Fic: 16 Proofs of Love, #04 Kiss on the mouth: Love
Title: Ain’t Lookin’ For Prayers Or Pity
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: het
Summary: It's a cold February night in Milwaukee for Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman. Time for some hard truths.
A/N: Alright, this one was being a little bitch at times and I'm not sure if I nailed it but yeah, that is, so far, the final part and maybe I can finally concentrate on some of the other fics I still need to write and/or finish. As always, I'd love to hear what you think!
PS.: You can see the other finished stories here.
( I've Tried So Hard, Baby )
( Badlands Start Treating Us Good )
( All the Boys You Sent Away )
Ain’t Lookin’ For Prayers Or Pity
“Girl ain’t no kindness in the face of strangers
Ain’t gonna find no miracles here
Well you can wait on your blessings darlin’
But I got a deal for you right here
I ain’t lookin’ for prayers or pity
I ain’t comin’ ‘round searchin’ for a crutch
I just want someone to talk to
And a little of that human touch
Just a little of that human touch.”
Bruce Springsteen, “Human Touch”
God, she hates Wisconsin.
No, okay, that’s not true. Actually, she likes Wisconsin. Or at least doesn’t mind it very much, not even in February. She’s a Chicago native, so snow and temperatures in the double negatives at the end of winter don’t surprise her much, nor do they bother her much. To be honest, whenever she was forced to spend time at Twentynine Palms - and yeah, both in Fallujah and at Leatherneck - she kind of found herself pining more than once for the Great Lakes in January.
Anyway. Back to Wisconsin. Milwaukee, especially. Corner of West Cleveland Avenue and 19th Street, right in the middle of an industrial park that is. Right now. It is the middle of February, and temperatures really are in the double negatives today. So what would normal people do?
Get the hell out of the cold and inside a nicely heated house, maybe with a fire merrily crackling away in the fireplace and a dog sleeping by your feet or something, that’s what they would do. Not standing around in the dark in bunker gear, that’s for sure. And yet here they are, standing fire watch over the smoldering remains of what used to be a galvanization factory not three hours ago.
Damn, if it could just have been anything but that damn factory. It’s cold enough that they wouldn’t need more than maybe two firefighters sitting watch comfortably and toasty warm in one of the vans for your average, garden-variety house fire but no, it had to be a fucking hot dip galvanization factory going up in flames, with God knows what buried in the smoldering remains, ready to burst out in flames at the slightest contact with oxygen.
So yeah, no comfortable van for them. Instead, half of Engine 12’s Second Watch placed at strategic corners of the building in full rig, minus SCBAs, waiting for the other half of the watch to relieve them in about an hour. About fucking time, too. At least she got the right partner for her little corner of the lot.
Or, it would be the right partner if he were just a little bit chattier. As it is, in the last hour since they got the fire under control, all Evan had done was skulk around, kick at debris here and there and aim the handheld infrared camera into the mass of the remains in irregular intervals. Definitely not his standard performance. Something’s up with that man, and she intends to find out what the hell it is tonight.
The thing is: it’s been going on for a while, that much she can tell. She’s been back with the watch for five weeks now, and something’s been eating at him for at least four of them. Gradually and slowly because she hadn’t even realized it until maybe a week ago but yeah, the signs had been there before that. That night when she was still in hospital when he hadn’t even changed out of his bunker gear before visiting her, deflecting things by concentrating on helping her getting back on her feet, closeting himself away in his quarters for longer and longer intervals… all there.
After their little dance performance, she’d thought that they might get closer again, in some way, opening up a little more but in the end it had only been skin deep. She’d thought that telling him about Rodney, as much as she hadn’t wanted to blurt that out, would change, you know… something and it kinda had, at least that one evening but couple days after that? Something had started to feel off about him.
She’d considered talking to Jennifer about it, or maybe better Teyla because Teyla has known Evan for a hell lotta longer than almost anyone else at the fire station but something had kept her from doing it. Maybe she didn’t want them to speculate about her sudden interest in the guy she dumped a little less than a year ago, maybe she hadn’t wanted to put anyone on the scent of what was probably nothing more than just a bit of funk.
Anyway, whatever it was, she didn’t talk to them about that - pretty magnificent feat, considering how they both kept trying to grill her for whatever changed between Evan and her after waking up after surgery - and she didn’t talk to anyone else about it, either. She shortly considered giving Ronon a hint and make him talk to Evan, she even thought about giving Sheppard a hint but yeah, that definitely had felt like being a snitch and she’d never do something like that to Evan. She would break his heart to protect her own, yes, but she wouldn’t do that.
So what’s left short of dragging him into a dark corner at the fire house and beat it out of him?
Cornering him at a fire watch, that’s what’s left. She doesn’t sigh but instead walks up to him, her plan for making him talk firmly in her head. Maybe shocking him into talking works a second time, too. She prepares to give her statement and… “I fucking hate Wisconsin.”
Right.
Or they could use that as a conversation starter. She grins beneath the scarf she wound around the lower half of her face. Not that he could see it but he knows her well enough to be able to hear it when she replies, “No, you don’t.”
“Sure do.” Ah. There they go again. That kind of tone, bordering on petulant, isn’t his usual way to answer something like that.
She gives keeping it light one more try. “Nah, that’s just your Californian genes talking.”
It makes him snort, at least that, but he doesn’t reply anything, just keeps walking, his shoulders hunched over a little against the cold and his face just as heavily covered as hers. Scarf for the lower half, beanie and helmet for the upper half, leaving only the eyes exposed. Maybe he really does hate Wisconsin but at least his California beach boy genes didn’t keep him from dressing according to the weather.
Unfortunately, his unwillingness to discuss his feelings regarding Wisconsin leaves her with her original plan. Which means taking a deep breath - actually, it doesn’t mean that because she kept trying to tell herself that being nonchalant about this was probably her best strategy - and saying, more or less right out of the blue, “Rodney’s getting married again.”
It’s not a lie, that’s the weirdest thing about it. Just two days after she told Evan about Rodney’s mere existence, he calls her right out of the blue. Talks to her about a conference in Chicago he’s been to, how he kept considering to ring her up but you know, time constraints, et cetera, et cetera and oh by the way, he proposed to his botanist girlfriend and she said yes.
His reply isn’t exactly verbose, consisting only of, “Your ex-husband?”
She nods, walking alongside him, their feet crunching through the refrozen slush. “The very one.”
He doesn’t immediately reply at that, keeps crunching on and aiming the camera at the remains of the factory now and then. It’s difficult to see even his eyes because of the shadow the helmet’s throwing on his face. Damn. That didn’t get her very far yet, did it?
