19 August 2007, Undisclosed, Libya
Jack slammed down onto his back, the air rushing out of him in a dull whoosh. He gasped for breath, hands spasming around his rifle; the dust from the blast blinded him and his ears filled with a shrill whine. As soon as he had air in his lungs, it escaped again in a cough that shook him to his bones.
He rolled onto his side, head wobbling as he tried to make out something - anything - around him. His lips moved and his throat rumbled, but he couldn’t hear himself speak.
It took him almost a full minute to realize that the strange black shape sticking out from under a pile of rubble was a black-gloved hand, still clutching a Glock.
“Nervous, Rollins?” Brock asked with a smirk as he tightened the straps on his cross-chest harness. “Never seen you this jumpy before.”
Jack pursed his lips and put away the butterfly knife he’d been flicking around. “Just… got a feelin’.”
The teasing smile on Brock’s face slipped away in seconds as he crossed the few feet between them to crouch in front of Jack. “What sort?”
Rubbing his forehead, Jack winced. “The dull-ache-behind-my-eyes sort.”
“Pretty sure that’s a migraine and not a Code Foxtrot. You take your meds this mornin’?”
Jack nodded, then gritted his teeth at the sharp spike of pain that shot through his head. “Getting worse.”
After a quick glance toward the rest of the team, Brock reached out and wrapped his hands around Jack’s. The rings for a marriage they weren’t supposed to have glinted in the dull light of the transport jet’s hold. “You tell me if it becomes a Foxtrot, yeah?”
Staggering to his feet, Jack swept the area around him as best he could, relying on muscle memory to call the names of his soldiers. Even if he couldn’t hear them in his earpiece, he’d still feel the vibrations of the tiny speaker.
He cycled through them five times, squinting against the swirling dust, before he finally swallowed thickly. STRIKE Alpha Fire Team Two down, he reported into the radio. Fire Team Two down. This is Rollins. Does anyone read?
No answer.
STRIKE Alpha Fire Team Two down. This is Lieutenant Commander Rollins. Does anyone read?
Silence.
Fear clawed its way through his lungs and he barely managed to pull himself behind cover before his knees gave out under him.
Brock, he choked out. Brock, please.
The STRIKE team listened quietly as Brock laid out the plan. They were professionals; they’d done this a hundred times before. They all knew their roles, their positions, their overwatch and covers.
They all knew the stakes if this mission went wrong.
“We get in, we extract the hostages, we get out.” Brock’s tone was hard as he leaned forward on the steel table in the center of the cargo hold. “By-the-book exfil, and we deliver the insurgents to the local authorities as alive as possible. I don’t want any fancy ideas or anyone deciding to be a hero today. Gear up.”
The SHIELD medics found Jack shaking and shivering in the ruins of the market. He could read lips well enough to report his injuries and last known locations of his soldiers. They helped him strip off his gear, draped a heavy blanket over his shoulders, shoved a bottle of Gatorade into his hand, and told him to wait for debrief.
After the fourth dead agent, they stopped looking for survivors and pulled out the body bags.
“He’s- he’s not dead,” Jack mumbled, feeling more than hearing his own voice even though the ringing was finally fading. He reached out and grabbed the nearest Damage Control agent by the sleeve. “He’s not dead!”
“Sir, I need you to calm down.” The agent peeled Jack’s hand away and nudged him back onto the bench. “Can you take a deep-”
“He ain’t dead! I’d know!” The ring on Jack’s hand glinted in the dusty sunlight as he reached for the agent again. “He- he isn’t- he can’t be-”
The world tilted sideways as pain erupted behind Jack’s eyes.
“Breathe for me, tato.” Brock’s hands were steady on Jack’s shoulders, as always. “Just like that. In and out.”
Nodding, Jack tightened his grip on his rifle and closed his eyes for a few seconds.
“Hai ancora mal di testa?”
He nodded again.
It took him three hours to convince Pierce to add a rescue team to the search. Long enough for a trapped body to run out of air. Long enough for a puncture wound to bleed out. Long enough for-
“Hey.”
Jack had his sidearm half-drawn before he recognized Harrison.
“We’ll find him.”
He stared at the other agent, and he knew exactly how crazed he looked.
Harrison held out a pair of sturdy work gloves. “We got a heat signature on the southeast corner. Come help us dig.”
