Fic: 16 Proofs of Love, #02 Kiss on the forehead: Jealousy
Title: I've Tried So Hard, Baby
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: het
Summary: Milwaukee Fire Department Lieutenant Evan doesn't care about his ex, firefighter Laura Cadman. Not a little bit. Nope.
A/N: Righty-o, firefighter!AU. I'm blaming this one on Chicago Fire and sgteam14283 who made me watch it. It gave me major headaches (also, it's going to be a trilogy and I nearly called the series Mustard Yellow because I'm unoriginal as fuck...) and I'm still not sure about it but I do like it for some reason. Hope you do, too? Also, thanks to my Tumblr followers who helped find a city to base this in and to anuna_81 for sharing my love for Bruce Springsteen :D
Also, as I just realized, big fat language warning. Firefighter!Evan apparently has an even filthier mouth than the version of him I usually write.
PS.: You can see the other finished stories here.
I’ve Tried So Hard, Baby
“Well I’ve tried so hard baby
But I just can’t see
What a woman like you
Is doing with me
So tell me who I see
When I look in your eyes
Is that you baby
Or just a brilliant disguise.”
Bruce Springsteen, “Brilliant Disguise”
Here they are again. Funny how that always works. Just last week, it had been Dex narrowly escaping the wrong end of a wood cutter and getting socked in the eye by a jealous husband in the process. Don’t ask about that, just remember that it got him a nice trip to the ER because Keller can convince even Teyla Emmagan when she gets really overprotective of her guys.
Here they are again. ICU, this time, and he still doesn’t really know how it happened. Something with Dex sending Cadman into a near zero visibility zone for primary search - goddammit, she hasn’t been on the squad for a full year, he could have told Dex that making her take point would end badly - and Cadman nearly buying it in the line of duty. It’s not like he cares about it, anyway.
So yeah, ‘course he cares about fellow firefighters, and he kinda cares about Cadman and let’s face it, that’s kinda the entire problem. So he’s just here because everyone else is, of course he’s just here because the rest of the house is, too, because that’s what firefighters do when one of their own ends up in the ICU. They congregate outside the room, as if their presence would make any change in the final outcome. Firefighters really are a bunch of superstitious assholes, when it comes down to it. It’s what they do. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that Cadman’s his ex of seven months.
Nothing do with the fact that they called it quits shortly after her candidacy ended, nothing to do with the fact that he still is a bit fuzzy on why the hell she ended their thing in the first place, nothing to do with the fact that it still hurts like the devil every time he looks at her.
Nothing to do with the fact that hearing her scream over the radio and then nothing but the roaring of the fire and the crackling of the walls burning down and the hard breathing of firefighters doing their job took off ten years of his already statistically short lifespan.
Goddammit, for some reason, it takes all the energy that the fire didn’t eat up to just stand there, hands in the pockets of his filthy turnout pants, ignore the itching and the stench of the sweaty station uniform shirt sticking to his skin and stare right through the window to Cadman’s room. Ignore the wide berth they’re all giving him, that even Sheppard, his captain, is giving him. As if there’s something between Cadman and him that would warrant respectful distance.
As if he still had the energy to piss at anyone dumb enough to address him, anyway.
He’s thought about it, as they raced to the hospital directly after the incident. He’s thought about grabbing the front of Dex’s turnout coat and shoving him into the nearest wall. He’s thought about it long and hard, savored every little bit of it, fantasized about how it would feel to give the Rescue Squad LT a piece of his mind about sending the youngest, most inexperienced member of the squad headfirst into a fire like that, with black, greasy smoke billowing out of every hole in the goddamn building and the flames eating up walls and floors faster than they could spell “flashover”. Even entertained the notion of ripping Dex a new one with his bare hands for a few minutes.
Then again, Dex used to be an Army Ranger, is a head taller than him and packs about twice as much as he does in the weight room. Shoving that guy into the wall for a perfectly good decision would be suicide, and he might run into fires to rescue total strangers for a living but he isn’t stupid.
‘Sides, Dex and the squad got her out just before the house collapsed, and hitting the guy who just rescued your ex-girlfriend that you don’t care about any more than about other firefighters is just really bad form.
So. Why is he still standing outside her room and feeling like a knife is slowly twisted around in his guts every time he sees the bandage around her head and the breathing tubes in her nose and the leg hanging a few inches off her bed in suspension, then?
