she's really let herself go

Overwatch

🎲s/s dynamics | Read on AO3 Symmetra x Junkrat | Oneshot, 10K | Explicit Symmetra and Junkrat are hopelessly attracted to one another, but as submissives, they are both waiting for the other to make the first move. When the sexual tension becomes too much to ignore, one of them needs to make a compromise.

🎄Blackwatch Ugly Sweater Party | Read on AO3 Blackwatch!Reyes x Reader | Oneshot, 3K | Mature When you attended Blackwatch's Ugly Sweater Party for the holidays, you didn't expect your Commander's getup to be so… tight.

Date Everything!

☀️Too Close to the Sun | Read on AO3 Hector x Plus-Sized!Reader | Multichapter, 52K | Skippable smut in the final chapter, otherwise rated Teen You catch the attention of the hunky Norwegian at your job and begin to exchange flirtations Thiscord messages. You are unaware that the words are not coming from him, but a shy secret admirer who has been peering at you through the vents for years.

Skyrim

🐲Fifteen Years | Read on AO3 Vilkas x Dragonborn OC | Oneshot, 9K | Explicit Stressed and exhausted Dragonborn Avangeline does Vilkas a favor when he's at his worst. Fifteen years later, he returns to fulfill his debt.

And I have two more Skyrim fics but they kinda suck lol. If you're interested, they are on my AO3 profile.

On the eighth week, Johnny had learned to string together words like a non-native speaker – a grab bag of vocabulary connected by equal parts grammar and guesswork.

He was napping when you arrived, so you settled in your chair and scrolled on your phone. Waking him up just to interact with you seemed selfish. International news was so depressing, and local wasn’t much better, so you mindlessly swiped through social media clips to pass the time. Would it be weird if you asked to come back the following day, so you could still have an hour with him?

Upon the sound of stirring, you slipped your phone away and looked up. Johnny sat up in bed and fixed you with a distressed look.

“Everything okay?” you asked him.

“You here,” he announced adamantly, as though he expected you to react to this information.

Nodding, you confirmed, “Reporting for duty.”

He shook his head. “Awake, for you.”

You felt a little embarrassed as you realized he was chastising you for not waking him up. You were only trying to be polite.

“I’m sorry,” you told him. “I didn’t want to disturb you. Next time I visit, I’ll wake you up if you’re sleeping.”

This seemed to mollify him as he sank into his pillows. He pressed a little button on the bed’s handlebar and raised the back so that it better supported him.

“Cards?” he asked so casually, you might have forgotten your circumstances.

“Sure,” you responded, swiping a pack from this end table that now said primary school reading level on the front.

This time, Johnny had mastered locution enough to say the multisyllabic words on the card when you showed him pictures. He seemed less burdened by making a mistake, his fierce concentration replaced by an eagerness to impress. Complete sentences still evaded him, but his words got the point across perfectly.

Like when he correctly identified a library and boastfully announced, “Nailed it.” Or when he pointed at fish inside an aquarium tank and remarked, “Mum has ‘em.”

You observed his progress with joy, barely paying attention to the time. As long as no one was dragging you out of there, you intended to stay as long as possible.

At one point, you and Johnny both reached for a card at the same time. Your fingers brushed, causing a small spasm in his hand, and you drew back immediately.

“Sorry, sorry,” you rushed, wondering how he felt about physical contact given all the neural crossed wires he was dealing with right now.

For the first time since you started these visits, Johnny’s response was utter gibberish. Not a grunt, not an aborted sentence that started going awry – just, syllables that meant nothing. You expected to see some shame or frustration, but he was just smiling at you easily.

Oh. Does he not realize?

All the articles you’d read had prepared you for this situation. Calmly, without calling too much attention to his slip-up, you asked, “Pardon?”

Johnny just cocked his head and said the same nonsense words as last time.

It couldn’t have been too important, because it didn’t look like he was waiting for an answer. You looked down at your cards, trying to hide your blush, when something clicked.

“Wait – are you brain damaged or just Scottish?”

Johnny burst out laughing so loudly that you actually jumped in your seat. He had a dimple on his left cheek, you noticed, and his smile made his eyes a hundred times brighter. You couldn’t help but giggle alongside him as your heart did something funny in your chest.

“Dinnae fash,” he enunciated clearly, still enjoying obliviousness. “No worries.”

The charge nurse poked her head in and looked with curious amusement between you and the patient. “Everything alright in here?”

On the seventh week, you heard John MacTavish’s voice for the first time.

"Hello," he said when you walked in, and you damn near dropped your bag.

"Hi!" you squeaked back. Although his voice was hoarse from disuse, the word came out perfectly. "Oh my gosh, you're talking!"

He made a wishy-washy sign with his hand, but you were beaming regardless. You were so excited for him that you practically forgot to be nervous.

