I’M WORRIED, Shade said through the sync one night. They had been working on convincing Jason that sleeping in the mat room regularly was simply not a good idea, and Jason had agreed to sleep in the living room for the time being. Maybe one day he could join them in their bed to sleep, but that day was still a long way off. They’d wait. But in the meantime, Shade worried.
About what?
The future. Jason had had a rough night, followed by some sort of training session at base that had left him drained and sad. He’d spent most of the rest of the day in the mat room. What Jason is training for. The life he’s trying to get back. His goal is still to be returned to active duty. And I… I worry.
So do I, Chase replied after a moment’s hesitation. I haven’t wanted to say anything to him yet, but… I don’t like what he’s working towards. But I don’t know what else he could work towards that would make him happy.
If he does get put back into the field, that means he leaves, Shade said. Leaves to go off and compromise his safety, experience more pain, come back even more broken than he was when we first met him. And he let us see the statistics, Chase. One of the reasons he’s so high up and they treat him like the asset he is is because he’s still alive!
The average person in Jason’s position managed fieldwork for two years before retiring to another branch or being “retired” for various reasons. Including death.
Jason had been doing his branch of missions for nearly six years. And more reasonable fieldwork before then, before he’d moved up.
I sometimes think about him going back to work, the work he keeps talking about, not the training he’s been doing, and I—Shade stopped that train of thought, unable to keep going. Because in every scenario, Jason died.
He died, and it wasn’t even quick and painless. It was drawn-out, and messy, and horrible, and Shade thought about that future every time Jason had a nightmare, every time he methodically checked his knees, whenever Shade saw the scars painting his torso. Jason still sometimes flinched when Shade or Chase made sudden movements. Because fieldwork had brought him nothing but pain.
We could talk to him, Chase suggested. See if he might consider changing his goals. He’s been working these last few months as a supervisor and training coach. Base has people scrambling to call time with him. Maybe… maybe he might consider doing that permanently. Instead of leaving.
Leaving us.
We’ll talk to him, Chase promised.
“OH MY god,” Tyson groaned from where he was lying on the floor. “That’s it. You killed me, man. I’m dead.”
“So what you’re telling me is that I failed,” Jason said, eyebrow raised. “Because killing you wasn’t my mission objective.”
“Man.” Tyson rolled over just enough that he could sit unburdened by the bulk of gear he was wearing. “You always have the worst jokes.” Jason smirked. “You’re not funny! Just brutal.”
“Training you up’s my job,” Jason said. “You and the others.”
“Oh hey, yeah, speaking of which, how’s that going?”
Jason shrugged. Since he was still off active duty but had all this expertise under his belt, he’d been approached to start training some of the other recruits, aside from the team he had previously worked with. They were being sent in batches to see him, talk to him, even go a little hand-to-hand.
“It’s all right. I guess,” he said. “They’re asking me to start working on more assessments.”
“That’s great!” Tyson said, eyebrows raised. “And yet you don’t sound all that into it.”
Jason shrugged again. “I’m doing a lot better in all of my own assessments, and my psych eval is probably about as good as it’s gonna get. There’s been talk about me sifting through the people I’ve been training up, assembling a team, I think.” He sat down on one of the benches, grabbed a bottle of water, and drained it. When he came up for air, he added quietly, “There’s been a push lately, with my progress. I think they’re hoping I’ll be able to return to active duty soon.”
Tyson shrugged off his top gear vest and trudged over to sit heavily down next to Jason. He leaned forward, hands clasped.
“Is that not what you want anymore?”
Jason stared at him.
Tyson held up his hands. “I’m just sayin’! You’re thirty-five, man. That’s like… the longest anyone has ever lived at your station. You’ve done your duty, had your battles, and have plenty of scars to prove it. You stick with being active… you’re gonna get killed. You know that. It’s—it’s part of the job. I mean, shit, you know how much I want the position and the experience, but you think I’m going to do it longer than two years if things get messy?” Quieter, he added, “I know it’s probably mutiny for me to say this, but… if you retire from the field, you stay alive. You’ve dealt with enough shit, you know? Especially after your last mission.”
“Which was over five months ago.”
“And you could probably stand five years to recover from it. I had the clearance to read about half of that file. You’re gonna be a legend for a long time, surviving what you did. Especially with the info you brought out with you.”
“It was my job,” Jason said feebly. “That’s all.” And he hadn’t been good enough. Not to save anyone else who’d been in there with him. He needed to be better.
(“Aidez-moi s’il vous plaît—”)
Tyson let out a sigh. “Think what you want,” he said. “All I know is I wouldn’t’ve made it. A lot of other people wouldn’t’ve either. You got out. You got out alive, in one piece, and with the intel you’d gone in to get. There’s a shit-ton I’m still learning from you, and we’ve worked together for ages. It might… it might be time for you to think about a new career path.”
