1.  Nancy McMahon

She was about eighteen years old, with short black hair and heavy black eyeliner. John was six, maybe seven, and she’d let him paint her nails and tell him about life.¹

Nancy lived two houses down with her older brother and his wife, because she’d left her dad’s house a few years earlier² and her brother was ten years older than her. “He thinks he’s God or something,” Nancy would say, blowing on the red polish on her pinkies. “Seriously, just cuz he’s a doctor or whatever.”³

John had had crushes before.  He’d even liked the girl sitting next to him in kindergarten so much that one day on the swing set he gave her a sweaty bunch of hand picked flowers,⁴ but that was nothing. That was kids’ stuff. John didn’t have a crush on Nancy, he was in love with her, because, see, Nancy was cool. She was a real grown up and she didn’t talk like John didn’t get things, because he did. He got things plenty, and besides, he was her favorite guy in the whole world. She even told him so, and then kissed his cheek, and that was *awesome*, even if she did leave behind a gross lip shape there because of her dark lipstick.⁵

Anyway, John lived in Somerfield for two years, and Nancy took him home from school every day, stayed with him until his dad came home.  When they left, Nancy cried almost as hard as John did. Then she said, “I love you, John-boy,” and John never wanted to stay anywhere as much as he wanted to stay right there, with Nancy McMahon hugging him in the driveway of his empty old house.

2.  Elaine Collins Sheppard

She died when John was about four years old,⁶ so John didn’t remember her that well. His dad put pictures of her in the dining room of every house they lived in after that, and John had a couple in his room that his grandma gave him back when they lived in Nebraska near Gran and Gramp Collins’ place.⁷

He thought she looked really nice. She had a big smile, and really long hair and in all the pictures of her and John’s dad, they’re holding hands, so they look happy.⁸

John remembered that she had really soft hands, and she smelled warm.  He thought, sometimes, about how she used to sing to him and how he always remembered her voice as sweet.⁹

3.  Tootsie the Corgi ¹⁰

She showed up in the backyard in Colorado on a Tuesday afternoon, with a stick in her mouth and wagging her tail.  When John threw it, she fetched, and when John threw it again, she fetched again.  She wasn’t wearing a collar, and when John tried to go back inside, she sat on the porch and whined until he came outside to play with her some more.

He was fourteen years old, and he’d been adopted by the cutest dog ever.  Life was very, very good.

His dad was away for eight days, and the maid was taking care of him, so John managed to sneak Tootsie into the house with no problem whatsoever. Keeping Tootsie secret while she was in the house, on the other hand, was basically impossible.¹¹

Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, John told Kim, the maid, that he was watching a friend’s dog for a few days, just until the friend recovered from a minor coma.¹² Kim didn’t even roll her eyes at him, just sighed and said, “So what’s the dog’s name?”

To this day, John isn’t sure why he said, “Tootsie,” but he did, and the dog barked.¹³

She slept on his feet for the rest of the week, and ate the little bits of bacon he slipped her under the table before school. When he came home, they’d go out back and play catch, and while he did his homework, she curled up next to him and watched him with her big, brown dog eyes like John was the coolest thing ever and if she fell asleep for a second, he’d disappear.

Then John’s dad got home, and Tootsie went back to her real family. 

4. The 28^th Air Expeditionary Wing

The plane ride home was a goddamned long one.¹⁴ John spent most of it sleeping, or staring at his hands where they rested against his pants.  He sat next to a guy who kept nervously rolling and unrolling his discharge papers, and tried to talk to him about how excited he was to be going home, seeing his daughter.¹⁵

“You on furlough?” the guy asked, and John turned and gave him a flat stare, so the guy shut up.

