A/N:Hey guys. So chapter three is both long and probably riddled with spelling and grammatical errors as I edited late into yonder eve. Honestly I didn't want to read it anymore because in my opinion the fic is getting to 'fluffy' to me, which we all know means I can't mention vomit or condoms so I don't like it. FUN FACT:I liked one paragraph out of this entire almost 5k chapter. Feel free to guess which one it is.
Now that my hatred of fluff and my writer cultivated angst is out on the table, thanks so much for your reviews/favorites/alerts and most of all reading. A lot of people have said they've reread the other chapters several times, I'm glad you're enjoying the story so much. The ending is still up in the air, and the story will most likely have a 5th chapter to accommodate the length. Since chapters 3 and 4 are large enough as it is. Also SYuuri won't let me write Just-World until I finish this story. So send your love to her because I have a habit of finishing shit.

Aphonous

Chapter 3

Again

Thirty-six hours later he stands at his locker. It's half empty, in the middle of a manual stomach pumping. All the crap inside, none of it really matters. He's been through this before, collecting personal items in a frenzy before being shipped off for days and days of cross examination. He thought walking down the hallways one last time, seeing the locker Wordy used to have, that it all might stir some sentiment in him but honestly over the last day and a half he's waded through so much shit closing this chapter of his life doesn't affect him at all.

Everything has been tossed into a lidless cardboard box. Thrown in without a care because he doesn't give a shit. Holleran called his cell today, told him in a stoic voice to clean out his locker. Fine. Remaining brain cells pooled and he chose a time contrasting with when they would be in. A shift Team One wouldn't be on duty for, even if they weren't down two members. He doesn't want to run into Sarge who still thinks there's a way to verbally work this out. Or Ed who's left a dozen fuming messages on his voicemail.

The only things he handles with precaution are the three pictures decorating the inside of his locker door. Two of him with The General. He doesn't know why the hell he keeps them here; all the other guys have pictures of their families, their wives and kids and parents. His door remained blank until Spike made a joke about no one loving him. So he found two random pictures of The General. He shouldn't have displayed them. He hates The General. Within the next week he's bound to get a phone call full of expletives for quitting. It will be so accosting The General might as well be standing in the same room. At some point the thought of the red face on the other end of the line will just make him hang up, but he'll still feel the spittle fleck at his skin all the way from B.C.

The other picture is of him and Matt. It's the only picture he has of Matt. The only brother he had. Unless he ever meets Jules' brood of brothers, but every time he asks about them she shrugs away, bows her head, and changes the subject. Same with her father, which is a whole other story.

He never got to put up photos of her in his locker, because, well that would kind of blow the whole 'secret relationship' thing. It seems so stupid now. How Ed and Wordy, even Sarge with Marina get to keep pictures of their wives and girlfriends and yet he has to be ashamed of his. He has the perfect photo too. This year for his birthday Jules, Nat and him flew out West for the weekend. Jules met his mom for the first time and his mom instantly approved. Kept giving him the not-so-secret thumbs up all weekend. The General wasn't there so it was absolutely flawless. In the photo they're sitting in his parents' backyard at a picnic table. She's leaning her back against his side and his arm is draped casually around her hip. Natalie is pulling a face in the background.

The locker door slams and he lifts up the last four years of his life in a box. The room is left without so much as a second glance or a single nostalgic thought. He always assumed he'd leave the SRU the same way most guys do, as an old bastard at a retirement party. All liquored up and thanking way too many people. It's kind of disappointing to know that he could have helped more people, but he'll help in a different way. He presses the down arrow on the elevator panel and waits as it illuminates.

"Sam?"

Spike stands behind him, un-uniformed in a light blue dress shirt and jeans. His appearance is ragged, his eyes are bloodshot and it looks like they should be having a contest for who's avoided sleep the longest. Thirty-six hours and counting.

It's not that he didn't try. He tried at his apartment but when he got home at, his sister, his little baby sister whose jaw was still littered with bruises because some heroin freak thought it was okay to hit her, glanced up from her daytime talk show and asked, "You're home early. Did you and Jules have a fight?"

And he cried. Started to sob in the open doorway, his back to the hall. Fell dramatically on his knees like he was lurching before the whole church congregation. Natalie shut the door and knelt next to him. With repetitions of 'Sammy', she kept badgering him about what happened as she hugged him and failed to calm him. He couldn't talk. Jules couldn't talk.