Jason swallowed. Tyson was voicing something he’d been… thinking about. He much preferred waking up to Chase’s breakfasts, coming home to Shade’s tactility, to living with both of their open acceptance and companionship. Waking up from nightmares and to not still be living one. But… “I guess it’s just…. Work is what I know. It’s what I’m good at.”
Tyson shrugged. “There’s other work you could do. You could ask to move full-time to training. Hell, with your rank and experience, they’d be lucky to have you doing this full-time. Or, like, you’re killer with languages. You could do interpreting or some shit. Anything. It’s just, you know, something else to think about, man. Another option, you know? I mean, even if you petitioned to get honorably discharged because of trauma, which would absolutely fly because come on—I’d miss you around here, but I’d get it. If it’s that over fieldwork…. Don’t you have something worth living for?”
Jason thought about the two people he got to go home to every day. “I might.”
“THERE’S BEEN talk about work wanting to bring me back in,” Jason said, managing to bring it up one afternoon while Chase was working on his back again, Shade busy working on his hands. He felt open and exposed but still so safe, that it was enough for him to be able to talk about what he’d been ruminating over for a week. “I’ve been talking to people, asking around, listening to some higher-ups. The general consensus is that if I’m still making steady progress in a month or two, they’d like me to assemble a team and return to fieldwork.”
Chase didn’t stop the hard press and dig of his fingers. “Oh,” he said, voice small. “And you… you want to do that?”
“I’m not sure,” Jason quietly admitted. “That’s—that’s what I’ve been training for. I don’t know how to do anything else. But I… I don’t know if I want to, anymore.”
“Wouldn’t have other jobs for Jason?” Shade asked, sounding bewildered. “Jason knows so much.”
“I mean, maybe. I could… I could ask,” Jason said, before hissing as Chase moved to work on a particularly sore spot. Tyson had jabbed him good under the rib cage yesterday. “I’ve been doing my normal training with Tyson but with a couple other people too, just some regulars. The people they want to team me with. But I was thinking that maybe I could see if they wanted me for something else. Conduct training seminars. Work with other people one-on-one. Move to assessments and assignments, basically. Out of the field and into… teaching. I just, I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s what they want out of me. I don’t know what I’d do if they said no, they want me out in the field or not at all. This has been my life. I don’t know what I’d do without it.”
Chase was quiet for a long moment. “Maybe… maybe it’s worth finding out, though.”
“I don’t know,” Jason said miserably. “I haven’t thought about it at all. All I’ve ever been gunning for was to return to the field, since that’s what I knew how to do. I was….” He shut up quick. Saying that out loud would only upset his Companions.
“Was what?” Shade asked, setting down Jason’s right hand and moving around the massage table to start work on his left.
“I… I was planning on dying in the field,” Jason admitted. It was harder to say the words out loud, compared to thinking them. Especially to someone he cared about so much. “That’s one way people in my area of work retire.”
Shade growled, and even Chase let out a hiss. But the hands working on him remained gentle. Or as gentle as a regular massage from Chase was.
“Does Jason… does Jason still plan?” Shade asked, voice small.
Jason shook his head. “No. Not—not for a while. I’ve got enough worth living for.”
“I’m glad,” Chase said fervently. “I’m glad that’s the case.”
“I just… feel like I’m in limbo,” Jason said. “I’m working, but not really working, and if they want me back in fieldwork, then—”
“You’ve more than done your duty,” Chase said sharply. “It’s perfectly reasonable for you to want to move to something else now. And even—even worst-case scenario, even if they didn’t want you anymore, and they’d be stupid not to, you have so many other marketable skills. You could—with your languages alone, you could do so much.”
Jason tried for a smile. “Yeah, that’s what Tyson said.”
“You’ve talked to him about it, then?”
Jason snorted. “Tyson was on the same page as you guys. He thinks I have opportunities other places.”
“Good,” from Shade. “Smart.”
“Yes,” Chase said. “And Tyson can’t be the only one who thinks you’d be an asset as a trainer. It sounds so worth looking into.”
“You really think so?”
“I—Jason, of course I do. If you were here, teaching, then you wouldn’t be out there in the field experiencing distress or pain. You would be so much more safe. And… and you wouldn’t be away from us. I admit to… worrying about it. Shade and I have talked. We were actually going to bring it up soon. That we were worried about your future.”
“Wanted to talk to Jason about future with Jason.”
Jason swallowed. “Wait, wait, I think I should be sitting up for this conversation.” Once he’d pushed up, legs dangling over the side of the massage table, he asked, “What do you mean, future?”