When John closed his eyes, he could see the airfield, all the pretty birds lined up in a row. His choppers, the tarmac below them, his men milling around them in the too-bright sunlight. He could see his guys, bleeding out. Sand turning into brick red clumps beside them. He swallowed hard, and it still felt like there was sand between his teeth.¹⁶

He repeated the names of all the people who served under him from XO to dishwasher, alphabetically, the whole flight to DC.¹⁷ He remembered the guys who got there before him, the ones he watched arrive. He remembered what it was like to fall asleep after a day of fighting, after a night spent staring at the fire, drinking quietly, and every now and then, clapping each other hard on the back. 

When he landed in DC, he knew before he met the granite-faced man acting as his judge that his squad might as well be on Mars.

They asked him where he wanted to be posted next, and he said the first thing he could think of, just so that he wouldn’t blurt out, “Please, send me back.”

In the end, Antarctica didn’t turn out too bad, after all.

5.  Mike Wilcox

He was a tight end and John was a running back, which, if John had ever told anyone about them, would have made for some pretty unfunny jokes.¹⁸ He was a year older than John,¹⁹ and he drove a beat up Honda that trailed plumes of smoke from the muffler. He was tall, and he was smart, and when he grinned, he always tried to hide behind his long blond bangs.

It started off with the two of them drinking beer²⁰ and watching porn every other weekend or so. Just the two of them in Mike’s dark basement bedroom, sitting on the floor by the bed. John remembers trying hard to keep his breathing even, remembers staring at the screen, only the screen, not even daring to think about looking over at Mike, trying to forget Mike’s leg pressed warm all along the side of his, trying to forget how hard he was. He’d wait until he heard the pop of the top button on Mike’s jeans, the hiss of his zipper, before he would reach down and palm himself through his pants. 

It always felt like years before he could touch himself, before they were both beating off in earnest, Mike groaning and thrashing next to him, beer spilling cold over John’s hot hands until finally, finally, he came.²¹

They’d wipe their hands off and clean up the spilled beer with one of the towels Mike kept down there and then drink until they both passed out, right there on the floor. More than once, John woke up with his cheek pressed against Mike’s shirt-clad shoulder, his arm flung over Mike’s chest and Mike’s legs tangled with his. 

That lasted about five months.  Then one night Mike said John’s name ²² and John couldn’t say how, but their hands ended up on each other, and they were naked and rubbing off on one another frantically, desperately, straining and gasping and coming and coming and coming until they fell asleep, just like that, glued against one another. 

When John woke up the next morning Mike was still asleep. He was silent as he got dressed and walked out the door.  They never hung out alone together again.

6.   Aiden Ford

When John filled out the paperwork needed to declare Ford MIA, he stared at the box marked ‘Additional Comments’ for a damned long time. He stared at that box until his eyes started to water, before picking up his pen and writing, “He’s a really good kid.”

It took him three weeks before he actually handed the fucking thing in to Elizabeth.  She put a hand on his shoulder and said maybe he should go talk to Heightmeyer, and John just walked away without saying a word.²³

He sat in his room, in the dark, and picked up his guitar.²⁴ He didn’t play anything, just held it in his lap and stared at his fingers on the strings, and thought about grandparents, and pie, and being twenty-five.²⁵

He thought about Ford’s blind faith in him, and the look on his face when he free fell through the gate in Colorado.  Then John put his head down against the cool curves of his guitar, and closed his eyes for a long time before letting out one long sigh and raising his head to face the evening.

7.  Mrs. Coniglio

She was his kindergarten teacher and she had bright blue eyes behind thick, round glasses. She wore dresses with flowers all over them, and when John came into her class halfway through the year she gave him the cubby closest to her desk.²⁶

He doesn’t remember much about that year, except that his dad was gone more than he was around.  The woman John’s dad had hired to pick him up from school and take care of him worked two jobs, so she was always up to three hours late.²⁷

Mrs. Coniglio waited with him every afternoon while the rest of the classrooms in the school went dark.  They’d sit together in the beanbag chairs at the back of the room, and she taught him to read.  She’d sit beside him with one hand cupping the back of his head, and when he managed to finish a book, she’d smile at him and say, “That’s good, Johnny. You’re so smart.”²⁸

Once, he asked her to be his mother. She wrapped her arms around him so tight he could feel the thin bones of her arms against his ribs, and kissed his forehead.

