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[johnnytruantt]

All too soon, it was over. Which was something Noah never thought he’d say when it came to getting stitches and probably never in a million years would think again. Unless he could somehow get Atticus to be his personal nurse and then maybe Noah would get hurt more often just to have those thin little hands working him over. He tried to abstain from the terrible thoughts that came with the idea of personal nurse, and kept his face a blank slate when his mind was reeling with the possibilities. Maybe the pain, the exhaustion of the night and the bright white lights that had been shining in his eyes for the better part of half an hour had made him a little...loopier than he thought. Luckily, though, Atticus seemed to buy into his charm, and that was all that really mattered to Noah. It seemed to him that the nurse was moving deliberately slow. It could have all been in his head, but it almost seemed like Atticus wanted the encounter to last longer just like Noah did, making his confidence, his grin and his ego grow only a little bit larger (if it was altogether even possible). 

Noah looked up while the nurse wiped around the stitches. By now, the anesthesia had really worn off and he could feel the cooling swab on his skin, which was boiling hot from the puncturing and pulling and tearing of the needle that was only there to stitch his skin back together. He couldn’t bring himself to grimace or wince, he couldn’t even pretend like he was upset that his anesthesia had worn off before Atticus was finished. All he could do was stare up at him with his giant brown eyes and grin. “Sounds like you had a long day,” he mumbled along. His chest felt like it was expanding and he could feel the rushing of his blood through his veins. He could tell. Noah knew it was coming, that moment when Atticus would finally agree to drinks. Maybe not tonight like he wanted, maybe not for a couple days depending on how shy he really was. But he was going to say yes and it was making Noah’s face split into an eager grin unlike any he’d made during the entire visit. 

“Drinks,” Noah repeated and for a moment, he couldn’t believe his luck. His charm and his confidence came easy and Noah wouldn’t lie and say he had difficulty picking guys up at say, a night club, and getting them to come with him right then and there. But the fact that Atticus was so willing to come along for drinks after work tonight, made his entire body feel like it was ten times lighter than it really was and his smile couldn’t be contained. “I can do drinks tonight,” he said, nodding. Hell, he could do drinks any night for those sleepy eyes and that timid little smile, but Noah wasn’t about to admit that out loud for fear of sounding like a complete fucking creep. “You said you get off in another thirty minutes? That gives me enough time to go home and shower and change into clothes that I haven’t been wearing all night at a gross night club,” Noah said.

When he attempted to sit up, he immediately felt like laying back down. But he powered through the way blood rushed up to his head, swinging his legs over so he was sitting. Noah instinctively ran a finger along the stitches he’d just been given, looking at Atticus with the biggest grin. “Yeah, I know, no touching, don’t worry, I got it,” he said, nodding before sliding off the bed so he was standing. Atticus didn’t seem like that short of a man when he’d been laying on the hospital bed, but now that he was standing, he was a tiny thing compared to Noah. Everyone was, of course, but that didn’t stop Noah from finding it absolutely endearing as hell. “Why don’t I give you my number and then you can call me when you’re done work and I’ll come pick you up. For drinks. I know a nice bar that’ll serve two tired souls,” Noah said, running his hand back through his hair. He could feel dried blood (how did it even get there?) and the sweat of a long night and felt entirely too gross to be trying to hit on guys like he was.

He wanted to give Atticus his number because he still wasn’t sure. What if the nurse gave him the phone number to some dumb hotline and the entire time he’d been faking how into him he was? Noah didn’t want to risk it. Not when the man in front of him looked so positively adorable in his scrubs with his tired, tired eyes. So instead he held his hand out for a pen and raised his eyebrows in a friendly manner. 

Cold Clocked

Deftly skilled hands secured another stitch before moving onto the last two. And there was a part of him that wanted to slow down, maybe make the last few stitches take a little longer. If he could stretch out time with a patient that he actually, sort of, liked, there would be less time to deal with the ones he didn’t want to deal with (and in turn, didn’t want him). It was so tempting to slowly ease the needle through, pull the last few stitches in at a snails pace. All so he could selfishly enjoy the company of the first person to make him actually crack a smile in recent memory. But the anesthetic would wear off pretty quickly, way too fast for Atticus to really enjoy any time with the man.

His eyes never strayed from his work, and his voice had soften quite considerably from it’s usual harsh tone of pure annoyance. Over worked and underpaid did that to a person, not that many had a lot of sympathy for Atticus or anyone else in his profession. “I’m…” he began, teeth seizing his bottom lip as he focused on tying off the fourth stitch, “cautiously admitting that you’re a little charming.” He’d given up on trying to fight against the muscles in his cheeks. Not just because it was hardly possible but also because his eyes would give him away. Sad, but expressive. Round and tired looking, but they always gave him away. His ex had told him that much. Atticus could fake a smile, but he couldn’t fake the dull resentment in his eyes. He had to figure it worked both ways.

It was an odd feeling, to be so entertained with blood on the finger tips of his gloves. Pulling a man’s skin back together was routine and boring to him, but the man beneath it had managed to make his day a little better. “And I’m on the last stitch, so you’re getting closer to two minutes. Tops. Atticus had already made up his mind. Even as Noah rambled on (as if he could possibly be less charming), the nurse was already picturing himself jotting his number down on the corner of his chart, tearing it off, and slipping it into the giant hands laced across his chest. It was something Atticus could honestly say he’d never done before. Other nurses, sure (thought it had been a while). Doctors? Once, and it had ended three years later with Atticus sleeping in a car that he no longer had for two weeks. He’d never do that again. But this was new territory and he could feel nerves bubbling in his throat.

It might have been Noah’s laugh that sealed the deal for him. Loud and hardy that seemed to brighten the entire grim, white room. Even if it did shake his whole body, and along with it the bed beneath him—maybe even the ground. “Lucky I wasn’t stitching yet,” Atticus said, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull out his stern tone and expression. Atticus moved his tools to the side, placing them gently on the sterile, metal table at his side. If he just took the time to clean the wound, blood that had seeped through and dried around the stitches, he could extend this just a little while longer. Just a few extra minutes because the more time Noah spent being charming, the easier it was for Atticus to let go of rules and ethics that he should have lived by.

“I was just going to go home after work,” he mumbled, moving a sterile whip over the wound. For a brief second, he let his eyes move down to Noah’s. “I’ve been here for ten hours, you know? And I don’t get off for another half.” With the area clean, he could finish the last stitch, to his thinly veiled disappointment. “But,” he continued, positioning the instruments to take hold of the next stitch, “it was a long night.” He wasn’t sure if Noah’s invitation was for the night or some vague point in time in the near future. And though he knew he had to clock right back in to work at ten the next morning, Atticus wanting nothing more than a rum and coke in a strangers company.

“I could probably use a drink… or two.”

[johnnytruantt]

Despite the fact that Jace was taller than Graham (he could see that now with the way the other man was leaning himself against the banner, looking a hundred times more at ease than Jace did), he didn’t feel nearly as big as him. Once again, Jace caught Graham’s eyes wandering over him, easier now by the way he stood just slightly above him. It made his chest swell and something inside him burn, in such a good way. He’d never found himself unattractive, but Jace wasn’t fooling himself into thinking he was the best looking guy at the party they’d both just abandoned. Maybe Graham liked low hanging fruit. Either way, he felt a warmth of sexual appetite rise through his body at the way his potential lovers eyes swept appreciatively over the body Jace had always worked hard to keep as tight as he possibly could. “Pretty sure you know what kind of somewhere,” Jace said, with a teasing smile. “I bet you’re very cute with your beer brewing,” he shot back as quickly as he could, hoping that he was staying on pace with Graham’s easy, ping pong conversation and flirting. 

Jace might have made the first contact before, with his fist just lightly grazing against Graham’s chest, but that had been playful. Could be written off easily. The way Graham’s hand snaked toward him, just barely grazing his side before it settled on his lower back--Jace hoped that he couldn’t feel the shiver that ran up his spine. There was no saying no at this point and Jace didn’t want to. He wanted to lunge forward and kiss him already, because he knew where these things were leading to, he wanted to feel that hand on his chest instead and his own on Graham’s thighs. Thoughts of a bed and tangled sheets and the awkward dance of finding out who would be topping and bottoming, and who cared when it could be either of them for all Jace gave a fuck. He wanted to taste this beer Graham made and then taste it on his lips. That was what Jace wanted and he wanted to stop taking it cautiously slow. But he also couldn’t bear to try and speed things forward, propel themselves to the car and hopefully to Graham’s, where Jace would be able to pull off his clothes and show him the body he was obviously desperate to see.

Graham’s focus was on his cell phone, something other than Jace for the first time since they’d starting speaking and he felt like it was easier to make decisions without that clever gaze on him. “I’m kinda interested to see how much longer you can possibly flirt with a guy,” Jace said his hand finding Graham’s forearm as it rested on the bannister. He rested it there, lightly, his thumb brushing a tiny circular design into his arm, eyes on the cell phone that he had procured from his pants, wondering who he could be texting. Hopefully not some boyfriend or girlfriend, hopefully Graham was a good person of some sort, not that it mattered if all this was leading to was sex. Jace still wanted--or hoped?--that Graham wasn’t the sort to cheat on someone else. He’d been the other guy with that sort of stuff and it never made him feel good. But Jace was also, probably, looking for a reason to say no when he desperately wanted to say yes.

“You know, let me text the guys that picked me up,” Jace said, pulling his own cell phone out. “Going to grab beer with a guy from the party,” he said aloud as his fingers swiped over the phone’s touch keyboard. He added a sleazy looking emoticon, a thumbs up emoji and hit sent to the group chat of all the players he was in. Before he could even lock his phone, he was getting texts of congrats back and one reminding him to wear a condom. He grinned before sliding it into his back pocket. When he stepped forward, there was no gap between them anyway. His thighs just barely touched Graham’s, their chests merely inches apart, Jace’s face so close to Graham’s if they wanted to, they could kiss already.

“So take me to your place?” he offered.

Party Fouls

There was always a recognizable pattern when it came to hook ups. And Graham could always tell within five minutes of a conversation if it was going to happen or not. Not to sound cocky or anything, but he did pretty okay for a guy with looks that ranged from average to downright goofy depending on how late he’d gotten to the party. He knew girls took a little more energy and effort and that he was never going to leave with the hottest one in the room, but as far as he could tell he always took home one of the most fun ones. Guys seemed just a little more appreciative of his brand of charm. Especially, it seemed, guys like Jace.  He didn’t have to try to impress them, he just had to be cute and that got him a lot further than most people would imagine.

He figured a while ago that they both knew where this litter interaction was heading—someone’s car, someone’s house, someone’s bed.  And now the game had begun. The competition to see who would fold and be the first to suggest it. It was an amusing back and forth and Graham wondered if Jace had even realized that it was all a game.

“Yeah, I brew my own shit,” Graham nodded, grinning at the fist pressed lightly against his chest, “Started a few years ago. I’ve gotten pretty good I think.” It was barely contact, really. Just a gentle nudge, absentminded at best. And at the same time it was the final crack in a damn, opening a floodgate that made Graham even more determined to make this happen. Jace’s hand withdrew and Graham didn’t miss the opportunity to lean in just a little closer. Enough to let his fingers wrap around the railing and let all of his weight push down on one palm.

“Gentlemen don’t have agendas,” he teased, “What makes you think I’m trying to get somewhere?” His movements were fluid and well-practiced, as he let his body shift to the side. His hip hit the bannister where his hand had been as his arms folded loosely across his chest. Jace was taller, ne noticed for the first time having to look up to catch his eyes.

“Just out of curiosity though,” he asked, “What kind of somewhere are we talking about?” He couldn’t help the tiny voice of hesitation in the back of his head as it reminded him to slow down, take it easy. Jace seemed young and maybe not ready to go there just yet. But his eyes roamed over the baseball player’s body one more time. They admired the way his t-shirt fell on his frame, forming faint outlines of muscles in the fabric. The long arms and sturdy hands. The way denim hugged his legs…

He couldn’t stop the voice, but he could make it smaller. Shrink it down to a tiny squeak and lock it away in some unused and forgotten space that was easy enough to ignore. “I mean, I’ve got beer at my place,” he shrugged. Graham nodded his head in what he guessed might be the general direction of his car, “Better than anything they’ve got here and you can see how cute I am when I’m showing off my set up. Which, if I’m honest, is really fucking adorable.” It all came so easy for him, like riding a bike or something. It didn’t escape him that someday, someone was going to slap him in the face for being so damn cocky. But hopefully that wouldn’t be tonight.

One hand snaked around to his back pocket while the other slid slowly down the rail, cutting through the tiny space left between them. His fingers grazed against soft t-shirt fabric before setting just behind Jace’s back. “If you want,” he added quickly, hoping he didn’t sound too much like a total creep. Graham slid his phone out of his pocket and glanced down at the screen. It was closer to one in the morning than it was to midnight and his fingers were already itching to text Louise. “Or I can just keep flirting with you until you’re either tired of me or tired of the crappy music. Whichever comes first.”

