I grunted in pain and irritation as I attempted to extricate myself from the backseat. Herrmann had gone ahead to unlock the door, but Mouch was hovering over me, hands outstretched but not coming near because he'd probably had enough of me taking breaks to whack at his hands again.
"God fucking damn!" I cursed leaning forward to smack my forehead against the door arch.
"Okay, nope," Mouch quickly intercepted the path of my head. He pushed on my head gently, and I found myself lying down on the backseat. For a moment, I felt extremely vulnerable, and then it got a lot worse. Mouch carefully tucked one of his arms under my knees and the other behind my back before picking me up as easily as if I was a rolled up blanket. "Here we go," he turned slowly to close the car door with his foot, then began to carry me up the path towards Herrmann's house. His voice sounded strained, but his movements were free and easy.
"Come on, Mouch," I groaned, moving a little and clutching onto the coat he wore for dear life as my head turned to see how far I was from the ground. "Put me down. This can't be good for your back." I gripped tighter when his body started to shake with the depth of his laughter.
"You weigh about as much as a domestic cat, Jay. Besides, I'm not that old." His eyes narrowed down at me, as if daring me to argue, but I would never say anything to offend him. Especially not while he was carrying me, I was far too afraid of falling.
"Nah, you must be kidding. I've got some serious muscle, and that's gotta add some weight." I responded snarkily. I shuffled a bit as we made it to the doorstep, trying to free one of my legs from Mouch's grip so I could get myself back on solid ground. His grip remained solid, tightening slightly, as I continued to struggle.
"Hey!" Herrmann's shout shocked me so much that I threw my body weight back into Mouch. His arms tightened further around me, almost protectively, as the two men and myself stopped moving. "I'm sorry, Jay," his voice had become considerably more gentle.
"For what?" I asked, I was aware that my voice had risen to a pitch higher than I ever thought I could reach. I was deep in denial about why Herrmann's shout may have triggered me. "Nothing happened, I was being a bother. It's all good." I shrugged, relieved as Mouch slowly lowered me to the ground, making sure I had my footing before he let me go fully. He closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock before sharing a look with Herrmann over my head and moving past me.
I was uncomfortable. I'd been to Herrmann's before, of course, but this time felt different.
"Jay," Herrmann looked down at the soft beige carpet of the front hallway and shook his head. "It's not okay for me to yell at you right now. Or anyone else for that matter." He looked at me whilst he spoke, but I had to turn away. I couldn't handle the way he was speaking to me.
"I'm not a kid, Herrm," I sighed as the ache in my head increased, suddenly, by tenfold. "You can speak to me how you want."
"Well," he smirked, one eyebrow shot up into his hairline. "How I want to talk to you?" My headache worsened, and I couldn't fight back the whimper that escaped me. Immediately, Herrmann's smirk dropped, and the face of concern returned. He took me in his arms and started, embarrassingly, to sway. Left, right, left, right. It soothed me, but the action made my vision blurred so I closed my eyes and dug my face into his neck. More whimpers followed the first, and I realised that I had just begun to make a continuous keening sound. "Aw, bud," one of Herrmann's hands started to stroke my hair, and I almost melted with embarrassment. "You're probably pretty embarrassed about all this, but you shouldn't be. I'm sure you've noticed by now how much more worried we all get about you?" He asked, but it sounded rhetorical, so I kept my mouth firmly shut as I continued my attempt to silence the God awful sounds I was releasing. "It's because you're so young and you show so much promise, bud. God knows where your unit would be without you, and I know for a fact that CFD and Med would have no interest in liaising with intelligence if you weren't the face of it. You're respectful, kind, and open with all of us," he paused as I groaned. My head almost fell off his shoulder as pain gave way to an exhaustion, the strength of which I had never before experienced. "We like to baby you because you deserve it, taking such good care of all of us despite your upbringing. You know, every time you get hurt, Will comes around us all to make sure we know all of your triggers. He asks us not to set you off but also to make sure we take note of any new ones you may have developed. He was exceptionally worried when you disappeared today. He knows that you hate hospitals, but he was functioning under the knowledge that on previous occasions, having someone you trusted in the room made you feel safer." Herrmann went on. "In the morning, when I decide you've rested enough, you're going to call him over and we're going to have a chat about why even the thought of going back to hospital caused your PTSD to flare up."
