Post by avisis on Oct 30, 2011 15:23:03 GMT -5
He has never been good with diplomacy. That's his story, and he's sticking to it.
So that's what he tells Lily when the girl yanks at his elbow, pleading for him to hurry up and make them stop already. Petrel has no intention of making them stop; the two got into their hissy spat on their own, and he's got no reason to get between them. Things are too tense around here, looking for more trouble will hardly help matters. Everyone else in the recruit barracks is on edge, new uniforms still riding tight or hanging loose, but Petrel is a pro by now. He's been in Rocket training for nearly three months; he's got this down. And one thing he has not yet seen a single reason to do is get involved in fights. They invariably get settled without you.
"What's all this, what's all this?" comes shouting around the corner, and a moment later comes a stout officer-lined man to follow up on his query. "What's all of this then? Who's causing trouble? Who is it?"
"Salamance," drawls Petrel. He informs the man as quickly as if he was behaving, with none of the obedient tone or straightened posture to match. "He's started a riot with Patrice. They're both being absolute fucks."
"How now, how's this? What's this, in my barracks?" The officer goes stumping on up the row, ready to whittle out confessions and preparing himself for a rigor-mortis tongue-lashing. Petrel's eyes roll back as his shoulders do, and he reclines back on his bunk to let his eyes illustrate the loud beratement with the cracks in the ceiling. Soon enough Folstoff is puffing back up the row, slowing as he passes Petrel's bunk. "And do something about that posture, abominable," he throws out as he goes, not looking back to see the single-fingered salute Petrel offers the ceiling in response. Folstoff is an officious fullblown short little boiling pot of a man, and Petrel is happy to appropriately despise him.
"Good work, asshole," snaps Patrice, the moment the door overhead slams shut. "I've got cleanup now."
"S'not my fault you called him a ho."
"I'll call him what I like, and you're twice as bad, toadsuck."
"Please, I wouldn't lick Folstoff's boots if my life depended on it." Petrel snorts. "He's a shame to the officers. They shouldn't allow you to be a role model if you're a gormless potato."
"I doubt they signed him on because he was a gormless potato." Salamance, somewhat less angered by his assignment of dish duty, is stripping his shirt off to change into work clothes. "Probably signed him on because he's got a giant fucking Steelix that could bash your face in with its eyelashes."
"Probably you're an idiot," sighs Petrel, lacing his fingers together behind his head, eyes falling closed. "You can't be an officer unless you've got as least as much style as a damned gym leader, that's my new rule. More than, if we're talking about Violet City. Fucking kimonos."
"I like Falkner."
"He's like thirteen. Nobody should be a Gym Leader at thirteen," says Petrel in disgust. At seventeen, he's got room to be disdainful. "You don't know shit at thirteen. You don't even know what you like to fuck yet."
"I know what I'd like to fuck," mutters Salamance, and his sidelong glance at Patrice gets him a boot to the face. Petrel's lip curls, and he rolls to face away from the fight breaking out. God, people are dumb at thirteen.
--
The problem with his partner was that she was entirely too invested in discovering somebody he'd like to fuck.
There wasn't anybody out there like that, he insisted, not yet anyway. Archer, Team Rocket Lieutenant, was quite some ways distant from Archer, Team Rocket Valentino, and anyway he had plenty of shit to get done as it was. A girlfriend could hardly help matters.
But Ariana was convinced that a little rest and relaxation and fucking would do Archer a world of good, and while she hadn't yet singled out an appropriate recipient for Archer's 'raging rod of manly enthusiasm' she hadn't given up on one existing. Archer, who couldn't keep a controlled face at the mention of 'raging rods', reminded her of the futility of her search just as often as she reminded him of its continued action.
What really was the harm in a simple lay, she demanded. If he was going to spend his nights cold and lonely, at least he could have a solid experience (or three) to think back on when they got a little too cold.