He finally told her. After she suggested he have a shower and take some sleeping pills and just rest, Natalie promised everything would work out fine. What the fuck did she know? He didn't acknowledge her answer, just shuffled to his room, lied on top of the bed fully clothed including his work shoes and stared at the stupid window. Omnipresent city lights seemed like a selling point when he bought the place. Jules side of the bed smelled like him. His side of the bed smelled like him. She was already disappearing.

He went to her house three hours later. Used his key and took his shoes off as a courtesy. He climbed the stairs and found her bed, premade, unslept in like a quaint bed and breakfast. It was home. Her home was his home. She was his future, but she was absent and it was like the lifeline carved into his hand suddenly ended. He showered, smelling her shampoo. This month's was pomegranate. He dried using her towels. He grabbed some clean clothes from his drawer in her dresser, earned five months ago when he bitched about having to go home so often. She'd done the laundry. She folded his top.

He slept in her bed in brief sessions of ten to fifteen minutes for maybe an hour. Mind muddled, confused. Kept reaching out to touch her. Once he woke up under the impression it was three years ago, and Jules was beside him in her post-gunshot wound phase. He asked the empty mattress if it needed anything. Any more pain medicine? The heating pad? When he received no answer and his hand clawed through only air, he jumped out of bed in frantic search of his wounded girlfriend. Right woman, wrong wound.

"So you really quit, huh?" Spike nods to his box of shitty knickknacks and three pictures. He just wants the pictures.

"Yeah."

"Toth and Sarge didn't give you a free pass? I mean last time Ed quit and—"

"Ed wasn't sleeping with a teammate, Spike." He likes Spike. In all honestly he does. He's a funny guy, he's a loyal guy. He could ask Spike for a favor in passing, forget about it and the next day Spike will have it done. But Spike is naïve. Naïve from over thirty years of living with his parents.

Instead of the shocked expression he expects, a small smile flashes by on Spike's lips. "How is she?"

"Still in contamination. They won't let me see her. Haven't after the first day. They say it's a danger and she doesn't need the added stress."

"She'll get better. She's Jules." Everyone keeps telling him this. People with no authority keep telling him this. Sure they've know her longer. But he knows her inside and out. He knows how terrified she is to be in that room isolated from everyone but hospital staff. If they don't let him in today he's breaking in. Suit or no suit.

The elevator pings, interrupts the ocean of silence growing between him and his former teammate. That was always the voiceless downfall to the secret relationship, he knew it, is sure Jules does too. Deciding to hold each other in a more intimate manner means the eventual segregation of the rest of the team. Before they were teammates, equals, now the remainder of Team One stands above him, judging and debasing. Perhaps even blaming him for the decapitation of the team.

But Spike did him a favor. A huge favor. Risked his own life to retrieve Jules in his proxy. "Spike, I never did get a chance to thank you. I mean you broke protocol to—"

"Anyone one of us would have done it for anyone." Spike's words are nonchalant. His chivalrousness dissipates into the ducts of the SRU circulating cool air. His hands hide in crossed arms and the hint of the smile still remains.

Neither of them bring up the shared attribute that they both broke the priority of life code. He left his post, and sluggishly returned only after being coerced by Sarge. This wasted time on both accounts, time in which a nuclear winter could've rained down in Toronto. When Spike broke the windows to the dentist office, he released toxins into the building. If it wasn't cleared, others could've been contaminated. Spike putting his life at risk when he's the principal bomb disarmer didn't sit well with Toth either.

"It was a great four years." Squeezing the box under one arm, he holds a hand out for Spike to shake. None of this is going the way his mind imagined. It's not a banquet. He's not drunk on scotch or upset about the life choices he's made. It seems like a lame way to say goodbye to such a close friend, but what the hell are they supposed to do?

Spike shakes it, pulls him into sort of a semi-hug. "Good luck. I'll probably see you at the hospital after Jules gets out of decontamination." He didn't have the nerve to tell him that she can't talk. Ironically it's not the sort of thing that he could casually weave into the conversation.

At the hospital, he arrives with two plastic bags. Even if they won't let him see her, maybe they can give her a care package to let her know he'll be waiting until they will. He'll always be waiting. He's spent the majority of his time at this hospital in the waiting room with his dirty, ratty sneakers flat on the ground and his hands clasped together in a pre-prayer stance. The rest of his time has been spent cleaning her house. He doesn't know why, just a ridiculous amount of time washing down the baseboards and cleaning the cobwebs from ceilings she can't reach.

