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How does it feel to be home?
That was the question each member of Team 7 got asked after returning from deployment. It was asked in a million different ways by a million different people; over text from friends, loudly by a Wine Aunt tipsy before noon at the family gathering, by strangers at coffee shops who saw the dog tags or assorted Army— Navy, for Preach— clothing and thanked them for their service. But in the end, it all boiled down to the same thing. How does it feel to be home?
For Amir, it was a new question, a new answer. Nice, he’d tell his aunties and cousins. Relaxing he’d tell his uncles. He missed them, he’d tell his parents. Eventually, though, the house in Beirut or Detroit— or the beach-front condo in Miami— would be too quiet, his parents too distant. The memory of his sister would echo faintly, sounding a little too much like her favourite song.
He’d start wishing for a different kind of music, the kind his sister had started writing before that day, music she’d tried to convince him was better than even her favourite Chopin because it mixed piano with the sound of people and chaos and living; the clang of horseshoes at odd hours, the constant scuffle and resulting crash of a gently violent disagreement. The sound of Patton’s claws on concrete as he padded lazily after someone. He missed the music they’d brought back into his life, music he knows his sister would have written a symphony with.
For Preach, he’d tell everyone how much he loved being home with his girls, how much he missed the little things like helping with homework after dinner and Carter Carpool karaoke. It didn’t matter that on deployment he talked to them almost every day; that karaoke and homework were handled through FaceTime and the family group chat in an effective manner. There was something about the lack of static in his girls’ laughter and the ability to reach out and hold one of them at any point that eased the burden of knowing he’d leave again.
This time it was worse, the girls clamoring more than usual with the understanding that this time their dad almost hasn’t made it back. And he’d just remind them that he didn’t break promises and he always promised to say goodbye. His daughters always fought for his attention the first few days— ignoring that they already had it undividedly— but it never took long for it to fade into routine. His wife watched it all knowingly, the wry smile he’d fallen in love with appearing above mug rims and laptop screens. Eventually, though, he’d start wishing for four more pairs of eyes rolling at his bits of wisdom.
For McGuire, he’d tell everyone about being glad to just be able to sit out of his porch, drink a beer, and stare out at the land as the sun set behind the hills. He was ribbed by everyone who knew him about pretty girls and plenty of free time and he’d smile conspiratorially at them all. But truth was stranger than fiction; the only woman he was aching to see was his mom and her million-dollar smile and a hug that made all the shitty things he’d seen okay for as long as it lasted. After that deployment— after the fallout of losing Eli, of almost losing Jaz and Preach— the hug lasted a long time, too long, from the moment he walked in the door until she had to leave for her shift at the hospital.
McG had never claimed to be anything but a Mama’s Boy, but it went deeper than that: his whole life it had been the two of them against the world and he’d done everything he could to help her bear the weight of it. When he came back Montana, to the farm he’d helped her buy with his first installment of hazard pay, she supported him like he had her. Eventually though, he’d get bored and lonely— his mom was a hero to him but also to an entire hospital that didn’t run without her— aching for the team he thought of as the siblings he never got.
For Adam, he would tell everyone that he was glad to have boots on American ground. He’d tell his sisters that everything was fine, he was fine and in one piece. He’d call up old friends from past units and even meet up with them, talking about the Old Days that always seemed a little different each time they met. They'd tell him about the families they now had, the lives they now lived, in these meet ups that seemed to get a little shorter each time, filled with silences that got a little longer.
Eventually, Adam was missing the familiar teasing and smiles of his team, the ones that eased tension in the field and worry on base. He missed McG’s booming everything and Amir’s quiet retorts that filled a room along with the smell of whatever he was cooking. He missed finding Jaz perched in weird places around the quonset, usually nursing a cup of half-cold coffee. He missed getting randomly pulled into FaceTime calls with Preach’s girls and, hell, he even missed Preach’s knowing glances. Most of all, he missed the steadiness, the presence of them like a compass keeping him pointing due north.
