Surprise!

Jason looks up from his desk, raising his eyebrows. Katie didn’t usually beg him to join her for lunch…she’d been going out with Wyatt lately. “Um….” He smirks at her puppy eyes and shakes his head with a laugh. “Alright. You win. But if Reese gets on my tail for being late with this thing, I’m sending him to you.”
He gets up and walks with Katie out of his office, trying to remember what he’d put in the fridge for lunch that day.

“Surprise!!!”

Jason skids to a halt in the doorway, stunned by everyone gathered in the break room. “What…?” His eyes go wide, shifting from person to person. They were all wearing smiles…apparently he wasn’t in trouble. But what on earth was going on? He swings his gaze to Katie for a moment, before looking back at the others.

Laura comes forward, giving Jason a hug. “We all thought you could use a pick-me-up,” she explains, smiling. “Come on. We’ve got some cookies and everything.”

Jason steps further into the room, feeling dumb. “I….what…”

Laura giggles. “And we’ve got something for you too…” She gestures for the others to spread apart, revealing the acoustic guitar on its stand.

Jason hadn’t known he could be even more surprised, but his eyes get even wider. “Please don’t tell me you…”

“We did.” Laura beams. “Is it the kind you wanted?”

“Well…yes, but…” Jason can’t understand any of this, and continues to look around at the group lamely. “I don’t….I don’t understand. Why…?”

“Because we wanted to do something nice for you,” Susanne speaks up. “It’s a far cry from what we’d like to do after everything that’s happened, but we thought it might help.”

“It was Con’s idea,” Laura adds. “He rallied all of us to pitch in.”

Jason can’t help but step forward and reach out to touch the frets of the shiny new guitar. It was exactly the instrument he’d wanted for a long time. It was even better than what he’d had. He glances up at the others again, beginning to feel a strange mixture of emotions. “I still don’t….” He furrows his brow. “Why?”

“Is it so hard to believe we care about you?” Hal questions gruffly.

Susanne smiles. “Hotshot, swallow your pride and accept the fact that we love you.”

Jason’s face begins to grow red. “But…I don’t deserve…I mean….I can’t accept something like this.”

“Yes you can,” Laura states flatly. “You deserve a whole lot more than this, too.”

“Oh come on, me?” Jason is so taken aback by all of this that he doesn’t even know what to do.

“Yes, you.” Susanne gives his shoulder a pat. “Don’t act so surprised. You brightened this place up as soon as you started working here. You’re one of the best we got, you’re kind to all of us around here, and without you, this place just seems a little bit duller.”

Jason swallows the lump in his throat. These people had it all wrong. They were putting him on a pedestal that he certainly didn’t deserve. They had no idea what he’d thought, or who he’d pretended to be in front of them all these years. They were giving him a gift that showed they cared about someone who he wasn’t. “I…” He glances to Katie, his eyes pleading for help, but this time he was on his own, and the spotlight was getting hotter. “You guys shouldn’t have…I mean…man, this guitar is a beauty. I’ve been dreaming about this kind for a long time. But…I just…” His gaze finally drops to the floor. “If you knew who I really was, I don’t think you’d be doing this.”

The room grows a little quieter as it’s obvious that Jason’s tone is implying more than surface embarrassment.

“What do you mean, Jase?” Susanne questions.

The silence seems to drag on for an eternity, when really it’s only several seconds. Jason’s mind reels. Here was a group of people…a dear group of friends that he had underestimated…even taken for granted. He’d had no idea they cared about him that much…he’d always simply thought that they considered him a coworker…someone to hang out with at best if they had no one else. But this…this gathering and this gift…it blew him away. And he’d been hiding from them all. He’d been blind to their friendship, and as a result, he’d hidden his true self, afraid of rejection or embarrassment.

Jason raises his eyes again, the raging emotions reflecting in his eyes. He owed these people more than that. He owed them the truth before they took anything too far…it was time.

“Look…” He catches Katie’s eye, groping for support before moving his gaze around the room. “I’m not really the ‘Hotshot’ y’all think I am. I got a life, a past, and problems that I’ve never told anyone here about before because…well, because I was afraid to. I see now that it was wrong…but I’ve always shown you guys a person who’s not really me…and…I don’t know how to accept a gift like this when that’s the truth.”

