Operation Apollo | 3.0 | Jake Seresin x Reader
previous chapter | epilogue | masterlist
Synopsis: After a threat is made against her life, the President’s grown up daughter gets her security tripled. Her long term detail is about to retire and needs replacing, only — she isn’t the easiest to work with. Ex-Navy and current Secret Service, Jake Seresin is devoted to being the best at everything he does. He isn’t going to let a bratty little girl cost him this job.
Warnings: age gap, power imbalance, enemies to lovers, danger and angst, manipulation, sucky parents, grief and manipulation, lying, distressing themes throughout but especially towards the end of the chapter. Graphic violence, dangerous situations, inaccurate injuries, major character death revenge, wc: 3.8k
There’s no rush to open your eyes. The ache and throb, and painful dryness of your lips brings you no respite from the way things had been before you had fallen asleep. Blacked out. Whatever you want to call it— it hadn’t helped.
Your nose wrinkles at something offensive. Sterile and sharp smelling. Wrinkling it comes with a crunch, and sharp pain. There’s a dry feeling in your nostrils where old blood still sits.
The smell is chemical, antiseptic. It’s so strong smelling through all of that blood and pain that it forces your eyes open. That’s worse. That hurts more. Fluorescents above you. You’re left with no choice but to squeeze them shut again— and the sudden realization that you’re not where you were before, at all.
There’s no hard, painful metal chair holding your weight. The burden of being held now falls to something much softer, so soft that it feels like you’re sinking into it like sand. It doesn’t hurt much less.
Your legs hurt, a prickling static feeling. Your ass hurts from however long you were sitting there like that. Your back hurts, a numb and stiff feeling. You attempt to turn your head and your neck reminds you suddenly not to overlook it— a gasp tears from your mouth and makes your lungs burn almost as much as your bruised throat.
Two voices say your name at once. A chair scrapes across the ground, two sets of shoes hit the floor. People are coming. The gasp, despite your burning throat’s protests, becomes a choked whimper.
“Don’t— Don’t touch her,” Allen. You’re dreaming again, just like you had been when you heard Jake’s voice. “Maybe we should get the doctor.”
You try once again. The bright, blinding white stuns your sore, unadjusted eyes. You squint through it, determined as ever. Allen’s weathered face steadies and becomes more clear. His mouth hangs open, watching your bruised face start to move with recognition.
“Stay still, sweetheart, don’t move.” He’s speaking to you. He lifts his hand and reaches. His fingers extend towards you and your skin comes alive, buzzing with electricity like you’re being shocked as you tear back from his extended palm.
He winces as you cough out a choked cry, doubling over in pain from the sudden movement.
“Doctor Owens?— Doctor Owens!” Your mother. Her voice is further away, growing in urgency. She’s barely recovered herself. She shouldn’t have come.
The monitor beside your bed beeps wildly as your heart rate kicks into another spike, and footfall echoes in the hall as people rush for your room. So many shoes hitting the ground at once that you can’t place how many of them there could possibly be.
“Don’t.” It comes out choked and horse, but loud. “Don’t touch me. Allen. Don’t— I don’t want—“
“Calm down, it’s alright,” He tries, he really tries. The footfall grows closer and you thrash as Allen’s fingers graze the curve of your shoulder. You’re just hurting yourself more. “Stop. Try to stay still, alright? — You’re — Stop. Stop!”
There’s nothing peaceful about the way you’re sent back to sleep, thrashing and crying and screaming as your IV is adjusted and filled. With everything that you’ve been through, they had warned your loved ones that recovery was going to be far from linear.
Over the course of the next two days, you wake three more times and are put back to sleep in a similar fashion. With your stitches and recovering internal injuries, they need you to be still. For now, every time you have opened your eyes has been another fight that your body just isn’t ready to take.
The fourth time comes easier than the rest. Your broken nose has started to heal by now. Under the hospital gown, your ribs are black and blue. Your lungs have stopped making that rattling sound when you inhale deeply now. Still, everything hurts.
The fluorescent lights are off. The curtains are open, the television is on. You blink heavily, your chest aches as you breathe in.
Allen looks up at the soft rattle of your first breath in. His brows furrowed slightly, green eyes widening as he watches your eyelids blink heavily.
“Hey…” He whispers cautiously, like he’s afraid to spook you. Your gaze settles on him, the fuzziness of the picture dissipating with each heavy blink. His face is sullen, tired. “Hey, sweetheart. It’s just me. It’s just us, you’re okay.”
