Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
“Am I confined to this room?” Shaun was gonna be pissed if he had swapped one prison for another.
He wanted to look at the sky and contact his team, damn it.
He also wanted food. Lots of fucking food.
The second the thought entered his mind, his stomach got on board with the idea and growled loudly enough that there was no pretending Zenko hadn’t heard it.
“Nope,” Zenko told him. “The kitchen is at the end of the hall. Help yourself to whatever.” His voice hardened as he pointed at Shaun. “But you are going to the MASH today. I patched you up enough to get you through the night. That doesn’t mean you get to decide you’re fucking fine.”
“Yup, fine, to the MASH today for medics to look at my whiplashes.” Shaun shuddered as he took another sip of the coffee, strong and black, nectar of the freaking gods in a mug.
“When you get back, will you come check on me?” He was completely unbothered by the request as he sat back on the bed and drank his coffee.
After everything that had happened, knowing Zenko was coming back would settle something inside him that Shaun wasn’t interested in examining too closely yet.
“Yeah, I’ll come check on you. We’ll figure this shit out.
K?” Something shifted in Zenko’s expression before he looked away, his jaw tightening for a second as though there was more he wanted to say but had decided against it.
Shaun didn’t push. Zenko had already done more for him than he had any right to expect, and whatever happened next, getting back in contact with his team had to come first. Once Ghosts knew he was alive, they could start figuring out exactly what the fuck had happened to him and how the men who’d taken him had known he’d reported what he overheard.
Shaun nodded. “See ya later then.”
He watched Zenko leave the room before glancing around the small space. It was as neat and tidy as he’d expect from any military guy. Shaun had lost count of the number of times his dad had yelled at him for not making his bed or tidying his shit up when he was done with it.
He took another drink of coffee as his priorities rearranged themselves. Zenko might have ordered him to the MASH, but he’d said today, not right fucking now. Food came first, then he needed to figure out how the hell he was going to contact his team. The medics could look at his back later.
Before heading for the kitchen, Shaun checked Zenko’s bedroom for a phone or comms unit but found nothing. Not even a computer. Seriously, who the hell didn’t have a computer of some sort? An iPad, hell, even a freaking Xbox connected to the internet would do. But nope, nothing, nada, zip.
Damn it. Getting hold of Ghosts was going to be harder than he’d hoped, and walking around Red Squadron’s compound asking to borrow something he could use to contact his highly classified team was probably a really fucking bad idea.
His stomach growled again, settling his immediate priorities for him. Shaun stepped into the kitchen at the end of the hall, hungry enough that whatever he could find in there was going to have to do until he figured out his next move.
The kitchen spanned the back of the building the team had claimed as their home base. Someone had partitioned it off with plywood walls, while a gas stove, fridge, and sink ran along one wall with shelving units filling the remaining space.
Finding a loaf of bread wasn’t difficult, since someone had thoughtfully left it out in front of the two-slice toaster.
Shaun shrugged to himself as he popped a couple of slices into the machine.
Spotting the coffee machine, he cautiously sniffed what remained in the pot before refilling his mug and setting the machine up to brew again.
If there was one thing he knew about military teams, letting the coffee machine run dry was not going to earn him any fucking friends.
As he waited for the toast to pop up, the tick-tock of a clock caught his attention. Holy shit, it was almost noon. No wonder his stomach was trying to eat itself.
Murmured voices and laughter rumbled down the hall, reminding him that sooner or later he was going to have to face the rest of Red Squadron.
He glanced around the kitchen and figured the one thing he could do that might endear him to these guys was cook.
He’d spent enough years around teams like this to know food was usually a damn good place to start.
Opening the fridge was an experience. Holy freaking shit, there were things in there that had to be alive, considering the amount of mold he could see.
How the fuck had these idiots not poisoned themselves?
He shifted a container he had absolutely no intention of opening and spotted a pack of meat that was thankfully still under the expiration date. He picked it up and shrugged.
Fuck it, feed them. That will help, for sure.
If there was one thing he learned while growing up with no mother and a father who could burn water, it was how to cook the basic stuff.
