A/N: So this breakup has COMPLETELY SUCKED and I decided to start fixing it. Now we have confirmation of some secret, Savis sexy time so this isn't quite canon compliant anymore. But I still love it. Enjoy!
We can still be friends. That's basically what she'd told him. Of all the god damn cliches she'd gone with that one. And it had broken him. She'd seen it. She knew him. She'd watched his eyes shutter, watched as he'd sunk into himself the way he always did when things got bad, and then he'd driven off. Alone.
She was exhausted and overwhelmed by everything. Mandy had always made this job look so easy. But now it was her team she was putting at risk day in and day out. Her mistakes wouldn't cost her anything, but it could cost the rest of them their lives. She had to be perfect. She had to get them all home safely every, single time.
And all she wanted, more than anything in the world, was to go cry on Sonny's big, warm shoulders and tell him that she felt like she was falling apart and she didn't know what to do. But she'd given up that privilege the second she'd gotten in his pick-up tonight. It was over because she'd said so. It was over because she was too tangled up in her own life to fight for them.
The whole thing was her fault. She'd kissed him first. She'd let him into her apartment that night knowing full well where the evening was going. You didn't let just friends into your home at 11:30pm and expect not to end up in bed.
A tear slipped down her cheek and then another. It was too much. Too awful. She should have just gone to California in the first place. At least then she might have saved their friendship.
"Ensign Davis! Davis!"
Ray's call shook her from her misery and she scrubbed a hand across her face trying to hide her tears. "Davis, hey," he jogged up beside her. "I wanted to—are you all right?"
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." She forced a smile. "What's up?"
He studied her face and understanding with a hint of guilt passed through his eyes. "Was that Sonny's truck pulling out?"
"Yep. What do you need Ray?" She wasn't in the mood for a chat and she definitely didn't want a Ray Perry pep talk right now.
"Never mind. It can wait."
"Great."
She turned around and walked back into the building. There was always another target package waiting right? No point in going home. There was nothing there for her anyway.
The next weeks settled into a grim routine. A permanent ache took up space between her ribs. It was bad enough having to see Sonny every day, but they also had to pretend there was nothing going on. That there never had been. The lies continued to suck everything out of her, even now that they were over.
If the days were long the nights were worse. Sleep became a stranger. Every night she lay in bed for hours, staring at her ceiling, and when she did her dreams became nightmares of the lifeless eyes of her team members. Sonny feature prominently among the dead. Some nights he died upwards of five times. It was horrible.
So she buried herself in her work. She'd taken to haunting the briefing room at all hours, only going home when she could no longer see straight or her headache had gotten so bad she thought might vomit. They needed to be spun up. She needed the distraction or she thought her heart might just break in two.
This was why you stuck with stripper bars and one night stands. He'd been an idiot to ever think they could make this work. The worst part was he didn't even know what had happened. Everything had been fine and dandy and then it had been…well, shit. Absolute shit. He'd never felt so bad.
Now he understood why Clay had taken up permanent residence on the base when things went south with Stella. He knew why Jason was working them into the ground and having mood swings like a teenager. Life without Lisa was hell and all he wanted was to get out of his own head for just a minute and feel like he could breathe again.
He missed the smell of her on his pillow, the way she felt pressed against him first thing in the morning when he was kissing her awake. He'd never been so lonely in his life, not even when his daddy died when he was ten or when he'd first left home for boot camp. Both times he'd had his family behind him, blood and chosen. This time he had nobody.
Sometimes when he jolted awake in the middle of the night and found his bed cold he could almost convince himself he'd dreamed the whole thing. That it hadn't been real at all. But then he'd going finding some trace of her in his apartment, that soap she liked in the kitchen or a leftover pair of socks in his drawer, and it hurt even more.
It would have been better if he could hate her, but the fact of it was he couldn't. Every time she walked into the room he stopped breathing because the horrible, aching feeling inside him would disappear for just a second until he remembered that they weren't even friends anymore. They were just nothing.
The guys had noticed something was up. Clay had stopped ribbing him about his phone after Sonny had snapped at him pretty good about three days after the break up. Ray kept giving him the side eye and Sonny was firmly ignoring him. All the times he'd been there for his brother, and he just had to go and stick his nose in someone else's business. Sonny wasn't interested in talking about it.
He'd avoided eye contact with Ensign Davis—he was trying to get into the habit of referring to her that way instead of as Lisa—tried not to be in the same space as her. If she wanted to talk to him she didn't give any indication. It seemed like she was doing the same thing.
They spun up, they came home, they spun up again. The days became weeks and the silence stretched between them in unbearable agony. They were polite. They made conversation when they had to. But mostly they avoided each other's eyes, slipping in and out of rooms, hoping the others wouldn't notice.
