by J. P. Oliver
His Paladin
An MM Contemporary Romance
J.P. Oliver
Contents
Hello!
1. Quinn
2. Raine
3. Quinn
4. Raine
5. Quinn
6. Raine
7. Quinn
8. Raine
9. Quinn
10. Raine
11. Quinn
12. Raine
13. Quinn
14. Raine
15. Quinn
16. Raine
17. Quinn
18. Raine
19. Quinn
Raine
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His Paladin
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1
Quinn
Routine, they told me, was the only thing that could kill a tragedy. When Grace died, when the world shattered apart as I tried to hold her together with my hands, the only thing I could do was wake up the next morning. Make the bed. Fix breakfast and force myself to eat. Little things, little rituals, attempts at reassembling my life, one tiny piece at a time. Slowly but surely, I kept adding more. I brushed my teeth. Bought groceries. Turned on a TV. Started driving again. And eventually, when I finally had my feet back under me, had the framework of what almost looked like a life again, I headed back to work, where luckily for me, nothing on Earth hammered home routine like the U.S. Army.
I was up fifteen minutes before my alarm, as usual. Some habits you never really break, even when you should. I showered, shaved, and brushed my teeth. I made sure my uniform was in crisp order as I tugged it on and noted the Q in the stitching around my nametag, “Z. QUINN,” was coming slightly loose. I rooted around in the musty cardboard box in the hallway to find a lint roller for the final touches, and made yet another mental note to start actually putting things away as I walked past eight more identical musty boxes on my way out the door. It was relatively warm for pre-dawn mid-September, so I drove with the windows down towards the base. I pulled up to the gate right at 5:45 AM and made my way to the supply depot to prep for the morning’s arrival of new shipments, and took five minutes to myself to finish my typically terrible cup of coffee and watch the sun rise.
What they never told me was that routine doesn’t make a tragedy go away. It can’t. Nothing can. The scars it left on me were still as raw as the day it happened, clung to me like a ghost. But that, too, became part of the routine. My grief turned into background noise. The empty hole in my life was my new normal, just like the boxes that filled up the hallway that I kept screaming at myself to put away for years now.
Then, as the clerks started filing in and the shipments started to arrive, I didn’t have time to think anymore.
Being a Supply NCO meant three things: that I handled orders for every expendable piece of equipment from bed sheets to body armor, constantly monitored our inventory to ensure we had everything the base needed on hand, and that I was responsible for the personal wellbeing of three soldiers: Nguyen, Perez, and Miller. All of them were bright, followed orders, and performed their duties exceptionally well. I had no doubts they all had promising careers ahead of them, even though some days it felt an awful lot like babysitting three kids who could also drive forklifts.
The supply depot itself was a large warehouse, about half the size of a Lowes store and twice as well-organized, still big enough for three trucks to pull into simultaneously on exceptionally busy days. Shelves and shelves of supplies lined every row, stacked up to the top of the high ceiling. The other end of the building was our entrance proper, where soldiers on base could make requests at the counter. The tiny, cramped room that served as my personal office was on this end, across the hall from a small prep room where we could gather multiple requests together and store them until pick-up. When the loading bay doors were shut, it always smelled like a headache-inducing mix of shoe polish and fresh plastic, so I always made it a point to keep at least one of them partially up.
Today wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. We unloaded the supply truck, counted the manifest against what we received, and then started the long process of making sure everything was put into its proper place. Perez took care of monitoring the supply requests for the day, with Miller assisting fulfillment. Nguyen was working on equipment inspection, and I performed the unfortunately necessary task of filling out paperwork and entering the required information in our computer system. Busy, but it was a controlled kind of chaos, the kind that becomes second nature within a couple of weeks with a team that pulls its weight.
“Hey Sarge,” Nguyen called over his shoulder as the day wound down, finishing his examination of the last set of Interceptor body armor. “You decide on a place for our mandatory fun day yet?”
“Not yet,” I said, signing my name for what felt like the three-hundredth time and adding the newest piece of paper to the tall stack on my desk, finally, finally done. I hadn’t actually given much thought as to where I was going to take the three of them, even though the date for the day was rapidly approaching.
Seemingly satisfied with his inspection, Nguyen placed the armor in a small pile to his left and turned all the way around to look at me, grinning in a way that was highly reminiscent of a six year old well aware they were flirting with trouble.
“I still can’t see why we can’t head over to that new place that opened up downtown,” he said plaintively, knowing very well why we absolutely could not. “You remember when I brought in the brochure, right?” He waggled his eyebrows. “Centerfolds?”
I stared him right in the eye. “No.”
He laughed and mock pouted. “Aw, but Perez said she’d be all right with it.” He craned his neck to give Perez a lopsided look. “Right, P?”
“As long as all of you agree to go wearing matching mankinis,” she replied without missing a beat, her eyes glued to the most recent supply manifest, tapping a pen against every line.