Jaz would tell everyone that she enjoyed a break from the routine of living on a military base, enjoyed a chance to wander and go to a place with sun, sand and all-inclusive perks (hopefully sans Taliban). Her high school friends in New York and military friends scattered across the country would joke that she must be glad to be rid of all the testosterone, must enjoy some girl time as she jumped across the country and avoided staying anywhere for too long. Eventually though, she’d get tired of living like a nomad, of moving from spare bedroom to couch to the occasional hotel, and she’d want the security of having her guys, of having her home, back in that quonset. And this time that feeling was so much worse.
Now Jaz had trouble even laughing at that joke like she used to, had trouble thinking that living surrounded by the guys was a big deal. They were her guys— full stop. Sure, spending her time doing what she wanted for that reason alone was great and she enjoyed the time with her other friends. But after everything, being without her guys for a long period of time had started to make every day feel like she’d walked into a firefight without a vest and a gun. She lost her armour, something vital that left her feeling unprepared and a little off-kilter. She’d taken to marking off the days until they were back together.
Group: Quonset Crew 007
McG: I’m bored 🙁
Jaz: You have a whole ass farm??
Jaz: Go outside and leave the group chat in peace
McG: It’s April in Montana Jazzycat. It’s god damn cold and still fucking snowing
Amir: Sounds like you need to shovel it. There, no more boredom.
Jaz replied 🙂 to Amir
McG: Big words from the guy in fucking Lebanon
Amir: I’m in Detroit at my cousins right now, thank you very much. It’s cold here, too.
Jaz: Rich boy jet setting to all the family homes. Bet you’ve never had to shovel snow before
McG replied 😄 to Jaz
Jaz: And keep up McG. Some kind of friend you are, don’t even know where we’re at
McG replied 😠 to Jaz
Amir: I’m the jet setter? Have you even stayed in one place longer than a week, Jaz?
Jaz: Shut it. I’m driving and couch surfing, there’s a difference.
Jaz: Not everyone has multiple houses with staff
Top: at least he has a permanent address jaz
McG: Does a cabin in the middle of the fucking boondocks count? I don’t think it counts
Jaz replied 🙂 to McG
Jaz: You’re all just jealous that I have the nicest car and I'm on a road trip
McG: I would be if I wasn’t terrified of your driving 😬
Top: thats y shes nvr on driving duty
Amir: Oh?
Jaz: More like I’m too busy saving all our asses and watching our 6
McG: Jaz treats American driving laws like they’re mild suggestions and talks her way out of tickets
Jaz replied 😠 to McG
Preach: Do none of you remember how time zones work? It is 0500 hours here and my wife is threatening the sanctity of The BBQ if you don’t stop blowing up my phone
McG: Blowing up your phone? Who are you?
Jaz: It’s started
Jaz: He’s adopted the use of their language. Soon there will be no Preach
McG: Only DAD
Preach: I’m muting this chat. Or deleting WhatsApp
Top: if only it was that ez 2 get rid of them
Jaz: Rude
McG: SO rude
Amir: McG, seriously, it’s like 6:00am there. How are you bored?
Top: y r u even awake ur never up before 1200h
McG: I woke up to have breakfast with my mom before she left for work thank you v much
Jaz: Soft
Amir: Please tell me you didn’t cook her breakfast.
Jaz replies 😂 to Amir
McG replied🖕to Amir
McG: I hate all of you
Top: then stop txting
McG: I’m BORED and none of you sleep properly anyway which I don’t have to be concerned about rn because we’re not in a war zone
Preach: I sleep for the love of all that is holy stop
McG: No you don’t
Preach: Trisha does
Top: i thought u muted us its ur own fault
Jaz: Damn I could go for some of Nana Carter’s special sleep tea
McG: Saaaaaaaaame
Amir: This is getting out of hand. I’m making breakfast for my cousins, goodbye.
McG: SHAKSHUKA
Amir: ...
