Digging in, Tiger said “TJ, this is really good. I didn’t know you could cook.
TJ snorted. “This is grilling. Put a fire and a piece of red meat in front of a red-blooded man and he’s going to figure out what to do with it. I can teach you how to grill. Every man needs to know how to grill. It’s survival training one oh one.”
“So, Tiger have you gotten all settled in?” Remi asked.
“Oh! Remi you have to call him Tigger now” Jake said. “We took a vote and everything, because he didn’t like Kittycat. He lost two to one.”
“We did not take a vote” he gritted out through clenched teeth, “and I am not answering to Tigger.”
“Really? I think it sounds kinda cute,” Remi teased. TJ just looked at Tiger and smirked.
As they ate and went over Remi’s day and how the three of them had spent their afternoon, TJ kept a close eye on Remi. He now knew that Remi was gay or bi and it was obvious he was enamored of Tiger. Of course, he was… everyone who met Tiger was, except TJ. TJ had no sexual interest in Tiger; good god, that would be like lusting after his kid brother! He just wanted to be sure no one took advantage of or hurt his little brother. There’d been enough of that already.
Tiger, of course, was totally oblivious. Once dinner was over, TJ, Jake and Remi cleaned up while Tiger dozed in the lounge chair. He’d been up all day and TJ hadn’t seen him take any pain medication. He went out to the patio and roused Tiger, helping him up and guiding him down the hall and into his bedroom. Closing the door, he sat him on the edge of the bed, where he just stared at the floor, not moving. TJ pulled the meds out of the pharmacy bag and set it all on his bedside table.
“Hey, Tigger. Wake up sweetheart.” He patted Tiger on the cheek and lifted his chin to get eye contact. Tiger opened his eyes wider and stared blearily back at him. “Do you want to get cleaned up and brush your teeth?”
“No. Sleep,” Tiger mumbled.
“Okay, kiddo but let’s get your clothes off.” TJ managed to pull the covers down and took his shirt off, then laid him down on the pillows and pulled off his shoes, socks and pants. He settled the covers over Tiger and hurried to get a glass of water from the bathroom before he could go back to sleep. Coming back out, he checked the labels and got out the correct dosage, patting Tiger again, a little harder this time.
“What?!” Tiger groused. Oh great, mister grumpy cat was going to be loads of fun to take care of. He’d be only too happy to hand this part off to Remi.
“Sit up a little so you can take your pills sweetheart.”
“Don’t wanna!”
“Tiger, I know you haven’t taken your pills all day. Now take these before I stuff them down your throat,” TJ threatened as his patience snapped.
“Fine, fine!” Tiger grimaced and held out his hand. TJ dumped the pills in his hand and reached for the glass of water as Tiger just plopped all the pills into his mouth at once. He took the glass and drained it, then handed it back to TJ and fell back on the pillows with a groan.
TJ went into the bathroom and refilled the glass, bringing it back to the bedside table. He kneaded his fingers against the tense muscles at the junction of his neck and shoulder, eyeing Tiger for a few moments, then picked the pill bottles up and headed for the door.
“TJ!”
“Tiger?”
“I’m sorry.”
TJ’s heart broke for him. Tiger was in so much pain and he didn’t deserve any of this. “It’s okay sweetheart. Just go to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
When he returned to the living room, Jake and Remi were sitting on the couch, watching a movie. They looked up as he collapsed into the chair next to them and plunked the bottles down on the table in front of them. “Is he okay?” Remi asked, scrunching his eyebrows together.
TJ leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and looked at Remi, trying to decide how much to say. “He’s asleep. I made sure he took his meds. I don’t think he took them all day. One or both of you need to take charge of them and make sure he takes them. I don’t want to leave them in his room because he’s too out of it tonight to trust that he won’t accidentally overdose.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t have left the hospital so soon. He had a long day today and he’s grouchy as hell. I think he needs to take naps. I could barely keep him awake long enough to get him into bed and have him take his pills.” He paused, chewing on his lip. “He’s trying so hard to look normal, like he’s not hurting or freaked out. He can’t relax. His nerves are strung so tight he looks like he’s about to snap. Something’s really off with him.”