“I’d like to start taking steps towards requesting permanent placement with you,” Chase admitted. “Since I don’t intend to leave anytime soon. Shade’s my partner, so if I stay, he stays. We’d—we’d both like to stay. With you. I’d, well, I’d be taken off the roster at the Delegate as a live-in Companion.”
“You’d—you’d want to do that?”
Chase huffed. “Jason, we love you. Neither of us wants to leave. We’d like to stay as long as you’ll have us. But that also means that you stay with us. Because I know just enough about the nightmares you’ve faced during active duty to know I never want you to be out there ever again.”
“Thinks the same,” Shade said, voice adamant. “No more hurt, please. Teaching good! Teaching also safe. Safer.”
“We’re not pressuring you into a decision,” Chase said. “Our opinions are just that. But they are our own. At least think about it?”
“I, yeah. I will.”
JASON RETREATED to the mat room soon after to work through his thoughts the best way he knew how: putting his body through its paces. As he went through a routine on the bag, he let his thoughts drift.
Retiring from active duty had never crossed his mind before. He was built to work in the field, was good at it, and if he was the one out there, that meant someone else wasn’t. It wasn’t a bad trade-off, he figured. And before, it wasn’t as though he had to worry about anyone missing him. Not really.
Now he had two people who would miss him. And they were already worried.
He sighed and tried to imagine himself being a regular at base as a trainer and abruptly realized that… that’s what he’d been doing for the last four months anyway. As soon as he’d had psych clearance to work again, they’d put him with Tyson straight away. And then Sahara after that, and Nick, Urvash, Kylie….
It was a veritable team, and he knew the purpose behind that was to return to work with the team at his back. But Tyson was a leader, too, and this was what he wanted to be doing. He’d be a good fit to lead, if Jason said no.
Could he say no? Would they still want him anymore? That was the fear. That he’d ask to be reassigned from fieldwork and then just—his options would vanish. He’d been doing it for so long. What if… what if that really was all they thought he was good for?
He shook his head and tried to fight that thought down. No, he… he was good at other things. He had about ten or so regulars who he saw throughout a week now, for training. Not including the newer trainees he sometimes had assessments with. And there had been those brief talks about him maybe leading seminars if he wasn’t back on active duty by next month.
Even though work was gunning for it, they couldn’t be too upset that he was making another call. Right? He was working. He was doing a good job. All his trainees liked him, liked to work with him. That had to count for something.
Right?
The niggling fear that his overall job was in jeopardy was still there, but…. They’d invested a lot of energy in trying to get him healthier, and they were using him as a resource either way. Clearly they wanted him to stay on.
So should he do it? Should he actively decide not to return to the field? To try to go in and fill out paperwork and make it official?
There wasn’t a lot about fieldwork he’d miss. He could always keep up with his languages regardless; that was a nonissue. And travel, well, he’d sort of had enough of that for a while anyway. The people he wouldn’t miss, because he was still in contact with them. Over half of them were his freaking students.
Maybe… maybe this decision could be easier than he’d originally thought. As long as work was okay with it. And they had to be. They had to be.
He let himself just ruminate for several more minutes before focusing more fully on his bag, letting the tension bleed out of his body. This was okay. He could do this. It was the next logical step, really. And Shade, Chase, and Tyson, they were all right about one big thing: Jason was recovering. There was no good reason to return to what he was recovering from.
When he was finished, he took a quick shower, threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and left the mat room.
CHASE WENT in with him to submit Jason’s request for permanent reassignment to a training head and to retire from active duty. It was a relief to get it over with, knowing he’d hear back sooner over later, but that night Jason retreated to the mat room to just lie on his back and stare up at the ceiling. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t retire. What was he thinking? He was thirty-five; he’d been doing this for over fifteen years; he couldn’t just stop. There had been so much push to get him to return to the field, they’d never accept his request. He’d have to leave. He’d have to file for getting honorably discharged. And he didn’t want to do that. He did like training, he liked the people, he liked getting to keep his mind and body in shape, and he couldn’t—he couldn’t—
Chase or Shade. He’d go find them. He needed—he knew he was having a panic attack, and it was better when they were there. He didn’t have to go it alone, he could—he could get up and go find them. It wasn’t that late yet; maybe they wouldn’t mind— He stumbled to his feet and threw the door open, only to narrowly miss stepping on Shade, who was sitting in front of his door again. Shade rose quickly to his feet, setting his hands on Jason’s shoulders. “Jason okay?” he asked, voice writ with concern.
“Panicking,” Jason gasped out. “Job, I can’t leave it, Shade. I can’t. I can’t—”
“Shh, sit, Jason. Jason sit.” Shade guided Jason to the floor and wrapped his arms around him, resting Jason’s head on his chest. “Breathe, don’t think. Think of breathing.”