Amir: When did I get this predictable?
Top: its sat
McG: We just know you
Jaz: Just like we know McG’s really just fucking lonely and desperate for attention
Amir replied 😄 to Jaz
McG: So what if I am huh ?
Top: 2 bad u uninvited jaz from c ing ur mom
McG: She loves me more than Jaz. She’s MY mom
Jaz: If you take it back, I may consider visiting
McG: Never. And I was right about the grilled cheese too
Jaz: Guess you don’t miss us that much
McG: ...
McG: Fine. I’m fucking lonely and my mom loves Jaz an absurd amount for meeting her twice
Top: jaz tell him ur back in nyc
McG: I thought you were still in Georgia with the Vallinses?
McG: How do you know exactly where she is Top ?
Jaz: Nah I’m back at my friends in the city. My flight for Billings leaves in a week so you better pick me up
McG: You’re the BEST Jazzycat
Preach: Wonderful. Now leave the chat alone for a few hours before my wife hates you all
Jaz: the chat
Jaz: rip
McG: Dad Mode activated
Top: pls stop
Amir: Tell Trish to check her email. She won’t hate us anymore.
Jaz: !!!!!
Jaz: Noooooooo
Jaz: Why does Preach get his video without being fucking bullied
Jaz: Rude
McG: You jumped on a table and threatened my life
Top: and amirs
Amir: Circumstances call for it. Now no one’s bored.
McG: Unfair
Top: none of u get to complain mine was wrse
Jaz: More like the best
McG: The Best Boy
Top: u 2 r the worst
Jaz and McG replied 😄 to Top
Preach sighed and left WhatsApp, completely resigned to the fact that his team was never going to shut up when they were all so achingly obvious about feeling the separation. And he could admit that it was a lot harder to just turn them off than it should have been. After everything, almost three months without them— well two for Adam, who had claimed Preach’s spare bedroom for the first part of his recovery— was starting to be noticeable. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he couldn’t make it back to full strength by the time they were supposed to re-deploy, let alone the very real possibility of retirement that was nearing on the horizon.
His phone kept buzzing as he refreshed his email but there was nothing. Strange.
Trisha’s phone dinged loudly where it sat on the other side table. Apparently, Amir was serious about sending it to her first. Trisha groaned, throwing the pillow off her head from where she’d been trying to block out the noise and reached for it.
“I’m going to kill your team, Ezekiel Carter, and then I’m coming for you, advanced training be damned. Love them to pieces but...” she trailed off, adjusting her silk head wrap knocked askew by her vigorous attempts to stay sleeping.
“I know, honey,” Preach sighed, sitting up slowly and resting his head against the padded headboard in resignation.
Trisha shuffled over to cuddle gently beside him, mindful of keeping her weight from leaning into him and grumbling pointedly. “I worked on that nasty divorce case and did pro bono work at that clinic all week and on the one day we get to sleep in...”
“I know, honey,” Preach wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s just see what Amir sent.”
She’d already located the email, resting threateningly at the top of her inbox with the subject line: I Didn’t Get No Sleep Cuz of Y’all.
“What?” She asked, glancing at her husband.
“His cousin’s daughter is the same age as Leah. Apparently, she loves to show Uncle Amir pop culture references. Even the old ones,” Preach supplied the best answer he could.
Trisha opened the email, the line at the top stating: This time on American Ninja Warrior... Preach!
Preach stilled, a vague, blurred out memory wiggling its way to the forefront of his mind.
“Zeke?” Trisha asked, mouth skewed sideways.
Preach took a deep breath. “I’m not going to lie, honey, that was some time after the phone call and I don’t remember much of that.”
“Well, in that case” she laughed, pressing play and turning her phone horizontal.
The image that filled the screen was dark and the light that filtered through the Quonset caught on the white letters spelling NAVY across a t-shirt that was at spread out on the top of the weapons cage. It wasn’t until something shifted that the video picked up on the white lettering of a box and the dark hands clutching it to his chest that became apparent that there was a person inside the t-shirt ten feet in the air, precariously balanced above top of the storage shelf.