It’s hard to stay quiet, let him work it out for himself but for once, she manages to keep her impatient trap shut. And gets rewarded for it. “You okay with that?”
Jackpot, so to speak. That’s exactly what she was hoping for when she struck up that conversation. Good to know that Jennifer isn’t the only one with an uncanny knack for instinctively finding the exact right thing to say, at least sometimes. She hunches her shoulders herself, hoping her lucky streak holds for at least a little while longer. “Yeah. There are worse things than that.”
Again, she didn’t even have to lie, and that’s pretty much weird, too. She’d always been aware of the possibility that one of them or both would remarry at some point and for some weird reason she’d always thought Rodney would be the first, despite his obvious jerky, vain and God complex tendencies. And look where she’s now. She doesn’t mind it, though, really, she doesn’t.
Evan doesn’t seem to be so convinced of that, though. “Like what?”
Well, here it is, her one chance at getting to the bottom of it all. She stops. “Like you not talking to me. Or anyone else for that matter.”
He doesn’t stop immediately, keeps walking on two or three more steps before realizing that no, she’s not coming. When he stops, he doesn’t turn around, but she can see his shoulders move, as if he just sighed heavily. She expects him to tell her that there is nothing to talk about or something equally characteristic of the strong, silent male stereotype so many firefighters apparently yearn to adhere to, which is why it really surprises her that he says, after finally turning around after all, “What do you want, Laura?” sounding kind of defeated and maybe a little annoyed, too.
Surprises her so much, actually, that she has to grope for words for a moment, doesn’t really know what to reply so in the end, she has to leave it a slightly dumfounded, “What do you mean, what do I want?”
Again, he doesn’t answer right away. Apparently, making him talk is going to be like pulling teeth. At least now she knows why they - with the sole exception of that one nightly conversation on professional distance four months into her candidacy - always carefully tried to skirt around everything deeper than day-to-day station gossip or baseball results.
In the end, his shoulders heave again and he runs a hand over his face, shaking his head. “Nothing, I just…” Yes? He just what? “Never mind. Come on, we gotta keep moving or our feet will freeze to the fucking ground or something.”
Yep, there it is again. It was clearly meant to be joking but it clearly sounded just a tad too pissed off and frustrated to compare to his usual dry humor. And four weeks ago, he probably would have been able to pass it off as just being a little grumpy teasing. Now, though… no. It’s gotta end right here because it’s actually starting to get really irritating.
She shakes her head, a little mulishly making a point of not even lifting a finger. “Not until you tell me what the hell’s going on with you.” Damn. That came out way quieter and gentler than she’d intended to. Like she cared for him. Really cared for him.
Which, God help her, she actually does.
Jesus fucking Christ, they’re not even into an actual conversation, and it’s already shaping up to be a royal clusterfuck.
To his credit, he doesn’t try to bullshit himself out of this or gives her some “What are you even talking about?” crap when he finally reacts. Rather, she detects even more signs of frustration. That thing with rocking back on his feet once or twice, the nodding that was probably accompanied by his usual jaw clenching and maybe an eyeroll… yeah, it’s all there, before he settles at, “Duty’s just been a little rough for the last couple weeks is all.”
Yeah. Well. That’s the understatement of the year. In the last couple weeks, Engine 12 had to cope with two of Evan’s crew nearly getting caught in the literal crossfire between two rival gangs, several worse than usual house fires, three cases of suspected arson and, worse of all, just last week, a twelve year old boy having to sit next to his dead father for four hours in a crashed car because that’s how long it took for someone to notice the wreck by the roadside and fucking call 911.
The thing is, though: it’s not like those were the only bad four weeks they ever had. To tell the truth, most weeks are rather like that than that shift four weeks ago when she let him convince her to dance to that goddamn song with him. And ever since she came to the station, Evan Lorne was the one guy she looked up to because he always seemed to take it in stride.
Sure he got upset about things like them having to break down doors so the cops could get inside and stop a husband from beating his wife to death or having to cut kids out of totaled cars. They all did. But Evan, he always seemed to bounce right back, always kept doing his job with efficiency and skill, not letting negative emotions keep him down. Even Ronon, her LT, couldn’t always manage to push it away after the shift was over. Evan, though…
Evan, though. Evan always seemed to be able to strip it away with stepping out of his bunker gear, wash it off in the shower, leave it behind him as soon as he left the station’s premises. Evan always got to make his own words about not letting it get to you look so easy.
Apparently, it’s not so easy, after all. She shakes her head. “Duty’s always a little rough.” She could let it end here, keep up the superficial pretense of talking about some deep stuff and leave it at that. But yeah. They’ve been doing that for far too long. And if she’s learned anything ever since she woke up from surgery… well. She takes a deep breath. “What changed?”
She can see that he’s thinking the same thing; that he could just brush her off, give her something about nothing having changed at all, knowing full well that she’d probably take the hint and let it rest, despite all her resolutions of not doing that. She can see it in the way he hesitates, in the way he’s about to turn around and just keep walking the perimeter before he moves his helmet a little back, so she can see his eyes glittering in the light of the floodlights they put up earlier. Hears it in his gruffer than usual voice when he mumbles, “Can’t seem to shake it off. That’s what changed.”
Well. That was a remarkably straightforward answer, considering how much they’ve been beating around the bush until now. Not straightforward enough, though, so she decides to keep up provoking him, at least for a little while longer. “So? You’re not the only one that ever happened to.”
He shakes his head, frustration clearly visible in his slightly jerky movements. “So you don’t understand.” No. Well, yes, actually, she does. She just has a feeling that he needs to say it, say it out loud so that he understands it, too. “I’ve been doing this shit for fifteen years, and it never… I don’t know anymore, Laura.”
It’s weird. She’s been in more than one serious relationship, not just the one with Rodney but two or three others. Serious relationships with serious emotional investments, with men she cared for deeply; deeply enough that when those relationships ended, there was always some real heartbreak involved. But none, not even one of them, managed to break her heart the way that simple sentence, sounding so lost and confused, from a man she hasn’t even been in a real relationship with just did.
Maybe she shouldn’t have initiated this conversation, after all. Because now that she’s in it, there’s no way to get out of it, no way to tell him to shut up, no way to not hear him say, “I still keep seeing that kid next to his father while you cut him out of that car. Still keep hearing him begging Jennifer to tell him his dad’s okay. That stuff… that never happened to me before.”
