like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me

by do_not_confess

Summary:

While they are treating him, first at the FOB, when he’s being airlifted out, then at the base in Germany, he is drifting in and out of consciousness, thanks to the trauma and the copious amounts of anesthesia. There are sure and steady hands on his body, those of strangers probably, but she comes to him in his drug-fogged sleep, the way he saw her fully for the first time: her wedding dress pooling at her feet, open and soft – yielding to him. The way she felt under his hands, his body.

He cannot die yet when there’s life like this to be lived. When he might yet feel like that again.

AU. Couldn't leave in that courtoom confession of Luke's. Literally, Cassie could have said then what she said 24 hours later and it'd have been fine? Mash-up of book and movie canon, inspired by the amazing "Fire In My Bones" by Amethyzt, who had the genius idea of the court martial never happening and Luke and Cassie having to figure it out themselves. This story is not in that universe, but in the same spirit. (Go read it, I consider all of the interactions she wrote between Luke and Cassie's mom canon). I also needed more of Luke's journey from a problematic guy to someone worthy of Cassie's love.

Notes:

• Inspired by Fire In My Bones by Amethyzt

Chapter 1: Oh yeah, baby, touch and touch and touch and touch me

i. 

It would have been easier if Luke hadn’t been such a grateful mess after she fucks him that night, before he leaves, like a goodbye.

And yes, looking back, she definitely thinks it happened because he was going on deployment, and how could you send someone to hell and not give them whatever comfort you have to offer, something to hold onto, a reminder that they are a body and that they are alive?

But there’s also the fact that from the first time they met, Cassie has felt like a live wire in his presence, her body responding to whatever friction there is between them. Like what they have, whether it be animosity or attraction or both, could light a match and then a whole fucking wildfire. 

So, there’s that.

They lie together in the dim motel light afterwards; the sheets tangled around them. Cassie is resting her cheek against Luke’s shoulder, sex-warm and slightly sweaty. A stranger would probably mistake them for lovers now.

Cassie looks up at him; he looks so much more normal, without a uniform. So much younger than his 24 years. It feels absurd to think that his job might mean that this, his large, warm body, his steady heartbeat under her hand, might cease and then she’d never see him again.

“You’re awfully quiet, Commando.”

He lets out a breath that’s not quite a sigh. “Guess I don’t have anything smart to say.”

She snorts softly. “Since when has that stopped you?”

He gives off a little indignant huff, and maybe she’s pushed it too far again. Cassie shifts so she can see his face better. There’s something unknowable about him. He won’t look at her, just stares at the ceiling like a goddamn machine.

“You didn’t have to do that.” He says, flatly.

She blinks. “Do what?”

His Adam’s Apple bobs. “Have sex with me.” Another swallow. “I know it’s not –”
He cuts himself off, searching for the right word. “– not your style to take pity on someone.”

She stills, then pulls back an inch, enough to see his profile more clearly.

“Luke,” she starts, “I didn’t –”

“You don’t have to make me feel better about it,” he says quickly, the words rushing out. “I get it. Big night before deployment, scared Marine, sad story –”

“Stop.”

She softens her tone. “That’s not what this was.”

He finally turns his head toward her. What she sees nearly unravels her: there’s something raw and painful in his eyes. His brows are knotted – he’s got a scar there, disrupting the slope of one of them, and if she was truly his wife, she’d surely know the story behind it.

“Then I don’t get it,” Luke tells her.

“Good,” she murmurs. “Neither do I.”

He looks at her as if he’s trying to figure her out. She had wanted to know if there was something that could put a chink in his armor of honor and duty. It had felt so good, she thinks. She had wanted him.

Cassie threads her fingers through his under the sheet. “I don’t sleep with people out of pity. So don’t put that on me.”

Luke swallows. “It felt like you were being kind.”

“I was.” She shrugs. “But that’s not the same thing.”

After a quiet stretch, she speaks again, voice softer. “You were scared,” she says. “And yeah, I saw it.” She squeezes his hand. “But that’s not all I saw.”

Her body hums at the memory of what just happened between them. Turns out they’re not incompatible, at least not in that respect.

Luke turns his head slightly toward her, raising his eyebrows, a smile playing on his lips. “Oh?”

She rolls her eyes. Fucking predictable, that it’d be like that, that she'd be swayed by a handsome face and a little vulnerability, like she’s the cheapest cliché.

“Don’t let it go to your head, Commando.”

He smiles again, more broadly, and tucks his arm behind his head, turning her face to look at her over his elbow. She’s a little irked at how much she liked how that arm pinned her hands above her head when he was inside her, how good it had felt to hold on to it, so sturdy, as she came. Twice. He really is just so handsome, with his face cracked open like it is now. She could get used to this Luke, at least. She rests her head back on his chest, listening to the slower, steadier rhythm of his heart.

After a moment, she asks gently, “Still scared?”

Luke hesitates. “A little.”

Then, more honestly: “Scared shitless, actually.”

She nods, without trying to soothe it away. “Yeah. I know.”

His arm curls around her again – tentative at first, then firmer. Her body, the little traitor, hums in response and follows his lead, inching closer until she’s flush against him.