He’s still standing there, wrecking his head about that damn question when he hears the squeaky treat of rubber soles on hospital linoleum coming closer and he nearly expects to see Dex or his boss coming up next to him but the footsteps aren’t heavy enough for that and he kind of has a hard time not breaking out of the impassive staring he has adopted ever since coming here an hour ago. Better not move. Better not make them all eye him even closer than they’re probably already doing. Better… “You know, you can totally go in there.”
Ah. Jennifer Keller. He doesn’t look at her. “Whoever said I wanted to?”
“Whoever said I was talking specifically to you?” Dammit.
She got him. Again. Fucking Jennifer Keller with her early twenties innocence and her deceiving lack of practical life skills. She’s been on their watch for almost two years, killing time before she can finally scrounge up enough money to go to med school, and yet he still hasn’t learned his lesson about not underestimating her. He resists heaving a sigh and manages to keep staring into Cadman’s room. “What do you want, Jennifer?”
It sounded too weary, too tired for his liking but then again, they’re all on the tail end of a busy forty-eight-hour shift full of idiots ramming perfectly good knives into their perfectly good hands and setting their perfectly good living rooms on fire with cheap table fireplace knockoffs. Probably explains that hard look he just saw Dex throwing him in the corner of his eyes.
Keller doesn’t have his inhibitions about sighing. “Teyla and I just came across the surgeon who worked on her.” Right. The surgeon who won’t tell any of them what exactly is wrong with her because none of them are next of kin. Must be a new kid, or he’d know that for a firefighter there’s no closer kin than the one they ride with every damn shift. Kinda figures that he’d tell Keller and Emmagan, though. “She’s stable, just needs to keep being monitored for smoke inhalation and that gash on her head for a while. Leg’s gonna need some time mending but she’ll most likely be able to get back on the job in a couple weeks, maybe months.”
Well. “She’s gonna hate it.” He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. He hadn’t meant to do a great many things today. Must be one of those days.
“Of course she is.” Pretty sure Keller just rolled her eyes in that “well, d’uh” motion she must have picked up from Cadman. Being the only three women in the house and none of them natives to Milwaukee, the three of them formed an almost instant friendship, completely different personalities and tempers notwithstanding. Generally, he thinks that’s a good thing but sometimes, he gets just so fucking jealous of that easy, uncomplicated friendship she shares with the paramedics. Also, sometimes it’s just a really big fucking pain in the ass, too.
Especially when he can hear a second pair of work boots squeak on the linoleum, steps too quiet to be any of the guys. Of all three women, he has known Teyla longest. Coming to their house six years ago, a registered nurse having switched to emergency medical services after cutbacks all around the city’s hospitals, she’d been the only woman working there for four years until Keller and Cadman had arrived there fairly close together. If she’s coming up because she has decided to weigh in, too, he’s done for.
“Have you told him yet that he’s being ridiculous, Jennifer?” Yep. Done for. Sure as death.
“I was just getting to that.” Right here. He’s standing right here.
“You’re being ridiculous, Air Force.” Ah. Is that where they’re at now? Teyla, she rarely calls him any of the nicknames related to his career before joining the Milwaukee Fire Department eight years ago, rarely calls him any nicknames. When she does, it’s the equivalent to your parents calling you by your full name, middle names and all. When she does, it means she thinks you royally fucked up. Or are being an idiot. She’s usually right.
Doesn’t mean she’s right now. “Just cut to the chase and get it over with, whatever you think you have to tell me.” Either that or just leave this to Sheppard. At least his captain would simply crash his hand down on his shoulder, tell him the truck still needs to be hosed down and put to bed and he’d be absolutely right to do that.
Which begs the question: why hasn’t Sheppard done that yet?
“Jesus, just quit with the moping and get in that fucking room, Lorne.” Ah. And that answers that question. Are they all just standing here, silently watching him making an idiot out of himself with sulking in front of his ex-girlfriend’s hospital room? Bunch of assholes he works with, he swears to God.
“Yes, quit with the moping and get into that fucking room, Lorne,” Keller unnecessarily repeats in a voice sounding eerily like Cadman’s when she’s mocking him and then slaps something against his chest.
Something looking suspiciously like surgical gloves, the kind paramedics use. Damn, he shouldn’t have reacted, shouldn’t have looked down.
Because now the only choice he has left is turn towards Keller and frown at her. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
She shrugs. “Laura’s got some par for the course first and second degree burns on her hands and arms. Just being careful is all.”
