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the tide that even now carries us out beyond

Summary:

GQ doesn't think about his mark much.

He doesn't have to. It's standard procedure for ARGUS personnel, for all kinds of reasons—not least so a mark can't be used against an agent, so they can't be set up by a false match. Touching is all it takes to light a mark, yeah, and then the jig's up; but if somebody's close enough to touch your mark, they're also close enough to shove a knife between your ribs.

So when GQ joined up, his got tattooed over. It was weird at first, looking down and seeing that thick black square on his forearm instead of the familiar faint gray pattern. It's like documents, GQ thinks sometimes, classified—blacked out. Redacted.

(Or: GQ's mark isn't visible, and he assumes the mutant killer crocodile guy doesn't have one. Then Midway City happens to them, and everything changes.)

Notes:

:D ♥

Work Text:

 

 

GQ doesn't think about his mark much.

He doesn't have to. It's standard procedure for ARGUS personnel, for all kinds of reasons—not least so a mark can't be used against an agent, so they can't be set up by a false match. Touching is all it takes to light a mark, yeah, and then the jig's up; but if somebody's close enough to touch your mark, they're also close enough to shove a knife between your ribs.

So when GQ joined up, his got tattooed over. It was weird at first, looking down and seeing that thick black square on his forearm instead of the familiar faint gray pattern. It's like documents, GQ thinks sometimes, classified—blacked out. Redacted.

Other times, he thinks maybe this was exactly how it was supposed to happen. Maybe ARGUS has been his soulmate the whole time.

The point is, he's not in the habit of paying much attention to it, or to anybody else's. When he first meets Killer Croc—which is to say when he first gets a halfway decent look at the strapped-down, gagged-up, growling thing Flag's told him to call by that name—he doesn't even think to look for a mark, too busy just plain old goggling at a killer cannibal mutant man-crocodile.

It does cross his mind, eventually. Just in the abstract, really: thing like that, would it even have one? Probably not, right? What the hell kind of person would you need to be to have a killer cannibal mutant man-crocodile for a soulmate? Jesus.

But then—

It's just that Croc starts to seem a lot less like a thing when—when he's not getting treated like one, when he's not trussed up on that transport frame so he can't walk or talk or move his head.

And the further they get into Midway, the more GQ kind of starts to hope Croc does have one. It's hard to tell, with the variegation of his scales, what's just coloration and what might be part of a shape. Every time GQ glances at Croc's forearm, it's like constellations: that could kind of be a curve with a handful of dots along it. And that, maybe that's a squiggle of it right there. GQ remembers trying to pick out Orion as a kid, what a crock of shit it seemed like that anything up there was supposedly some guy with a bow drawn—that all he could see was a distorted Dalek, and even then one of the bright ones had turned out to be a satellite. For all he knows, he's eyeing up what's left of a dried splatter of mud on Croc's arm.

But if Croc had one, it would be kind of reassuring. Half the reason GQ got picked for Flag's team this time out was because his mark hadn't lit yet. People hardly ever die with their marks unmatched. Some folks say you literally can't; some say it means you made a mistake somewhere along the way, turned right when you should've turned left, and you can slip through the cracks before the universe has a chance to correct, if you don't watch it.

GQ figures it's a hell of a mistake, going into those flooded tunnels with a charge that size waiting for him. But it's his decision. If he's fucked, then he's fucked. That's okay.

He's still halfway glad, though, when Croc turns down the chance to back out and rushes into the water instead. Maybe at least one of them is going to make it out of this shitshow alive. Because mistake or not, mark or not, if anybody on the squad can survive the bomb GQ's about to set, it's bound to be Killer Croc.

 

 

 

And in the end, maybe it's how hard GQ's hanging onto that thought that makes the difference.

He understands just fine what Croc's saying, when they get swarmed by those creepy bubble-faced motherfuckers. And he could go. But it's still there in the back of his head, this idea that even if all the rest of them are screwed, Killer Croc's going to make it. He's—he's fixated on it. If he's going to end today blowing himself up, he gets to pick what counts as a win, and that's it: Killer Croc, living through this, scaring the shit out of people for years to come.