Luke exhales. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

She tells herself it’s just one night.

Just proximity and heightened emotions and the strange tenderness of two people on the edge of something unknown.

 

ii.

The sun is slipping behind the blast walls, washing the whole FOB a dusty, dim gold. Evening means downtime – showers, food, card games, and the kind of trash talk that always rolls in as predictably as the desert wind.

Luke is sitting on his cot, lacing his boots for a night shift of perimeter security, when Ramirez, a young scrawny kid from Tucson, flops onto the bunk across from him.

“Yo, Morrow,” he says, good-naturedly, cracking open a can, “your wife send anything today?”

He nods to the picture Luke’s put up of Cassie above his own bunk.

The internet had been down at the post for the last week, but today the link has finally been restored. Naturally there’s been a run for the computers and Luke has had to go stand in line, for appearance’s sake. There’d been a message from Jake and Hailey, filling him in on what Spencer’s been up to.

Nothing from his dad.

Keeping up her end of the deal, there’d been an email from Cassie, too, including a couple of pictures from her last gig a photographer friend had taken. She looked so beautiful on stage, hair wild, in her element.

He pushes that thought down. She gets to live her life, and he gets to live his. That’s the deal.

Luke doesn’t need to look up to know that Ramirez is still there. “Yeah,” he says, aware that he has a façade to maintain. “Heard from her earlier.”

Cooper, a bulky gunner from Minnesota, snorts from the next bunk. “Ricky, man, she’s hot as hell. Hey Morrow, she got any friends? I need a woman like that when we’re next on leave. But, maybe, like… a little less mouthy.”

Luke pauses, hands on the buckle of his armored vest. He feels a prick in his chest – quick and sharp.

Ramirez grins. “She the type who’s always arguing, huh? Some of them never shut up. My girl back home? Sweet. Knows when to let things go.”

He tries to remember that most of the guys in his platoon are younger than himself. Luke’s pretty sure that Cooper and Ramirez, with their 18 and 20 years respectively, have about as much relationship experience as he did at that age.

Cooper chimes in, tossing a deck of cards onto a crate. “I met Morrow’s wife, once, just before we shipped out. She looks like she’d rip your balls off if you breathed wrong. Tried at least, with Armando.”

The guys laugh. Luke doesn’t.

Ramirez blows out a low whistle. “Yeah, man. Women like that… too much work.”

Luke tries to focus on the strap he is tightening, his jaw ticked. Cassie is mouthy. And headstrong. And could argue circles around anyone if she wanted. She’s exhausted him more than once.

He’s found it exasperating. A lot.

But hearing these boys mock her – flatten her into some caricature of a ‘difficult woman’ – it hits him sideways. Makes something tighten low in his gut.

Cooper deals out cards and Ramirez adds: “Hot or not, I’d lose my mind living with a woman like that.”

Luke’s not sure he’s even included in the conversation anymore, but he feels heat crawl up the back of his neck. The words Get your girl ring in his mind.

Ramirez doesn’t notice, just keeps running his damn mouth. “My cousin dated this chick. Crazy. Always talking back. You gotta set some rules, man, otherwise they dance circles around you.”

Luke swallows hard. “Watch how you talk about my wife.”

It comes out sharper than he intended, the kind of edge that makes the hut quiet for a second.

Ramirez puts his hands up, laughing. “Relax, man. I’m just saying. If they got that attitude,” he mimes claws, “you gotta keep a woman like that in line. Or Jody will take care of her back home.”

Him and Cooper cackle at the allusion to that age-old military boogeyman. Luke’s heard all the jokes before, of course.  About ‘Jody’, the fictional guy who is ready to ‘take care’ of your partner while you’re deployed, making light of the very real anxiety most Marines feel when leaving a significant other behind.

Ain’t no use in calling home, Jody’s on your telephone.

Ain’t no use in going home, Jody’s got your girl and gone.

Ain’t no use in feeling blue, Jody’s got your sister too.

He can take them talking stupid shit, but at this, something in Luke snaps. The impulse flares – hot, immediate, protective in a way he doesn’t want to examine too closely: a sudden, sharp urge to stand up, to grab Ramirez by the collar, to shove him against a wall, to tell him –

“Shut your damn –”

But then he sees Frankie standing there, who’s come back from showering, wearing his typical sweet smile. Luke doesn’t know how much he’s heard, but Frankie surveys the scene and looks at him towering over Ramirez, fists clenched. He shakes his head very slightly.

Stop.

The instinct hits him. Hard, familiar, drilled in: Don't start something you can’t finish. Not here. Not with the guys who watch your six on patrol.

It’s not like he has any claim over Cassie. If she had ‘a Jody’ or anyone else back home, wouldn’t that be just within her right, anyway?

His fingers curl tight around the strap on his armor.

“Don’t listen to that dumbass, Luke,” Frankie says light-heartedly, even though Luke can see the flint in his eyes. He then turns to Ramirez, his face flat: “Cut it out. Cassie’s my friend. If you talk about her like that again, I’ll whoop your ass. And you’re not the one married to her. Not like you’d get the chance, anyway.”

Luke’s fingers finally get that last buckle secured.

He is married to her.

Even if it is fake.

