If having writer's block was an olympic sport, I'd be banking on a solid second place. I don't wanna give anyone any false hope about an even half-way decent posting schedule, because life has been kicking my ass and I'm doing my best. What I can promise is that I will finish this story, no matter how long it takes me, and I won't abandon it. So, here's chapter seven, and honestly I think I may have lost some of my sanity in here, so if anyone finds it, let me know.

This chapter isn't actually all that long, but it took a lot out of me to write, so please don't hate me too awful bad. There's notes at the end too; do with that what you will.

Clay didn't think his head had ever hurt so bad in his entire life, and he once spent part of a deployment nestled into a hideaway doing recon with Sonny day in and day out for almost two weeks. He was acutely aware of every single bruise on his body, which at this point felt like it was actually less body and more bruise. He couldn't remember a lot about the fight in the bar, if you could even call it that, but there was one thing that he knew for certain.

He'd gotten his shit rocked.

He blinked open his eyes– well, eye– and realized that all he could see were the white ceiling tiles that were cast in shadows from the setting sun outside. At least, he hoped it was setting. His sense of direction had always been above par and he hoped that the spinning of his head hadn't affected that too much. Trying to move his head felt like torture in and of itself, but it was worth it to see the sight that awaited him when he finally managed to rest his cheek against the pillow.

Jane, asleep in the recliner next to his bed, with her laptop precariously balanced on her knees and her mouth open while she snored softly. He didn't know how he'd fallen for her as fast or as hard as he had, but when he realized that he should be upset by the idea, he wasn't. Clay didn't know how he knew, but he did.

No woman he'd ever met quite compared to Jane.

She moved abruptly, as though she sensed him watching her, and curled further in on herself. Doing so caused her laptop to slip, and Clay knew that there wasn't a chance in hell of him being able to catch it before it hit the ground in his current position. Before it had the chance, someone else managed to catch it, and what was even more surprising was that he hadn't noticed another presence in the room with him, no one other than Jane. Maybe that was just saying something about her being the one he looked for when he woke up. Either way, he pulled his vision slowly– his memory of past concussions and a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Trent told him that quick movement of his line of sight would be painful, regardless of how little he moved his head – up the arm that the hand was attached to, which was now putting the laptop on his bedside tray, and found himself looking into the face of his boss.

Jason regarded him quietly, his expression not giving anything up for him to read, and slowly walked back around the bed to the folding chair sitting there. He sat Jane's laptop on the rolling table that was beside his bed, and seemed to fidget for a moment with his hands before he realized what he was doing and stopped. Clay couldn't help but blink in surprise, because Jason Hayes was many things, but a fidgeter was not one of them. Jason didn't seem to know what to say, and Clay wasn't sure he could speak without his nausea getting the better of him, so the two of them stared at each other for what was probably only a few moments but felt like hours. When Clay thought that he couldn't stand the incessant beeping of the monitors above his head anymore, Jason finally opened his mouth to speak, but the words that came out didn't sound like anything his boss would say, and his voice was scratchier and deeper than usual.

"I don't know how you managed to get yourself into this mess, Clay, or how you got out of it with most of your bones still intact, but whatever the reason, you did good. I'm proud of you, kid." And yeah, Jason may have also shed a tear, but Clay could only chalk that up to the massive amount of pain meds that had to be coursing through his system for him to have heard the words he thought he had. Jason must have caught him staring, because the next words out of his mouth didn't make any sense either. "Yes, Clay, I'm proud of you. We weren't here, even when we should've been, and I can't tell you enough how sorry I am about that. But you're alive, and we're not leaving you again, and I'm so damn proud of the way that you handled yourself," he said, and then he pulled a face. "Even if I am a little agitated at your choice of female company."

Clay took in everything he said with shock written all over his face, wondering if maybe he was dying and his team were the only people who knew and they were going to say their goodbyes and be done with him while they replaced him on the team with someone else, someone who may not know how to get Brock to laugh or to poke fun back at Sonny or to give Trent something new to research or to—

"Kid? C'mon Clay, get outta your head and come back to me."

His vision refocusing on his team leader, he realized that the monitor that he'd been so aggravated with was now beating at such a fast pace, he could almost hear the door bursting open with a barrage of nurses. He used his sniper breathing techniques, and watched the ceiling while patiently –not patiently– waiting for said ceiling to stop spinning again. He never understood why his team seemed to be able to read his brain and his features, to know what he was thinking even before he did sometimes, though when he really considered it, he could sometimes do the same thing with them. Maybe it was some kind of trauma-induced telepathy that they shared because of all the shit they'd been through.

Good God, thinking philosophically made his fucking head hurt.

When he was sure that he could move his head without losing whatever bile passed for stomach contents in his current state, he turned once again to face Jason, who was still looking at him with an odd expression on his face, one he'd only ever seen when—

Pity.