I sure as hell ain’t touching my ex-girlfriend, is the first thing he wants to throw at her, not after everything. Not after she dumped me, spouting some gibberish about how she can’t do that whole “don’t let yourself care about anyone” stuff and that “don’t let it get to you” thing anymore but then again. Then again he cares.
He goddamn cares and it’s tearing him up inside. He was the one teaching her first about always keeping your distance to the victims, about never letting yourself care too much about them or about what you do for a living or how it might kill you right your next shift. He was the one teaching her first about that because he was the first one to realize how deeply Laura Cadman felt, how she didn’t only wear her heart on her sleeve, how her heart was also bigger than is strictly good for a firefighter. He was the first one to teach her about that because she reminded him of herself when she came to the station after the academy.
When she first came to them, fresh from the Fire Academy, she’d already had six years as a US Marine under her belt, including one deployment to Iraq and one to Afghanistan, respectively. She’d soaked up everything Dex and he and their crews taught her, like a sponge, and she’d bullied Jennifer into learning how to cook, sharing newbie duties with her, and she’d silently sobbed under her covers in the dorm after they lost their first child in two years four months into her candidacy.
At first he’d thought she was just sleeping it off but then he’d seen the telltale shaking shoulders and he probably should have left her alone that night because if he had, he’d never have walked over and he’d never have gently touched her shoulder and he’d never have talked to her about loss and detachment and avoiding getting burned out at thirty from all the emotional strain the job brought with it. If he had left her alone that evening, maybe he’d never have realized how he still found her hot with her hair streaked with so much soot that nothing of it strawberry blonde color remained and her face nearly unrecognizable under layers of ash and dust and sweat. How his heart kept lurching into his throat every time Dex ordered her to accompany him or someone from his crew into a burning building. How he couldn’t imagine the common room without her running commentary on the war flick of the day and her full laughter drifting over from the girls table she and the paramedics had appropriated anymore.
How desperately he wanted to kiss her every time he came across her in the hallway or push her right back into the shower when he saw her coming out of them with her hair still wet or sit down on the couch and bury his face in the crook of her neck and feel the comforting rhythm of her pulse after a particularly harrowing call.
Man, sure would have saved him a lot of heartbreak if he’d never decided to give her the lesson about detachment he wished someone would have given him so many years ago.
And he still cares, despite everything he taught her, everything he thought he’d learned in fifteen years of fighting fires, first in the Air Force, then in Milwaukee. Despite everything she threw at him when she dumped him. Despite how utterly humiliated and confused he’d felt after she was done with him. He still fucking cares, and he’ll never stop caring. Not about her.
Without another word, he snatches the gloves out of Keller’s hands and marches over towards Cadman’s… Laura’s room. Doing his best not to look back - lest he’d find himself scowling at anyone daring to give him a “told you so” face - he uses his foot to close the door, dissatisfied that it’s still standing a bit ajar but too determined to rectify it at the moment. He’s got better things to do.
He’s not quite sure what it is, though, so for a moment he’s standing in front of her bed, at her right side, completely at a loss for words. For a moment, it’s eerily quiet in the room, just the steady, kind of muted sound of a heart monitor disturbing it in regular intervals and… is that really “Tougher Than The Rest” drifting in through the crack of the slightly open door?
It nearly makes him laugh, how that’s possibly the worst and best song Fate could have chosen to have the radio in the nurses’ room across the hall play. “So somebody ran out, leaving somebody’s heart in a mess,” his ass. “Well, if you’re looking for love, honey, I’m tougher than the rest,” for sure.
He cracks a grin, in the end. Good old Boss, he thinks, making a mess of things by getting it so damn right. Tougher than the rest. That’s what he thought he was. Right up until that red-haired slip of a woman came up and broke his heart. Keeps breaking it because he still hasn’t learned his lesson, still hasn’t learned that he isn’t half as tough as he’d like to be. He snorts.
She stirs.
Huh. What. He blinks, takes a closer look, absentmindedly pulling on the gloves Keller gave him. She was right, there really are bandages on Laura’s hands and wrists but from the look of it, it’s just the usual mess of small burns that are characteristic for firefighters. She’ll probably have a scar or two, nicely visible whenever she’ll opt for short sleeves. Nothing to be ashamed of, and he knows she won’t be. She’s that kind of person. He loves that about her.