You were about to compliment him on his pronunciation when you noticed big, white cards laid out in a grid pattern over his lap on the bed. Positioning yourself next to the end table, you looked down and saw a variety of simple words on some, and illustrations on others: yarn, dog, girl, storm.

"The studious type, I see," you commented as he glanced up at you. No sooner did you meet his eyes than he picked up one of the cards and handed it to you.

You turned it over in your hand to find a picture of a bat. "Did you want me to quiz you?"

He nodded eagerly, a big grin splitting his face. Then, after a short delay, he said, "Yes."

"We got ourselves a chatterbox over here," you teased, positioning your chair so that you were more face-to-face, with the cards facing right-side up for him and upside down for you.

You weren't totally sure how this was supposed to work. Holding up the card in your hand, picture side out, you asked, "What's this?"

Johnny inhaled through his nose. On the exhale, he said, "Bat."

"Yeah, perfect!" You grabbed house. "How about this one?"

He stared at the card for a while, his gaze going a little fuzzy. After a time, you flipped it so that the letters were facing him rather than the illustration. He leaned in closer, made some movements with his lips, but ultimately remained silent.

"This is a house. You try."

He made a few sounds before the word came out. Unfortunately, the next few cards were not much easier. You could practically see the internal spiral as he beat himself up over not being able to answer right away. The frustration bled through his efforts as he painted himself in a corner, too disgruntled to think straight.

On the ball of yarn, Johnny swiped the card from your hand and threw it onto the floor. He turned away and stared out the window grumpily.

The show of aggression shocked and hurt you. You reminded yourself that TBI patients often had difficulty with emotional regulation, so what you weren't seeing wasn't him – it was a symptom. In fact, you'd been remarkably lucky so far in experiencing his sweet, friendly demeanor. He was overdue for a little tantrum.

You retrieved the card from the floor and glanced at the mess spread over his lap. On his crowded end table, you located the package between an adult coloring book and a cookie wrapper. "Should I clean these up?" you asked gently.

He looked back at you, thunderclouds in his eyes, before sighing and relaxing back into his pillow. He shook his head no. Gingerly, he started straightening out the cards again like he wanted to keep going.

A true military work ethic.

"Hey, I have an idea. Let's try something a little different," you posed. You flipped all the cards over so that the words were face-up. "Find the word flower."

Like a bloodhound, he immediately began scanning the cards, leaning so far forward he almost shifted some of them off his lap. When he found what he was looking for, he pointed to it triumphantly.

"Perfect," you announced. Johnny knew all these words, but his mouth hadn't quite caught up with his brain yet.

After he demonstrated that he could recognize verbalized words and locate their written counterparts with ease, you shuffled the cards and tried something a little more challenging.

"Find any animal."

There were several possible options, but eventually he pointed to zebra. "Perfect,” you reported, holding up your hand for a high five. Unfortunately, you were left hanging – not because he couldn't, but because he was too busy staring at the cards. Like a dog who'd seen a ball in your hand, and refused to look away until it was thrown.

"Alright... how about something that rhymes with blouse." This took him a little longer. He scanned over the house card several times and even started mouthing the word blouse until he finally found it.

You quizzed Johnny until it became noticeably darker out the window. It was fascinating to see him in his element like this, ferociously determined despite the incredibly low stakes. No doubt, qualities of a good soldier.

"You still here, pumpkin?" Neveah was standing in the doorway, head cocked as she looked back and forth between the two of you. Johnny finally tore himself away from the cards and held up a salutatory hand.

"Oh – must've lost track of time," you rushed, scrambling for the tote. You hadn't actually. You just didn't want to leave when he was so enraptured.

You said your goodbyes to Johnny and was about to follow Neveah back to the lobby when he cleared his throat. "Thanks," he croaked with a solemn nod.

"Look at you!" the nurse sang. "That's only the second time I've heard you say something, Sarge." (Oh – was he a sergeant? And you had been calling him Mr. MacTavish like he was a common civilian!) She lightly elbowed you. "Maybe we should bring our Ambassador on full-time, if these are the results she gets."

You waved her off shyly, but were secretly pleased to hear that she thought you'd brought out something special in your patient.

It was a lovely session, really. Your only regret, you realized as you drove through the quiet, Scottish countryside to the room you were renting, was that he never asked to hold your hand.

====

On the sixth week, someone had given Johnny a shave and haircut.

The sight of him when you walked into the suite nearly knocked you on your ass. He was really cute. His hair was shorn close on the sides but left longer up top (you would have called it a mohawk if you weren’t convinced those had gone extinct in the 90s). A jagged scar, long since healed, bisected his strong, stubbled jaw. Without the messy bedhead and mountain man beard, he looked much less like a patient wasting away in a hospital bed and more like someone you’d swipe right on a dating app.

He smiled and waved when you entered.