Miller snorted, gathering his last bundle of uniforms and hanging them on the rack behind the supply counter. “I don’t think mine fits anymore.”
Perez glanced up at him, the corner of her mouth quirked in a small smile. “Shame.”
“Mine does,” Nguyen piped up.
“That’s enough,” I told them, holding up my hand, and the chatter came to a quick end. It had taken me less than a week to learn all I needed to know about when to step in before things got out of hand. I stood from my chair, in front of my desk. “Sitrep of where we’re at today, please, before I head out.”
The three of them turned away from their activities to give me their full attention, falling in a line in front of me, Nguyen in its center.
“Twenty-seven OCPs accounted for from this morning, Sergeant Quinn,” Perez informed me. “That should be all the new uniform requests.”
I nodded. “Nguyen?”
“Chicken plates are poking through a couple of the vests but most of them look in order, Sarge.”
“Mark those down in the system,” I told him, and watched the corners of his mouth turn down. Unlike me, Nguyen rarely had enough patience for the computer we used. “Be sure to get them to repair staff before you leave today.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Miller?”
He checked his own list briefly, nodding. “Orders A5432 through A5441 confirmed received and delivered. PFC Charles hasn’t come in for pic
kup for A5442, but it’s ready to go whenever he does.”
“Good.” I took a moment to look the three of them over, and then added, “Great work today. All of you.”
Nguyen blinked. “Wow, Sarge,” he said after a brief pause, amazed. “I think that’s the most you’ve ever said to me without yelling. And the nicest stuff you’ve ever said to me, period. Seriously. It’s making me tear up.”
Before I could reply and politely ask Nguyen to give me twenty, Miller and Perez somehow managed to elbow him in the ribs in perfect synchronization. He winced, the air leaving his lungs in a startled huff, shooting them both a quick glare as they continued to stare straight ahead. I pretended not to notice.
“Dismissed,” I told them, returning their parting salutes, and then I headed back to my car to drive home to my apartment, where I planned to make my awful attempts at dinner, watch an hour’s worth of news, browse the internet, pretend to read a book, and then go to sleep and try to figure out how to kill time until I had to go to work again. Same as it ever was. Lather, rinse, repeat.
As I waited in the line of cars outside the gate, with nothing to look at but brake lights, half-listening to the soft notes of an old song drifting out of the radio, I couldn’t help but feel more than a little melancholy at what my evenings had become.
It’s the little things that keep you alive, keep you sane. But even the best medicine can kill you, if you take too much. My commitment to building back a routine had saved me -- of that I was damn sure. I had clung to it like a drowning man in a storm, and thanks to it, I had survived the unthinkable. Now, though, I felt like it was dragging me down: a weight around my neck, pulling me back under.
Not that I had ever been the life of the party or anything, but I had certainly done more...before, with Grace. Walks in the park. Movies with friends. Learning something new.
I had forgotten how to be spontaneous, in my quest to get my life back together, and it had dulled a part of me that maybe was more important than I thought. There was an uneasy restlessness now, churning in the back of my mind. I needed something, but I didn’t have any clue as to what.
Traffic coming home was awful: a sudden, heavy rainstorm combined with typical Fayetteville rush hour made everything far worse than usual only five minutes into my route home. Bored, I let my eyes wander to the sides of the highway. With my max speed at what felt like an inch every fifteen minutes, I could actually read the billboards for once.
The one on the left was new, an eye-catching red and gold. In the center were two large armored knights, one with a shock of blue feathers sprouting out of the top of their helmet, the black and silver armor of his opponent spiked on the shoulders. Their swords clashed together in a dramatic spray of sparks, illustrated on the sign by a set of flashing bulbs.
“Fight for the realm at Lochmire Castle!” it read, in a font that vaguely resembled medieval-style calligraphy. “Fierce combat, fantastic stories -- real adventure!”
Huh. Well, it caught the eye, at least.
The traffic eventually cleared, leaving the remainder of my commute back uneventful. I put together a not-so-bad assemblage of microwave green beans and slab of pork for dinner. My usual hour of news wasn’t holding my interest, and the image of that billboard wouldn’t leave my mind. Proof of effective advertising, I supposed. I sat down at my computer, typed in “Lochmire Castle” into my browser’s search bar.
The first result looked official. Clicking on it revealed lots of images of people dressed in robes or armor, the leather kind and what also appeared to be metal, some of them swinging what looked like the foam covered weapons from American Gladiators at each other on some giant battlefield. Was this some kind of historical reenactment thing, maybe? I couldn’t make heads or tails out of whatever was going on from what I was seeing, but all of the more candid pictures featured plenty of smiling faces. I was surprised, too, at the myriad of different people I was seeing: men and women, a range of ages from kids to seniors.