“Hey, Blues.” Okay. He wasn’t prepared for that. He thought he was, seeing as she just stirred a little prior to speaking but he really wasn’t. Mostly, it’s the nickname, he thinks. The one only she used, back when they were increasingly spending time off duty with each other and fell asleep on each other’s couches watching Sox games and well, that one time they totally didn’t sleep in the back of the ambo Keller let them have.
He swallows. “Hey, Mo.” Stupid, he thinks, stupid. He pinned that one on her, a couple weeks she came to the fire house. Someone started calling her Molly Marine, to see how long it would take her short fuse to blow up over that but it somehow stuck and he was the first one to abbreviate it to a simple Mo, and he only stopped calling her that when she broke up with him. He missed calling her that. Stupid to show her that and sound like the pining ex-boyfriend he is, really. Then again, she did start it.
“Missed you hear me call that.” So. Of all the things she could possibly have said, that’s the one she goes for? Well.
At least he can keep himself from telling her that maybe then she shouldn’t have dumped him because honestly, he’s not that much of an asshole. Unfortunately, that somehow leaves him without one of those snarky replies he kind of became renowned for. She never had that effect on him before and he attributes those new developments to the fact that she still looks pretty much banged up, which is doing all kinds of nasty things to his heart.
He takes a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his face and realizing too late that that just rendered the surgical gloves he’s wearing useless. Also, he really needs a fucking shower, if that one motion leaves his palm streaked heavily with black. “Look, Laura, I just…” He’s pretty sure that if she weren’t wearing a bandage around her head and if she weren’t doped up with painkillers like she must be now she’d definitely raise her eyebrows inquisitively and just a little bit mockingly and he’s glad that she doesn’t do that now. He’s not sure if he’d had the courage and the stupidity to say what he’s going to say now, if she had. “You just… scared the living daylights out of me. I know you’re an ex-Marine and everything but…”
“No such thing as an ex-Marine, Blues. Remember how I told you that a thousand times?” He expects her to throw him one of those looks, all hard eyes and impatience, the looks she gives people asking her whether she’s tired of making coffee all day for real firefighters yet and people who accuse her of having made up her service with the Marines to get attention. But all she does is give him a small, tired smile.
It takes him a minute or two to realize that she wasn’t just telling him off for making the same damn mistake for the hundredth time. She was also essentially saving himself for having to embarrass himself in front of her by keeping him from saying something he might regret later. For making an idiot out of himself by telling her just how much he cares about her. He kind of wishes she wouldn’t have done that, even though he appreciates the sentiment.
“Yeah,” he says, trying to mirror her smile, “I do. Every single time.”
Amazingly, he manages to make her laugh, just a low, husky sound interrupted by coughing and he’s so sorry about causing her distress that he moves immediately to apologize. She’s having none of it. “So what’s with everyone standing around looking like someone died out there?”
Right. So she isn’t ready to discuss the fact that he’s not out there but in here. Quite frankly, he isn’t, either, so he can play along to her tune just fine. “Don’t know. Wanna ask them?”
She grins, apparently knowing full well what game they’re playing here, being drugged up to her collar notwithstanding. “Sure.”
Maybe that isn’t how he’d hoped this little encounter would turn out but then again, it still turned out better than anything he could hope for only ten minutes ago so he lets it slide, steps away from her to open that door and gesturing for the rest to come in. They eagerly accept, Keller being the first one to enter, even before Dex, giving Laura a mock berating clearly aimed at masking how worried Keller was for her friend. Keller, of course, fails spectacularly and Laura doesn’t seem to mind.
After that, it’s the rest of them. Dex giving her some gruff advice at maybe trying to stay away from unstable structure next time he sends her in point and Teyla promising to use her hospital contacts to get her released as soon as possible and everyone being relieved and joking around while he stays at the door, crossing his arms and leaning back, just happy to observe. It’s only when their eyes meet through the throng of people milling around her bed and he catches her smiling at him again, tired and small and happy that he can’t help wishing they were alone and not separated and he could freely give her that kiss on the forehead to tell her everything will be alright that he’s honestly been wanting to give her ever since they arrived here.
As it is, he’ll have to contend himself with what they have, even if it’s just the scrap of a question where everything important went unsaid but he can work with that. It’s better than what they had in the entire seven months since she dumped him - awkward encounters and avoidance and heartbreak all over the place - and maybe, just maybe it’s a fresh start, after all. And really, that’s all he needs, and he kind of hopes that all she needs, all they need, too. Maybe, in the end, in some way, they are tougher than the rest, just not in the way he always thought. It’s a nice sentiment, that. He smiles. Can only get better now, can’t it?
