In A Wall'd Prison (James/Jonas, qtmc-verse)
Grief was a funny thing, with the myriad of ways that it could hound a man.
A boy's mother simply disappearing one day, leaving the father and son alone, strangers to each other. That was a sort of messy grief; the kind that had even the adult man instinctively looking into the face of every woman he met of a certain age and hair color and build for similarities to his own. Then there was the grief of having a father slowly lose his mind before dying, another messy grief where all the pieces of the man that used to be simply-- fall way like litter until the nothing that's left passed away in the middle of the night. There was the grief of leaving one's home and the ocean for parts unknown and landlocked, a dull sense of not belonging.
The new griefs of failure (he'd never failed in his life, never, he had always been the best, he'd always been lucky, he'd always worked hard), of leaving a project to wither away and all those people that depended on him to scatter to the four winds. Of losing his other half, so suddenly. The first was messy. He couldn't quite accept the first.
The second was a short, sharp shock, a straight, clean cut, then cauterization. His mind was still in that numbed moment, a patient etherized on the table, that dull moment before true pain.
Catherine was gone. She had simply disappeared. Oh, there had been a body, but the idea that his wonderful, lovely, vivid wife had somehow been replaced by that piece of meat just wouldn't click in his head. Grief, part of him had diagnosed. Distancing to minimize the amount of pain, to keep him functional, because just like before he'd been left with a stranger. Only this stranger relied on him and looked vaguely similar to his wife and spent all its - her time producing foul odors and gooey excretions and noises that keep him up all night, half annoyed, half afraid.
What if she stops breathing? Oh, god. What if her heart stops? What if there was a blood clot forming in her veins that very moment and what if it traveled to her brain and cut off the blood flow?
“It's not so bad,” he whispered, tracing the chubby cheek of his newborn baby girl, this stranger that took his wife's place. “A little cold,” he said and tucked the soft warm blanket around her fragile body. He was so afraid she'd die from the chill, the sudden loss of sun and warmth. Hell, he's afraid he might, too. How they could live like that, in a hole in the ground away from the sun (it's a tomb, he'd brought his baby directly from the cradle to the grave), he didn't know. But they'd make do.
Grief had a million different ways of manifesting. Maybe a man would shut down and just die, like he wanted to do, but James wasn't alone, wasn't his own person anymore. Catherine was gone. There was nothing he could do to change that and soon the real pain of losing her would begin, when his mind could wrap around the sudden hole that existed in his life.
“We'll make it, won't we?” he asked. “It's just you and me. We can do it.”
James didn't quite believe his own words, but the little bundle of his genetic code and his wife's genetic code, of her curly hair and his straight nose, made a wet gurgling sound. He took the mess as her outpouring of trust and faith in him.
Or possibly that the formula wasn't sitting well with her. He smiled a thin, watery smile.
They'd survive. She would survive. He would make sure of it.
There was no knock at the door, the young black man just walked in, stood in front of his desk and introduced himself as Jonas Palmer.
James looked up from the highlighted, tagged bundle of print outs that was his crash course in being a Vault physician. It takes about four seconds for a conversation to get awkward (James had honest-to-god just read that in the info and now, now he knew he was in hell because that was somehow considered important in this miserable place) and the two men got to second seven before James said, “And?”
“I'm your new assistant.”
James frowned. “I didn't ask for an assistant.” He tossed the printouts on his desk. They landed with a sort of horrifying thump because James was not entirely sure how he was going to get through a series of bundles that made a sound like that. And take care of a baby. And deal with the staring of the curious natives. And deal with the cold. And deal with the nutty woman who, really, was quite helpful in teaching him to care for his child but who wanted children of her own and saw him as a new set of testicles that she hadn't yet scared away. And the cold. Never forget the cold.
If Catherine was -
“I know. The Overseer sent me.” James arched an eyebrow, looking the young man, the boy, really, over. Because what he needed most in the world was to be taking care of two kids.
“Tell the Overseer that I'm not running an after school program for him.”
“I can always tell him that his new doctor has to read all of the manuals.” Palmer mimicked the eyebrow arch James had used before. James knew he when he was beat - he'd rather the Overseer not find reasons to kick him out because damn if he'd let anyone else raise his own child.
