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When Luca looks in the mirror, he isn’t quite sure who is looking back at him anymore.
It’s an odd, overwhelming feeling that rests deep within his bones. He doesn’t really know who he is anymore, and what he does know, does he like? Third generation S.W.A.T, but does that really mean anything? Third and last. Can’t lock down a woman because he’s married to the job, tries to lower the level of crime in his neighbourhood in his free time instead of living a life, never keeps a place for long enough because it always feels like being stuck.
A part of him thinks he’s drowning. The other part wonders what the hell that means.
His father says he’s weak. Terry says he’s just being hard on himself. Luca doesn’t quite know what to think of himself anymore.
He’s S.W.A.T. He’s not meant to second-guess. He’s damn good at it too, at being out there in the field, at taking down opponents and saving every life he can. He takes pride in his work. He’s proud of what the team has accomplished and that he can count himself as one of them. But that doesn't mean he doesn’t have doubts, if this is what he always wanted to do, or if he never had a choice in the first place.
Street hammers on the door- time to get going. He slips on a jumper and collects his carry bag and follows Street to the car.
He only half listens to Street as he eagerly tells some antidote, and Luca is sure that he’s already heard it before, was probably even there when it happened, but he tries to laugh and nod and shake his head where it’s expected. It feels fake. Everything feels fake.
Terry often says that he was the lucky one. Luca might be their dad’s favourite, but he also has the most expectations on his shoulders, and that gives Terry the opportunity to be his own, free man. No S.W.A.T, no third generation, no weight on his shoulders. Terry gets to run a damn food truck while Luca busts his ass and risked his life every damn day.
That’s not to say that Luca didn’t love being S.W.A.T. It is the air that he breathes, the only reason he has to get up in the mornings. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard, sometimes, to get up in the morning and go.
He can’t read the street signs, but that doesn’t matter- he could drive to HQ backwards and with his eyes closed, but it’s just another reminder that he’s just not the same as every other member on 20-David, third-generation Luca be damned.
“Hey,” Sweet nudges him. “You OK?”
“Yeah,” Luca keeps his eyes on the road. “Of course. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Luca can feel Street’s eyes on him, and he tries to ignore the way he feels like he’s crawling out of his skin. “You just seem… off, today. You have for a while.”
“Ah, sorry,” Luca shrugs. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
Street doesn’t push, which Luca is thankful for, but he doesn't miss the way that Street keeps his eyes on him when they exit the car, and all the way until he leaves the locker room in athletic gear and makes his way up into the boxing ring to wait for Chris. He doesn’t notice the confused look Tan gives Street when Luca passes him with hardly a hello much less the early morning hugs they all look forward to and come to expect, but he can’t think about that now. Thinking about how wrong he feels might be the end of the very small straw.
When Chris joins him in the ring, she’s beaming, happy to see him. It makes him feel warm inside, but he can hardly muster a smile in return as she wraps her arms around him and pulls away, and she stares at him quizzically as he holds up the sparring gloves. He realizes too late that he didn’t hug her either- he wishes he hadn’t made that his thing, hugging everybody he comes across, because on off days, days when he isn’t feeling himself, it’s a very obvious missing part of their daily lives. Too late now. Chris is throwing punches and he can’t think about it now.
Terry says that Luca is lucky. Lucky and blessed with the right Luca genes- the genes that heroes are made from, the genes that give you the opportunity to save lives on the daily, the same genes that bread three generations of S.W.A.T. He hates that statistic. It dictates his every move, it chose his profession long before he was ready, it’s a dark cloud hanging over his head that makes him question whether he’s really doing the right thing. Terry only sees the good that he does, that S.W.A.T does. He doesn’t know how hard it is to wake up in the morning, how hard it is to fall asleep at night, how he spends every moment in a constant phase of adrenaline that makes his hands shake and his heart pound too loudly. He doesn’t know what it’s like to look at himself in the mirror and not recognise the man staring back at you.
