Surprises in All Sizes #2
Reg squinted at him as he aimed his field glasses through the plane’s portal. “Those are really good field glasses.”
“Yeah, well, my dad got them when he was in the Bureau,” Anthony said, still peering through them.
Bailey was more interested in how he knew the identity of his would-be assassins. “How do you know—”
“Purple,” Anthony said promptly. “One of those guys is wearing a purple wool suit in July in the desert—wool doesn’t combust like cotton, and I can see a wool fedora still smoldering from here.”
“So, uhm, what do you think happened?” he asked, although he had a pretty good idea.
“Oh, they were hit by an IED of some sort,” Anthony said, with the surety of somebody who made munitions and ordinance his livelihood. “In fact,” he murmured, about a minute later, “I’d bet they were hit by antiaircraft fire that went through the tail section of that plane right there .”
“Oh my God,” Bailey said. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Dean !”
He didn’t remember much, not of the desert landing, nor of their two pilots disembarking. In fact, everything was a sweaty, panicky blur until Glen Echo clambered back into the landed twin-engine and shook him and Reg by the shoulder.
“They’re alive, Doc—but they need you.”
ONCE BAILEY had confirmed Dean was alive but unconscious, he turned his attention to Marcus’s nightmare of a leg.
“Oh God,” said Damien, their other pilot, taking a look over Bailey’s shoulder. “Those are the fucking worst.”
Bailey glanced at him. “You have experience with these?”
“Both as the recipient and as someone who’s nursed a fellow sufferer,” Damien said grimly. “The good news is, we can get this man to a hospital in less than five hours, and that was not the case for me or our friend.”
“Spencer’s was grosser,” Glen said clinically. “I’ll go get the gurney.”
Bailey barely suppressed a snort of laughter.
He guessed the company billing wasn’t bullshit—these guys were search and rescue, which meant as first responders, not much shook them, not even the giant knot on Dean’s temple or the fact that the pilot probably had a cracked skull and had bruised every organ known to medical science.
Bailey helped Damien and Anthony position Marcus for an easier transport to the gurney. “How was your friend’s injury grosser?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“He got his falling out of a helicopter into a flood,” Damien said. “By the time we got to him, it had been festering in a flood for twelve hours. It was like, one dump of antibiotics away from gangrene.”
Bailey grimaced. “Yup. I think Glen’s right.”
“Which means you can tell the kid waiting in Juarez that it’s gonna be okay, right?” Damien said soberly. “He was in bad shape about this guy.”
“I’ll tell him,” Bailey promised, thinking of Chance’s quiet sacrifice to stay behind. “And Reg too. They need Dean and Marcus to be okay.”
“Will they be?” Damien asked, and to his credit, he was earnest about it, and not cavalier like he could have been.
“I hope so,” Bailey said, and his voice came close enough to cracking that he didn’t use it much after that.
IT WASN’T until they got back in the air that Anthony thought to contact his father, who told Val and Chance and organized the hospital crew, and after a tension-wrought five hours of Bailey and Damien keeping up a steady stream of IV fluids, antibiotics, and painkillers for all three of the injured, Glen brought the plane in for an effortless landing, so smooth Bailey almost fell asleep between the time the wheels hit the ground and the time the back hatch was opened by the ambulance drivers, ready to take their patients away.
An eternity later, he found himself—rumpled, dirty, and exhausted—asleep next to Dean Royal’s prone figure.
He was sharing a room with Marcus and Birdie, because Mexico apparently didn’t fuss about patients who knew each other sharing rooms. Marcus would be asleep for many, many hours following a good five hours in surgery, and while visitors were allowed, everybody was cautioned to keep things quiet and the lights dim in deference to a concussion trifecta.
Bailey dimly hoped that more brains had been knocked into heads than knocked out of them.
He would dearly love to help with the knocking.
My God , he was angry.
He hadn’t allowed the anger to build until he’d known they would all be all right, but he was furious . It wasn’t until this blissfully peaceful moment, staring hungrily at Dean’s face, that he reckoned with what had almost happened.