Jason Hayes was staring at him with eyes that betrayed the look of pure, unadulterated pity, and why the hell did that make him feel so fucking weak. He'd been weak before, sure, but generally speaking he tried to never let the mask fall in front of the team, and now he'd gone and done it. He'd found the straw, because now his team leader thought that he was weak and this was gonna be the point where he told him that they no longer needed him on the team and he could clean out his cage if it hadn't already been done for him and—

"Alright, that's enough of that," Jason said, once again breaking him out of the thoughts that were spiraling his brain into some kind of chemical soup. Clay watched as Jason got out of his chair and sat on the edge of the bed next to Clay, close enough to reach out and touch if he could use enough brain power to make his arms move, because he realized, horrified, that he wanted to be held, for ten fucking seconds he wanted to be cared for and loved and not feel like a burden.

Where the hell had that come from?

But Jason, ever the mind reader when it mattered, moved even closer and took one of Clay's hands in his own. Clay flinched, and he didn't know why, because his throat wouldn't form any words, only distressed little sounds that kept trying to claw their way out of his mouth, and his father's voice in the back of his brain kept reiterating insults that he'd heard his entire life, never being able to catch a break from the flood of hurt caused by the asshole that dared to call himself Clay's dad.

He wanted to be angry. He wanted to scream and punch and break things, but he could hardly get himself to move. He wanted his team leader to know how fucking bad it had hurt to be hung out to dry, to feel like he'd been abandoned by the people in his life that he cared the most about. He wanted to curse and cry and kick Jason out of the room, tell him to mind his own and that he'd talk to them when he was ready, but he couldn't. All he could do was lay in the hospital bed from hell and cry, only to cry harder when Jason leaned over him and wrapped him into a hug. He didn't want to. He didn't want for Jason's arms to feel safe as they surrounded him. He didn't want to be made to feel small and helpless when Jason shushed him quietly and told him that it would be alright, that they would make sure everything would be alright.

Somehow he couldn't help but feel relieved. He wasn't alone. His team came back, to him and for him. Jane didn't seem to be going anywhere, when by all means she should've already hit the hills and not turned back. A few days prior, he'd have told you that he couldn't have felt more alone in the world, even if a week before that he'd had almost everything that he now had back. He felt protected.

Jason pulled back and Clay realized with a start that the older man also had a few tears streaming down his face, and Clay had a feeling that particular part of this discussion would never come up again, and you probably wouldn't be able to drag it out of either of them with wild horses. He didn't realize that his hand had latched onto Jason's shirt right away, but when he did, he didn't move it. He was calculating the reaction even before his brain caught up to him. Jason just snorted softly and used the toe of his boot to drag his chair over to the bed. He maneuvered himself back into it, and he never once tried to remove Clay's hand from his shirt. He actually clasped his hand over it and held on tight.

Clay glanced over to see Jane still asleep in her own chair, and when he returned his eyes to his team leader, he saw that Jason wasn't looking at her, but at their hands entwined together around his gray henley. Clay knew they wouldn't be hunky-dory in a matter of a few minutes, it would take time for all of them to come back from what had happened and be okay again, but he already knew he was willing to try. Hell, it might take halfway to forever to replace what had been broken in his life, as well as inside him. The trust that he'd put in his brothers, and the trust that he'd put in the work for as soon as he could get the annoying voice in his head to just shut the fuck up—

"I promise you, Clay, we're not going anywhere. We're here, and we'll stay, and when you're back on your feet, we're gonna find the bastards that caused this. All of this," he said, gesturing vaguely around the room. "Davis is diggin' for whoever pulled that shit with the book, and when we find them, there's gonna be hell to pay."

Then, Jason looked up at him with eyes that Clay was pretty sure he'd never seen a single emotion in –if you didn't count agitation, because pulling stupid stunts was one of Clay's favorite pastimes– and saw nothing but sincerity. And he was not gonna start crying again, he would not make a fool out of himself again—

"If it takes you forever to trust us again, then that's what it takes, because we're not gonna stop trying. We've got you, like we should have all along, and that's not changing. You're ours, kid. Ain't no changin' that now."

And there go the damn waterworks again.

But, if anyone ever had the nerve to ask and brave Jason's wrath, he'd absolutely blame the pain meds, because there's no way in hell he'd ever actually admit to this.

Am I happy with the way this chapter turned out? I can't honestly say that I am, but I've made y'all wait long enough, so there's no turning back now.

I'm basing a lot of Clay's reactions on the reactions that I've had from concussions and other head traumas, so I didn't do a lot of research on the broad spectrum of it. The medical inconsistencies should be taken with a grain of salt at this point. If he seems like he's out of character, it's because he is. He's had his bell rung pretty hard. His thoughts are stuttered and he's not thinking clearly, and I know that, and if you think he's hard to understand you should be around me with a concussion, cause I promise you it's so much worse.

The language in this chapter is pretty heavy, because for most of the chapter, I'm working strictly with Clay's thoughts, and that's pretty hard to channel yourself into when you don't live that life. I'm not a sailor, but I'm a rancher, and honestly, I can't imagine that his vocabulary is all that much better than mine.

Sorry for the long endnote, and I swear I'm gonna try to be better about the updates. Comments keep me going, so leave me one if you wanna.