Tatemcallisterr - Blog Posts

jaxon tucked his hands into his leather jacket, a Marlboro Red cigarette hanging from his lips, as he waited for tate outside McCormick’s. the text and the request came somewhat as a surprise to him, especially considering tate’s history. he’d always regarded the man as a serial monogamist. and he was pretty sure tate agreed. after the heartbreak of his high school sweetheart that dear john’d him, tate hadn’t ever been interested in going out to bars with jax. but now... he was. jax was trying to be optimistic about the night, rather than worried about what it really meant that tate was going out just to get laid. 

“ hey, man, ” jax smirked, taking the cigarette from his mouth and reaching out to grasp tate’s hand. “ want a cigarette? ” he offered, wanting to feel out tate’s vibe before they headed in. 

@tatemcallisterr

tatemcallisterr:

Tate should not be out, let alone going to a bar but at this point he didn’t care. He’d run out of alcohol in his house and his favorite liquor store wasn’t open this late ironically. In hind’s sight, drinking the last of the whiskey in his house probably should have been a sign to just stop drinking. But two glasses wasn’t nearly enough to get him drunk enough to fall asleep. After getting a combined fifteen hours of sleep the last few days, he thought maybe the only way to fall asleep was to get drunk enough to just pass out. Which deep down he knew was a horrible idea and just an excuse to drink, but that wasn’t the point. As he approached the bar and recognized the figure sitting outside it seemed fate was not going to let him get drunk tonight. “Well, you look like shit.” He spoke up upon getting a closer look at his friend. Taking a seat next to Jaxon he let out a soft sigh. “Aren’t cops supposed to be the ones that break up fights?”

while there was a large part of him that still really enjoyed fighting... he didn’t enjoy getting “caught”. but he could breathe easy, and his thoughts didn’t feel unmanageable. with all of that, it was hard to regret the decisions he made and the actions he’d carried out. despite the bleeding. jaxon scoffed at tate’s comment, licking at his split lip and screwing the cap back onto his flask.  “ some think th’ blood makes me look tough, ” he shrugged. “ and girls jus’ wanna patch me up. so. ” he chuckled dryly, sitting up a little straighter despite the ache soreness in his shoulders. “ supposed to. and yer not supposed t’ be drinkin’. yet here we are, ” he pointed at, offering up his flask to tate.  “ will it help if i tell you th’ guy was a creep? ”

tatemcallisterr:

Tate saw it coming, Jaxon’s careful first suggestion. It was the most logical thing to tell someone in his current state, and it certainly wasn’t the first time anyone had mentioned the idea to him. However, the way Jaxon proposed the idea was exactly why Tate wouldn’t do it. They both knew Tate wasn’t one to open up easily, or at all really. He used to be different. Talking about how he was feeling used to just come naturally to him. But a lot of things that used to come naturally were just not as easy anymore. “I’m not going to therapy.” Was all Tate said in response, completely shut down to even thinking about the suggestion seriously. He didn’t want to relive those days in his dreams and he sure as hell didn’t want to have to talk about them either. “It’s not fucked up, it’s just…stressed.” Tate decided before quirking a brow as Jaxon went on. “Oh yeah? You know Jonny, huh? Small world.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if anything would take the place of drinking. Although it might help me sleep for more than five hours.” It might also help him eat a decent meal once in a while, but he left that part out. Jaxon had enough worry in his eyes looking at him, Tate didn’t want to give him anything else. 

jaxon fully expected that reaction. even their issues in the past couldn’t erase the countless nights they spent on patrol together, and jaxon knew tate. then and now. they’d both changed in ways they hated to think about. he sighed to himself, and sat up a little straighter, leaning his elbows on the table and closer in.  “ look, man. i get it, okay? i don’t talk to them about my shit either. ‘cause i really don’t fuckin’ wanna drag all that shit up. but... they got counselors, who just give you suggestions, ya know? like they recommended me to a training program for my dogs, so they can help when i get overwhelmed. and they gave me a list of things to try when i’m in a bad place. jus’— somethin’ to think about, ” he shrugged, trailing off as he leaned back and sipped at his iced tea. it wasn’t something he wanted to pressure tate into. but he also didn’t want tate to blindly block out everything that had a possibility of helping. “ well i hope yer liver relaxes, ” jax replied, just barely smiling, hoping to get tate to relax some too.  “ yeah... we were best friends all through high school. remember i told you, how he went away to art school, got involved in sketchy shit, and we had a falling out. that’s jonny. same jonny you know, apparently. but smoking does help with the sleep thing. while your liver is healing, ya know? plus, i’d pay good money t’ see you stoned out of yer mind. ”

⌚ :))))

“ i served with this kid for years, and yer gonna make me pick just one? ummm… fuck your rules, you get two. 