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: het
Summary: Milwaukee Fire Department Lieutenant Evan doesn't care about his ex, firefighter Laura Cadman. Not a little bit. Nope.
A/N: Righty-o, firefighter!AU. I'm blaming this one on Chicago Fire and sgteam14283 who made me watch it. It gave me major headaches (also, it's going to be a trilogy and I nearly called the series Mustard Yellow because I'm unoriginal as fuck...) and I'm still not sure about it but I do like it for some reason. Hope you do, too? Also, thanks to my Tumblr followers who helped find a city to base this in and to anuna_81 for sharing my love for Bruce Springsteen :D
Also, as I just realized, big fat language warning. Firefighter!Evan apparently has an even filthier mouth than the version of him I usually write.
PS.: You can see the other finished stories here.
I’ve Tried So Hard, Baby
“Well I’ve tried so hard baby
But I just can’t see
What a woman like you
Is doing with me
So tell me who I see
When I look in your eyes
Is that you baby
Or just a brilliant disguise.”
Bruce Springsteen, “Brilliant Disguise”
Here they are again. Funny how that always works. Just last week, it had been Dex narrowly escaping the wrong end of a wood cutter and getting socked in the eye by a jealous husband in the process. Don’t ask about that, just remember that it got him a nice trip to the ER because Keller can convince even Teyla Emmagan when she gets really overprotective of her guys.
Here they are again. ICU, this time, and he still doesn’t really know how it happened. Something with Dex sending Cadman into a near zero visibility zone for primary search - goddammit, she hasn’t been on the squad for a full year, he could have told Dex that making her take point would end badly - and Cadman nearly buying it in the line of duty. It’s not like he cares about it, anyway.
So yeah, ‘course he cares about fellow firefighters, and he kinda cares about Cadman and let’s face it, that’s kinda the entire problem. So he’s just here because everyone else is, of course he’s just here because the rest of the house is, too, because that’s what firefighters do when one of their own ends up in the ICU. They congregate outside the room, as if their presence would make any change in the final outcome. Firefighters really are a bunch of superstitious assholes, when it comes down to it. It’s what they do. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that Cadman’s his ex of seven months.
Nothing do with the fact that they called it quits shortly after her candidacy ended, nothing to do with the fact that he still is a bit fuzzy on why the hell she ended their thing in the first place, nothing to do with the fact that it still hurts like the devil every time he looks at her.
Nothing to do with the fact that hearing her scream over the radio and then nothing but the roaring of the fire and the crackling of the walls burning down and the hard breathing of firefighters doing their job took off ten years of his already statistically short lifespan.
Goddammit, for some reason, it takes all the energy that the fire didn’t eat up to just stand there, hands in the pockets of his filthy turnout pants, ignore the itching and the stench of the sweaty station uniform shirt sticking to his skin and stare right through the window to Cadman’s room. Ignore the wide berth they’re all giving him, that even Sheppard, his captain, is giving him. As if there’s something between Cadman and him that would warrant respectful distance.
As if he still had the energy to piss at anyone dumb enough to address him, anyway.
He’s thought about it, as they raced to the hospital directly after the incident. He’s thought about grabbing the front of Dex’s turnout coat and shoving him into the nearest wall. He’s thought about it long and hard, savored every little bit of it, fantasized about how it would feel to give the Rescue Squad LT a piece of his mind about sending the youngest, most inexperienced member of the squad headfirst into a fire like that, with black, greasy smoke billowing out of every hole in the goddamn building and the flames eating up walls and floors faster than they could spell “flashover”. Even entertained the notion of ripping Dex a new one with his bare hands for a few minutes.
Then again, Dex used to be an Army Ranger, is a head taller than him and packs about twice as much as he does in the weight room. Shoving that guy into the wall for a perfectly good decision would be suicide, and he might run into fires to rescue total strangers for a living but he isn’t stupid.
‘Sides, Dex and the squad got her out just before the house collapsed, and hitting the guy who just rescued your ex-girlfriend that you don’t care about any more than about other firefighters is just really bad form.
So. Why is he still standing outside her room and feeling like a knife is slowly twisted around in his guts every time he sees the bandage around her head and the breathing tubes in her nose and the leg hanging a few inches off her bed in suspension, then?
