Thank all of y'all for the wonderful prompts y'all shared with me! I have so many more ideas to work from now. :)
This story is not fully outlined yet, but I'm guessing it will be about five or six chapters long. Warning for eventual themes and discussions of drug use (including non-consensual drug use), addiction, and overdose.
For lostinanotherworld24, who is the sweetest. Happy belated birthday, love.
Davis comes to base early, which is why she's the one who finds Clay.
She has been around Bravo long enough to know that several of them sometimes sleep in their cages, so she eases the door open quietly when entering. Sure enough, the hammock strung in Spenser's cage is visibly weighted, and there's a cowboy-booted foot hanging over the edge. She chews at her lip, debates just turning around and leaving so Bravo Six can get what is probably some much-needed sleep, but it's too late. Clay apparently heard her. With a groan that's audible from across the room, he struggles for a few seconds, then manages to sit up.
Lisa's eyebrows shoot up to her hairline.
"Oh, shit," she whispers.
His face is so battered that she might not have recognized him at first glance, if she hadn't already known who he was. One eye is swollen shut, his cheek is badly bruised and puffy, he's got a fat lip, and there's dried blood crusted thickly beneath a busted nose that looks like it might be a little crooked.
Clay just sits in his hammock, hands resting loosely in his lap. Doesn't make an attempt to say anything. Though he's looking in her direction, she can't really tell whether his gaze is focused. Whether he has even truly registered that she's there.
Davis takes careful steps closer, keeping her hands visible just to make sure he knows she's not a threat, in case he's disoriented and doesn't remember where he is. Alarm gnaws at her stomach, because this... this could be bad. He could have a head injury. Does she need to call someone? Does he need a hospital?
"Hey, Clay," she says softly. Without intending to, she has started imitating Sonny; there's even a hint of a drawl to her words when she asks, "You okay in there?"
Clay blinks his good eye and manages to focus on Lisa. He nods, reaching up to poke at his face with a wince.
Lisa flinches sympathetically. "You might not want to touch that," she tells him. God, he looks bad.
What the hell could have happened? This looks like more than a bar fight. Like he was beaten, and the thought makes anger curl into her gut alongside the concern.
Clay leans forward slightly, tucking an arm around his abdomen, and Lisa realizes there are almost certainly more injuries hidden beneath his grimy, blood-speckled blue shirt.
Someone did this to him. Once they figure out who, there will be hell to pay.
Davis starts to ask Clay if he's gotten medical care yet, but stops herself, immediately realizing that a nurse or doctor would have cleaned him up and fixed his nose. He must have come straight here after getting the absolute hell beaten out of him.
In a tightly controlled tone, she asks, "Do you need medical?"
He looks down, giving the slightest shake of his head.
She isn't sure she could possibly feel less convinced. "Clay. Do you need a hospital? And don't you even think about lying to me."
Spenser licks his lips, wincing as his tongue passes over a weeping cut, and then says hoarsely, "No, I think I'm okay. Just... sore."
"You don't look okay," Lisa parries.
He sighs. "Looks worse than it is." Gritting his teeth, he manages to get up from the hammock, moving enough like a very old man to tell her that 'sore' is probably a massive understatement.
Using her best officer tone, she orders, "Take off your shirt."
Clay looks at her, raising the one eyebrow he can still move. "Why, Miz Davis," he drawls in an exaggerated, scandalized Southern accent.
She rolls her eyes. "That's Ensign Davis to you, Petty Officer. I want to see if you look like you're bleeding internally, so take off your damn shirt."
"I'm not," he assures her with a level of sincere certainty that is very, very worrying coming from him.
When she just stares, he sighs again. Slowly, with a lot of wincing and quiet swearing, he starts trying to work the shirt up and over his head. After about 20 seconds, Davis can't stand it anymore, and moves forward to help.
With the shirt finally off, Lisa takes a step back and exhales through pursed lips.
The good news is that she doesn't see anything that would indicate, at least to her largely untrained eye, that Clay is in imminent danger of keeling over and dying.
The bad news is, well, just about everything else.
Clay's chest and abdomen are mottled with bruising, and a quick circuit around him reveals that his back is as well. The pattern left by boot treads is clearly visible in several places, which means he was kicked and/or stomped while he was down, and Lisa is going to fucking murder someone.
How is he not angry right now? How is he just standing there, subdued, staring at her with a weary, resigned gaze?
"Lisa," he says quietly, "please don't-"
"Who did this?" She shoves her hands into her pockets, trying to hide the fact that they're shaking with anger.
Clay looks past her. Doesn't answer.
Doing her absolute best imitation of Naima, Davis asks, "Clay, what happened?"
"I..." He trails off. Sways on his feet, but manages to get a hand out to brace himself against a shelf before Lisa has a chance to move to catch him. She notices that his knuckles are busted, on both hands, which makes her feel a hint of fierce satisfaction beneath all the fury.
Their boy fought back. Of course he did. The problem is that he obviously lost - badly.
"I can't tell you," he finally says.
Davis clenches her teeth tightly enough that she can feel a muscle ticking in her jaw. Her friend's pig-headed stubbornness is pissing her off, but the hollow, lost note in his voice scares her a little too. It reminds her too much of when she visited him in the hospital after Manila; when she reached out to him and just ended up cutting herself on all his broken edges.