He’s not the only one. She still keeps hearing that kid, too, every night she goes to sleep, she hears him. She shouldn’t even be able to, the sound of the heavy cutter eating its way through the car door droning everything else out. But she does. And she’d actually prefer not to talk about it so it slips out before she can think better of it. “Happens to all of us.” Not able to look at him, she stuffs her hands in her coat’s pockets and starts walking again, telling herself it’s because she doesn’t want to have to deal with Jennifer and Teyla and frostbite.
He almost ferociously shakes his head while she trudges past him. “Yeah, but not to me.”
Almost a little exasperated, she turns around to him and growls, “That’s bullshit and you know it, Air Force.”
In a little helpless gesture of rubbing his neck, he mutters, “Laura…” but trails off, never actually finishing the sentence.
She, however, suddenly finds herself having something of an epiphany. She almost dismissed the thought, but yeah, considering everything… it adds up. She stops and turns around again, this time fully facing him. “You know what? I think I know what this is about.”
“Oh right, and what would that be?” Ah, yeah, snarky sarcasm. She can deal with that.
Well, here goes nothing. “You’re afraid you’re losing your edge. You’re afraid you’re getting too old for this.” She’s pretty sure she hit the mark with that. He’s thirty-five, still a heap of years away from average firefighter retirement age but getting close to that age when you start wondering for how long you can still stay in frontline firefighting, when you start wondering if you haven’t used up all your luck and are now living on borrowed time. That age when you start wondering if you’re really still alive due to experience or if it’s just dumb luck that kept you alive for so long. That age when you stop feeling invincible and instead start wondering when your luck will finally run out.
She thinks she can see all that running through his head, in that minute or so when he hesitates answering her. Maybe she’s imagining it, sure but yeah, she’s pretty sure that in that moment, something like that’s running through his head. His final reply does nothing to convince her of the opposite, even if it’s just getting back to moving and grumbling, “Nice try, Dr. Freud.”
Her only answer is falling in step with him and shrugging. “Just telling it like it is.”
There’s silence from him again, the only sound their feet crunching frozen slush underneath their boots and the fabric of their bunker gear rustling and swishing with every move. So it’s a little startling when he suddenly says, sounding even a little petulant, “I’m not getting too old for this.”
She nearly laughs out loud at that, just the way he said that, as if the person he needs to convince most is himself, as if he feels affronted by the mere suggestion that he might get too old for a job he feels is his one calling in life. Just like she feels about the job, which is why, in the end, she doesn’t laugh but explains to him, “I never said you were. I just said you’re afraid that it’s happening to you right now.” Honestly, he can try to deny it all he wants but that is exactly what’s going on here. And because she cares about him, way more than she should, she feels herself compelled to add, “And here’s the thing: you aren’t getting too old for it. It just turned out that, apparently, you’re human, after all, just like the rest of us.”
Of course, it can’t end here, that much is clear from how this conversation went but to be honest, everything going past that is something that he should talk about with one of the department’s shrinks or maybe the chaplain, not with her. She nearly moves to suggest that to him but then she hears him utter a somewhat mollified, “Thanks. I guess,” and decides that that’s a conversation for another day. And maybe they won’t even need that conversation because he figured that out on his own, after all. He’s smart enough for that.
She smiles beneath her scarf. “You’re welcome.”
After that, they keep walking along the remains of the factory, in something like companionable silence and she’s glad that apparently, some of that tension and nervousness seem to have left him and harbors the slight hope that maybe they can go back to light teasing and carefully not mentioning that dance from four weeks ago, like they used to.
He, of course, seems to have different ideas, though, because after a couple of yards walking in silence, he suddenly stops again, going, “You know what’s the worst, though?” and completely throwing her off with what he says next, “I just… I know I should let you go but I still miss you, Laura.” That wasn’t… She never expected him to say that? To say it with so much conviction and even… desperation? It comes so out of the blue, shocks her so deeply that all she can do is stop, too and turn towards him and stay there rooted to her spot, listening to him. “Every single day. And I keep wondering what I did wrong, what I could have done better…”
“Don’t, Evan.” She didn’t want to say that. Not that and not like that. She nearly sounded like she was choking, for God’s sake.
Unfortunately, that didn’t do anything against the floodgates that must have opened in his head, though. “Look, I know I’m being out of line here.” He’s… Yeah, okay, he kinda is, but that’s not her problem. It’s what comes after that. “I’m… I’m sorry for that and I know I should let this lie and stop picking at it but I…”
It’s him apologizing for still missing her, when he should be pissed off at still missing that woman who dumped him. Yeah. That’s what he should be. That’s what she could have dealt with easily. Anger and irritation. Being sorry? Not so much. She swallows. “No, Evan. It’s not that. It’s not you, it’s…”
“Oh please, Laura, don’t even think about trying to give me that crap…” There. That’s what she expected.
What she can deal with. She shakes her head ferociously, almost glad that she gets a chance to explain her reasoning. “No, it’s literally me!” Okay, that hadn’t been supposed to come out as desperate as that. And okay, it also hadn’t been supposed to be worded like that because that was the one thing she didn’t want to tell him about when she ended their not-relationship. But apparently, telling him about Rodney did something to her, too, and now it’s in for a penny, in for a pound. “It’s… I just… I knew I’d mess up, eventually.”
Because that’s what it always comes down to it, isn’t it? She likes a guy, she starts getting serious with him, she ends up divorced because it doesn’t work out, never would have worked out and she should have seen that one coming from a hundred miles away.
Somehow, her throat seems to get curiously tight but something keeps her talking, stupidly. Goddammit. “I just… I wanted to stop it before either of us got too involved, and since you kept saying that getting involved too much with anything or anyone was the worst thing a firefighter could do…”
“I’m sorry.” So. That’s not exactly what she’d expected what he’d say to that, especially in such a quiet, genuinely apologetic voice.
She shakes her head, not able to deal with an apology of all things right now. “No, don’t be. It’s not like you were completely wrong.” She sees that now, really sees what he meant to tell her in that night after they lost that kid four months into her candidacy. Sees that her biggest mistake always was putting too much heart into things and people that didn’t have a future and…
“I wasn’t completely right either, though.” She’d never have thought that she’d hear him saying something like that, not after he’d been so adamant about teaching her to keep her distance, so adamant that she’d used it as the reason to end their not-relationship. So adamant that she’d thought she needed to end it because she thought he’d been keeping his distance from her and she’d thought she couldn’t deal with that in the long run.
Turns out things are even more fucked up than that. She kind of feels herself deflate, grasping at straws while telling him weakly, “I just… didn’t want to get anyone hurt again.”
