Authors: Crystal Rose
“My name is Staff Sergeant Grabowski. Welcome to Charlie 3/10. This will be your new home for the next eight weeks, and it's my job to personally see that each of you are fit, and trained properly.” For a Drill Sergeant, he was remarkably soft-spoken. He didn't yell, or scream. He just spoke like they were all hanging out. “Do not test my patience, because I have none. Is this understood?”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!” came the answering cry.
“I can't hear you.”
“YES, DRILL SERGEANT!” This time, it was a battle cry. Each man shouted from their diaphragm.
“Good.” The man began walking again. This time he did stop in front of Ryan.
Ryan kept his green gaze straight forward, not looking at the man, which was not hard, since his eyes were level with the strong chin of the Drill Sergeant.
17
“Gracin. I’ve heard of you.” Really, the man's voice was nice. It was deep, and had a nice cadence to it. Yeah, Ryan would admit it was kinda gay, but he was gay so he figured that was okay.
“Yes, Drill Sergeant,” he said, trying to keep his military posture as much as possible.
“Private, I would appreciate if you looked at me while I was talking to you,” SSG.
Grabowski said.
That's all the instruction Ryan needed. He finally, actually looked at the man. He felt his breath being stolen from his body. The man was absolutely gorgeous. His face was perfectly shaped, intense hazel eyes met his green ones, and for a moment, Ryan wondered if he was allowed to lust after the man. He felt he could, due to the fact that the Military finally got over the 'Don't ask, don't tell' crap, and allowed gays in the Military.
Drill Sergeant J Phillip Grabowski was fucking sex on a stick. Ryan hadn't felt like this for any guy since David, back in high school. Hell, he hadn't even thought about David like this.
18
A slow, lazy, dimpled grin formed on the Drill Sergeant’s face. One that caused Ryan to smile back.
Ryan actually, was kinda sorry he’d had all those unkind thoughts about the man. He seemed...different than the others they had dealt with so far.
That thought proved to be so fucking wrong, Ryan didn't even want to go into detail how wrong he was. Not only was Grabowski as insane as everyone made him out to be, he was fucking evil as hell.
“Aww, how cute. Look, William, I think Private Gracin has a crush on me,” Grabowski called, his eyes never leaving Ryan's. “Do you have a crush on me, Private?”
Ryan's smile froze. Fuck. He could feel a giggle. So, instead of speaking, he shook his head.
“Wrong Private. You will answer me when I ask you a question. So tell me, do you have a crush on me?”
19
At this point, Ryan knew saying anything would be wrong, but saying nothing would be wrong too. So, he answered. “No, Drill Sergeant Ga...G...Gas...”
His eyebrows rose clear to his hair line. “So, I'm not worthy of being crush material then?” Phillip asked.” Am I that fucking ugly?”
“God, no. I mean no, Drill Sergeant.” Ryan didn't even try to say his name again.
“Drill Sergeant Grabowski,” the other man supplied, and waited for Ryan to say it.
“Drill Sergeant Grabowski.”
“Good, now, back to our conversation. So, you
do
have a crush on me? Come on, Gracin, make up your mind.” He growled. “Do you think I'm easy, is that why you’re crushing on me?”
Ryan colored, and snapped his eyes straight forward. “No, Drill Sergeant Grabowski, I don't think you're easy.”
20
“I think he does, Phillip. Hell that would piss me off,” Connelly offered, coming over to stand at Phillip’s side.
“Yup, he thinks you’re a slut, Phillip,” William King added, as if Grabowski needed a reason to hate Ryan even more.
“I'm a slut? Do you think that?” Phillip asked and with that fucking evil ass grin firmly planted on his face. “Am I easy, Private Gracin? Is that what you heard?”
No, as a point of fact, that was not what Ryan had heard. He had heard that Drill Sergeant Grabowski was fucking insane, and he liked to kill the people who pissed him off.
“No, Drill Sergeant Grabowski!” he shouted.
“Oh so now I'm a prude. IS that what you think, Private Gracin?”
There comes a point in the whole process where even the strong break. Ryan figured he's rapidly approaching his. He felt the giggles start. Before he even managed to breathe, he was giggling like crazy...again.
“Oh for fuck sake, get down, Private Gracin; count them off for me,” Phillip demanded.