Even if she’d kill him if she knew he was letting this conversation happen without a fight.

He can imagine her reaction – arms crossed, cutting sarcasm dialed to maximum: “Oh my God, Commando. You just sat there while they called me mouthy? Were you planning to defend me at all or were you too busy upholding a fucked up patriarchal system?”

He almost smiles at the thought.

Instead, he stands up, adjusts his gear one last time. He forces his tone flat, neutral. Non-committal.

 “I’m heading out.”

Ramirez shrugs, almost apologetic. “Later, Morrow. No hard feelings, eh?”

Luke doesn’t respond, just nods curtly and steps into the open air. The night wind hits him – cooler now, carrying the smell of dust and diesel. He lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’s been holding.

He doesn’t understand why their comments bother him so much. They’re just kids. And hell, half the time Cassie drives him insane with her attitude. She’d rip his head off for trying to defend her. She doesn’t need him.

And yet –

Hearing them talk about her like she is something to tame – It makes him want to break something.

He doesn’t know what that means, doesn’t want to know. For now, he tells himself that it is simple – purely practical. He needs these guys to survive. He cannot afford to start fights over a marriage neither of them believes in.

He turns his step towards the command post to report for duty.

Behind him, the laughter inside the hut picks up again.

--

Cassie is perched on the edge of her couch, laptop open but forgotten, earbuds in, staring out at the streetlights throwing orange orbs into the dark just outside her window. Her phone buzzes against the coffee table, shaking slightly against the glass top.

When she sees the caller, she swipes to accept.

The screen flickers, revealing Luke's face. He looks tired, more so than usual, and his expression is drawn.

It still feels strange to see his face there, in a combat zone, when the last time she’d held it between her hands, kissing him goodbye. The memory catches her off-guard, a sudden tightening in her belly.

Not real, she tells herself.

The only thing that had been half-way real was the night they had spent together before he shipped out, and then he’d pretended that hadn’t happened. He’s never even alluded to it since, although it would probably help with their cover.

"Hey," she greets him, forcing herself to smile sweetly as she imagines a heart-sick military wife would when finally getting to talk to her husband again. She doesn’t know who’s privy to this conversation, another thing that’s entirely fucked up about the military. "How’s it going?"

"Same old," Luke replies, shrugging slightly. His voice is flat, and he isn’t meeting her eyes. "Busy, hot, you know... Iraq."

Cassie nods, and even though she doesn’t know Luke very well, she can feel something off. “You sure you’re okay? You don’t look... great.”

Luke runs a hand over his face, his gaze flicking briefly to the camera before glancing away again. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just... some stuff with the guys. It’s been on my mind, is all.”

This response is very cryptic, and Cassie’s instinct with any other friend would be to pry, but with Luke that tactic is like trying to chew on granite.

Then, totally out of the blue, he says: “Makes me think about some of the things you said.”

Cassie’s heart skips a beat, her mind immediately going to anything she’s railed against before, any of the points of contention between them, which add up to a pretty sizable list, considering the short time they’ve known each other. But she doesn’t want to assume.

"What do you mean?" she asks.

“It’s nothing," Luke says, but there is a slight edge to his voice now. “It’s just...” he lowers his voice a little, “sometimes people here are… I guess that’s to be expected. You’re thrown in with a bunch of men – mostly boys actually; some who you’d never pick as co-workers, let alone Marines. There’s stuff I don’t think I’d let slide if…”

He breathes out.                                                                                                           

“I guess sometimes I just want to…  knock their heads together, or something. But –"

He is searching for words, and when he angles his face, she can see the purple shadows under his eyes.

“They’re my brothers. If it came down to it – there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them. I don’t know, Cassie. That probably makes me a bad person.”

She can see the conflict in his eyes, the weight of it pressing down on him. Before, it was so easy to criticize him for anything his fellow Marines did, the litmus tests they failed in her eyes, but she suspects that they are bonded through training, trauma, and their mission, and that is probably a requirement for what they have to do. Doesn’t mean she likes it, but she understands, a little. “I don’t think you’re a bad person, Luke,” she says, her voice quieter now. “You’re not.”

She smiles at him, for real now.

“You don’t have to agree with everything they say just because you need them.” She tries to remember the words of her therapist in college. “You know, two truths can coexist at the same time, even if they feel mutually exclusive? And… you’re allowed to see the good in them and still have your own moral compass.”

He is silent for a moment, clearly wrestling with her words. “I’m just… I don’t know if it’s that easy.”

She leans forward slightly. “Oh, I’m not saying it’s easy. I really struggle with it with my mom. I love her so much, but she has some views, about men, about my career, that I just… that’s just not how I want to live.”

He grins that shit-eating grin of his, the one she hates or should hate, really.

“Oh, so you argue with your mom, too?”

“Shut up.” Cassie says. “There’s no arguing with Marisol Salazar. She’s more stubborn than you even.” And then, more seriously: “But, you know, maybe it’s possible to be on one side of an issue and still care for the person you disagree with. I want it to be possible. Like…. Maybe you can be against war as a means of resolving conflict and at the same time… if I could pick for someone to come back in one piece… I’m hoping it’s you.”

He looks at her for a long beat.