He’d closed his eyes tightly, hoping for some equilibrium, when he felt Dean’s rough hand cupping his cheek. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
Bailey felt that permission in his bones.
“You’re goddamned right I am,” he growled, keeping his voice down but infusing it with every moment of worry, every moment of fury, every moment of painful self-revelation that had peeled the skin off his nerves in the last five days. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?”
“Pushed you out of an airplane?” Dean asked, like he really wasn’t sure.
“Oh, that is the least of your sins,” Bailey snapped.
“You went away . There I am, thinking, ‘Oh my God—we might have a future!’ and you went away !” He fought to keep his voice even.
“I need you to not go away,” he tried to snarl, but it came out more like a whimper.
“I’ve had a lover go away and it… it ruined me.
It destroyed me. I thought I was dead , and then you ravished me in the goddamned ER crib, and suddenly I had a pulse.
And then you came back to me, and I was stunned , because living didn’t suck like I’d been afraid it would, and right when I thought, ‘Wow, we might be able to live together ,’ you went away ! ”
“Oh, baby,” Dean murmured, rubbing the moisture under Bailey’s eyes away with a cracked thumb.
“I won’t go away if I can help it. Emmett couldn’t help it—you know that, right?
He was just doing what you do. Being a hero.
He was just being a good guy. He wouldn’t have left you if he could have helped it.
Who in their right mind would want to leave you?
” He smiled slightly, and his eyes—half-open and hazy—closed with obvious reluctance.
“I’d do a lot to come home to a man like you. ”
He fell back under then, and there was nothing left for Bailey to do but cling to his hand and cry.
He didn’t even ask how Dean knew about Emmett—he figured the answer would be, as it always was, “FBI.” Of course Dean knew about Emmett; Dean knew everything about Bailey, from how he liked to be touched to how he liked his eggs done.
He knew Bailey wouldn’t jump out of an airplane unless his cat was next to him and his father was waiting for him on the ground.
And he knew Bailey had been hurt before he’d shown up on Bailey’s porch with a sprained elbow and then ravished Bailey into next week.
But he’d kept showing up. And when Bailey needed shelter—hell, when Bailey’s father needed shelter—Dean had provided. And when he’d been off slaying Bailey’s dragons, his family had stepped in, like Dean had known they would.
Bailey had no choice. He’d figured that out five days ago, and he knew it even more keenly in his blood now.
He had no choice. Whether Dean went off on an adventure and never came back, or went off and came back until they were both too old for adventures, Bailey had no choice but to be with this man, the man who held his hand when he was hurt and made a home when he wasn’t.
It hit him then, like a slug to his stomach, that he might not ever be going back to Outskirts General Hospital ER again. Sarree could retire. Austin would function without him. But Bailey wasn’t going to live anywhere Dean couldn’t come home to.
Simplest decision of his life.
“Dean?” he asked plaintively, wondering if he was still awake.
“Yeah?” Not entirely awake, Bailey thought, but he wasn’t ready to give up the conversation yet.
“Why do you work in Sacramento when your family lives in Bakersfield?”
“Dunno,” Dean muttered. “Ask Marcus. His idea.”
“If Marcus was willing to transfer to Bakersfield, could we live there too?”
He watched the smile overtake Dean’s face even as he slipped under.
“Sure, Doc. Sure.”
REG, ANTHONY, and Val came in after a bit and relieved Bailey and Chance, who had been there to make sure none of the patients awoke without a familiar face.
Val apparently knew Birdie, so that was nice.
Both Birdie and Marcus had declined to alert family that they were injured, which made Bailey curious, but not so curious that he refused Rory’s lift to one of two hotel rooms they’d rented.
Their pilots had taken off, with a promise to return in three days when the patients might be mobile, and all Bailey had to do was eat from the takeout order that Rory had brought with him, shower, change into the clothes from his knapsack, and sleep for a solid eight hours.
When he returned to the hospital with Chance, they were both surprised to see two men—in their fifties, wearing suits and Fed haircuts—in the room with Marcus and Dean, both of them shouting at the top of their lungs while the injured miscreants winced greenly and tried not to throw up.
