughout the facility. It reminded him of the underground compound where he had grown up—nothing defined, everything set in neat little packages. It felt so out of place on the surface, and it only made that fight or flight response stronger. He needed to get out of here. He needed to find the canister and alert the rest of his team to it’s location. He needed to stay focused on that and not how much this was seriously creeping him out.
The table rounded the corner, and he was escorted into a dark room. There was a single set of fluorescent bulbs bolted into the ceiling, but beyond that small window of light, he couldn’t see the corners of the room. They all rounded off at the edges, almost as though all that existed was in this circle. There was a slight creak as the table forced him into a standing position, so that he was eye level with his captor.
Or as eye level as he could get, given that the guy was ten feet tall.
“Fighting it would not be wise.” A chair was brought for him and he sat down, crossing his legs easily in front of him, with a grace that one would expect a man of his size to have. It was a thing to be admired, really, a person with that much control over their movement, but right now, he needed to focus.
“Not fight what?” he asked, and that was when he felt it. Something was crawling into his head like worms and pulling at the corners of his brain. It wasn’t an easy thing to experience, let alone tolerate, and after it lasted longer than a minute, he couldn’t help it. He fought back, trying to shove the intruder out, and that just made things worse. He felt like his skull was on fire, every piece of it looking to push away and explode and he couldn’t help it.
He screamed like a little girl.
The pushing and the worms stopped, and the man in front of him smirked. “That was rather impressive. Are you sure you’re only human?”
“Hundred percent,” he said with a smirk. “If I had a mutation, don’t you think I would have whipped it out by now?”
“Not necessarily if you were playing human,” he replied evenly, adjusting his watch. “But if you aren’t and are actually the weaker species, that was rather impressive. I’ve met some very talented psychics who haven’t lasted nearly as long.”
“Are you done buttering me up?” Westen asked, raising an eyebrow. “Or are you going to get back to the mental torture now?”
The man shrugged. “As you wish.”
He felt the worms start to pull at his head again, clamping down on his need to fight, and instead of trying to trap it, pushing out and back. He wasn’t a psychic, by any means, and he’s not strong enough to handle something like this, but he tried, no matter how much it feels like someone had set a bonfire inside his skull. Again, eventually, the worms pulled back, and the man still looked suitably impressed.
“You’re learning. That is very intriguing.”
“I’m known for thinking on my feet.” That barb lacked a lot of his usual snark, mostly because he was exhausted, but at least his brain was still coming up with them. “What the hell are you looking for, anyway?”
“Information,” he said evenly. “Catch your breath and we’ll go again.”
“Have you gotten anything?” Westen asked, raising an eyebrow. “Or is me fighting you a problem.”
“Fighting is only a problem for you, my friend,” he said simply. “You’re only killing yourself.”
It happened again, round after round, and each time, Westen came up with a new defense tactic, but he could only do that for so long. He could feel his defenses falling before he could even start, he was losing track of how long it had been, and his body was screaming at him to just let the man take what he wanted. It would be easier for all concerned. But he couldn’t. The stubborn jackass side of his personality wouldn’t let him.
They were about to start Round God Knows How Many, when there was loud bang! coming from the door behind them, and the sound of combat boots against the floor. The man in front of him rose to defend himself, but his head snapped with the force of a bullet before he could even start. The large body dropped to the floor, and his eyes then landed on Gordon, looking grim and serious, as per usual.
“You alright, Westen?”
“Five by five,” he said with a sigh as he was untied and slumped forward into his squad leader’s chest. “Took you long enough.”
***
When he woke up this time, he was back in the base camp.
He had never been so happy to see crappy canvas and aching from head to toe in all his life. There were parts of him that ached that he didn’t even know could ache, but all the same—it was nice to hurt. Just not hurt quite so much. It took him a minute to focus on what was around him to make it all out, but eventually every item started to come into a clearer focus, and he realized that he was home—or at least his temporary home. His home away from home, if you were.
They had stretched him out on a cot in his tent, an IV of fluids in his arm, and a big dump stupidly grinning outlier sitting next to him. Westen had no idea what Nicky thought was so fucking funny, but for some reason he was smiling like New Years and Christmas all rolled into one. It was annoying. In fact, it made Westen want to tell him to wipe that dumb, stupid grin off his face. But he didn’t.
Instead he clocked him right across the jaw.
It wasn’t a wise decision. Hitting Nicky was like hitting a brick wall, but the man at least had the decency to give under the punch, and not just stand there and not move. That way, Westen’s hand still hurt in the end, but it wasn’t broken. “Holy mother fuck,” he hissed as he tried to shake the pain out of his hand and get his knuckles to stop throbbing. He was really trying to not be insulted that Nicky seemed like he hadn’t felt a thing.