“And Frankie, of course,” she adds quickly, because she feels awkward under his gaze, even from a million miles away.

“Yeah... yeah, I get it,” he says, his voice softer.

Then there’s a tinny unintelligible announcement on Luke’s side and he tells her he’s got to go.

Cassie smiles. “Alright. Just… take care of yourself over there, okay?”

Luke’s lips twitch in a faint smile. “I’ll try.”

Then the call ends abruptly, leaving Cassie to stare at the dark screen.

It is only then that she realizes that they both forgot their fake ‘I love yous’.

For a moment, it feels like something between them had been real, even if most of their marriage isn’t.

 

iii.

Sometimes he thinks it would be better if he died. Most of the time, it’s not a desperate thought, just a detached calculation.

If it were to happen to him, doesn’t that mean someone else would be spared, another one of his fellow Marines, many of whom are parents, spouses, siblings? It would happen to him and therefore not to better men, kinder men, braver men. His family would be able to remember him as he was, just before it ended, a Luke who could never succumb to addiction again, never be able to disappoint them ever again. He turns the idea over and over in his brain when he’s terrified, like a shard of glass being weathered in the ocean, smoothing its sharp edges.

And there is now another thought, oddly comforting considering a few months ago he never even knew she existed:

Cassie would be taken care of.

So would the rest of his family, actually. He hasn’t told her about the death gratuity or the life insurance payment that would go to her, Jake and Hailey and little Spencer. He’s tried to put it into a letter, but the words elude him.

Death, he imagines, would be just an end to all of it: the fear, the constant worry about whether and when something might happen to him, the intrusive thoughts of wanting to numb that anxiety with oxy. All of that would cease.

He's not particularly faithful, having been raised vaguely Presbyterian, but he remembers when Mrs Vudek explained Buddhism to them in AP Philosophy in high school. It is a bit like that, he thinks, the idea of it having some kind of peace wrapped up in it, everything hard and awful about this world and this life, poof, gone. Maybe there’s something coming after it, but even if there isn’t, the thought of it ending is comforting.

Nirvana.

But, when it really comes down to it, Lance Corporal Luke Morrow doesn’t actually want to die.

He realizes that in a few moments that rewire his brain chemistry:

When the device goes off, pain explodes all around, blowing out his periphery, coursing through every part of his body. He’s on the ground, face in the dirt and his training works, because his first thought is for his brothers, before he can fully register what has happened to him. Frankie is next to him in the dust and even though Luke can’t get up himself, he manages to grab Frankie by his vest, rolls him over onto his back. And – he’ll remember this until the day that he draws his last breath – it is so immediately obvious that whatever made Frankie Frankie is gone.

Luke doesn’t know how, but he begins to crawl away, trying to find shelter, pulse hammering in his throat, like an animal. He can taste the sharpness of adrenaline on his tongue along with the acrid smell of smoke, black and heavy. Every cell of his body is screaming at him to survive. When rough hands pull him up and drag him off, putting him on a gurney, applying a tourniquet, strapping him to a vehicle, all he can think of is thank fuck. Because whatever force took Frankie and spared him is not to be relied upon for an end to suffering.

While they are treating him, first at the FOB, when he’s being airlifted out, then at the base in Germany, he is drifting in and out of consciousness, thanks to the trauma and the copious amounts of anesthesia. There are sure and steady hands on his body, those of strangers probably, but she comes to him in his drug-fogged sleep, the way he saw her fully for the first time: her wedding dress pooling at her feet, open and soft – yielding to him. The way she felt under his hands, his body.

He cannot die yet when there’s life like this to be lived. When he might yet feel like that again.

It’s different yet similar when Johnno’s face cracks under his knuckles, the blood he draws from him so satisfying. It should scare him a little, the rush of blood in his ears, the pain in his leg there but also forgotten, feeling so fucking alive. If you so much as look at my wife, I will kill you, he’d said, the words coming out so easy, too easy, really. Johnno looked small and pathetic lying on the ground and yet, as a threat to everything that has become so dear to Luke, the focus to stop him was single-minded.

It’s exhilarating.

Yes, well, as it turns out, Luke doesn’t want to die at all.

Chapter 2: Feels exactly like it was, but at the same time it feels so different

Summary:

So... this is part two of 3 or 4? See end of chapter for notes.

i.

Luke steps out into bright sunlight after his meeting with his assigned JAG.

It feels strange to be in uniform again. This morning, pulling on his cammies, he could tell they fit more loosely now. He’s dropped weight since his injury, has lost probably quite a bit of muscle too. He was never one of the biggest guys in his unit anyway – a lot of infantrymen liked to be as ripped as possible, but he never saw the point. Didn’t want to mess with his running form like that. And he’s always been physically strong enough for his duties, enough to excel even.

He feels less than himself now, but he’s steeled his resolve.

He knows what he’ll do.

As he climbs down the steps from the service building to cross the lot to Jake’s truck, trying not to wince, he spots Cassie a few yards away, leaning against her Subaru, as if he’s summoned her telepathically.

She is in her usual uniform, too: a tank top and a pair of jeans. Her hair is pulled back into a high ponytail, accentuating her features and – she’s so fucking pretty. God, he forgot how pretty she is.