Just us. The idea is more comforting than anything you’ve heard in a long time. It’s not really just the two of you, but Allen keeps that to himself. You don’t need to know the amount of security posted around this building.
You want to answer him, but your throat is dry and hoarse when you try to speak. Allen sits forwards, grabbing the underside of the chair with his good hand and pulling it closer.
“It’s alright.” His voice voice croaks. It’s not alright, but you will be. He hopes you’ll understand, when it’s time for you to learn how it all went down.
Stubble coats his jaw and his hair is longer than he usually ever lets it grow, salt and pepper all the way through. Your fingers twitch and your arm aches as you force it slowly upward, reaching for him. Allen grazes the tips of his fingers over yours. He slides his hand slowly into your palm, and watches your eyes fill with sudden tears.
“What… happened?” You whimper.
“I’ll tell you everything once you’re feeling a little better,” He whispers, thinking back to the strict orders from your mother not to upset you. He lowers his mouth just slightly and presses his lips to your knuckles, squeezing your hand tight. “You scared the shit out of me for a second, there.”
A burning sensation behind your eyes makes you wrinkle your nose, your bottom lip trembling as your chest flares with heat. There’s real fear in his eyes. He shouldn’t even be here, he’s supposed to be retired — there’s no money in this for him.
And yet, he’s the only person at your bedside.
He’s holding your hand, and holding your gaze firmly. Letting you think it’s all okay. Your throat hurts as you swallow softly.
There’s a news broadcast on the television to Allen’s right. The skyline buzzes, alight behind him. It plays on as he opens his mouth to speak again, he seems to have forgotten that it’s playing.
“Following the events of Thursday evening, we have received word that due to complications, a second surgery would be necessary — which is underway as we speak,” The reporter explains solemnly. She and her co-anchor are both wearing black. “The nation’s thoughts are with you, Mr. President.”
You blink at the fuzzy television screen. The picture they used of your father is from your kindergarten graduation. He’s younger there, his hair dark rather than they grey it has been growing into more recently — he’s got an arm around you, and he’s grinning proudly.
“Shit.” Allen breathes out, sitting up suddenly straight.
The news broadcast is gone with an abrupt beat. Allen drops the remote down onto the side and scrubs a hand along his salt-and-pepper stubbled jaw, studying the ground.
Your lips flatten into a firm line, your muscles screaming as you lift your head from the pillow.
Your gaze hardens. “Is he alive?”
Allen swallows. He gives you a small, serious nod. “Yeah. He’s upstairs, in surgery.”
The tone of his voice makes your chest ache. Serious in a way Allen rarely is.
Creeping into his office in your pyjamas. Scolding him for all the times he missed you teddy-bear tea parties. Sitting with him on the swing set in the backyard of the first house you remember. All the times you had told him you hated him as a teenager. How strongly you had meant it the last time.
Your gaze flickers back to the blank television screen, losing yourself in its sudden darkness.
“How?” You croak out.
Allen hesitates. He presses his lips together and shakes his head softly. “I’ll explain everything when you’re feeling better.”
You turn your head, blinking heavily as you look around the sprawling hospital room. Your parents really spared no expense. Well, your mom— you guess.
“Jake?” You ask.
“He’s here,” Allen nods solemnly. “He’s sleeping.”
And you can’t see him. It wouldn’t be good for you to see him, not until you’re feeling better.
“Is he—?”
“He’s going to be fine,” Allen sounds sure, and not in a sugar-coated way. He sounds more positive than he had about your father. “You should rest. He comes to see you in the mornings.”
Being on a ward himself, Jake’s been getting on the nurses’ nerves around here, trying to break the rules so he can wander out and see you for as long as possible. His shoulder is just about fine now, he can almost roll it back the way he used to. The doctor says an injury like his doesn’t heal that fast, but Jake has always been ahead of the curve.
He has spread his time between your room on the fourteenth floor, and where the President has been falling in and out of being classed as critical on the fifteenth with little regard for the fact he’s recovering from a surgery on his shoulder himself. With you breathing, he couldn’t care less about being hit himself.
If the bullet hadn’t caught his shoulder, it would have torn through your father’s lungs and killed him right then and there.
You shoot a quick glance toward the darkened hallway. Allen sighs.
“No.”
