A/N: Okay, I'm going to stop saying that this is the last update because I've proven to myself that that is blatantly not the case each time! Just be prepared at some point for updates to stop for a while!
Also, when a person suffers a particularly traumatic incident – such as being shot down in a war zone, captured and tortured – one of the most common ways of dealing with it is to compartmentalise it into a different section of the brain, which results in them often being unable to express it in rational words. It's more a collection of raw emotions and visuals that can't really be conveyed. It's fairly difficult to explain, but it's almost a more primal form of memory, one that you can't really understand unless you've experienced it. Also, I highly doubt Schofield would have escaped Bosnia without some sort of PTSD or similar emotional scarring, which is sort of brought up in this chapter.
Finally, this chapter is mostly written from Jack's point of view.
Chapter 11
Jack wasn't sure how he'd got himself into this situation. He could see sunlight just starting to peek through the bottom of the curtains. Not his curtains though. Schofield's curtains. With Schofield himself currently still sleeping against his chest. Eyes closed and unmasked by sunglasses, the scars made for an even scarier sight. Stretching exactly from eyebrow to the top of his cheekbone in a perfectly straight line and meeting at the eyelids without his eyes to separate them. Jack was currently tracing a finger slowly across one of his shoulders. He might have stopped when the other man shifted against him – not wanting to wake him - if the night hadn't already taught him that Schofield was both very difficult to wake up and incapable of sleeping still. Instead, he just pulled the slightly smaller man closer and tried to wish away the morning.
Approaching the barracks the night previous, they had been grateful to see that the light in the common room was off, the foosball tournament obviously over and the marines most likely in bed. All the same, that hadn't stop them from opening the door cautiously and looking around before they actually entered. After all, it wouldn't do for two people who supposedly couldn't stand each other to be caught returning from a late night stroll together.
Caution had been abandoned however, as soon as they were inside the shadowy room. Schofield's hands were tugging at his shirt and his own were tangling in his belt loops. Keeping their bodies joined at as many points as possible; lips, chest, hips; they stumbled recklessly into the room only to damn near crash into a sofa sitting in the middle of the room. It was all they needed to remind them how very dangerous this was if they woke anyone who heaven forbid, came down to investigate the noise and caught them.
In the half-light, he couldn't quite see the expression on Schofield's face when he'd asked if Jack wanted to come upstairs, but based on the hesitancy in his voice he could imagine it was uncertainty with the hint of that rare blush that he was coming to realise, only really occurred around himself.
"I didn't mean it like that," he had continued a little clumsily in the darkness, trying to explain, "I only meant you could just stay, if you want to that is. No pressure or anything."
He had successfully silenced him by claiming his lips back and pressing him towards the stairs, only letting go when they reached the foot of them, not wanting to trip over them and cause a calamity by forcing Schofield to navigate upstairs, backwards and thoroughly distracted. Gently, carefully, he dropped his own hand from where it had been holding the back of Schofield's neck and trailed it down his body before intertwining it with Shane's hand.
He had thought the other man might have pulled away at the unexpectedly intimate contact. Instead, the grip tightened slightly and he felt their calluses sliding against each other. If he had been able to see anything more than the shadow of a cheekbone or the glint of metal rimmed sunglasses, then he would have seen a genuine, if slightly shy, smile spread across Schofield's face.
They had passed the first landing, which led to the dorms where the junior enlisted officers slept. Schofield's room was the first door across from the second landing. He seemed to hesitate at it momentarily, so from behind him, Jack reached out with one hand for the doorknob whilst resting the other on Schofield's hip.
"I can still go back to my own room, no pressure," he said, echoing Schofield's own words, with his lips moving against his neck.
"Just checking you were still okay," he muttered as coherently as he could with Jack still teasing that particular spot on his neck and his thumb running dangerously close to his thigh.
In response, he had pushed open the door and shoved Schofield inside. He had never actually been inside another marine's bedroom before and he was glad to see they were all arranged the same way, bed in one corner, dresser in the other, otherwise Schofield would have hit the dresser and probably knocked himself out which would most certainly have put a dampener on the evening. As it was, he had managed to land mostly on the bed, with his feet still on the floor and propped up on his elbows, looking at Jack with his lips quirked and a single eyebrow raised in that seductively mysterious manner he managed to pull off.