It felt like you were meeting someone new every time you visited, as though the rapport you’d built over the previous weeks was forgotten. Anxiety crawled beneath your skin. The further along he got in his recovery, the more you expected him to dislike you. It made no sense – but then, anxiety rarely did.

“I see they cleaned you up a bit, huh?” you tossed out to mask your discomfort.

He scrubbed a hand over his freshly exposed chin and nodded. Not only was he more effectively communicating with body language, but you could sense more confidence in him as well.

Planting your tote on the edge of the bed, you laid out the same three choices as last time: the poetry book, a novel, and a newspaper. “So, Johnny. What are you in the mood for today?”

Johnny chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment before responding. Then he lifted his hand towards you and schooled his uncooperative fingers into a fist with his pointer extended.

"What? You want me to choose?" you asked.

He shook his head no and frowned. After thinking for a moment, he rucked up the blanket and folded it over the three items you had placed on the bed. Then he pointed to you again.

"Oh! You want me to talk about myself?" He nodded, letting his hand collapse back into his lap. The implication was quite flattering. Could it be that your patient wondered about you as much as you did about him? Maybe there wasn’t much else to think about being stuck in a hospital bed.

"I don't mean to disappoint," you explained tentatively, "but I'm really not that interesting. I definitely don't have stories that would entertain a soldier who's probably been around the world."

Johnny grunted and gestured to his forehead, as though to say, Look where that got me. 

You abruptly realized that the gauze covering the bullet wound was finally gone. A raised scar in various shades of scarlet rested over a hairless patch of his scalp. You could see a thin, pink line – too precise to be part of the original wound – that trailed from the scar to beneath the hairline. That must be from the surgery.

Afraid you had been staring, you looked away and fiddled with your volunteer badge. To fill the silence, you fired off your credentials like you were on a job interview: name, education, work history, and a fun fact about one of your hobbies. It felt silly, but he seemed very interested.

He only interrupted your rambling once, when he cleared his throat in a way that sounded intentional. You raised an eyebrow, unsure if he would try to speak, when he held out an expectant hand. He flexed his fingers impatiently.

Suppressing a laugh, you scooted your chair a little closer. "I really should know better by now, huh?" When you placed your hand in his this time, you were heartened by his steady grip.

The rest of your hour breezed by. You were pleased to hear some vocalizations from Johnny that seemed like syllables, if not quite words, in response to your monologue. He no longer seemed embarrassed by the noises – just determined. Secure in his faith that one of these times, he was going to pull it off. On days like this, where you could see him doing the actual work to hasten his recovery, you wished you didn't have to wait a whole week to check in on him.

On the fifth week, you were determined to start having two-way dialogues, even if they didn’t involve words.

“Good evening, Johnny,” you said cheerfully as you walked into the suite. Just as you’d hoped, his head turned towards you and his expression softened. You gave him a big smile and a wave.

To your utter delight, he raised a palsied hand in acknowledgment.

“Wow!” you squeaked, plopping down in your chair. “I know I’ve only been coming here a month, but the progress you’ve made already is so encouraging. Do you feel like you’re gaining back your strength?”

He seemed to have heard you, but didn’t nod. Undeterred, you hoisted the tote onto your lap and pulled out your materials.

“So, since I’ve been forcing my poetry upon you, I thought I might give you some choices today.” First, you withdrew a newspaper and laid it gently on his lap. “I could read you some articles about current events, if you’re interested in politics.” Beside the paper, you placed a tattered paperback. “I also picked up this book at a sale from the library, in case you wanted to hear a story. I think this is supposed to be good, but I’ve never read it.” The author was one of those men with an extremely Caucasian-sounding name who spat out a thriller novel every couple of months. “And finally – the moment you’ve all been waiting for…” You dramatically hauled the large anthology from your bag and placed it on the bed next to the other two choices. “On the off chance you’ve enjoyed the poetry, the offer still stands.”

Johnny frowned at the three choices in front of him. Then he looked back up at you.

“Whenever you’re ready,” you told him calmly, “point to the one you want me to read.”

After doing even more research on how to care for a TBI patient, you wanted to avoid the common pitfall of talking to him like he was a child. There was a fine line between speaking clearly and in simple words so that he could easily process, and being condescending. So you didn’t rephrase your request. You waited patiently while he considered.

With the determination of a batter walking to the plate, Johnny stretched his arm out and placed his hand on the anthology.

You gasped, half to be funny but half because you really were shocked by his choice. “No way! You like my stupid old poems?” Without looking up, he nudged the book towards you as though to say, get going. You laughed and swiped it up, then put away the book and newspaper.

“I picked out one especially for you this time,” you explained, detecting what you thought might be interest in his expression. “Unfortunately, I really don’t know much about you yet except that you were in the military. So I thought you might enjoy a poem about an epic, ancient battle.”

The first time you read Byron’s The Destruction of Sennacherib, you thought it was one of those obscure, religious poems that regurgitate a Bible story. But it grew on you, with its heart-pounding pace and imagery that literally gave you goosebumps.