It actually hurts to look at her.  

“Hey,” he says, as he approaches. Feels as shy as a schoolboy. He hasn’t seen her since she told him to get out, since she told him she wanted a divorce, since he finally told her the whole ugly truth about himself.

“Hey,” she parrots back and he can’t read her at all.

“I was just meeting with my counsel,” he says, by way of explanation.

“I know,” she says. “Your dad told me.”

He takes that information in, that his dad and Cassie are still talking. He’s glad of it.

She shifts her weight, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I was on base anyway,” she adds, almost too casually. “Had my checkup at the hospital.”

“Are you okay?” he asks, can’t stop himself. It comes out sharper, more worried, than he meant.

Cassie blinks, clearly surprised by the intensity. “I’m fine, Luke. It was just routine.”

He tries to get a grip. Tells himself it’s just as well that she’s unexpectedly here.

“Listen,” Luke clears his throat, stands up straight, to tell her what he’s decided: “Sergeant Wozniak told me it’s unlikely that you’ll be prosecuted in civil court, but I wanted to tell you that you have nothing to worry about.”

She looks at him in that unnerving way of hers.  

“I’m probably going to end up in jail for a while.”

Her eyes go wide.

“What?” she’s flabbergasted. “I thought she told you that you should plead ‘not guilty’ and that your chances are good! Didn’t she?”

He sighs. “I know.”

He looks at her: her delicate face, her dark eyes. There’s the urge to touch her – that’s been there since the beginning. He wonders if it’ll ever be like this with another person. But he’s lost any right to do touch her. At least he needs her to know he won’t let her down this time:

“I won’t take that risk,” he says. “I’m going to tell them I coerced you into it – that you didn’t know what it meant, or that you didn’t realize it was fraud. I’ll do anything to keep you out of this mess.”

She stares at him as if he’s grown a second head.

“Anything, Cassie.” His voice cracks a little and he clears his throat.

She furrows her brow, folds her arms in defiance. She’s still wearing the makeshift wedding ring he fashioned for her out of his dog tag chain. It’s probably just to keep up appearances while they’re on base, but it still strengthens his resolve.

“That is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” she says flatly. She has to tilt her chin up to glare at him, which only makes the sting worse. “Don’t –”

He needs her to understand:

“You’ll probably lose your benefits, but at least they won’t be able to prosecute you. Are you going to be alright though, for insurance? With the record deal? I still have a little money –”

Now she looks pissed.

“I don’t need to you to do that for me.” She says sharply, then looks away, taking a deep breath. “I wish you’d stop trying to protect me when it’s not even what I want. This – this chivalry act you pull? It’s bullshit. Are you doing this because you’re scared? Is this your coping mechanism?”

God, why is she always so goddamn stubborn? Doesn’t she understand what he’s trying to do?

“I’m doing this because I –” he doesn’t have the words to say what he feels, so he lands on: “Because I care about you, Cassie. I couldn’t live with myself if –”

She looks at him, scathingly.                                                                                                            

“Oh, you couldn’t live with yourself, huh?” He eyes are flinty. “I think you’re a coward. So, you get to throw it all away for me? Makes you feel like a real man?”

“Can we not do this here –”

He gently tries to take her by the arm, aware that they might be causing a scene, to steer her somewhere more private. But it’s not use, she just shakes him off with an angry flinch.

She lowers her voice, although it hardly takes away from the intensity of her words.  

“What if I want to take care of you? What if I’m not OK if something happens to you? What about that?”

He just stands there and stares at her.                                                                                                            

“I knew what I was getting into. This whole thing was my idea.” She jabs a finger into his chest. “I married you and – and even if – well, we are still legally married, Luke! Remember the vows?”

He nods, dumbly. He never thought he’d actually be expected to keep the promises he made that day, and then later – when he wanted to – he knows he broke them all by hiding the truth, by putting her and her mom in harm’s way.

“We promised we’d take care of each other in sickness and in health and… we did that, didn’t we?”

“Cassie,” he tells her and she shakes her head.

“Luke,” she motions to her insulin pump, half covered by the hemline of her tank top. “Because of you I don’t have to worry about my life every single day.” She looks at him, hard, and it is too much, what she says next. “Because you laid your life on the line, I get to have a good one.”

He stares at the floor, but she puts a hand on his cheek, turning his face towards her, forcing him to look at her.

Her eyes are big and swimming with something.

“And – we didn’t love each other. But – I feel you… honored me. You were loyal.” She grips his hand, stepping into his space.  “You say you care about me?”

He can’t help it; his arms find their way to her waist. Her body follows his cue, as if she’s been waiting for him all along.

“I care more about you than I’ve ever cared about anyone,” he says thickly, the words painful in his chest from holding them back for months.

“You do,” she says, as if it’s still a surprise to her, as if she’s turning the words over in her mind.

And then her lips are on his, her hands on his arms moving up his biceps, where he’s rolled up the sleeves of his uniform, pulling him in. She makes a small sound in the back of her throat when he kisses her back, one hand splayed behind her shoulder blades, the other in her hair. How has he been able to go without this for so long?

She breaks it off after a few seconds.