Maybe he should talk to somebody about this. A psychologist, or Hondo, or someone. Maybe even his dad. No. Not his dad. Carl would laugh at him and call him soft, too soft for the job, too soft for third-generation S.W.A.T, too soft for a Luca, how the hell is he supposed to be able to do his job when he’s too busy-
He holds the boxing pads too low, and Chris punches him hard in the jaw, so hard that he reels back, seeing stars, and somehow ends up on his ass on the mat. All the air is knocked out of his lungs and his hip screams at him, but he ignores it. He blinks the spots from his eyes, rubs at his aching jaw, and laughs it off. Chris looks horrified, is staring at him like she saw a ghost, and Luca might feel a little bit bad if it wasn’t a perfect punch.
“Luca?” Chris is wide-eyed and frightful. She looks like she can’t decide whether she should reach for him or leave him be. “God- I’m so sorry, are you-”
“Wow, Chris,” Tan forces a laugh where he’s standing with Street. They had been watching the fight closely, and Luca had been forced to pretend he hadn’t noticed their hushed conversation and rapid whispering. “When we told you to kick his ass, we didn’t mean it literally.”
“What the hell happened?” Hondo shouts from somewhere behind them, sounding more confused than angry, but Luca forces himself to his feet all the same. “Luca? Chris?”
“That’s one hell of a left hook,” Luca praises with all the sincerity he can muster. He isn’t even sure if she threw a left hook. He wasn’t paying attention. “Maybe aim for the pads though next time, yeah?”
He leaves the ring before anyone can question him, and he can feel their eyes on him as he retreats to the relative safety of the locker room, but he tries to focus on the pain in his jaw instead, so he doesn’t have to think about what they’re seeing, seeing through the wall he puts up, seeing into the cracks to the rancid thing beneath, the thing he can’t recognise, the thing he isn’t sure still belongs on 20-David.
It’s not long until someone joins him, and he busies himself with admiring the slowly darkening mark on his jaw. There is silence for a few moments, and Luca isn’t going to be the first to break it. “Hey,”
“Hey,” Luca works his jaw. He makes sure it isn’t broken. “I’m gonna have one hell of a shiner tomorrow. She nailed me good.”
“Yeah, she knocked you on your ass,” Deacon said, and he moved to his locker. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, of course,” Luca refuses to look at him, though he can feel Deacon’s gaze. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know, you just seem a bit off today,” Deacon doesn’t mention the lack of affectionate hugs or the bare-minimum greeting or letting his guard down enough that Chris could get a cheap one, but Luca knows that he’s probably thinking of it.
“Wow, have you been talking to Street?” He asks, but even as the words leave his mouth, he knows that he probably already has. “He said the exact same thing to me on the way in.”
Deacon hums and Luca gets himself changed. He unwraps the bandages from around his hands, pulls the hoodie over his head, and riffles for his perfectly pressed uniform hanging in his locker. For a moment, he thinks that maybe Deacon has let it go, dropped it, moved on. But then he says, “You know that if there’s something bothering you, you can always talk to one of us about it, right?”
He forces a smile. This is the last thing that Luca wants to talk about. “Yeah man, thanks.”
For a moment, he thinks that Deacon is going to try and push it, is going to question him and interrogate him until he loses his cool and spills his guts, but Deacon just stays silent and watches him out of the corner of his eye as he gets changed. Luca’s glad. He’s just having an off day, is all. One off day after a career of nothing but perfect ones. Cut him some slack.
But there’s a churning in his gut, a writhing, angry thing that makes him sick, and when he looks at his reflection in the little mirror hanging in his locker, he sees the dark circles under his eyes, the red mark on his jaw that is soon to be a bruise, the dead, unhappy look in his eyes, and doesn’t recognise himself. Can’t remember the last time he ever did, it was so long ago.