Jack blushed a bit as he remembered the frenzied minutes they’d stolen in his quarters, less than an hour before wheels-up at Headquarters. Turning to look over his shoulder, Brock smirked back at him, and Jack’s cheeks grew hotter.
He’d never been more thankful for the dim red lighting in the hold of the jet.
His ring clicked softly against the grip of his rifle. This is why you’re here, it said. This is what you’re fighting for.
He straightened his shoulders, pressed his headache back and away, and took one last deep breath before the drop ramp opened.
No sooner had Jack taken one look at the pile of what used to be the Embassy than something inexplicably dragged him over to a particularly interesting patch of rubble.
“Here,” he said, and tugged on the work gloves.
The agents behind him exchanged skeptical looks, but Harrison simply stepped up and helped Jack lift a large chunk of masonry. “Commander trusts his intuition,” he told the other agents with a grunt. “So should you.”
Jack ignored everyone else, following that sharp pull through the ruined building until he scooped up a rock and nearly overbalanced when he found nothing but air on the other side.
Tossing the rock to the side, Jack fell to his knees at the opening and scrabbled at his belt for a flashlight.
In a small, makeshift chamber created by two huge slabs of once-polished stone, four bodies were half-buried under dust and dirt and pulverized granite.
“Here!” Jack shouted, beckoning the crew over. “I found them!”
One of the men stirred, sending a small shower of stone chips cascading down his arm.
They filed down the street in the pitch-black night of a city without electricity. SHIELD did them the courtesy of making sure the power was cut roughly an hour before drop. Muted grays and green-brown camo rendered the STRIKE team all but invisible on everything but infrared.
Jack signalled his fire team to follow him around to the north side of the building. He locked eyes with Brock - goggles, really - and ignored the mild pulse of WRONG behind his eyes.
They set themselves up quickly and efficiently, and waited for the signal.
No one argued when Jack pulled rank to be first down the rescue ladder. Dust choked the air around him as he half-slid down a fallen, fragmented column. His foot caught in a crack and he stumbled to his knees when he hit the floor of what had been the main atrium.
Crawling over to the closest man, Jack rolled him over and checked for airway, breathing, circulation. He looked back to the medic already following him in and pointed to the man, then gave the medic an OK sign before moving on.
He tried to quell the nausea floating up in his stomach as he checked the next man, then the next. The thick dust blanketing everything around him coated his throat, leaving his mouth dry and lungs aching as he struggled to take a full breath.
The fourth man wasn’t moving, half-buried under a chunk of stone the size of a truck tire. Jack knee-walked over, grabbed the man’s left wrist, and checked for a pulse. A familiar scar on the outside of the pinky sent a jolt through him, followed by icy panic that clogged his veins until he felt a flickering heartbeat under his fingertips.
Another set of hands darted into view and helped Jack lever the stone off of the last man.
There, alive, squished and unconscious, but alive, was Brock.
Against all training and medical advice, Jack lurched forward and latched one hand on Brock’s shoulder, the other cradling his cheek.
“Brock,” he croaked. “Please. Brock, wake up.”
The last thing he saw before they parted ways was Brock’s toothy, cocky grin, and a quickly flashed hand sign - I Love You.
He patted Brock’s cheek as if that would help, and pulled his Commander, his husband, his best friend, into his arms.
Harrison crouched next to them, one hand on Jack’s shoulder, the other holding the medics back.
“Please wake up,” Jack begged. He smoothed back dust-gray hair and rubbed a trail of blood away from Brock’s scalp with his thumb.
Brock twitched slightly, and that was all the warning Jack got before the man in his arms whirled into an explosive mess of flying limbs.
Jack fell back on his ass, surprised and stunned by the elbow that caught him across his jaw. He stared at Brock as the other man scrabbled back in the rubble, frantically ripping his sidearm out of its holster.
Freezing in place, Jack held up his hands and stared down the barrel of a gun with which he had more than a passing familiarity.
“Brock, it’s me,” Jack said as calmly as he could. He slowly got to his knees, then stood. “Do you know where you-”
The gun rose fractionally as Brock rasped, “Don’t move.” His eyes were wide, the lower lid of one of them twitching ever so slightly as he stared at Jack. “Don’t fuckin’ move.”
Jack had never seen Brock look at him - at anyone - like that before. He kept his hands up, frozen in place, staring at the man staring at him.
His breath stuck in his throat when he realized that Brock was afraid of him. No, Brock was terrified of him.
