BtVS/Firefly: "The Army Chaplain" (Mal/Caleb, NWS)

[alixtii]

Title: The Army Chaplain
Fandom: Buffy/Angel/Firefly/Serenity
Pairing: Mal/Caleb
Rating: NWS
Summary: The Shepherd is dining on lamb tonight.

The Army Chaplain

Imagine with me a moon orbiting a planet orbiting a star far from here, years from now: a new resting home for the human race, and one of many fronts in an interplanetary civil war. You will be familiar with this war, although not with this particular battle on this particular moon. Its name is Rosalind.

Imagine with me a young man on that planet, twenty-one years old, a soldier in that war, a newly-minted sergeant. You will be familiar with that man, or at least who he will become. His name is Malcolm.

Imagine with me another man on that planet, older, a chaplain in the same army in which young Malcolm serves. You will be familiar with that man as well, but from a different time and place. His name is Caleb.

*

The young man who enters the chaplain's tent is troubled. He is not troubled by the death and destruction which surrounds him, or at least not directly. It is not his first battle; on the contrary, he is already a seasoned veteran. He has seen many men and women die. But still he is uneasy. His faith is challenged.

The tide in the war has turned, and the Independents--the good guys--are losing.

"Take off your clothes, son," the chaplain instructs him.

The sergeant just looks at the chaplain. "I don't understand, Shepherd," he says at last.

"Don't be afraid," the chaplain answers, kindly. "We were each of us created naked. No better than the birds and the beasts, when you think of it. Just animals, to roll in the mud. There isn't anything we do that they can't. Even wage a war on each other, like we do here: there are ants who do the same."

The animals didn't get themselves off of Earth-that-Was, the sergeant thinks but does not say.

The chaplain continues: "Do not be ashamed by what you are, Malcolm."

The sergeant thinks he understands. He has been too proud, and pride is a sin. He takes off his brown coat, his shirt and trousers. He pauses before he takes off his underpants, but the chaplain nods and he removes them as well.

"On your knees," the chaplain commands, "and pray."

The sergeant nods and obeys. Here he is, naked and on his knees, humbled before the Lord God and the Shepherd of the Lord God, reminded of his place, of his human weakness, of his inconsequence in the Divine Plan. "Our father, who art in heaven," he begins.

As he does so the chaplain walks around him, bends down behind him. He places one hand on the sergeant's shoulder, the other one around his dick, which almost instantly grows hard at the touch. It's been a long time since someone else's hand has been there. The sergeant doesn't lean sly, and women can be good lovers or good soldiers, but hardly ever both at the same time--and right now he needs the latter more than the former.

He gets as far as "deliver us from" before he comes, his seed spilling onto the ground. He finishes the prayer, his breath heavy.

The chaplain doesn't let go of the sergeant's dick, but keeps a grip on it the way the sergeant does on his gun when he's in battle. The chaplain's other hand slides across Mal's back and down his side until it rests on his ass. "There are powers in this universe far greater than us, Malcolm," he says, "and a meaning beyond our comprehension. It is our choice if we are to be an instrument of their will, or if we will make them work for us."

*

The war will last many more years, and not until it ends will Malcolm's faith be totally lost.