“The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold…”

You picked up speed as you read to simulate the urgency of the battle. Honestly, you’d never given much thought to performing poetry out loud before, but it was fun as hell. You glanced up once to see Johnny totally enraptured by your words.

For the final stanza, you dropped your voice to a somber chant: “And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail / And the idols are broke in the Temple of Baal / And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword / Hath melted like snow at the glance of the Lord.”

“Do you love it? You love it,” you gushed, clutching the book to your chest. “I mean, I know it’s the definition of deus ex machina, God swooping in to save the day and all, but it really feels like you’re standing there as it all happens!”

Your excitement must have been infectious, because Johnny smiled.

Even with his scruffy hair and beard, it made him look ten years younger. You involuntarily beamed, feeling like the cutest boy in school had just winked at you. Pathetic, maybe, but you told yourself it was the progress in his recovery that had your heart fluttering.

Actually, since you’d started visiting him, it felt like a lot of things in your life were looking up. You were revisiting poetry more often, seeing the world through the eyes of Wordsworth and Rossetti. You had something to look forward to, to occupy your mind with when the darker thoughts crept in. Visiting Johnny gave you purpose. It was exactly what you’d hoped for when you signed up.

“It’s so good to see you smile,” you said, hoping your blush wasn’t too obvious.

In response, Johnny extended a hand towards you. His grin turned sheepish as he wiggled his fingers.

A laugh escaped you. “What, you want to hold hands again?” He lifted a shoulder in what might have been a shrug.

Still, you were powerless to resist his innocent charm. Hand in hand in hand, you settled back in your chair and decided to take advantage of his newfound cognizance. You fired off a story about some drama in your workplace and pontificated on why Byron was better than Shelley and Keats combined.

You gave his hand a little squeeze before releasing it when the visit ended. “I’ll see you next week, okay?” you told him.

Johnny made an unexpected vocalization. He immediately stared down angrily at his knees. Maybe he had tried to speak, to tell you goodbye, and it hadn’t come out as he’d hoped. This was part of progress, though – trying and failing. Not wanting to draw attention to it in case he was embarrassed, you simply restated your goodbye and headed out.

Technically, you still didn’t know much about your patient. You couldn’t name his hobbies or favorite genre of music or say whether he was a dog or cat person. Yet you felt that you were learning so much about him each session, things that were more important than superficial like and dislikes. He was sweet. He was intellectually curious.

On the fourth week, John was sitting up in bed staring with fascination at the back of his hand when Nevaeh dropped you off at the suite. "Visitor's here for you, sweetie," she called as she ushered you into the room. To your surprise, his head snapped right up.

He heard her.

John's gaze slowly traveled from where Nevaeh had been standing to you. And for the first time since you met him last month, you looked each other in the eye.

Both of you were frozen like prey animals. In all the time you'd had to prepare yourself for what felt like really meeting him, you had no words for the moment.

Still maintaining eye contact, you grasped in the direction of your chair and tugged it into place. His expression was intense and inscrutable, like there was a cipher etched on your forehead that he was working his way through.

You at last broke the silence by announcing your name again. "And you're John MacTavish," you continued, noticing how his eyelid twitched. "But I've heard people call you Johnny. Is it alright if I call you that too?"

You weren't sure about his level of comprehension, let alone his ability to nod, but you might have seen his eyes widen at the name. You laced your fingers resolutely and declared, "Okay, then. Johnny it is."

After shooting the breeze about the weather and your day, you reached for your trusty anthology. He'd finally torn his gaze away from your face, instead inspecting a wilting carnation on the end table, though he perked up at the sound of flipping pages.

"So, I picked kind of a funny poem for us this time," you said, gaining confidence as he directed his attention back to you. It gave you hope that some, clandestine part of him may have tuned into your reading and rambling these past weeks, that he had come to expect if not look forward to it. "I don't want to spoil it, so I'll read it to you and share my thoughts after." You peeked over the book. "Sound good?"

A little tilt of his head seemed to ask why you had stopped talking. Confusion looked cute on him, with his incurable bedhead and sleepy countenance. Suppressing a grin, you cleared your throat and began, "Had we but world enough, and time / This coyness, Lady, were no crime..."

When you finished, you looked at him expectantly. His eyes were still on you. "Did you love it, or what?" you asked teasingly. To your surprise, his lips flexed in response, like he might have been trying to respond. Or maybe it was an involuntary tic – you'd read that those were common in patients recovering from traumatic brain injuries.

Heartened by what might have been a reaction, you launched into your interpretation. "So we have three verses here, right? In the first verse, the speaker declares love for his mistress, but it's all in the subjunctive tense – it's all being imagined. He would worship and praise her for thousands of years, he would dote on her for biblical eras."