21
Ryan fell to the ground and began to do push-ups. He counted loudly between giggles, praying that that would stop the whole scene. He realized two things. One, he just made a
'special' friend out of Drill Sergeant Grabowski, and two, trying to do push-ups while giggling is damn near impossible.
It seemed to work, because Phillip continued down the line. Every time he stopped, whoever happened to earn his wrath ended up pounding his face into the ground. By pounding his face, Ryan meant they ended up doing push-ups. A lot of fucking push-ups.
They day droned on, and everyone realized that all the rumors they heard about Drill Sergeant Grabowski were true. He was a sadistic bastard, whose only true pleasure came when he was trying to kill someone.
***
22
The first week of Basic went off without a hitch. Each man got their own special nickname from the three Drill Sergeants. Currently, Ryan answered to three names. Drill Sergeant King's own nickname, 'DSL', an acronym for his 'dick sucking lips'; 'Pretty boy', Drill Sergeant Connelly's own 'special' nickname for him, and fucking Freckles. Phillip’s nickname, because of the blonds’ smattering of fucking freckles.
They had just come back from dinner, and were sitting in their rooms, bemoaning another day in Hell. Luckily, Ryan ended up in the same room as Patrick, Brendon, and Kenneth. He was thankful for that because they were his close friends. At least, they had the most in common. They were all from somewhere in Ohio, except Patrick, who was from Oklahoma. And, most importantly, they all had come to the realization that the Army was so fucked up, that they all wanted out.
“Dude, I think Grabowski is trying to kill us. I really do. Those rumors weren't really rumors, he's fucking evil,” Brendon whined, as he fell onto his bunk.
Patrick sighed, and leaned against the wall. “I think he has a hard-on for you,” he said, looking at Ryan.
23
Ryan snarled at that. “Yeah, well I hope he chokes on it. He's the fucking anti-Christ.”
“I prefer the term Boy-King, actually.” The voice came out of nowhere. All four men groaned, and Ryan wondered if he could hide in his footlocker.
“Ten hut!” called Patrick who folded his arms behind his back. His hands rested on top of each other, with his elbows poking out; his feet were a few feet apart.
The other three snapped to the call, and stood in regimented formation.
“Don't let me stop the conversation, Privates. Continue on. I would like to hear it,” Drill Sergeant Grabowski said, as he took a seat on Patrick's bed.
Kenneth blinked, and turned a cautious head toward the Drill Sergeant. He felt the need to explain that he didn't say a damn word, and should be excused. But instead he just snapped his head forward. All thoughts of dropping his daddy's name left him completely.
Brendon looked like he was doing his very best to swallow his tongue and choke so he could die and not have to take part in THAT discussion.
24
Patrick had found his happy place and refused to look anywhere but straight ahead.
That left Ryan struggling to find something to say that wouldn't get him killed.
“Now, y'all were talkin' just fine, before I came in,” the man on the bed said. “Come on, I wanna hear it.”
Ryan was pretty sure he didn't want to hear it, as much as he wanted to kill them for talking like that about him.
Patrick cleared his throat, and finally broke rank. “Sorry, Drill Sergeant Grabowski. We were just blowing off steam,” he stated.
Ryan thought Patrick had big balls.
“Uh huh, blowing off steam, Gandhi. I get that. So, where were we? I had a hard on for Freckles and he wanted me to choke on it. Right?” Phillip supplied.
“And he said you were the anti-Christ,” Brendon added helpfully.
25
Ryan thought Brendon had no balls; they were probably sitting on his girlfriend's mantle back at home.
“We went over that. I prefer Boy-King, remember, Furry?”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant Grabowski, I forgot,” Brendon responded.
“So, tell me why I'm the anti-Christ, Freckles,” Phillip said pleasantly.
Ryan so did not want to tell the drill anything. He actually didn't want to even breathe in the same room as Drill Sergeant Grabowski, because he knew without a doubt that it would be the wrong way.
“Umm, I thought...I said that because you're...difficult to...work with,” Ryan said, finally. Yeah, he stuttered over his explanation, and it wasn't so much true, as they were the words he managed to put together in a short amount of time.
Phillip rose suddenly and stood directly in front of Ryan. He had his cadre cap off and it struck Ryan how truly beautiful the man was.
