Forced Together? (Tankman x Female Reader)

Late Night Comfort

For the next 10 minutes, me and Stan tried our absolute hardest to wake Randy. But he wouldn't budge. With every attempt, his snoring only seemed to get louder, so we cut our attempts short to prevent anyone from discovering our position.

"Eh let him sleep, he'll have to deal with Tom in like an hour anyway."

"Gosh I hope T isn't too hard on him."

Stan cocked his head to the side. "Did Tom scare you into calling him T?"
I looked up at him surprised , but looked back down in shame, "...yeah."

Stan put his hand to his face and grumbled, "He has got to stop doing that, he's going to make people want to leave again."

"Leave where?"

"The other side"

I stepped back a bit. "People killed themselves just to get away from T?!" I tried my best to keep my voice hushed.

"Huh, what, no! I mean the other side, the enemy side."

"Oh I kinda forgot that in war there's an opposing side," I began to stare into space again. ",maybe T was right, maybe I and just dumb." I tried to distance myself from Stan, as if my stupidity would spread to him.

"Hey, don't beat  yourself up about it." Stan's voice softened as put his hand on my shoulder.
"It's your first day and Tom is just trying to make sure you know what you're doing. Sure, he's a bit commanding and demanding but he doesn't think there is another way to get the message across to people. Just try to do what he says to get on his good side, okay Y/N?"

"Thanks, I guess. I needed to hear that." I put my hand on the one that Stan had put on my shoulder and smiled.

He smiled back.

"Hey, do you want to take a turn sleeping now?"

"No I'd rather stay up with you honestly, like T said there's not a point in me sleeping during my shift."

"I guess you're right, do you want me to teach you how to shoot that thing in the meantime?"

"I would love that actually, I really need to know how to, since you never know when the enemy will come. You sure I'm not being too needy, I don't want to be a bother."

"Of course not! Now let's get started!"

For the rest of the hour Stan taught me how to fire and aim. I didn't really get to shoot since I might wake up the others, but I was okay with that.

When 1 o'clock rolled around, Stan's watch beeped and Tom got up and saw that Randy was still asleep. He quickly marched to him, but before waking him up he spoke.

"Couldn't get the newbie to get up huh." Tom laughed in a condescending way.

"Yeah, but good thing Y/N stayed awake. She did a good job." He smiled at me, I turned away shyly.

"Huh so you did." Tom stood in front of me, it appeared like his expression wasn't as mean as it was an hour prior. "Good job, I guess, for a newbie. Get some shuteye while I teach this guy never to sleep on the job." He kneeled down to get closer to Randy, laughing as he cracked his knuckles.

"Should we stop him?"

"Nah, consider it as a group initiation, Tom always does that. Helps to keep one on their toes."

"Okay but what if he scares him?"

"Eh, that guy will most likely see something worse during his time here, hopefully not tomorrow. But don't worry too much about it, rest up, you already lost like 6 minutes by dragging out this conversation."

"Ah sorry I just wanted to make sure he was going to be alright."

No response.
Stan's goggles began to slip, a sign that he was already asleep. I envy him, I gotta learn to go to sleep quickly.

I tried to sleep standing up, only having the sound of Tom uttering threats at Randy followed by frightened yelps and laughter.

I did manage sleep, surprisingly.