[johnnytruantt]

“Well I got all this personable friendliness from Doc Win, so she might stop liking me soon. I’ll cherish it now,” Ryleigh said with an open grin as Milo lowered himself onto the couch, her eyes never leaving him no matter how badly they wanted to roam and take in her surroundings. She couldn’t help but notice the way he braced himself, how he had to ease into the position. Milo wasn’t the same man he had been in Vietnam, loping around the base and playing basketball with the younger soldiers, all cocky grins and abrasive openness. But he was still Milo, and Ryleigh felt a need to feel his chest against hers again in a hug that would never end. All things considered, they had always been affectionate toward each other, even overseas. They had become friends quickly. Maybe Milo had seen the challenge that was making Nurse Babe smile and risen to the call and maybe Ryleigh had seen something in Milo that made her feel safe and happy, comfortable even. But Ryleigh could count on one hand how many times Milo had hugged her. And now she absolutely ached for it.

For some reason, knowing that Milo had missed her as much as she had missed him made her feel warm. Maybe not happy. It was hard to feel happy. That exploding happiness that had broken her ribs open and ripped her heart right out on the porch of his house (his parents house?) while they hugged seemed distant and far away, even then, as he leaned closer to her. “I missed you a lot, Milo,” she murmured, eyes trailing from his gaze to his chin and throat and chest as she felt his arm brush against hers. What a strange thing, she thought, to be touched in a way that didn’t feel demanding or harsh. It was hitting her all over again that it had been two years when really it felt like yesterday. Every night she fell asleep she was right back in Vietnam, with warm blood all over her fingers while she held them over a hole in some boys torso. Right back in Vietnam where the ground was as red as the sun and her shoulders were burning and peeling from its harsh exposure. Her dreams kept her overseas and consequently, had kept her from moving on. Two years had passed and those two years had felt more like a dream than her nightmares ever had. 

But Milo’s mother was back, carrying glasses in small hands, looking more motherly than Ryleigh thought it was possible for one person to look. She quickly tried to avert her gaze from Milo to his mother, smiling as softly as she could still manage. If there was any more softness inside her, she’d muster it for the woman across from her. She took the glass outstretched to her, grinning at her dismissal of Milo’s attempts to help. There was something oddly amusing about watching the giant man beside her be quelled by such a small and delicate looking thing. The second she left, Ryleigh would have to tell Milo how much she already found herself adoring his mother. “Yeah, sorry about this,” Ryleigh said, looking to him and then her. She brushed her bangs over her eyebrow, hoping Milo’s mother hadn’t yet seen the bruise that Milo had homed in on so quickly. “It was kind of a spontaneous decision and well, I missed Milo, so,” she trailed off, taking a sip of the lemonade quickly in order to shut herself up. 

She was glad for it, because the mention of her parents made Ryleigh’s body tense quickly and she fought to make it relax, looking up from over the glass. Once upon a time, Ryleigh had been terrible at lying. In fact, it had been laughable at best. But now, Ryleigh was an artisan in the act of it and her smile was perfect and practiced as she lowered the glass from her lips. “Definitely,” she replied, almost laughing as she settled the glass of lemonade between her thighs. “They weren’t sure how to handle it when I came home, I think they were just so happy for me to be there again.” Her hand roamed to Milo’s arm and held on, like she was trying for a life line. She did it unconsciously, or so she would like to think, or maybe she wanted to steal some of the strength she knew the old war vet had and use it in trying to find a way to explain her parents without lying. But lying was needed, at least to Milo’s mother, because she didn’t want to make things awkward. How did she tell someone she just met that her parents had done nothing but pretend like Vietnam was a summer vacation to Brazil?

“It’s so nice to meet you too, Mrs. Savage. Milo talked about you in some of his letters,” she said, changing subjects as quickly as she could, taking a small sip from the lemonade. “And this is really good, by the way,” she complimented, grinning. “I’m really sorry I didn’t say anything about coming by. I’ll only be here an hour or so, I promise, even earlier if you need me to,” she waved her hand unable to say leave because she didn’t want to. Sitting there on that couch with her hand holding onto Milo’s arm, there was no where Ryleigh wanted to be but there.

Home Is Where You Are

She was nervous. She was always nervous. Always waiting for the end of the world to make the long drive up the winding gravel drive and barge through the door. His mother had always been that way, as far as Milo could remember. Ever since he was a child, she always stiffened at the sound of crunching rocks under tires and the rarely used doorbell was almost enough to make her jump out of her skin. In his twenties, he’d learned to call before showing up. He learned to give her time to prepare herself before sweeping in the door with Amber because even the familiar faces of her son and his wife showing up unannounced would have her on edge for no less than a few hours and sometimes for the rest of the night.

It was behavior that never seemed out of place to Milo as a child. It wasn’t until his first month in group therapy that he realized her ticks mirrored those of the soldiers who were missing more than just limbs. That the way grown men glanced anxiously towards the double doors in the back of a high school auditorium every time they shrieked angrily against their hinges wasn’t all that different from the way she sat straight up in her chair when the floorboards outside the door creaked under a stranger’s foot. Sometimes he wondered what had made her so anxious. Other times he tried not to think about because if she were anything like the other men in his session, she would never give a straight answer to anything.

Though in rare form, she seemed to relax almost immediately after learning his friend’s name. More familiar to her than the faces of countless friends and lovers who had strolled through his life in the past, Ryleigh’s name had been on the tip of his tongue and on nearly every piece of mail he’d received for the last few years. She was the first thing he’d talked about when he felt well enough to talk about anything else. She was something beautiful and fresh in the midst of a cruel and bloody jungle. And Evelyn Savage heard all the stories he was willing to tell and had obviously picked up on just how important the woman in short shorts was to him. She had painted her best smile on her lips and set about being the mother and homemaker she’d always been.

Before he could offer to fetch drinks, she had already practically shoved Ryleigh into a spot on the sofa so she could bustle into the kitchen. “She’s exaggerating,” he smirked, though it was more the juvenile grin of a child who’d just been busted doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. “But she usually doesn’t warm up to strangers this quickly, so you’ve got that going for you.” Milo forced himself to laugh as he braced himself. His hands gripped the back and arm of the sofa as he shifted all of his weight onto his good leg and carefully lowered into place beside Ryleigh.

“I did miss you, though.” Milo leaned in close to her, pushing himself towards her. He let his arm relax, moving down the length of the back of the sofa until it brushed gently against hers. There was more he wanted to say. So much more. He needed to talk to her about her life and her letters and the home she’d apparently left behind for a nomadic life in the most seedy places across the United States that they’d both fought so uselessly to protect—or so they were told. He opened his mouth to begin, only to be interrupted by his mother’s voice, more singsong than usual, as she entered the room.

“I would have made dinner,” she said, cradling three full classes in her tiny hands, “but Milo didn’t tell me you were coming.” Milo made a move to stand, hands shoved against cushions to pull himself up again just as “Oh you sit, Milo,” interrupted him, “I can handle a few glasses of lemonade.”

Milo did as he was told, letting his arm rest beside Ryleigh’s again. It felt unreal to touch her, to have her beside him again. In his living room as his mom passed her a glass. “I didn’t know, Ma,” he shrugged, taking the glass she offered him and watching her settle into the chair on the other side of the room.

“Well, either way, I am absolutely thrilled to meet you. Such a brave young woman. Your parents must have been so proud of you.”

[johnnytruantt]

The last thing Noah wanted to do was get the skinny nurse in front of him in trouble. “No,” Noah said to Atticus’s accusation, or rather joke about his sexuality and it’s connection to his choice of career. At least, it seemed like a joke because it was the first time since Atticus had arrived that he was actually smiling. A few stolen moments where he looked like he was about to grin here and there, the ghost of what looked like a smile when Noah pressed his flirting with a little more oomph than he usually did. Atticus’s smile was beautiful, soft and gentle looking and so good at hiding a world of other emotion that Noah could only ever wonder about. It opened his face, made the bags under his eyes look less prominent, gave his skin a bit of a glow under the fluorescent lights. Noah could only stare and hope that he found a way to make the nurse smile like that again. “I assume every guy I encounter is gay or at least bisexual,” Noah explained, grinning as his eyes ran over every inch of Atticus’s face. “It’s payback for my entire childhood when every girl assumed I was straight and tried to rub all over me.” 

Noah had never really cared that women threw themselves at him. It was awkward to turn them down. It was that everyone, literally everyone, had assumed he was straight. To them, because Noah worked out and surfed and watched sports, he was straight. And when he shot that stereotype down and told the offender he very much liked men, they acted so shocked it disgusted him. Atticus probably got the opposite. He probably got a lot of shit, a lot of insults and assholes and Noah couldn’t help but get caught up thinking about the exhaustion in Atticus’s voice and eyes when he was talking about the assholes that had health insurance too. Noah’s “straight passing” ability was both a gift and a curse. At least no one called him a faggot, but everyone’s obsession with utterly erasing an important part of his identity within the first ten minutes of meeting him always hurt. In a small and easily ignored way, though.

“So you’re admitting that I’m charming?” Noah asked in a delighted tone as he readjusted in the time that Atticus paused, folding giant hands over his flat, solid torso. He had never stopped smiling the entire time, a crooked, cocky grin that was beaming self confidence, but also, he hoped, a sort of friendliness that could lure in someone as seemingly shy and introverted as the nurse in front of him. Noah thought he was in. The way Atticus had opened up and shown him that beautiful, generous smile. The way he seemed even a little to be flirting back. How he had dared to tell Noah that he preferred action movies (which Noah could totally do) and rum (another could do) and how he’d never seen a surfboard in his life (which had lead to Noah wanting to tell Atticus he still had plenty in his bedroom at home, despite being in the poorest state to ever attempt to surf in; but he hadn’t wanted to push his luck). “I can do a whole lot in ten minutes,” the former SEAL mused. 

Truthfully, the numbing agent in his eyebrow had started to wear thin, so to speak. And it was sore and the skin with fresh thread running through it seemed to be throbbing like it had a life of his own. Flirting wasn’t just for Atticus, but like people who listened to music while getting tattoos or those that watched movies while studying, Noah had been flirting to get through the rather nasty procedure of stitches. It just so happened that Atticus was so ridiculously good looking and a little sweeter than Noah would have imagined and now all he could think about was taking the young nurse home, peeling away the scrubs and making him blush harder than any of his words ever could. 

“You should smile more,” Noah said, motioning with his hand. “I mean that in the least...obligational way...possible,” he awkwardly tangled his fingers together. “You know? I hate when people tell people they need to smile like its for them, you just--you have a really beautiful smile. It really opens up your face. Shit, I’m suddenly less charming, huh?” Noah said, laughing in that way that was more bellowing than it was anything else. A deep laughter that came from his chest and filled the room. Noah was only human, and under the anesthesia, the needle and the brilliant blue eyes he felt hot under the collar. He cleared his throat and set his giant brown eyes on Atticus. “I would really like to get your number, Atticus,” Noah said, slowly, deliberately, the smile that skewed his face returning. “I mean, it would make my night if you’d allow me the pleasure. And maybe, we can go for drinks.” Tonight, he didn’t add. Though, he thought it. And all the things that could come with it.

Cold Clocked

“Yeah well,” he murmured, watching the needle slide through the skin, pulling thread along with it, “Assholes have health insurance too, unfortunately. So I gotta treat them, same as everyone else. Anti-discrimination policy and all,” he felt a bitter laugh bubble in his throat at an idea that shouldn’t have been as absurd as it really was. He’d seen female interns conveniently fired around the time administrators started to hear rumors that they were pregnant. He’d watched others get shut out of ORs and shuffled around to minimize hours if there was a slight reason to suspect any type of “abnormality” in their life style. Atticus was legally required to endure ridicule over his profession that didn’t align with his gender to patch up people who were just going to end up in the hospital a few days later for the same stupid reason he was already treating them.

“At least the assholes I deal with don’t usually have much cause to punch me in the face,” he shrugged and his lips fought their way into a tiny, shadow of a grin as his eyes moved over to meet the other man’s. Only for a split second before they returned to his work. “Just four more to go,” Atticus’s voice had a ring in it that it had been missing all day. Something almost chipper (or as close to chipper as he was capable of being) as he moved his tools a millimeter down from the first stitch. “Hopefully you can soldier through the rest of them.”

The instruments in his hands felt like extensions of his fingers. He could do simple sutures in his sleep if he had to. Hell, he practically did on nights like these when there wasn’t enough time between patients to grab a quick cup of coffee from the nurse’s station on the fourth floor. When his body was worn down and running on little else than years of experience and the best nursing education a rich doctor’s money could buy for him, stitches became muscle memory and sterile metal tools fused with the tips of his fingers. It was monotonous to say the least, made only as interesting as the patient he was stitching.

At least Noah was interesting. And attractive, though he’d never admit it out loud.