so over there… its so much fucking desert, and sand, and that shit is fuckin’ awful. it gets in your guns, it gets in your gps, it gets in your fucking lungs. sometimes there are these sandstorms, right? it just blows and blows and blows. and you can’t see shit, you can barely breathe, you can’t hear. yer just stuck in this browned out haze. and then… then sometimes it starts fuckin’ raining on top of it. so its just a mud storm. and then yer on your belly, trying to get out of the wind, and you get even more muddy. anyways. its awful. one night, tate and i are walking the perimeter, and before he reaches the end of his sentence, the wind starts up, and while i’m finishing settin’ up the standard issue tent for this kind of shit, it starts raining. so we’re both fuckin’ covered in mud, gettin’ this shit set up, trying not to lose hold of the damn thing. and mind you… it’s a one person tent. so we’re both soaking wet, and caked in mud, huddled in this tiny ass tent, waiting out the storm. and i mean… you get bored, ya know? so mcallister pulls out his pack of cards, and we know its gonna get ruined because we dont have a clean fucking scrap of material between us. but what else do ya do? so we sit there pretty much all night, playin’ every card game we can think of, talkin’ about everything and anything we can think of. and honestly… despite the storm, it really wasn’t a bad night. i think he lost a patch of hair because we let the mud dry and tried to pick it off. anyways, after that, i kept the ruined deck, and got him a new deck of cards, and ghetto laminated them with packing tape. i thought i was funny. 

so that’s one. that’s when we were serving. my other favorite memory is one i can barely remember. we were headed home on leave, but our flights were delayed because of atlantic storm. so we spent a couple days in dublin. and i mean… we were young, dumb, antsy marines back then. and we were in fuckin’ dublin for gods sake. so of course… we go out and get absolutely smashed. you’d think it was fleet week the way we tore it up. we were bar hopping, and making friends all over the place, because the irish fuckin’ love americans. i think we did karaoke at one point. or maybe we just sang real loud in a pub. anyways… i wake up the next morning, in someone’s hotel. tate is passed out on the floor with a bruise on his fuckin’ neck. i’ve got a split lip and a scrape on my cheek and my shoulder. there’s marbles in my pockets, a jacks and ball set on the coffee table. and a fucking red balloon tattoo on my foot. how we got from one point to the next is a little hazy,  but i do remember we had a whole god damn bunch of fun. we were both hungover on th’ plane going back to the states, but it was fun drinking bloody marys and trying to piece together the night. 

there’s lots of nights like both of those. but those two stick out, and just remind me that tate is a real ride or die. even when he definitely doesn’t agree with the stupid shit i wanna do. he still goes along with me, and makes sure that i don’t die. ”

@tatemcallisterr

@tatemcallisterr

@tatemcallisterr asked “ ❢ ” [ ❢ ] my muse discovers yours all bloodied and bruised.

he’d gone through the list. yoga, taking a long walk, reading a book, doing something with his hands. he was really trying to find better coping mechanisms, but the ones that the counselor at the VA recommended just really were not cutting it. or doing much of anything at all. with the reappearance of jonny in his life, and all the complicated bullshit that came along with that, plus the hardship his family was going through with the cafe not making as much as it needed to... the inside of jaxon’s head was not a fun place. and god damn, he just wanted everything to slow down for a moment. he wanted the world to just get a little quieter. four shots of whiskey and a bar fight later, things had slowed down. his brain could only focus on the throbbing and the bleeding and the blurring effects of the whiskey. jax sipped slowly at his flask, sitting on the concrete edge of a planter outside the bar. blood slid slowly from the re-opened cut on his cheek, and leaked from the inside of his mouth. it should be trouble that jaxon felt calm, and centered like this, for the first time in weeks. 

tatemcallisterr:

It was hard to talk about, even with someone like Jaxon who could relate so strongly to what he was going through. That was a big reason Tate kept insisting he didn’t need to see a therapist or go to any support groups. Talking about things had never helped him deal with them anyways. “I know it’ll probably never go away completely —- I just wish it would get better. I’m fucking tired.” Tate knew he wasn’t the first person to go to war and come back having nightmares about it, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. But when he wakes up at night, alone, in an empty house, it’s hard not to feel isolated. “I am for the most part. Doc just found some problems with my liver when they were doing blood tests. It’s not a big deal.” At least that’s what his doctor had told him, it wouldn’t be a big deal as long as he didn’t drink so often. Which was proving difficult when it was his go-to coping mechanism. 

yeah, he knew that feeling well. too well. it made his chest ache for his friend. and it made him angry that he didn’t know how to help tate. especially when tate was so adverse to help.  “ they say therapy is supposed to... i dunno. do somethin’, ya know? ” the suggestion was tentative and gentle, like he knew tate wouldn’t respond well to it. but he had to try. there had to be something. even if talking didn’t help the famously tight-lipped man, maybe there was something else they could recommend. at least, that’s what jaxon hoped.  “ yer liver being fucked up doesn’t sound like ‘not a big deal’. and that fuckin’ sucks. who else is gonna appreciate shitty whiskey with me? ” he teased gently, a small smirk flickering at the corner of his lips. “ oh, we got a friend in common. jonny. maybe in place of drinkin’, get stoned with him. ” the suggestion was only half serious, and the light in jaxon’s eyes said as much. he was trying to be helpful. trying to make tate feel like there was a little hope. despite how fucking tired he felt. 