“Sorry,” she says, though what for he couldn’t say. “We shouldn’t – I’m still mad,” she adds, as if to clarify. “I – you lied to me, Luke.”

He nods, again. “I’m so sorry.”

She steps back, still breathing fast. If he touched her chest, he knows he could feel her heart hammering the same way his does.

“I don’t know where to go from here,” she says, “but I know this: I don’t want you to admit to anything. I’ll testify to anyone who asks me that this is a real marriage.”

And suddenly his heart, his silly heart, is a hopeful thing again.

“You’d be willing to perjure yourself for me?”

“Luke,” she says, looking at him as if stupid. “How can it be perjury if it’s not really a lie?”

 

ii.

In the end, it all comes to nothing.

The NCIS office is colder than Luke expects – bright lights, bare walls, humming vents. He sits in a plastic-molded chair that feels too small for him, hands folded on the table to keep them from fidgeting. He feels like a fraud wearing his wedding ring to this meeting, but he can’t bring himself to take it off.

Wozniak sits beside him. She’s calm in a way that Luke doesn’t understand.

Across from them, Special Agent Wright flips through a thin folder. Thin. That detail makes Luke’s stomach twist, though he tries not to read into it. Wright is also the officer who first questioned him when he was detained, who informed him there’d be an inquiry – but back then Wozniak had been right beside him, sharp and steady. She is again today, but this feels different. Almost… routine.

Wright doesn’t look aggressive. Just tired.

“Lance Corporal Morrow,” he begins, sliding a single page forward, “this is the statement we received from Jonathan DeLuca.”

Luke’s throat tightens.

Wozniak’s knee shifts slightly toward him – not touching, but grounding. A reminder.

Wright continues, voice flat: “It alleges that you married Cassandra Salazar for financial gain, that the two of you are not in a romantic relationship, and that you split the BAH and FSA benefits you received. He claims the marriage was a fraudulent arrangement.”

Luke stares at the page. His heartbeat pounds in his ears. “Yes, Sir.”

Wozniak inhales sharply through her nose.

Wright raises an eyebrow. “That wasn’t a question.”

Luke nods quickly, ashamed heat crawling up his collar. “Yes, Sir.”

Wozniak’s voice slips in smoothly, controlled. “My client acknowledges he heard the statement.”

Wright exhales through his nose and leans back in his chair. “Look. I’m going to be honest with you. This statement? It’s weak. DeLuca was detained on drug charges. Is there an explanation as to why he has made these claims? Maybe a grudge? How do you know Mr. DeLuca?”

Luke swallows hard. Wozniak turns her head toward him slightly – her expression neutral, but her eyes carrying a clear message: answer, but don’t volunteer.

Luke tries. But the truth is bitter in his throat. “He was my drug dealer, Sir.”

Wozniak closes her eyes for half a second.

Wright looks straight at him now, brow furrowed.

“I am an addict,” Luke supplies before he can stop himself. “I have a serious opioid problem that I got help for, more than a year before I joined the Corps. I attended an inpatient program and got sober. I had a sponsor and went to regular meetings until I went to basic training and eventually  was deployed.”

Wozniak lifts his hand slightly – not to interrupt him, but to slow him. “Agent Wright already has the documentation of your rehabilitation on file.”

Wright nods, making a note on his pad. Luke’s fingers curl hard against the table’s edge.

“How long have you been sober for, son?”

“A little over two years.”

Wright flips another page. “Let’s talk about the financials. We reviewed your accounts and your spouse’s. You transferred money back and forth. You split expenses. She paid for groceries and utilities. You paid part of her medical costs.” He shrugs. “That’s literally what married couples do. The only thing that might be used as evidence against you is circumstantial – the payments you have made to Mr. DeLuca.”

Luke takes a deep breath. “I owed him money. When Ms. Salazar and I decided to get married, I told Mr. DeLuca that I would receive extra pay and would finally be able to clear my debts. The reason we got married –”

Wozniak cuts in gently but firmly. “We don’t need to delve into subjective motivations for lawful marriages.”

Wright mirrors her tone. “We don’t prosecute marriages for starting for practical reasons. Hell, if we were in the business of prosecuting rushed marriages for folks who need the extra pay or don’t want to be separated, we’d have to prosecute half the Corps.”

Wozniak’s lips twitch, a ghost of agreement.

Wright spreads his hands. “We do prosecute fraud when there’s clear, corroborated evidence of intent.” A beat. “Is there?”

Luke’s breath catches.

“I’m not sure how to answer this question.”

Wozniak turns to him fully now, voice quiet. “The evidence speaks for itself.”

Wright nods to her like they’ve already had this conversation without Luke. “You lived together after your injury. You listed her as your next of kin before you deployed. You added her as a beneficiary in case of your death. She attended your medical appointments. You didn’t hide the relationship. Many people have seen you two together.”

Luke doesn’t realize his leg is twitching until he feels Wozniak’s hand on his shoulder.  “Lance Corporal. Breathe.”

He does. Barely.

Wright’s tone matches hers. “Lance Corporal Morrow, unless you have anything more to say… I’m going to write up my report recommending to my superior that you receive a reprimand and we’re closing this case.”