Johnny was adorably attentive. Whether or not he was processing your words, the furrow of his brows in concentration just made your smile grow wider.

"But then we get to the second verse, where he tells her, whoops! Too bad! I actually can't do any of that stuff because death looms over all mortals, and if you keep playing coy, we may never get a chance to act on our love." From memory, you quipped, "The grave's a fine and private place / But none, I think, do there embrace."

You almost exploded from cuteness aggression when you saw his tongue poke out between his lips, brows still drawn in the absolute picture of focus. 

"And then, we get to that final stanza, where the speaker announces that he has a solution to this awful problem. Of course," you laughed, "the answer is simply that they should go at it like bunnies as long as they're young and hot. His argument is, hey, we can't pause time, but boy can we make the most of it."

You finished your analysis triumphantly, snapping the book shut with a flourish. Where the heck was this showmanship coming from? You were not the type to engage in dramatics, even when talking about one of your special interests, but something about your patient's utter willingness to listen to your words was addicting. Now that you'd finished spewing your nonsense, though, you realized that you might have gone a little overboard.

"Anyway," you said meekly, looking out the window. "I just always thought it was funny because it subverts expectation. It was written in the 1600s, so you go into it thinking it's going to be flowery and high-minded, which it sort of is. But really, the author's just a total dog."

Eventually Johnny went back to studying other parts of the room while you thumbed through the pages and dog-eared a few poems for future weeks. It seemed that he'd been engaged when you were talking, so you made some absent commentary as you went.

A small thump on the bed caught your attention. Johnny had flopped his hand, palm-up, down on the sheets right by where you were sitting. He was staring at you again with that same unreadable intensity.

"Do you need something?" you asked. There was a cup of water on his table, but given the way one of his fingers was twitching, you were not confident he had the motor skills to drink it. Should you help?

Johnny lifted up his hand and flopped it back down, right where it was before. Like a child stomping his foot to emphasize a point.

"I don't know what you want," you confessed, glancing at the door as you considered getting a nurse.

Or… maybe you did know.

Tentatively, you extended your own hand and hovered over his. You watched the muscles in his face relax as he traced your movements. Did he actually want to hold your hand? Was that really what he was trying to tell you?

As gingerly as possible, you rested your palm atop his. He was warm, maybe a bit clammy, and there was a callous beneath his pointer that must have come from years of holding a weapon. Very slowly, his fingers closed around yours to confirm that this is where he wanted you. After he'd accomplished that difficult feat, he slumped backwards into his pillows without letting go of your hand.

The gesture was unbelievably sweet. You couldn't be exactly sure what he wanted to communicate, but it seemed like touch was his only way to connect with you when he didn't yet have words. You tried to smile at him but his eyes were already closed, exhausted from all the stimulation.

On the third week, the first thing you blurted upon seeing Nevaeh was, "Did he make it?"

The smile that bloomed across her face felt like letting a breeze into a stuffy room. You had been tensed up all day, jaw clenched, picking at your fingernails, catastrophizing over all the things that might have gone wrong. Maybe they weaned him off the meds and he just flatlined. Maybe his brain activity and vitals were so concerning they hadn't even tried. Or, what if he woke up and freaked out? Ripped the IV from his arm, horribly disoriented, trying to ask what has happening but shocked to find himself aphasic?

"Your boy's a fighter," she assured you, nodding towards the stairs. You fell into step beside her. "I wasn't on that shift, but I heard it all went textbook. He's been sleeping a lot, though. That's normal."

Sure enough, when you arrived at the suite, John's snoring proceeded him. You shared a look with the nurse and laughed. She eased open the door and gestured that you should enter.

He looked so different to you, despite his eyes still being closed. Rather than lying flat on his back, he was curled on his side today with the blanket clutched in one hand at his chest. The snoring was loud, almost confident, compared to the little gurgles he'd made the last two weeks. You couldn't contain your smile.

"Hey sleepyhead," you whispered, barely remembering to lower your voice now that you actually had a chance of waking him up. Although, if his own snoring wasn't doing it... "Glad to see you're still in one piece."

Even though you’d brought the anthology with you, you weren’t moved to take it out. You made yourself comfortable in the chair beside his bed and sat in meditative silence. The workday had been a stressful one, and you welcomed the opportunity to zone out and reflect to the white noise of his snores.

Sometime later, a sharp inhale drew you out of your reverie. You snapped your head towards John, ready to jump up and grab a nurse if he needed one. His face was crinkled as though in concentration, lips and nose twitching, before his eyes slowly opened.

They were the loveliest shade of blue.

“Hi,” you breathed, smitten and shy, like you were meeting a celebrity.

John blinked a few times, not shifting his position, and stared vacantly at the wall behind you. He made no indication of having heard your voice.

Now that he was conscious, you introduced yourself by name and explained that you were here to keep him company. His lack of a reaction didn’t faze you, as it was what your research had told you to expect.

