Kelly flopped down the steps from the flybridge, a scowl on his sunburned face. He’d worked through his issues with a cigarette and a beer and then another cigarette, and though he knew he wouldn’t be getting the image of Nick and another man out of his mind anytime soon, running away from the problem wasn’t going to help him. He and Nick had learned their lesson already about not communicating. Kelly wasn’t about to let this little blip erase all the progress they’d made, and he felt a little more relaxed already from his time alone to think about it.
He had discovered in the past year that it was best for him to walk away and calm down before getting into any sort of fight with Nick, especially since his first instinct was to be physical, and that was certainly the last method of arguing Nick ever used.
He opened his mouth to call out for Nick, then snapped it shut when he saw his boyfriend sitting on the couch in the salon, surrounded by bits and bobs, a letter in one hand, the other hand shielding his eyes as he read it.
“Nick?” Kelly called as he edged toward him. “What are you doing?”
Nick looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed and he wasn’t even trying to play off the fact that he’d been sitting there with tears in his eyes.
“Oh God, what is it?” Kelly blurted.
Nick waved the papers in his hand. “I tried the letters again.”
“What?”
“Fucking Sanchez,” Nick gritted out, his voice wavering. “I was trying to . . . I don’t know. Stay out of your hair.”
“And you thought reading that letter again would help?”
Nick shrugged and glanced around at all the possessions he’d pulled out of Sanchez’s box. He looked lost and alone, and Kelly moved to sit beside him, sliding his arm around Nick’s shoulders. It was just as much for his own comfort as Nick’s, though.
Kelly picked up the oversized manila envelope with Nick’s name scrawled on it. He knew from before that it contained the letter Nick had been reading. But he hadn’t looked at it very hard the first time Nick had dragged this stuff out. Inside he found more letters. “What the hell did he do, write a letter to everyone he knew?”
Nick laughed shakily and shrugged. Kelly pulled one of the envelopes out. It was sealed, with a number on the front in Eli’s handwriting. Kelly scowled and extracted a few more. They were all numbered.
“What are we supposed to do with these?”
Nick took a deep breath, then picked up the second page of the letter and read it out loud.
“I have instructions for you, and you have to follow them like a good little Marine or I’m going to haunt your Irish ass.” Nick rested his head in one hand, closing his eyes. It took him several seconds to regain his voice. “Step number one is to finish reading this fucking letter so you don’t fuck up any of the other steps.”
Nick and Kelly shared a glance. “He knew us so well,” Kelly said.
Nick nodded. “I may be dead,” he read with a hitch in his voice. “But I’m going to force you boys to love each other again. And it starts right here, right now. So take a week off work. Get your boots on. Prepare to be loved from beyond the grave.”
Nick had to stop reading. Kelly took the letter and scanned it, trying to find the spot where Nick had trailed off.
“Do you remember the trip we took after we were discharged?” Kelly read. “Remember it. How the fuck could we forget it? That was the end of us.”
December 9, 2002
Kelly fought through the hazy rush of panic and adrenaline that always came with waking up in a strange place. He wound up tossing the sheets off his body, crawling over his bedmate, and rolling gracelessly to the ground.
The floor shook with his impact. Table lamps rattled. Someone groaned.
Kelly sat up and pressed his back to the table behind him, hand groping for a weapon, eyes wild as he looked around. It was obviously a hotel room, and a nice one at that. It most definitely was not the hotel in which he’d closed his eyes. “Where the hell am I?”
A face appeared over the edge of one of the beds, and Kelly’s blurry vision saw it like someone peering down from a cloud. “Doc, you got to calm down,” Eli said.
Kelly’s chest heaved with the remnants of panic and confusion. He blinked at Eli, mouth hanging open. Eli rolled over, disappearing from Kelly’s view. A moment later, Ty sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed Kelly had just bailed out of.
“Dude, you crushed my ribs.”
Kelly looked down at himself, straightening with a wince as the newly stitched wound in his side pulled. It was healing already. Kelly put his hand over it and gave the room another desperate once over. “What happened?”
“Which time?” Ty asked, laughing. It turned into a cough and he doubled over, holding his ribs. “Oh God, I think they’re really broken.”
Ty stood, revealing a bruise spreading across his rib cage. “I didn’t do that, you need to get those looked at.”
“Corpsman up,” Ty called.
Kelly shook his head, hand returning to his side. “Who stitched this?”
“I did,” Ty answered with a huff. “It’s good work.”
“Where are we?” Kelly asked again.
“This is the softest pillow I’ve ever had,” Digger said.
“That’s my ass, man,” Eli told him, voice muffled like he had his face in the mattress. “You sleep sideways.”
“I don’t care, this is nice.”
“Shut up!” Owen called. From the sound of it, the three of them were sharing a bed. How the hell had all three of them fit into a queen-sized bed? “That better be a gun sticking into my hip, man.”
Kelly swallowed hard, blinking to focus his vision. “Where’s Irish, is he okay?”
Ty nodded, then looked over his shoulder at the other side of the bed Kelly had bailed from. “Irish. Hey, Irish!” He tossed a pillow toward the head of the bed.
“No,” Nick grunted in response.
Kelly sat there for a time, breathing heavily, trying to remember how they’d all wound up here together, sleeping in puppy piles in a strange hotel. He finally shoved himself to his knees and crawled back to the bed before using it to climb to his feet. He wobbled when he stood, putting his hands out to steady himself.