Without even thinking about it, his shirt was on the ground and he was, carefully, leaning over Schofield who pulled himself up to meet Jack's lips, bracing himself with his hands on Jack's hips. Neither could quite believe they had waited so long when this was so incredible. He started at Schofield's chest, wanting so badly to feel the heat of his bare skin without the shirt, skirting his hands across the flat plane of his pectorals and dipping into the spot where his ribs would have met under them before pushing up to his shoulders and down firm biceps, all the way down his forearms until he reached his hands. Sliding his fingers between Shane's, he pulled both arms up and over his head, pinning them to the wall with a single hand. Schofield looked at him perhaps a little curiously but was obviously content to allow Jack to continue his exploration.
"Just don't tie me up," he muttered over Jack's shoulder.
He had no intention of doing so. The other hand that wasn't restraining Schofield's came down to rest on the waistband of his shorts. He thought he might have heard a muffled curse as, instead of pushing into them, he slid his hand up and under the olive green shirt, along obliques taut from the hands held over his head. The skin under his hand felt so amazingly soft and yet with all the hard strength of tensed muscle directly below it. It was like touching silk which bled head against his palm. Slowly, he inched the hand up his body, fingers tripping over every muscle before pausing at the broad chest, taking in details he hadn't been able to appreciate through the shirt. Gently brushing his thumb over a nipple, he felt it contract and harden at the touch. Creeping up, he found the pucker of a scar right above Schofield's heart, which he could also feel thumping fast and strong against his hand.
He turned his gaze away from the body and up to Schofield's face which he was glad to see was delightfully flushed, eyes glazed behind reflective lenses.
"Leave those there," he ordered, indicating the arms before bringing his head down to nuzzle at his neck.
Waiting until he felt Schofield nod, he abandoned the pale flesh of his neck and dropped his other hand to pull the shirt up and over his head – joining his own on the ground - revealing the body he'd already explored by touch to his sight and it certainly didn't disappoint. There was absolutely no way he could fool himself into thinking this was anything like making out with a girl – not that he could currently think of a single reason he would want to. Now naked to the waist, it was obvious that – had he been in the mood for it – Schofield could have killed him. easily. Other than a tempting line of dark hair which streaked down and into his pants, his chest was entirely hairless and marked with quite a few more scars than the one Jack had already discovered.
As Jack looked at him appreciatively, Schofield, no longer content, it seemed, to play passive, pulled himself further up the bed and upright, leaning his back against the wall and fisted his hands through Jack's belt, dragging him forward and onto his knees, effectively pinning Schofield to the bed and between himself and the wall.
It was then that he made his fatal mistake. So close to Schofield, who had now taken to running his hands across Jack's chest in the same way Jack had already done to him, he brought his own hands up to cup Schofield's face. Brushing one thumb across the slight stubble of his jawline and the other down the slightly crooked line of a nose that had been broken plenty of times, he gently, very carefully, slid his fingers under the dark glasses and across the thickened scar tissue.
Instantly, he felt Shane stiffen beneath him – and not in a good way.
He pulled back immediately, removing the offending fingers and instead resting them on Schofield's thighs. He had tilted his head away and was staring at the ceiling. Jack decided to try a different tactic in hopes of recovering the situation. He placed his hand over a small, thin strip of a scar that sat just above his left hip, before bending over nearly double and pressing his lips to it, causing Shane to look down at him sharply.
"How did you get that?" He asked gently.
For a moment, he thought Shane wasn't going to answer. He had returned to staring at the wall, the floor, anywhere but Jack.
"My Father," he said softly, his voice sounded far away, "used to beat me. That particular one was inflicted with a belt."
"And this one?"
He held out Shane's arm, kissing a small circular mark above the elbow.
"Cigarette burn; same person, different weapon."
He brought his lips to the side of his neck to a thin white line, murmuring against the skin, leaving feather-light kisses with each word, "What about this?"
He felt Schofield's hand dig into his shoulder, holding on to him tightly.
"Shot by a man I thought was a friend, and healed by a man I thought a murderer."
Jack was beginning to see a pattern here.
He sat up and looked Shane directly in the eyes or, at least, as directly as possible with sunglasses still hiding them. Slowly, very slowly, he lifted his arms and pulled them off, revealing storm-like dark blue eyes. Schofield's hand curled around his neck and drew him forward.
He pressed a kiss against each closed eye, tenderly,
And one more against his lips for good measure.