They'd just gotten back from a particularly brutal spin up and the whole team was out at the bar including Blackburn and Mandy. Lisa was conspicuously absent. She hadn't come out with them much since the break up. Another thing for Sonny to feel guilty about. He'd never meant to tear her away from her family, it was just a brutal side effect.
The hour was growing late and only Sonny, Clay, and Jason were left. The "three amigos" as he'd started to think of them. Apparently things were on the rocks again with Stella because Clay had been out with a regularity Sonny remembered from his own young buck days. And Jason was just miserable. Sonny wasn't sure what had him down currently, but it was starting to trouble him. If he and Ray had been on better speaking terms lately they'd probably have been working the Jason problem together. But as it was they were all just kind of co-existing.
He missed his friends. He missed his lady. He looked around the bar and frowned. Apparently he also missed his hat. "Where the hell is my hat?" he griped to nobody in particular, looking under the table and at the nearby seats.
"Back in your cage," Clay grunted, lounging lazily on his barstool. "Saw it there before we left. You just noticed?"
Lisa had been in the cages talking to Jason. So no. He hadn't noticed. He'd just hightailed it out of there as fast as possible. Damn it.
He probably should have just gone home, but he was heading out for a weekend of solo fishing so back to the base it was.
Sure enough his hat was hanging in his cage. He grabbed it and shoved it on his head, heading for the door. If he got home in twenty minutes he'd still get a couple hours sleep before he needed to leave.
The base was quiet at this hour. Only a few support staff and a couple of the more eager Green Team guys were hanging around working out or catching up on paperwork. Sonny nodded to a couple of guys who'd come with them on a recent spin up to Yemen as he passed them in the hall.
He walked past the briefing room and realized the door was cracked. The hair on the back of his neck pricked up. That door was always supposed to be locked what with all the sensitive information inside.
He resisted the urge to go grab a weapon from his cage and instead slowly pushed the door all the way open. What he found inside couldn't have surprised him more than if a bronco had bucked its way through the room.
Lisa was sitting at a table, the glow of the computer casting a soft halo around her. Her head was in her hands and he wasn't sure if she was crying, sleeping, or something else. Before he knew what he was doing he was moving toward her. "Lisa?" he said softly, stopping just short of touching her back, his hand hovering awkwardly near her shoulder.
She started. "Sonny? Oh my god, what time is it?"
He checked his watch. "'bout 1:30 in the morning. What are you doing here?"
"I just had some work to get done. I wanted to review the ISR footage, see what we missed."
"See what you…Lisa what are you talking about? It was a good op. We got the target and came home. What's there to review?"
"We thought there would be only six tangos in the house but there were ten. Somewhere we missed something."
"That's not a miss, that's just what happens sometimes. A couple extra guys doesn't make any difference to us."
"Well it could," she said sharply. "It could be the difference between you coming home on your feet or in a bag."
He'd never seen her like this before, so strung out and tense. Peering a little closer he saw dark circles under his eyes. She looked drained, thin, weary. A spark of concern lit up his chest and he tried to quash it without success. Damn his anatomy for betraying him. "We've all been up for over thirty-six hours. You need to go home," he said gently.
"I will. Soon. I just want to finish this."
"Davis."
"I said I'm fine Sonny!" she snapped.
He couldn't leave this alone. His feet literally refused to move and words started pouring out of him before he could stop them. "I don't think you are," he said evenly. "I think you've been working yourself to death and if you don't change something soon it's going to become a real problem." He shook his head. "This isn't you Lisa. Snapping at people, staying up til all hours of the day and night. And I can tell you've got a headache. I'm not going to let you work yourself to death. 'specially over something that's already done."
She stared at him, mouth slightly open in surprise. He was a little surprised himself. He wasn't one for grandiose speeches, but he'd seen Jason and Clay bury themselves in their work and cut everyone else out. He knew what kind of bad shit happened when you pushed too hard. And he wasn't going to let her do it, relationship or no relationship.
"Let me take you home," he said more gently.
"I can drive myself." She got to her feet and wavered, a hand going to her head.
"You all right?" he asked quietly, wanting nothing more than to scoop her up into his arms and carry her to the car. But he didn't have the right to that anymore so instead he waited.
"Yeah, I just…my head really hurts."
"I'll drive you," he said. "It's no problem."
She was silent on the drive and when he glanced over he saw she'd fallen asleep. Damn it. What the hell was he doing? She'd made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with any kind of relationship and he'd pulled the plug on their friendship as a result, but here he was doing the knight in shining armor routine…why? He wasn't sure. Not really. At least not in a way that he wanted to admit to himself yet.
He parked and killed the engine. "Davis?"
She stirred a bit but her eyes didn't open. "Davis we're here."
Still no reply. He sighed. Well there wasn't really much choice now, was there?
He dug her key out of her purse and then gathered her up into his arms, shoving the truck door closed with his foot.