At the end of the year, John told her they would be moving again before he could start first grade.²⁹ Her eyes got shiny with tears, and before he could leave, she pressed seven envelopes in his hands, each one stamped, each one addressed.

“Draw me pictures, Johnny,” she told him, and he promised he would.³⁰

8. Jessica Brown

Jess was a friend of John’s friend and then, somehow, Jess was John’s girlfriend, and then Jess was living with John, and then Jess was John’s fiancée. It all happened so fast it was hard to pin down *how* exactly it had happened.³¹

Jess was low-maintenance. She was funny, and she drank beer, and she bet with him on football ³², and she loved Kevin Smith movies and would go bowling with him up to three times a week if he wanted to. She was tall and leggy and had long brown hair, and the way she kissed him when they were in bed together was like something out of one of the skin flicks he used to watch with Mike Wilcox.

She had big round brown eyes, and she did the dishes whenever he did the laundry.³³  She cried for two days before he went to Afghanistan.

When he came back, he realized that he did love her.  Then he packed his things, and he left.

9. Col. Cameron Sheppard

The hospital room had two windows on the east-facing wall, so in the mornings John could feel the light on his face.  He was on furlough from Antarctica, ³⁴ and there was a motel a ten-minute walk away where John had a room, but he slept in the chair next to his dad’s bed most nights. 

“John?” his dad murmured from between his cracked lips as John stretched and shifted.

“Yeah, sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, standing and leaning over the bed. “You okay?”

John’s dad shook his head once, his watery eyes barely open.  “John,” he said again, “John, you look like – ”

“—my mom, yeah, I know, Dad, you told me a couple of times.” ³⁵

“No, no,” Cameron said, shaking his now-bald head.³⁶ His pale scalp was whiter than the pillowcase behind it, and it made John’s throat ache. “No, I was going to say -- you look tired.” He reached up a paper-thin hand and touched John’s cheek. “You need to – to take care of yourself.”

“Dad,” he rasped as his eyes got hot, his hands got cold.  “Dad, I – ”

His father wiped a tear off his cheek and gave him a lopsided smile before closing his eyes and saying, “Shh, Johnny. You’re a good boy.”

Epilogue: Two Things John is Learning To Trust Will Be There When He Needs Them

1. Atlantis

When John falls asleep, he never feels like he’s alone.³⁷ The city breathes, too, and when John wakes up the lights above him illuminate slowly until he’s ready and they turn all the way on.  He pulls on his sweat pants, stretches and runs out to whichever pier he feels like running toward.  On the east pier, he can see the sun come up, on the south pier, there’s a spectacular light show every time he steps foot on it.  The north pier has something that looks like dolphins living off it.  The west pier is still dark when he gets there, and sometimes, that’s what John wants.³⁸

When he gets back to his quarters, the shower is already running at just the right temperature.³⁹ He gets dressed, gets ready to face the day’s first crisis and Atlantis is with him.

2. Rodney McKay

The first time John tries to walk out on Rodney is after the fourth time they have sex. He forgets that Rodney is incredibly smart, vindictive and that Rodney knows him very, very well already, and ends up sucking Rodney’s cock in the dry jumper bay while still soaking wet from the sprinklers Rodney rigged to go off in the hallways.  Afterwards, Rodney just shakes his head and says, “Honestly, John. I’m not going anywhere unless you really want me to, and even then…well. I’ve been told that I’m very stubborn.”

“You think?” John asks from under his wet eyelashes, and Rodney just grabs him by the neck and pulls him up into a long, warm kiss. 

“So, you’ve learned your lesson?” Rodney asks him, plucking at John’s sodden jacket.

John tries to look away, but Rodney won’t let him until he nods and says, “Yeah, yeah, I think maybe I have.”

Eventually, he actually does.⁴⁰