“I’m not sure if you recall the poem,” you mentioned nervously, tracing the tired lines of his face with your gaze. “I hope it wasn’t too weird. I might keep reading them until you tell me to stop? Once you get your voice back, you can tell me what you actually want to hear.”

Although your words elicited no reaction, they didn’t seem to bother him. You made a few more comments before settling back into silence. It was just such a relief to see him awake. He even reached up and scratched the side of his head where the gauze was, once. You checked out the fresh flowers and noted that a half-eaten Jello cup now graced the bedside table as well.

Your patient remained nonresponsive for the rest of your visit. "I'll see you next week, Mr. MacTavish,” you said as you left.

You turned to walk towards the door only to find that Nevaeh was already poking her head in. You must be right up against the hour.

"Did I hear you call him Mister?" she teased.

You looked down at your hands and muttered, "I was trying to be polite."

"Sweetheart, you could insult his mother and I’m not sure it would register. Call him Johnny - that's what his visitors say."

It felt oddly intimate to use the diminutive without his consent, but if that’s what his visitors said, you supposed it was what he preferred.

It suited him.

On the second week, you felt much more confident signing in at the reception desk, although the jitters hadn’t totally left you.

You had been thinking about John MacTavish almost nonstop since you left last week. Your Google search history was riddled with traumatic brain injury and coma topics – survival rates, prognoses, long-term treatment. He would still be in a coma when you saw him this week, but now only a few days away from his transition to consciousness.

"Glad to see you back," Nevaeh chirped as she picked you up. Her scrubs had little cherries on them.

"Do most volunteers quit?"

She chuckled. "Not usually, but it can be a lot. Especially when they're paired with an unresponsive patient."

You liked your unresponsive patient perfectly fine, thank you. Although you wondered about his personality and history, the coma meant you didn't have to fumble your way through an interaction with someone recovering from brain damage. You were awkward and inarticulate even when you had a competent conversation partner.

Nevaeh dropped you off at your destination, not bothering to walk you inside this time. "Holler if you need something," she reminded you cheerfully before heading to her next task.

A slice of evening light bisected the room, the curtains slightly ajar this time. The amber glow rested upon John's supine form like another layer of blankets, softening his features in contrast to the ugly neutral colors and persistent antiseptic smell of the facility.

"Hello again," you stated, pulling up the chair from the corner again. As you set down your tote, you were touched to notice that the flowers had been changed out since last week. He had regular visitors, then. Good - you hated to think that your sorry self would be his only lifeline to the outside world.

Ambassadors visit long-term patients once a week to provide companionship and mental stimulation, the brochure had explained. This program is one of several interventions to keep our residents from feeling isolated during their stay. Ambassadors might read news articles to keep patients informed about local goings-on; bring books or video clips for entertainment; or even exchange stories from their personal lives, if they are comfortable doing so. Several Ambassadors have reported staying in touch with their patients after discharge, having formed true friendships through the program.

You were not optimistic about such an outcome for yourself. This was just a chance for you to do something selfless at a time when you were tempted daily to undertake the most selfish act a human could.

You reminded him of your name, on the off chance he was wondering where the disembodied voice was coming from, and made yourself comfortable. For most of your hour, you sat with him as you scrolled through your phone, occasionally remarking about what appeared on your feed.

As your time together neared its end, you studied your companion in the waning evening light. "I, uh. I think I'd like to meet you," you said, almost a whisper. Embarrassment twisted in your gut at the confession. "It's been nice to talk at you, but I want to... to actually help you. To make you feel less alone." Isolated, like the brochure said. "And I can't really tell if it's working unless you respond to me. Not that I expect you to be chewing my ear off as soon as you wake up," you hedged. "Just. Maybe if I could see your eyes. It would feel more real."

Your face was on fire with your blush, ashamed of your sappy monologue. You silently packed up the tote bag and hastened toward the door. Just before exiting, you forced yourself to pause and look back at him.

"Good luck with your surgery, Mr. MacTavish. I'll see you next week. Okay?"

On the first week, the nurse guiding you through Saint Ambrose Rehabilitation Centre introduced herself as Nevaeh.

“It’s a miracle he survived,” she told you off-handedly, like she was bringing up the weather.

She had long braids in a ponytail and a sweet, Jamaican accent that made you feel far less intimidated than you had sitting in the parking lot. The real miracle was talking yourself into leaving the car and entering the building. Your anxiety had its peaks and valleys, but entering unfamiliar space proved a consistent trigger.

“How much am I allowed to know about him?” you asked tentatively. All they told you over the phone was a name. “I mean. Because, you know, medical privacy and all.”

“I can’t show you his chart or anything, but I can tell you the broad strokes.” Her sneakers and your flats made metronomic slaps against the tiles as you walked. “Poor boy sustained a gunshot wound to the head while serving. He’s in a medically-induced coma. Stable, after a few weeks in intensive care in London. But the extent of the brain damage and any guesses as to what recovery will look like need to wait until he’s awake and we can run some tests.”