Archer, for his part, didn't need anything to think about when the nights got cold and lonely. He was a little too busy being nervous during them.
He'd been all right at first. Team Rocket had treated him well, not gently, but well, and between Ariana and bits and pieces of companionship elsewhere he'd spent his first years comfortably enough. He'd felt useful, hard-working. Felt that his time and efforts were recognized as well-spent. He'd been nervous, yes, but he'd had something to direct that energy towards. He hadn't had a bad childhood. He sent money home on a regular basis. He saw his family recover, grow solid roots in a town it could foreseeably flourish in. He'd seen his siblings find jobs. He'd had a good childhood.
Then he got promoted and it all went to shit.
She was in the basement sorting laundry when the news came. Ariana had never particularly taken to the indulged habit of officers leaving their laundry to be handled by the staff; she innately distrusted the disinterested hands of a low-paid employee, and resultantly took time out every Saturday to do the task herself. The laundry machines were squirreled away in the basement. They were not particularly impressive, a row of squat noisy ancient things lined up on stained concrete. The squalid room was typical of Team Rocket, which, having committed to illegal cloning after a little over three days' deliberation, was incredibly cautious about rushing into things like new laundry equipment.
She had just started a good hard irritation over her best dress having scraped up a sizeable red streak down the side when Archer stuck his head in the door. She shook the dress at him as he awkwardly righted himself, sidling in at the same time and shutting the door behind him as if he had something to hide. "A hundred and twenty bucks! A hundred and twenty bucks, and it's got a red blotch right down the front there. What the fuck?"
"That's nice," he said, with the uncomfortable small-step towards her that always connotated something on his mind.
She dropped the wet dress in her lap and made a face at him. "And the troubles of the day are?"
"I'm being promoted."
"For honest? Of course you'd write it up as something to worry about. Only you, Archer."
"Not to chief." He was pacing the room now, picking things up and putting them back down without actually looking at them. "To secretary general. To Giovanni's office."
Secretary General to Giovanni was---well, it was higher than Chief, certainly. And it was higher than Executive. It was a desk job, but its closeness to Giovanni himself connotated intimacy an in-field job could not have. Secretary General brought in his morning paperwork, but it also brought with it (supposedly) the right to comment on said paperwork. To Giovanni's face.
This time her eyebrows shot up. "For honest."
"Honest."
"Why?" she burst out with immediately, and after his mute, confused shake of the head she followed it up not-kindly with, "Why the hell?"
"I don't know. Nobody said a word, and then today I got the letter under my door."
"You're joking."
"Hell I'm not!" He stopped short, hands tight behind his back, fisting worriedly into the base of his spine. "Just like that! I don't know who pulled the strings, I don't know why--"
"Well, if they wanted a tightass who could organize their inboxes, they've found the best." Having had her brief burst of shock, Ariana came back down to reason quickly. "It'll be hell getting you out to bars now. Damn them."
"I don't know why they'd even consider me! I've been here eight seasons, that's hardly enough to even get established."
"Enough to get you noticed, at least." She made a thoughtful noise, hands moving to resume transferring laundry. "Has Giovanni ever spoken to you before? He always seemed uninterested in his male associates, I just sort of assumed---"
"That is not why I got promoted," Archer informed her in a strangled tone. She simply made a disbelieving cluck of her tongue and started the dryer. "That is absolutely not why I got promoted," he continued, voice strengthening. "Whatever reason they may have had for placing me in this position, that was not it."
"You'd better consider changing your wardrobe," Ariana told him, remembering to throw in a dryer sheet. "I hear he likes white."
--
Petrel was looking forward to his first assignment when he met Proton.