She sees him shake his head, sees something like pity in his eyes and hopes she imagined it, and then he says, quietly and actually without any pity, just weird sadness in his voice, “That divorce really messed you up, didn’t it?”
Her first instinct is to tell him that that’s bullshit, that she’s been over the divorce as soon as she signed all relevant papers because that’s how she felt for four goddamn years but then a little voice in her head reminds her off the small stab of envy she felt in her heart when Rodney told her about getting married again. It’s not that she still has feelings for Rodney, at least no romantic ones, and that is the truth but sometimes, late at night when she can’t sleep, she finds herself fending off traitorous thoughts telling her that the divorce was her fault, and her fault alone, and that in the end, all her failed relationships were her fault, and that this inability, whatever it is, to keep a relationship stable and running lost her the man she really, really wanted to keep forever, deep down in her heart. The man now standing opposite hers in bunker gear and steel-toed boots. She swallows something that tastes like sobs. “I…”
“Shit, Laura, I’m sorry for that” And why would he say that, if it was the truth? “That was uncalled for, and I just… I really shouldn’t have said that.”
Well. Maybe it’s the way he apologized yet again, maybe it’s that he managed to find out something even she hadn’t known about herself but all she can do is take a deep breath and finally own up to it. “That doesn’t make it any less true, though.”
He’s silent after that, apparently as shocked by her admission as she is and something tells her that she should just turn around and walk away, but suddenly, she can’t. Could be that they’ve been out here freezing their asses off for hours, could be that she’s just plain dead tired but walking away seems absolutely impossible to her. There’s something else she needs to do. “Blues?”
“What?” She’s kind of glad that he sounds only weary, no irritation or suspicion at all. Just that same tiredness that seems to be creeping into her bones.
Because it makes it a lot easier to say what she needs to tell him now. “I miss you every single day, too.”
God, she’d been trying so hard to tell herself that she was done with him, that dumping him was best for both of them that for a while, she’d even believed it. And it had been easy, as long as she hadn’t had to see him or be in the same room with him. Which meant that the only days she didn’t miss him had been her days off, away from the station and since she’d been pulling a lot of doubles immediately after the end of her candidacy to get the hang of working on a HURT squad, those days had been few and far between.
So yes, she’s been trying to deceive herself for months, and it had never even worked. She’d always missed him, had always wanted to walk up to him and tell him that she was sorry and ask him to try again, only to remember what usually happened when she got in a serious relationship with a guy and how she didn’t want that to happen to a relationship with that guy. Had always felt like a goddamn idiot for ending it, anyway.
So she nearly socks him in his jaw when his final reaction is actually laughing - albeit only a short, humorless chuckle - at her and snorting and telling her, “We sure are two fucked up individuals, Mo.”
But then again, he’s right, isn’t he, about the two of them? He doubts that he can still cut it after fifteen years, and she thinks she doesn’t deserve a relationship because she seems to run them into the ground at some point, anyway, and they miss each other so very bad that they needed almost a year of finally admitting it to each other. “Fucked up” doesn’t even begin to adequately describe it.
Her next step is, to be honest, not based on careful consideration at all. It’s pure instinct and need and so not like that tough firefighter chick image she’d worked hard to construct and fulfill but yeah, fuck that, just for a moment fuck that, and she steps up to him and throws her arms around him.
For one terrible moment, he stands there, motionless and she nearly lets go of him to finally and truly walk away from it. But then, suddenly, she feels him move, feels him put his arms around her, bulky bunker gear making his movements a little clumsy but man, even through all those layers of gear, she can still feel the fierceness of his embrace. He hugs her like he needs it as much as she does, like he never wants to let her go again. That, more than anything, even more than that dance four weeks ago, tells her all she needs to know and she genuinely would sob with relief and hope if it weren’t so damn cold and there wasn’t the real danger of her tears freezing in her eyelashes.
So instead she goes for breathless, a little hysterical laughter, and he joins her and things would really be fucking perfect right now, if there weren’t the sudden telltale sound of a muffled explosion and one of Evan’s crew on the radio, frantically calling for support in his corner of the property.
In the end, it takes them another hour and the help of their replacements to get the fire back under control and after that she’s so exhausted that all she can do is concentrate on getting back into the truck and keep herself awake long enough not to fall asleep in the shower. She doesn’t even make it to the dorm, stopping at the couch in the common room because she honestly couldn’t have walked just one more step.
She curls up on the couch, just when the ever running TV plays the first notes of “The River” and Springsteen starts to sing, “I come from down in the valley,” and about a shotgun marriage failing and she even lacks the energy to shut that damn song that she found herself hating ever since she and Rodney decided to get divorced off. Really goddamn hate that song, swear to God… “Want me to shut it off?” Huh? “The TV, Laura. Want me to switch it off?”
Did she say that thing about hating “The River” out loud? She opens her eyes, squints at the source of the voice and thinks that he looks even more tired than she feels. She closes her eyes again. “Whatever.”
That makes him chuckle again, this time with a certain… fondness to it? Yeah well, whatever, she’s too tired to contemplate that now, and really, all she wants is to be left alone and sleep off the exhaustion and the cold for at least a few more hours. So she doesn’t even move when she feels a blanket drawn over her while Springsteen keeps going on, “No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle, no flowers, no wedding dress,” and she nearly regrets not just nodding when Evan asked her… oh.
Huh. That’s his fresh out of the shower smell, right there, right next to her and she doesn’t even think, just makes the herculean effort to move her arm to cover his waist, hand shoved beneath his uniform shirt to touch skin still slightly damp, like she used to do before everything went down the drain, and it feels so right, so good, so much like what Springsteen means when he sings, “At night on them banks I’d lie awake and pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take,” when she feels an arm draped around her shoulders, pulling her closer to that body she got to know so intimately well.
Maybe she doesn’t hate “The River” that much, after all.
She smiles. It’s the last thing she does before falling asleep in that cocoon of blanket and arms and body because that’s the best thing that has happened to her in a long time. So they didn’t kiss or declare their undying love for each other or some other crap like that but honestly, no one needs that, anyway. Not when she has just been handed a chance at putting something to right she didn’t even think she deserved.
So she smiles and hugs him just a little bit closer and just for those precious few hours until their shift is over, all is right in the world. So you know, fuck being normal. Fuck the merry fire in the fireplace and the dog by your feet. At least for tonight, she can imagine nothing better than sitting on that ratty old couch in the common room with a firefighter just as messed up as she is and yeah, everything else, they can still figure out tomorrow. Thank God for tomorrow.