Luke’s head snaps up. “What?”

“I have no good evidence of fraud,” Wright repeats. “DeLuca has incriminated himself, his statement is unreliable, and everything else we found supports that your marriage is – authentic.”

Wozniak gives Luke a slow nod. This is what we wanted. Let it end here.

Luke’s vision blurs for a moment. He looks down, trying to steady himself, but the room tilts anyway.

Wright watches him carefully. “Lance Corporal? Are you alright?”

Luke swallows. Hard. “I – I don’t know what to say, Sir.”

Wozniak answers on his behalf. “Thank you, Sir.”

“Well,” Wright says quietly, “you were maybe scared and misguided. But your service record is exceptional and shows you’ve been trying to do the right thing.”

He closes the folder.

Luke nods, stunned. Wozniak rises with the same calm she’d entered with, gathering her briefcase. When Wright leaves, she gives Luke a moment before touching his shoulder once more – lightly, professionally.

He bows his head and grips the seat beneath him, shoulders shaking once – barely a flinch, but for him it’s a crack as wide as an earthquake.

Wozniak pretends not to notice, instead donning her cap.

“Go home, Morrow,” Wright says at the door. “And take care of your wife.”

Luke closes his eyes. Cassie’s face fills the dark behind them – sharp, stubborn, impossibly soft where it counts.

When he stands, the weight on his shoulders is different. Wozniak walks beside him as they leave the office.

Not leading. Not following. Just there.

 

iii.

The venue is dim, low light and murmured conversations, but Luke keeps to the back wall anyway. He isn’t sure if Cassie even knows he’s come. He hadn’t said he would. He isn’t sure he deserves to be here, after the official reprimand and they way they left it when he last saw her.

He knows Cassie’s still in touch with his dad and with Hailey, who have likely filled her in on all details of the result of the inquiry.

Luke doesn’t know what to say to her. He’s been going to meetings and seeing a counselor Yarvis referred him to, for his PTSD. And slowly, things are… clicking.

Not neatly, not all at once, but enough for him to see the shape of what’s been driving him. It’s a laundry list of issues: The hypervigilance he always thought of as discipline. The guilt over what happened to Frankie – what he couldn’t prevent as his fire team leader. How he’d spent so long trying to be the man his father was, that he didn’t know how to ask for help before everything went to hell.

All those things that felt like training now look like symptoms. And some of them look suspiciously like the things Cassie has been calling him out on since the moment they met. Some of her words have been replaying in his mind.

Not an excuse for casual misogyny, though.

Excuse me, he doesn’t get me?!

Makes you feel like a real man, huh?

Where she’s playing tonight, it’s not a big gig, just an open mic night at a club downtown where Cassie likes to test out new material before she takes it to The Loyal and her label. She’s invited him before and he never had the courage to come, but tonight, when he’d seen the announcement on her Instagram, he’s decided to go.

He’d been at Jake and Hailey’s for dinner and got stuck in traffic, so he almost missed her set. When he slipped in, she was finishing something upbeat. Now she’s swapped her keyboard for a guitar, stepping up to the mic as she tunes it. Her hair is pulled into a low pony, face pale in the stage lights. She looks striking.

“This is the last song for tonight,” she says, and there’s a disappointed murmur in the crowd. “But this one’s brand new.”

Her fingers brush the fretboard, the strings giving off a whisper noise. “I think this might be all too familiar for many of you.” She swallows visibly, then clears her throat, chin stuck out in defiance. “If it is – I see you and I believe you. This one’s called Wolves.”

Luke’s chest tightens at the steady thrum of the guitar in the opening bars.

The first verse drifts out soft, but razor-edge – about a girl alone at fifteen, cornered in a parking garage by a man she mistook as harmless.

By the second verse, the girl is nineteen at a party, trusting someone who pretended to be a safe person, who plied her with drinks, someone who acted like he was owed her body.

He feels something cold settle in his gut, something ugly.

He has never been that guy—
but he has known guys like that.
Guys who, looking back, might have been wolves.

He remembers the jokes made in bad taste, the ones he scoffed at when men talked about women like trophies. Discounted them as false bravado. Luke had never spoken like that himself – had called guys out on it from time to time – but he also never stopped to wonder if there were real assaults behind the talk.

Maybe he hadn’t understood then. Maybe those men were talking about their prey.

He can feel the weight of it, how those attitudes and his passivity live in the same ecosystem Cassie is singing about – where men get to wander freely and women have to map out danger just to get home alive.

The third verse comes in like an indictment.

Saw a teenage girl on my street

Talking tall to one of them

Recognized him in an instant

Heard about him from my friend

Thank God women learned to whisper

But I crave a megaphone

That wolf said, "It's dangerous out there"

That wolf said, "Let me walk you home"

When Cassie delivers the line about men who play at being protectors, Luke’s heart clenches with shame.

She leads into the chorus, her face open, honest, the way she offered herself to him before, and he knows what a gift it was, especially in a world that has taught her she needs to be careful. He can’t take his eyes off her.

The applause comes like a distant roar and he finds himself clapping along with the crowd.

Cassie smiles, thanks them.

There’s a girl just to the right off the stage with tears down her face.