“Pasta it is then.”
He quickly tossed the meat and whatever ingredients he could find into a pot and browned it. Someone else could clean the fucking fridge because that was where he drew the line.
Sometime and numerous mugs of coffee later, Shaun tensed when he heard a door open down the hall and the voices grew louder as footsteps approached the kitchen.
The pasta and sauce were happily bubbling on the stovetop, filling the room with a smell that had to be drifting through the rest of the building by now.
“What’s that smell?”
“Is your momma visiting, Drax? Coz that smells like food,” another voice asked, and those footsteps immediately sped up.
Shaun’s eyes widened as two massive men got stuck, shoulder to shoulder, when they both tried to enter the room at the same time. Even though he recognized them as the other two members of the team who had rescued him, he still sighed with relief when he heard Zenko’s voice behind them.
Jesus, Shaun was six feet tall and had worked with men built like freaking shithouses for years. He’d never once considered himself small, but these dudes made him feel positively dinky by comparison.
Fuck.
“Get out of the way, dumbasses.” Zenko’s bitching was followed by the two men in the doorway pushing and shoving at each other until the blond one popped forward. He immediately turned around and punched the other one. “Fuck you, asshole.”
The other man shoved his way into the kitchen behind him and rubbed the spot where he’d been hit. “You wish, dick-face.”
The space in the kitchen felt like it had shrunk in size as Shaun tried to wrap his head around what he was seeing.
It was almost like seeing a duplicate of his own team.
Six more men followed the first two into the room, their heights ranging from just taller than his own six feet to somewhere around six-seven.
He looked at Noble again and reassessed.
Nope… six-eight. They all packed a lot of hard muscle onto their frames, and most had their hair clipped close to their scalps, except for Zenko and one other.
Holy shit, that’s a lot of testosterone.
“You cooked?” Zenko asked from directly behind him.
Shaun locked his limbs in place to stop himself from leaning back into Zenko’s heat, because he refused to allow himself to look weak in front of these men.
“Yeah, not much else to do while you finished your briefing.” His eyes widened as someone put the pasta and sauce in the middle of the table and immediately helped himself to a huge plate of it.
“What the fuck, Saxon?” Zenko swiped the plate from in front of the man.
“The cook gets first helping, or you assholes won’t leave anything for him.
” He placed the plate in front of Shaun and scowled at the others as they took seats around the table.
“Shaun, you already know Noble, Drax, and Reese. This is Saxon, Max, Castiel, Roman, and you know me. Welcome to the home of Red Squadron. Don’t let the natives freak you out.
They’re pussies beneath all the bluster and shit they’re throwing your way, and their mommas and the military really did teach them manners at some stage. ”
“So, I’ve been upgraded to the cook?” Shaun tilted his head back so he could peer up at Zenko. “If you fuckers think I’m cooking every day, then someone’s gotta clean that fridge because it’s got something alive growing in there, and I’m pretty sure it’s started breeding.”
“He has balls,” Roman drawled from his space at the end of the table as he passed the loaf of bread to the man sitting next to him. “Are we keeping him, Zen?”
“Don’t mind him,” Max told Shaun, his face a study in seriousness as he pointed toward Roman. “His manners were buried in the dirt during boot camp. We looked for them, but eventually we had to accept they were fucking gone.”
“Yup.” Zenko ruffled Shaun’s hair as he took the seat next to him, and Shaun ducked his head to hide the stupid fucking smile the casual touch pulled out of him. “We’ve been trying to beat some manners back into him ever since, but I’m almost certain we just caused brain damage instead.”
Within minutes, silence descended over the table as everyone started to eat.
Zenko grabbed some bottles of water and, after loosening the top on one, handed it to Shaun before passing the others down the line.
Shaun glanced at the loosened cap before looking at Zenko, who was already digging into his food like he hadn’t done anything worth noticing.
Something warm settled in Shaun’s chest at the quiet gesture.
Jesus, the man had been taking care of him since the second he’d found him chained to that fucking wall, and it looked like he wasn’t planning to stop anytime soon.
