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PRE-SHIELD DAYS. 001
Jan. 20th, 2015 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theclairvoyant
You're going to die. You're going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we're just going to be gone. The world's going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.
- BOB DYLAN
SHIELD ACADEMY. late-eighties
[John Garrett has had crappy COs before. His brief stint in the military left him with a degree of respect for them. The kind of respect that meant you put dog shit in their locker when you couldn't get caught, when you were abandoning any area they might be in for the foreseeable future and wouldn't be available for punishment. Nick Fury is...not a crappy CO. Sure "Go out and run until you pass out" wasn't the most prudent order and not something anyone in their right mind would want to do but...but...
He's on his shit list, but if John Garrett was brutally, brutally painfully obvious he might have deserved it. Might. He'd always had something of a wild streak.
(That's what his mother had called it, a wild streak. The judge had disagreed and the military had settled it out.)
Mainly because here was structure, here was ideals, and they made it interesting. Not to mention that Fury insisted upon each recruit considering themselves an individual while still being willing to teach them.
This was heavily on his mind today and it was a fitting sort of scourge. He hadn't meant to be out as late as he had been but the waitress at the bar had heard "Government Agent" and had practically fallen into his lap and what the hell was he supposed to do? He was only human and she was blonde with fantastic breasts.
The only thing was, he was really against the idea of making it a long term thing mostly because she was vapid and shallow and had kept saying stupid stuff and while that was fine and dandy like sour candy he really would have preferred...
Someone interesting.
Which was why he was putting himself through his paces, round and round the track, sometimes timing himself, sometimes adding well placed leaps and kicks and punches just like the instructor had been drilling them in over the past week and a half. Women at SHIELD were interesting and he was almost positive, eighty nine to ninety percent positive that one of them would come and offer to lick his wounds and then...
They could have some fun. If he didn't kill himself first.
I wouldn't be happy if I wasn't setting myself to this with a will. He thought, I wouldn't be happy if I didn't feel like this would be worth it, fuck I'm being punished and I'm happy.
Happier then he had been, and it only increased when he spotted a familiar face striding across the green of the track, focused and determined. Melinda May.
Oftentimes he wondered if he had a shot with Melinda May. Oh she wasn't his typical type really, truthfully (although she met most of the requirements. Female, breathing and now a disturbing new one, able to hold a decent conversation.) It was mostly Phil that kept him from making a move. The younger man was rather fond of staring off in May's direction, of pairing himself up with her for exercises that required two people (and he ended up with Carolyn Ferrerah thank you very much Phil freakin' Coulson.) it was either puppy love or respect.
Respect was something that John had for her in spades. In a drunken boast after Fury had announced including women in operations that "Fuck all if I'm going to be holding their purse when I should be holding my gun." (he'd been drunk as hell, and he'd spent the entire evening convincing himself that it had nothing to do with the letter from his father telling him that his mother had passed away.) apparently he'd said other things, worse things. He'd awoken taped to the flag pole - in only his boxers, squinting into the sunlight.
Even if May hadn't done it (he could put two and two together - Phil glancing in her direction despite May's passive looks) he'd changed his tune.
Dare he say it? John Garrett was growing up. Screw the judge in Sussex county.
Which did not preclude the occasional childish behavior. Such as making a beeline for May in an effort to knock her to the ground with a childish grin on his face.]
