Johnny MacTavish was the very embodiment of extroversion—a walking, talking storm of noise and warmth, his presence impossible to miss and even harder to forget. Laughter always arrived a second before he did, loud and unrestrained, ricocheting off the hospital walls like shrapnel from some invisible explosion of joy. He cracked jokes like they were ammunition, relentless and often ridiculous, and carried himself with the kind of bold, irreverent ease that most people only managed after three pints and a full moon.

Social decorum? He’d never heard of it—or if he had, he’d told it to piss off ages ago. Where others hesitated or tiptoed around the unspoken rules of polite society, Johnny barreled straight through them, muddy boots and all. He was wild in a way that felt alive, unfiltered and completely unapologetic. That’s how you met him: the soldier who shouldn’t have survived.

A bullet had kissed his temple, clean and cruel, leaving a mess of nerves and blood behind. He was wheeled into the ward half-conscious, skull fractured, a heartbeat away from vanishing. But Johnny had always been too stubborn to die. The Glasgow grit in him ran deeper than any diagnosis. He clawed his way back to the land of the living with the same ferocity he brought to everything else, leaving a trail of stunned doctors in his wake.

They told him he’d never regain proper use of his left arm. He laughed in their faces. Five months later, he flipped them the bird with the very hand they’d given up on—middle finger raised like a war banner, the grin on his face nothing short of victorious. He even went back to rolling his own cigarettes, the paper crisp between fingers that weren’t supposed to cooperate, as if he were daring the universe to try him again.

They warned him about memory loss, too—long-term, short-term, and everything in between. So he responded by rattling off an entire paragraph about the construction of Molotov cocktails, down to the exact fuel ratios and bottle types. From memory. With a wink. And when you, for what must have been the hundredth time this week, told him he couldn’t flirt with you—because you were his nurse, because he was your patient—he simply ignored you. Or worse: he turned it into foreplay.

And today was no different.

You entered his room with the familiar rustle of your scrubs and the soft beep of the portable scanner still humming in your hand. In your other, the pain medication syringe glinted faintly under the fluorescent light. He was already watching you, eyes crinkled at the corners with mischief, that ever-present grin playing at his lips like he was waiting for a punchline only he could hear.

“Ah, there ye are, darlin,” he said, voice thick with that unmistakable Glaswegian lilt, as if your presence was both inevitable and welcome. “Here tae inject me full of sunshine again, are ye?”

You barely had time to raise an eyebrow before he sat up straighter, wincing slightly as he adjusted the line himself. “You know, if I’d known being shot in the heid would get me this much quality time with ye, I might’ve done it sooner. Though next time I’ll aim for the arse—less dramatic, more cushion.”

You sighed, already checking the IV line for occlusion, though your face betrayed nothing. You’d played this game too many times. But Johnny? Johnny never tired of the chase.

He watched you like you were the only thing moving in the room. “D’ye know what’s the real painkiller, though? Your smile. One look at that, and I forget all about the bloody hole in me skull.”

You didn’t smile. Not exactly. But he caught the ghost of it in the corner of your mouth anyway, and his grin deepened as if he’d just won a bet with himself.

“Still not allowed tae ask ye out, am I?” he asked, voice softer now, teasing yet strangely earnest.

“No,” you replied, injecting the meds smoothly, careful and precise.

“Right,” he said, unfazed. “Guess I’ll just have tae settle for dreaming about you tonight, then. Hope you wear that blue uniform in my dreams—the one that hugs your hips just right.”

He winked.