A/N: Hello! Long time, no post! It's been forever since I've submitted anything here (updates or otherwise), so first please let me thank all of you that continue to read my stuff, and all of you that have been supportive over the last few months. I'm dealing with a health issue right now, and my personal life has fallen into a bit of a tailspin... so the muse has gone into hiding for awhile. I have one 1/2 finished chapter for "Home," and 2 other partially finished fics in the works, so I have no intentions of going away permanently, it's just rough right now. Enough said.

Anyway, this is just a little something I've been working on for a few weeks. It's set post-series and is entirely in Cal's voice, because his is the only one I'm "hearing" at the moment. Short pieces aren't my norm, but it felt good to get back into the writing habit again with this. I hope you enjoy it. :)

Thanks for reading!

…because I thought I was fine, yeah?

Absolutely fine.

For years.

Truly.

Which I suppose either makes me the stupidest man in the entire world, or the blindest, because let's face it: "fine" is a temporary state. It expires. It recedes. Everyday life is filled to the brim with change, and there I've been: stuck. Knee-deep in a thick, slimy mess of the stuff for nearly a decade, just reeking with the stench of my own pride. So, no. "Fine" shouldn't have even been a blip on my radar, much less a state by which I measured my heart.

Or my life.

Or my future.

Still, I had no (real) room to complain, and no (real) stake in anything intimate – and while the days did, admittedly, feel rather empty at times, I existed all the same. I breathed. I ate, slept, drank, and procrastinated. I immersed myself in work, and I sought refuge between the thighs of women half my age… and if I tried hard enough, I could almost forget what it felt like to want more.

Fine.

I was fine.

Admitting otherwise would've seemed like total failure.

My wake-up call, however, came charging in like thunder and left me reeling in its wake. December. Afghanistan. Sand and blood and screams and smoke. Surreal, it was. Half of me was sure I'd be dead within moments, and the other half – the part that couldn't seem to shake the picture of Gillian's eyes or Emily's fear from the forefront of my stubborn mind – was too busy being filled with a thousand different regrets to care about something as finite as my own mortality.

People die, after all.

Life ends.

And I've never been foolish enough to think I was immune.

Each of us is born with a limited number of chances; a limited number of days, hours, minutes, seconds in which to make it all count. To make it all matter. Free will, yeah? That's the root of the human condition. We're supposed to learn; to love. We're supposed to take chances and make mistakes – to foster friendships, create memories, and understand that most people don't make it to the end of the line unscathed. Scars and baggage and pain and fear are a part of the process too. For everyone.

Nine years, three months, two weeks, and four days. That's how long we've been friends. Or rather, that's how long we've been "just friends." And just for the record? That desert war zone showed me exactly how much I hate that bloody qualifier, and how incredibly lucky I am to still have Gillian in the center of my life. She and Emily have long been the only reasons I needed it all to count, so yes: 'like thunder.' Rarely has any other realization hit me with such force.

We met on a Wednesday, when my defenses were up and her walls were halfway down. Four months later, we were partners. I trusted her implicitly. Emily adored her, and she filled the empty spaces in my soul with such a… such a… spark, that it became almost impossible to define where our work relationship ended, and our personal one began. And as much as I'd like to believe that I didn't fall in love with her until sometime after my marriage ended, the bitter truth is that I've been lying to myself for far too long.

Hell, I've probably been lying to everyone for far too long.

I have demons, see? And wounds. I push people away, and I take ridiculous risks, and I can't even begin to imagine how I would live without her. And somewhere along the way it became easier to embrace denial, rather than risk ruining her beneath the weight of my broken past. Tragic, isn't it? Fear won for so long because I let it. Gillian holds my heart, and I kiss her cheek, and I know what it feels like to love her… but thanks to that fear, I've never been brave enough to let her love me.

Gillian's arms feel like home, and her touch is a balm, and I don't want to live in a world where any of that is out of my reach; where love is conditional, or where past sins outweigh the hope of something more. I want to hold her. To comfort her. To keep her safe, and make her smile, and tell her a thousand times over that it's always been her.

So. Please allow me to rephrase, yeah? I've never been brave enough to let her love me… until now.

I'm ready now.

Nine years, three months, two weeks, and four days.

We've both waited long enough.

And the fear doesn't get to win, anymore.

END