So he doesn't just turn to look. One kick, two, and he's close enough to swing the end of his flashlight into one of those eyeless black faces, distracting that one long enough to pull his Ka-Bar and stab it in the guts. It lets go of Croc and kind of screams at GQ, the sound harsh and strange even through the water—but GQ hardly has time to flinch, stupid reflex, before Croc's torn through the other one that had him, kicked a third hard enough to smash its head open against the tunnel wall, and is free.

He grabs the one coming at GQ, bares those pointed teeth, and it—jesus, it stretches, rearranges itself somehow so that even without getting loose, without turning in Croc's grip, it's suddenly facing Croc instead of GQ. But whatever whack-ass fucking Exorcist maneuvers it has up its sleeve, GQ keeps his eyes on the ball: if it's looking at Croc, then GQ's free to jam his knife into the back of its neck, deep as it'll go.

There's nothing to guide him, no way to tell what he's doing—these things don't seem to have blood or bones so much as some weird thick gunk inside of them. GQ makes a face into his dive mask and just stabs harder, cuts sideways, stabs again. And somehow he must hit something that matters, because all at once the critter's coming apart under his hands, water going black and sticky with murk. Yuck.

The current brings the cloud of gunk toward him a little before it starts to sink, and for a second he can't see shit. The sensation of a yank on his dive suit makes him swing out in a panic; he could have sworn there weren't more than three of them, dammit—

But that brightness in the corner of his eye when his flashlight swings around isn't the shine of reflected light off black goo. It's a lot paler than that. It's Croc.

GQ makes a muffled, bewildered noise into his dive mask. He can't figure out what the hell Croc is doing.

And then he does, an unforgivable instant too late. The charge is already ahead of them somewhere, just needs to be moved into position, but it won't blow without somebody to shove the authorization key in and turn it.

The authorization key clipped to the ring that Killer Croc just ripped straight off GQ's fucking suit.

"Hey!" GQ shouts, except it's nothing but useless shapeless sound, in the water. He twists as sharply as he can, grabs after Croc—and is rewarded with the split-second sensation of scales under his grasping fingertips, slick and cool and smooth.

Gone before he can get a grip, and shit, Croc is so fucking fast in the water, in a way GQ would call graceful if he weren't so pissed. He needs to radio Flag, except there's nowhere to surface, no way he's going to catch up to Croc in time; he strikes out grimly anyway, kicking so hard his thighs burn, and he grapples up with one hand for his radio, clicks the talk button in a handful of Morse bursts: N-O-W, N-O-W, and if he's lucky Flag'll work out what it means before—

 

 

 

He comes around, totally fucking disoriented. Usually if he's just been unconscious, he's on the floor or leaned up against something, but this time that's not true, and he can't figure out why. He flails, and it's like he's falling in slow motion, the air thick against his hands even though he can hear himself gasping and it sounds totally normal—

No, wait. He's still in the water.

He blinks and shakes himself, and feels the water respond around him, as grounding as if somebody'd thrown some in his face. Right. Right, okay. The tunnels. He's in the tunnels, and Croc blew the charge himself like a jackass instead of letting GQ do it, and GQ caught some of the blast. Hit the wall of the tunnel, must have; there's a sharp ache at the back of his head, in a bright line along his ribs to one side of his spine, even extending into the meat of his asscheek. Must've hit a corner, an edge of stone jutting out somewhere.

And when he got knocked out, he quit swimming, so he's sunk almost all the way to the bottom. His flashlight's flickering, but mostly still shining, and he can see he doesn't have far to go; he lets himself drift until his flippered feet reach bottom, lets the faint tug of gravity settle him into his skin.

There's a few dim trails of blood clouding the water where bits of hurtling rubble caught him, and his suit's torn in more than a few spots. But for somebody that close to an explosion that size, he's pretty okay, he decides.

Which means he'd better get a grip and figure out whether anybody else is. He breathes, swallows, and belatedly reaches up to feel around—but his dive mask seems all right. There's a crack feathering up across in front of his eyes, breaking his view of the water into awkward halves, but it's not actually leaking. His mouthpiece is still in place, too, and he doesn't think he managed to inhale any water on the way down. Small mercies.