“You’re relentless. Hold still,” he said, slipping the needle in place for the second stitch. “You know this is inappropriate, right?” It was getting harder and harder to fight the smile threatening to break out across worn out features with barely enough strength left to keep his eyes open. “If I told you that I prefer action movies and rum and that I’ve never seen a surfboard in my life that wasn’t on TV, I’d be breaking about a million policies against fraternization.” The thread pulled skin back together over the tender red of exposed tissue, the second stitched tied off without a problem. “You trying to get me fired, Noah?”

Policies were lenient at best, he knew. At least the ones about nurses dating other nurses and doctors dating other doctors. It’s hard to keep people from screwing each other when they spent anywhere between fifty to eighty hours a week together. And after two more stitches, Noah would no longer be a patient. Or close enough to consider having drinks with. Or seeing a movie with. Or… going home with. “I’m a male nurse so you assume I’m gay?” he asked, finally letting a grin crack across his all but carved in stone stern expression. He hadn’t smiled all day—maybe not all week—and his muscles felt awkward, shoved into a position so alien to them. It was impossible not to laugh a little, just the smallest chuckle let to escape his lips as he rolled his eyes back towards Noah’s.

“Two more to go. That should take about ten minutes,” Atticus swallowed hard, fighting the urge to retreat back to the safety of patients who didn’t flirt. To the ones who, instead, snickered to their friends when he turned to retrieve gloves and tools, rather than ones who had eyes like the ocean and smiles that could cure cancer all directed at him. “Think that’s enough time to charm a phone number out of me?”

[johnnytruantt]

All at once, all Rory could imagine was a baby that looked exactly like a mixture of the two of them. When she was younger, she could never see the allure with children. They were messy and loud and entirely too dependent on their guardian. And Rory had always considered herself a free spirit; and she had been for the most part of her life before Jax had wandered back in--or rather, she had wandered back into his because Rory could never forget the way he had wanted to insist she could do better. But regardless, as a child herself, Rory had promised she’d never have any. She’d grow up with a hundred published novels and cats and never settle down no matter how many beautiful men she met and how many wanted to chain her down. But Jax was different, had been different, had changed her idea completely on the idea of settling down. No longer did it seem like a permanent end to the happiness of life, no longer did it feel like a cage. And no longer did a child seem like a burden. Instead, it seemed like a gift. A small gift with her eyes and Jax’s hair and cheek bones. A happy, laughing baby that she could hold and love. That they had made together and would love and raise together. 

“Sawyer genes are too strong, babe,” she laughed. “He’s gonna look just like you.” All Rory could do as Jax inched down her body and loved her was lean back on her elbows and smile, soft and happy sighs leaving slightly parted lips. Admire the way he looked while he hunched over her, a feeling of expanding warmth opening up inside her as she watched Jax kiss her stomach, her stomach that was carrying their child. She couldn’t tell if the tears in her eyes were really there or not, or if it just felt like she was crying because of how much her eyes burned, but she couldn’t care less. Long, strong legs tightened around her husbands waist just like they did during love making and she could only imagine the celebrating they’d do later that night, together in bed. The sort of love making that only happened between two people so entirely in love and happy that words couldn’t possibly describe it and thinking about it made her entire body shiver at the thought.

Jax’s hot breath and soft lips against her skin made her break out in goosebumps, the little hairs on her arms raising, teeth capturing her lip. Rory had known Jax for too long by now to know that there were other things on his mind besides the good news, but she didn’t press it yet. Jax had his ways and he was set in them and she didn’t want to push him to spill his guts all over the table for her to analyze and possibly make worse. No, Rory wanted to float in this moment, this pure blissful moment of happiness forever and forget, or ignore, that Jax had those self loathing, unhappy thoughts. Just for now, she’d have just this. She could hear the emotion wavering in his voice, the same emotion that was threatening to tear her apart just then--an overwhelming happiness that made the tears in her eyes real. “You giant sap,” she finally choked out before her hands found his face.

Rory cupped Jax’s cheek’s in her hands, slowly pulling him away from her stomach. It was completely flat, without a hint or sign of the impending child that they’d soon have together. But she already felt protective of her torso and didn’t actually want Jax to stop kissing her, maybe keep kissing, actually until he found the button of her jeans, popped them off and rewarded her good news with the tongue she knew he was so amazing with. But despite how crazy her emotions were making her for Jax (not that she wasn’t usually running on what she referred to as a Jax High, where her mind strayed to the muscles in her husbands back and the veins in his arms, so much so that she couldn’t get him out of her head until they finally fell into bed together), all she wanted at that moment was to look at him. 

“I’m going to be a mom,” she said, her eyes crinkling. “We’re having a baby,” she repeated, because she still couldn’t believe it was true. “You need to tell Jason!” She laughed, more amused at the fact that Jason was still an ever permanent fixture in their lives and probably would be. “I need to tell Spencer! Oh God, I need to tell Noah.” She needed to call her mother and father, Jax needed to call his own parents. “We need to make another doctor appointment, oh my God, Jax this is all real, this is really happening.” She fell onto her back, putting hands over her face as crying turned to laughter. “Holy shit, we are having a baby.” She finally unlocked her legs and slid off the counter, stumbling a little from the way blood rushed to her head. “We need to turn a spare room into a baby room!” She smiled at him, snapping her fingers. “We need to go to home depot for paint swatches! Oh my god, I need to tell my agent!” She put her hand over her mouth. The new book she was working on needed to be postponed. 

“Oh my God, this is really happening,” her hands went to her stomach again, her face dropping into a look of awe. 

Surprise!

Thoughts came in flashes between kisses. Rory’s legs wrapped around his waist and his hands found her hips, fingertips pressing into skin and bone and would soon round out into the figure of an expecting mother. Thoughts of all the times they’d made love in the last several months, in the bedroom down the hallway with Rory wearing nothing but the engagement ring he’d slipped on her finger in the middle of the night just over a year ago. Their wedding night, when he’d practically ripped away white satin and lace that had brought tears to his eyes when it moved towards him down the aisle to melody of some Hawaiian song that he sometimes found himself humming while he worked. Their honeymoon on an island that he couldn’t remember the name of and hardly saw any part of outside of their resort. It could have happened any of those nights.

Not that it mattered. It was just nice to think about their bodies tangled together as his hand moved slowly from hip to thigh while Rory kept her hand flat against her belly, as if she could already feel the life forming inside her. Something created of equal parts of both of them—though hopefully he or she would end up with more Tonkin features than Sawyer.

When he felt Rory pulling away, his first instinct was to hold her in place. Continue the kiss she was attempting to break. Keep their bodies interlocked because there was nothing Jax wanted more than to just keep her there. His wife and his baby, probably not even the size of a golf ball yet but still surrounded by so much love it could drown in it. “I don’t care what we have as long as it has your smile. And your eyes,” he said softly through shallow breaths. “And if it looks like me, hopefully it’s a boy. I’d make an ugly girl and Cheyenne is never going to forgive me for giving her my ratty hair.” He couldn’t help but laugh, they thought of his daughter fussing endlessly over the tangled mass of brown curls she’d been cursed with just like her grandmother and her cousins.

The hand gripping his wife’s thigh slowly inched his way towards her stomach. He knew he was probably imagining it, as he slipped his hand beneath the loose fabric of her shirt, but he could have sworn there was a warmth in her tanned skin that he hadn’t felt before. “I love you,” he said, hunching over. He wasn’t sure who he was talking to, his wife or his child but his chest felt close to bursting as he inched Rory’s shirt up just enough to expose the warm skin beneath it. He could feel a lump forming in his throat, a dense ball that chocked him as his eyes seemed to swell with the pressure of one hundred rushing emotions that he wasn’t sure what to do with.

Jax pressed his lips to the flat surface of Rory’s stomachs, tenderly as he would kiss his child once he or she came into this world. And for a brief moment, Jax wondered if he’d be a good father the second time around. Given the change to hold his wife’s hand while she went for sonograms and doctor’s appointments and when she finally gave birth. Holding his newborn son or daughter for the first time and knowing without a doubt that he was a father. He would do all of the things he’d been deprived of with Cheyenne.

No, he had to remind himself, not deprived of. He hadn’t been deprived of anything, he just hadn’t been around.

It was a wave of guilt he didn’t want to feel. A dark cloud moving in across the horizon and Jax refused to allow it to intrude on this moment. He would be better this time and that’s all that mattered. He was going to be a father, Rory a mother, and Cheyenne a sister so a baby sister or brother. Rory seemed firmly set on the latter. “I love you so much, Rory,” he murmured against her skin, words choked in his throat behind something that had settled deep inside his airway and for the first time since his wedding day, Jax thought he might actually cry.

Dark brown eyes wandered up to find Rory’s, bright blue like the ocean she’d crossed to find her way back to him. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier about anything.”

[johnnytruantt]

Already, Jace could hear his Uncle Noah’s voice in his somewhat drunk head. Be careful with the charming ones, he’d always warned. He couldn’t remember what came after, because Jace had a bad habit of tuning his uncle out whenever he’d get into his self righteous speeches regarding homosexual dating, but he was betting it couldn’t have been good. And Graham’s smile was a scary mix between adorable and downright evil, something that was oddly arousing in the pale porch light that only illuminated the beer bottles and their faces, and just barely that. He was all confidence where Jace had almost none. Or rather, misplaced confidence, unsure of how to wrangle it while flirting, having a conversation, or just existing, sometimes. Because Jace knew he was good looking--and it was only confirmed by the way Graham’s eyes seemed to make continual rounds across his body. It filled Jace’s ego, but not his ability to stop himself from stumbling awkwardly over their small and very obvious courtship. Because very definitely, something was going to come from this. Jace was already itching to text the players he’d come in with telling them he’d found another way home, but he could spare a moment later, sometime when Graham wasn’t raising and standing so close to him.

It felt like the air in his lungs had been sucked out of him. Usually, by now, Jace probably would have said fuck it and thrown conversation to the wind and tried to make something physical happen. Touching was something he was good at. When words failed him, his hands could always do the talking for him instead. And he very much had already decided where he wanted to touch Graham. His sides and his thighs, his back and his neck, run a hand down his chest and all the way down. His fingers tingled for it, staying in his pockets the same way the other boys hands had found his. It was like a game of who was going to touch who first; and Jace usually lost those games. “You brew your own shit?” Jace said, laughing a little as he stayed leaned back against the bannister, all too aware of how close they were, and how close they could be if Jace hitched his finger into Graham’s belt loop and pulled him forward. 

Maybe it was because he’d had one too many beers already and maybe it was because Avraham had broken up with him only a month earlier and Jace had been left to do with his hand, what the lithe dancer had once done with his lips; but the urge to go further with Graham was real. It had been too long since Jace had laid down with another boy and let his hands wander over a flat chest and muscular thighs. Too long since he’d been able to peel away clothing and feel sublime for once instead of worried. School and baseball and other things he didn’t want to think about weighed so heavily on his mind so often that all he could do was want for what Graham could be offering. What he seemed to be clearly offering. Raising his hand and curling his fingers into a fist he laid his knuckles gently against Graham’s stomach, his grin turning just as evil as the other boys. Maybe dimmer, because Jace wasn’t as good at this yet. Maybe he could be taught by a much more experienced teacher, though. 

“Such a gentleman,” Jace said, nodding his head and keeping up his smile. What he wanted to ask was a taste of Graham’s own brew. If he really made his own, after all. He wanted to tell Graham fuck the party. But he couldn’t get the words out no matter how hard he tried and the nervousness he’d felt from before was back against with a vengeance, his hand slipping from Graham’s stomach to take hold of the bannister. “Yeah, I can go for another beer,” he said, rolling his head and shoulders and looking toward the door. “You can show off that gentleman side if you want. Who knows, maybe it’ll get you somewhere,” Jace told him, making sure his eyes told Graham exactly what he could get if they continued this interaction. Just a little longer and maybe another beer and Jace could make himself less jittery about the prospect of asking an older man (or who he assumed was older) to take him home and put his mouth where his eyes had been wandering.

Party Fouls

“C’mon now,” he laughed, resting the bottle on his knee, “I’m not completely hooked on them. My opinion is pretty easily swayed when attractive men are involved.” There was something about Jace that reminded Graham of a baby deer. The nervous way he flirted, as if he were learning to walk on all four legs for the first time. He was fumbling a little—trying to match Graham’s posture and ease—in a way that was definitely more endearing than it was awkward. He already had a tendency to go after younger guys, cocky where they were comfortable but vulnerable when Graham cracked up the charm he’d been born ready to wield. When he leaned in close enough for Graham to reach out and touch his stomach (a stomach he had already imagine to be toned and cut), his chest stirred with a buzzing excitement that he couldn’t ignore.

