Title: These Small Things
Author: speechie42
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Grif/Simmons
Summary: Tex calls in the favor the reds owe her. It turns out, it DOES involve gay stuff, and the mafia, and wild sex, and angst, and dramatic gunfights...
Warning(s): Graphic sexual content, slash, language, violence, blood/guts, angst, and death
Chapter: 1/16 - The Set Up

Chapter 1: The Set Up “Are you ready?”

"Oh man, this is crazy. Why are we even doing this? Technically, we shouldn't owe her the favor...and I'm pretty sure we said "no gay stuff" when the deal was made!" Simmons groaned.

"She could kill us without even trying." Grif pointed out.

"Oh...uh...yeah..." Simmons tried to shove his hands into his pockets, but found his pants were too tight. "God dammit, Mandy! Why do girl's jeans have to be so fucking tight?!"

"So straight guys can stare at their asses, and gay guys can advertise theirs.” Grif explained, then paused and added as an afterthought, “by the way, right now you don’t fall into the “straight guy” category…”

"Shut up. The only reason you get to be the dominant one is because nobody wants to see you in tight pants."

"At least I'm not the one wearing my sister's jeans."

"Shut up, asshole."

The two continued walking in silence for a minute or two, Simmons getting wolf-whistles and cat-calls along the way, until the club came into view. Grif took Simmons' hand in his own and dragged him forward to the front door when he refused to continue of his own volition.

"What's the cover fee?" Grif asked the bouncer guarding the entrance.

"No cover tonight," he said, eyeing Simmons. He then added to Grif, "in fact, there will probably never be a cover as long as you bring the little miss along."

Simmons tightened his grip on Grif's hand in silent anger but smiled sweetly and diverted his gaze to the ground in an attempt to effectively play the role of shy uke.

"Gee thanks..." Grif replied dryly, pulling Simmons behind him through the door. A resounding smack (and a surprised yelp) filled the entry hall when the bouncer slapped Simmons' ass.

The pair hurried into the club's interior and stopped for a moment to take in their surroundings.

Tex had said it was a pretty shady place, but the reds had been thinking a very different kind of shady. Where they had pictured hard drugs or weapons dealing in the room's many dark corners there were only male prostitution and sodomy.

It looked like they were in the middle of a rave. There were black lights galore, various colored lights and strobes flashing randomly, and even an over-sized disco ball. The music was loud and pounding, vibrating through the bodies that filled the room, seeming to drive the dancers closer and closer together.

"Yeah, I'd really like to leave now." Simmons whispered to Grif, running a hand through his heavily gelled and spiked hair.

"Simmons, shut the fuck up."

The two received many stares as they approached the bar. Unsurprising, considering they would have had to raid Tara Reid’s closet to find pants any tighter than the ones Simmons was wearing. He had to force himself to walk normally due to their inhibiting fit, which was annoying to say the very least, not to mention painful. He glared down at the much looser pants Grif had on.

"How’s it going boys?" The bartender, a young man in his mid-twenties with soft blue eyes and a rather fake smile, asked when they were within earshot. Due to the pounding of the music, this meant that all three of them had to lean across the bar counter to hear each other.

“What?!” Grif shouted back.

“I said, how’s it going?!” He repeated, near screaming.

Grif snorted incredulously, “we were just outside, I promise you it wasn’t snowing!”

When he gave Grif an odd look, Simmons interjected, “We’re fine!”

“Uh…gee, thanks?!” The bartender frowned.

“What did you call his mother?!” Grif mimicked the other man’s expression. Simmons rolled his eyes. Stupid morons with their stupid lack of super-enhanced hearing," he thought to himself contemptuously.

“So, what can I get you?!” The bartender asked.

“A rum and coke for me! And…” he took a moment to pointedly appraise Simmons, "and a cosmopolitan for this one!”

"Be up in a second!”

When he left to make their drinks, Grif reluctantly put an arm around his fellow soldier.

"Do you have to do that?" Simmons asked.

"Yes. You're my bitch, remember?" He pulled him flush up against his body and smiled broadly.

"You are having way too much fun." Simmons glared.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’ve never been on the inside...bitch.”

“Grif, for the last time, you weren’t in prison! You were a prisoner of war! There’s a difference!” Simmons groaned in an exasperated tone that told of how many times they’d had this argument, "and stop calling me your bitch!"

“Oh yeah? Then how do you explain how this wicked barbed wire tattoo magically appeared on my bicep while I was there? Heh, yeah, it’s a prison tat.”

“Whatever, idiot.”

“You’re just pissy because you know you’d have cracked under the pressure. But me? I came out even more of a badass than I was before I went in.”

Simmons glared at him, “…when we finish up here, I’m going to strangle you.”

"Here you go, gents.” The bartender had returned with an appletini and what appeared to be absinthe. Looking Simmons up and down, he added, "these are on the house."

The two soldiers looked at the incorrect order a moment, watched the bartender leave his post behind the counter (apparently to personally deliver a drink, judging from the glass in his hands), then looked at each other and shrugged.

"Grab those for me will you, babe?" Grif asked in a tone that clearly said it was more of a demand.

Muttering to himself once again his plan to find and kill whoever assigned Grif to their unit, Simmons picked up the glasses and had turned to walk away when Grif grabbed him by the elbow.

