Other Faces I Forget, Yours Is Carved Out of Stone (Robert Barnes x Reader)
Summary: Kinktober Day 19 - Creampie. Tryna take you out of me is like tryna get smoke out of wood. Or, you finally get your coveted profile from Staff Sergeant Robert Barnes (and then some.) | AO3 link.
Note: Follow-up to Got You Mounted on a Wall in the Back of My Mind. Female reader, but no other descriptors are used. Title comes from the song Gold Satin Dreamer by Nicole Dollanganger.
Word count: 2.4k
Warnings: Sexually explicit content involving vaginal sex, some degradation.
This could be the last time you see him, you reminded yourself as you watched him walking toward his group's bunks, the object of your journalistic interest, perhaps bordering on obsession at that point. One of the first pieces of advice your editor ever gave you echoed in your mind. 'You gotta be persistent, kid. Proactive. If you want something bad enough, you find a way to get it. You'll see how flexible the word 'no' can be.' Ethically dubious, but it had yet to steer you wrong.
"Sergeant Barnes!" you shouted, quick to throw your cigarette onto the muddy ground, as if that'd help you shoot your shot one last time.
He slowed down, but didn't quite stop until you reached his side. "What?"
"I'm leaving tomorrow. Headed back to Saigon."
"I heard."
"I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask one last time if you've changed your mind about the profile?"
He stood silent, unimpressed by your appeal.
"There's a brand new bottle of Jack Daniels with your name on it if you do."
"You allowed to give bribes?"
"Only when I'm desperate."
He took a long drag on his cigarette before finally nodding. "Alright."
You smiled, tempered and controlled for fear that showing too much excitement would only make him turn around and change his mind. You didn't have another month to wear him down. Though, for as much as you didn't know about him, which wasn't very much at all, really, you were certain Robert Barnes didn't do anything unless he wanted to. Watched him shirk Lieutenant Wolfe's questionable leadership and bark out his own, more competent orders on more than one occasion.
But it led to friction, resentment, insecurity, in-fighting, all of which you documented as if that was what Stateside readers wanted to see when they picked up their latest copy of The Hudson Tribune. A war being fought by burnouts and blowhards who hated each other almost as much as they hated the Viet Cong. A war with an enemy that embarrassed the world's foremost military power before eating breakfast. A war hard-pressed to produce household names like Audie Murphy or John Basilone—unless they were going on trial.
Glancing over at Barnes, you almost couldn't believe how intentional he seemed about everything he did. Even walking next to you, his long, confident strides didn't quite leave you in the dust, but you had to make a concerted effort to keep up with him, as if he wanted to see just how serious you were, how much you wanted it—wanted him.
The room was mostly packed up, save for a camera and two notebooks that sat on top of the table you'd been using as a desk for the past month. The ashtray wasn't yours, but just about every cigarette butt in it was. The rest of your belongings were stored away in your suitcase and backpack, ready to be brought back to Saigon with you the following day.
He didn't wait for an invitation to sit down. Helped himself to the more comfortable of the two chairs on either side of the table, his legs splayed out as if he owned the place, unreadable gaze fixed on you as you sat down across from him.
"Thank you for this. I know you have more important things to do, but I've been itching to sit down with the man in charge."
"You ain't confusin' me for the L-T now, are you?" he asked, snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray.
"He's a figurehead at best. Good on paper, but in practice?" You made a vague waving gesture with your hand, unsure of what you even meant by it. "Every war, every conflict has someone exactly like him—well-meaning, but way too in over his head to be in charge of anyone but himself."
"That your expert opinion?"
"More or less."
He scoffed. "What the hell's a girl like you runnin' around war zones for, anyways? Got a death wish?"
"We're supposed to be talking about you, Sergeant."
"I ain't that interestin' of a subject."
"Bullshit. I've spent the past month trying to learn as much as I can about you, and I've barely scratched the surface."
"That so?"