The bags only hold a few things. A few easily replaceable things, because when she comes out of decontamination, they won't. First he grabbed a book from her shelf, it's thick and dog-eared and she complained a few months back about wanting to reread it but never having the time. Then he grabbed her knitting, which despite the waves of ridicule he threw at her when he discovered the talent, he begged her for a hat. He didn't wear a hat all winter in the slight hope she would take the hint and knit him a goddamn hat. She never did and he figures now is the perfect time to start, even if he can't actually have it.

He brought a pair of her sweatpants, and was going to bring her a t-shirt, but logic reminded him tubes stood in the way of it fitting properly. Instead he grabbed one of his dress shirts, a black one that buttons up all the way. She hates hospital gowns; after she was shot she protested every single aspect of them, from being cold to being exposed. Back then they wouldn't let her wear a normal top because of the gunshot wound. Maybe she'll be able to wear his, smell it and think of him. He also dug through her underwear drawer, an act that made him depressed and disgusted with himself because he was trying to find pairs she and he would mind not having anymore.

On the way to the hospital he made a few stops. One to pick up some toiletries, because she has specifics, doesn't like to switch from them aside from the shampoo. He likes that about her, it's an attribute that's definitely feminine, definitely Jules. He buys a notebook and a pen because she has to communicate with him somehow. They're close, but their minds haven't melded yet. The last thing he buys is an exact cloned copy of panda slippers. They stare at him with black beady eyes as if to ask, again?

Hospitals rely on routine and even though for the last thirty-six hours he's only seen the waiting room, he always follows the same path, looks for the same nurses, and wears the same expression of trepidation and hope. The nurse finds him this time, much like she did on that first faithful night. He still doesn't know her name. In his mind he just calls her Pete.

"I know I can't come in. I was wondering if someone could give her something for me."

The nurse sinks her teeth into her lower lip and cradles a chart to her chest. The scrubs she wearing are bright, clashing colors that look like a 90s motel carpet. She sucks in air through her teeth and scans her card to enter into the waiting room. A few of the ill notice and groan like zombies.

She grabs his bicep firmly and leads him away from the triage. "No one told you?"

His heart starts a club remix. The bags' handles crinkle in his hands. He's Jules' emergency contact. When they forced him to leave her side, after he asked what was in the IV—pain medication for her throat, he updated her contacts. Gave them his cell number. Never turned it off. His tongue brushes against his lower lip. "What happened?'

So many things could have gone wrong. She could be intubated again. She could be in surgery for some unknown reason. She could be aspirating blood. She could be having a second wave of side effects from the chemical. He questions why he ever left the fucking hospital.

"We moved her."

"Why?" Surgery, it has to be surgery. She got shot just below the lung. Broken ribs, flayed muscles. Her chest was already weakened.

The nurse smiles and pats his arm. "She went through decontamination this morning. She's in the ICU now. Floor seven."

"She's cleared?"

"Well she's out of decontamination. It's the first step."

Half of him wants to run his fist through the wall, because he told them, repeated in rambles and then in a slow distinctive tone to match his bobbing head for added comprehension, to call him if anything changed. He could have been here for her when she finally got out of the room, when they wheeled her through the ER on a gurney that might as well have been a royal carriage because she assumed everyone's was looking at her, taunting.

The remaining half wins out, the part flushed in relief, soaking it up like a sponge, seeping at the sides with it and not complaining a bit. He just wants to see her. He shakes Pete's hand, thanks her for everything she's done. Breaking the rules on the first night by letting him sneak in stealth-like in a hazmat suit that might as well have been an Easter Bunny suit.

The elevator doesn't arrive. Well he doesn't know if it ever does, because he jams the 'up' button until the pressure almost bends his thumb backwards. After the seventh consecutive jab, and holding down the button with the force of the last thirty-six hours, he gives up and shoves the door to the adjacent stairwell open.

He climbs the stairs like he's wearing a bulletproof vest and a sniper rifle on his back. Like he's going to be searching for the vantage point and the first pang of longing hits him. He's not exactly torn. Nine out of ten times he'll choose Jules before the job, that tenth time representing when she broke up with him and he was so confused and broken hearted that he couldn't function. He just wishes he knew the job was ending; maybe he would have appreciated it more.

Rounding the third floor in a strong gait, and in the back of his melancholic mind he does remember a cell phone ringing yesterday. Morning? Night? He can't segregate them anymore. Time zones in Alaska, without her the sun doesn't set, or rise. Staring wide-eyed at her ceiling, left arm lazily wrapped around her pillow, her scent. He slammed his right hand blindly down on the bedside table until he found the ringing device and brought it too his ear.

