hello! the note at the bottom is my usual send off + some of my thoughts about 7x05 (including spoilers!)
As glad as Chris is that her and Street are wherever they are, she can't help but wonder how much he might be letting onto the team. She knows she's able to keep whatever she wants hidden, this whole experience cracking that open in front of her, but he's always read like a book, and 20-Squad have never been ones to let things lie when something could be wrong.
She supposes she's in the same boat after working together for so many years, if this coffee date with Deacon is any indication. Nerves bounce around her stomach like a burning desire to go back to what she's used to. A knock on the door startles her out of her thoughts and denies her the opportunity to run. Grabbing her crutches and shoving her phone and wallet into her back pockets, she pulls open the door and smiles at Deacon.
"Hey, Chris," he says as he hugs her carefully. He's nervous, too, and it makes her feel better about her own anxieties.
They haven't spoken about what happened in Lankford and the air is thick with it.
"Ready to go?" Deacon asks. Chris nods, thanks him for driving and lets that lead them into a conversation about how her physical therapy is going and how she's only a few weeks out from getting the brace off. She watches the city blaze by until Deacon parks and opens her door.
The café is busy but not packed. Chris takes a seat at one of the outside tables while Deacon orders for both of them. She's holding out a ten when he returns, two medium iced coffees and blueberry muffins in hand, but he waves her off and Chris rolls her eyes, setting it down anyway.
"Victoria's college fund."
As she pulls the muffin apart, crumbs drop on the napkin and she wipes her hands on her shorts.
"How have you been?" Deacon asks, eyes falling to the brace through the frosted glass table. Chris grimaces at the attention everyone can't help but give to it.
"Okay," she answers honestly, giving him a small smile and a shrug. "Like I said, PT's going well, more range of motion each week. What about you?"
Her eyes are fiery where they meet his, and Deacon swallows a sip of coffee to quell his nerves.
"Good. I've seen Wendy a few times, spoken to Annie. It's always hard. You know. But, what I've really been thinking about is everything we said before Rafa and his men showed up."
"About family?" Chris asks, unsurprised by his nod. Her grip tightens around the coffee cup.
"Yeah. I owe you an apology."
Eyes widening, Chris's hand falls and she leans forward. She and Deacon have gotten into it before, but have usually chosen to let mutual respect and time muddle their disagreements into the background.
"For how I acted towards the Safe House, and for what I said about you not having attachments. I know how much your family means to you, I see it with how you are with my kids. I'm sorry for insinuating all of that is less important than my own beliefs."
Chris's mind spins, her small nods the best indication she can give Deacon that she's listening as she forms a coherent thought and then fights the instinct to bite back the truth for his comfort. Undeniably, Deacon cares about her, and she reminds herself that that's enough.
"I know our beliefs don't always align," she agrees, tapping the cup on the table and avoiding meeting his eyes just yet. "I know there are parts of my life you don't agree with, but you have to understand that those things don't come from nowhere."
Despite the sick feeling in her stomach, she finds Deacon's eyes, and their familiarity gives her enough comfort to overpower her fears. She continues.
"My Aunt Helena didn't have a choice when she came to this country. She was granted asylum but most people fleeing aren't. Her and Sarzo, they raised me, even before my mom died. They were—" stopping to clear the tears in her throat, Chris squeezes her hands and focuses on the image of her family in her mind, hearing their soft, ever-present encouragement.
"They were the ones who took care of me. And Tomas, and Mirabel."
Taking another deep breath and a slow drink of her coffee, Chris lets those words settle before she says anymore. The way Deacon's focus is only on her isn't nearly as scary as she imagined, even with what she's sharing.
"My family means just as much to me as yours does to you. I don't know what they'd do if they lost me, but I can't think about it because I know I couldn't go on if I lost them, and I won't entertain them going through that kind of pain. Especially not when I know the rest of the team has my six to make sure we all get back to the people we love the most."
Silence falls, both finishing their coffee, and Chris adjusts in her chair when the weight of the brace starts to strain on her hip.