Everybody was being shifted. New Secretary was being assigned---some tool named Archer, a blue-haired round-headed fellow Petrel had met once and not taken much of a shine to, too nervous and skittery---and five Executives were being named, which meant they would re-assign the officers immediately under them to distant outposts in order to legally get rid of their predecessors' confidantes and refill the now open positions with people of their own choosing. It was inevitable, this kind of favoritism-flavored power-shift, and it usually meant a lot of assignments for new recruits as the shifting filtered down through the ranks. He was ready for it, too, barracks by this point being nothing more than a boiling pit of over-eager newcomers and sedated, sullen old-timers ready to move on. Petrel was, while flattering himself to not be quite sullen, getting towards the latter half of the road. He was ready to move. Meeting Proton didn't exactly change that, though it did distract him, for a time.
The kid was...engaging, was a nicer word for it. Enthusiastic. The kind of person to throw himself forward when volunteers were asked for. The kind of person to show off his fucking Zubat like it was something really special. (Petrel had done some time, gotten to know some people, and gotten his assigned Zubat exchanged for a much more endearing Koffing. He could show initiative like that when he wanted to.) The kind of person who took care of his uniform and wanted to be seen in it. The kind of person who actually liked the dippy hat.
In short, Proton was a regular piece of pavement-smear waiting to happen, and it wasn't long before the more reasonable and less bright-eyed bushy-tailed of his fellow barracks-mates figured this out. To his credit, he was smart enough to avoid most trouble. Petrel did, however, stumble across him once or twice being taught the finer points of 'wrestling' by a rather persistent pair, Stella and Mickey; the third time it happened Petrel scared them off, yelled them off really, voice close enough to a shout to pass for threatening. They moved on sulkily, and Proton, hastily jerking himself off the floor, grinding a sleeve at the impressive bloodflow from his burst lip, insisted Petrel shouldn't have done it. They were teaching him how to wrestle, he insisted. They were being friendly.
Friendly was the key term here, and Petrel focused on it. Focused on it so much that he didn't really bother to hear the rest, which was all empty worried drivel, and shunted it off as background noise while he checked Proton's face for any other injuries. Proton was pretty, short-haired and slim-jawed and pretty, and he didn't deserve to get that fine nose smashed in. Probably asked for it, but didn't really deserve it. "You don't need friends like that," he said, cutting off Proton's babble once he was satisfied that the younger boy was otherwise unharmed. "I'll be your friend."
That cut off Proton's protests for good, and while the disbelief and enthusiasm was somewhat ridiculous, Petrel didn't really mind them. Proton laughed and chattered all the way back to the cafeteria. He had a sharp voice, one that wouldn't take to higher pitches well, but it was pleasant and bubble-bright when it was modulated to even banter. Petrel nodded and replied and let Proton burble his happiness out. Friends couldn't hurt. Friends could never hurt.
Not here, anyway. Not in the barracks, where one-upmanship in front of superiors was often just a prequel to dangerous, illogical explosions of machismo and pride during after-hours or off-base nights. Petrel was smart, and savvy, and avoided most of the upsets; Proton wasn't so sharp, but Petrel didn't need somebody to back him up as much as somebody to simply relax with through the boredom-stretched hours, and he didn't mind leading Proton out of certain danger. Proton was always, after all, appropriately grateful, and his appreciation was second only to his unique ability to invariably get himself back into trouble again. There was no real harm in the kid. A lot of dumb, but no real harm.
There was no real harm, but one night somebody took a wrench and bludgeoned him five inches from death anyway.
--
His first night as Secretary General, lying in the fresh-smelling bed that had higher-count sheets and nicer bedposts than any bed he'd ever slept in, as well as an air of respectable solidity to it that was only partially caused by Giovanni's own bed being located only one floor away, Archer could not bring himself to fully appreciate his position. He wanted to. He really wanted to, and he'd tried very hard to exercise every amount of appreciative good-nature he could find in his wire-tight body. And he was appreciative in the head-knowledge way, understanding fully how strange and how unlikely and how very, very lucky for him it was that out of every Rocket member Giovanni could have chosen to represent his office, to greet and direct and work with potential customers and business partners, the man would have chosen a no-name from Kanto with five siblings to send money back to and no truly remarkable field reports to his name. He appreciated his luck. He appreciated the recognition.