He’s still standing there, wrecking his head about that damn question when he hears the squeaky treat of rubber soles on hospital linoleum coming closer and he nearly expects to see Dex or his boss coming up next to him but the footsteps aren’t heavy enough for that and he kind of has a hard time not breaking out of the impassive staring he has adopted ever since coming here an hour ago. Better not move. Better not make them all eye him even closer than they’re probably already doing. Better… “You know, you can totally go in there.”
Ah. Jennifer Keller. He doesn’t look at her. “Whoever said I wanted to?”
“Whoever said I was talking specifically to you?” Dammit.
She got him. Again. Fucking Jennifer Keller with her early twenties innocence and her deceiving lack of practical life skills. She’s been on their watch for almost two years, killing time before she can finally scrounge up enough money to go to med school, and yet he still hasn’t learned his lesson about not underestimating her. He resists heaving a sigh and manages to keep staring into Cadman’s room. “What do you want, Jennifer?”
It sounded too weary, too tired for his liking but then again, they’re all on the tail end of a busy forty-eight-hour shift full of idiots ramming perfectly good knives into their perfectly good hands and setting their perfectly good living rooms on fire with cheap table fireplace knockoffs. Probably explains that hard look he just saw Dex throwing him in the corner of his eyes.
Keller doesn’t have his inhibitions about sighing. “Teyla and I just came across the surgeon who worked on her.” Right. The surgeon who won’t tell any of them what exactly is wrong with her because none of them are next of kin. Must be a new kid, or he’d know that for a firefighter there’s no closer kin than the one they ride with every damn shift. Kinda figures that he’d tell Keller and Emmagan, though. “She’s stable, just needs to keep being monitored for smoke inhalation and that gash on her head for a while. Leg’s gonna need some time mending but she’ll most likely be able to get back on the job in a couple weeks, maybe months.”
Well. “She’s gonna hate it.” He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. He hadn’t meant to do a great many things today. Must be one of those days.
“Of course she is.” Pretty sure Keller just rolled her eyes in that “well, d’uh” motion she must have picked up from Cadman. Being the only three women in the house and none of them natives to Milwaukee, the three of them formed an almost instant friendship, completely different personalities and tempers notwithstanding. Generally, he thinks that’s a good thing but sometimes, he gets just so fucking jealous of that easy, uncomplicated friendship she shares with the paramedics. Also, sometimes it’s just a really big fucking pain in the ass, too.
Especially when he can hear a second pair of work boots squeak on the linoleum, steps too quiet to be any of the guys. Of all three women, he has known Teyla longest. Coming to their house six years ago, a registered nurse having switched to emergency medical services after cutbacks all around the city’s hospitals, she’d been the only woman working there for four years until Keller and Cadman had arrived there fairly close together. If she’s coming up because she has decided to weigh in, too, he’s done for.
“Have you told him yet that he’s being ridiculous, Jennifer?” Yep. Done for. Sure as death.
“I was just getting to that.” Right here. He’s standing right here.
“You’re being ridiculous, Air Force.” Ah. Is that where they’re at now? Teyla, she rarely calls him any of the nicknames related to his career before joining the Milwaukee Fire Department eight years ago, rarely calls him any nicknames. When she does, it’s the equivalent to your parents calling you by your full name, middle names and all. When she does, it means she thinks you royally fucked up. Or are being an idiot. She’s usually right.
Doesn’t mean she’s right now. “Just cut to the chase and get it over with, whatever you think you have to tell me.” Either that or just leave this to Sheppard. At least his captain would simply crash his hand down on his shoulder, tell him the truck still needs to be hosed down and put to bed and he’d be absolutely right to do that.
Which begs the question: why hasn’t Sheppard done that yet?
“Jesus, just quit with the moping and get in that fucking room, Lorne.” Ah. And that answers that question. Are they all just standing here, silently watching him making an idiot out of himself with sulking in front of his ex-girlfriend’s hospital room? Bunch of assholes he works with, he swears to God.
“Yes, quit with the moping and get into that fucking room, Lorne,” Keller unnecessarily repeats in a voice sounding eerily like Cadman’s when she’s mocking him and then slaps something against his chest.
Something looking suspiciously like surgical gloves, the kind paramedics use. Damn, he shouldn’t have reacted, shouldn’t have looked down.
Because now the only choice he has left is turn towards Keller and frown at her. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
She shrugs. “Laura’s got some par for the course first and second degree burns on her hands and arms. Just being careful is all.”
