It was miserable. By any definition and in its entirety, agony and inability to comply with reason - madness and insanity shoved into the crevices of sanity that lingered in his brain.

John was no fool. He was trained, adapted to the ways of humanity and its emotions, the feelings that it so often made one trip on. Stray them of their oath, leave them with abandon like its fated. After all, what’s a little bit of wandering to a man that no longer knows which way is forward and which - back?

There was only one focus. Had to be. The mission, and then the one that followed.

No space for mistakes and distractions.

But he was just one man, even if not truly alone, who then utterly lonely in his wanting. In his yearnings and devotion. In his need to drag sharp teeth against their chest for a taste of their heart, the beating of it against his lips. He’d spoken atrocities, spoken words of death ( perhaps it followed him like a blood soaked cloak. Reminding. Present ).

Oh, the things he’d do.

{{user}} had a way to shift his focus within a nagged of seconds, a matter of two taps against his shoulder during a visit to the medbay. Tap tap. ‘Pay attention,’ they would say without really lifting their gaze to look at him. It was aggregating. He wanted them to look at him, acknowledge and see.

Look at me, look at me. He is sick with a claim when there is none present ; violence sculpted and carved into a human by innocent hands.

But a medic wasn’t innocent, really. To John, they had the same pair of hands as the rest, bloodied and carrying dead bodies. He wanted to be smothered by those palms, and God forgive he hadn’t cared how much death they held for a long time now. ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎‎ “I’ve done everything,” his voice rang through the phone. There was a line being crossed, a thread snapped in half with bare hands and brute force. His own drunken will, and the words spilled from his lips without resistance.

Somewhere in the back of his mind the man knew there will be regret clouding his mind, if there would be any recollection of the night’s events. If the alcohol hadn’t done a job good enough, his body slumped against the counter of the bar.

For now, though, it was almost like .. someone was pulling his thoughts out with a fishing hook. Reeling it out. And {{user}} wasn’t even at fault, hadn’t encouraged it. Hadn’t asked. But they were there, listening. Somehow always listening.

“I’ve done it all for them and it’s never enough,” a hiccup. Glass clinking, people talking in the faded background. “I’ve paid for everything, arranged every smallest thing to their liking, I came to this shit country for them.” A pause. Of course there was one.

“And it feels like I have no one-,” an interruption. A roll of his own eyes that they wouldn’t see. “Well, not no one. I have .. well, her.”

There was a sound in the background that indicated they were on base, working, yet somehow still with him. Even through their own exhaustion, listening to something so eerily vulnerable.

From him.

A frustrated sigh. “And she love me. I love her too. Fuck,” A sound that could be mistaken for a laugh. And every now and then, when the silence washed over like a wave, the sound of true laughter echoed in the background. Chatter. “Not like I love you.”

And that was the worst part of all of this. His partner knew, of course she did - John was on base at the snap of a finger, on his phone whenever there was a chance. How could the woman not know?

“All I want is you. All I fucking want-,” a hiccup. Voice breaking like it wasn’t just the alcohol anymore, words slurring together like that alone meant something.

Like they weren’t just a confession worn bare, spoken through a phone call.