“I want to know what happened.” You don’t. Not really. You want to pull these foreign covers up over your head and hide and cry your eyes out, scream this whole place down. There’s no easy way to say it, and really, no one knows how you’ll handle it.
You close your eyes for a moment and wait.
Somehow, you’re safe — you’ll be okay. Jake’s okay. Your father won’t make it through the week. You don’t remember a thing. None of it makes sense.
Jake remembers every detail. He sits awake too, not in his own room but in the hallway of the twelfth floor — as close as he can get to the operating room without being put on his ass by a serviceman.
In the mornings that he’s able to visit you, Jake likes to talk to you. You’ve been out of the woods for a while now, everyone knows that it’s just a waiting game until you’re stable enough to be awake. Really awake. On the Monday just passed, you had opened your eyes for a few seconds and just blinked at him.
Brows drawn together all stern, your lips pursed, your eyelashes fluttering. He never thought he would be so grateful to see you frowning at him.
He has heard about the past few days. The panic and stress. He has made a strong case for himself to be allowed to be there, but the people who make the calls won’t budge. It’s just not the right time.
That’s not true. It’s his punishment.
It’s his punishment, for not being the one in that operating room with his chest cracked open and twelve surgeons fighting to keep his heart beating.
Having spent most of his adult life working in environments where he was the expendable one, Jake had heard a lot of stories. He had heard, most frequently, that time always slows down in the moments that matter.
Not that day. It had been a blur. He had walked into that exchange with certainty; you would be leaving there with him.
To an extent, he had been expecting Elias to be bluffing. No man on the planet couldn’t be bought — Jake had been expecting a bidding war, and he knew your father had the right amount of money to make this go away.
It hadn’t been that at all.
His stomach twists when he thinks about how they had paraded you before them. The look on Matthew’s face as he studied the dried blood in your hair, and the fresh blood trickling from your temple.
They had hurt you to prove a point. Almost killed you, to send a message. It was too far gone to be about the money.
Jake knows that he isn’t responsible for this, he isn’t the one that put your father in this situation. He’s the only reason that those surgeons are even trying right now — if he hadn’t been there, you’d both be dead.
He’ll never not be there again.
Jake sits there through the surgery. On the floor with his elbows on his knees, his head rested back against the wall, he sits there for six hours. It should have taken six hours.
At a little after seven, Jake is startled awake by an orderly rushing past him with a rattling metal cart. He checks his watch, which is now settled on the wrong wrist due to his sling, and clumsily pushes himself up from the ground.
“Hey, buddy,” Jake strains, sighing at the ache through his side and clearing his throat as he finds his footing. “How’s he looking?”
The twenty-something year old in scrubs whips around to look at Jake, his eyes wide with heavy blue marks under them. He looks like he’s been up even longer than Jake has.
“You’re the bodyguard.” The kid seems to realize, blinking as his rattling cart comes to a stop. He glances back in the direction of the theater, then at Jake. “Uh… I don’t know. It’s going to be a while before they can say, I guess.”
A muscle in Jake’s jaw ticks. At seven, Jake walks to your hospital room and usually starts to bug whoever is in charge of watching you until they let him visit early.
He glances towards the operating room, and then back at the orderly. This could take hours, something urgent could happen in the next few minutes. He hesitates.
Then, his phone buzzes in the pocket of his sweats. Jake takes it from his pocket and glances quickly down at the screen, with every intention of answering the kid in front of him.
She’s awake. Asking for you too.
And Jake’s mind is made up. He can’t wait a second longer. His heart feels like it’s in his mouth by the time he’s pushing open the door to your hospital room.
He has seen the bruises fade from blue to yellow, and the IV lines and monitors all around you every day for almost a week. It does nothing to prepare him for the sight of all of those things once you’re awake and staring at him.
“Honey…” His breath catches in his throat, his brows drawing together.
The comprehensive list of your injuries is still typed up at the foot of the bed. Jake could list them off by heart, by now. Fractured eye-socket. Broken ring and middle finger on your right hand. Soft tissue damage to your left foot. Extreme bruising to the abdomen. The fracture in your rib. Every single one of those god-damned bruises.
Your right eye had been swollen shut that first day. Now, it’s wide open. The bruise is yellowed and sore looking, your eyes filled with fear.
“Jake.” Your voice cracks and your breathing hitches.