“Serving… in the military?” you asked, hitching your tote bag higher on your shoulder.

She smirked. “Yes, but they won’t even tell me the details about what really happened.”

You wondered how you could be an effective companion to a comatose man you knew virtually nothing about. On the plus side, it did take some pressure off you. You’d submitted an application to volunteer at Saint Ambrose in hopes of injecting a shred meaning back into an existence that, for many months, had felt hollow and directionless. It would only be one hour a week, but with your current energy levels, that was about all you could properly commit to. And commit you did. Emotionally exhausted and anxious enough that pit-stains were a serious possibility, but you were here. Making an effort. Trying something, anything, that might convince your serotonin-starved brain that you matter enough to get out of bed in the morning.

Nevaeh finally stopped in front of a slightly ajar door, giving a quick wave to the charge nurse watching from a nearby desk. You pulled your badge out from beneath your hoodie, responding to an urge to justify your presence.

She eased open the door and put a gentle hand on your shoulder, guiding you inside.

The room was as spartan as the rest of the Centre: a small window on the far wall, a single bed with a pulled-back curtain, and a blocky piece of machinery beeping out readings beside an IV-drip. Your eyes were instantly drawn to the only bit of color in the space, on the table beside the bed. Two bouquets of flowers, a stack of a dozen greeting cards, and a few handmade gifts vied for space on the small surface. A bit of the tension left you as you realized that although this man’s odds were up in the air, he had a network of people of who cared greatly for him.

Your patient was resting on his back, half beneath the blankets, with a little string of drool slithering from his lips to a patchy beard. His unruly brunette hair looked like a grown-out undercut, except for a shorn patch above his left eyebrow. Medical tape held a gauze pad at the center, covering what you assumed to be the bullet wound.

He looked so young. And so… gentle? Perhaps being in a blue medical gown will do that to a person, but you could not picture this man holding a gun.

“We know that people in coma sometimes hear and understand us,” Nevaeh told you quietly as you observed your new companion. “He may not be able to respond yet, but I’m sure he will appreciate the company.”

Anxiety spiked in you again, but you wrestled it back down. At least he had a room to himself – no other patient to judge your awkward monologue.

“Thank you. If I need something, will you be…?”

She nodded towards the hall. “You can talk to Ellie, sweetheart. I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Right. Sorry.”

With an encouraging smile, she slipped out the door.

Taking a deep breath, you located a plastic chair tucked in a corner and tugged it to the side of the bed. Gently setting down your tote bag, and you eased yourself into the seat and clutched your hands together in your lap. Your eyes flicked up to him and then back to your knees.

“Hi,” you said meekly. Clearing your throat, you told him your name. “I’m a new volunteer with the Ambrose Ambassador program. I’ll visit you every Tuesday for an hour and, uh, keep you company.” It felt unbelievably weird to talk to an unconscious stranger, but you assured yourself that some distant part of his brain may register a soothing voice if nothing else.

“I’m not really that interesting,” you went on, “so I won’t bore you with, like, telling you stories from work or anything. I would like to learn about you, though.” You side-eyed the pile of greeting cards. You might be able to glean something from reading them, but it felt like a violation of privacy. “All I know right now is your name and that you were in the military. Thank you for your service.” God, this felt stupid. Poor guy gets shot in the head and needs to listen to you blather inanities at him like a kid learning to talk.

Although you had hoped not to fall back on your failsafe so early into the hour, you ducked down to your tote and fished out a heavy volume. Its blue and gold jacket, tattered and faded with age, nearly slipped off in your grip.

“I like poetry,” you announced, glancing at his reposed figure and trying to guess if he was the type to flip through sonnets between drills. You doubted it. “Only old poetry, though. The good stuff, with meter and rhyme schemes. Guess I’m kind of a snob about it, honestly.” You cracked the spine and thumbed to the table of contents, scanning the titles you’d read over so many times. “I’m not sure what kind of poetry you’d like, Mr. MacTavish. This is my favorite anthology, so I thought, there must be something in here that’d suit you. But I, uh, didn’t quite expect for—” You cut yourself off, not wanting to express that you hadn’t anticipated being paired with a vegetable. You went back to reviewing the titles.

A smile crept onto your face as you saw one that felt like the perfect introduction. “Ah, okay, so… you must be Scottish, right? I relocated here last year, which you can probably tell from my accent, but like – I assume you’re a native if you’re here at Saint Ambrose.” God, why did this feel like a disastrous first date? Thank heavens this was more or less a practice run, given your patient’s state. “Anyway. If you are Scottish, you probably read some Robert Burns in school, right? He’s the most famous Scottish poet I know. This one,” you announced, leafing to the proper page, “is called ‘To A Mouse,’ and I always thought it was really sweet. The speaker is kind of comforting this mouse who’s terrified of him, saying he wishes nature hadn’t given the creature such a difficult life. And yet, at the end, he sort of reasons that at least this mouse doesn’t have to worry about the past or the future, which can’t be said of men.”