tatemcallisterr:

as much as tate hated to admit it, jaxon knew him better than probably anyone else on earth. they had been through a lot together throughout their friendship, quite a bit more than a normal friendship could handle. tate knew that jaxon had been through and still dealt with some of the same things he was currently going through, maybe not as intensely but still. he knew it was why jaxon preferred to work at night and sleep during the day. even when tate tried to sleep during the day he was jolted awake by the nightmares. finally setting his fork down he rested his elbows on the table and let out a heavy sigh as his gaze met jaxon’s. “because every time damn i close my eyes i’m back over there. except it’s fucking worse.” he shook his head, putting his head in his hands. it made him angry when he thought about it — it made him feel weak and god, he hated feeling weak. “alcohol helps. i’m not supposed to be drinking though.” 

jaxon sighed at tate’s response— it was the one he expected. and feared. it seemed like no one left the war whole. physically, mentally, emotionally. they were all tainted and damaged, and nightmares fucked with sleep and sanity in a very special way. he wished he had an answer for tate. a way to help make them go away, or even ease them slightly. but fuck... he’d been searching for that answer for two years and had come up with very little.  “ hey, man. it’s alright. don’t think i’ve ever met a soldier that didn’t have nightmares. yer not alone there, ” he offered quietly, intimately familiar with feeling weak or broken for struggling like this. fuck, he still felt like that a lot. but it helped... knowing his brothers felt like it too.  “ why aren’t you supposed to be drinkin’? i thought you were all healed up. ”

tatemcallisterr:

At the sound of a familiar voice in response to his request Tate looked up to meet Jaxon’s gaze. He was right, but there was no way he was going to get any sleep more at this point in the day. It might as well be noon Tate-time. Jaxon had always been able to read him. Although it wasn’t that hard right now to tell that Tate was exhausted. Between the bags under his eyes and the mess of hair he hadn’t bothered to comb through before he left the house, it was clear he had just rolled out of bed and come to the diner. Tate shook his head slowly letting out a sigh. “Thought you were the waitress.” He replied, setting his fork down as Jaxon took a seat across from him. His gaze moved to his plate at Jaxon’s question, staring at the barely eaten contents momentarily before he answered. “Just couldn’t sleep is all.” He shrugged, looking back up at his friend.

they’d been through a lot together— overseas, fighting side by side, and abroad, fighting each other. but after years, and months of trying to repair things, tate was coming around, and their friendship had slowly started to rebuild. thank fucking god. jaxon folded his arms on the tabletop, giving tate a quick once over. he knew the look well. on tate, on himself, on other veteran friends. it worried him. but even more, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to help.  “ she looks much better in a skirt than me, i can promise you that, ” he teased gently, trying to fight the sympathy from his smile. tate didn’t need that.  “ couldn’t sleep, because...— ” he trailed off, but the tension in his expression spoke enough. it was the reason jaxon worked graveyard. those nightmares were easier for him to deal with when he slept during the day. but he knew tate’s nightmares manifested worse than his did.  “ does anything help? ” 

tatemcallisterr:

It was early, even for Tate. But after another night of restless sleep he thought maybe some food would take his mind off things and help him relax a little bit. So he sat at his favorite twenty-four hour diner, pushing the food around on his plate with his fork absentmindedly more than he was actually eating any of it. He had a million things on his mind since he had gotten back home three months ago. Losing his mother, his injury, the end of his career in the marines — it was all a lot for him to handle in a short amount of time. Rubbing his sleep filled eyes he could hear someone approach him, and just assumed it was his waitress checking in on him for the one hundredth time since he had sat down forty-five minutes ago. “Just another cup of coffee, please.” He muttered.

god, he was tired. after a long overnight shift, his whole body ached with weariness. it wasn’t anything like the long overnighters in the military. but it didn’t mean it was particularly fun or easy. especially tonight. with a rough domestic violence call, with kids involved. he was ready to go home. but he was starving. and eating at home meant cooking, and he definitely didn’t have the energy for that.  “ hey, daisy, ” jax smiled warmly at the waitress behind the counter he knew too well after so many early mornings. “ steak and eggs? with sweet potato fries. to-go, please. and a black tea. thanks, darlin’. ”  he was about to sit down, waste time on his phone, when he saw tate. looking just as exhausted as he felt.  “ i can grab you one if ya really want. but you look like you need a nap more than caffeine, ” he pointed out, gentle and understanding as he sat across from his old friend.  “ hey, man. rough night? ”