He could not appreciate the position.
There was nothing wrong with the work load. It was heavy, certainly---he'd been startled, almost thrown, by the stack of papers waiting for him at his desk, a small orderly oak desk that sat subtly at the left of the entry-room, the last space between the outside world and Giovanni's own office---but he had accepted every explanation of his duties with a nod of his head that covered, he hoped, any doubts he might have; and sitting down to review the actual work expected, he found it massive in size, but manageable in content. He was expected to make economic decisions. He was expected to organize company assets. He was expected to catch, and notify Giovanni of, any strange kink-ups in the system, whether they be stirrings of unrest, piping away of cash flow, or bubbles of unexpected activity. All busywork, all things he could be competent (in time, very good) at.
But he had to deal with Giovanni, and that was not something he was sure he could manage.
The man was something more than Archer could handle. Giovanni was so---physical. So oppressively aware of, and yet somehow casually disregarding as to, personal space. It wasn't that the man had been inappropriate with him. Far from it. His boss had maintained a polite distance at all times, keeping his massive, solidly square body away from Archer's thin bones. It wasn't enough. Giovanni had a sprawl to him that extended beyond his physical limits, heavy tendrils of his presence curling around objects, items, people. He wasn't indolent, but the relaxed lounge in his desk chair seemed to spread him farther than it did, seemed to lengthen him to a widening pool of languor that slowed and sedated anyone who got within several feet of his desk. His hands, broad hands, tough hands, were unapologetically firm, and when they opened wide-fingered to take papers from Archer the brush of his rough fingertips against Archer's fine-boned knuckles was heavy enough to linger, ghostlike, at the corners of Archer's senses for full minutes after.
Scarred hands. There were faint ropes of lightened skin over the knuckles of them, light braids of old cuts and tears; the pads of them were toughened. Giovanni was a Gym Leader once, handled the earth like it was his property---Archer had honestly forgotten that, until he saw Giovanni's hands. Until he saw the way Giovanni's hand ran over the head of the Persian curled at his side, fingers silk-heavy, draping down over the ears slick as water, intimate as anything Archer had never felt. Until he had faltered, trying to remember which order to stack one of dozens of reports in, and had felt more than heard (warm breath, light, just over the back of his neck) Giovanni's gentle amusement right behind him, the man's hand reaching around him to point at the papers in his hands, voice mildly, pleasantly informing him which way things went. A teacher's voice. Light-handed, almost delicate, and knowing.
Archer didn't appreciate the position.
--
Petrel only heard about it the next morning. Some fight over behind the liquor place, Tony's Beer Bazaar or whatever. Something stupid about a pokemon, or somebody's pride, or anything really. These things happened. He figured it wasn't too big a deal, if nobody had thrown a fit over it during roll call. Proton was missing, but that was not as rare as it should have been. He'd show up for lunch.
Except Proton didn't show up for lunch. Or dinner, or curfew, or roll call the morning after. It wasn't until he noticed Officer Folstoff wasn't concerned by Proton's lack of response during roll call that he realized something was actually wrong. He asked around.
"You didn't hear?" frowned Patrice, over her work. "He's in the medical bay. Probably not going to last the week if scuttlebutt's right."
When he entered the infirmary, they tried to keep him away from the bed. Proton wasn't well enough for visitors, they said. He didn't need the stress. But Petrel insisted, wanted to be able to see him at least. At last they let him get close enough for a decent look.
They'd kept away from his face this time, was his first thought. It wasn't until he'd confirmed this that he noticed the elaborate work of bandages and stiff, uncomfortable-looking boards that were built up around the boy's chest in a strange half-cage, wound over and under like a giant wasp nest. "Why the armor?" he asked.
"Probably to keep his broken ribs from collapsing in," said the orderly, bored.