Amir swore quietly in the background of the video, barely heard over the slurred chatter of Jaz and McG and what sounded suspiciously like the clink of a fork inside a pickle jar.
“Preach?” Amir’s voice was disbelieving behind the camera. Video Preach’s head sharply angled towards the sound, emerging from the shadows with one arm wrapping more firmly around the cookie box.
“No.”
Trisha snorted and paused the video, hand coming up to cover her mouth and she looked at Preach, who was staring at the screen in pain. He reached over to press play but she smacked his hand away.
“I think you might have been right when you told me you were too old for Jägerbombs,” she giggled and Preach joined in, thinking of the absolute shenanigans from that night. It truly had been the last good night for the team for a long while after that.
“We are never showing the girls this. Ever.”
Trisha’s amused glance only grew. “I don’t know, it’s like I told McG about his video when you were still in the coma— teenage girls are like piranhas. And, baby, you are the blood in the water.”
“Put me out of my misery,” begged Preach. Trisha pressed play.
“No? You’re not Preach?” Video Amir’s voice was more than amused.
“No? What? I’m Preach,” Video Preach mumbled. “And I’m not sharing.”
“Sharing... the cookies?” The camera shook like Amir was walking closer and Video Preach was wedging himself deeper into the corner, feet hooked in the cage and an arm clutching at the top of it.
“They’re mine. I’m not giving any to the god damn pelicans.”
“Pelicans?” Video Amir asked, clearly fighting a laugh.
“You’re all a bunch of squawking, fighting, food stealing pelicans. You’re gonna swoop up my cookies like you always do, like pelicans on a pier.” Video Preach’s voice was dead serious and vehemently spiteful.
Real Preach groaned. He was never going to live this down.
“Who takes your cookies?” Video Amir’s voice asked, no longer hiding the laughter.
“Every single one of you! Well, I don’t know about you, but you’re a sly one.”
“Thank you?”
“Fucking McGuire just grabs a handful without even asking every time I pull out a box. Jaz stares at me with the big-eyed look, you know the one, until I offer her one and then she eats half the pack. And that damn Adam sneaks them out of my footlocker, I know it.”
Video Amir was chuckling softly. “Okay, okay. Pelicans.”
“Damn straight,” mumbled Video Preach. “These are my cookies, from my daughters Girl Scout troupe, and I’m going to eat them and be proud that she just got her second outdoor adventure badge.”
“Leah?”
“Mira. Leah didn’t like it, quit after a year. Kylie barely made it through a meeting before asking to join ballet class and the computer science after-school program instead.”
“Oh baby,” murmured Trisha, rubbing her husband’s arm as she stared at the screen, “you always are their number one fan, maybe we should show the girls. They’d like to hear this.”
Video Preach wobbled slightly in the frame as he moved his supporting arm to reach into the box for a thin mint, his entire body sliding down from where it was about a foot above the shelf.
“Maybe not,” countered Real Preach, wishing he could look away from his own filmed idiocy. Why had that seemed like a good idea?
The video blurred for a second as it bolted forward, closer to Preach’s perched form. Video Amir’s voice came out strained. “Alright, Preach, maybe it’s time to come down from there.”
“Uh uh.” Video Preach’s firmly shook of his head, the motion making him to lean a little closer to the edge of the overhang. “I am not bringing these cookies anywhere near the pelicans. I’m staying here until they’ve flew the coop. Flown? Fly the coop?”
“What if I get rid of them?” Video Amir started, only to get drowned out by a jolting laugh and Video Jaz yelling “Let’s play darts!”
“Yes!” responded the faint but enthused voice of Video McG.
“No!” shouted Video Amir, the camera blurring as he twisted towards the other two. His voice dropped to a mutter. “Why do those two need constant supervision?”