"To be honest, Deac," she sighs, eyes moving to watch a cloud float by and letting a squawking bird fill a second of time, "I've tried to keep my distance, 'not have attachments,' like you said, but that hasn't worked. It might look different, but my family is as irreplaceable to me as yours is to you. And I don't just mean my immediate family! It's you guys, too, the team. Your kids, Victoria's my goddaughter, I'd do anything for them."
Deacon's smiling like he's remembering when he asked Chris, and it makes Chris smile. Reaching across the small table, he sets his hand on top of hers.
"I know, and we're lucky for it. I'm sorry again. Thank you for talking it out with me."
"You, too," Chris says, and then adds, "it's a new thing I'm trying out."
"How's that?" he asks, finishing his muffin and crumbling the wrapper into the empty coffee cup. Chris shrugs.
"Nearly dying will do that, I guess. I'm glad you had my back out there."
With a sad smile, he nods and agrees.
"We had each other's backs. I've got a little while before I've got to get back to HQ, is there anything you need while we're out?"
Sighing, Chris says the only thing she needs is to get back to work.
"You will soon." Deacon promises.
As relieved as Chris is that things with Deacon are better, having that worry off her chest means the only things her anxious brain can focus on at night are her loved ones and the vivid memories of Lankford. After her eyes close, those fears manifest until she's right back in the desert.
Sometimes she's the one who dies after reliving the fight. Other times it's the team or her family that she's powerless to save. It's always hot and bloody, and the images get more horrific the longer they last. She wakes up with her heart beating out of her chest and sweat drying as a film on her skin.
She wants to shower, but 20-Squad is on the night shift so the most she can do is splash cold water on her face and roll to what's become Street's side of the bed to try to get some uninterrupted sleep. Despite his best efforts, her sleep is light and his careful footsteps are enough to wake her when he sneaks in hours later.
"Hey, sorry," Street says when Chris joins him on the couch, groggy.
"It's fine." She assures him, though there's an edge to her voice and the dark circles under her eyes are visible with only the table lamp on. Her yawns cover the dialogue of the cooking show that's moving far too fast for her tired mind to follow.
"You're sure you're okay?" Street checks-in again when he's done eating. Nodding, Chris still feels disgusting, but Street either doesn't pick up on it or he doesn't want to push her, so he says nothing else about it.
"Okay," he continues, washing his dishes quickly before turning back to her, a soft smile on his face. "Do you need anything? I was gonna shower and go to bed."
Lips in a line, she says she's good. She gets clothes from her room to change, and anything else she thinks she might need, but it doesn't matter because Street goes to the guest room. How considerate he is would make her feel wonderful if she didn't already feel so terrible. If it didn't make it all the more clear that Street sleeping in her bed to chase off bad dreams is something that's going to come to a screaming halt, and soon.
Unrolling her yoga mat, Chris turns on her headphones and starts the loudest playlist she has, so she can't think about anything else other than the numbing monotony of her PT exercises.
On good days, she feels accomplished as she goes, hopeful with each rep. On bad days, which are becoming all the more common the longer this lasts, tears mix with sweat, and she wants to kill Rafa's men over-and-over again.
Grinding her teeth together, she pushes that thought away. Sweat rolls down her forehead and over her chest as her muscles spasm through the movements. When she stands to do wall slides, the brace slides down her leg, the foam pads slipping and the velcro scraping over her thigh. Her fists clench as she takes a deep breath, wishing there was a punching bag in the corner.
"Motherfucker." Chris mumbles. Her fingers wedge underneath the metal to hike it to where it needs to be and she tightens in once it's back in place, pulling the straps until she's certain they won't move.
The wall slides are the last thing she does, and when she's finished, she's exhausted. Her knee aches because it's still unused to the weight, a weakness as uncomfortable now as it was at her first post-op appointment. The instability of her own body freezes her where she is. It feels like a betrayal, one she did nothing to deserve, and everything she struggles with now that she used to do without a second thought reinforces that.