He stood up. “I’m heading out. You’ll need to wake him up in six hours for another pill. Watch him to be sure he actually swallows it. He hates those things, so he’ll try to avoid it. Just treat him like a sulky sick little five-year-old boy and you’ll be just fine.”
“I’ll see you in the morning at your office. I think he needs to stay home tomorrow and rest. I want to talk to Stafford again too. He knows something about all this shit, but he keeps citing patient confidentiality.” He bid them good night and let himself out.
Chapter 9
At midnight, Remi went down to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water and one of Tiger’s pain pills, then headed down the hall to his room. Leaving the hall light on so he wouldn’t need to turn on the room lights, he opened the door to Tiger’s room and heard Tiger thrashing around in his bed and muttering.
“Aki, get the pilot out!” Tiger ordered loudly. “We need…. Shit! Mortars…..! Tak-Takuma! No! Takuma!” he screamed. It was obvious he was in the middle of a nightmare and reliving some past combat experience that had been traumatic. Remi rushed in, putting the pill and water on the table, and sat on the bed next to Tiger, shaking his shoulder lightly.
“Tiger. Tiger wake up. Come on buddy. Snap out of it. It’s okay. It’s not real, you’re just dreaming” he crooned. As Tiger gradually withdrew from the thrall of his nightmare, Remi rubbed his cheek and arm, still speaking soothingly so he wouldn’t spook or try to take a swing at him.
Combat soldiers tended to have a bad reaction to being touched in their sleep and the first thing they were taught during training was to shake the bed or a foot. Remi didn’t think that was going to be enough to pull Tiger out of whatever nightmare had him in its grip. “Come on Tigger! It’s me, Remi! You’re in your room at my house. It’s just a bad dream. You’re okay.”
Tiger finally opened his eyes, looking confused until they adjusted to the dim light coming from the hall, then he just looked embarrassed. “What? Remi. Sorry.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed. “Did I wake you guys up?”
“No, not at all. Don’t worry, we can’t hear you from upstairs unless you give a full out battle cry” he laughed. “It’s time for another pain pill and before you try to argue, I have orders from Kirk to make sure you take it.”
Tiger took the pill and chugged down some water from the bottle Remi handed him, wincing as he handed it back. He was shaky and sweating. Remi suspected it wasn’t just from the nightmare. He got up and went into the bathroom, coming back with a damp cloth. Sitting back down on the edge of the bed, he patted at Tiger’s face and neck, smoothing the hair away from his forehead. When he finished, he set the cloth on the table and placed his hand on Tiger’s arm, rubbing the back of it gently.
“You know, no one here is going to judge you. We just want to help you get better. We won’t think less of you if you admit that you hurt, or you need help with something, or you have nightmares. That doesn’t make you weak or less of a man,” he said. “That includes listening, if you just need a willing body to scream at or vent to. Any soldier who came back alive from that war has some kind of issues to deal with.”
Remi patted Tiger’s hand and stood up. “Try to get some sleep. It’s okay to sleep in tomorrow if you need to. You’re here to rest after all. Maybe a nice long soak in the bath will help. Good night, Tiger.”
Tiger’s eyes were already drooping. “Night Remi…. and thanks,” he replied listlessly.
*****
The next morning, Remi had all of Tiger’s meds lined up for Jake with the times Tiger needed to take them. He’d prepped snacks and had lunch ready to pop in the oven. When Jake wandered into the kitchen, Remi fixed his breakfast and gave him his orders for the day.
“Okay Jake. Today Tiger needs to rest. No talking his ear off, okay? Kirk and I will be busy today, so we probably won’t be around till this evening. I suggested last night that Tiger take a soak in the bath for his back, but I realized he may have trouble getting in and out of it. I’ll see if Kirk can swing by for a while to help him with that, so he’ll probably be here for dinner again.”
