Only If For a Night(MxM)

After

Warning for some PTSD, nothing too bad but it def triggered my (low grade) anxiety to write it.

FOUR YEARS LATER

Even when the world has gone to shit, and it doesn't feel like there's a point to anything anymore, donuts are arguably the only part of humanity worth saving.

Jet couldn't decide if he wanted to curl into a ball or sprawl out across his entire booth, so he just sat with his head in his hands, listening to the three-year-old sitting behind him loudly exclaim to his mother how much he enjoyed jelly donuts.

Jet was partial to chocolate, but he didn't weigh in on the subject.

New York hadn't changed, and he was happy that it hadn't. He didn't have a lot of constants right now, and everything was pitched crooked on its axis. He didn't know what to do with his hands if they weren't holding a gun anymore, or what sneakers felt like on his feet. There was no sand being flung in his face, and every loud noise was not a threat.

He was safe, and he hated it.

But he couldn't shut it out from his head. The chime of the door every time it opened set his teeth on edge; the rhythmic kicking the back of his seat was getting from the toddler made his left hand tremble.

He needed to leave the room, the restaurant, the city. He needed to go, but where? The only place that felt real was the dunes sprayed with bullets and women with shrouded eyes.

This is real too, he told himself, but the notion almost made him scoff out loud. This wasn't real, this was the biggest game of make-believe he had ever seen, and he had three sisters. When he was ten, they pretended he was a girl named Janet for four weeks until he had a small identity crisis, and his mom had to intervene.

This was not real; these people were always faking it, every smile, every laugh, every charitable act. He could see through it all.

The room started to seem a little bit smaller than he had remembered, and he couldn't quite seem to get a full inhale of air into his lungs.

Buzz

Buzz

Buzz

His phone was sleek and black, small enough to fit in his hand. For so long, he had his fist curled around a walkie-talkie or a CB.

He tapped the little green button and held it up to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Jet Juarez?"

"Yes," he responded cautiously.

"This is Bill Staley from Gideon Security, do you have a minute to talk?"

Gideon Security. That was the company he worked for when he was a bodyguard a lifetime ago. His first name sounded odd; Juarez was his only name for too long.

"Uh, yeah. I guess I have some time,"

"I understand that you have just gotten back from Afghanistan, am I correct?"

"It was Iraq in the beginning, then Iran then Syria,"

"I see. I'm sorry to spring this upon you so soon after you've come home, but there's a small emergency."

"Look, I told you guys that I probably wouldn't be coming back to the company when I decided to go on a second tour, and that was three years and two more tours ago."

"We understand that, but if you could just listen for two minutes, we would really appreciate it."

You've ruined my donut now ; Jet Thought as he stared at the half-eaten chocolate circle and the now cold coffee. It probably wasn't the guy's fault entirely; he couldn't quite remember how long he had stared at the table with his head in his hands. It had been long enough for the jelly donut toddler to have left.