Bailey was striding into the room to aid the two nurses, who were begging the men to quiet down, when the more senior looking of the men shouted, “And if you two want to move to fucking Bakersfield, you go the fuck ahead. Take it as the demotion it is, you insubordinate brats, because neither of you are moving up after this fiasco.”
Dean scowled up at the man—obviously his superior in some way—and said, “But is it really a fiasco, sir? We put an end to Bratva’s merger with the cartel, helped eliminate two assassins without actually killing them ourselves, and took out a paramilitary installation with zero casualties.
I mean… nobody’s government is complaining, am I right? ”
His boss turned purple, and the other man had to guide him out by his elbow, talking soothingly to him about his blood pressure and how maybe he should stop by the blood-pressure station and have it monitored because this level of stress couldn’t be good for him, and how Bakersfield might be the best thing that ever happened to the Bureau regarding Cabrillo and Royal, so maybe they could call this a win.
Chance and Bailey exchanged glances and then walked quietly into the room, where the nurses fussed and lowered the lights again and pumped all three patients full of more painkillers.
“I don’t know why I had to endure that,” muttered their tiny pilot. “I’m not even part of your stupid organization.”
“Sorry, Bird,” Dean said, sounding drained. “He did offer you reimbursement for the plane, though.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Dean. You came through like a champ.” And with that Birdie grunted and fell asleep, leaving a groggy Marcus.
“You know what I hate about Bakersfield?” he asked, sounding stoned.
“Your parents,” Dean said promptly.
“You know what I love about Bakersfield?” Marcus persevered.
“ My parents,” Dean said, a dry smile on his face.
“Think they’ll let me live there secretly?”
“Sure, Marcus. But first I need an apartment so Bailey can move out.”
“Good,” Marcus said, sounding surly. “You’d better move in together after this last fucking week. Goddammit, that was close.”
And then he saw Chance, his eyes widened, and he pretended to sleep, while Chance sat next to his bed and opened his phone, a cat-and-canary smile on his face.
Bailey sank into a chair next to Dean’s bed, shaking his head.
“Whatcha thinking?” Dean asked, sounding not quite as stoned as Marcus. “And, uhm, no yelling.” He winced. “’Bout done with that today.”
“You did it,” Bailey said, still stunned. “You’re flat on your back, and you asked to be transferred home.”
“It was your only stipulation, right?” Dean asked, narrowing his eyes on Bailey’s face. “I mean, your dad, his dog, your cat, and my family—that’s all you need, right? I know you can find another job easy, but you don’t need anything else, right?”
Bailey laughed softly, restored almost completely by his sleep, by hearing Dean keep yet one more promise to him, by realizing how deeply enmeshed he really was into the lives of all the people Dean loved best.
Four years ago he’d lost a lover, and he’d been alone in a desert of grief. A week ago his lover had gotten lost in an actual desert—and had given Bailey an entire cavalry with which to retrieve him.
Dean wasn’t going to stop being brave and crazy anytime soon, but Bailey was pretty sure he’d never be alone again.
“You’re okay,” he said. “That’s all I need. Now get some sleep, and we can transport you guys to Bakersfield in a couple of days.”
Dean grunted, sounding happy. “You know what sounds great ? My mother’s curry salad sandwiches. I am dying for one of those. She makes them in the summer, you know?”
Bailey felt tears starting in his eyes, the joyful kind that came when a person’s heart was amazingly full. “They’re delicious ,” he said. “And she makes a mean iced tea and lemonade.”
Dean sighed. “Marcus has his own place in the basement. Think my dad could build a ramp for him?”
“With my dad to help? They’ll probably have it done before we get there.”
“Still afraid I’m holding back?” Dean asked, and Bailey realized he was using the last of his energy to search Bailey’s face for signs of remorse, or dissembling, or fear.
“I think you fell in love with me the same way I fell in love with you,” Bailey said, reaching up to skim Dean’s cheekbone with his fingertips. “Full throttle, no turning back, no fear, jumping right off the crazy cliff like jumping out of an airplane.”
Dean smiled and closed his eyes. “You get me,” he said happily. “It’ll be fine.”