“Yay, company! But why can’t you do that?” Jake asked.
“Well, he might be a little shy about me seeing him… um… naked” Remi answered. “I’m sure he and Kirk have showered together with the team. Sometimes straight guys are a little weird about that around gay men they don’t know.”
“Does he even know you’re gay?” Jake asked.
“Well, the subject never came up. Kirk knows, but I don’t know if he said anything about it to Tiger. He might be angry if he found out about it after the fact.” This conversation was starting to go off on a tangent.
“Why does TJ know you’re gay? Did the subject come up in front of him? Why don’t you just tell Tiger?”
“Jake! That’s not the kind of thing you just blurt out for no good reason! What am I supposed to say? Hey Tiger, I’m gay. Oh, by the way, want to take a bath together?”
“Well, what reason is good?” Okaaay, the conversation just went completely off the rails.
“Jake! Stop, just…. stop! I don’t have time for this!” Remi put his hands on the breakfast counter, taking a deep breath. In a calmer voice he said “See if Tiger wants to take a shower when he wakes up and let him know he can have a bath before dinner if wants to. Either Kirk or I will help him.”
He thought for a moment. “And please don’t repeat this conversation to him. I told him to sleep in, so you can fix him breakfast if he gets up early or heat up the casserole I left for lunch. There are snacks prepared and I setup his meds for you. Make sure he takes naps. Don’t hover but be available if he needs you. Can you do all that?”
“Sure, piece of cake,” Jake assured him.
Remi patted Jake on the shoulder, grabbed his hat, coat and briefcase, and headed out the door, muttering to himself about needing to have a ‘talk about some things’ with Jake soon.
When Remi got to his office, Staff Sergeant Hanson was at his desk. Remi put his things in his office, then came out to pour himself a cup of coffee. While he was doing that, Hanson spoke up. “Cap, when you have a minute, I need to show you something.”
At his tone, Remi glanced up. Hanson’s expression was troubled. “What is it?”
The sergeant walked to the door and locked it, then sat down and logged into his computer. Pulling up a file, he scooted back so Remi could see the screen.
Remi scanned the file briefly then gasped and turned to Hanson. “What the hell Hans! This is a sealed file! Where did you get this? How were you able to access it?”
“It came up after I gave you the preliminary results the first night. The search was still running all this time. I shouldn’t have been able to open it but… well, I’m kind of a hacker for some of the special forces guys occasionally and my software gave me access before I realized what it was. I thought it might help with the assault case. I don’t know if any of it is useful, but I thought you should see it sir.”
Remi pinched the bridge of his nose and growled. “This is wrong on so many levels Hans. It’s an absolute breach of security and privacy. If anyone knew about this, we could both end up in the brig, or worse.”
Hanson shrugged. “So, you want me to shred the copy I printed out and left on your desk sir?”
“I want you to close that out and forget you ever saw it… and purge any evidence that anyone’s touched it. I’ll take care of the printout myself,” he said as he retreated back into his office and closed the door.
Hanson closed out the file and cleared his computer of all traces that he’d gone through central command’s back door, then he unlocked the office door and went back to work.
Remi read the file completely, except for the details of a court transcript, which was a separate printout in a separate folder. Once he saw the charges listed, he set it aside without reading the rest. He read the main file in its entirety again.
Hanson tapped on his door and peeked in to announce that TJ was waiting to see him. Remi slid the court transcript into a drawer and went to the door, waving TJ into his office. “Coffee, sergeant” he said, then offered TJ a seat and sat down behind his desk and waited. As soon as Hanson had settled the cups in front of them, Remi said “no interruptions” and Hanson left, closing the door behind him.
TJ settled back in his chair and arched a brow at Remi. “What bug crawl up your ass this morning?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
Remi flipped the primary file around and slid it across the desk in front of TJ. He didn’t say a word; just let TJ read through it.
