Work Text:
"What've you done to yourself there, lad?" Price's gaze is low, glancing across the tabletop towards MacTavish's hand as he sneaks another pull of his smoke. It's a futile gesture; the bartender's drinking his full of Gaz's tits, artfully displayed in a too-tight button-up that's serving it's country with a dedication MacTavish could only hope to match.
MacTavish swipes for Price's drink with his off-hand, gets half a swig of something that burns that burns like engine oil before he's coughing into his wrist and sliding it back. There's a part of him that's never left the vaulted ceilings and stained glass blush on his cheeks, and he's chosen accordingly with a rich red. The cocktail umbrella had been Gaz's offering.
"Caught it on a new piece of kit, they don't make clips like they used to." MacTavish hadn't noticed it at the time, only catching the steady drip a handful of minutes later with blood running over his fingers, a stripe of skin missing from the base of his thumb to his wrist. It's bandaged now, more tape than stitches, and the medic had been a trainee, his hands still soft with a tremor from excitement instead of nightmares.
MacTavish can remember being that young.
"That they don't," Price offers, knocking the side of his boot against MacTavish's.
He's a man that requires careful study, layers of calcified marble around the shape beneath. MacTavish has been around long enough now to see how military men rot, some six feet under with crisp white bones and others still walking and talking and signing their names on personnel directives. Price has softened slightly, a heft to his belly, his chest, wrinkles clustered at the corners of his eyes, but there's a solidness to him all the same. He might not be able to hold MacTavish against a wall to fuck him anymore, but he'd still be able to make him come hard enough that he sees salvation.
"Saw you got a new training room." MacTavish doesn't bother hiding his grin behind his palm or a veneer of professionalism. They're all off the clock, partially off-base, and Price can smack his hands about his lack of manners later.
Price groans, tips his head back to study the ceiling. "Don't fucking remind me."
"About what?" Gaz asks, sliding onto the seat next to MacTavish, drinks clinking in hand as he does so. Condensation beads over his fingertips as he slides them into place: a fresh whiskey for Price; another wine for MacTavish; and some blended faintly orange concoction for himself, strong enough to peel paint from the table. Gaz sips at it, grins over the edge of the glass at Price's wince.
MacTavish knows there's blood in the water, a cut for the moment, just a taste, so he turns to Gaz with a matching grin. "Did yeh happen to notice that nice shiny plaque right outside the new training centre?"
Gaz has spent too many missions with the exact patter of MacTavish's voice to miss the extended hand, the follow me promised with a lilt. He shuffles his chair in a little, scrapes the legs against the sticky wood so Price's lip curls a fraction higher.
Price tips back the rest of his original whiskey, grabs for the next like it'll save him.
"I did," Gaz confirms, butter cold on his tongue. He props his elbows on the table, leans forward to chase his straw with his tongue. It's a masterwork, all clean crisp lines of his open shirt down to the swell of his tits, the glint of his dog tags catching the fluorescence just so.
Price tips his gaze thoughtfully downwards, determined to find some thread of a silver lining in the next few moments. MacTavish does as well, outlines a sketch by scraping his nail against the table top, committing the scene to hazy smoke-filled memory.
"Notice the name?" MacTavish continues, shifts sideways so he's closer to Gaz. He presses his mouth to Gaz's offered temple, tastes the salt of his sweat and the insistently neutral body wash they're supplied with beneath the richer spread of moisturiser. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Price shift, innocuous in the subtlety, barely more than a shift of his weight back into his seat.
There's the evening plans sorted.
Gaz hums, tipping his head against MacTavish's mouth until his mouth is pressed to the edge of Gaz's jaw. There's the faint hint of stubble there, rough against MacTavish's lips, and he leans into it, scrapes his teeth along the offered pathway.
"I did," Gaz confirms. He cups the back of MacTavish's head lazily, two fingers pressed against his skull to hold him in place, and he reaches for his drink with his free hand. It's even stronger up close, sugar and the tang of something that could strip paint burning MacTavish's eyes as Gaz sips, swallows. "The 'Captain Price training facility', isn't it?"
"If I ever get big headed about something like that," Price rests his hand on the table with unwavering sincerity, leans forward to catch the fragments of their gaze, "then I need you to take me out back and shoot me."
"Like a dog," MacTavish chuckles, turning away from Gaz for a moment. They're not unfamiliar with all the pomp and circumstance and shiny bits of tat that'll be sold for a mint by their imaginary grandchildren, but the name of a room is new, a slowly bleeding wound that isn't allowed to calcify just yet.
Price smiles, not the polished and neat expression he blows the dust off for the politicians or the raw and aching version that's scattered across a thousand battlefields, but something that's as good as a whistle to the pair of them. They pay fucking attention, spines so straight they creak. "Exactly like a dog. And I might even let you fuck against my boot later if you behave."
"We can skip to that now," MacTavish says, his throat too tight and his head already swimming in a way that has nothing to do with Gaz's drink. Price is his Captain in every way that matters and several more ways that MacTavish couldn't define or begin to put a name to. It would've been easy when he was younger, hotheaded and gagging for a purpose. He would have cut his own throat if he thought it would make Price look at him for longer than a second and been fucking grateful for it. He had bled so Price would look at him for it, dragged his gasping husk of a body round the training course again and again until he could skim his fingertips against Gaz's record and then he'd do it again.
Jealousy could've swallowed him whole, but it didn't. Because of Price.
MacTavish is an old soldier now, not part of the brickwork as literally as Price is, but he's been around for long enough that he's heard the fresh recruits whisper about his missions and fall carefully silent when he passes by. Price cradles his beating heart in one hand and he's never discussed it in the specifics with Gaz — some things are sacrosanct, experienced but not mentioned — he knows it's similar with him.
"Finish your drinks first," Price answers, softening his edges until they're all back to skin and muscle and human-shaped once more, not just trembling greyhounds of need waiting for the shot. "Your niece enjoy her present?"
"Aye," MacTavish answers, fixing his thoughts on mundane matters, on regular updates, knowing that in an hour or so, he'll be in Price's rooms on his knees with a cushion to gentle it and everything will be right with the universe once more.