"To fight. To shoot. Whatever you think I need."
"You need rest."
"I need to not be helpless. Rest can wait."
Zain caught the bag. Turned. Seth was standing at the bottom of the stairs, arms folded, chin up, that defiant posture Zain was starting to recognize as his default. Like the world had told him to sit down and he'd decided to stand for the rest of his life.
He was wearing borrowed clothes. Nate's, from the look of it, too broad in the shoulders, the sleeves rolled up past bony wrists. His hair was clean now, drying in unruly waves. He smelled like the safehouse soap, pine and something medicinal. Underneath that, something else. Something warm. Human.
Zain caught himself noticing and dragged his attention back to the conversation.
"Soon," he said.
"Not tonight?"
"Soon." He unwound the hand wraps.
"I'll be ready."
"I know."
Seth almost smiled. It changed his whole face, for a fraction of a second, the anger dropped and something younger looked out,what remembered what it felt like to want something and believe you might actually get it.
Then it was gone. He turned and went back up the stairs, and Zain stood in the empty gym and listened to his footsteps fade and thought:I am in trouble.
That night, Zain couldn't sleep.
This wasn't unusual. Sleep and Zain had been in a cold war since his first deployment, and the war had only intensified since he'd left the force. He slept in fragments, two hours here, ninety minutes there, his body snapping awake at the slightest wrong sound.
He heard Seth's door open at two AM.
Footsteps, quiet but not quiet enough. The creak of the stairs. Zain was out of bed and moving before he fully registered what he was doing.
He found Seth on the back steps.
The night was brutal, single digits, cold that hurt your teeth when you breathed. Seth was sitting on the concrete steps in bare feet and a t-shirt, arms wrapped around his knees, staring at nothing. His breath made small clouds that dissolved into the dark.
Zain went back inside without a word. Came back with his jacket, the heavy field coat he'd had since Mosul, and dropped it over Seth's shoulders.
Seth flinched. Then stilled. Then pulled the coat tighter.
Zain sat down beside him. The cold bit through his own clothes immediately, but he ignored it.
"Nightmare?" he asked.
"I don't have nightmares."
"Okay."
"I have.. replays. It's different."
"How?"
Seth was quiet for a long time. Then, "Nightmares change things. Add monsters, distort faces. Mine are just.. accurate. Every detail. The smell of the floor. The sound the chains made." His voice was steady, but his hands were shaking. "It's worse when it's accurate."
Zain didn't touch him. Didn't move closer. Just sat in the cold and let the silence hold.
"Why did you leave the police?" Seth asked.