“Actually,” he forces out against all better judgement. Deacon waits as if he knew Luca would break eventually. He always has been a talker. “I’m having a bit of trouble sleeping, recently. It’s no big deal, but maybe that’s it.”
“Is it bad?” Deacon asks. “Have you spoken to anybody about it?”
“I mean, I’m talking to you,” Luca tries to laugh it off, but Deacon’s eyes have gone steely and intense and Luca knows that he’s just put his foot in it and is unquestionably stuck. “Look, man, it’s no big deal, alright? Just a few restlessness nights. I’m all good.”
“If you’re not sleeping,” Deacon presses. “That isn’t good. It isn’t healthy. It’s borderline dangerous.”
“We deal with ‘dangerous every day we come into work. It’s in our job description,” Luca says. “Losing a little sleep isn’t going to kill me.”
Honestly, Luca truly doesn’t know what the big deal is, but Deacon sighs a long-suffering sigh as if Luca has personally caused all the evil in the world. “Why are you like this?” he asks, but there’s no blame to it, no ire. If Luca doesn’t know better, he might think there could be some affection beneath the exasperation. “You worry so much about everyone else, but you don’t think twice about your own health? You’re the only one of us who doesn’t have someone to speak to about this stuff. Even Chris and Street have each other. You care so much about every single one of us, to the point of worrying even when you’re not around, and fretting like a mother hen when we’re out of sight, but you don’t care about what happens to you?”
Luca pauses. He stares at himself in the little mirror, his shirt pulled over his arms. He wants to bang his head against a wall. But he thinks about Deacons words- he thinks about the panic he feels each time they leave HQ on a dangerous mission, how when they’re out of his sight he frets until they’re reunited, how his medical leave and his time in Germany was absolute hell just because he didn’t know how the others were faring without him there to keep an eye on him.
“Do you ever…?” he finds himself speaking before he can really process the words and immediately regrets them. But he can’t take them back, can’t stop now that he’s started. “I don’t know. Do you ever feel like a burden?”
“A burden?” Luca can practically hear Deacon’s frown. “To who?”
“To the team, to your family, to yourself,” Luca says. He doesn’t want to be here. He would much rather be anywhere but here. “You know what? Don’t worry about it, man. I don’t even know what I’m saying.”
“Luca,” the tone Deacon uses is almost one that Luca can imagine him using with his kids, soft and gentle and understanding. He hates it. He doesn’t need to be comforted like a child. He doesn’t need any help. He’s third-generation S.W.A.T for god's sake. “Have you spoken to anybody about how you’ve been feeling? Because I don’t need to tell you that… this isn’t healthy, man. It’s not normal to feel like that. You’re not sleeping, you’re checked out most of the time, you’re just not yourself. You understand that, right? You’ve got to know that you’re not doing OK.”
Luca wishes he had never come into work today. He wishes he had told Street that he wasn’t feeling well and spent the day watching soap operas and sports re-runs on TV instead. But he’s here now, and he’s made his bed. Now he just has to get out of it. They’re watching each other, caught in a tango of who will react first. So he puts on his most convicting smile and moves so he can swat Deacon lightly on the chest. “Come on, man. We’re 20-David. We’re S.W.A.T. We can handle anything.”
“Dom,” Deacon tries. “Luca-”
“We don’t want to keep Hondo waiting, huh?” Luca shuts his locker harder than was necessary and saunters out of the room. “The last thing we need is for the others to start spreading rumours about what we’re doing in here.”
He doesn’t let Deacon argue, and he doesn’t check to see if he’s following him either. He just marches to where Hondo is preparing to give the debrief, and ignores everyone’s eyes boring into him as if they can see into the darkest parts of his soul. Soon, Deacon joins them, and they continue the day as if it were every other day, and Chris didn’t kick Luca’s ass and he hadn’t confessed something he swore he would never say to anybody.
So he keeps his eyes forward, his shoulders back, and he tells himself that he’s third-generation S.W.A.T and that nothing else matters.