Susanne steps forward with compassion, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You think we don’t know that?” she asks. A gentle smile creases her lips. “You’ve always lived a private life, Jason… there’s things about you that none of us know because you always made yourself off limits when it came to personal things. But no matter how good you are at TJY, and no matter how skilled you are at your job…we do know you’re still human. Everyone has problems whether others know about them in particular or not. It would have been nice to know you apart from work, but we knew you had your reasons. And just because you locked yourself away doesn’t mean we didn’t see this…” She moves her hand to Jason’s chest. “You may think that ‘Hotshot’ is all a lie…but how can it be, when it’s a portion of your heart? Whether you intended to let your own self shine through or not, you can’t tell me that your willingness to help others wasn’t real. You can’t tell me that your passion for this job wasn’t real. You can’t tell me that your compassion for those in need wasn’t real.” Susanne shakes her head. “There’s a lot we don’t know about you because you never let us in. But there’s a whole lot we do know, and those are the things that count.”

Jason is so completely taken aback, that he doesn’t realize the tears pooling behind his eyes. He wasn’t sure of a time he’d been more humbled than this. He forces a short laugh. “I don’t know what to say.”

Hal’s eyes widen teasingly. “Hotshot? Speechless? This is quite the occasion.”

Jason can’t help a small grin and he sighs deeply. “You all have me backed into a corner, you realize that?” He shakes his head. “I guess now would be a good time to apologize…I did have reasons for separating myself from you…but they weren’t good reasons. And…I know just since I came back from Texas, I haven’t exactly been sociable…and I’m sorry about that.”

Rick lifts an eyebrow. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

“Ha!” Jason points to the guitar. “You guys have done way too much already.”

“No…is there anything we can do for you?” Rick repeats. “You like to hide, no doubt, but if there’s anything we can do to help you through whatever it is you’re going through…you only have to let us know.”

Jason swallows hard, finding his eyes sinking to the floor again. “No…not really. It’s…not just the fire or…or things here at work that have…well sort of got me down lately though,” he confesses. He might as well tell the truth now that he had an opening… now that he realized it couldn’t hurt him. “It’s not a secret that I was abducted when I was nine…” He clears his throat awkwardly. “And…I have problems with that…” He looks up again, finding Katie’s face, though still addressing the group. “I locked myself away a long time ago because of it…and I hurt myself in the process. And now that I’m an adult, it comes back to haunt me. I thought I worked through everything, but now and again I experience a relapse that pretty much entails fierce nightmares and flashbacks.” He pauses, trying to maintain an even keel with his emotions, and purses his lips grimly with a nod. “I’ve realized that I’ll probably have periodic relapses the rest of my life, though hopefully the frequency and severity will decrease… It’s something that’s been rather an embarrassment as of late, and…I apologize if anything I did or said reflected anger towards any of you, when really my anger was aimed at something completely different.”

Laura is quick to wipe a tear from her eye. She was so proud of Jason…so happy that he was finally, finally letting people in.

Hal offers Jason a nod. “You’re not alone, Jase. When I was a firefighter years ago there was a tragedy I experienced firsthand. I worked through it, but it still comes back to me…sometimes it’s just one flashback…sometimes it takes me down for a week. I can understand, and you don’t need to apologize.”

Jason looks at Hal with surprise. He hadn’t known that. He could remember times that Hal had taken leave for several days quite unexpectedly, but had never realized why.

Susanne sees Jason’s surprise, and smile. “The benefit to sharing yourself is having others share with you too.” She cocks her head. “We’re here for ya, Hotshot…that’s a promise.”

Jason can’t even express how he feels. All his walls…his barriers…they were gone. He was left out in the open bare and vulnerable…but it hadn’t been as painful as he’d thought. He hadn’t received the strange looks he’d thought he would. No one was upset with him. No one thought he was crazy. Hal could even relate. Jason had feared for so long to allow these people to know him, and now that he’d finally taken a step forward, he was finding out just how ridiculous that fear had been. These people…these friends…they cared about him enough not to be shocked by his past…not to be bothered by it in the least…they only wanted to help if they could.

Scott can see the emotions building, and quite loudly breaks things up before Jason melts in the spotlight. “If we’re not going to have these cookies, I’m going to have to remove myself from the room before I drool all over them.”