So he kicks up into the murk to look for Croc.

The water's full of settling debris, dim shadowy shapes of toppled rubble looming through drifting clouds of crap. As he gets closer to the heart of the blast, it gets weird, almost hot, still seething a little, and he has to shake off the grim thought of finding Croc boiled red as a lobster in the middle of it.

Except of course it's not that easy. The blast took out the floor above the tunnel, that was the whole point, and somewhere up there GQ thinks he can hear weapons fire, that crazy-ass goddess yelling in a voice that's almost hard to listen to, thankfully blunted a little by the water.

But down here, it's all collapsed, a great big busted pile of junk. GQ can barely see what he's doing even with the flashlight, and he ends up pinning it between his chin and his chest so he can yank off his gloves, reaching out to feel around with his bare hands. Stone, stone, stone. Lumpier—but rough, a jagged edge; concrete. Stone, stone—

Something else.

He feels such a overpowering rush of relief right then that it makes his head spin, makes his knees weak

(—and maybe that's when it happens: his bare palm to Croc's limp slack arm like that, and soulmarks not even on his radar. Maybe that's why it's so much, that heady dizzying emotion—endorphins, adrenaline, serotonin, all GQ's brain chemistry fucking losing its mind at once. Not GQ's fault if a light-up turns out to be basically indistinguishable from minor brain damage, plus or minus feeling suddenly fucking fond of the guy who saved your goddamn life—)

and jesus, this is so not the time, because he's got about half a ton of crap to move off Croc before the guy fucking drowns. If he hasn't already been crushed, or burned half to death, going into shock, any of half a dozen things that could be killing him right now.

Lucky for GQ that they're underwater—and that most of the blocks of stone he'd never have a hope of moving otherwise got cracked into pieces by the blast. He's got half a chance of shifting even the chunks that weigh as much as he does, plus that handy near-death-experience urgency filling him up. All told, it feels like barely five minutes before he's got Croc three-quarters loose; and then GQ gets a good solid grip on the leg that's still trapped, sets his shoulder to the stone over it and heaves, and it's done.

Easy enough to drag Croc through the water, relatively speaking: he's not struggling, limp and cooperative under GQ's hands, and for somebody as big as he is, the way his scales are ridged streamlines him pretty well.

Getting him out is a hell of a lot harder. All the way back to the tunnel entrance is a no-go, but GQ doesn't want to pull him up through rubble that's still settling, and especially not into the middle of whatever knock-down drag-out boss battle Flag's button-mashing his way through up there.

But there's a fork back here somewhere. GQ memorized the map they were given, and also Flag's warning about this one unstable section—already collapsed, a couple of years back. And yeah, there it is: the water's lightening just a little ahead of them now, filtering down where the ceiling caved in. Probably not safe, as such, but it's that critical percentage less likely to fall in on them than the part they just blew up ten minutes ago. It'll do.

GQ bursts up out of the water and spits out his mouthpiece with a gasp, clutching Croc against him

(—or maybe it's right here, brush of GQ's grasping fingers in just the right spot. Maybe that's why he's lightheaded, why he can't seem to suck down enough air, why he feels desperate and grateful and wildly alive. If he's thinking anything, he's thinking maybe there's something wrong with his mouthpiece after all; nobody'd ever told him that light-up was like being able to breathe for real for the first time in an hour, actual air and not just your own sour backwash, sweetest thing you've ever tasted even when you're still trapped underground in a fucking tunnel—)

and scrabbling for purchase against wet slanting stone. He tries to be as careful as he can, because Croc looks—Croc looks pretty fucked up, blistered where he isn't scraped raw, blood seeping between his scales. But there's only so much GQ can do when Croc weighs as much as he does, and every inch GQ has to maneuver him makes GQ's arms shake a little more.