"Humor me, Sarge, please?" you implored, sticking your hand in your bag to grab the promised Jack Daniels.
He reached over like it was already his when you set the bottle on the table. "Go on and pick up your pen, then."
Born on the cusp of kudzu swallowing the South, Robert Barnes abandoned any semblance formal education at the age of thirteen, all but expected in a holler where veins of coal ran thicker and deeper through most families than blood.
As he spoke, it was clear he had long since squared that back-breaking work for pitiful pay had to be done by somebody, sweat and struggle were inevitable, and the only notion of fair he knew of set up shop with flashy tents and carnival rides once a year on county property. Among the chaos and entertainment, military recruiters set up a glossy table, looking to lure hard-working, hearty young men away from the coal company that otherwise had a monopoly on their futures. Why wait for a draft card when a new and exciting opportunity could be taken by the horns so much sooner?
A month before his twentieth birthday, he signed his life away to the institution amidst ringing bells and flashing fairground lights. Almost hesitant to write, you couldn't picture him in such a carefree, civilian environment, let alone as a young man. Figured he was birthed from the iron womb of a tank, fully formed as the battle-hardened soldier who sat before you. Hazarding a guess as to his age, you figured he must've been in the Army for at least a decade. Although from what Elias said, when he arrived in Vietnam in '65, Barnes had already been in country for about a year. Regardless, calling Barnes a Lifer was an understatement when being a soldier seemed to possess his very soul.
You lifted your gaze from the lined page, your chest heavy as you noticed his eyes searching for something in yours—like he expected judgment, and seemed almost suspicious of your lack of it.
"Is it alright if I take a picture of you to go with the profile?" you asked.
"I'll break your camera."
"You look rugged. It'll add to the mystique for readers back home when they pick up a copy."
"Yeah? What good's that gonna do when they read half my face got shredded by VC bullets? Landed me four months in an Army hospital in Manila and then some. That gonna inspire the limp dicks back in the States to come runnin' over here?"
"I only meant—"
"That sweet talkin' shit might work on Elias, but you're not gettin' one over on me," he snapped.
Your jaw clenched. Fine. If he didn't wanna play nice, you didn't have to either.
Lifting your camera, you barely had a chance to adjust the lens before he grabbed your wrist and squeezed until you dropped it back on the table with a pained gasp. He released his hold on you, his face unreadable as you glared at him.
"Sorry for wasting your time," you muttered, gathering your things from the table, so insulted you were ready to storm out of your own damn office. "Have a good night, Sergeant Barnes."
"Hang on," he said. "Lemme see what you wrote."
For as much as you wanted to deny him the satisfaction, you knew he wouldn't let you leave the room without getting his hands on your notes one way or another.
You threw your notebook in front of him, standing to his side with your arms folded over your chest as he perused what you'd written.
His face betrayed nothing of what he thought of your writing as he silently flipped through the pages, his steely gaze scanning each one with what appeared to be indifference until his grip on the neck of the bottle tightened, and for a split second you were almost certain he was going to take a swing and give you a scar to match his.
"Is there something wrong with what I wrote, Sergeant?" you asked.
"Read that for me," he said, pointing to a paragraph. "Right there."
One of few coherent statements you'd written about the man, centered among haphazard notes and musings based on your personal observations as well as gossip that'd been divulged to you by various sources over the past month.
Clearing your throat, you read off what you imagined would be your concluding statement on the man: "Staff Sergeant Robert Barnes isn't merely a soldier, he is the soldier. His natural habitat is a war zone, and to picture him in any other setting borders on obscenity. Commanding fear and respect among the platoon in equal measure, his competency and confidence certainly isn't bravado, but has been proven repeatedly against an almost spectral enemy. He is the epitome of the virile, hot-blooded American man whom every swaggering star from John Wayne to Warren Beatty so desperately try and ultimately fail to imitate."
His intense stare didn't break when you looked up from the paper.
"What do you want me to say?" you asked, knowing you wouldn't get anywhere playing it safe with him. "I wrote the truth."