“Fine.” If the Overseer wanted to keep tabs on him, let him. James could outsmart Almodovar at any game he wanted to play. “Fine,” he repeated. “Tell me what you know and let's see what we've got covered and what we've got to figure out.”
Almodovar blamed him for his wife's death, of course. James had tried to explain to him, very calmly, very reasonably, that his wife had died because they didn't have the knowledge about how bacteria and viruses had evolved in this small, hyper sterile environment. He didn't recognize the disease from outside, even under a microscope. Almodovar shouted and screamed at him until he was hoarse. It didn't matter that James had taken in Amata when Lily had gotten sick. It didn't matter that James had spent countless nights away from his own child, trying to save a woman he barely knew.
“You brought it in. I know you did. You and your dirty little brat.” Recognizing the madness of grief, James bit down on his own tongue until he could taste blood. They could fight later. Not like this.
“Overseer, I examined the contagion. It looks like DR-strep, something that evolved after the Vault Bestiary was written.” Unlike James, Palmer was arguably on the Overseer's “side”, and that made the same words out of his mouth somehow more truthful than what James had said just five minutes before.
With no direct target for his anger, all the fight went out of Almodovar at once like water from a skin. Shaking, Almodovar collapsed into James' own chair, leaving the doctor to stand, to sway from exhaustion. “She's gone,” he whispered. “What am I going to do? How the hell do I take care of a baby on my own?” His shoulders drooped, cut from imaginary strings. “What do I do? She's gone.”
“You survive,” James said sternly, practical even here. Especially here. “It's what everyone does. It's what you'll do, too. Because the other option is dying yourself and leaving Amata an orphan.” Parents didn't get the right to romantic suicides, to laying down next to their other half on the pyre.
For the first time (and the last), Almodovar didn't argue, he didn't shout, he didn't belittle James, he simply nodded, struck dumb, struck numb. James let him sleep in his own bed that night, near little Amata, while the doctor slept in a chair at Zoe's crib. Sometime in the night, he woke to the aches and pains of a body folded awkwardly in a chair that has as much cushion as a rock. He was freezing, even though someone - Palmer, maybe - had covered him up with a thin blanket.
James shifted in the chair, drawing his legs up and wrapping the blanket tighter around him, up to his nose to block out the cold air. Maybe the Palmer kid wasn't so bad.
“What's this? A specimen from Mr Mack?”
“Not any of your concern.” James didn't look up from his computer. That was the problem with an assistant. Jonas was - curious. Not a sin, except James didn't think the Overseer would appreciate his doctor-on-probation (for the last three years) diverting Vault resources for his “hobby” of a project.
“This doesn't look like one of the bacterial colonies.”
“I believe I said it wasn't your concern.” He could feel Jonas watching him, didn't have to look up to know that his intelligent, quick mind was running through options. James could outsmart the Overseer. He wasn't sure he could outsmart his assistant.
It wasn't a comforting thought.
“You want to talk about?”
“About what?”
Jonas nervously flipped through a few charts clipped to a board. “You know. Your wife?”
Something thick and heavy settled in his stomach before trying to claw its way up his throat and along his shoulders and neck. Catherine. He'd thought about her every day, but today was Zoe's third birthday and he'd - forgotten. Not the birthday, they'd had a lovely little cake and presents (of which Zoe was most fond of the wrapping, go figure), but he'd forgotten his wife.
Guilt. He identified that nasty thing choking him as guilt. How could he forget? “No,” he said gruffly, around the sudden, choking sensation. The love of his life (the first, because Zoe was the love of his life now) and he'd forgotten her own death date. Jonas shrugged.
James closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “But thank you, Jonas. I appreciate it.”
“No problem, Doc. I've always got a shoulder if you need it.”
“Oh my god.” Jonas' breath was warm against James' cheek, smelled vaguely of the same toothpaste and coffee everyone in the Vault used.
“Shhh. He'll hear you.”
“Then don't do that.”