--

“Luke?”

She finds him on the low brick ledge outside the venue’s stage door where he’s been waiting for her. She’s carrying her guitar case, and the neon light bar sign behind her is giving her a halo as he looks up at her.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Hi,” he tells her. “I just managed to catch the end of your set. It was…”

What can he say that doesn’t ring hollow or like he’s a hypocrite?

She studies his face. “So, you heard my new song?”

He nods. “Yeah. I… I did.”

She waits. When he doesn’t continue, she asks gently, “And?”

Luke swallows hard. “It was so good, Cassie.”

She’s got him pinned with her gaze and he can’t read her at all. Then he blurts out: “I just wanted to make sure you’re OK.”

“You’re impossible,” she says, smirk tugging at her lips. “Seriously. All that chest-thumping about protecting women – We talked about this. I thought you were over that.”

He doesn’t answer right away. He thinks he’ll never be over wanting to protect her, that he’s not sure he knows how to love someone without it. The part of him that always wants to control the uncontrollable, is coiled, ready to snap at the world before it can harm her.

“I just… sometimes I see danger – real or imagined – and I can’t –” He stops. He runs a hand through his cropped hair. “I can’t help it.” He amends: “I’m working on it.”

Cassie leans back, arms crossed, a faint grin playing on her face despite the tension. “Is that why you look like you’re ready to punch a wall every time a guy looks at me sideways?”

Luke’s lips twitch, half-smile, half-grimace. “The thought of anything happening to you –” he mutters.

Although, stuff already plainly did.

Cassie’s face softens as she looks at him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize –” he shakes his head, “I’m sorry. For all the times I’ve been an ignorant ass. For what other guys have said and for what I didn’t say or do to stop it.”

Her brow furrows.

“I feel so dumb now. I thought some of your issues – maybe most of them – came from… not having a dad around.” He clears his throat. “That if you had one, things would be different.”

It sounds ridiculous, saying it out loud. To think that what was missing for Cassie was just one stand up guy.

Cassie’s head tilts, half amused, half exasperated. “I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman,” she says, letting the words hang for a beat. “Of course I’ve experienced sexual harassment. That’s not about my dad. That’s about men.”

He nods. Takes it in. Then looks at her. “I don’t want to be someone you have to be wary of.”

She blinks at him, dumbfounded.

“Luke,” she says softly, sliding her guitar case aside so she can face him fully. “I wasn’t singing about you.”

He opens his mouth, closes it.

Her voice is warm. “That lyric - that wolf said ‘let me walk you home’ – that was – things aren’t always what they seem to be.” She looks down at her shoes. “I’ve known real wolves. Some of them looked like harmless dogs.”

Luke looks down, jaw tight, something like lead in his stomach. But she reaches out and touches his hand lightly.

“And then there have been men,” she continues, “who I didn’t want to trust but who then offered safety without owning me, without asking for anything back.” A tiny smile lifts her lips.

He lets out an exhale. “What does that say about me that I want to find all those guys and kill them? Even if they’re me?”

She tuts at him, as if he’s being ridiculous.

“Ok so maybe at first, I lumped you in with every guy who ever made me feel small. But you’ve never – not after that first day, after the wedding. Even when we were faking everything else, that part was real.”

He lets out a shaky exhale. “I’m so sorry about the way I bossed you around that day. I never should have spoken to you like that.”

Cassie blinks as she considers him. Then says:

“You’re not a wolf.”

Luke shifts uneasily. He thinks about Johnno’s skin splitting under his knuckles, the feel of the give of soft tissue and the crunch of bone under his fist. He thinks of how he’d let Armando make his jokes, told Cassie to calm down, to not ruin anyone’s night.

He thinks about being on patrol in Iraq, being under fire. How he’d thrummed with certainty that he would kill anyone, gladly, who’d lay a hand on one of his brothers.

He thinks of how he’d screamed himself hoarse, yelling into his pillow in his childhood bedroom, the night his dad had told him that they were moving his mom to hospice care.

She looks at him, quizzically, then stands.

“Come on,” Cassie says, extending a hand. Something in him eases – slowly, carefully, like a wound unclenching. “Come on, Commando, you can walk me home.”

 

--

Notes:

The song Cassie showcases at the open mic night is actually a wonderful and poignant song called "Wolves" by singer/songwriter Jensen McRae. Obviously neither I nor Cassie own any of these lyrics, but they're soo goo! I encourage you to listen to it!

Here's a video of Jensen McRae talking about her favorite lyrics in the song which are pivotal to this chapter and how the world
isn't always how it appears to be.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/foNXx314MTo

Cassie's songwriting in the book is much less focused on love songs and I love how book!Cassie's songs about other stuff (e.g. her relationship with her mother) are what draw Luke to her art.

Notes:

Ok - so I'm obviously late to a very tiny party, but anyway. Is anybody still here?

I'm mostly writing this for my own enjoyment as I loved this pairing's chemistry in the movie and the book, but felt both were lacking things I really craved, like more remorse and nuance about Luke's character or just a lot more... spice? We were short-changed! This has more parts coming, but I don't know yet how many. Feedback is a writer's delight, so if you'd like, come and chat with me in the comments!