“Free spirits find easy trouble,” stated Video Preach sagely, reaching into the box and sliding further, until he was scrunched up with his feet higher than his head and his spine curved into the corner of the cage. “Troubled spirits find easy freedom with each other.”
“I don’t— okay. Please get down, Preach. I need to handle Jaz and McG. I’ll keep the distracted enough for you to take the cookies to bed,” begged Video Amir.
“WHOA!” Video Jaz’s voice sounded closer now and Video Preach dropped all the way down to the top of the shelf, clutching the cookies closer at whatever he saw beyond the camera. “What the fuck, Preach?”
“You have cookies? I want a cookie!” pouted Video McG.
“Pelicans! Get away! Shoo! These are mine, you hear?” Video Preach shouted, trying to scramble back up to his earlier spot and swaying slightly as he did.
Trisha squeaked out a laugh beside Real Preach, her whole body shaking into his.
“Just a few!” Video Jaz joined Video McG’s pouting.
“Mine!” argued Video Preach, struggling to maintain his position.
“Top took the rest of the last bottle out to the campfire” interjected Amir, sounding absolutely done. “I thought you guys wanted shots?”
“Shots!” Video McG howled and the chaotic rumbled that warned of him and Jaz dissipated from the video.
“They’re gone, Preach, please,” Video Amir begged.
Video Preach didn’t move. Real Preach held his breath. He had almost no memory of how he got up there.
“How did you even get up there?” Video Amir asked slowly. Trisha's eyebrows were raised until nearly under her hair wrap. Clearly, she'd been thinking the same thing.
“... Parkour.” Video Preach said seriously, stretching out along the top of the shelf.
Trisha snorted, stopping herself from pausing the video only because it was almost done.
“Alright,” Video Amir sighed. “Can you parkour down before Jaz and McG somehow light a camp chair on fire?”
Video Preach paused, staring down over the edge.
“Amir?”
“Yeah, Preach?”
“I don’t think I know how to get down.”
There was silence behind the camera before it slowly trailed over Preach’s lounging form, down the shelving to the concrete floor. A muttered shit was the last sound before the video cut off.
Preach stated at the ceiling of his bedroom, not sure if he was relieved that, arguably, it wasn’t that bad or mortified that it had happened at all.
“Why in the world would you think climbing up there was a good idea?” Trisha asked, incredulous. Her eyes were lit up with amusement, that wry smile making a lovely appearance. Preach couldn’t help but think a little embarrassment was worth seeing the worry she'd had since he’d woken up in that hospital bed finally melt away.
“More like why in the world did Jäger think it was a good idea,” Preach sighed. “I guess I thought they couldn’t reach me?”
Trisha laughed, mostly at the terrible logic and the image of her husband hiding from his teammates like a hassled parent.
“They really are family, aren’t they?” Trisha said, fondness overpowering the previously predominate annoyance. Preach kissed the side of her head and rested his cheek against it.
“There isn’t any other word for them.”
“Except pelicans?” she teased.
“Like that one from that movie Mira used to love, A Dolphin’s Tale.”
“Rescue pelicans that never leave?”
“Exactly,” smiled Preach, “all four of them.”
Group: Quonset Crew 007
Top: pelicans? wat kind of bitch ass navy insult is that
Jaz: ... how did you even get up there? I can barely fit up there
Amir: How do you know that Jaz?
McG: That explains the weird ass dream I had about pelicans trying to steal something from me, screaming “mine” like in Finding Nemo
Top: those r the seagulls not the pelicans
Amir: Top?
Jaz: I have questions
McG: I thought you were more of a Fox and the Hound guy Top
Top: I have nieces and nephews
Preach: Mira made us watch it. And Finding Dory
Jaz: I have answers
Preach: We all owe Amir. The BBQ is saved. Trisha says y’all are lucky Amir’s a sneaky sonuva and that next time she’ll just send us some more god damn cookies.
McG has changed Group name to Preach’s Pelicans.