"I think I see them," he whispered, pulling Simmons up against him.

"Where?" he asked.

"In that corner over there." Grif made a discreet gesture towards a group of men gathered together in a dark corner booth which the barkeep was approaching. He made a show of igniting one man’s drink to much applause, and then departed.

The three men’s gaunt faces were illuminated by the flame of what Grif assumed was a Spanish coffee. The light of the fire flickered violently, casting sharp shadows over the booth’s occupants that made them appear skeletal.

The flame was extinguished in a most sudden, forboding manner.

The two red soldiers stood and stared.

“Well, I say you go first.” Grif said, nudging Simmons.

“What? No way!”

“Yes way. Move it, Simmons.”

“Uh-uh. I’m your bitch, remember? I should be trailing behind you obediently.”

“Fine, whatever.” Grif marched off ahead of him, forcing Simmons to do a sort of dance darting through the crowd to keep up with without spilling their drinks as the bodies around him writhed and swayed.

Somewhere along the way, his ass got treated to a rather painful pinch, causing him to jump and slosh some of the absinthe on his pants.

"I'm okay..." Simmons said in a quiet voice, verging on hyperventilating, “I don’t feel violated. I’m safe. I’m okay…”

After getting another slap on the ass and a proposition that made him blush, he decided sticking close to his "partner" was probably a good idea just as a group of teenage girls in relatively no clothes walked past, tailed by whom he could only assume was their pimp. He gave them a look over, caught the suggestive glint in the pimp's eyes, and hurried forward to get up beside Grif.

Slowly, they approached the table. When they got closer the three men seated there looked up from their conversation and let their gazes travel over the tightly clothed form of Simmons, causing him to blush further.

"Good evening, boys." Grif greeted casually as he pushed Simmons closer to the table.

"Good evening Mister...?" One of the men asked. He appeared to be the leader of the group, sitting it the center and wearing a grey suit with his black hair slicked back stylishly. Tex had said his name was McGuire or Mickey or some such. Frankly, Grif didn't really care.

"Anderson. You can call me Eric," Grif replied.

"Good evening Mr. Anderson." The man replied haughtily, ignoring Grif's request. "I presume you are about to make a proposition of some kind?" he nodded toward Simmons, all business.

"I was hoping we could join you." Grif shrugged. "This here is Lawrence. Say hello, pet."

"Hi." Simmons smiled, bowing his head as though only slightly embarrassed, as opposed to being completely mortified...and did Grif just call him pet?

He barely resisted the urge to shoot a glare the orange soldier's way.

"You'll have to forgive him; he's a bit shy in public." Grif sat down beside a man with blond hair wearing a navy dress shirt and black slacks. Simmons simply continued to stand beside the table looking down at the floor abashedly, not having been prompted to sit down by his master. He suppressed a cringe.

"...but he can be quite outgoing in private, if you know what I mean," Grif was saying.

Simmons really did blush at that comment.

"You don't say?" The man Grif thought was named McGuire replied in a bored tone. "There are plenty of others that share the same quality, what makes this one special?"

"He’s a nympho,” Grif explained in a conspiring whisper, “those others might get a little crazy, but Lawrence here doesn't care where, when, or how as long as he can serve."

Grif took his glass out of his teammate's hand and took an experimental sip of the absinthe. He decided he liked the smooth, bittersweet taste of licorice and took another healthy swig before handing the glass back to Simmons.

"Is that so?" McGuire raised an eyebrow and leaned forward to lift Simmons' chin upward. "You're too pretty to stare at the ground all night, boy. Look up at me."

"Thank you, Sir." Simmons said softly, lightening his tone in hopes of sounding sweeter.

"Oh, and such a beautiful voice you have."

"You should hear him scream.” Grif said interrupting the man's scrutiny when he noticed the flush Simmons' face had taken on. Although they had to make this believable, he didn't want to make the more sensitive red too uncomfortable lest he have some sort of meltdown.

McGuire turned to look at Grif. "I'm a business man, Mr. Anderson. I know a con when I see it. You're not nearly greasy enough to be pushing this sort of product, and your boy here is standing a little too straight to be as submissive as you'd like everyone to believe."

Simmons repressed a snort of laughter, "Right, because you'd know all about greasy product pushing..." Instead he kept his gaze fixed firmly on the ground, refusing to break characer.

"Look man, just trust me; I may not be the sort of low-life you normally deal with, but that's because my...ah, services are a bit higher class. Just give my boy here a test run if you don't believe me."

"And what exactly do you propose for this...test run?"

"Lawrence," Grif turned to Simmons, "any ideas?"

Simmons glanced at his appletini, decided sobriety was over-rated, and downed the whole thing. Setting the empty glass down on the table, he sat down lightly on Grif's lap and leaned over the blond to speak directly against McGuire's neck.

"What can I do for you?"

A/N: Woohoo, first chapter! :D Anyways, Author's Notes used to be a place for me to explain weird shit that happened in the posted chapter, but now it appears as though it will serve as more of a space to provide humorous anecdotes like this one: Lawrence is actually my exboyfriend's middle name. I chose it because, at the time, I was all in love and shit and thought it was the greatest name evar. God, I was stupid. Haha