Chapter Text
It’s not until her throat feels raw until she can physically feel it rasping and choking does she realize she’s the one screaming. Her body doesn’t feel like her own, she fights and pulls to be released from the arms around her torso. Panic, overwhelming panic and the blood all over her hands. It’s cold now. The once too warm blood is cold on her hands and those broken, pleading sobs are coming out her mouth.
“Shh, shh.” JT’s right beside her, blocking her view of Gil and Malcolm. Their silhouettes are drawn out on the floor, the sun setting and casting them out dramatically. The stretcher is bigger than Malcolm is. His thin frame and short stature… yet, she watches as his hand slowly slips from where they placed on his chest until it dangles down over the side. Limp. Without life at all.
JT proves to be bigger. Stronger just isn’t the word. He fights with all he’s got to keep her with him. It’s not strength he prevails with but his size holds her in place. Until she finally just sinks back, bringing her knees to her chest and letting him hold her. JT sits bewildered because he’s seen Dani get shot at, he’s seen her take blows to the head and held at gunpoint. She’s held dying children in her arms and put pressure over his gunshot wounds and… never once, not a single time has she ever been broken.
Not until now. JT has no idea how to take that. No idea what to do. A part of him fears for Malcolm. If he dies, then they’re up the creek without a paddle and if he lives he’s got months of recovery. The other part of him hates Malcolm for Dani, even if it isn’t at all his fault.
“It’s okay, D.” He rubs her arm and this is ridiculous because he doesn’t know that, not at all. “He’s gonna be fine, isn’t he always? You can do anything to that stupid punk and he always comes back for more. He’s gonna be fine.”
JT has himself convinced of that too. Until he walks into the hospital room.
He’s expecting to be greeted by a rough-looking Malcolm but still their Malcolm. So when he opens the door and he’s not greeted by guesses of what the J in his name stands for ‘Jacob? Jace? Jaeger? Jarvis?’, his heart drops a little.
Malcolm doesn’t say a word around the tube down his throat and the machine breathing air into his lungs. JT realizes just how small Malcolm really is. “How’s he doing?” He can’t tear his eyes away. He wishes he had just told the dumb bastard what his name is, somehow that seems to make it all better in his head. He wouldn’t feel so guilty if he’d told Malcolm his name.
Dani doesn’t stir in the chair she’s got pulled up to the side of the bed. She’s got her knees pulled up, sleeping soundly despite the monitors beeping and hissing all around the room. JT doesn’t miss the hand she’s got tangled in Malcolms and he doesn’t even bother over thinking that one. Dani will beat his ass if he’s even kinda wrong about what that touch means.
Gil does, however, turn to see who is at the door. His reading glasses are at the very tip of his nose, files spread out on his lap and two more on the balanced by his briefcase. He looks JT up and down, quickly, and turns back to his file. “The kids tough, he’ll be fine.”
JT dares to glance at Malcolm. He’s not sure if he wants to push the issue of whether or not Gil’s answer is a medical or even possible one. Malcolm doesn’t look like he’s just going to be fine. “Is that what the docs say?” Gil shoots him a look and JT’s smart enough to accept Gil’s previous answer as their word. He just hopes Malcolm can really pull it off.
He doesn’t.
That is, Malcolm doesn’t pull off just being fine. Two days after JT’s first visit, Malcolm fails one of the hemoglobin tests they’d been so worried about him passing. The room stands in uncomfortable silence, all of them shifting and waiting.
The bad news is, Malcolm’s been bleeding internally. The good news is, for the first time in days his Glasgow score is higher than a 10. A solid 14. He recoils from their touch, groaning out as the doctor’s hands push down around his wound. Dani’s head snaps up at the sound and she moves to stop the doctor’s. Stop them from hurting Malcolm because he’s been through enough but Gil stops her. It’s a quick, strong arm across her chest before she’s pulled back. Stopped.
“He’s alright. He’s alright.”
They give him more pain medicine and swear that he’s getting better, that the pain was worthwhile. Dani doesn’t believe that as easily as JT and Gil. Not until she comes into his room on her lunch break to find him coughing up his tube. Nurses and doctors talking around him, one removing the tube, and a nurse pushing a clear substance into the IV.
“Bright?” She moves to the side of the bed, watching for indications that he’s still awake. That he’s pushing through what was probably a sedative in the nurse’s hand. His eyelashes don’t so much as flutter, he looks asleep.