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: het
Summary: It's a cold February night in Milwaukee for Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman. Time for some hard truths.
A/N: Alright, this one was being a little bitch at times and I'm not sure if I nailed it but yeah, that is, so far, the final part and maybe I can finally concentrate on some of the other fics I still need to write and/or finish. As always, I'd love to hear what you think!
PS.: You can see the other finished stories here.
( I've Tried So Hard, Baby )
( Badlands Start Treating Us Good )
( All the Boys You Sent Away )
Ain’t Lookin’ For Prayers Or Pity
“Girl ain’t no kindness in the face of strangers
Ain’t gonna find no miracles here
Well you can wait on your blessings darlin’
But I got a deal for you right here
I ain’t lookin’ for prayers or pity
I ain’t comin’ ‘round searchin’ for a crutch
I just want someone to talk to
And a little of that human touch
Just a little of that human touch.”
Bruce Springsteen, “Human Touch”
God, she hates Wisconsin.
No, okay, that’s not true. Actually, she likes Wisconsin. Or at least doesn’t mind it very much, not even in February. She’s a Chicago native, so snow and temperatures in the double negatives at the end of winter don’t surprise her much, nor do they bother her much. To be honest, whenever she was forced to spend time at Twentynine Palms - and yeah, both in Fallujah and at Leatherneck - she kind of found herself pining more than once for the Great Lakes in January.
Anyway. Back to Wisconsin. Milwaukee, especially. Corner of West Cleveland Avenue and 19th Street, right in the middle of an industrial park that is. Right now. It is the middle of February, and temperatures really are in the double negatives today. So what would normal people do?
Get the hell out of the cold and inside a nicely heated house, maybe with a fire merrily crackling away in the fireplace and a dog sleeping by your feet or something, that’s what they would do. Not standing around in the dark in bunker gear, that’s for sure. And yet here they are, standing fire watch over the smoldering remains of what used to be a galvanization factory not three hours ago.
Damn, if it could just have been anything but that damn factory. It’s cold enough that they wouldn’t need more than maybe two firefighters sitting watch comfortably and toasty warm in one of the vans for your average, garden-variety house fire but no, it had to be a fucking hot dip galvanization factory going up in flames, with God knows what buried in the smoldering remains, ready to burst out in flames at the slightest contact with oxygen.
So yeah, no comfortable van for them. Instead, half of Engine 12’s Second Watch placed at strategic corners of the building in full rig, minus SCBAs, waiting for the other half of the watch to relieve them in about an hour. About fucking time, too. At least she got the right partner for her little corner of the lot.
Or, it would be the right partner if he were just a little bit chattier. As it is, in the last hour since they got the fire under control, all Evan had done was skulk around, kick at debris here and there and aim the handheld infrared camera into the mass of the remains in irregular intervals. Definitely not his standard performance. Something’s up with that man, and she intends to find out what the hell it is tonight.
The thing is: it’s been going on for a while, that much she can tell. She’s been back with the watch for five weeks now, and something’s been eating at him for at least four of them. Gradually and slowly because she hadn’t even realized it until maybe a week ago but yeah, the signs had been there before that. That night when she was still in hospital when he hadn’t even changed out of his bunker gear before visiting her, deflecting things by concentrating on helping her getting back on her feet, closeting himself away in his quarters for longer and longer intervals… all there.
After their little dance performance, she’d thought that they might get closer again, in some way, opening up a little more but in the end it had only been skin deep. She’d thought that telling him about Rodney, as much as she hadn’t wanted to blurt that out, would change, you know… something and it kinda had, at least that one evening but couple days after that? Something had started to feel off about him.
She’d considered talking to Jennifer about it, or maybe better Teyla because Teyla has known Evan for a hell lotta longer than almost anyone else at the fire station but something had kept her from doing it. Maybe she didn’t want them to speculate about her sudden interest in the guy she dumped a little less than a year ago, maybe she hadn’t wanted to put anyone on the scent of what was probably nothing more than just a bit of funk.
Anyway, whatever it was, she didn’t talk to them about that - pretty magnificent feat, considering how they both kept trying to grill her for whatever changed between Evan and her after waking up after surgery - and she didn’t talk to anyone else about it, either. She shortly considered giving Ronon a hint and make him talk to Evan, she even thought about giving Sheppard a hint but yeah, that definitely had felt like being a snitch and she’d never do something like that to Evan. She would break his heart to protect her own, yes, but she wouldn’t do that.
So what’s left short of dragging him into a dark corner at the fire house and beat it out of him?
Cornering him at a fire watch, that’s what’s left. She doesn’t sigh but instead walks up to him, her plan for making him talk firmly in her head. Maybe shocking him into talking works a second time, too. She prepares to give her statement and… “I fucking hate Wisconsin.”
Right.
Or they could use that as a conversation starter. She grins beneath the scarf she wound around the lower half of her face. Not that he could see it but he knows her well enough to be able to hear it when she replies, “No, you don’t.”
“Sure do.” Ah. There they go again. That kind of tone, bordering on petulant, isn’t his usual way to answer something like that.
She gives keeping it light one more try. “Nah, that’s just your Californian genes talking.”
It makes him snort, at least that, but he doesn’t reply anything, just keeps walking, his shoulders hunched over a little against the cold and his face just as heavily covered as hers. Scarf for the lower half, beanie and helmet for the upper half, leaving only the eyes exposed. Maybe he really does hate Wisconsin but at least his California beach boy genes didn’t keep him from dressing according to the weather.
Unfortunately, his unwillingness to discuss his feelings regarding Wisconsin leaves her with her original plan. Which means taking a deep breath - actually, it doesn’t mean that because she kept trying to tell herself that being nonchalant about this was probably her best strategy - and saying, more or less right out of the blue, “Rodney’s getting married again.”
It’s not a lie, that’s the weirdest thing about it. Just two days after she told Evan about Rodney’s mere existence, he calls her right out of the blue. Talks to her about a conference in Chicago he’s been to, how he kept considering to ring her up but you know, time constraints, et cetera, et cetera and oh by the way, he proposed to his botanist girlfriend and she said yes.
His reply isn’t exactly verbose, consisting only of, “Your ex-husband?”
She nods, walking alongside him, their feet crunching through the refrozen slush. “The very one.”
He doesn’t immediately reply at that, keeps crunching on and aiming the camera at the remains of the factory now and then. It’s difficult to see even his eyes because of the shadow the helmet’s throwing on his face. Damn. That didn’t get her very far yet, did it?