TJ read the first few lines, then placed his cup on the desk and picked the file up flipping through the pages, storm clouds forming in his eyes, which rose slowly to meet Remi’s.
“Son of a……! Where did you get this?” he hissed.
“That’s not important. Were you aware of this?” Remi asked.
“No. I wasn’t aware of any of this. Tiger certainly never spoke of it, which is hardly surprising.”
TJ was beyond incensed. He wanted to kill something with his bare hands. What Hanson had stumbled onto was a sealed file from Tiger’s time at the training center. Tiger never attended the academy. He came up through the ranks and earned his field commission the hard way, by killing the enemy and impressing some general.
He had to attend a training center to be educated as an officer. It was no gentlemen’s club. Most of the officers who worked in the TC’s looked down their noses at the field commissioners and tended to be bitter about being stuck with training what they considered to be ‘shit officers’.
One officer in particular, Captain George Harriott, had apparently made it his mission in life to break Tiger. The file included a court transcript that detailed the systematic harassment and degradation Tiger was subjected to under Harriott, culminating in his kidnapping, rape and torture of Tiger over a period of 5 days in a TC warehouse.
While Tiger was in the hospital, Harriott was declared mentally unstable and to avoid scandal, Harriott was given a medical discharge with full benefits. Once Tiger was released from the hospital, he was graduated immediately and transferred without returning to the TC.
There was also some interesting background on Tiger and his parents regarding their asylum from Fae hunters on Old Earth and the fact that Tiger’s mother was part of the royal bloodline. There was a background on the Fae in general, and an analysis on the possible ramifications of Tiger’s mixed Fae / human genetics over time.
The background on Fae in general shook TJ and Remi to their core when they read the possible attributes Tiger might manifest and the fact that he might live to be hundreds of years old. TJ wondered if Tiger was even aware of any of that or even aware of the existence of the file.
“What are you planning on doing with this?” he asked Remi. “Who else has seen this?”
“I honestly don’t know. I only just read it this morning. I mean, some of this information might help Tiger learn more about his parents and his heritage, but he’d be crushed if he thought we’d seen the court transcript. Maybe we could redact the file and give him some of the information, but how would we explain where we got it? If anyone else knew we’d seen this…..” his voice trailed off.
“Yeah,” TJ seconded. “I always thought Tiger’s nightmares were strictly from the firefight when
his best friend died trying to save him. That seems like what he babbles about, calling Takuma’s name and talking about the stuff that happened in the hanger. Considering what that bastard Harriott did to him I would think that was far more traumatic for Tiger and I’ve never heard anything that seemed related to that, unless he’s suppressing the memory.”
“He hasn’t really been having many nightmares lately. I thought over time they were fading from his memory. The stress he’s under seems to be bringing them back. Apparently, he had a couple while he was in the hospital.”
“He had a nightmare last night, but he didn’t sound like it had anything to do with the TC. Maybe the recent trauma of being tied up and tortured in the alley was enough like what Harriott did to him that it’s triggering all his old nightmares.”
“Where’s the court transcript?” TJ asked.
“You don’t need to see that. I didn’t read it either. If Tiger wants us to know all the sordid details, he can tell us himself. It’s bad enough just knowing that it happened.”
TJ sat staring at Remi. A fire slowly started to burn in his gut. His mind was starting to make connections as he added all the little pieces together. The changes in Tiger, Max’s comments about Tiger maybe being reluctant to testify and that patient confidentiality nonsense, Jake’s vague details about the events in the alley and the lack of eye contact when he talked about them.
The folder he still held gave away the tremor in his hands and a tear slid down his cheek. He started to hyperventilate.
Remi jumped up at his distress and ran around the desk, crouching before him. “Kirk! What…… what’s the matter? Are you okay? Talk to me TJ!” He took the file from TJ’s hand, tossing it on the floor next to the chair, then shook his shoulders hard. “Kirk!”
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