“Guess I probably deserved all that,” the tall man comments with a shrug, before the grin returns to his face. “But mission accomplished, yeah? Isn’t that what you military types are always saying?”
“You used me for cannon fodder,” he glared, his free hand coming up to massage his injured one. “You couldn’t have at least given me a goddamn warning?”
“Sorry, man,” he sighed. “But you think that if I told you a guy in there was gonna shove mental needles in your brain that you would have gone for it?”
The idiot did have a point. No one in their right mind would have. But that didn’t make him hurt any less. “Yeah, well, a little heads-up would be nice if you’re going to be sending me into certain death.”
“Right, sure. Got it. I’ll warn you next time.”
They both stared each other off for a moment. Nicky rubbed his palms against his jeans for a moment, before getting up and moving forward, wrapping his arms around Westen’s shoulders, and pulling him up into a tight hug. The other man flailed for a moment, hands waving in the air in protest, but in the end he just let them hand limp over the top of Nicky’s arms, letting the hug be what it was. He waited until he was dropped back down onto the cot and learned how to breathe again before responding.
“Was that absolutely necessary?”
“Sure was,” Nicky grinned, before clapping him on the shoulder. “Now get some rest. We’re movin’ out in the morning.”
Westen just stared at him as he made his way out the front of the tent, before flopping back down into a resting position and curling up on his side. A few minutes later, Gordon made his way into the tent to check on him, the same dry smirk on his face that he always wore.
“So. I think you actually might have bruised Wallace out there. You must have been pretty goddamn pissed.”
“Oh, bite me,” he grumbled, rolling onto his other side.
“I’m sorry? What was that?”
He rolled over, and faced Gordon with a glare. “Sorry. Bite me, sir.”
“Much better,” Gordon smirked as he tossed him a bottle of water and set down the plate of food rations. “Eat up, solider. We’ll see you in the morning.”
Title: Take a Fall
Author:
iluvroadrunner6Rating: PG-13/Light-R just to be safe
Characters: Andrew Westen, Nicky Wallace, Riley Gordon, and a couple unnamed NPCs.
thenewpub Prompts: Gravel pushing into your palms and knees. The flutter of a heartbeat under your fingertips The lick of a flame A friendly hug
Content Warning: Violence, a smidge of torture.
Summary: The punch blindsided him, and the first thing he felt was the gravel beneath him cutting into his hands and knees.
Author’s Note: This is based on an original concept I have for a novel, if I ever develop the attention span to write one, and this possibly could be part of it. These are all original characters, from my own head, so any critique would be lovely.
Disclaimer: It’s mine. Don’t you dare take it.
The punch blindsided him, and the first thing he felt was the gravel beneath him cutting into his hands and knees.
Westen wasn’t a pushover. All his years in the army hadn’t made him a slouch, but when Nicky slammed that fist into him, he went down, hard. It was like getting hit by a sledgehammer, which can be expected when you’re dealing with someone who can do what Nicky can do, but the problem was, Westen had thought they were friends. Outlier or not, there had been some real bonding there.
He was starting to miss the bonding.
The gravel cut and dragged as Nicky forced him to his feet again, and slammed him up against the nearby wall. He was right there in Westen’s personal space, lips inches from his, and if this were a woman, it might have been hot, but for the time being, it was just making Westen really, really uncomfortable. “Dude. I don’t swing that way, and usually you have to buy me dinner before you make this kind of move, not punch me in the—”
“Shut up.” The whisper was a low hiss, and Westen did as he was told to avoid getting punched again. When a guy can toss a tractor over his head without breaking a sweat, you tend to try not to piss him off. “We need to get back in there to get the canister. I can get you in, but you need to take a fall.”
First of all, the words ‘take a fall’ were not in Andrew Westen’s vocabulary. He had never taken a fall in his life and he wasn’t about to start now. But there were taking falls, and there were taking falls for the sake of a mission. Westen had never botched a mission in his life either, and he also wasn’t going to start now. If it was his pride versus his job, it was his job.
It was probably why he was the one who was volunteered to go for this.
He gave a subtle nod, bracing himself for the next punch to come, before his eyes flew open again. “Do you think you could hit me not quite as—”
Nicky didn’t wait for him to finish. The punch landed, and he went flying to the ground again. His face hurt. His face really hurt. He skidded as he hit the ground, and the world was swimming in front of him. He tried to struggle to get himself up again, but it was clear when he could barely get his weight on his hands that that wasn’t going to happen. He collapsed back down into the gravel, before closing his eyes and letting everything go black.
“Told ya I’d bring you the leader, didn’t I?”
“Get him inside. He’s bleeding all over the driveway.”