If that's what it comes to, she'll do it again. He would do it for her, too. If she ever let him.
There are several different battles she could choose to fight at the moment, and she needs to pick the right one. She suspects that pushing harder on the 'who' and 'why' will just make Clay shut down even more, so, as much as it rankles, she lets that go for now.
"You need to get checked out by an actual medical professional," she tells him firmly. "Judging by the dizziness, you've probably got a concussion, and might have broken ribs too. At the very least, you need to get your nose reduced."
He groans, reaching up to prod gingerly at it. "Shit. They broke my nose?"
They. Lisa files that little tidbit away for later. "Yeah, Pretty Boy, they did. You're not looking so pretty right at the moment."
Clay gives her a tragic, wounded puppy look out of his one visible eye, as though she has just signed his death warrant by insisting he receive actual medical care.
"Trent might be able to fix the nose," she says, "but I'm pretty sure he'll agree with me that you need an actual doctor to check out the rest."
At the mention of his teammate, Clay goes a shade paler and sways again, tightening his grip on the shelf to keep from falling. Lisa moves a couple steps closer so she can at least try to break his fall if he starts to go down.
It doesn't take long for her mind to seize on what is probably the source of Spenser's distress.
"Clay. Were you planning on trying to hide this from your team?"
He pointedly does not look at her or acknowledge the question in any manner whatsoever. Which means yes.
For a competent and intelligent operator who reads a lot and speaks respectable portions of somewhere around nine languages, God he can be an absolute dumbass sometimes.
"You look like you got hit by a truck. They would have to be blind and deaf and dead to not notice. In fact, I should probably call Jason right now to give him a heads-up."
As far as Lisa is concerned, the sooner Jason and Trent can get here and take over deciding what to do with their youngest brother, the better.
Clay groans.
"Come on." Lisa moves up closer, sliding beneath his free arm, trying to support him without putting pressure on any visible bruises or anything that might be broken, which is easier said than done. "You need to sit down before you fall down."
She manages to get him into an actual chair, where he sits hunched over his ribs, expression glazed and distant in a way that she really doesn't like. Something tells her he won't be operating again for a while, but she keeps that thought to herself. He's already miserable enough as it is. No need to add on.
The temperature in here is pleasant but Clay has started shivering anyway, goosebumps visible on his bare arms. Lisa brings over a blanket, tucking it carefully around him and getting a whispered "Thanks" in response.
"You're welcome. Don't move," she warns, because while Clay doesn't look like he's planning to make a break for it the minute her back is turned, she's been his friend for long enough to know better than to assume.
After receiving a vague nod in return, she moves across the room and calls Jason.
Or calls Jason's phone, anyway. He isn't actually the person who answers.
"Jason Hayes's phone," Sonny drawls. "He's drivin' at the moment, so this here is his butler."
Lisa rolls her eyes, her chest warming with fondness. She'd forgotten that Sonny's truck is in the shop right now, so he has been catching rides with Jason.
(Beneath everything else, the affection for Sonny and the worry about Clay, there's a hint of old, well-worn sadness at what she knows to be the reason behind Jason's reluctance to talk on the phone while driving, but Davis doesn't let herself dwell on it.)
"Hey, Sonny," she says.
"Ensign Davis!" He sounds uncharacteristically cheerful for this early. "What do you need on this fine mornin'?"
He seems happy. She hates that she has to ruin that.
"Uh." She clears her throat, suddenly feeling oddly lost for words. "Listen, I was just calling to give Jason a heads-up that something has happened. With Clay." She glances over at Spenser. He's still sitting where she left him, staring blankly and doing an excellent impression of a man who can't hear himself being talked about.
Sonny's pause lasts just a beat too long. Humor gone, he asks, "What exactly is 'something'?" Then quickly follows it up with, "Hang on. I'm puttin' you on speaker. Okay, go ahead."
Knowing that Jason is now listening too, Lisa takes a deep breath. "Clay was here when I came in this morning, sleeping in his cage." She tries to figure out how best to phrase the next part. "He's pretty busted up and won't tell me how it happened. I think he might need medical care, but he doesn't want that either."
Sonny swears.
A bit fainter and further away, Jason says tightly, "Keep him there. We'll all be in soon. Trent can take a look at him when we get there."
"Copy that," Davis says. She ends the call and glances up to see that Clay has listed to the side a bit and is now staring morosely at the floor. He looks so much like a child dreading punishment that it makes Lisa's throat ache.
She goes to sit next to him. He startles a bit, then relaxes, fixing his eye on her face. "They're gonna kill me, aren't they?" He asks, sounding quiet and sad.
Carefully, Davis reaches out to pat the small section of his forearm that's protruding from beneath the blanket. "They're gonna do whatever it takes to make sure you get better, Clay," she tells him. After a brief pause, she can't resist adding, "And then they might kill you."
Especially if he doesn't give up on this 'I can't tell you what happened' bullshit. Someone left boot marks on him, and if that pisses her off, she can't imagine how strongly Clay's teammates are going to feel about it.