Despite his fumbling with the key at the door and then having to maneuver sideways to get inside she never stirred, just curled up closer into his chest, making his heart do crazy things. He set her on her bed, pulling off her shoes before covering her with a blanket.
If things had been different he would have climbed in beside her, pulled her close, and told her things would be all right. But everything was different now.
It was still dark out when she woke up. What the hell? How had she gotten home? And in her bed? In her clothes?
It took a good minute for the things to come back as the sleepiness cleared from her mind. Sonny. Sonny must have brought her home and put her to bed.
She digested that for a moment. Things hadn't been good between them for weeks, yet he'd managed to put that aside to get her here. That couldn't have been easy for him. It made her feel incredibly guilty. She should have made him leave last night, not worry him to the point that he'd had to drag her sorry ass back to her own house.
She needed coffee. And a couple Tylenol. And a lot of ice cream. She could still feel traces of last night's headache. They'd become increasingly frequent since the breakup. Too many hours of work probably.
She stretched as she got out of bed and into the living room, stopping short immediately. Sonny was asleep on her couch. Well that was unexpected.
"Sonny," she said loudly. "Hey."
He startled awake with a grunt, nearly rolling off the sofa. She forced herself not to smile. For someone so grouchy and formidable, he was kind of adorable sometimes.
"Oh, hey," he said, rubbing his eyes as he sat up. "Sorry, I uh, I just wanted to stay a bit to make sure you were okay and I musta fallen asleep."
"That's okay," she said, shifting uncomfortably. This was the most time they'd spent together in weeks and she wasn't sure how to proceed. "Thanks. For bringing me home last night. You didn't have to."
"Oh, no, it wasn't any trouble," he said. "But Lisa you—" He seemed to bite his tongue. "Never mind. Not my business. I'll just get outta your hair."
He was leaving and her heart felt like it was tearing apart all over again. "Sonny!"
He paused, his hand on the doorknob. She swallowed. "I hope…does this mean, we can be friends again?"
He didn't move, his back still to her so she couldn't read his face. "I really," she swallowed, "I really miss you."
"Davis," his voice was full of pain.
"I just wish we could go back to the way things were," she rushed on. "Because I don't think I can keep doing this everyday. It just, it hurts too much Sonny."
"You don't think I know that?" He turned to face her, agony radiating off of him. "It's like every single breath is killing me, Lisa." He shook his head. "I was all in on us. I have never—" he searched for words, "not once in my life has somebody meant something to me the way you do. So no, I can't just be friends. I can't do that."
He took a step closer. "You were wrong Lisa. We can make this work, you just don't want to. I get it, you're stressed and you're tired, but what we've got, it's stronger than all that. I shouldn't have driven away that night. I've never backed down from a fight and I don't know why I did this time, but I'm gonna say my piece. I know you're scared. I know that it sucks that we have to lie about us to everybody we care about. But I'm willing to do it, to put everything on the line because of the way I feel about you. I love you Lisa. And I ain't told hardly anybody that before.
"So no, I can't be just friends with you. But if you decide you can make it work, if you want to try for something more, I'll be here for that."
She stared at him, her heart in anguish. "Sonny…I don't think I can," she said weakly. It would never work. It would only come back to hurt them both.
"Okay then." He set his jaw. "I guess I'll see ya around."
He left, closing the door behind him as tears slid down her face. He loved her. And she loved him too. Still, even after all of this. Maybe she'd always loved him. Maybe, somehow, that could be enough.
Her feet jumped into motion and she flew out the door after him. "Sonny! Sonny!"
He was halfway into his truck but he stopped when he heard her. She reached him, out of breath, crossing her arms over her chest against the cool damp of the early morning air. "Don't go," she said, tears still in her eyes. "Please just, please don't go."
"Davis I—"
"You said you never back down from a fight. Well fight for this. Fight for us. Fight for me." The last words came out on a whisper and she stared at him, praying for a response.
His lips were on hers and she was wrapping her arms around his neck as he pulled her close. And just that quickly, everything was all right again. She was safe. She was happy. Was it really so simple? Just give in and let love happen?
"Lisa," Sonny's voice was low in her ear as he pulled back. "Are you sure this is what you want?"
"I'm scared," she said. "I'm scared of what doing this means for us. But I can't be without you. I just can't."
Sonny rubbed his thumb up and down on her arm. "I won't pretend I know how this is going to work out," he said. "But I know how I feel about you."
"Well then," she took his hand and pulled him toward the door. "You should probably come back inside."
It wasn't a solution. But it was something. And somehow it felt like together they could figure it out.
A/N: There. I fixed it. Good golly I hope they figure out how to make things work and that the end of "Danger Crossing" isn't just a one-off. Also they said the word "LOVE" and I cannot even wait to write some fanfic about THAT. Leave your love in the reviews!