Everyone keeps telling her that she's doing great and that she'll get back to it soon, but no one seems to understand the pain of her life as she knew it being ripped away in the first place. The fear that she might not ever get back to where she was, and if she can't, then she's never getting back to who she was, either.
Overwhelmed, Chris inhales raggedly and squeezes her eyes shut. After a minute, patterns start moving behind her eyelids, and she focuses on them until her thoughts blend into static white noise. When she's sure she's got herself together, she opens her eyes and blinks away the past two hours. She rolls up the yoga mat and sticks it in the corner unceremoniously before downing a glass of water.
Getting to the bathroom, her crutches annoying her the entire way, Chris leans them against the wall and peels off her clothes. The shower curtain stands like a brick wall between her and sweet, necessary relief that she's getting one way or another. A hand on the wall and bracing her core, she slides down the wall until she's sitting on the thin edge of her tub. Where the velcro sits on her skin itches when she gets the brace off, and she swings her left leg over.
With a deep breath, Chris braces her core and stands up, drawing her right leg awkwardly over the edge. She almost loses her balance and she leans forward to grip the small washcloth bar on the shower wall, but white knuckles and sheer will keep her upright. Frigid water shocks her awake, quickly giving way to her muscles relaxing as it turns hot.
The thought crosses her mind that she doesn't know how she's getting out, but is washed away as she steps under the water. It rains down on her and, as she washes, the nightmares and her frustrations swirl down the drain, too.
Feeling a million times better once she's clean, she dries in the shower and ties her robe before staring at the predicament before her. Her eyes flick between her brace, her crutches, and the edge of the tub. She chews on her bottom lip and debates waking Street up until a fire flares in her stomach and she decides not to.
Carefully, each movement accompanied by bated breath as she keeps her bad leg as still as possible, Chris uses the wall for support to slide until she's sitting on the edge of the tub once more. It's harder to swing her right leg over first but she manages to get it over and lined up with the brace. Secure, she stands.
Elated but exhausted, Chris gets to her bedroom to change and then falls into bed. It feels stupidly good to have done something as simple to shower independently, but it's the win she needs. Her heart flutters at the thought of telling Street later, and her own unease with the feeling is no match for the ever-growing reality of loving him.
Her last thought before she falls into a nap is the hope that, if she has a nightmare, she doesn't wake up screaming.
hello (again)! thank you so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed this chapter even though it's got quite a bit of a different tone. i knew i had to include a conversation between chris & deac because of the themes, and their relationship was fun to delve into a bit more. as well, i wanted to get more into chris's headspace. i know i said before, but the original intent of this fic was mostly just supposed to be injury recovery + me going through some of my own knee surgery stuff through the characters. this chapter, for me, was really great for that, so i hope that the short chris character study was satisfying for you all!
thank you to everyone who keeps coming back for your comments/continued support! i can't say it enough how good it makes me feel and how motivating it is ?
now, onto my thoughts about 7x05, bc i would also love to talk about that, and this is the best place i've got to do it aside from tumblr where this is pulled from (say hi streakyglasses!)
1st, very happy this means I can still be delusional about this not being his last appearance/possibly getting a guest spot from Lina!
I do think it's a little odd there wasn't a whole team goodbye (perhaps I'm missing context that this was like a happenstance situation and not street planning to leave per se like chris or he had individual scenes/moments with deacon/luca/hicks). with how much swat/20 squad is Street's family I feel like he'd want to have one good moment as a whole. Loved the scene with him & Tan though! The friendship between those two/+ Chris is severely underrated so it was lovely to see that have a moment to shine. (also, tan as his best man, hello).
the fic gears are a turning so hard rn trust me. I have a huge doc with just ideas and it's about to get so much longer (will be writing this engagement scene + I have so many headcanons about them getting married and their wedding as it is that'll be fun to really dive into + perhaps some more smut ?). about to finish up college (lol) so writing has been much more difficult as of late but hopefully over the summer and here and there I can work on little things!
sorry this was super duper long/if this isn't the best place to facilitate all these thoughts lol.
XO, A