It was better with Shade there, but he still couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t leave work; he didn’t know what else he could do.
“Jason’s fine, Jason’s safe. Chase is fine and safe. Shade is fine and safe. Breathe, Jason.”
Right. Right, Chase was okay, Shade was okay. Concentrate on that. Focus on that. That was why he was leaving. He had them to come home to now. He didn’t have to go off on missions, leaving an empty apartment behind.
He could still train, even if he couldn’t go to base to do it.
He’d still have Tyson, some of the others. They could keep in contact outside of work.
He still had his skills, and he could use them for something else. Something safer. Work security, be a bodyguard, do something with language, anything.
He tried to breathe and concentrate on that. Eventually the breathing got easier.
“Better now?”
Jason nodded into the hollow of Shade’s throat. “Sorry.”
“No sorries. Why panic?”
“It just… it just hit me what I did today. That I might not be going back at all.”
“Might not happen.”
“Yeah, but it might. And I’m just… I’m rattled. I’ve been in deep for fifteen years. Anything now would be a change.”
Shade ran his hands up and down Jason’s back. “Change together. Will be okay.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Thanks.”
Shade leaned back far enough to look Jason in the face, eyes glinting in the dark. Then he carefully pressed a kiss to Jason’s cheek. “Will be okay,” he said again.
Jason tried to believe him.
“JASON?”
“Yeah?”
“Shade and I were talking, and—” Chase squared his shoulders. “We want to talk to you again about the mat room. And where you sleep.”
“Okay?” Jason looked up from his laptop and tried not to get his hackles up.
“We’ve been really happy that you’ve stopped sleeping there at night,” Chase continued. “But the couch isn’t—shouldn’t be—a long-term solution.”
“I’m not kicking you out of your room,” Jason said immediately. “That’s your space.”
“We know,” Chase said. “And we really appreciate it. And we also appreciate and understand the importance of you having a room to work out in at home. We were hoping, ah, well….”
“Switch rooms,” said Shade. “Make old room mat room, mat room new room for three.”
Jason blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s only an idea,” Chase said quickly, “and obviously we understand if you’re not comfortable with it. But you fall asleep around us much more easily now, and—I’m not suggesting we share a bed, though that is something we’d both love to try eventually, but, well. If you were willing to have a smaller mat space, the mat room is the master bedroom of this apartment. It’s certainly big enough for two beds and all of our things.”
“Could still sleep on couch if needed to, some nights,” Shade added. “Wouldn’t feel bad.”
Jason’s “I’ll think about it” was on the tip of his tongue before he stopped and reconsidered.
“Yeah,” he said, after a beat. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Shade asked. “Just… like that? Is fine?”
Jason nodded. “It’s not a bad idea. And I do sleep… easier with you two around, I’ve noticed. I’ve always slept better with someone I trust at my back. So it… it would make sense. That it could work.” He sighed. “As long as you’re okay with me, um, moving in with you.”
“We wouldn’t have suggested it if we weren’t,” Chase said. “And I don’t think much will change, honestly. You’ll still have your designated mat space to retreat to if you wanted, and we can always go there too, in the event we needed some space.” Which was a laugh, really. Chase and Shade rarely wanted to leave Jason alone.
“Okay,” Jason said again. “Let’s do it. We could get to work now. If, um, you wanted to?”
“That sounds great,” Chase said, smiling.
It was hard work. First they had to take up all the mats and gear and store them around the living room. Next came moving the furniture around. Between the three of them, they were able to get the king from the smaller room into the master bedroom, plus the mattress. Shade remade the bed while Chase and Jason moved the massage table and smaller furniture. Then Jason placed the mat that could fit down, while Chase and Shade transferred clothing and the last of the items from one room to another. It took most of the day to get everything organized and situated.
The last thing Jason did was take out his bedroll and put it on the floor at the foot of the bed. He’d get a real bed soon, maybe even manage to go to a store to buy it, but the bedroll worked for the time being, and it was something he was used to. That he would be sleeping in it near Shade and Chase made things that much better.
The room was big enough that even with a second bed—Jason was planning on just getting a full, he didn’t need anything larger—it wouldn’t be cramped. Cozy maybe, but that was okay too. He spent a couple minutes just looking around at it, taking in the fact that he pretty much had a new room.
Then he went to his new mat room and did the same thing. Got situated, walked the length of it, placed his standing punching bags where he wanted to. It was a good room, just a bit smaller. It could work. Hopefully could work well.
Jason took a deep breath and let it out again. He’d had enough exercise for one day. He’d use the room for real later. Chase and Shade were busy making dinner, and it smelled amazing. The mat room was right there. He could always come back to it.