Jack’s eyes flicked down when a glint of metal in the dust caught his eye. There, half-buried in a boot print, was the ring Brock had worn every day since they signed the paperwork in a courthouse over an embarrassingly large stack of money.
He looked back up at Brock, face blank and heart shattering, and fell to his knees.
24 August 2007, Washington, D.C.
The doctors let Jack visit Brock, as the next of kin specified in his personnel file. And Jack kept visiting, even though Brock wouldn’t speak to him, simply watching every movement with the wary precision of prey. Even though Brock never asked to see him. The relief of being allowed to see his husband was tainted with the guilt that so many people like them would never have that privilege.
On the fourth day after their return, one of the neurosurgeons pulled Jack aside and handed him Brock’s ring.
“He doesn’t remember his marriage,” she told Jack quietly, eyes glistening. “I’m so sorry. We’re not sure how much will come back, or how long it may take.”
Traumatic brain injury, they told him when he bullied enough of the doctors to get somewhere. “We only know enough to know we’re out of our depth. No swelling or obvious damage, and he’s otherwise uninjured, but… a concussion like this is going to have an effect.”
It was two weeks before Brock even so much as looked at Jack with anything other than wariness.
“We’re reinstating him, effective as soon as he completes his requalification tests,” Pierce said emotionlessly without bothering to look up from his computer. “You’ve done an admirable job as Commander in his absence, but Rumlow’s more valuable to us where he was than retired.”
Jack took a breath that was steadier than expected, and nodded, though Pierce didn’t do him the courtesy of looking up to see it “Copy, sir.”
“Oh, and…” Finally looking Jack in the eye, Pierce gave him one of his politician’s smiles. “Best to keep your… special relationship with the Commander under wraps until he remembers it on his own. He has enough on his plate right now as it is.”
“...understood, sir.”
Once dismissed, Jack managed to get back to his on-base quarters and lock the door behind him before he slumped against the wall and slid to the floor. The relief that he wouldn’t be asked to retire Brock into a body bag was heavily soured by the knowledge that Brock wasn’t - and likely never would be - the Brock he knew from before.
The simple act of dragging off his own ring and sliding it onto the chain with his dog tags and Brock’s ring took almost all the energy Jack had left.
He spent the rest of that energy lurching to his feet, shuffling into his tiny kitchenette, and grabbing the first bottle of liquor he could find.
The next morning, when he endured Brock impersonally dumping his drunk ass into the locker room shower and turning it on cold, Jack secretly wished that one of them really had died in Libya. It would have been easier, easier than watching the man he loved treat him like nothing more than just another broken toy soldier.
Jack learned to bury it, learned to compartmentalize. Learned to answer only to his last name and callsign. Learned to school his expressions, relying on years of undercover training to survive the never-ending op that had become his daily life.
Several months later, Jack told a half-assed joke about Harrison’s rapidly receding hairline, and Brock actually laughed. Jack hadn’t felt the strange pressure in his chest in long enough that he couldn’t even identify it at first.
The core of their friendship remained through it all, albeit strained by Brock’s amnesia and several months of irritability as the concussion healed. Echoes of the closeness they’d once had were bittersweet as Jack helped Brock pick out a new TV for the small downtown apartment for which he’d just signed the lease.
There wasn’t much in Brock’s on-base quarters since he’d always lived on the spartan side, and Jack didn’t know how to explain why he had two people’s worth of furniture in an off-base house. At least after a few trips to IKEA and Target, the walls of Brock’s new apartment no longer echoed.
Sitting out in his old Chevy in the parking lot at Brock’s apartment complex, Jack stared down at the dull brassy key in his hand and ran his thumb over the off-center stamped 206B . He closed his eyes and took a deep breath that was less steady than he would have liked, then slid the key onto his keyring. It glanced off Jack’s own house key, the key that unlocked the home they once shared, with its rough old brick walkway and the front step Brock always used to trip on and... well. It wasn’t what Jack had been hoping for, but having Brock’s apartment key was something. Progress? Perhaps not. But something.
The wood of the steering wheel was rough and cold in Jack’s hands as he started the truck and fiddled with the choke valve for a moment before backing it out of the parking lot.
As he drove back to his too-empty loft in the suburbs, the sun poked out of the clouds just long enough to turn the slushy roadside snow just a little bit gold. And, when he closed the door behind him, the loft felt a little less cold than it had the day before.