Shaun found himself watching the men around the table as he ate, with Noble muttering under his breath while he bitched out Castiel for eating all the bread and Max kicking Roman under the table hard enough to earn himself a kick back.
They were fully grown men with the brain size of five-year-olds, and fuck, it was familiar.
He could have been sitting at a table with the Ghosts, listening to his own teammates giving each other shit over food while somebody inevitably started something that would end with two of them wrestling on the fucking floor.
He watched Zenko out of the corner of his eye and took another bite of pasta. Yeah, he could see himself fitting in here.
“You assholes are on clean-up duty,” Zenko told the others as soon as everyone was finished, pointing toward the sink as he pushed back from the table. “And someone better clean that damn fridge before whatever the fuck is living in there develops opposable thumbs.”
“Hey.” Reese carried his plate to the sink and dumped it beside the others before turning back toward Zenko. “Why the fuck do you get out of clean-up?”
“Coz he’s taking me to the MASH,” Shaun told him as he pushed his own chair back from the table. “I might get lost on the way.” He glanced at Zenko, conveniently ignoring the fact he’d spent the last couple of hours avoiding the medics Zenko had told him to visit in the first fucking place.
Zenko laughed as Noble pointed a finger at the two of them. “I’m fucking doomed. There are two of you now.”
“Too late now, Boss,” Zenko threw over his shoulder as he followed Shaun out of the room. “You already said he could stay.”
Shaun followed Zenko down the corridor toward the MASH, already regretting the fact that he’d opened his mouth about getting lost. The last thing he wanted was someone poking at his back when it had finally stopped screaming at him, but Zenko had made it pretty damn clear that refusing wasn’t an option.
Besides, if the medics cleared him to move around, that would make getting outside and figuring out how the hell to contact the Ghosts a whole lot easier.
The MASH was smaller than Shaun expected, more functional than comfortable, with everything arranged for speed rather than appearance.
Zenko stepped aside as a medic approached, and Shaun immediately caught the look the man gave him before his eyes settled on his back.
He’d seen that look before. People tried not to react when they saw what had been done to him, but they weren’t always very good at hiding it.
“How bad?” the medic asked as he pulled on a pair of gloves.
“I’ve had worse,” Shaun answered, because he wasn’t about to admit that every fucking movement still pulled at the wounds.
Zenko snorted beside him. “He’s lying.”
Shaun shot him a look. “You always this helpful?”
“When someone is being a stubborn asshole about an injury I already treated once? Yup.”
The medic grinned as Shaun reluctantly turned and lowered his shirt enough to expose his back. “I’m guessing you’re the reason these were already cleaned.”
“Yeah.” Zenko folded his arms across his chest.
“Good job.” The medic leaned closer to inspect the butterfly closures. “These are holding nicely. You did the right thing using them instead of stitching him while he was exhausted.”
Shaun glanced over his shoulder at Zenko. “You hear that? I was right. No stitches.”
“Don’t get fucking excited,” the medic warned. “You still need to keep these clean and covered, and you’re going to take it easy for the next couple of days. If one of those closures opens or looks infected, you come straight back.”
Shaun looked down at the floor, already knowing exactly how little chance there was of him taking it easy. “Define take it easy.”
Zenko laughed under his breath.
The medic gave Shaun a long look. “No running around, no heavy lifting, and no doing anything that makes you forget you’ve got half your back held together with butterfly closures.”
“So basically, I’m screwed.”
“Basically.”
Shaun sighed and pulled his shirt back into place.
His back still hurt, but the medic hadn’t found anything worse than what they already knew about, and that was good enough for him.
He could deal with the pain. What he needed now was a way to contact the Ghosts without giving Red Squadron any reason to start asking questions he wasn’t ready to answer.
The medic gave him some antibiotics and a stern warning not to miss a dose and to take them all. Zenko opened the door and waited for him to walk through first.
“Come on. You’ve got orders.”
Shaun looked at him and quirked up an eyebrow.
“For now.”
Somehow, that answer didn’t bother him nearly as much as it probably should have.