His eyes cast over Proton's face again. It was arrestingly pale, veins standing out under translucent skin. 'Collapsing'. He'd take better care of the kid, he promised himself, promised anything that was listening. He'd take much better care of him. Just let him come back, and Petrel would take better care of him.
And he did come back, faster than anyone would've thought, back in uniform in three weeks, back on assignment in five. He wore bandages for longer than he wanted, and he winced when he got winded for even longer, but he came back. Petrel, pleased, scooped him back under a wing, and was shocked when Proton snapped at him for it.
It wasn't that Proton didn't like him anymore. The kid still wanted his attention---wanted his company, his time. Still followed him places; still paired up with him, automatically, for assignments. Things had just shifted between them, so that Petrel wasn't relied on anymore. He wasn't the first thing Proton turned to when the kid needed advice. Because Proton didn't need advice anymore. He didn't ask for it. He didn't want it. He had his own intentions, and far from wanting to please his superiors like he once so desperately did, he now wanted only to do whatever happened to fall into his strange, empty head as worth doing. Petrel wasn't entirely sure what had happened to Proton; all he could say, for certain, was that Proton was very different.
Something had been beaten out of him and something had been beaten into him, and the next time Stella and Mickey came to wrestle, he wrestled back.
Petrel came into the barracks right as Mickey was swinging the emergency phone, the cord wrapped tight around his right hand, a length of it pinched hard in his left, the heavy receiver swinging down in a wide beautiful arc that took too much of Mickey's appreciation to allow Petrel to be noticeable. Stella saw Petrel, though, and her pretty thin mouth crooked, and she would have said something if she hadn't gotten tackled in the side right then. Proton took her out at the knees, making a ducking tight crouch before an explosive lunge at her legs, and she was lucky she fell hard or the receiver, its target removed, would have broken her nose. As it was Mickey nearly got cracked himself on the come-around, he was so startled; Petrel, running to disarm him, almost sympathized with him in similar incredulousness. He hadn't known Proton knew how to jump somebody, much more keep them down with a leg hooked over theirs like that.
On the floor Proton was crawling up Stella's body like a cat, all nails and ridged jutting joints and teeth, and she got halfway to standing before he got an elbow around her neck and yanked her back to the floor. Mickey, dancing back out of Petrel's grasp, was gasping laughter, half in disbelief, half in enthusiasm: "Hey, hey, get him, get him, holy shit, look at him--"
He lashed out, snapping the receiver at Petrel's grasping hand, and the man howled, yanking back; the bones hadn't broken, but he could already feel the bruise that would burst open there, capillaries popping open under his skin. Mickey laughed again at him, but the sound faltered when Stella screamed. Proton had one arm hooked around her shoulder and the other to her neck, and as Petrel and Mickey watched spittle startled to bubble at the corner of her gaping mouth.
"Shit. Shit," said Mickey, voice rising, as her irises started to dilate. "Shit, what the fuck are you doing, let her go! What the fuck!"
Stella was clawing at Proton's arm, nails digging in, scratching with terrified strength. Proton's face was hidden against her hair. His hold didn't falter, but soon her scrabbling motions began to. "Shit," snarled Mickey, starting for them, Petrel following at a distance just outside of that phone's reach. "Let her go, you cocksucking---"
Proton shoved her forward, her body limp in his arms; Petrel watched in fearful fascination as her eyes, half-closed, focused on nothing. "Here," said Proton.
Mickey crossed the distance between them in a few steps, and by the time he got close Proton had thrown Stella aside and gotten to his feet. The first swing of Mickey's weapon he dodged, darting back out of the way; the second cracked him solidly to the ear and his head snapped hard to the side, body staggering in sudden swollen dizziness. Mickey retreated a step to get himself a better range, and laughed in his safety zone. "Come on, come on, you little fuck! What now?"