You stared down at the poem, which was unfortunately written in Burns’ original Scots. It was more or less intelligible to an anglophone, but a total bitch to pronounce. It’s highly unlikely you’d be able to recreate the sing-songy rhythm that the author intended, which would have resonated pleasantly within Mr. MacTavish’s comatose brain.

“Okay, I’m gonna give this a shot. Try not to laugh.” You straightened up, as though presenting for a class, and read as confidently as you could: “Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie / O, what a panic’s in thy breastie…”

The effort was a valiant one. You’d read it enough times in your head that the words were not quite as stilted as you feared. You smiled up at your listener when you finished, only to falter when you saw how pale and vacant he looked.

“Pretty decent for not-a-Scot,” you murmured, shutting the book.

And after that, words began to flow freely. You blathered about your interpretations of the poem, spewing musings you’d had for years but never shared. It was difficult to find someone interested enough in 18th century poetry to listen to your commentary, and you would never find an audience more captive than the one you had now. Soon you transitioned into your opinions on other things – the culture shock of moving to Scotland, having a hard time picking up on the slang, and even how you’d almost turned the car around out of fear before walking into the Centre today. That might have been too embarrassing to admit to a conscious person.

Although it was currently devoid of expression, Mr. MacTavish’s face was very pleasant. He seemed peaceful, resting in the bed, occasionally emitting some quiet gargles akin to snoring. You could almost trick yourself into thinking he was sleeping.

By the end of the hour, you were shocked at how cathartic the whole experience had been. Nevaeh walked you back to the first-floor reception where you turned in your badge and signed out.

“Do you know how long he’ll be in the coma?” you asked. You were terribly curious if he would remember anything you’d said.

The nurse nodded, her ponytail bobbing. “If his vitals and scans look good, they’re planning to taper him off the sedatives week after next. Doc said his brain has a lot of recovering to do.”

He has to work quickly, or thousands will die.

Johnny is used to high pressure situations. He has used nothing but security cameras and his sense of timing to guide a panicked civilian through an embassy overrun with gunmen. He’s crept between buildings on a rainy night in Mexico with no more than the clothes on his back, fashioning distractions and weapons out of whatever he could find. And most recently, he’s fought his way through the Channel Tunnel to find one of the largest bombs he’s ever encountered as a demo specialist.

There’s nothing for it – Johnny gets to work.

It is difficult to tune out the chaos happening around him, the tattoo of gunfire, the shouted commands and the wheezing of the injured. But the moment calls for otherworldly focus. One wrong twitch of his finger, an instruction given to his captain too hastily, and it’s all over

About halfway through the procedure, he takes a bullet to the side. His Kevlar dulls the brunt of it, but he has a bitch of a time fighting the reflex to clutch at the throbbing pain.

Fortunately, his team is quick to dispatch his assailant and the fresh wave of Konni reinforcements as Johnny regains his bearings. At worst the bullet’s impact cracked a rib, and at best he’ll have a bruise all the colors of the rainbow tomorrow. Neither scenario is more pressing than keeping his attention on the bomb. He calls for Price to get back on the snakecam and promises himself the stiffest of drinks when this is over.

He zeroes in on the wires and serial numbers he’s looking for, mouthing instructions to himself and occasionally giving directions to his partner. He’s calm, locked in. Exactly like in training.

When footsteps battering the concrete behind him grow louder, he forces himself not to react. He has to have faith that his team will gun down any threats so he can keep his attention on the wiring. But then they are right behind him, he has to look, and he is barely able to register Makarov before there’s a blinding flash of light and an impossible pain explodes below his shoulder.

He hits the ground, hard. Never has he taken a bullet at such close range. For a few seconds he is too disoriented to comprehend anything beyond the ringing in his ears. And then he hears Makarov say something about seeing the captain in hell.

His fingers scrabble for the knife tucked into his tac vest. Running on nothing but adrenaline, Johnny launches himself upward, his muscles stretching the fresh pectoral wound, and sinks the knife into Makarov’s shoulder. He does not seriously consider himself capable of taking down their target with a blade and the injury he’s sporting – he only hopes to buy Price a few seconds to grab a gun.

In a split second, the knife skitters across the floor and Makarov is twisting Johnny’s arm to bring him to his knees. From this angle, he can see his captain flat on his back and struggling to grab a weapon. Hope spikes in his heart as he realizes his distraction worked.

Then Price takes a boot to the jaw, and Johnny panics.

He tugs his arm violently but doesn’t manage to break Makarov’s hold. Whipping his head around, he wonders if he can snatch something out of the vest, or maybe wrestle the gun away—