It’s hard to stay quiet, let him work it out for himself but for once, she manages to keep her impatient trap shut. And gets rewarded for it. “You okay with that?”
Jackpot, so to speak. That’s exactly what she was hoping for when she struck up that conversation. Good to know that Jennifer isn’t the only one with an uncanny knack for instinctively finding the exact right thing to say, at least sometimes. She hunches her shoulders herself, hoping her lucky streak holds for at least a little while longer. “Yeah. There are worse things than that.”
Again, she didn’t even have to lie, and that’s pretty much weird, too. She’d always been aware of the possibility that one of them or both would remarry at some point and for some weird reason she’d always thought Rodney would be the first, despite his obvious jerky, vain and God complex tendencies. And look where she’s now. She doesn’t mind it, though, really, she doesn’t.
Evan doesn’t seem to be so convinced of that, though. “Like what?”
Well, here it is, her one chance at getting to the bottom of it all. She stops. “Like you not talking to me. Or anyone else for that matter.”
He doesn’t stop immediately, keeps walking on two or three more steps before realizing that no, she’s not coming. When he stops, he doesn’t turn around, but she can see his shoulders move, as if he just sighed heavily. She expects him to tell her that there is nothing to talk about or something equally characteristic of the strong, silent male stereotype so many firefighters apparently yearn to adhere to, which is why it really surprises her that he says, after finally turning around after all, “What do you want, Laura?” sounding kind of defeated and maybe a little annoyed, too.
Surprises her so much, actually, that she has to grope for words for a moment, doesn’t really know what to reply so in the end, she has to leave it a slightly dumfounded, “What do you mean, what do I want?”
Again, he doesn’t answer right away. Apparently, making him talk is going to be like pulling teeth. At least now she knows why they - with the sole exception of that one nightly conversation on professional distance four months into her candidacy - always carefully tried to skirt around everything deeper than day-to-day station gossip or baseball results.
In the end, his shoulders heave again and he runs a hand over his face, shaking his head. “Nothing, I just…” Yes? He just what? “Never mind. Come on, we gotta keep moving or our feet will freeze to the fucking ground or something.”
Yep, there it is again. It was clearly meant to be joking but it clearly sounded just a tad too pissed off and frustrated to compare to his usual dry humor. And four weeks ago, he probably would have been able to pass it off as just being a little grumpy teasing. Now, though… no. It’s gotta end right here because it’s actually starting to get really irritating.
She shakes her head, a little mulishly making a point of not even lifting a finger. “Not until you tell me what the hell’s going on with you.” Damn. That came out way quieter and gentler than she’d intended to. Like she cared for him. Really cared for him.
Which, God help her, she actually does.
Jesus fucking Christ, they’re not even into an actual conversation, and it’s already shaping up to be a royal clusterfuck.
To his credit, he doesn’t try to bullshit himself out of this or gives her some “What are you even talking about?” crap when he finally reacts. Rather, she detects even more signs of frustration. That thing with rocking back on his feet once or twice, the nodding that was probably accompanied by his usual jaw clenching and maybe an eyeroll… yeah, it’s all there, before he settles at, “Duty’s just been a little rough for the last couple weeks is all.”
Yeah. Well. That’s the understatement of the year. In the last couple weeks, Engine 12 had to cope with two of Evan’s crew nearly getting caught in the literal crossfire between two rival gangs, several worse than usual house fires, three cases of suspected arson and, worse of all, just last week, a twelve year old boy having to sit next to his dead father for four hours in a crashed car because that’s how long it took for someone to notice the wreck by the roadside and fucking call 911.
The thing is, though: it’s not like those were the only bad four weeks they ever had. To tell the truth, most weeks are rather like that than that shift four weeks ago when she let him convince her to dance to that goddamn song with him. And ever since she came to the station, Evan Lorne was the one guy she looked up to because he always seemed to take it in stride.
Sure he got upset about things like them having to break down doors so the cops could get inside and stop a husband from beating his wife to death or having to cut kids out of totaled cars. They all did. But Evan, he always seemed to bounce right back, always kept doing his job with efficiency and skill, not letting negative emotions keep him down. Even Ronon, her LT, couldn’t always manage to push it away after the shift was over. Evan, though…
Evan, though. Evan always seemed to be able to strip it away with stepping out of his bunker gear, wash it off in the shower, leave it behind him as soon as he left the station’s premises. Evan always got to make his own words about not letting it get to you look so easy.
Apparently, it’s not so easy, after all. She shakes her head. “Duty’s always a little rough.” She could let it end here, keep up the superficial pretense of talking about some deep stuff and leave it at that. But yeah. They’ve been doing that for far too long. And if she’s learned anything ever since she woke up from surgery… well. She takes a deep breath. “What changed?”
She can see that he’s thinking the same thing; that he could just brush her off, give her something about nothing having changed at all, knowing full well that she’d probably take the hint and let it rest, despite all her resolutions of not doing that. She can see it in the way he hesitates, in the way he’s about to turn around and just keep walking the perimeter before he moves his helmet a little back, so she can see his eyes glittering in the light of the floodlights they put up earlier. Hears it in his gruffer than usual voice when he mumbles, “Can’t seem to shake it off. That’s what changed.”
Well. That was a remarkably straightforward answer, considering how much they’ve been beating around the bush until now. Not straightforward enough, though, so she decides to keep up provoking him, at least for a little while longer. “So? You’re not the only one that ever happened to.”
He shakes his head, frustration clearly visible in his slightly jerky movements. “So you don’t understand.” No. Well, yes, actually, she does. She just has a feeling that he needs to say it, say it out loud so that he understands it, too. “I’ve been doing this shit for fifteen years, and it never… I don’t know anymore, Laura.”
It’s weird. She’s been in more than one serious relationship, not just the one with Rodney but two or three others. Serious relationships with serious emotional investments, with men she cared for deeply; deeply enough that when those relationships ended, there was always some real heartbreak involved. But none, not even one of them, managed to break her heart the way that simple sentence, sounding so lost and confused, from a man she hasn’t even been in a real relationship with just did.
Maybe she shouldn’t have initiated this conversation, after all. Because now that she’s in it, there’s no way to get out of it, no way to tell him to shut up, no way to not hear him say, “I still keep seeing that kid next to his father while you cut him out of that car. Still keep hearing him begging Jennifer to tell him his dad’s okay. That stuff… that never happened to me before.”