Once they're both three-quarters of the way out of the water, GQ calls it quits for a minute; fat lot of use he'll be to Croc if he can't catch his breath. He has to lie there next to Croc with his eyes shut for longer than he wants to, waiting for the pounding in his head to ease off enough that he can be sure he won't throw up. And then—he doesn't even know what to do. He heaves himself over and tries to find a spot that won't hurt Croc to touch, tentatively pressing his fingertips just over the hollow of Croc's throat. Do crocodiles have jugular veins? Fuck if GQ knows. But Croc's a man, too, sort of—

A man who's cracked one weird double-lidded eye open, and is giving GQ a flat stare with it.

"Holy fuck, you're not dead," GQ says, once he's got his startle response under control.

Croc closes that eye again, shifts, and makes a tiny growling noise of discomfort. "Nope."

"Jesus Christ, are you out of your mind? Why the hell did you do that?" GQ demands, immediately shifting gears, looking for wherever's bleeding most. His air tank's got some straps he could use for tourniquets, if he has to. "What's wrong with you, huh? That was way outside your job description, man—"

Croc tenses up just a little under his hands on what's wrong with you, but whatever annoyed him about GQ saying that, it doesn't stick; he eyeballs GQ again for a second, and then says, "Couldn't kill me."

"Yeah, apparently not—"

"Nothing kills me. I'm badass."

"You sure fucking are," GQ agrees, and he doesn't see anything that looks to him like a spurting artery, so maybe Croc's really going to make it after all. He can't help but suck in a long relieved breath, sitting back a little, hands still hovering over Croc's torso while he tries to figure out what to do next.

And then an answer presents itself, because out of the corner of his eye, he can see something move in the water.

It hadn't really escaped his notice that something's still raging overhead, shouts and rattling blows, and that what little light there is down here has gotten briefly weird now and again, flickering bright like lightning.

But he'd kind of hoped nobody was paying attention to them anymore.

"I guess it was too much to hope we'd be home free from here on out," he mutters, feeling at his vest: jackpot, didn't lose the Ka-Bar back there, and the flashlight really does have enough heft to it to serve him okay as a bludgeon.

He was saying it mostly to himself, and it comes as a surprise to him when Croc moves. Which he definitely shouldn't be—the scalded streaks of blistering disrupting the lines of his scales look painful as hell, red and swollen, and just because he's not in imminent danger of bleeding out doesn't mean he hasn't sprung some nasty leaks.

"Hey, whoa, what are you doing?"

"Coming for us," Croc growls, tilting that big blunt head toward the water.

"Yeah, I'd figured that much out myself," GQ says, pushing on Croc's shoulder, trying to shove him back down. "Relax, man, I got this. I got this, we're good," and he pulls the Ka-Bar, flips it around once, twice, in his hand and then holds it up so the flashlight gleams off the edge. "You had my back, and now I got yours. Nothing's going to fucking touch you."

Croc stares at him.

And okay, GQ figures, if he's feeling a little skeptical or something, that's fair. "I know I gave you some attitude back there," GQ hastens to say, "and that was shitty. In my defense, you're a killer cannibal mutant man-crocodile, and it freaked me out. But you just blew up a god, and also saved my significantly more blow-upable ass from having to do it. Keeping these creepy-crawly fuckers off you for ten minutes until Flag's done up there and we can radio for evac is the least I can do."

Croc maybe buys it; maybe doesn't. It's kind of hard to tell. But by the time the first shiny distorted black head comes up out of the water, GQ's between it and Croc, and Croc hasn't pulled him back or thrown him into a wall or told him to go fuck himself.

He stabs the first one right in the space where it should have a face but doesn't, a gout of black sludge the only way to tell he got it somewhere that counted. The second one gets the flashlight and topples sideways far enough to give GQ a shot at the neck, and he goes for it.

And he's running on fumes and adrenaline, but all the same he manages to find a rhythm in it: distant thunder over them, mutant crocodile blood and pitch-black gunk everywhere, the weird chittering noise these things make echoing off the tunnel walls. But the weirdest part of all is GQ can feel himself smiling anyway, teeth bared, fierce and wild. "Come on, motherfuckers," he hears himself muttering, in between blows. "Give us your best shot," and he doesn't realize until way, way afterward that he was saying us.