Proton's eyes rediscovered him, and Petrel felt himself suddenly, irrevocably removed from the situation as Proton simply ran forward, eyes smoldering. The receiver smashed into his side and he just kept going, hands grabbing for it, barely missing the wire; it hit him again, to the gut, and he doubled and wheezed and got it in one hand and wrapped it around his wrist as he came, and by the time Mickey had let go to prepare for him he was already there, one open palm swept out in a slap to the jaw that would have been hilariously inappropriate if it hadn't been strong enough to send Mickey staggering. The phone was dangling from Proton's arm and he got a hand around it, lifted it, and his next swing down brought a spurt of blood.
Mickey howled, hands going to his clenched nose, but they jerked up when the next blow fell, and continued to grasp at the air as the blows kept coming, the receiver smashing down on his head and shoulders until he dropped to his knees.
Blood was bubbling out of his nose, the corner of his mouth. Proton twisted to get behind him, hands moving faster than Petrel had thought possible, and the phone wire snapped tight between his hands, dropped down, looped itself neatly around Mickey's neck. The heel of Proton's boot jammed into the small of Mickey's back, and the younger Rocket set all his weight against his foot and pulled.
"Proton," Petrel finally broke free with, stumbling into the picture.
The other boy's eyes snapped up to him and for a moment there was no recognition.
"Proton," he tried again, more calm, more demanding, and Proton acknowledged him with a relenting nod. His grasp on the wire did not loosen. Mickey, trying desperately to work fingers up under the thick black cord crimping his skin, wheezed and spit and tried to speak.
"What?" said Proton.
"Let him go."
"He attacked me," spat Proton, and returned his attention to his work. His heel twisted in and Mickey gave a garbled cry.
"You're going to kill him!" Petrel closed the space between them, reached for Proton's shoulder; yanked back, more frightened than he cared to admit, when Proton, sensing his approach, released his hold on the wire strangling Mickey and jerked around fast to meet him, hands going up in fisted defense. The stance was amateur, but Proton's eyes were blind with an injured dog's killing intent. Petrel's stomach was twisted with the sudden icy certainty that if he'd actually made contact, Proton would have fallen on him. "You're going to kill him," he said in a quieter tone, as Mickey fell, comically quickly, onto his side and wheezed there. "That's enough."
"They attacked me," repeated Proton, but cast an eye over the two people lying curled on the floor, and seemed sated. "They deserved it."
"Okay," managed Petrel, swallowing his protests, his modifiers, in favor of easing a hand carefully around Proton's shoulder. The younger Rocket's eyes darted to it, but then jerked back to his face, and the nervousness was no longer terrifying. "Come on. You need some ice. Your ear is swelling."
"Is it? Shit." His hand went to his ear, already purpling and swollen like a boxer's, and his distraction was complete. He let Petrel lead him out of the barracks room, absent and chattering, and Petrel only left him there when he was under the medical bay's examination. Then, hand still burning in the beginnings of a bruise, he bolted back for the other injured members.
Stella was awake and cognizant, if slightly traumatized, and was back on her feet with no ill side-effects within a day. Mickey, nose crooked from a quick re-set in the infirmary, face mottled, was quiet for weeks to come; years later Petrel heard a rumor from some water cooler conversation or maybe overheard snippet in the office that he had suffered hearing loss. He stayed in, though, and was shipped out with Stella on assignment to Sinnoh three weeks later. Petrel didn't see either of them again.
Proton, suffering bruised ribs and a swollen ear, ravaged through the barracks for another two months, and by the time he was assigned to Johto he'd acquired a reputation for brutality and a taste for pushing boundaries. Petrel told him to ease up. Proton laughed in his face.
It was that laugh that came to Petrel's mind if he tried to think of Proton now: the aggressive lean into his personal space, all the teeth bared, white and even and dog-displayed under the half-hooded careless eyes. Proton had lost something after that first beating, some holy fear or respect or maybe love, and trying to find it again was ruining him.
When Petrel thought back to that barren laugh he was pretty sure Proton would get himself killed, trying so hard to find it.