I sure as hell ain’t touching my ex-girlfriend, is the first thing he wants to throw at her, not after everything. Not after she dumped me, spouting some gibberish about how she can’t do that whole “don’t let yourself care about anyone” stuff and that “don’t let it get to you” thing anymore but then again. Then again he cares.
He goddamn cares and it’s tearing him up inside. He was the one teaching her first about always keeping your distance to the victims, about never letting yourself care too much about them or about what you do for a living or how it might kill you right your next shift. He was the one teaching her first about that because he was the first one to realize how deeply Laura Cadman felt, how she didn’t only wear her heart on her sleeve, how her heart was also bigger than is strictly good for a firefighter. He was the first one to teach her about that because she reminded him of herself when she came to the station after the academy.
When she first came to them, fresh from the Fire Academy, she’d already had six years as a US Marine under her belt, including one deployment to Iraq and one to Afghanistan, respectively. She’d soaked up everything Dex and he and their crews taught her, like a sponge, and she’d bullied Jennifer into learning how to cook, sharing newbie duties with her, and she’d silently sobbed under her covers in the dorm after they lost their first child in two years four months into her candidacy.
At first he’d thought she was just sleeping it off but then he’d seen the telltale shaking shoulders and he probably should have left her alone that night because if he had, he’d never have walked over and he’d never have gently touched her shoulder and he’d never have talked to her about loss and detachment and avoiding getting burned out at thirty from all the emotional strain the job brought with it. If he had left her alone that evening, maybe he’d never have realized how he still found her hot with her hair streaked with so much soot that nothing of it strawberry blonde color remained and her face nearly unrecognizable under layers of ash and dust and sweat. How his heart kept lurching into his throat every time Dex ordered her to accompany him or someone from his crew into a burning building. How he couldn’t imagine the common room without her running commentary on the war flick of the day and her full laughter drifting over from the girls table she and the paramedics had appropriated anymore.
How desperately he wanted to kiss her every time he came across her in the hallway or push her right back into the shower when he saw her coming out of them with her hair still wet or sit down on the couch and bury his face in the crook of her neck and feel the comforting rhythm of her pulse after a particularly harrowing call.
Man, sure would have saved him a lot of heartbreak if he’d never decided to give her the lesson about detachment he wished someone would have given him so many years ago.
And he still cares, despite everything he taught her, everything he thought he’d learned in fifteen years of fighting fires, first in the Air Force, then in Milwaukee. Despite everything she threw at him when she dumped him. Despite how utterly humiliated and confused he’d felt after she was done with him. He still fucking cares, and he’ll never stop caring. Not about her.
Without another word, he snatches the gloves out of Keller’s hands and marches over towards Cadman’s… Laura’s room. Doing his best not to look back - lest he’d find himself scowling at anyone daring to give him a “told you so” face - he uses his foot to close the door, dissatisfied that it’s still standing a bit ajar but too determined to rectify it at the moment. He’s got better things to do.
He’s not quite sure what it is, though, so for a moment he’s standing in front of her bed, at her right side, completely at a loss for words. For a moment, it’s eerily quiet in the room, just the steady, kind of muted sound of a heart monitor disturbing it in regular intervals and… is that really “Tougher Than The Rest” drifting in through the crack of the slightly open door?
It nearly makes him laugh, how that’s possibly the worst and best song Fate could have chosen to have the radio in the nurses’ room across the hall play. “So somebody ran out, leaving somebody’s heart in a mess,” his ass. “Well, if you’re looking for love, honey, I’m tougher than the rest,” for sure.
He cracks a grin, in the end. Good old Boss, he thinks, making a mess of things by getting it so damn right. Tougher than the rest. That’s what he thought he was. Right up until that red-haired slip of a woman came up and broke his heart. Keeps breaking it because he still hasn’t learned his lesson, still hasn’t learned that he isn’t half as tough as he’d like to be. He snorts.
She stirs.
Huh. What. He blinks, takes a closer look, absentmindedly pulling on the gloves Keller gave him. She was right, there really are bandages on Laura’s hands and wrists but from the look of it, it’s just the usual mess of small burns that are characteristic for firefighters. She’ll probably have a scar or two, nicely visible whenever she’ll opt for short sleeves. Nothing to be ashamed of, and he knows she won’t be. She’s that kind of person. He loves that about her.
“Hey, Blues.” Okay. He wasn’t prepared for that. He thought he was, seeing as she just stirred a little prior to speaking but he really wasn’t. Mostly, it’s the nickname, he thinks. The one only she used, back when they were increasingly spending time off duty with each other and fell asleep on each other’s couches watching Sox games and well, that one time they totally didn’t sleep in the back of the ambo Keller let them have.