"'M so tired, Hermm." I was barely able to take in what he was saying. In the morning, when I was fully in control again, I'd probably freak out about more than half of it. Emotional stuff always made me horrifically uncomfortable because, after an entire childhood and adolescence wherein nobody gave a shit about me, I had no idea what I was feeling most of the time unless I was angry or happy or uncomfortable and God knows I could never talk about it.
"I know, kid," he hummed. "We're going straight to bed." He ducked down, and my eyes flew open in shock when it made my head feel strangely weightless, as though it were falling off, when his shoulder was no longer under it. I turned bright red when Herrmann swooped me up in his arms, the same way Mouch had, with ease, and carried me away from the door and up the stairs like I weighed less than nothing to him.
"Jesus! I can't - " I gripped tightly to the neck of his plaid shirt, only then noticing that his coat had been removed at some point and I hadn't noticed at all.
"It's okay, Jay. I would never drop one of my kids." Herrmann promised. I knew there was a deeper meaning to that, but I was far too tired to hear anything except for him promising that he didn't drop his own children, of which I wasn't one. Which didn't reassure me in the slightest.
"Where's Mouch?" I mumbled as I rolled my head to lean against his chest, finding it quite soothing to listen to his heartbeat. My eyes slid closed of their own accord.
"He's up here, setting up the room for us." He replied.
"'N' Platt?" I asked, my eyebrows pulled up as I attempted to open my eyes again.
"She'll be here in the morning."
"With Voight?"
"With Voight." He affirmed.
"No," I whined, the vowel stretched ridiculously. Platt and Voight were a nightmare together. They weren't much better separate, but it was a lot more manageable when they were. They had, at some point during my employment at the 21st District, appointed themselves as my parental figures. Voight was fiercely overprotective at times, although he pushed that aside when he thought the others might notice even though the others were very much the same. Platt, however, was a whole other story. There had been occasions when I had come to work with the smallest scratches and/or bruises, and she had frogmarched me to her car so she could make sure that my brother had seen it. Both of them had become significantly worse after Will had let it slip that I had PTSD, Voight being far more obvious about his protectiveness and Platt barely letting me pass her in the morning without checking in on me. What made it even worse was that as soon as they'd realised that they were both worried about me, they started working together. If I managed to elude Platt, Voight would be waiting for me at the top of the stairs, or if I left quickly at the end of the day Voight would call down to Platt so that she could ask why I was rushing. When they learned I'd been abused, I was sure there was no way they could smother me any more than they already had, but I was wrong. After Will had informed them of that, they started to enforce family dinners. It was optional for the others but either Voight or Platt, depending on who was hosting, would drive me straight to their home from work and I would spend the night so that they could drive me back to work, where my car was, in the morning. I had a room in both houses that was dedicated to my comfort, which actually exacerbated my discomfort, not that I'd ever tell them that.
"What've you got against my wife, squirt?" Mouch chuckled, I knew that he knew full well what was running through my head. Mouch was the one that tattled about my struggles to the others who worked at the firehouse. They enjoyed looking after me equally as much as my fellows at the 21st District. Besides that, Mouch had lovingly and devotedly decorated my room at his and Platt's house by hand. He and Trudy had even gone as far as to paint a mural on the ceiling above my bed. It was a simple one and not cutesy at all, I had appreciated it. The four insignia that were symbolic of my family, blood and otherwise. There was a red lightning bolt for the US Army Rangers, an almost exact copy of Voight's Sergeant badge but the first half of the badge number was mine and the second was Platt's, there was a fire department badge and a red cross for Med. I felt safer sleeping under it, although I was never going to tell anyone that because then they'd force me to move in permanently.
"Nothin' Mouch. 'M tired, Hermm said we could sleep." I grunted. Finally, I managed to open my eyes, I immediately noticed that we were in the master bedroom. The bed was freshly made with extra pillows and a large glass of water on the bedside table, and two camp beds were set up on the floor, one on each side. I looked up with pleading eyes, first to Herrmann, who still held me and then to Mouch, who had moved to look at me over Herrmann's left shoulder. "I'll sleep on the floor."
I was met with laughter.
ВЫ ЧИТАЕТЕ
Resistance To Assistance
ФанфикJay's returned to work, maybe too, shortly after being tortured by Keyes and his men. People are acting weird, refilling his coffee, and they're not letting him go anywhere on his own. He's even noticed them tailing him on his way home, only leaving...