He fought against an almost magnetic attraction to the other man. When every cell in his body wanted to move towards Jace, to reach forward and rest the palm of his hand on a denim clad thigh, Graham forced himself to stay still. To keep one hand wrapped around the chilled bottle of beer and the other resting firmly on the arm of the rickety lawn chair. It drew him forward when Jace pulled away. It propelled him to an upright position, leaning after the other man and Graham had to admit that he’d be sorely disappointed if this didn’t go anywhere.

He propped his elbows on his knees, the almost empty bottle dangling casually between them.  His shoulders slumped forward and Graham looked up at Jace with smirk that struggled between friendly-puppy and borderline-evil. “I’m thrilled,” he laughed, bowing his head down for a brief second before returning to Jace’s gaze. His eyes had made countless trips over the younger (he assumed) man’s body. He’d admired the way his jeans hugged lean legs and even under the layers that covered his torso, he looked muscular.

“You want another beer?” he asked, nodding to the bottle that had been carefully placed at his feet. He gulped down the last of his own drink, failing to suppress the way his face contorted when the flavors washed over his tongue. There was only so much Budweiser he could stand in one night, and this was clearly his last. He shook his head as if that could erase the taste from his mouth, “Not much of a selection. Bottled American or whatever piss is in the keg. I’m not quite brave enough to give that a shot.” Graham laughed as he hunched forward to leave the bottle at his feet. He was already fairly confident in where this was all going to lead. Hopefully a sofa in one empty house or another with wandering lips and hands moving aside the stupid baseball t-shirt so he really could get a look at what he imagined was hiding under there.

“Sorry, I can be a snob,” he shrugged as he brushed unruly curls back into place. “Been brewing for a couple of years and the cheap shit at parties just doesn’t cut it.” He laughed, almost apologetically as he pulled himself to his feet and taking an extra step closer to Jace than was entirely necessary. The space between them shrank immediately and Graham could feel the same pull tugging at his hands as he defiantly shoved them into the front pockets of his jeans. “I’d be willing to fight my way through Lady Gaga remixes to grab one for you if you wanted, though.” His eyes found Jaces. Even bathed in the dim yellow of a porch light, they were a bright blue that he hadn’t expected.

He pulled his shoulders in, shrugging as he rolled his eyes towards the door. “I’m kind of a gentleman,” he said as he rocked back on the balls of his feet. In a different set of circumstances, he might have been more forward. Want another beer? I’ve got plenty at my place, had almost always worked in the past. But Jace might as well have been all knobby knees and awkward standing on new, unsteady legs. A cute sort of inexperience that forced Graham to reel it in a little. 

[johnnytruantt]

It was stupid, but Ryleigh had forgotten. She had forgotten that Milo had lost his leg--or she hadn’t forgotten, but maybe it had slipped her mind. Or maybe, she just didn’t want to remember it had happened to him. There was a prosthetic there, underneath one pants leg, where flesh and bone and muscle had once been. Hacked off because of a stray bullet that infected so bad there was no saving it. She had spent more nights than she cared to remember thinking about it. The way he had begged for them not to, the way he had screamed and the harsh way he had treated her because he was angry and it was so easy to lash out. Ryleigh had wanted to forget everything about the grueling week before Milo was in good enough shape to be packaged and shipped off back to America. Like a broken toy soldier. But instead of forgetting it, she had forgotten the leg. And now, he had to bend over to pick up the cane she was probably responsible for falling from his hand. For a moment, she wondered if she should bend down to pick it up for him, before she thought better of it. Milo didn’t need her help. He was the strongest person she had ever met. With or without his leg.

Ryleigh slid her hands into her back pockets, the wide, bright, toothy smile she had for him never leaving. Despite the small hiccup in their reuniting she had her shoulders thrown back and her eyes on his, a strange confidence in her that she had thought was all but gone. But really just hiding and waiting for the man who had originally pulled it out of her. Milo looked so different and his eyes seemed so much sadder, but the fact that he was there and in front of her, that he was even real and not some bizarre drug induced hallucination she had made up to get her through the last few months, was all that mattered and really, all that she needed. Nodding and not trusting her voice to remain steady from the nerves, she told herself, of meeting his mother when she looked like such a mess--bruised eyebrow and cropped denim shorts she was regretting wearing no matter how good they made her legs look. As she stepped through the threshold into his house, Ryleigh’s eyes went straight for the woman sitting on her chair as though she was going to have to jump up to defend herself--or maybe Milo--at any moment.

She could only imagine the agony Milo’s mother had gone. Waiting every day for the Marine Corps to tell her that her son was dead. That he was coming home in a body bag. Though she’d never actually seen corpses in bags over in Vietnam, they just had tarps laid over them, sometimes not even that. Just laying there. Ryleigh’s heart felt cold and her lungs felt dry and her throat felt tight as she tried to say something, watching the woman rise to her feet. But she had nothing to say to her beyond a hello, hand extending as she stepped toward her and their palms met for a brief handshake. Ryleigh wondered if her parents had ever thought some man in a blue uniform would come to their door (but really, a gate that lead to their lake front property) and tell them she was dead. She wondered if her parents knew that gooks with guns and knives could get into a base if they tried hard enough and that they had, more than once, gone to the medic stations first just to cut the US Marine force out from under its legs. But if her parents had, she didn’t know it, because they had pretended like she’d never even gone to Vietnam. 

“Please, you can call me Ryleigh,” she said finally, her hand resuming place in her back pocket like a nervous habit, throwing a wayward glance to Milo. “He never even called me Nurse Stewart anyway,” she teased, jabbing her elbow lightly into his ribcage and her smile widening. “And I’m not really a nurse anymore, either.” The last part she said with a bitter taste in her mouth and hoped it hadn’t come out that way. She had wanted to. Go through a medical assistant program of some sort, stay where she felt familiar and almost home. But the second she had walked through the hospital to speak to someone about it, she was walking out. She had to lean against the wall and slide down it to breath better and for some reason all she could think was that the hospital didn’t smell like Vietnam had. 

There was a moments paused before Milo’s mother seemed to get comfortable leaving Ryleigh to wonder if it was her, or just the random intrusion into her day. “You just sit down right there,” she said, gesturing to a sofa before looking at Milo and then back to her. “How about some lemonade? Let me go get you a drink. You can tell me about yourself, Milo never stops talking about you.”

Ryleigh wanted to resist the way her smile returned, opening wide at her cheeks, crinkling the sides of her eyes as she looked over at Milo for a brief moment and then back to his mother. “Lemonade would be lovely, thank you,” Ryleigh said, the politeness of a girl well trained in etiquette flooding her. Like riding a bike, one never forgot how to be a proper lady. She sat herself down on the couch as slowly as possible, tucking one leg under the other and looking over at Milo as his mother exited. Once she was gone, Ryleigh threw her arms back over behind the couch and grinned at him a little slyer. “Never stop talking about me, huh? Gosh, Handsome.” She winked.

Home Is Where You Are

Ryleigh had been a ghost, emerging from her beat up car. She wasn’t real until he’d touched her. Just some hallucination borne of loneliness and bitterness that swelled so big in his chest sometimes he felt as though his ribs were going to crack open. And until his arms had wrapped around her waist, Milo was certain that his fingers would have passed straight through her without ever feeling the flesh and bone that made her so real. Holding her was being alive and Milo hadn’t felt alive in so long. Not since the last time he’d held a rifle in his hand and could stand comfortably on two real, human legs.

When his arms found themselves wrapped around Ryleigh, Milo felt his heart start beating for the first time.

Something about the blue hues that dissolved into putrid yellows around the edges turned Milo’s stomach. It wasn’t something that should be painted on the face of any woman, not even a kid as touch as he knew Ryleigh was. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of it no matter how hard he tried to avert them to any other feature that constructed a face he’d never been happier to see. And the flippant way she’d brushed it off, as if it was just a common thing that happened, made him even more concerned. “Yeah,” he muttered, feeling somehow colder than he ever had as she stepped away from him, “I hope his friends didn’t recognize him when you were done.”

Milo had almost forgotten about his mother, probably waiting nervously in her recliner, television muted and wondering what was happening outside. It was hard to pin point when her anxiety had started, grown into some exaggerated fear whenever the doorbell rang. He couldn’t help but wonder if part of her still expected every knock on her door to be two men in dress blues with a folded flag, dog tags, and a sincere apology from the United States Marine Corps. “You didn’t interrupt anything. Believe me,” he laughed breathlessly, scratching his fingers back through his hair, “Ma’s been watchin’ game shows all afternoon and this is the first time I’ve hauled myself off my ass in hours.”

It was only when he moved to grab his cane did he realize how stiff his good leg had become. Shouldering the burden of his body weight, he felt as if his veins were suddenly full of cement and pins and needles pricked at the bottom of his bare foot. Bending his knee down to pick up the slender wooden stick sent a wave of heat coursing through his body and as hard as Milo tried to maintain control of his expressions, he was certain Ryleigh had seen him wince. His cheeks were warm, embarrassment making them tint a shade of red that was hopefully obscured by the beard that had worked its way over half his face.

She drove all this way to watch the mighty fall, he thought bitterly as he held onto the door frame to pull himself back upright. In a thirty-three year old body, Milo felt ancient clutching the handle of a wooden cane in one hand and the brass doorknob in the other. “You wanna come in? Ma’ll be thrilled to meet you.”

Of everyone he served with, Milo had talked about Ryleigh the most. In his letters home, over dinner when he’d gotten back, in doctor’s meetings to discuss his leg and physical capabilities and pain levels. Ryleigh always seemed to work her way into his thoughts even when she was god only knows how far away. “She’ll tell you she’s heard a lot about you and that I talked about you non-stop for a long time,” he laughed lightly, glancing over his shoulder, “It’s a lie, obviously. Well, an exaggeration, anyway.”

She was sitting in her chair, perched like a mother bird over her nest. Her eyes darted towards the door the second in creaked open. “Ma, we’ve got company,” he said, stepping inside and nodding towards the young woman hopefully trailing in after him. “This, uh. She’s the one I told you about. Nurse Stewart.”

[johnnytruantt]

No stranger to the numbing liquid the nurse was spreading over his skin, all Noah could do was lay there and enjoy the slight cool before the dreaded pinching-painful sensation of the stitches. The anesthetic did the best it could, he knew that (and overseas all he was used to was the powdered morphine packets corpsman could sprinkle on wounds), but Noah had stitches across his elbow from a time he’d broken into his own car drunk one night and he knew very well that it couldn’t completely mask the feeling of needle sliding through skin, dragging thread along with it. Still, it was nice and from the angle he was at, watching Atticus slowly smooth it over his skin was more enjoyable than the last time he’d been face down, drunk and asking where his surfboard was while someone stitched up his elbow. It could be argued the nurse or two (or doctor, he couldn’t remember) had it harder than Nurse Wilder, but they didn’t have to deal with Noah’s unrelenting flirting like he did. But by the small grin he could just barely see on the nurses face, it didn’t appear like he was uncomfortable. He could have even been enjoying it--which was what Noah was hoping for. Because by now, he had a goal.

“Light bulb in the ass, huh?” Noah said, laughing harder than he meant to, imagining not only the poor fuck that thought that was a good idea (and Noah could admit when he was younger he had seen some porn he regretted that involved good ideas like that) but the nurse before him having to put on the plastic gloves and go to work removing all the tiny shards. He sure as hell didn’t envy the man’s job and suddenly found his own a little less daunting. He could go to work the next day knowing that at least he never had to pull glass out of a man’s asshole before. “You have it rough,” he trailed off as Nurse Wilder began to focus more on the actual procedure of stitches rather than him.

The sound of the tools being unwrapped made Noah’s nerves feel raw and he sunk a little, with his teeth grit tighter than before, unable to spew the witty lines he was before. Noah wasn’t unaccustomed to pain, really. Not only had it been a constant in his life for years when he was a SEAL, but his hand was an aching mess during the winter months and it wasn’t the first time he’d been punched in the face, nor probably the last. But he still couldn’t stop his stomach from turning at the crinkling, the sterile whiteness of the room around them closing in and the smell of antiseptic making his tongue feel sour. Like it was being poured down his throat. He paid attention to Nurse Wilder instead, eyes running up his slim neck and to his jaw and that smile he was so desperately trying to get rid of. 

For the first time, Noah was frowning and it was a serious one. A real sympathetic sort of grimace at what he could only imagine was said to the man. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but he could think of a few scenarios where Nurse Wilder would luck out and get someone who had the worst in them and wanted to spew it into another persons face. Just like the violence some stranger had marked Noah with all because he was doing his job and protecting some girl from some assholes grabby hands. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Noah said, his voice quieter than it had been. “I mean about the douchebags. Not the sixty-five year old woman who has seemed to win your heart. Valiant as I may be, I might not be able to top the allure of nostalgia and the possibility of a motorized chair that brings you up stairs.” His smile was back again the second the nurse was looking back toward him, hovering over his face with instruments one would also put in a horror movie.