He swallows. “Hey, Mo.” Stupid, he thinks, stupid. He pinned that one on her, a couple weeks she came to the fire house. Someone started calling her Molly Marine, to see how long it would take her short fuse to blow up over that but it somehow stuck and he was the first one to abbreviate it to a simple Mo, and he only stopped calling her that when she broke up with him. He missed calling her that. Stupid to show her that and sound like the pining ex-boyfriend he is, really. Then again, she did start it.
“Missed you hear me call that.” So. Of all the things she could possibly have said, that’s the one she goes for? Well.
At least he can keep himself from telling her that maybe then she shouldn’t have dumped him because honestly, he’s not that much of an asshole. Unfortunately, that somehow leaves him without one of those snarky replies he kind of became renowned for. She never had that effect on him before and he attributes those new developments to the fact that she still looks pretty much banged up, which is doing all kinds of nasty things to his heart.
He takes a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his face and realizing too late that that just rendered the surgical gloves he’s wearing useless. Also, he really needs a fucking shower, if that one motion leaves his palm streaked heavily with black. “Look, Laura, I just…” He’s pretty sure that if she weren’t wearing a bandage around her head and if she weren’t doped up with painkillers like she must be now she’d definitely raise her eyebrows inquisitively and just a little bit mockingly and he’s glad that she doesn’t do that now. He’s not sure if he’d had the courage and the stupidity to say what he’s going to say now, if she had. “You just… scared the living daylights out of me. I know you’re an ex-Marine and everything but…”
“No such thing as an ex-Marine, Blues. Remember how I told you that a thousand times?” He expects her to throw him one of those looks, all hard eyes and impatience, the looks she gives people asking her whether she’s tired of making coffee all day for real firefighters yet and people who accuse her of having made up her service with the Marines to get attention. But all she does is give him a small, tired smile.
It takes him a minute or two to realize that she wasn’t just telling him off for making the same damn mistake for the hundredth time. She was also essentially saving himself for having to embarrass himself in front of her by keeping him from saying something he might regret later. For making an idiot out of himself by telling her just how much he cares about her. He kind of wishes she wouldn’t have done that, even though he appreciates the sentiment.
“Yeah,” he says, trying to mirror her smile, “I do. Every single time.”
Amazingly, he manages to make her laugh, just a low, husky sound interrupted by coughing and he’s so sorry about causing her distress that he moves immediately to apologize. She’s having none of it. “So what’s with everyone standing around looking like someone died out there?”
Right. So she isn’t ready to discuss the fact that he’s not out there but in here. Quite frankly, he isn’t, either, so he can play along to her tune just fine. “Don’t know. Wanna ask them?”
She grins, apparently knowing full well what game they’re playing here, being drugged up to her collar notwithstanding. “Sure.”
Maybe that isn’t how he’d hoped this little encounter would turn out but then again, it still turned out better than anything he could hope for only ten minutes ago so he lets it slide, steps away from her to open that door and gesturing for the rest to come in. They eagerly accept, Keller being the first one to enter, even before Dex, giving Laura a mock berating clearly aimed at masking how worried Keller was for her friend. Keller, of course, fails spectacularly and Laura doesn’t seem to mind.
After that, it’s the rest of them. Dex giving her some gruff advice at maybe trying to stay away from unstable structure next time he sends her in point and Teyla promising to use her hospital contacts to get her released as soon as possible and everyone being relieved and joking around while he stays at the door, crossing his arms and leaning back, just happy to observe. It’s only when their eyes meet through the throng of people milling around her bed and he catches her smiling at him again, tired and small and happy that he can’t help wishing they were alone and not separated and he could freely give her that kiss on the forehead to tell her everything will be alright that he’s honestly been wanting to give her ever since they arrived here.
As it is, he’ll have to contend himself with what they have, even if it’s just the scrap of a question where everything important went unsaid but he can work with that. It’s better than what they had in the entire seven months since she dumped him - awkward encounters and avoidance and heartbreak all over the place - and maybe, just maybe it’s a fresh start, after all. And really, that’s all he needs, and he kind of hopes that all she needs, all they need, too. Maybe, in the end, in some way, they are tougher than the rest, just not in the way he always thought. It’s a nice sentiment, that. He smiles. Can only get better now, can’t it?