He was about to ask when Shane kissed him, forcefully, running his hand across the back of his head and using the other to push him over carefully, so that he was lying on his back and Schofield had wrapped his body around him. Gradually taking control, tongues battling for dominance and with Jack's shoulder successfully pinned to the bed, he tore away from Jack's mouth and left a trail of kisses that were almost bites down his neck and onto his chest. Then abruptly, with his head tucked against the crook of Jack's neck, he began to talk.
"1995, in Bosnia," he said as he reached over Jack and rummaged through a drawer beside the bed. Pulling out a very battered photograph, he continued, "I was a pilot."
He handed the photo – of a couple of smiling, carefree, young men, including an unscarred Schofield, standing in front of a plane, wearing old fashioned flight suits and with their helmets held proudly under their arms – to Jack, who stared at it intensely and perhaps a little sadly as Shane continued to tell his story.
"Flying can make you feel invincible, so you do stupid things. I got myself shot down by a bunch of guerrillas with a couple of stingers and a jeep," he said shortly. "Don't ask me how long I spent down there 'cause I can't really remember. It's all a blur of hunger and pain and fear but they caught me in the end."
He took Jack's hand and guided it to the small pockmark he had found before on Schofield's chest.
"I got this from a plank of wood with rusty nails. They beat me with it for hours."
He seemed to falter, took a deep breath and closed his eyes, bringing the scars together.
"When they realised that wasn't going to work, they tried to cut my eyes out, so that I'd never spy again. Actually, it worked. I haven't taken an 'information reconnaissance' mission since." He laughed a little to himself.
"Then they locked me in a cupboard and left me to bleed."
Jack couldn't help but wince and he was worried that Schofield, hearing it, would say nothing further but his fears were unfounded.
If anything, his voice was stronger when he spoke again.
"I don't remember anything after that, just blackness and waking up in a hospital a couple of weeks later. They told me it was Jack Walsh who ordered them to come for me. Apparently the corp were all for leaving me there."
Jack could hear the traces of an old but never quite forgotten anger in his voice. He was starting to understand the Scarecrow. Repeatedly hurt by people he should have been able to trust. He valued loyalty above anything else, but never expected it. He didn't often let people get near to him, because then he made himself vulnerable to them. He had very few close friends, a handful of acquaintances, but virtually no 'just friends' because of it. The man was mysterious, an enigma, not by choice or intent but because he'd simply forgotten how to trust people. How much then, must it have hurt him to have been unceremoniously tossed out by the service he had given his life to. How much courage then, did it take to stand up for himself anyway.
How much then, should Jack value this – whatever this was between them.
A sudden, warming, thought struck him. If this was nothing more than the comfort of a warm body, then Shane would never have never let that particular story past his lips. He wouldn't have told him about his father. He certainly wouldn't be lying against him, skin flush against skin, staring off into space with a faint frown marring his face and his hands absent-mindedly drawing patterns across Jack's chest. Whatever this was – Jack was reluctant to accidently over complicate it by giving it a name just yet – he could be fairly sure it actually meant something to Schofield.
He decided to test something. Sliding an arm slowly across Shane's shoulders, he pulled the slightly smaller man close against his chest. Sure enough, as he suspected, he felt the muscles beneath that arm tense. Shane, at least in terms of physical intimacy it seemed, drew the line at being held. He loosened his grip and withdrew the arm. Instead, letting it settle in the small of his back, providing gentle pressure and a sense of intimacy but without the constraint, and felt him relax again.
"Sorry," he had murmured and Jack had felt the vibrations of his chest against his own. "I don't like being restrained."
Jack personally, thought he might find that difficult. After the story, he had to repress the urge to hold him tight and keep him safe from any further damage. Only, a single glance down or one recollection of the things this man had done and he remembered that Shane did not require – or probably appreciate – his protection. Which of course, raised one more question that begged an answer.
"When I joined this unit," he said tentatively, hoping he wasn't pushing his luck too much, "they gave me a whole stack of files to read about the things this team – you – have done. I know about Wilkes, and about Cinc-lock VII and theKkormoran situation, I know about the bounty hunt, about Elizabeth, I even know about that debacle with the president. What I don't know, is how on earth you manage to get back on your feet and convince yourself there's something in this rotten world worth saving?"
He didn't get an answer to that question but it didn't bother him too much, because when he looked down quizzically at Shane, he found that he had fallen asleep. Looking far more peaceful than any hero had a right to, he couldn't bring himself to disturb him. So he carefully wriggled down to a more comfortable position in the cramped single bed and tossed a sheet over them, before shutting his own eyes and resting his head against the mop of dark hair. Thinking to himself, What a night!