The Expendables One Shots and Imagines

Bruises - Part 1 - Gunnar x Reader

"Gunnar. I'd like you to meet someone." Barney said, as the big Swede walked into his makeshift office in the hangar. The blonde's eyes growing wide in disbelief, as the person that Barney wanted him to meet, rose from the chair and turned to face him.

"(Y/n)?"

"Hello, Gunnar. Its nice to see you again." The woman replied, a soft tentative smile pulling at the corner of her lips as she looked up at the big man.

"You two know one another?" Barney asked, as he came around the desk to stand by (Y/n)'s side. Feeling slightly confused as he noticed the shell shocked look on Gunnar's face.

"I think that you could say that. We knew one another very well a long time ago." (Y/n) replied. It obvious that Gunnar seemed briefly too dumbstruck to talk.

"What's going on? What are you doin here, (Y/n)?" Gunnar suddenly demanded to know. The big man shaking himself from his momentary shock. It now clear that he was far from happy about seeing the woman.

"Er......(Y/n) is the new recruit I was tellin you guys about. The one that Tool, and I have been working on talking into joining us for months. She should be perfect......."

"No!" Gunnar exclaimed. Now glaring at (Y/n).

"She joins, ya won't see me again. Its her or me." The now irate man added, before turning and leaving the office. The whole room rattling, as he slammed the door behind him.

"I knew that this was a bad idea. I thought after all this time he would have forgiven me. But obviously not. I'm sorry Barney. It was a great idea, but I think I should go. I don't want to make things complicated, and Gunnar was here first." (Y/n) sighed, as she reached for her pack on the back of the chair, only to find her wrist caught by Barney's hand.

"We could really do with you, (Y/n). So, why don't ya tell me what tha hell is goin on with you two and let me decide." Barney said. Not failing to see the glint of a tear that was forming in the corner of her eye. (Y/n) sighing again as she took a seat.

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Gunnar kicked open the door to his apartment. Dropping the bottles wrapped in their plain brown paper bags onto the sofa, before making his way over to the kitchen to retrieve a glass. He was going to get drunk. He was going to get stinking drunk. So drunk that he would forget the bruises that she had left behind. He had done it once before, and he would do it again. Numb the pain that she had left him in.

He never thought that he would see her again. But he wasn't surprised that her skills had drawn Tool and Barney to her. She was good at what she did. No, strike that. She was amazing at what she did. And that was one of the reasons that he had loved her. And seeing her face again, even after all this time, his reaction to it, proved that he was still in love with her. And despite himself, he knew he always would be.

Gunnar had never and would never admit it to the others that he was so foolishly weak. He had let them believe that it was because of his time in the service, what he had seen and done that had sent him scurrying to the bottle. To the drugs. Yet he knew that that was not the case. That the real reason he had tried to kill all his emotions with his addictions, was because of (Y/n). Because she had said, no.

Gunnar slumped onto the sofa, placing the glass on the coffee table, before pulling the first bottle from its brown paper disguise. Ah, twelve year old scotch. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it in style. He was going to show her. Prove that he didn't need her. And how could she come back after all these years and say that it was nice to see him again? After all they had been to one another, it was just nice to see him.

Carefully, he unscrewed the cap of the bottle. The heady scent of the fine liquor filling his sense, as he poured himself a large glass, and looked at it. Time. What was it about time? On one hand it could be fleeting, passing quicker than you wanted it to. On the other, a moment could seem to last a lifetime. Sometimes you wished that you could turn it back so that you could return to special moments in your life. And then other times you longed to be able to make it go forward so that you didn't have to face your current situation. But no matter what we may think or want, time is a law unto itself, and there was nothing that any of us could do to alter that. Well, that was what Gunnar had always thought. Yet (Y/n) had somehow managed to defy that rule. She had managed to stop it and turn it back the hands of the clock in one foul swoop, just by smiling at him.

Their relationship had started off innocuous enough. The discrete touch of a hand. A secret smile here and there. Then the next thing he knew, they were in her bed. (Y/n)'s body writhing under his as she moaned out his name, begging him not to stop. And Gunnar had done the one thing that he never thought he would do. He lost his heart.

When she had been injured on a job, he thought that he would go insane. That if she died, then he wanted nothing more than to join her. That life wasn't worth living if (Y/n) wasn't in the world anymore. Yet when he had burst through the doors of the hospital, she had been alive. Badly hurt, but alive. And Gunnar had decided that there was no better time than then to tell her how he really felt. To ask her the question that he had wanted to ask her, for the whole time that they had been together. Yet, when he had asked her the question, she had said, no. And so, the bruises had been permanently beaten into his heart. Bruises that were once again fresh and painful.

He knew that he shouldn't have blamed her. She had had a glittering career. She was younger than him by a number of years, with a fantastic life ahead of her. And she had tried to explain her decision. Tried to tell him that she loved him as much as he loved her. But they had made her an offer that she would have been an idiot to refuse. An offer that he knew that he couldn't compete with. So, when he had left the hospital, he had gone back to her apartment and cleaned out his stuff before he had to face her again. Before she could bruise him anymore. And then he had crawled into a bottle. Not giving a damn about anything anymore. And here he was again. The same screwed up fool, feeling sorry for himself. Happy to throw everything away again in an attempt to heal the bruises. So, what would be his decision? The bottle or the bruises. The bruises or the bottle.