“Oh I can totally handle it,” Noah said, but winced all the same as he felt the needle sliding through. It was distant though, the numbing agent having done what it was there to do and Noah grinned. “See? The tough guy thing ain’t just an act.” Noah bit his lip, eyes wandering to the sleepy ones in front of him. “Gotta distract me, though, or else I’ll start to feel it. Yunno, keep the conversation going. I’m Noah, I like surfing and German brewed beer and I have a little sister that just got married to this total hottie named Jax. You like comedies or romance movies? Wanna catch one with me sometime?” Noah strung his words together, unable to deny his grin getting wider and wider.

Cold Clocked

 “Still have to check,” Atticus muttered, moving the cotton swab closer to the actual wound now that most of the dried flakes had been cleaned away from his skin. “If we took every patient at their word, I wouldn’t have spent all last night helping doctors pull shards of broken lightbulb out of a grown man’s anal cavity.” He shrugged, ignoring the blatantly inappropriate topic of conversation. He hoped that Noah would be the type to get a kick out of the story—as much as Atticus could share anyway—rather than the type to complain to his boss. The sterile ball of cotton edged as close to the wound as possible, wiping clean the edges of skin above the man’s eyebrow and Atticus had to wrestle with the muscles in his face to keep from returning the grin he could see in the edges of his field of vision. “So, we have to check.”

The blood soaked swaps ended where they belonged, in the red biohazard bin on the wall. The wound was still open, too deep and blunt a gash to heal on its own. “Numbing also isn’t optional,” he muttered, reaching for the solution set aside of the surgical tray beside him. “I am sewing your face back together, after all.” The liquid was an orange color, and it felt cool over freshly sterilized skin. At least, it always had to Atticus, on the six different occasions he’d been sent off to get stitches. It pooled over Noah’s tanned skin and went to work almost immediately.

As much as Atticus wanted to be annoyed by the blatant flirting, he couldn’t bring himself to reign in the smile that tugged gently at the corner of his lips as he unwrapped the sterile stitching tools. A full-fledged career in nursing hadn’t exactly helped assuage the gay assumption that he tried to avoid, but flirting was better than being called “limp wristed” by a drunken moron who had only let his friends drag him to the ER in the hopes of having a hot nurse to harass. “You’re actually only the second guy who hasn’t found some unoriginal, snide insult to toss out. I’ve gotten all the douchebags tonight,” he admitted. The tools lined up evenly on the tray to his side, and Atticus was left to thread the needle before he could start. “But you’ve got some competition with a lovely sixty-five year old woman who told me I looked like her husband when they got married.”

Conversations with patients didn’t come this easily for Atticus. Ever. The normally introverted nurse kept things as impersonal as possible. Normally, the conversation would have stopped after the concussion interrogation and Noah’s stitches probably would have been done by now. “Honestly, man, right now she’s got a leg up on you. She showed me a picture and her husband was a hottie in his twenties so, I mean, that’s a pretty huge compliment.” Flirting that seemed too natural for Noah, felt stiff and awkward when Atticus returned it. Truth be told, he wasn’t quite sure what had prompted him to try in the first place.

Though, if he had to guess he could probably attribute most of it to the broad grin that had taken over most of Noah’s face. Almost like an actual beam of light had erupted from somewhere within hm. Atticus bit down on one corner of his lips to keep his own smile from breaking any wider. The last thing he needed was to look even more awkward than he already felt.

The nurse cleared his throat as he positioned the tools over Noah’s head. “You’re, ah,” he said, the cold tips of medical instruments nudging closer to the man’s torn flesh. “You’re going to fell a little bit of a pinch.” The tip of the needle slid through on side of the wound and Atticus positioned the tools to move the needle through. “I’m pretty sure you can handle it though, right?” 

[johnnytruantt]

“Oh, Jax, the mayo--” before Rory could complete a single sentence (her growing concern for having to clean up their new floors), her husbands hands were on her tear streaked face and she completely forgot about anything that wasn’t related to that. Or him. To Jax and his reaction. “I’m fucking pregnant,” she repeated after him, her eyes crinkling as more tears seemed to escape and her hands, trembling hard, found his chest. Solid and warm and comforting and safe. Rory had been terrified, she had been so afraid. Of the pregnancy, of his reaction, of her own reaction--she had been so afraid. Maybe Jax didn’t want another child, or maybe he just didn’t want one with her and maybe Alyssa would be the only woman who would ever have some sort of connection to Jax like that. And selfishly, that had terrified her. But Jax had launched himself toward her, ignoring the mess on their floor to take hold of her in an excitement she had never seen in him before. An excitement for her, or rather for them. Rory felt like her heart was going to rip free from her chest. There was no describing the feelings that were taking over her body, no way to put into words, metaphors or similes how she was feeling. Just that it was amazing.

Jax felt good pressed against her, his hands on her hips, hers still shaking on his chest. She wanted for a moment, to not do anything. Not to react or move, just to melt against him and enjoy that singular moment. In years to come, she knew it’d be one she thought back on often. When she was sad or upset, she could put herself back in her shoes then and remember when both of them had been nothing but complete happiness. But then suddenly Jax’s hands were moving to her waist and suddenly, she was weightless. He was still speaking and asking things, but Rory was still crying and she realized the stress of waiting the entire day to tell Jax was finally unraveling and coming out in small, yet elated sobs as Jax sat her down on the counter. Without even realizing it, her hand had found her own stomach, flattened over it and almost holding it protectively, like the life inside her that was hardly even real yet was more important than anything else. 

One arm lifted to wrap around Jax’s neck, the other staying firmly where it needed to be on her stomach, her lips hardly able to react to Jax’s kisses from the smile that was now a permanent fixture on her face. Her cheeks were sore from how hard she was grinning. Unwillingly, she let her hand leave her torso and take Jax’s cheek, her thumb brushing her husbands skin softly as she pulled away from the kiss. “I didn’t want to intrude on your work stuff,” she mumbled, almost too quietly to be heard. She didn’t want to rush into telling him something that might not have been a good surprise. Thinking about it now, it seemed so silly to have waited so long, to have worried so much, to have occupied her time making food they were both completely ignoring now in the face of something so giant for both of them. This was such a next step. Marriage and then baby in the baby carriage. Rory almost cried again, but she kissed instead. 

She kissed him hard, not soft. She threw herself into it, her legs finding their way around his waist and pulling him into her, the hand on his cheek brushing back through his hair to find the back of his neck. Her other hand tightened into his shirt and Rory kissed him again like they had on their wedding night and the following honeymoon days after. She kissed him in a state of complete bliss, burgers cooling and forgotten, mayonnaise on the floor. And when she finally pulled away, breathing hard than before and her arms locking around Jax’s neck like her legs had already locked around his waist, Rory grinned, finally free from the tears that couldn’t stop before. “I think we’re gonna have a son,” she said. “I can totally feel it. There’s gonna be another Sawyer boy running around. He’s gonna look like you too,” Rory joked, or rather half joked. That was what she wanted and in her head she imagined the life growing inside her to be. A small replica of the man in front of her. A son with dark hair and big brown eyes to match her husbands. It was all she wanted. A week ago all she wanted was to be able to pull off a cute pixie cut but now all she wanted was this.

Surprise!

There was something about his wife’s demeanor that worried Jax. He could sense a part of her mood that felt unsettled, nervous about something. Even if Rory had been good at hiding her feelings, Jax had learned to read her like a book. In the last few years he’d spent with her, he’d consumed her. Memorized her mannerisms, her ticks, her moods. There was nothing about Rory that he hadn’t wanted to know, to understand with a depth that he’d never understood anything before. So he’d watched, he’d listened, he’d learned. And he could tell when Rory was trying to hold herself together; guarding a secret she wasn’t ready to share.

But the good sort of anxious and the bad sort of anxious were only separated by subtle nuances that were sometimes hard to pick out. Possibilities ranging from a new book deal to setting the bathroom on fire ran through his head, though the absurdity of the latter almost made him smile as he rummaged through the refrigerator drawer for the half-chopped head of lettuce. Jax wedged a jar of mayo between his elbow and reached in for the jar of pickles before spinning around and closing the refrigerator door with the heel of his boot. Across the counter, Rory was standing, hand shoved into her back pocket. “What’s that?” he said, already starting to process the situation before he first few words even left her mouth.

“Are you fucking serious?” he said, his voice running over hers as she explained the meaning of the slender little stick grasped between two slender little fingers. Jax’s lips cracked into a bright, beaming grin. “Are you fucking serious?”

For a moment, Jax’s brain seemed to lag behind. Processing details about wedding and stress and how the hell they missed it. He couldn’t speak or force his body into motion, as if the only thing he was physically capable of doing was standing with two feet firmly on the ground. His entire body felt numb, almost weightless and he hardly noticed the jar of mayo slip slightly from his grasp. The sound of hard plastic colliding with linoleum tiles shattered the stunned silence and prompted him to shove the rest of the items in his arms onto the kitchen counter before they joined the splatter of mayonnaise on the floor.

“You’re pregnant!” he shouted, laughing so hard that he might have been utterly impossible to understand. Involuntarily, his body launched itself towards his wife, the palms of his hands pressing gently against her cheeks streaked with tears. “You’re fucking pregnant.” It was all he could manage to say, over and over, as his lips pressed against Rory’s. His hands moved down until his arms wrapped around her torso. Aches in his muscles and joints from hauling crates in and out of a kitchen all day had all but been forgotten and all Jax wanted to do was hold his wife—soon to be the mother of his child—as close as he possibly could. Hands flattened themselves against her waist as he lifted her off her feet.

“How? I thought we…? Holy shit.”

His mind seemed berated by questions all at once, too many thoughts fighting a war over his tongue as he set Rory gently down on the counter. Fingers dragged down her thighs, squeezing her knee as he leaned in to kiss her again. “You should have called and told me to come home earlier,” he mumbled against her lips, “Because I could have let the managers unload by themselves.” The burgers Rory had made were now utterly forgotten about and even though there were probably things that needed to be said and discussed, Jax didn’t care. His fingers brushed Rory’s hair back away from her face and his lips never left hers. Because there were too many things running through his head and the simplest, most satisfying, remedy would be to just keep their lips locked together.

[johnnytruantt]

This was definitely flirting. The air around them had most definitely changed and Jace could feel the electric buzz inside his body--he knew that Graham had looked once or twice--he could feel his stomach muscles tense and a sort of warmth wash over him. This was flirting with intent too; Jace wasn’t thinking about going back inside and finding his friends and team mates to let them take him home, he was thinking about this. Flirting. And Graham was ten times better at it than Jace was. He felt awkward leaned up against the bannister watching the other man throw himself into a state of absolute ease, lounged back with his legs kicked out in front of him (and they were nice legs). Jace admired the way his jeans hugged his limbs, the way Graham’s shirt fell against his torso and chest and the grin that slashed his face and opened wider than he’d ever seen a smile. There was something possibly haughty about the way Graham was grinning--like he knew he was good at this. Or at the very least, he was entirely comfortable with himself and his game. Jace, on the other hand, could only try to imitate such ease and failed, probably miserably. 

“Soccer players,” Jace scoffed as he took a sip of his beer. Soccer players and their fake falling on the ground for the ref to call ‘red card! red card!’ any sort of foul to get ahead. He respected football players more than soccer players and he didn’t even care for football unless it was on the TV at home. Soccer players were actors more than they were athletes. But all Jace really cared about was that Graham was referring to (what were probably) a bunch of men as ‘hot’. And that sealed the deal, right there. Not only was it flirting, it wasn’t a joke. No straight man called a bunch of sweaty soccer players hot as a joke. Graham was interested, either in Jace or men or both, it didn’t really matter. He had Jace’s attention, the baseball player trying desperately to keep up with Graham’s smooth, easy way of talking. Jace wanted to lie and say he wasn’t staring at the bottle as it touched his new talking partners lips, the way he sipped it, the bobbing of his adams apple as he drank, but Jace couldn’t lie. He was in pretty deep.

Jace laughed and slid his hand through his hair, the other still holding his beer and tapping it lightly against his lips as he shrugged. “Team mates,” he conceded, before taking a swig. In all honesty, Jace appreciate the senior members trying to drag him out places, it made him feel wanted--sometimes even needed--but given the option he would have rather been at home eating a medium pizza by himself and watching Breaking Bad on Netflix. But with Graham in front of him, smiling that moderately sinful grin at him, sipping from his beer like he knew other things he could do with his lips, looking good in clothes and probably better out of them, Jace couldn’t deny what Graham said. “Maybe it wasn’t,” he said, feeling like a parrot and the loser of the game, the conversation they had strung between them. Jace wasn’t good at this flirting back and forth, the ping pong of witty sentences, but he tried. He was almost overwhelmed by the sheer confidence that Graham exuded from himself. Like a tidal wave, it crushed him and he liked it. 