 

 

 

Anyway, the point is that all told, there's kind of a lot of stuff occupying his attention. Even when all the drone-soldier critters suddenly burst apart at once into piles of black goop, it still takes a bunch of hoarse shouting and fucking around with his radio, repeating himself over and over into the static and trying not to press too hard where the casing's cracked, to get a solid copy on their location from anybody upstairs. And then even longer for the team of ARGUS medics to actually pick their way down through the fallen-in floor, because like hell are GQ and Croc going to be able to swim out of here. Just thinking about trying makes GQ want to lie down and not move for a while.

But sooner or later, it happens. They need a good half-dozen guys to have any chance of lifting a stretcher with Croc on it, which makes it about twice as hard for them to climb out again. GQ can walk under his own steam and proves it, stumbling along behind them through the rubble—and then it's another two blocks before they reach the evac chopper, which feels more like two miles.

Nobody could blame him for not noticing, okay.

And in the end, it isn't even him who does. It's the crazy chick with the baseball bat, sitting across from him with her damp pigtails drooping, and she eyes him for a second and then tilts her head and says, "Huh. That's new."

GQ blinks at her. "What?" and she raises an eyebrow before he belatedly looks down at himself.

He's half expecting it to be something horrible, some of that creepy eldritch sludge sticking to him, or maybe a weird shiny patch where he's about to start turning into one of those black things. It takes a minute for his eyes to actually catch on his forearm.

On his forearm: on the mark, alight.

He stares at it. The pattern's right, swirling just like he remembers; but every time he ever looked at it before ARGUS, it was—it looked dead, gray and faded-out, just a shadow of itself. Now it's not like that at all. It's sharp, a bright clear blue-green standing out bold against the thick black ARGUS tattoo. Intricate, vibrant, sweeping graceful lines curling around themselves like a wave, and the color so stark and brilliant it's playing tricks on his eyes, like it's rippling. It looks like water. It looks fucking beautiful. Holy shit.

"Holy shit," GQ says.

But it was—it couldn't have been one of those things, right? GQ shudders just thinking about it; but they'd been people, hadn't they, before the thing inside Moone got to them? Except he doesn't think he actually touched any of them. Stabbed them, yeah, and knocked them off him, kicking and elbowing when he had to. Once or twice one of them had grabbed him by the leg. But not skin-to-skin, and none of them touched his forearm. The only thing that might have was—was Croc.

Well, damn.

 

 

 

He keeps it to himself as best he can, tucking what's left of his sleeve in close and folding his arms against his chest. Croc's probably going to be headed to the medical wing at HQ first, even if they take him back to Belle Reve after. And they'll let GQ in. They have to.

Technically speaking, he's supposed to go get checked out himself, and then cleaned up, debriefed. He's probably also supposed to sleep.

But instead he lets himself get hustled along to the medical wing, and then pops right back up off the bed they've put him in and down the corridor. It's not hard to guess which room is Croc's, because after another couple hallways and a security checkpoint, there's only one door with half a dozen armed guards arranged outside it.

GQ's still in his uniform, or what's left of it; they don't stop him.

Croc's eyes are closed when he first steps through the doorway. GQ shuts the door again behind him as quietly as he can, just the barest little click—but it doesn't matter, because when he turns back around, Croc's looking at him anyway.

Just that long steady stare, for a minute, but that's okay, because it gives GQ a chance to look him over. They've already cleaned him up some, but the worst of the burns are still standing out livid against the usual cool pale color of his lighter scales, and GQ winces a little just seeing it. Must feel like shit.

"You need something, or you just looking?"

GQ blinks. Croc's still watching him, level and careful. He doesn't look much like the world rearranged itself for him today, and all at once GQ's struck with three-quarters of a serious freakout: what if they don't match? What if he was right, what feels like a year ago, thinking Croc didn't have a mark at all? Maybe it's just GQ, lit up by the last person on the planet with any reason to give a shit what he thinks—

"I just, uh," he manages, and then scrubs a hand over his face, cussing himself out silently. Jesus, he is so fucking tired. "Sorry. I just wanted to make sure you were okay, I guess. You are, right?"

Croc's eyes narrow just a little. "Yeah," he says, slow, and then he tilts his chin up the barest fraction like he's bracing for something, and turns his arm over on the edge of the bed they got him lying on.

