Carter's Duty - 4. Chapter 4

"Don't go!" Andrew repeated slipping his hands into his battered leather jacket and affixing those hurt eyes on Will's face.

Will stood stock still, one hand holding onto his tickets, the other his carry on bag. He stood there for an eternity, torn between what he knew was right, and what he felt was very wrong.

Andrew's puzzled expression eased slightly seeing the distress Will was in. What ever had driven him to this action... this utterly insane choice, he was suffering for it. And every instinct inside of Andrew made him want to sweep the man he loved up into his arms and protect him.

But protect him from what?

"H-how-?" Will managed as his eyes filled with tears, a man of twenty five reduced to tears by the weight of everything crashing down upon him at once.

Andrew took a step forward and pulled Will into an embrace drawing him against his chest, there was so much he wanted to say, so much he could say but nothing he could say would help right then...except...
"I love you." He stated firmly, "Even if you are an idiot some times."

"I-I know..." Will managed dropping the bag as his arms went around Andrew's waist, "I don't know what to do..."

"Excuse me, sir..." The stewardess was hesitant to interrupt, she gave Andrew a sympathetic look, "But if you are going then you have to get on the plane..."

"He's not going..." Andrew said resolutely.

"I have to." Will stated with a sniff as he stepped out of the embrace and picked up his bag, "I wasn't given a choice, I have to."

Andrew stared at him, and then up at the boarding ramp, "What's going on?" He asked again, desperately.
Will shook his head, the pain already seeping into his every action. He was being torn apart and he knew it, but he didn't have a choice he had to go. He bent down and picked up his bag, and closed his eyes to the pain as he turned to walk to the boarding ramp.

Andrew stood in quiet shock staring up at the doors as the stewardess moved to close them.

"Stop!" Brody yelled out, his long strides covering the distance to the lounge, grabbing Andrew by the arm as he ran, holding up a pair of tickets to the stewardess and flashing his passport so fast they didn't have a chance to looks at it properly.

"What?" Andrew asked in surprise as he found himself all but dragged onto a Boeing 747 destined to cross the Atlantic.

"Do you really think,' Brody panted, "I am going to let Carter get away with..." He held up a finger to catch his breath, "pulling a stunt like this?"

Everyone on the plane was staring back at the two of them as a Stewardess took their tickets and showed them to their seats. Will staring in utter shock as the two of them were seated on either side of him on the plane.

Brody smiled and winked at the stewardess as he buckled his seatbelt turning to Will beside him, he reached up to cuff his swiftly to the back of his head, "idiot do you realize how much you just cost me?"

Will ignored the blow as he slumped into his seat, "Why are you doing this?"

"I think I'm the one who should be asking that question." Andrew stated as he stared at his seatbelt in confusion and looked questioningly at Brody, who demonstrated how to clip it with an exasperated sigh at the hockey player.

Will deflated like a burst balloon, as he rested his head back on the seat and stared up at the baggage compartment above him, "I don't have a choice, work... reassigned me."

"They reassigned you?" Andrew asked, confused as to how that could possibly lead to Will getting on a plane without so much as a word to him. “You're a middle manager at a CALL Center, how in the nine shades of hell... why in the nine shades of hell, would you be reassigned out of the country?”

His fears, exasperation, utter confusion were bubbling up. Andrew, the unflaffable, steadfast and calm man was rapidly losing his temper. “Start fucking talking Carter!” he snarled, a dangerous tone in his voice.

"I fucked up." Will said, letting his head roll to the left so that he could see Andrew clearly, "I fucked up and they screwed me." a tear ran down his cheek, and Andrew looked at the hollow sunken eyes, the unshaven face... the broken and shattered look. What the hell had he missed?

"Ok," Andrew said feeling the plane begin to taxi for a take off, and he had that momentary sensation of panic as he realized this was his first time on an airplane. "That still doesn't explain why you didn't try to talk to me." his hands white knuckling as he gripped onto the arms of the chair. Swallowing, realizing it was his time to panic, air... plane... fireball... death.

Focus Andrew... Will...

"H-how did you find out?" Will asked hesitantly. Wondering how in the hell they knew what was going on when he barely knew himself.

"You're assistant Alicia, she thinks the world of you and called me before she picked you up." Andrew folded his arms, "Strange as this may sound Carter, you do have friends that care about you. And even stranger, you have a boyfriend that loves you."

"I-I didn't want to hurt you." Will stated firmly, "I thought if I just left it would be easier..."

"You remember when you first tried that tactic on me?" Andrew said flashing Will a look, cold, hard and seething with rage. "It was when we first started dating and you thought you were protecting me by pushing me away... it didn't work then and it isn't going to work now."

Will sighed a ragged breath, reality beginning to crash in on the carefully crafted insanity of the past few hours. The lies his brain had made up just to fight back in the face of overwhelming dread. It was amazing what the mind could justify, the delusions it fed to itself when it broke. "It's just so screwed up."

"So," Andrew could see anguish there. He'd never seen Will so, it wasn't upset. It wasn't fear. It wasn't rationality. His limited psych classes when he was doing his bachelors might have called it disassociation? He struggled to remember what his lecturers had tried to teach him.

Establish a connection, ground the victim, get them centered.

Shock, shell-shock, a chapter in the text sprang into his mind. He suddenly grabbed Will's hand as the plane jostled as it lurched into the air. And Andrew tried his best not to wet himself, as for the first time in his life, his body left the terrestrial ground and ascended to the heavens where no man, in his right mind, belonged. Let alone hurtle through the night in a tin tube, rattling and shaking and threatening to plunge groundward at a moments notice.

He gripped Will's hand tightly, now was not the time to deal with his crippling fear of the concept of flight. Now was about Will... not firey explosions, parachutes... where the hell was his parachute? He focused on Will.

"We have a seven hour flight, you have plenty of time to explain it to me."