Silence suffocated the space for a moment too long. You parted your lips to take in a breath, but his mouth was sooner on yours—a kiss that demanded your full attention, leaving you preoccupied with kissing him back, the way his scarred lips felt on yours, the taste of whiskey and tobacco on your tongue as he invaded your mouth. You put up no resistance.
Your only relief was temporary, as he stood up and grabbed you by the hips, his fingers digging into the skin almost painfully, like he wanted to break through the flesh and claim you from the inside. And you wanted him to. God, you really did.
"I'm on the pill," you strained.
"I know."
You didn't know how he knew, but the fact that he did sent something especially primal in you into overdrive, crashing your mouth against his, more teeth and tongue this time around, consumption rather than a kiss, accompanied by the faint tang of iron, desire in a rusty shade of pink exchanged between your mouths.
"Sergeant, I want you," you implored breathlessly. "I want everything you'll give me."
"You're sayin' that like you got a choice."
With this assertion, he pushed his cock inside you, your wet pussy taking him greedily despite his lack of decorum, the tense interview apparently all the foreplay you needed before he picked up a punishing pace, though you it occurred to you that he very well could have been holding back, and you'd never know for sure if he truly pushed you to your limit.
Digging your nails into his bare arms, you attempted to ground yourself, his warm body far more stable than the table that creaked and groan with his exertion, threatening to give out beneath you with each unforgiving thrust that brought you closer to the edge of what you found was a heady mix of pain and pleasure.
"Give it to me, Sarge," you pleaded. "Fuck, I'm—"
"You're a greedy lil' slut's what you are," he said. "Been followin' me around like a puppy all month 'cause you wanted my dick. You satisfied? Got what you wanted?"
"Yes!" you cried out, pleasure crashing over you in a wave of heat, your already sweat-drenched body feeling as though it was on fire you as you came, your pussy pulsing around his cock.
With an unforgiving thrust, he came—white-hot, deep, branding you his from the inside, so primal and intimate you clung to him after he emptied himself in you, not wanting to lose the feeling of fullness, of closeness, quite yet.
And he indulged you, at least for a moment or two more than you expected, bringing his hand to your temple, his thumb wiping away the sweat that gathered there.
Separating your bodies was almost painful. A whimper caught in your throat at the emptiness, the chill that rolled over your skin with the absence of his body heat despite the humidity that hung over Vietnam like a veil. Your mind was hazy as you became acutely aware of the aches in your muscles, fresh bruises threatening to appear on your skin, though, as he tucked his cock back into his pants, you noticed a fresh cut on his bicep.
"You're bleeding," you whispered. "I'm sorry."
He looked down at his arm, a slow trickle of blood oozing from one of the crescent-shaped indents you left in his skin. "You get one photo," he said, his voice husky. "Make it quick."
Scrambling for your camera, you took a deep breath, steadying your hands as he came into focus through the lens. Sweat dripping from his face, cigarette hanging from his lips, he almost looked like he'd come right out of combat. You only wished you had color film to capture the intensity of the storm in his blue eyes as he stared you down until the shutter clicked.
"See? Didn't break," you murmured as you lowered the camera.
He scoffed, though you would've sworn on a stack of Bibles you caught a hint of a smile before he drowned it with a swig of whiskey.
Glancing at notebook on the table, a newfound vulnerability panged at your heart, the contents feeling more like your personal diary rather than a profile for national circulation. All of what he told you could've been bullshit, you weren't that naive, but the picture was real, and even if none of it saw the light of day, you'd take it to the grave, and if you were prolific enough to have biographies written about you, made your mark in journalism for people to give a shit about your work after you were gone, they'd go through your things and endlessly speculate who this man was to you.
Hell, you weren't even sure.
But daring and sentiment twisted in your gut for a moment, and you placed a kiss on his scarred cheek. "Thank you, Sergeant," you said softly.
"Watch your ass gettin' back to Saigon," he drawled.
"I will."