And jesus, there it is after all. Maybe it wasn't even on his scales, maybe it was—maybe it was on the skin underneath them, GQ thinks dimly. Didn't show through, couldn't, until they lit each other up: because it's there now, maybe a little bigger but the exact same mark, and if GQ'd seen it earlier, he'd have recognized it in a second. Glimmering, on Croc, shimmering like gold at the bottom of a river, that graceful curl just like GQ's, and GQ's was pretty enough but Croc's is the most gorgeous thing GQ's ever seen.

"Goddamn," GQ breathes, and without even thinking about it he's halfway across the room, reaching out—except Croc's had a pretty bad day, and probably isn't interested in some half-concussed SEAL feeling him up right now. "Uh, sorry. Sorry, I just—goddamn, would you look at that. When did it happen? You feel it?"

And that makes Croc's eyes narrow again, for some reason. "Hard not to," he rumbles after a second. "Only part of me that didn't hurt." He pauses, looks away. "You didn't?"

GQ laughs and rubs his mouth, shakes his head. "I mean—maybe," he says. "Jesus, I don't know, I was going fifteen directions at once, I didn't know what the hell was going on." He shakes his head again, and he's about to say something else about what a dumbass he is, give Croc a chance to agree, when suddenly he rewinds what Croc just said and feels himself snag. "Wait, you—you thought I had? And I was, what, pretending not to?"

Croc shrugs a shoulder, giving GQ one sharp wary glance and then looking away again. "Maybe. Don't know why else you'd come back."

"Uh, maybe because you saved half the city, including me? You had my back down there, man," GQ says. "I heard you yelling at me, I know you told me to go." He stops, struggling—because there's no easy way to explain it, how Croc had stopped being a big scaly freaky thing about six hours ago, how that moment had sealed it: how they hadn't been a mutant killer crocodile and a puny tasty SEAL anymore, but two guys in the water together trying hard to keep each other from dying. He's not sure he's even got the words for it.

But maybe he doesn't need them. He reaches out again, and this time he doesn't stop himself before his hand can reach Croc's wrist. He swallows hard and skims his fingertips up the smoother, paler scales along the inside of Croc's arm until he's just brushing the widest golden curve of the lit-up mark. And fuck, now that he's paying attention, he really can feel it. Just an echo, like this, of the way it would feel if he set his palm over it—the rush of warmth and belonging, sweetly giddy well-being, his spine sparking up with delight.

"I hadn't even touched you yet," he murmurs, "and I still wouldn't've left you alone down there for anything, dude. And then—well, I guess I probably had, by the time those things showed up again, but I'd have torn those motherfuckers apart with my bare hands before I let them get a piece of you, after what you did."

Croc finally looks at him again instead of the wall, when he says that; and Croc shifts a little, the bedframe creaking helplessly under him, and then closes his hand around GQ's wrist and says, "I watch my own back."

"Yeah?" GQ says, because on the one hand that sounds like a shutdown, but on the other hand they're touching the most they've ever touched outside of dire life-threatening necessity, and Croc's hand is huge and a little damp and unbelievably distracting.

"Yeah," Croc says, and then stops, grip tightening on GQ just a bit. "I never—nobody ever—" He stops again, and looks at GQ hard, and doesn't let go. "Nobody ever wanted to watch it for me, before. But you did."

"You bet your ass I did," GQ says instantly. Because it's fucking true, and Croc should know it. Nobody ever. Jesus.

"Then I figured maybe you just had to," Croc elaborates after a second. "Because we matched." He looks away, and then back at GQ. "But you didn't know."

"Didn't have a goddamn clue," GQ promises. "Just winging it like the jackass I am," and Croc's eyes kind of crinkle then, almost a smile, which makes it feel a lot less dangerous to lean in and kiss that wide scaly mouth.

For a moment, Croc goes still under GQ, and GQ figures he's about to get his ass thrown into the ceiling. But when Croc moves, it's just to clamp one of those enormous hands around the back of GQ's neck. And—right, probably he hasn't done a whole lot of kissing, GQ thinks dimly. Guess they're just going to have to pencil in plenty of practice.