“Can't let me have the last word, can you?” James grinned crookedly in the half-dark of the examining room, his fingers clutching Jonas' coat. His assistant was pressing him into the (cold, cold, forever cold) metal wall that separated the two of them from Allen Mack. “You know, Jonas, Mack has been very clear on how much he,” he tugged on Jonas' collar, damning (and not for the first time) the stupid one-piece Vault suits, “'hates fags', I believe his exact words were. Wouldn't want him to find us.” Another tug, and they were breathing the same air, Jonas' heart was pounding strong enough that James could feel it through his chest.
Footsteps coming closer. Jonas went stiff, twice over, as he pressed James closer to the metal, as if he thought he could force them into the wall for hiding. “Doc, he'll - mmph.“ James interrupted him with a kiss, hands on both sides of his neck, cupping his jaw, and now he could feel that racing heartbeat through his palms, too.
Wanted to feel it in his dick, too, but he didn't say that out loud because he wasn't quite that tipsy. Or maybe he was, because Jonas sucked in a sharp breath, started kissing him again. “If he finds out, I'm telling the Overseer you seduced me,” James whispered as he heard Mack leave the empty clinic.
“Right. Because he's so not keen on blaming you for everything. Christ, James,” Jonas dropped his head to James' shoulder as the older man reached down and fondled him. “Are you sure we should be doing this here?” And he might have sounded unconvinced, were it not for the kisses, the little punctuations between each word.
“Trust me,” James said, palming Jonas' erection through his (godawful, amazingly unsexy) suit. “I'm a doctor. Now, help me unzip that stupid thing.”
Jonas had gotten such a thrill from nearly being caught, he didn't have the heart to tell him that he'd locked the door from the main room long before Mack had shown up. He made up for his deception by going down on his knees for his assistant and, yes, his heartbeat was distinct even there.
They'd made a nest of lab coats and Vault suits, neither of them particularly willing (or able) to drag himself to the less appealing examining table. James had forgotten the feel of this: lying, tangled up in someone else, sweat drying in places not all that comfortable, but the bone-deep warmth was worth not moving. Catherine had been fond of making him work for these moments, for teasing him with the possibility of getting up and cleaned and dressed and -
He closed his eyes and pressed his face against Jonas' bicep, damp and warm. He'd just had sex. That didn't mean he wanted to start, start sharing. “Hey, Doc.” Unfortunately, Jonas was a very perceptive young man (they'd start fighting about Project Purity later, but Jonas couldn't help him, especially not after this because James wouldn't be able to stand a - sexual partner, whatever he was, getting reassigned to garbage duty or worse, it was too dangerous, that was final) and he'd noticed. “You all right?”
“Mmfine,” James mumbled against skin, trying to sound sleepy, trying to get off the hook. The muscle underneath his mouth flexed and a hand came up to stroke the hair at his temples (already graying and he'd just hit forty).
“I didn't think you'd take the shoulder thing seriously. It's a figure of speech, Doc.” Jonas' voice was warm, soothing and vaguely the color of the tea his mother used to make him when he was a little boy and sick, his sex-addled brain supplied synesthetically. James counted to three. If he could make it to three, then he'd be past this urge.
“I miss her,” he said roughly, failing. He turned his head to the side to let his temple rest against the damper skin of Jonas' arm. “Every day. But I -“ I had sex again? I can't remember the shape of her mouth? I don't remember her smell under all this goddamned isopropyl alcohol and recycled air? I can't remember how her fingers tasted or how her hips felt? “I feel like I'm losing her,” he settled on finally, because it was the least pathetic thing to say.
“I'm sorry, Doc. But I don't think she'd want you to be unhappy.” Jonas stumbled over the words, because though he'd always offered to share, there wasn't - each heart knew its own bitterness, and there was no way to share. “And your kid is doing fantastically.” What was far more helpful was the hand still touching him, that had dropped to his shoulder.
For the moment, he wasn't cold, and James let himself be lulled to sleep by Jonas' even breathing.
The day James realized he'd been sleeping with his assistant, off and on, for longer than he had known his wife, he dropped a sample. Glass shattered and water, clean, clear as the glass, sparkled at him under the sharp, white light of the Vault's clinic.