“I mean maybe,” Jace continued, shrugging, taking a sip of his beer before realizing he’d finished it. And how many was that now? Jace lost count. If his father taught him anything it was how to shoot a rifle, how to make the perfect omelette, how to throw a punch and how to handle his alcohol. And Jace didn’t even feel buzzed. Until he leaned back up from the bannister. Then it rushed to his head and he felt light on his feet for a moment. But it only made him braver, happier and probably stupider. “It did lead me to this porch where a guy who thinks soccer players are hotter than baseball players gave me a beer,” he said, leaning forward to place the beer next to Graham’s chair. Closer, he could inspect him, half leaning over him, completely purposefully. There was no need for how close he got, but he had to match his grin and if Jace couldn’t match his way with words, he sure as hell was going to up the ante and make things a little physical. Faux physical. Not touching, but Jace was close enough to before he pulled himself back up standing and leaning against the bannister, both hands slid comfortably into his pockets.

“What about you?” he asked, folding one leg over the other, legs crossed at the ankles. “Happy you came to this rotten party now?” Jace second guessed himself for a moment, wondering if he was being arrogant, but there was no time to back out now. He had to keep his pose and his grin and hope they didn’t turn Graham off. Because Jace was already hoping this was leading to something.

Party Fouls

“Well, I’m honestly surprised, Jace,” Graham admitted, shoving his keys back into the front pocket of his jeans, “Usually the hot ones are soccer players.” Even Graham wasn’t sure, at this point, if he was speaking in metaphors or if he was saying what he literally meant. Soccer players with tight bodies in loose shorts were undeniably more attractive to him than the dudebros that did anything they could to identify that they were, in fact, baseball players. But another element of surprise came in the form of very obvious flirting. He leaned—no lounged—back in his seat, kicking his feet out in front of him even as the shoddy aluminum frame of the chair creaked under his weight. His smile never faltered as he mimicked the pseudo-relaxed posture of his new friend.

Flirting was easy for him, something that came so naturally that half the time he had no idea that he was actually doing it. It was his default state, with men and women and everything in between. People he had no interest in were even greeted by his casual grin and well meaning, playful attitude. It was so easy for him because, unlike many people he knew, Graham didn’t take himself seriously. Not even a little. At twenty five years old, Graham was a part time student, a full time waiter, and existed in a constant state of moderate apathy. He’d made a fool of himself enough times that he hardly cared about how he came off to people anymore. And with that came a soaring confidence that someone with his average height and average weight and average overall appearance should ever feel entitled to.

He fell into this role easily. The one who pursued rather than the target. This was his comfort zone.

“We go to the same school,” Graham pointed with the mouth of his beer bottle towards the bright red letters on the baseball player’s shirt. “It’s not surprising we’ve never met, though. I’m not half as important as a star baseball player; just a lowly part time business major.” Graham didn’t know the first thing about sports, despite the fact that any given game was used as a thinly veiled excuse to get drunk in the bleachers and cheer for whoever happened to be wearing his school’s colors. But Rutgers was almost famous for its teams and people seemed to take a lot of pride in that.

Graham brought the bottle to his lips and took a swig. He hated American beers, only roughly a step above horse piss. But the Budweiser was the only bottled beer in the cooler. He did his best to suppress a slight cringe as he swallowed it down. “You looked like you’d rather be anywhere else than inside there,” he said, nodding his head back towards the door, honestly surprised that it wasn’t vibrating off its hinges from the ridiculously loud bass that drummed inside. “So who dragged you here? Teammates?” He’d seen a  bunch of guys wearing similar shirts standing in a group by the keg.

“I feel you,” he continued, “I just got off work an hour ago. Definitely didn’t plan on ending up at a party with bad music and worse beer.” Graham shrugged as he looked up at Jace, a friendly grin almost turning sinister. “Maybe it wasn’t such a bad move after all, though.” Maybe his decision to look presentable would pay off. Maybe his decision not to crash on his couch with a beer and a movie work to his advantage. And maybe putting up with the terrible music and shitty American beer would all be worth it.

[johnnytruantt]

NAME joseph shepherd DOB april fourteenth / HOMETOWN boston, massachusetts / NATIONALITY american / JUNG intj / ENNEAGRAM type eight / MORAL ALIGNMENT chaotic good / SIN pride / HOUSE ravenclaw / ORIENTATION straight / RELIGION catholic / ANIMAL blackbird / OCCUPATION unemployed

TRAITS

+ adaptable, brave, patient, unselfish, caring, resourceful

- conservative, harsh, miserly, sarcastic, vague, guarded

All threads's

↳ By people

→ n/a

↳ By timeline

→ n/a

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→ n/a

[johnnytruantt]

NAME celeste kavanaugh DOB may thirty first / HOMETOWN manhattan, new york / NATIONALITY american / JUNG intj / ENNEAGRAM type five / MORAL ALIGNMENT true neutral / SIN pride / HOUSE slytherin / ORIENTATION straight / RELIGION agnostic / ANIMAL timber wolf / OCCUPATION unemployed

TRAITS

+ intelligent, charming, dedicated, creative, loyal, brave

- pretentious, malicious, self centered, rude, uncaring, proud

All threads's

↳ By people

→ n/a

↳ By timeline

→ n/a

↳ Chronological

→ n/a

[johnnytruantt]

The sound of Milo’s voice brought back memories that threatened to overload her system and send her into more shock than she already was having someone hold her in a way that didn’t hurt. He didn’t smell like Vietnam (that earthy, sweaty, bloody smell), he didn’t look like the Milo who had left her with an injury that nearly destroyed him (cracked and broken and a shell of man). But fuck if his voice didn’t sound the exact same, deep and smooth like one would expect from a man so handsome. It rattled her bones, rattled her right to the core, making her shudder as she felt his fingers threading through her hair, making it difficult to pull away. She wanted to close her eyes and stay in that moment for as long as she could. She wanted to memorize the way his chest felt and the way his hands felt and the faint tickle of his breath when he spoke with that comforting voice. She didn’t want to move from that exact position because when she did, she’d have to break from the nostalgia and rejoin the real world where she and Milo were two broken veterans standing on a porch in an embrace that was much more intimate than two friends should ever share. 

“Figured I would randomly show up like you used to do in the medic tent all the time,” Ryleigh joked, her arms slipping from around his neck to loop around his torso. It occurred to her that she had thought often of this. Reuniting with him, but not even just him--anyone from there. She thought of Isaac every time her pen met paper and Remy when she drank her coffee black and Matthew when she fell asleep, his hysterical laughter ringing in her ears and sometimes bringing a smile to her face. She thought of Milo when she was awake, every moment, wondering what it would be like to be close to him again. “Don’t tell me you didn’t miss me, I know you did,” she joked, her throat closing a little and she was left to wonder if this was a good idea. So long as they stood like that, nothing was wrong. They didn’t have to talk. Milo could keep holding her and she could keep holding him and they could reasonably pretend like the world around them didn’t exist--much like Ryleigh had done laying on a cat in Vietnam.

When he broke the hug and his hands moved to take hold of her biceps she was forced to look at him again and worst yet, be looked at by him. His thumb brushing over her bruise felt more gentle than any man had touched her in years and it made her want to cave. She wanted to cry right then and there, she wanted him to hug her again. She missed her mother and her father and her brother and the naivety Vietnam had stolen from her. She missed her bed and her horses and being happy. She didn’t want to tell Milo that the bruise on her eye was from a man who had as good as called him a baby killer. She couldn’t tell him she had gotten into a van with strangers and this was the result, she couldn’t let Milo know that the nurse he’d cared about in Vietnam had come home and taken the things that had happened to him (to all of them, to the soldiers she cared for and watched die, to the ones that had to survive and come home to hate and poison) and made them about her. Not yet, anyway. 

Ryleigh had come to Milo knowing she’d break eventually, but not on his porch when just a second ago she had felt happier than she had been in what felt like years. 

“Yeah well you should see the other guy. He regrets ever meeting me, don’t worry,” Ryleigh joked, taking his hand from her face and lacing their fingers together. She should have covered the bruise up with make up, but maybe she didn’t so he’d see it. So someone would see it. Someone would ask and someone would care. She felt guilty in the pit of her stomach that she wanted that. “The world is big and I am a small girl,” she sighed, taking a step back from him so he could breath, separating them for the first time since she’d thrown herself at him. His hand felt as warm as his chest had. “Why don’t we start by getting a beer or something, though. It’s been a long as hell drive and I could really go for that.” She swept her hair back and peeked around him. “Shit, am I like interrupting, oh God, I’m sorry,” she apologized quickly, stepping back again.

Home Is Where You Are

Nostalgia was something he never expected to feel towards the retched jungle where he’d spent almost three years of his life. There was no warmth in his chest on those sleepless nights. There was no love for a place that had chipped away pieces of him, both mentally and physically. When his own screams woke him up in the middle of the night clutching at searing pain in an absent limp, all he felt in his absent heart was bitterness.  But Milo had missed his people. The younger men who signed up for all the same reasons he had and the ones whose fates were very different from the lives they had planned. For a while, lots of them had written him. Isaac, whose second tour might have done more damage than his first, had always been the most honest with him when he wrote. Remy’s letters always felt somehow stilted, as if he were speaking rather than writing. Now, what had once been a letter a week flooding his parent’s mailbox had dwindled down to little more than one or two every few months. Isaac hadn’t written him since the package came with a novel that Milo still couldn’t bring himself to read.

Ryleigh’s letters had always held something back. Maybe it was the shaky, handwritten words on the page that gave her away. Or the words she chose that seemed specifically designed to keep her secrets. It was her she worried about the most. Even when she was forthright with the things she was doing and the life she was leading now, Milo could still sense something buried deep underneath the scribbled ink and tattered pieces of paper.

But as much as all of that seemed to matter in the moment, nothing else mattered but Ryleigh throwing all of her minuscule weight against his chest. It took everything he had to hold himself upright, his bad leg almost slipping from beneath him as his arms flew out to his side to keep his balance. Even the clattering sound of his wooden cane hitting the loose boards on his parents’ front porch didn’t reach him as he wrapped his arms around the woman.  For a moment, there was a sensation that he hadn’t felt in years flooding his bones. She didn’t smell like the jungle, she wasn’t covered in mud and blood. She wasn’t the nurse he’d left behind when the country he’d been trying to help stole his leg. She was human and yet she was something more. She was joy and terror and smoke and gunfire and passion all in one form. He didn’t miss Vietnam—the whole country could go fuck itself, for all he cared—but damn, he had missed her. More than he’d realized until she was pressed against him.

Ryleigh felt like home.

“I didn’t know Nurse Babe did house calls,” he laughed, fingers treading through the hair at the base of her neck as he held her. It was a reunion scene stolen straight from the pages of a cheesy romance novel. One like his mother read to keep her mind occupied while his father was away. If Milo was a stronger, more capable man, he would have swept Ryleigh off her feet and carried her into the house. “I think the beard really pulls together the look I’m going for. You look amazing, though.” His words caught in his throat, strangled by a flood of emotions that he had convinced himself a long time ago that he didn’t actually possess. “What the hell are you doing here?”

It took everything in him to pull himself away, fingers wrapping firmly around her biceps to look her over. She was thinner than he remembered, skinny legs running for miles under short denim shorts. Her face wasn’t as bright and youthful as it usually appeared to him in his dreams. Still, she was beautiful. Even scarred by the things she’d lived through and the world she’d been exposed too when she was still nearly a child. Scarred by something else, as well. “What happened here?” Milo grazed his thumb over a splash of blue and purple and putrid yellow that spilled out from her eyebrow. “What did I tell you about picking fights, kid?” It was easier to tease her than to let the growing concern in his chest spill outward. Part of him just wanted to bring her back into his chest and never let her go; eliminate any possible doubt that this reunion was just another one of his taunting dreams.

[johnnytruantt]

Like a giant dog doing as it was told, Noah swung his legs (although slowly) over and up onto the bed. He lowered himself just as carefully, trying to settle into the hospital bed that seemed determined to be as uncomfortable as possible. “Nurse Wilder,” he repeated, watching as the lithe blond took a stool and sat near his head. He seemed to look more comfortable than when he’d stepped in. There wasn’t any more annoyance in his voice; not that Noah could blame him for having any in the first place. He’d dated a nurse once before and he remembered the hours they worked. Going from a four hour shift one day to a thirteen the next. Dealing with giant idiots with gashed eyebrows probably wasn’t the most fun. Noah’s mind wandered, and unfortunately the sudden shift in position had made all the blood rush to his head, his hands flattening on his stomach as he tried to lay still for the nurse. “Now that’s not fair. You know my first name and i just know your last,” he mumbled, a grin on his face as he looked up at him. “But I like it, Nurse Wilder.” 

His body tensed and he refused a flinch as he felt the cotton dabbing away the blood on his face. It was cool and for the first time since being admitted he realized that he was very hot. Not feverish, but warmer than usual. Blood pumping and heating him up. Getting the dried blood off his face felt good and he couldn’t deny that having a good looking man do it for him was an added bonus. He tried to mentally remind himself that a nurse didn’t need to deal with his flirting, but Noah couldn’t help but let himself imagine what it would be like to flip Nurse Wilder over onto the bed he was laying on. “Headache, yes,” Noah said, squirming a bit as his eyes flickered up to the nurse that was taking over his thoughts at the moment. “Probably from the punch to the head, though, not from anything else.” He swallowed and licked his lips, eyes never leaving the others, focused. “You want to know if I have a concussion? Trust me, I’ve had concussions before and I know I don’t have one,” he said, laughing. 