“Holy God,” he muttered. He looked to the side, out the floor to ceiling windows. “Oh Jesus, is that the Empire State Building?”
Ty stood and trudged over to stand beside him, wavering as he blinked at the window. “Are we stateside?”
“Are we alive?” Owen countered. “I don’t feel alive.”
Nick slid out of the bed and shuffled to the window, his shoulder bumping into Kelly’s as they both looked down at the streets of New York City far below.
“Are you freaking out?” Nick asked Kelly under his breath.
“Yes! Join me!”
Nick snorted and wrapped an arm around Kelly as he waved a hand at the scene outside their window. “Welcome to civilian life, Doc.”
Kelly turned to the others, eyes going wider. They were all in various stages of sitting up. Ty was still standing behind them, weaving from side to side like he was trying to keep his balance on a ship. He shook his head, looking sick.
Eli was sitting with the sheets pooled around his lap, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Ay Dios mío, dame fuerza.”
Kelly raised both eyebrows.
“I don’t remember anything right now,” Eli said. “Did you say we’re stateside?”
“We’re in DC,” Digger told them. “At least . . . I thought we were.”
“What are we doing in DC?” Owen asked, raising his head finally.
“What is the Empire State Building doing in DC?” Ty cried.
Kelly looked out the window again. He could see his own reflection in the glass, bearded and shaggy from the missions they’d been running, bruises everywhere, including one on his cheek that looked like he’d been sucker punched.
The memory was slowly returning.
They’d been discharged and sent home without a word of explanation. As soon as they’d landed in DC, Nick and Eli had started drinking to numb the pain of “losing the only thing they’d ever given a shit about.” The rest of them had soon followed suit.
He didn’t know how they’d wound up in New York City, but now that he was remembering why they’d been trying to find oblivion in a bottle, he sort of wished they’d tried harder.
“Civilian life,” he muttered, echoing Nick’s bitter words. He glanced to the side, where Ty was crawling back into bed and stuffing his head under a pillow. “What the hell are we supposed to do with civilian life?”
Everyone was so silent, Kelly could hear Eli breathing from all the way across the room. No one would meet his eyes.
“Rob banks?” Digger finally suggested.
“No!” Nick and Owen both barked.
Nick sat on the end of the bed nearest Kelly, hanging his head. Kelly stared at him, his stomach tumbling at the mere thought that they were done. What the hell were they supposed to do if they weren’t a team anymore?
“This is the end, isn’t it?” Kelly asked quietly. “Sidewinder no longer exists.”
Eli shook his head and the others grumbled quietly. But Nick shot off the bed again, fast enough that it made Kelly’s tender head spin, and Kelly flinched when Nick advanced on him. He chucked a pillow at Kelly’s face, and Kelly had to duck away from it and from him. He backed up until his bare back hit the window, and he gasped when Nick kept coming, shocked by the vehemence.
“Don’t ever fucking say that again,” Nick snarled, his finger pointed in Kelly’s face, eyes blazing and teeth gritted. “Not where I can fucking hear you,” he growled before he stalked off toward the door.
Kelly watched him go, eyes wide, wounded by the anger and the threat.
“Bro,” Eli called as he scrambled off the bed to go after Nick. “Yo, Rico, wait up!” He glanced at Kelly and shook his head as Kelly shrugged at him, and the others sat in silence, staring at each other uncomfortably as Eli ran after Nick.
“He took that better than I thought he would,” Ty finally offered from beneath his pillow.
May 31, 2013
“I’d forgotten about that morning,” Kelly said. “Or maybe blocked it out. God, you were so angry.”
“You deserved it.” Nick was hanging his head, his eyes closed, his fingers splayed through his hair.
“You’re right,” Kelly said quietly. His own memory of that last trip with his boys was bittersweet at best. It wasn’t the last time all six of them had been together, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it had been the end of Sidewinder. The end of the best thing he’d ever been a part of. And Kelly had been the main catalyst of that end. He’d seen a town in Colorado as they’d been driving through, and he’d fallen in love with it. Weeks later, when they’d still been holding on to the last gasps of their time together, when they’d still been on that road trip and traveling and having fun and being a team, Kelly had decided it was time to go, said good-bye to them, and retreated to that little town.
His decision to leave had ended Sidewinder. And he’d never forgiven himself. He doubted the others had ever forgiven him either.
Kelly looked from the letter to Nick again, and he slid his hand over Nick’s back, letting it rest on his spine. “Nicko,” he whispered.
Nick cleared his throat. He wouldn’t look at Kelly, instead concentrating on the letter he held. He started to read again, speaking Eli’s words for him. “Of all the things we did together, of all the times we had, that trip was my favorite. It’s the time I remember in the dark, when the dreams are too sad and the scars hurt too much. Because it was everything good about the best time of our lives, and we all need to remember it. Together. And that’s why I’m writing this letter. Because you boys need to remember Sidewinder the way I remember us. The way we were when we threw all our seabags into the back of Ty’s Bronco and set off across the country with zero idea of what we were doing.”
Nick stopped to swallow, and he coughed quietly. “Jesus, we were crazy.”
“Were?” Kelly asked with a smirk.
Nick snorted.
“What’s the rest say?”
“Step number two won’t be easy,” Nick read. “But there’s a reason I’m giving this task to you, Rico. You have to call each of the other guys and make them meet you at my gravestone. Without telling them why. So buck up, buttercup, this might get tricky.”