It wasn't until after he connected the call that he realized it was her cell, not his. He didn't even get a chance to utter a greeting before a voice interrupted him. It was an unfamiliar voice, older and deeply masculine. There was a scruffiness to it, one too many cigarettes smoked. One too many cigarettes swallowed. A slight twang only crazy mountain D.B. Cooper type men kept. The sever gruffness came through in his first sentence. "Jesus Christ Julianna, why the fuck do I have five goddamn messages on my machine telling me you're in the hospital?"

It was her dad.

He was about to reply. About to tell her father, that his daughter was fine, just sort of contagious at the moment. But before he could, before he could remember brief words Jules had spoken about her father, the man continued, "It's not like there's a goddamn thing I can do from Medicine Hat and you belong there too if you think I'm flying down."

Then the floodgates open. After she was shot Sarge kept asking her who he should contact. She kept answering no one. Spike was enlisted to find her dad in Medicine Hat. In less than fifteen minutes they had the info. The phone call was shorter than the effort. Later in confidence Jules told him her father's surly attitude stemmed from him blaming her for her mother's departure. Apparently four kids were fine, but five was the straw that packed her mother's bags.

"—constantly injured? How are you still on the force?" Her father took a deep inhalation of what he expected was the man's sixtieth cigarette of the hour. "I told you that you'd make a shitty cop."

He snapped. Absolutely snapped. Shot up in bed, body hinged at the waist as he wondered what the fuck Jules actually had to put up with growing up. Fingers and toes curled, muscles clenched. "Your daughter is in the hospital."

"Who the fuck is this?"

"This is Sam Braddock, her boyfriend." He wanted to continue, tell him how Jules is an amazing cop. How she tackles perpetrators like a panther. How she repels effortlessly down the sides of buildings like it's an undiscovered art. How her aim is better than his and he was born a sniper. How she's his every single breath.

But her father interrupted him, "Good, you take care of her then."

There was a click and then the incessant dial tone. At least now he'll never need to have the awkward phone conversation where he asks permission to marry Jules. Not that he would, because she would murder him.

Jules abandoned by a mother, a father, a brood of brothers, and now in some ways the Team, her makeshift family. He is going to take care of her. God willing, for the rest of his life.

The '7' gleams in the industrial stairwell lighting. A white flare up, a mini explosion in hole to hell he stands in. The door handle crumbles under his the full weight of his body and the immediate bright and false chipper atmosphere of the quiet ICU greets him.

In hospitals there is an infinite number of nurses sitting behind and infinite number of desks just waiting for him to act like a moron before they actually do something to help him. This one sits in an almost comatose state, mouth slightly agape at the computer, typing with slow strokes of each finger. She only has to type a first name and a last name, even though it's Jules' he's tired of spelling it out for her.

Finally when he's about to hop the desk, shove her back and hack the system with his limited knowledge, she glances up; her eyes glazed over in TV static, too many hours staring at too many screens. "Room five."

She doesn't bother pointing him in the right direction; he doesn't bother thanking her for wasting a huge chunk of his life. The ICU is formatted in a classic square pattern, so he finds the room with ease. He lingers in the doorway, fingers twisting the plastic bags' handles, twirling them tightly and letting them unwind.

A nurse, older and heavier than the android at the desk is fussing over Jules' IVs, making sure the tubes don't tangle together. Jules sits on the side of the bed. Clad in a comparable hospital gown to the one he last saw her in. Her legs, bare from her knobby knees down, hang and wobble loosely like marionette appendages. She's lost weight, it frightens him.

The ECG machine and the fingernail ornament are absent which is a definite improvement. The oxygen mask as been replaced with an inhaler to soothe her throat. When she holds it away from her mouth, vapors roll out the end. Her hair is a messy nest on the back of her head; it extenuates the pristine square of gauze on the side of her neck.

"Tomorrow we'll try introducing food." The nurse fiddles with the monitor on the IV, double checking the chart and then the digital numbers. She's either very efficient, or she's screwed up before. But she carries on a conversation with Jules like she's going to answer. "You'll have to be on the feeding tube until we can keep a—"

The bags drop from his hand and hit the ground with a thump and a plastic hiss. Jules, still in a semi-fetal position while sitting up, glances towards the door. He watches the silent recognition wash over her facial features, the way her slightly pink eyes perk up and her lips part to create a grin. She swallows, flinches her eyes in pain at the action, and opens her arms to him.