“Adventure awaits!” the site proudly proclaimed, in that same overly ornate font as the billboard. “Battle for the glory of the kingdom, explore the unknown, and live out your greatest fantasies!”
Whatever the hell that meant.
An image of Nguyen dressed from head to toe in medieval armor, running around in a grassy field flashed in my mind’s eye, and I couldn’t help but grin. Perez was always willing to try something new, and Miller had let slip he was a bit of a military history buff. All three of them would be ecstatic at the prospect of swinging objects at each other. Our mandatory fun day activity might just have been found.
There was plenty of information on the site, but I ignored it, scrolling down to view the address near the bottom. Something like this I definitely had to see for myself and get an explanation in person. I had Saturday mornings off, which gave me plenty of time tomorrow to see what was actually going on over there.
Besides, there was something really appealing about something so unabashedly different, so far away from the mundane.
If what I really needed was a break in routine, I couldn’t get much better than whatever was going on at Lochmire Castle.
2
Raine
I could feel Nicole practically vibrating with impatient excitement as she sat on the chair. At last, I finished brushing her unruly brown hair, so similar to my own, into something almost manageable, snapping a glitter encrusted barette to secure it away from her face. Her hair successfully kept out of her eyes -- for the moment, at least -- I walked around in front of her, holding an ornate crown aloft in my hands, chipped gold paint and plastic jewels sparkling in the sunlight.
“All right, her Highness the Princess Nicole --”
“Dad,” she sighed, in the only way an utterly exasperated seven year old could, “my princess name is Elora.”
“A thousand pardons, my liege.” I bowed, low, and Nicole hid a giggle behind her hand. “Her Highness the Princess Elora, ruler of all of Lochmire, beloved by her people --”
“Dad.”
“-- paragon of strength and beauty --”
“Dad!” She threw her head back dramatically, rolling her eyes -- theatrics ran strong in my gene pool -- but she was also amused, flashing a smile with two recently missing teeth.
“Okay, okay.” I smiled back at her, slowly and reverently placing the crown on top of her head. She peered up at me, her face drawn into her best attempt at a regal expression. “The Princess Elora is now officially ready to make the journey to her hallowed home, Lochmire Castle.”
“Finally,” Nicole said happily, practically leaping off her chair. She took a second to ensure her periwinkle dress wasn’t about to get stuck on anything as she bounded towards the door.
“Hang on,” I called after her, and was answered with a loud, frustrated sigh. I double-checked the kitchen, gathering what I needed, running through my mental checklist: lunch bags for both of us, paperwork I had gone over at home I needed to bring back, that special effects supply catalog --
“Dad!” I heard Nicole tugging on the doorknob.
“Sorry, all done,” I told her, praying I wasn’t forgetting anything. I walked towards the door, handed Nicole our lunch bags, and scooped up my chainmail armor from where it sat in the foyer, hefting it to join the pile of everything else. I stuffed all of it into the trunk, checked to ensure Nicole was wearing her seatbelt in the back, and started the engine.
One quick car ride later, we arrived at Lochmire Castle, my little shop of supplies, armor, and weapons -- the foam tipped kind, of course -- and a dedicated play location for live-action role-playing. An activity otherwise known as LARPing, or “pretend for grown-ups,” as Nicole liked to explain it.
Lochmire was one small but proud nation in the fictional world of Juhanis, which spanned the entire continental U.S. Lochmire was lucky enough to be supported by a large and passionate local community that gave me enough business to stay afloat, not to mention plenty of games to participate in. We were
all about sword and sorcery, fantastic adventures, acting as different characters who were the chosen defenders against the forces of evil, that kind of thing. Sure, it’s not the most typical hobby, but it’s more fun than most people think. Everyone needs a break from reality every once in a while, and sometimes that comes in the form of putting on some armor and smacking someone else dressed as a goblin with a foam sword while shouting stuff like, “Verily!”
The field was still wet and the sky still overcast from yesterday’s rain, but the sun still managed to poke through the clouds every so often. It was steadily getting cooler, almost perfect weather for wearing heavy armor and running around in the woods.
“Incoming!” I called inside, propping the door open with my hip and bracing it with my foot. Nicole scampered past me at full speed with a delighted squeal. She rounded the corner of the short entry hallway, and I followed behind, watching her leap straight into the arms of DeMarcus Leroux -- better known by his preferred nickname, Roux -- my only employee and dedicated co-conspirator, who was standing in front of our newest display rack of leather and foam shields. He hoisted her up for a brief twirl, much to her loud elation, before setting her back onto the ground.
“Your Highness!” he said with a brief bow, laughing, and Nicole elegantly curtsied in reply. Seeing me heavily laden down with stuff, he quickly approached to assist, but I shook my head, moving in to lay it all out on the counter.
“How’d the grand battle go?” I asked, trying to sort everything in a way that was slightly less haphazard and doing a pretty dismal job. “Was the Last Alliance enough to save Juhanis?”