He’s not the only one. She still keeps hearing that kid, too, every night she goes to sleep, she hears him. She shouldn’t even be able to, the sound of the heavy cutter eating its way through the car door droning everything else out. But she does. And she’d actually prefer not to talk about it so it slips out before she can think better of it. “Happens to all of us.” Not able to look at him, she stuffs her hands in her coat’s pockets and starts walking again, telling herself it’s because she doesn’t want to have to deal with Jennifer and Teyla and frostbite.
He almost ferociously shakes his head while she trudges past him. “Yeah, but not to me.”
Almost a little exasperated, she turns around to him and growls, “That’s bullshit and you know it, Air Force.”
In a little helpless gesture of rubbing his neck, he mutters, “Laura…” but trails off, never actually finishing the sentence.
She, however, suddenly finds herself having something of an epiphany. She almost dismissed the thought, but yeah, considering everything… it adds up. She stops and turns around again, this time fully facing him. “You know what? I think I know what this is about.”
“Oh right, and what would that be?” Ah, yeah, snarky sarcasm. She can deal with that.
Well, here goes nothing. “You’re afraid you’re losing your edge. You’re afraid you’re getting too old for this.” She’s pretty sure she hit the mark with that. He’s thirty-five, still a heap of years away from average firefighter retirement age but getting close to that age when you start wondering for how long you can still stay in frontline firefighting, when you start wondering if you haven’t used up all your luck and are now living on borrowed time. That age when you start wondering if you’re really still alive due to experience or if it’s just dumb luck that kept you alive for so long. That age when you stop feeling invincible and instead start wondering when your luck will finally run out.
She thinks she can see all that running through his head, in that minute or so when he hesitates answering her. Maybe she’s imagining it, sure but yeah, she’s pretty sure that in that moment, something like that’s running through his head. His final reply does nothing to convince her of the opposite, even if it’s just getting back to moving and grumbling, “Nice try, Dr. Freud.”
Her only answer is falling in step with him and shrugging. “Just telling it like it is.”
There’s silence from him again, the only sound their feet crunching frozen slush underneath their boots and the fabric of their bunker gear rustling and swishing with every move. So it’s a little startling when he suddenly says, sounding even a little petulant, “I’m not getting too old for this.”
She nearly laughs out loud at that, just the way he said that, as if the person he needs to convince most is himself, as if he feels affronted by the mere suggestion that he might get too old for a job he feels is his one calling in life. Just like she feels about the job, which is why, in the end, she doesn’t laugh but explains to him, “I never said you were. I just said you’re afraid that it’s happening to you right now.” Honestly, he can try to deny it all he wants but that is exactly what’s going on here. And because she cares about him, way more than she should, she feels herself compelled to add, “And here’s the thing: you aren’t getting too old for it. It just turned out that, apparently, you’re human, after all, just like the rest of us.”
Of course, it can’t end here, that much is clear from how this conversation went but to be honest, everything going past that is something that he should talk about with one of the department’s shrinks or maybe the chaplain, not with her. She nearly moves to suggest that to him but then she hears him utter a somewhat mollified, “Thanks. I guess,” and decides that that’s a conversation for another day. And maybe they won’t even need that conversation because he figured that out on his own, after all. He’s smart enough for that.
She smiles beneath her scarf. “You’re welcome.”
After that, they keep walking along the remains of the factory, in something like companionable silence and she’s glad that apparently, some of that tension and nervousness seem to have left him and harbors the slight hope that maybe they can go back to light teasing and carefully not mentioning that dance from four weeks ago, like they used to.
He, of course, seems to have different ideas, though, because after a couple of yards walking in silence, he suddenly stops again, going, “You know what’s the worst, though?” and completely throwing her off with what he says next, “I just… I know I should let you go but I still miss you, Laura.” That wasn’t… She never expected him to say that? To say it with so much conviction and even… desperation? It comes so out of the blue, shocks her so deeply that all she can do is stop, too and turn towards him and stay there rooted to her spot, listening to him. “Every single day. And I keep wondering what I did wrong, what I could have done better…”
“Don’t, Evan.” She didn’t want to say that. Not that and not like that. She nearly sounded like she was choking, for God’s sake.
Unfortunately, that didn’t do anything against the floodgates that must have opened in his head, though. “Look, I know I’m being out of line here.” He’s… Yeah, okay, he kinda is, but that’s not her problem. It’s what comes after that. “I’m… I’m sorry for that and I know I should let this lie and stop picking at it but I…”
It’s him apologizing for still missing her, when he should be pissed off at still missing that woman who dumped him. Yeah. That’s what he should be. That’s what she could have dealt with easily. Anger and irritation. Being sorry? Not so much. She swallows. “No, Evan. It’s not that. It’s not you, it’s…”
“Oh please, Laura, don’t even think about trying to give me that crap…” There. That’s what she expected.
What she can deal with. She shakes her head ferociously, almost glad that she gets a chance to explain her reasoning. “No, it’s literally me!” Okay, that hadn’t been supposed to come out as desperate as that. And okay, it also hadn’t been supposed to be worded like that because that was the one thing she didn’t want to tell him about when she ended their not-relationship. But apparently, telling him about Rodney did something to her, too, and now it’s in for a penny, in for a pound. “It’s… I just… I knew I’d mess up, eventually.”
Because that’s what it always comes down to it, isn’t it? She likes a guy, she starts getting serious with him, she ends up divorced because it doesn’t work out, never would have worked out and she should have seen that one coming from a hundred miles away.
Somehow, her throat seems to get curiously tight but something keeps her talking, stupidly. Goddammit. “I just… I wanted to stop it before either of us got too involved, and since you kept saying that getting involved too much with anything or anyone was the worst thing a firefighter could do…”
“I’m sorry.” So. That’s not exactly what she’d expected what he’d say to that, especially in such a quiet, genuinely apologetic voice.
She shakes her head, not able to deal with an apology of all things right now. “No, don’t be. It’s not like you were completely wrong.” She sees that now, really sees what he meant to tell her in that night after they lost that kid four months into her candidacy. Sees that her biggest mistake always was putting too much heart into things and people that didn’t have a future and…
“I wasn’t completely right either, though.” She’d never have thought that she’d hear him saying something like that, not after he’d been so adamant about teaching her to keep her distance, so adamant that she’d used it as the reason to end their not-relationship. So adamant that she’d thought she needed to end it because she thought he’d been keeping his distance from her and she’d thought she couldn’t deal with that in the long run.
Turns out things are even more fucked up than that. She kind of feels herself deflate, grasping at straws while telling him weakly, “I just… didn’t want to get anyone hurt again.”