As he felt himself get manhandled and dragged into the complex, just before he passed out, there was only one thought that crossed his mind:
This so wasn’t how you took a fall. Just for the record.
***
“I thought we didn’t want them alive.”
“He’s their leader. We might be able to … interrogate him for information.”
“It’s a waste of time. We have the canister, we should just kill them and be done with it.”
There was a pause. Westen wasn’t fond of pauses.
He had been conscious for maybe five minutes, but he hadn’t moved. There was something in his instincts that was telling him that if he moved, he would be dead, and he needed to get as much information as they could. They wanted to get information via interrogation—he just wanted to get information when they thought no one was listening. They always told you so much more that way. The only problem was the context, and that wasn’t what he was getting. He didn’t know enough about Warner’s underlings to be able to put the pieces together. So, until then, he was sleeping—or at least faking it.
“No. We need him. Just fix him so that we can move on.”
He felt the soft brush of fingers against his thigh, brushing their way upwards until they landed just over his heart. He willed his heartbeat not to speed up and give him away, but there was the tiniest of flutters as he worked to control everything else and just not react. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but it was worth it when he felt her fingers point down, and the next thing he knew he was moving.
Not far, they had him strapped down to the table, but straight up into a sitting position as it felt like a shot of adrenaline was sent through him. Across his body, he could feel cuts and scrapes reforming and patching themselves, and by the time he caught his breath, and could focus again, he his fight-or-flight response was ready and rarin’ to go.
“Don’t bother to struggle.” The woman was tall and—actually rather mundane looking. Dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin. Nothing out of the ordinary about her, but he’d felt her ability and knew that there was much, much more to her than met the eye.
“What’d you do to me?”
“I fixed you,” she snapped, before shoving him back against the table. “Be grateful.”
He grinned. The smartass came out in him first, and it couldn’t really be helped. “Untie me and I can be very, very grateful.”
She snorted. “Just wait here. They’ll be in for you in a second.”
He sighed dramatically. “Fine. I can thank you without getting untied, but I’ll have you know that I’m not very into this kind of thing, so I won’t be calling you mistress.”
“What part of the words ‘Shut up’ do you not understand?” she glared, her hands landing on either side of his feet. “I fixed you. I can kill you just as easily.”
“And I find that so incredibly sexy.”
Her hand raised again, poised to grip his ankle, and just as she did, the door to the room opened and a really, really big guy wandered through it. He was twice the size of Nicky. Westen was really starting to dislike this plan of his.
“We’ll take it from here,” he said, his voice low, deep and ominous, just as it should be.
Her hand dropped and she shook her head. “You never let me have any fun.”
“Can I for one say—”
“Silence.”
One word, no tone, but it did the trick. Right. Silence now. Talking later.
The table started to wheel out of the room, and he sighed heavily, before closing his eyes again. Yeah, really disliking this plan.
But when you’re already in it, what can you do?
***
The wheels squeaked as they moved him down the nondescript hallway throughout the facility. It reminded him of the underground compound where he had grown up—nothing defined, everything set in neat little packages. It felt so out of place on the surface, and it only made that fight or flight response stronger. He needed to get out of here. He needed to find the canister and alert the rest of his team to it’s location. He needed to stay focused on that and not how much this was seriously creeping him out.
The table rounded the corner, and he was escorted into a dark room. There was a single set of fluorescent bulbs bolted into the ceiling, but beyond that small window of light, he couldn’t see the corners of the room. They all rounded off at the edges, almost as though all that existed was in this circle. There was a slight creak as the table forced him into a standing position, so that he was eye level with his captor.
Or as eye level as he could get, given that the guy was ten feet tall.
“Fighting it would not be wise.” A chair was brought for him and he sat down, crossing his legs easily in front of him, with a grace that one would expect a man of his size to have. It was a thing to be admired, really, a person with that much control over their movement, but right now, he needed to focus.
“Not fight what?” he asked, and that was when he felt it. Something was crawling into his head like worms and pulling at the corners of his brain. It wasn’t an easy thing to experience, let alone tolerate, and after it lasted longer than a minute, he couldn’t help it. He fought back, trying to shove the intruder out, and that just made things worse. He felt like his skull was on fire, every piece of it looking to push away and explode and he couldn’t help it.
He screamed like a little girl.
The pushing and the worms stopped, and the man in front of him smirked. “That was rather impressive. Are you sure you’re only human?”
“Hundred percent,” he said with a smirk. “If I had a mutation, don’t you think I would have whipped it out by now?”
“Not necessarily if you were playing human,” he replied evenly, adjusting his watch. “But if you aren’t and are actually the weaker species, that was rather impressive. I’ve met some very talented psychics who haven’t lasted nearly as long.”
“Are you done buttering me up?” Westen asked, raising an eyebrow. “Or are you going to get back to the mental torture now?”