“And I certainly don’t need anything to numb it,” Noah continued. He had been in worse pain than this. He had suffered through worse injuries as well. A split in his eyebrow was nothing, and at this point, he could hardly feel the cut. Noah tried to imagine the needle going through skin, the terrible feeling of having thread pulled through the hole it made. The jerk of his skin as the thread was tightened. It was sick, but Noah almost longed for the feeling. His chest was tightened with excitement. It reminded him of years ago, with other men just as gruff and excited to be hurt and dish the hurt out, overseas donned in gear that probably weighed more than Nurse Wilder ever weighed in his entire life. Noah hated that it made him excited and he hated how it reminded him of something he didn’t have anymore, so he turned his focus back to the nurse and his beautiful blue eyes. Gorgeous no matter how sleepy and somewhat sad they looked. 

The retired soldier let air out between his teeth in a heavy sigh, fingers drumming (the ones that worked full and properly anyway) on his abdomen. “I don’t want a doctor, anyway. They’re haughty and annoying. Much prefer the cute nurse to the cold doctor. Who would I flirt with then?” He tried to hold in, but he couldn’t stop the smile that was taking over his entire face, feeling the dried blood cracking and pushing off his skin as he did. Had to be the biggest smile he made that night to unsettle the blood on his face, which was slowly being cleaned away. “I’m really sorry. I know that’s probably inappropriate. I just refuse to believe I’m the only guy to hit on you all night,” Noah reasoned, tilting his head ever so slightly so he could look at him further. “You can tell me to stop and I’ll try really hard if it’s making you uncomfortable, but I make no promises. I’m persistent when it comes to good looking men, honestly.” And he was, but not if he was making the nurses night even worse than it already seemed to be. From the moment he’d seen the man coming in, he’d had it in mind to at least get his number. If he could do that, the split eye brow was worth it. 

Cold Clocked

“I’m going to get you cleaned up in just a minute,” he interrupted, hoping the edge of annoyance in his voice was actually just his imagination. While bedside manner had never been Atticus’s strong suit, he had learned to fake it well enough to get by. Only at the end of the day did his exhaustion cause him to loosen his filter. Sometimes a little annoyance spilled out. Annoyance that accidentally got directed at the massive man who hadn’t done anything to earn the aggression. “Sorry,” he mumbled, more to himself, as he listened to Noah’s story.

The story itself was less important than Noah’s ability to recount the events, though knowing the cut had come from a set of brass knuckles instead of a broken beer bottle meant he wouldn’t have to spend an hour trying to pull broken fragments out of the wound. With head wounds, there was always the risk of concussion and the easiest way to determine if a patient had one was to pay attention to their speech. Atticus washed his hands and covered them with sterile latex gloves while he listened carefully. Noah’s words weren’t slurred nor did his voice stagger. He seemed able to recount events with no trouble recalling details and events. He even seemed lucid enough to flirt, sort of. If that’s what he was actually doing. It was such an alien experience that Atticus could never really tell but it made him smile a little nonetheless as he moved back around the bed to stand in front of his patient.

 “Wilder,” he answered, fingers dipping into the dispenser of sanitary wipes mounted to the side beside the bed. Something about Noah reminded him of a massive animated puppy. His movements and expressions seemed almost cartoonish, even with a reopened head wound.  It made the man harder to dislike, despite the fact that Atticus had been entirely prepared to do so. Because someone who ended up in the hospital after getting cold clocked with a set of brass knuckles had all the markings of some blatantly unlikable asshole. “Nurse Wilder, because I have to be formal. And you’re definitely going to need stitches.”

Although Atticus wasn’t short by any means, and most of the time he could clean someone’s wound without having to stand on his toes Noah towered over him even when seated on the ER bed. A man that size would prove to be a bit more of a challenge. “Do you mind lying back, Mister—um, Noah?” He asked, feeling awkward as he addressed the man free of formalities. His question was accompanied by a long sweeping gesture towards the head of the bed.  “I just need to clean it out and numb it first. You’re uh… definitely going to want it to be numb.” With sterile wipes in hand, Atticus stood back and waited for Noah to move into a better position.

That proved to be a mistake.

He had always appreciated anatomy. The way bodies were structured and muscles moved under tanned skin to lift Noah’s legs into place, the way arms strained against too-tight t-shirt fabric to lean his body back on a bed that looked too flimsy to hold him. Noah Tonkin had an anatomy worth admiring in ways that the nurse knew he shouldn’t. Still, he forced himself to avert is gaze, eyes shooting down to the toes of his sneakers that poked out beneath light blue scrub pants. “Ah,” he stammered a little, hoping there was no red in his cheeks to accompany his typical pallor. “Have you experienced any nausea?” he asked, perching himself on an uncomfortable stool near Noah’s head. Carefully, he dabbed away both fresh and dried blood starting furthest away from the wound and working his way up to it.

“Headaches? Light and sound sensitivity? Balance problems?” He rattled off all the typical signs of a concussion, though he was certain that Noah had somehow managed to avoid one. Atticus forced himself to focus on his job, ignoring perfectly toned skin under the rust colored flakes of blood. “Head injuries often lead to concussions. And if you’ve got a concussion, I’ll probably need to call a doctor over here.” 

[johnnytruantt]

Marrying Jax had undoubtedly been a risk. She knew his life coming in, having dated him long enough to know how hectic it could. An ex (if she’d even ever held the title of girlfriend, Rory’s thoughts always echoed bitterly) and a two year old daughter riding on his coat tails. Rory hadn’t just married Jax, she’d married his life as well. She’d married Cheyenne in a way, something she was more than happy to do, but married the stress that came with her and her crazy bitch of a biological mother. A woman who seemed hellbent on making Jax out to be the same man he’d been when Rory had known him before, even though he was so clearly changed it was like someone had run over the dirt of his life with a bleached rag and cleaned away almost all the grime. Rory loved Jax, though. And she had never in her life been one to turn down a risk--a possible adventure. And that’s what married life was to Rory, in a way. Another adventure for her to tuck under her belt, another experience. In the two months they had been married, Rory hadn’t found a snag that they hit too great for them to over come, although Alyssa always, always loomed heavy in the background.

A baby, however, would be an adventure for two and Rory wasn’t sure how prepared for that they were. She wasn’t sure how prepared Jax was. His feet finally firmly on the ground and his life moving in the right direction. A daughter already and a new wife, a job he seemed to love--a job that seemed to keep him away for longer than it ever had before. Or maybe Rory had been imagining that, as she had already run through every wrong thing that could happen with a new addition in their life as well as everything new and amazing thing we all. 

But Jax’s body found hers, though, making her feel like melting where she stood. His hips against hers, his lips touching her skin (in a way she knew he knew would make her shudder and smile). The comfort of his hands on her arms and then at her neck, giving a sample massage of what she thoroughly planned on making him continue later. And then the smell of his coat before he was stepping away from her and she felt all the worried feelings rush back up into her sternum like a heavy wave hitting and throwing her off her surfboard. Rory pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down slowly, careful of the pregnancy test she was keeping in her back pocket. She could feel it poking her, reminding her of the news she had to share with her husband, almost taunting her. Rory chewed on her thumb nail as she watched Jax moving around the kitchen. “Just uh, lettuce and mayo.” Rory smiled at him, folding one leg over the other.

Rory wasn’t a good actress at all. She’d never been able to hide her emotions well, she was never good at lying. She wasn’t even good at pretending to be happy, an awkward pinched look on her face when she received stupid wedding gifts from distant cousins. Looking up at Jax from her seat at the table, she wasn’t sure what emotion she was putting out for him to see, but she could only guess it was a nervous mix of hysteria and utter happiness, something that probably looked more like she belonged in a total insane asylum. She could only guess what scenario’s Jax was running through his head at the moment and Rory hated that she couldn’t just spit it out--until she could. Until she was finally standing and pulling the pregnancy test out of her back pocket without even thinking twice and holding it out to him. 

“I didn’t notice because of the wedding. It’s been so stressful, I really didn’t think about missing my period but when it didn’t happen this month,” Rory trailed off, her eyes shining as they filled to the brim with tears. The same sort of tears she had cried when Jax had said I do in front of his family and hers and they had kissed and her last named changed to something decidedly more southern. The same sort of tears she had cried when he’d proposed, the sort of tears she cried when she was so happy, she felt like something inside of her was going to burst at any moment. “Jax, I’m pregnant,” she said, her face splitting into a smile so wide it almost hurt her. “It’s positive. I’m pregnant.”

Surprise!

A savory smell seemed to permeate through the door. And even before Jax nudged it open with his foot, arms occupied with manila folders and order forms that needed to be filled out, an uneasy feeling setting over his chest.  One that could easily be shaken away by the smell of grilled meat, but uneasy nonetheless. “Did you cook?” he asked as his feet crossed the threshold into the small apartment the newlyweds shared. Maneuvering inside proved to be more difficult than it should have been as Jax pushed the door closed with an elbow, working hard not to drop the bundle of papers in his arms. His keys clanged loudly on the inside of the porcelain bowl, almost drowning out whatever Rory had called from the kitchen.

Her couldn’t pretend like having a warm meal already prepared wasn’t an exciting prospect and as much as he loved cooking for his wife, some days  (like today) his arms ached too much to hold the handle of a pan. He didn’t bother straightening the pile into a neat stack when he dropped an arm full of papers on the table beside the bowl. He’d sort through it later, figure out what needed to be done tonight and what could wait until tomorrow. After a long day of unloading trucks filled to bursting with meat cuts, all he wanted to do was plop down at the kitchen table with a beer. Jax’s coat came off in one fluid motion on his way back to the kitchen and he left it thrown over the back of the living room sofa. He’d hang it up later—maybe.

“Smells good,” he commented as he leaned against the door frame and folding his arms over his chest, “all ten of them.”  Rory was beautiful in ways that tugged at Jax’s heart until he felt a buzz in his chest that reminded him that he had never done anything in his life that could make him worthy of her. But he loved her anyway, and for some reason she loved him back. Enough to give him another chance that he didn’t deserve, enough to marry him and put up with all the baggage he brought to the table. A daughter and a borderline-crazy ex. He questioned it every day, but never out loud for fear that she’d actually listen to him and realize how much better she could do.

Two months into their marriage and Jax still smiled every time he looked at the ring on his finger. He always wondered if Rory did the same. The burgers made his stomach rumble, reminding him that he’d skipped lunch to finish unloading the truck on time. He hated having to pull people away to finish putting things away after the restaurant was open—it took away from the experience, the atmosphere. And that took away from his bottom line. Besides, given the chance to be at the restaurant an hour later than planned or skipping lunch to make it hope to spend the evening with his wife, Jax would choose the latter one-hundred-percent of the time.

“What’s the occasion?” There was something about his wife’s demeanor that made him anxious. The way she chewed at her lip and her eyes seemed to dart all around him as she moved uneasily through the kitchen. His boots squeaked as he moved across the floor, moisture from an afternoon rain shower still clinging to the soles as he moved around the counter. His hips found a comfortable place on her waist as his lips found a place on her neck that he knew would make her shiver. He’d spent three years learning Rory’s body and he knew how to comfort, he knew how to love. “I’ve got it,” he mumbled against her skin, moving his hands up her frame until they rested on her biceps, “you sit down.”

His hands inched up to her shoulders, massaging them lightly as he pressed his lips to the top of her head.  “What do you want on your burger?” he asked, taking a step back so she could move. “Just have a seat and tell me what we’re celebrating.”

[johnnytruantt]

Being gay was tough. Not just that one had to fear being hated just for their sexuality or the lack of proper representation in the media. Or that most pop singers used gay men as props and insulted them the entire time. There was the gay marriage thing still being a fight for rights daily and he was pretty sure being a gay athlete was only going to bring him pain later in life. But most of all it was hard when it came to dating. Because Jace had to constantly look at another man and wonder. Squint hard and rely on stereotypes he hated and wished he didn’t have to look for. He had to try and pick up on subtle cues that he could be reading entirely wrong. Especially now that he played baseball and had people who genuinely just wanted to become his friend. It was not at all rare that Jace found himself alone with another guy, thinking this guy was initiating something only to realize to his own horror that he was flirting with his own straight fan who just wanted a chance to become friends with someone on the Rutgers team. It was a terrible mess and most of the time, Jace had to wing it and hope the other guy would make the first move. After all, Jace was pretty publicly gay--though that hadn’t stopped the pretty blond girl. 