He ducks under the cord of the inhaler. Laughs as he holds her, not too tight because her chest is frail and quivers under his arms. She still smells like Jules, not weird like Spike did after decontamination. Maybe Spike always smelled weird and he just never noticed.

Her body temperature is hot. Not the cool skin on the feet and legs he's used to weaving their way between his while sleeping parallel to her for the last eight months. Her arms are linked around his neck, and her feverish cheek brushes against his repeatedly. He shaved. Remembered to shave for her.

He kisses everywhere he swore he would, her cheeks, her chin, her forehead, the dark discoloration of skin around her eyes, her lips, and her nose. He has to be careful of the tube, not to jostle it. Finally they just rest against each other, her head tucked tightly underneath his chin. One of her hands within his; the other playing with the hem of his shirt as his thumb absently rubs the unburned side of her neck. "I'm sorry I wasn't there Jules."

She breaks contact. Both her hands hold his cheeks, fingers searing pinpoints into his skin as she stares into his eyes shakes her head. He leans forward pecking her nose once in remembrance and she lets out a silent laugh. She knows what he's thinking of. He rests his forehead against hers so their noses touch and they share the same content sigh.

"I take it you know this man then." The nurse interrupts their reunion. She's writing something out on Jules' chart, but over her thick rimmed glasses, her gray eyebrows take a skeptical plunge.

"Sorry." He steps back, but keeps an arm around Jules. Always wants to keep an arm around her. "I'm Sam Braddock. I'm her boyfriend and she's my everything." She gives him a harsh exhale probably meaning it to be a snort and hits him in the chest with the back of her hand. It lands with a hollow thump.

"Oh I like this one." The nurse chuckles. Apparently understanding his innate need to be alone with Jules she replaces the chart and walks towards the door. "I'll be back in an hour to switch over your IVs. And don't forget about the inhaler."

"You should keep using this." He fixes the inhaler, unraveling the cord and picks it up from the bed. The smoke smells vaguely minty. He wishes he could take her home now. She hates this place. He hates this place because she does. He'll stay with her for as long as he can, but visiting hours only account for so much of the day, she'll be alone at night. So will he. "I don't want you to get worse."

Another stern exhale is followed by her replacing the inhaler back into her mouth. She wheezes when she uses it, it's disconcerting, but apparently it's helping so he tries not to notice. "I brought a few things for you, just in case they wouldn't let me see you again."

A curious eyebrow arches as he takes a seat on the bed next to her. The way she holds the inhaler makes her look glamorous, like a 1920s movie starlet. Her head lolls to his shoulder, and she releases a wheeze like squealing tires. "I brought you that book you want to reread, and yarn so you could knit if you wanted too."

Her lips purse and pull into a sardonic expression because she knows exactly what he's hinting at. He hinted at it the same way when he bought the yarn and left it on her bed with a hat pattern. He said Santa brought it. That only pissed her off more.

"I got this notebook so if there's anything you need to actually tell me you can."

She rolls her eyes and sighs incredulously at him. His blood pressure lowers a little because all he's missing is the lengthy speech about however he's agitated her. He wonders what did it this time. What features of a notebook and pen could possibly irk her, it's not like he can bring his laptop in her and give his girlfriend a computer voice. At least if he reads her chicken scratch, he can read it in her voice.

"Hey you should be more grateful, I almost got you a Speak-and-Spell."

Another silent laugh followed by a genuine smile at his thoughtfulness. She places a kiss on his cheek. His arm circles around her waist open palm landing on her thigh. His hand almost consumes her thigh. Casually, without showing her just how disturbed he is, he withdraws his arm and reaches for the second bag.

"I also brought you these." He stops his voice from cracking and pulls out perfectly folded clothing that reminds him of his days in the army. She's always saying he's too messy and she doesn't know how he survived the army. "I brought you my shirt because I know you don't like the gowns and you could button it over –"

She hugs him hard. Might actually fling herself at him. Boney arms crushing his neck as the light weight of her body presses against his. He closes his eyes and just revels in the fact that she's there, while ignoring the half of her that isn't. They made it over the first hurdle; she's no longer a chemical nightmare or biological weapon. She's in his arms, her skin rubbing against his. His nose in the nape of her neck. His lips on hers. But a sense is still missing.

Next Chapter - Panda slippers (I didn't forget I just needed to cut), and an actual complication.