The man shrugged. “As you wish.”
He felt the worms start to pull at his head again, clamping down on his need to fight, and instead of trying to trap it, pushing out and back. He wasn’t a psychic, by any means, and he’s not strong enough to handle something like this, but he tried, no matter how much it feels like someone had set a bonfire inside his skull. Again, eventually, the worms pulled back, and the man still looked suitably impressed.
“You’re learning. That is very intriguing.”
“I’m known for thinking on my feet.” That barb lacked a lot of his usual snark, mostly because he was exhausted, but at least his brain was still coming up with them. “What the hell are you looking for, anyway?”
“Information,” he said evenly. “Catch your breath and we’ll go again.”
“Have you gotten anything?” Westen asked, raising an eyebrow. “Or is me fighting you a problem.”
“Fighting is only a problem for you, my friend,” he said simply. “You’re only killing yourself.”
It happened again, round after round, and each time, Westen came up with a new defense tactic, but he could only do that for so long. He could feel his defenses falling before he could even start, he was losing track of how long it had been, and his body was screaming at him to just let the man take what he wanted. It would be easier for all concerned. But he couldn’t. The stubborn jackass side of his personality wouldn’t let him.
They were about to start Round God Knows How Many, when there was loud bang! coming from the door behind them, and the sound of combat boots against the floor. The man in front of him rose to defend himself, but his head snapped with the force of a bullet before he could even start. The large body dropped to the floor, and his eyes then landed on Gordon, looking grim and serious, as per usual.
“You alright, Westen?”
“Five by five,” he said with a sigh as he was untied and slumped forward into his squad leader’s chest. “Took you long enough.”
***
When he woke up this time, he was back in the base camp.
He had never been so happy to see crappy canvas and aching from head to toe in all his life. There were parts of him that ached that he didn’t even know could ache, but all the same—it was nice to hurt. Just not hurt quite so much. It took him a minute to focus on what was around him to make it all out, but eventually every item started to come into a clearer focus, and he realized that he was home—or at least his temporary home. His home away from home, if you were.
They had stretched him out on a cot in his tent, an IV of fluids in his arm, and a big dump stupidly grinning outlier sitting next to him. Westen had no idea what Nicky thought was so fucking funny, but for some reason he was smiling like New Years and Christmas all rolled into one. It was annoying. In fact, it made Westen want to tell him to wipe that dumb, stupid grin off his face. But he didn’t.
Instead he clocked him right across the jaw.
It wasn’t a wise decision. Hitting Nicky was like hitting a brick wall, but the man at least had the decency to give under the punch, and not just stand there and not move. That way, Westen’s hand still hurt in the end, but it wasn’t broken. “Holy mother fuck,” he hissed as he tried to shake the pain out of his hand and get his knuckles to stop throbbing. He was really trying to not be insulted that Nicky seemed like he hadn’t felt a thing.
“Guess I probably deserved all that,” the tall man comments with a shrug, before the grin returns to his face. “But mission accomplished, yeah? Isn’t that what you military types are always saying?”
“You used me for cannon fodder,” he glared, his free hand coming up to massage his injured one. “You couldn’t have at least given me a goddamn warning?”
“Sorry, man,” he sighed. “But you think that if I told you a guy in there was gonna shove mental needles in your brain that you would have gone for it?”
The idiot did have a point. No one in their right mind would have. But that didn’t make him hurt any less. “Yeah, well, a little heads-up would be nice if you’re going to be sending me into certain death.”
“Right, sure. Got it. I’ll warn you next time.”
They both stared each other off for a moment. Nicky rubbed his palms against his jeans for a moment, before getting up and moving forward, wrapping his arms around Westen’s shoulders, and pulling him up into a tight hug. The other man flailed for a moment, hands waving in the air in protest, but in the end he just let them hand limp over the top of Nicky’s arms, letting the hug be what it was. He waited until he was dropped back down onto the cot and learned how to breathe again before responding.
“Was that absolutely necessary?”
“Sure was,” Nicky grinned, before clapping him on the shoulder. “Now get some rest. We’re movin’ out in the morning.”
Westen just stared at him as he made his way out the front of the tent, before flopping back down into a resting position and curling up on his side. A few minutes later, Gordon made his way into the tent to check on him, the same dry smirk on his face that he always wore.
“So. I think you actually might have bruised Wallace out there. You must have been pretty goddamn pissed.”
“Oh, bite me,” he grumbled, rolling onto his other side.
“I’m sorry? What was that?”
He rolled over, and faced Gordon with a glare. “Sorry. Bite me, sir.”
“Much better,” Gordon smirked as he tossed him a bottle of water and set down the plate of food rations. “Eat up, solider. We’ll see you in the morning.”