The guy who had followed him outside was good looking enough that it made Jace’s heart skip a beat and hope, really hope that he had a chance and that he wasn’t just being followed to be asked what it was like to play with insert whatever mildly almost famous player here was like. The guy had curly black hair that he pushed aside and then a slash of a grin across his face pulled together by a button up shirt; and Jace couldn’t deny that he was staring as his new friendly stranger moved to the lawn chair. Jace tried to lean against the railing of the porch and look somewhat suave, but probably came off looking a little awkward. He had never perfected the charm he swore he was born with, but if he got into the groove of flirting (if that’s what was about to happen) he was sure he could pull it off. “Louise, right?” Jace said, grinning a little as his hands found the bannister and he crossed his foot at the ankle and watched the other man. He looked a bit older than him, but not by much. Jace was hypnotized by that grin that took up half Graham’s face.

Though he had already decided that he was done drinking for the night, he took the beer and the bottle opener anyway, leaning back against the railing as he used it to pop off the cap. It made a satisfying sound as it came off, almost as satisfied as Jace felt with the stranger, who wasn’t so much a stranger anymore. He was almost positive this was flirting. He’d had his friend swoop in to figure out what sport he played. What he was sure that meant was what team he played for and whether or not he was into guys or he wasn’t. Jace felt confident now that this wasn’t just some fan trying to get closer to the more star players of the team. With confidence came easer and Jace felt more comfortable to lean back, hips thrust a little forward as his shoulders straightened. 

“I’m Jace,” he said, pocketing the cap and leaning forward to hand the bottle opener back to him trying to grin half as cute as Graham managed, though Jace thought that was likely impossible. “And I’m a baseball player actually. Never was one for soccer. Always been better with my hands.” He took a swig of his beer, set it down on the bannister and then pulled the zipper of his hoodie down to reveal the jersey underneath that he and all his other teammates were wearing for the night. It had RUTGERS printed across it in bright red letters and on the back, SAWYER. It wasn’t used during games, but it was modeled like a baseball kit and that was all that really mattered. Jace took the beer again and held it to his lips and slid his hand into his pocket. 

Party Fouls

He’d actually worn a nice shirt. A clean, plaid button down that he’d run home to get after work. Graham never dressed up for parties. Not when he was being coaxed into going with coworkers. He didn’t mind a good party, but Graham was notoriously lazy and getting him to change into something that didn’t smell like the inside of a bar was a chore on its own. But he’d changed out of the purple t-shirt with East End Bar and Grille printed on the front and into something that could almost be considered dressing up, and now he was determined to put it to good use.

Louise was always the best wingman he could ever ask for. She went in early to scope out the scene for him, to figure out if the guy he had his eye on would punch him in the face if he tried to flirt. In turn, Graham did the same for her. The little southern blonde was a knockout, gorgeous in a traditional way that anyone would have a hard time turning down. But Graham couldn’t help the smirk of satisfaction that crossed his lips when the boy dodged her and headed for the door. They’d spent an embarrassing amount of time debating on the poor kid’s sexuality and even more time trying to figure out what sport he played that gave him such an amazing physique that screamed athlete. His eyes followed the kid all the way from the snack table to the front door before shooting back to Louise to give her a thumbs-up.

With the necks of two unopened beer bottles one hand and the other running back through a head of chaotic black curls, Graham trotted towards the door with a broad smile on his face. He couldn’t say exactly what it was that drew him to the other man. Whether it was a slender frame, or the cute way he wore his baseball cap, or the way his jeans seemed to hug his thighs, Graham couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It might have even been the vibe he seemed to give off from afar, something in his posture shouted that he absolutely didn’t want to be there. Someone that cute should be enjoying themselves more. It was a party, after all.

The strangers back was towards him when he opened the door, shirt accentuating lean muscles. Definitely an athlete, though Graham hadn’t entirely decided what he played. The creak of wooden boards under his feet must have gotten his attention, as the athlete seemed to rush to his feet. “You took the Doritos,” Graham lied, the hand that held beer bottles tucked carefully behind his back, out of sight. “I just go where the good food is.”

His free hand shoved curls to the side of his face, out of his eyes, and his mouth stretched into an almost comically large smile. Graham plopped himself down into a vacant lawn chair, arms laid across his knees to prop himself upright. “I’m joking,” he said, two bottles dangling between his knees. “I actually don’t really mind Gaga. She’s annoying as hell, but this song is pretty damn catchy.” He was a good looking kid, definitely younger than Graham but he couldn’t quite put a number to it. Twenty, maybe. Even under the faint porch light, he could make out enough of the other man’s features to know that he was just as attractive up close as he was far away. Graham had made a good decision and hoped his semi-nice button down that didn’t smell like beer, burgers, and cigarette smoke would do him some favors tonight.

“My friend,” he said, nodding his head back towards the door, “the cute blonde country singer. We were trying to figure out what sport you play. I put my money on soccer.” Graham extended his hand, offering an unopened beer bottle up to the stranger in front of him. “So you gotta clear this up for us, it’s putting a serious riff in our friendship.” Graham laughed as his hand fished through his pocket for his keys and the bottle opener key chain he’d gotten more for work than play. His eyes moved from the bottle to thighs wrapped in tight denim as he pried the lid off. That only made him smile wider.

“Name’s Graham, by the way. Needed it?” he shrugged, offering him the bottle opener. “Don’t try to take off with my keys. The car and apartment they belong to are pretty shitty.”

[johnnytruantt]

The first time Ryleigh saw Milo was her first day in Vietnam. She was fuller and paler and brighter and nervous than the last day she saw him. With hips that still curved because she ate three meals a day and rode horses until the sun went down. Paler because sun hadn’t beamed down on her every waking hour of the day. Brighter because she hadn’t seen the horror of a man having his leg cut off just below the knee and nervous because she knew she would be seeing something like that soon. She had no idea, really. There was no way to predict the things she’d seen, but from the second her feet touched the ominous red earth of Vietnam, she was nervous. She was twenty and naive and Milo was strutting across the base completely nude and complaining about how hot it was, all tanned skin and sweat. Making all the blood drain out of her face and flush to it at the same time, snap her head to the side to avoid looking at him, others who had been on the same helicopter as her laughing or staring somewhere else as well. As telling as that red dirt had been to the horrors she would see, her first meeting with Milo was just as telling of a man he was.

When she asked someone for his name, all they told him was Handsome. An adjective she wasn’t going to deny, but not a name to satisfy her at all. In the coming weeks, though, she found that all marines had were their guns and nicknames and Handsome suited Milo just fine, like Nurse Babe suited her. He was something else, though. He was like hope and happiness to the others. A regular prankster with nothing malicious in him for his fellow soldiers and all good natured charm that lead to cracked smiles from cracked faces and broken people. Ryleigh disliked him at first, listening to the way Doc Win sighed heavily and frustrated around him (until she realized he liked the Corporal as much as everyone he just had his own way of showing it) and the way other nurses fawned and soldiers revered. Annoyed by his nudity and his preference for the prostitutes he saw as both pathetic and depressing. But Ryleigh couldn’t ignore his charm, not the way he was brash and unafraid around her. The way he treated her with the respect she thought she’d earned.

And she could never deny the safety and comfort she felt around him eventually. A hug from Milo was enough to make her last through the day. His hand rubbing her back and shit talking the ex who sent her a Dear John letter usually reserved for soldiers. Milo had been like home in Vietnam, the only small comfort when there was nothing except the hope that today they’d have hot food and water that didn’t taste like oil. Watching Milo go from that, to the man in the hospital bed with only one working leg and eyes that looked as dead as the soldiers they carried out in cots to be sent home in caskets, had wrecked Ryleigh. When Milo went home, when he went stateside and she was alone next to the bed he’d been in, Ryleigh felt like the only thing that had kept her grounded was gone. And selfishly, she had felt torn by it.

Seeing him again, for the first time in two years made her heart feel just as torn as it had been, but in a different way. Milo looked as handsome as he did back in Vietnam. He’d grown a beard and his hair was longer and he sagged on a cane, but he was Milo. And that was all Ryleigh cared about, his eyes and his lips and his hands and his face and it was Milo. That was all that mattered, it was Milo. She felt a magnetic pull she couldn’t stop and suddenly she was running instead of walking and her arms were opening to wrap around his neck, her chest hitting him. Harder than maybe it should have, but she didn’t have time to be wary of the prosthetic leg she probably should of cared about but didn’t. Her arms only tightened and her face buried into his shoulder, standing on her toes to reach his height. 

“Milo, I missed you so much,” she whispered. He didn’t smell like sweat and Vietnam and it confused her body and her senses. For some reason, on the way to his home, she had envisioned him the exact same as he’d been over seas. She pictured him younger and still in greens and sweating. He was dry and older and his beard tickled her cheek, but she didn’t care. She had never felt as good as she did then, holding onto him, and she wondered if the world was vibrating or if she was shaking. “You stupid fucking marine,” she choked out pulling back to take his face in her hands and embarrassingly realize she had tears in her eyes. “You look terrible with a beard!” She lied, a smile so genuine on her face her body didn’t seem to recognize it. “It’s so good to see you,” she said in a much quieter tone, her lips dulling the smile, but not dulling the authenticity of it. She was still pressed flush against him in the most intimate of ways and the least sexual of ways, she just wanted the comfort he had once brought her in a place where there was no comfort.

Home Is Where You Are

Tuning things out was a skill he’d picked up overseas—however many years ago that had been. If the base wasn’t buzzing with the constant sounds of boots hitting the dirt and men wrestling in the mud, then it buzzed with the nervous energy of soldiers all realizing at once that they’d probably succumb to the same fate as a freshly fallen comrade. Neither was more overwhelming than the other, but the nerves would swallow if you let it. So Milo spent his time reading. Books he’d brought and bought on leave, books his mother sent him when he asked for them. He drowned himself in books and learned to block out the chaos.

But the noise in his parents’ living room hardly counted as chaos. It was hard to compare the sound of his mother’s knitting needles clocking together to the ruckus marines made when a poker game turned into a wrestling match. There was a game show on the television set that Milo didn’t know the name of or understand the rules too, but it all faded into the background just like the sound of far off gunfire that might have been his imagination all along. His eyes scanned the pages of the newest Michener novel, the hardback heavy in his hand as he leaned back against the sofa with his leg propped up on the coffee table and the other left to dangle uselessly in the floor, as it usually did. The leather strap around his thigh itched, as it usually did. But Milo forced himself to block it out as he turned the page.

It was always easier to block things out and let himself fall into another world. One more interesting than this, where maybe he would walk out to the mailbox without the burning sensation cutting through his thigh.

“I wonder who that could be.” His mother’s needles stopped clicking and the creak of her rocking chair moving forward was louder than the man with a broad smile and a cheap suit on television. “Your dad’s not supposed to be home for another two days,” she murmured, looking past him and over his shoulder where the curtains were drawn over the window to block out the late afternoon son. The sound was unmistakable, tires crunching on the gravel driveway that stretched almost half a mile back up to the road. It was accompanied by the roar of an engine sputtering and almost out of gas.

Milo shrugged at his mother as he reached for the cane propped up against the wall. It was rare that anyone stopped by unannounced. A farmhouse on the outskirts of one of the smallest cities in the state didn’t get many visitors. So far off from the road that most people wouldn’t even know it was there if not for the bright red mailbox in front of the gravel driveway with “SAVAGE” painted on in pretty white block letters. “I’ll see what they want,” he offered, struggling to find a way to pull himself up and balance his weight on one foot. Even two years later, he hadn’t quite mastered some of the basics with his new leg.

Mrs. Savage always seemed to get uneasy when people popped by. And Milo could tell by the way she stood and moved swiftly to mute the TV that she was already getting nervous. Milo half wished he had enough hands to carry the shot gun with him onto the porch, if for no other reason than to put her at ease.

The sun was setting fast behind the tree line when Milo stepped, barefoot, onto the sealed wooden porch. The sound the plastic made against the planks made him cringe. They creaked naturally under his right but his left clattered down on them that more often than not sent mice and stray cats scurrying terrified out into the yard. But at least only one foot was affected by the ice cold surface that greeted the pads of his bare toes. Milo tried not to scowl at his pathetic attempt at optimism as he watched a familiar woman charge towards him.

At first he couldn’t place her, the brown waves of hair that framed her face, a slender frame and thin shoulders he might have once held close to his chest in the middle of the jungle so long ago that it seemed more like a dream than a memory. All at once it flooded back to him, hit his body with the force of a tidal wave that threatened to sweep him off of his unstable feet. If she’d worn her greens, covered in vomit and blood and dirt, then Milo would have recognized her the second he laid eyes on her.

“I’d meet you half way,” he called, his face cracking into what might have been his first real smile in two years, “but I don’t move as fast as I used to.” Milo’s laugh was genuine as he tapped the plastic foot, poking out from the bottom of flared jeans, with the rubber grip of his cane. Something swelled in his chest, as he pulled the door closed behind him, momentarily forgetting about his mother and her anxieties. The entire world seemed to blur around the woman moving deliberately towards him.