I didn't mean to leave you behind (sometimes we get left out or forgotten)

[theclairvoyant]

[John Garrett had few pleasures in life.

Few things to lead him back to calm and pleasing memories, few ideals to hold close to himself at night. Mostly he burned for revenge. Yearned for it, swam in it, mostly just to get off scott free because trust will get you killed motherfucker and that...is what today's exercise is all about.

Okay maybe it's not an exercise. Maybe they are on the ass of the world (no really, the world has an ass) also known as the sandbox, also known as the middle east and fuck all if the only place who's water supply he was sure of was the local MacDonalds. Oh sure it lacked the artery clogging goodness that was a staple of the place, one of the few things he looked forward to during his trips but damn it all...

He's handed four grilled chicken patty sandwiches a shake, and a soda before he eyeballs the cashier.]

Milkshake.

[The cashier shrugs his shoulders. Milkshake. Here and now. Frowning he collected his purchases before pointing back at him and speaking in Arabic.]

Don't try and cheat me shithead.

[Watch the kid discreetly flip him the bird made him smile. Children were all the same.

He wasn't going back to a child, not now (not anymore) but there were some thoughts you never lose, some things you always believed in. Sitting behind the wheel of the worn SUV and leaning over his thoughts turned to Grant Ward who would no doubt be waiting dutifully in his safe house. Specialist and operative, trainer and trainee, father and son, brother and brother, words that amounted to the same thing.

Placing emotion on them, in them, around them would get you killed.

Still, as he was discovering lately the older he got, you couldn't keep it out. Like delicious artery clogging goodness, like the taste of bad hamburger, you couldn't keep out affection and he did have a degree of it for the boy (never a man, always a boy). His thoughts so occupied he failed to notice the soda spilling out across the back of his car until he'd driven off into traffic. The thud made him jump and draw his gun, pointing it back behind him until the telltale liquid fell across the back of the window.

It was so mundane he could almost laugh. Standing there, gun drawn and pointed at the fucking back window. I left it on top of the car.

Of course it was Grant's but he wouldn't comment. He wouldn't say anything and thinking about that...

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

In four hours they would break up a weapons dealer's private crack house, save some lives, discreetly recruit the dealer's son for a more noble cause, steal their stash, and John Garrett would deliver his news. In eight hours (or thereabouts) Grant would be winging his way back to the states just in time for recruitment to the team of recently returned from the dead hail mary pass Phil Coulson.

And what he realized, parking at the shitty little apartment above where they would eventually do murder and horrors, was that he was worried about it. Worried about Grant Ward, worried he might say something or do something and fuck it up and get killed. Or worse, share their secrets.

He felt alone with this worry, it was a new feeling, one that lodged in his chest and made him rub at his eyes with exhaustion. For the first time in a long time he felt old and saw death like a lion on the horizon. And thereupon replies...That his hair is beautiful. Cold as the March wind his eyes.

Where had that come from?

He knocked twice, paused, then knocked a third time.]

...Pizza man.