Jess Parker

"Is that my shirt?" - Becker cos I can

Send me "Is that my shirt?" for my muses reaction to getting caught wearing your muses shirt

Glancing down Jess gave a small shrug, the shirt sliding off her shoulder. Fingers toyed with one of the buttons as she looked over at him almost innocently. She could lie and say it had been the closest thing to her in the room but really she hadn’t wanted to put back on her tight mini-dress from the night before. Becker’s shirt had more than covered her and was so much looser. 

Becker was barely holding himself together and he felt like his mask was about to crack, the mask that showed he was currently okay. All he had been through today, all he had just seen… On all the missions, with every single anomaly, they had never lost a child… until now. He had left the EOD Squadron for the ARC to avoid that, to avoid seeing children get caught in the crossfire like he had in Afghanistan. He wanted nothing more than to just let himself break down, but he couldn’t… not after years of stopping himself from expressing when he was sad or hurt. Loosing children to this job… he had always thought he would make it in time. He looked for anything else to focus on, not the look of terror that was on the girl’s face when he found her and not the state of her body… and so he had asked Jess if she was going to be okay. It was better to focus on the living, on the one person who had been making him smile since he first met her, than on the children he had failed.

Because we have you… those words were ones he certainly found comfort in. He gave Jess the best smile he could muster, though there was obviously a lot of pain behind it. He had been so bloody close… if he could have just gotten past that blasted door… Becker could already feel the bruising starting on his right shoulder, and he knew it was likely to look rather nasty within the next twenty four hours. The bite on his leg would take longer to heal, but nothing could heal what being too late had caused. His pain was nothing compared to what the girl’s family was about to go through. And Jess had not seen someone die before… he was most immediately concerned for her, since he could at least offer her comfort.

   “ Her belated birthday present was going to see a show opening on Broadway in New York this weekend… She and my parents don’t get cell reception outside of Britain… I could call Destiny, but she is watching Tommy… and Kaitlyn is on her honeymoon. ” He could not even call his family, and saying it out loud made him feel rather alone. At least with Afghanistan and Cutter and Sarah, even when Abby, Connor and Danny did not come back, he had at least been able to check in with them. For the first time in a very long time, Hilary Becker felt alone.

              “ Are you sure you will be okay? I mean I could stay until you are, if you need… “

She was tempted to suggest perhaps he could write an email instead... but then she remembered she was probably the only one she knew that would find something like an email comforting. She continued to watch him as he talked about the rest of his family, listing them also as busy or unreachable.

“Becker,” she said, giving his arm a small squeeze, not realising it was bruised. She hadn’t gotten to finish reading the medic’s report before she’d seen Becker on the tapes getting ready to leave. She’d abandoned her desk quickly to come check on him; to see if there was anything she could do to help him. It had been a silly thought really. What could she possibly do to help him?

The fact she sounded like the word children was the word dinosaur was oddly endearing, or it would have been if he did not have a two year old screaming in his ear. Instead he had Liv screaming her head off, and he could swear he was going to have a migraine by the end of the day. He did not know how his sister, or his parents for that matter, could stand it. He prayed that when he had kids of his own that they did not scream at the top of their lungs or chew the heads off stuffed animals.

             “That screaming is the sound of a two year old singing the song of her people.”

Jess let out a snort. 

“Connor is enough for me to not want to know any further details…” He had seen enough of what Connor had done to appliances while trying to invent things that he did not even want to know what he had done to the poor pipes he saw before him. He had a sinking feeling that he was not the first to try and fix the problem today, and it almost would have been better if they had called him right away if that was the case.

Becker leaned back, using his heels to rest on as he crouched. At the offer of take away, he looked up at Jess and gave her a smile. “Take away would be lovely. What kind did you have in mind?”