26
“I'm difficult? Of course I am. My job is to train you, and all of your fuck-up friends, to do battle. To safeguard this great nation. My job is to make sure you are ready to face any and all threats, Private. So you won't be a threat to the man next to you. When you leave here, I won't be reading your obituary because you were poorly trained. I’ll know I did all within my power to train you correctly. That means making sure you four fuck-ups get with the program.
So, you can continue your little conversation, bitch like a girl about how fucking evil I am, but don't forget the training I'm doing is going to save your fucking lives one of these days.” With that said, he did an about face and strolled out of the room.
No one said a word, until Brendon let out a deep breath. “Wow, I thought he was going to go Full Metal Jacket on our asses and kill us.” He stood up straight, and pasted a fierce look on his face. “It's a good thing he left, otherwise I would have so jacked him the fuck up.”
Patrick, blinked, and then laughed. “Yeah, Brendon. We could see how you were going to fuck him up, seriously.”
Kenneth nodded. “Adding the bit about the anti-Christ was just to lull the big guy into thinking you were a kiss ass, so that you could sucker punch him, right?”
27
“Fuck you all, bitches. I had it under control.” Brendon snarled.
Ryan just stayed quiet and shook.
28
“This group is the most ate-the-fuck-up platoon I have ever had the displeasure to train,” Drill Sergeant Connelly told them. “First, how many of you fucking assholes got through kindergarten without the ability to know your left from your right?” he spat out in disgust.
“Apparently, Mark, every fucking one of them,” Phillip intoned dryly. “Even Freckles doesn't know his left from his right and here we had him pegged for a certified genius.”
Drill Sergeant Connelly just snickered.
29
Ryan was getting used to the extra attention that Drill Sergeant Grabowski was giving him. Getting used to being the key word, because he was sure that the Drill Sergeant was trying to drive him crazy, and it was working.
They were out in the midday sun trying to learn to march. It's like everything else in the Army. Nothing you knew prior to basic was right. The fuckers had to teach each man how to walk, talk and fucking breathe right. Ryan swore if he heard 'your Military left' again he was going postal and kill everything in front of him.
To Ryan it became a game. He wouldn't let Grabowski drive him to quit. So each time the dreaded drill would single him out he would stand tall, eyes straight ahead and take it.
Ryan could take all of the physical stuff, the running, the push-ups, the sit-ups. Hell, Front, Back, Go, was more of a game than anything else. They learned during their first day that Front, back, go was Drill Sergeant Grabowski’s favorite punishment. He was extremely fond of letting them do the exercise until 'he was tired' - the bastard never got fucking tired.
30
“Alright, I've dicked around with this enough,” SSG Grabowski said. He rounded on the group and yelled out “HALF RIGHT FACE!”
It was two in the afternoon and they had been on the drill field since noon. Each man was sweating like a pig and all had to suppress a groan.
They executed a short cut to the right and waited for the next order.
“FRONT LEANING REST POSITION, GO!” Grabowski shouted the order, daring anyone to deny him.
Like anyone in the group would tell the nine foot, two hundred pound gorilla ‘no’, Ryan thought sarcastically. He dropped down into the 'up' position of a push-up. His body was arrow straight and he was looking straight forward.
“I don't get it, Privates. We are explaining this like we're talking to a bunch of five year olds and yet you amazing fuck-ups aren't getting it. What exactly do we need to do to help you along with this?” Grabowski said. It went without saying that it was a rhetorical question.
“Down.”
31
This was their call to dip down with the body still straight and head still raised.
“I mean, seriously. What can we do as your instructors to help you with this?” He sounded sincere but Ryan knew it was just another mind-fuck.
Unfortunately, Brendon didn't get the memo because he chose that exact moment to tell Drill Sergeant Grabowski what would help.
“Well, Drill Sergeant Grabowski ...” Brendon started.
“Holy Mary mother of fucking Christ on a stick!” Drill Sergeant Connelly yelled. “Furry, what the fuck do you think you’re fucking doing?” His long stride had him in front of Brendon in seconds. He dropped down and was on his knees, kneeling until he could look Brendon straight in the eyes. “Did you just infer that Drill Sergeant Grabowski was fucking up?”
If they had been somewhere else every single man in the platoon would have killed Brendon. SSG.Grabowski wouldn't have had to lift a finger.
“Down!” Phillip commanded. “Did he say I was fucking up, Mark?”