She sees him shake his head, sees something like pity in his eyes and hopes she imagined it, and then he says, quietly and actually without any pity, just weird sadness in his voice, “That divorce really messed you up, didn’t it?”
Her first instinct is to tell him that that’s bullshit, that she’s been over the divorce as soon as she signed all relevant papers because that’s how she felt for four goddamn years but then a little voice in her head reminds her off the small stab of envy she felt in her heart when Rodney told her about getting married again. It’s not that she still has feelings for Rodney, at least no romantic ones, and that is the truth but sometimes, late at night when she can’t sleep, she finds herself fending off traitorous thoughts telling her that the divorce was her fault, and her fault alone, and that in the end, all her failed relationships were her fault, and that this inability, whatever it is, to keep a relationship stable and running lost her the man she really, really wanted to keep forever, deep down in her heart. The man now standing opposite hers in bunker gear and steel-toed boots. She swallows something that tastes like sobs. “I…”
“Shit, Laura, I’m sorry for that” And why would he say that, if it was the truth? “That was uncalled for, and I just… I really shouldn’t have said that.”
Well. Maybe it’s the way he apologized yet again, maybe it’s that he managed to find out something even she hadn’t known about herself but all she can do is take a deep breath and finally own up to it. “That doesn’t make it any less true, though.”
He’s silent after that, apparently as shocked by her admission as she is and something tells her that she should just turn around and walk away, but suddenly, she can’t. Could be that they’ve been out here freezing their asses off for hours, could be that she’s just plain dead tired but walking away seems absolutely impossible to her. There’s something else she needs to do. “Blues?”
“What?” She’s kind of glad that he sounds only weary, no irritation or suspicion at all. Just that same tiredness that seems to be creeping into her bones.
Because it makes it a lot easier to say what she needs to tell him now. “I miss you every single day, too.”
God, she’d been trying so hard to tell herself that she was done with him, that dumping him was best for both of them that for a while, she’d even believed it. And it had been easy, as long as she hadn’t had to see him or be in the same room with him. Which meant that the only days she didn’t miss him had been her days off, away from the station and since she’d been pulling a lot of doubles immediately after the end of her candidacy to get the hang of working on a HURT squad, those days had been few and far between.
So yes, she’s been trying to deceive herself for months, and it had never even worked. She’d always missed him, had always wanted to walk up to him and tell him that she was sorry and ask him to try again, only to remember what usually happened when she got in a serious relationship with a guy and how she didn’t want that to happen to a relationship with that guy. Had always felt like a goddamn idiot for ending it, anyway.
So she nearly socks him in his jaw when his final reaction is actually laughing - albeit only a short, humorless chuckle - at her and snorting and telling her, “We sure are two fucked up individuals, Mo.”
But then again, he’s right, isn’t he, about the two of them? He doubts that he can still cut it after fifteen years, and she thinks she doesn’t deserve a relationship because she seems to run them into the ground at some point, anyway, and they miss each other so very bad that they needed almost a year of finally admitting it to each other. “Fucked up” doesn’t even begin to adequately describe it.
Her next step is, to be honest, not based on careful consideration at all. It’s pure instinct and need and so not like that tough firefighter chick image she’d worked hard to construct and fulfill but yeah, fuck that, just for a moment fuck that, and she steps up to him and throws her arms around him.
For one terrible moment, he stands there, motionless and she nearly lets go of him to finally and truly walk away from it. But then, suddenly, she feels him move, feels him put his arms around her, bulky bunker gear making his movements a little clumsy but man, even through all those layers of gear, she can still feel the fierceness of his embrace. He hugs her like he needs it as much as she does, like he never wants to let her go again. That, more than anything, even more than that dance four weeks ago, tells her all she needs to know and she genuinely would sob with relief and hope if it weren’t so damn cold and there wasn’t the real danger of her tears freezing in her eyelashes.
So instead she goes for breathless, a little hysterical laughter, and he joins her and things would really be fucking perfect right now, if there weren’t the sudden telltale sound of a muffled explosion and one of Evan’s crew on the radio, frantically calling for support in his corner of the property.
In the end, it takes them another hour and the help of their replacements to get the fire back under control and after that she’s so exhausted that all she can do is concentrate on getting back into the truck and keep herself awake long enough not to fall asleep in the shower. She doesn’t even make it to the dorm, stopping at the couch in the common room because she honestly couldn’t have walked just one more step.
She curls up on the couch, just when the ever running TV plays the first notes of “The River” and Springsteen starts to sing, “I come from down in the valley,” and about a shotgun marriage failing and she even lacks the energy to shut that damn song that she found herself hating ever since she and Rodney decided to get divorced off. Really goddamn hate that song, swear to God… “Want me to shut it off?” Huh? “The TV, Laura. Want me to switch it off?”
Did she say that thing about hating “The River” out loud? She opens her eyes, squints at the source of the voice and thinks that he looks even more tired than she feels. She closes her eyes again. “Whatever.”
That makes him chuckle again, this time with a certain… fondness to it? Yeah well, whatever, she’s too tired to contemplate that now, and really, all she wants is to be left alone and sleep off the exhaustion and the cold for at least a few more hours. So she doesn’t even move when she feels a blanket drawn over her while Springsteen keeps going on, “No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle, no flowers, no wedding dress,” and she nearly regrets not just nodding when Evan asked her… oh.
Huh. That’s his fresh out of the shower smell, right there, right next to her and she doesn’t even think, just makes the herculean effort to move her arm to cover his waist, hand shoved beneath his uniform shirt to touch skin still slightly damp, like she used to do before everything went down the drain, and it feels so right, so good, so much like what Springsteen means when he sings, “At night on them banks I’d lie awake and pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take,” when she feels an arm draped around her shoulders, pulling her closer to that body she got to know so intimately well.
Maybe she doesn’t hate “The River” that much, after all.
She smiles. It’s the last thing she does before falling asleep in that cocoon of blanket and arms and body because that’s the best thing that has happened to her in a long time. So they didn’t kiss or declare their undying love for each other or some other crap like that but honestly, no one needs that, anyway. Not when she has just been handed a chance at putting something to right she didn’t even think she deserved.
So she smiles and hugs him just a little bit closer and just for those precious few hours until their shift is over, all is right in the world. So you know, fuck being normal. Fuck the merry fire in the fireplace and the dog by your feet. At least for tonight, she can imagine nothing better than sitting on that ratty old couch in the common room with a firefighter just as messed up as she is and yeah, everything else, they can still figure out tomorrow. Thank God for tomorrow.