He grunts. She frowns, the doctors said the tube would cause mild irritation but that the painkillers he was already on would keep him from having any additional pain. “Mmm, your hands really cold.” He sounds hoarse but she doesn’t mistake his voice for anyone else’s. She’s too focused on something else.
She looks down and she realizes she’d been holding his hand. It wasn’t a conscious action. She’s still doing it though. “They’re not that cold,” she doesn’t remove her hand from his, instead using her empty right hand to press against her face and see if he’s maybe even a little right. She finds her hand to be cool but not cold. “You’re just being a baby.”
He cracks his eyes open, the corners pinched in pain. He opens his mouth, the sound he makes is the chatter of his teeth. “It’s cold in here.”
She removes her hand from his, slowly and gently sitting his hand on the bed. She pulls the blanket the nurses had pulled down to his waist back up to his chest. Mindfully, she’s careful of his new wound. The doctors had told them the operation to stop the internal bleeding was fairly simple all things considered. It went smoothly and Malcolm would only have a small thin scar to show for it.
But she’d seen the rest of his body back in the OR, littered with lazy scars here and there from what she images to be bullets, knives, and God knows what else. So one more scar would probably go unnoticed in the grand scheme.
She looks up at the monitors, like she could understand what they mean, and remembers the doctor warning Gil that from all the stress Malcolm might get a small fever. They would monitor it. “Gil says you’re not checking out AMA this time and that when they finally let you out you’re staying at his place.”
Malcolm’s eyes slid shut in the time it took for her to come up with something to say but she does see his reaction to her words. He makes a soft scoffing noise,” I think I’d rather stay here than have that mother-hen hovering over my every move.” Dani smiles and that gives him an idea. His eyes blink open sleepily, “Why can’t you sign me out?”
It’s her fault. All of this. What’s happening here.
She can’t pick men for shit. She has a habit of picking hidden bangers, drug abusers, and well just general abusers of every kind. Michael was a gangbanger and, at the end of their relationship, it was his budding relationship with smack that made her end things. Two weeks later she found out about him being a banger. Now, Malcolm’s laying a hospital. He’s got a concussion and a hole in his side. All because she’s got shit taste in men.
And so here they are. He’s looking up at her with that stupidly good looking face. Frowning and just all around looking so pathetic. He’s manipulating her, just a little. His lip poking out. She rolls her eyes and decides that she might. “I’m not saying yes,” she holds a hand up when he opens his mouth. “You stay for another day and I’ll see what the doctors say and then-maybe and only maybe- I’ll sign you out.”
Malcolm grins,” thanks, Dani!” The smile fades all too quickly when she moves away from the side of the bed. His hand moving to clench the bedsheets. “Y-You’re not- you’re not leaving, right?”
Dani stops, her back facing him. She was headed to the cabinet at the end of the bed, going to pull out two more blankets. She glances at the cabinet and sighs,” as much as you annoy me, I wasn’t planning on leaving these poor nurses all alone to deal with you.” The words feel wrong leaving her mouth but she can’t say what she means. She can’t say that the guilt she’s carrying is tearing her down. How she can feel his blood on her hands and hear his scared voice shocked that he would be on a team.
“Oh.”
When she turns back with the blankets he’s turned on to his side, facing the visitors' chair she’s occupied since his admittance here. She’s hesitant, working gently to cover him in one of the blankets. He doesn’t move while she tucks it up to his shoulders but he does blink tiredly when she settles heavily into the chair.
She covers herself in her own blanket, stopping when she sees that Malcolm’s managed to untangle his hand from under the blankets. It’s within her reach and shaking. “Plus, you know, we’re a team.”
That gets his attention, his tired eyes dragging their way to hers.
“Teammates watch each other's backs.” He grins at her. The canal under his nose bent all weird and she curses him for looking so cute when he’s all loopy on pain medicine. “That and I want to steal your jello when the nurse brings lunch in.” She reaches up and knocks her knuckles against his. He smiles and she decides to take his hand back, she gets no comment about her cold hands.
She watches his eyes slide shut, the stiffness in his shoulders melting. Softly, half slurred as he slips into a peaceful slumber he mumbles,” the jello is all yours.”
She squeezes his hand, earning a small sleepy smile,” thanks, Bright.”
He hums, and she knows he’s asleep a moment later. She settles back into her chair, her thumb rubbing against his knuckles. God, she’s in trouble.