It doesn’t matter that Allen is standing right there, sitting back against the window ledge with his arms folded over his chest. Jake couldn’t care less that your mother is watching him like a hawk.
She has been every single time he has visited.
The security guard steps out of the way as Jake charges forwards. He takes slow, long strides. He’s trying so hard to remember what you’ve been through, and remind himself to be slow with you, but every fibre of his being wants to pull you close and never let you go again.
He stops at the side of your bed and hesitates, just for a split-second. His eyes scan across your face, searching for doubt or fear. As he makes his decision, you make yours too.
He leans forwards swiftly as you ball your not-injured hand into his shirt, his fingers curling gently around the nape of your neck and pulling you against him.
The room falls silent. Your nose fills with his smell, your cheek presses firmly into the soft cotton of his t-shirt. His thumb strokes at your skin.
For all you care, the other people in the room could have disappeared from the second that Jake touched you. He holds you close, silently. He doesn’t know how much you know yet, whether it’s all or nothing, and he doesn’t care. For now, you’re okay, and you’re with him.
It takes a moment before you notice that he’s only got one arm around you.
Jake watches as you pull back, searching for answers and landing on the blue sling resting around his shoulder, covering his right arm.
“I’m fine,” He assures you instantly, already shaking his head as his palm moves to cup your jaw. He holds your gaze, certain. “I’m fine. It’s superficial. We’re okay.”
Superficial. Allen bites his tongue, but can’t help but disagree. That bullet tore through ligament and bone, and Jake is lucky to be recovering so well. It was far from superficial— the surgery had taken all night.
“I’m sorry.” Your voice cracks, weak sounding and trembling. You drop your head forwards to rest against his unbandaged shoulder. “This is all my fault. This is all my fault, you shouldn’t ever have even met—“
“Stop.” Jake whispers, turning his face towards yours and trying to coax you back to look at him. He closes his eyes, pressing his mouth to your temple. “It’s over now. I’m never going to let anything happen to you again. It’s over.”
Your mother watches. There’s a cautious, nagging feeling that tugs at her that she really doesn’t know you at all. There isn’t much that feels familiar about watching you with him — she wouldn’t have a clue how to calm you the way that he does.
“I want to go home.” You whisper, balling your hands tighter into his t-shirt. If he didn’t know any better, he’d guess that you’re trying to pull him right into your hospital bed with you.
“Yeah, a couple more days, honey,” Jake nods his head. He’s been speaking with your doctor. Once they’re certain that you’re stable enough, you’re free to go. “We’ll get you back to the house.”
“No.” You rush out, so fast that it almost makes you hiccup. It’s then that your head turns, your eyes wide and searching as you look around the room. Just as quickly, before you’ve even met the gaze of Allen or your mother, you bury your face into the crook of his neck and squeeze your eyes shut. Just quiet enough for Jake to hear, you whimper softly. “I don’t want to go back there. I want to go with you.”
Jake feels your mother’s gaze burning into his back, and knows what she must be thinking. She’s about to lose her husband and she thinks that Jake’s going to take you too.
“With me?” He murmurs, stroking a hand over your hair. Your mother has been taking pride in maintaining it — she has cared for you in so many quiet ways recently. Jake will tell you all about it, another time.
“Could — maybe we could see your mom again?” It feels ridiculous to ask, and from the second that the words leave your mouth, you’re already worrying about the kind of danger you could be putting them in.
But for Jake, it makes his heart catch with sudden relief.
“Yeah,” He hums. “Yeah, we can do that.”
He perches on the edge of your bed, draping his good arm around your shoulders. Your mother watches as you curl against him, closing your eyes and finally unballing your fists.
The room falls quiet, and stays that way.
Allen lets the two of you have the peace and quiet. Your mother, simply, has little to say.
An hour later, a little after eight, there’s a commotion in the hallway. Jake watches the bustle between the security guards silently, a heavy feeling settling in his gut as he braces for what is coming.
He feels you perk up at his side as their voices grow more hushed, trying to peek over him.
He turns his face towards your hair and kisses the top of your head softly, wrapping his arm tighter around you. “It’s alright.”
He pities the poor guy who opens the door to the room, forced to meet your mother’s gaze with a sullen expression. He clears his throat weakly, hands tucked behind his back. “Ma’am.”
Your mother isn’t a dumb woman. She doesn’t need it explained to her. The doctors had explained the risks, and explained that he might not make it. Her husband is dead.
…