"I tell myself I have to build defenses
'Cause once you are in love, you are defenseless
Everything was easy when it meant less
But once you are in love, you are defenseless."

Askjell - To Be Loved ft. AURORA

#3 of the Defenseless Series

Higgins had seen Magnum take the hit and go down, cracking his temple on the blacktop along the way. When he didn't get back up, both fear and rage flared in her chest, making her lungs struggle and her vision turn red.

She promptly wiped the smug look off of their attacker's face, catching him solidly in the throat first. As he choked, she followed up with a savage kick to the groin and as he was gripping his bits as his knees gave out, she finished him off with a roundhouse to the skull. He was out before he hit the ground. Vicious and precise, as she always was. It was all instinctive at this point. Though, this was one of those occasions when the angry part of her wished she had taken a bit longer with him, made him feel a little bit more. It was done now however and she had a feeling he'd be out for a while.

There was a groan to her left. Magnum, it seemed, would not be.

Higgins pulled her attention from their assailant and moved to Magnum's side, dropping down onto her knees beside him. "Magnum?" she questioned.

His hand went to his head, face crumpling into a wince, before his eyes snapped open and he tried to lurch upward.

"No, don't try to sit up," Juliet quickly said, pressing a hand down on his shoulder. Magnum resisted at first, his expression confused and wild, but then he finally complied.

"There now," she soothed, keeping a hand on his shoulder while pulling her phone out of her back pocket. "Can you look at me, Magnum?" He didn't respond to her request, however, just kept rubbing his head and squinting into the middle distance with pained eyes.

Higgins was well acquainted with the look of a concussion. She'd seen others with them and had experienced more than her fair share. She knew how very disorienting they could be. "Alright," she said, "just relax, I'm going to call emergency services."

But just as she brought the phone up in front of her, Magnum's hand shot up, grabbing her wrist tightly.

"Magnum?" Higgins said cautiously. "Let go." He didn't. "Magnum… Thomas."

That seemed to get his attention because his eyes suddenly snapped upward to meet hers. There was something disconnected there, clear confusion.

As he stared at her, he seemed to struggle as if he wasn't quite sure who she was. Juliet waited and just held his gaze, allowing him the time he needed to work through whatever was going on in his mind.

After a few long moments, Magnum's gaze softened and he let go of her wrist. Instead of dropping his hand back down, however, he reached up toward to her face.

Higgins held still, unsure of what he was going to do. She'd heard Rick and T.C. talk in hushed tones about an occasion or two of disassociation where Magnum's mind slipped back to his time as a SEAL and he lost connection with the world around him. The episodes were always short and mostly happened during a time of delirium, usually when waking up medicated in the hospital or the time or two when he'd woken from a nightmare.

It made Juliet's chest hurt to think of what kind of suffering he must have gone through. Magnum never delved too deeply when discussing his PTSD, always brushing past it, but Higgins saw the way his face would shadow after he'd laughed it off with those around him and turned away, thinking no one would see the happy-go-lucky facade fall. She always saw; she was sure his two best mates did, too.

"Handle with care" indeed.

So, she stayed still and just held his gaze, hoping somehow that maybe it would help ground him again. When his fingers brushed gently across her cheek, her breath caught in her throat. His eyes dropped from hers and his focus concentrated on where his was touching. As she watched him, she realized he seemed fixated on the freckles that lightly dusted her cheeks and nose. They were usually covered by her daily application of makeup, but they did peek out now and again when she spent most of the day in the sun like she and Magnum had today.

His fingers faintly tracked across her cheek before his palm slipped down to gently cup her the side of her face. His eyes darted to her mouth just as his thumb brushed her lower lip.

He didn't know what he was doing, she told herself, but she felt something in chest ache at the touch anyway. She swallowed. "Thomas..." she whispered and his eyes came back up to meet hers again. "I… you…"

Before she could say more, however, Magnum's face crumpled into another wince and his hand dropped from her cheek to cradle his forehead. He groaned. "Ughhh…"

Higgins took that moment to distance herself a bit from him, repositioning herself a few inches further back from his side and forcing her brain to compartmentalize the feelings that had stirred at his touch. He didn't know what he was doing, she repeated to herself several times over.

She straightened her spine and took a breath before addressing him again. "Magnum?"

"Higgins," he replied, dropping his hands from his face so he could squint at her.

Relief flooded her and she gave him a nod. It was somewhat shakier than she would have liked.

Magnum half-lifted his head to glance around, but then groaned again at the movement, closing his eyes, and dropped it back down onto the pavement. "Did I get him?" he asked after a second.

"No," she replied primly, "I did."

He grunted at that. "Well, I softened him up for you."

She rolled her eyes skyward. "Oh yes, your face hitting his fist definitely did that," she replied, pushing out a strained puff of a laugh.

When her gaze came back down to look at him again, she saw him just watching her, analyzing her. She shifted slightly under his scrutiny. What did he see? What was she showing? He seemed to process, consider, and then looked for a moment as if there was something on the tip of his tongue that he desperately wanted to get out, but then suddenly his boyish facade slipped into place and he smiled at her. "My face is just that good," he joked.

Juliet returned the smile with a small one of her own and chose to ignore how his voice wavered with a hint of something more.

Author's Notes: This has been one of my favorite shorts so far. ...And now for some odd reason, I totally have "Something There" from Beauty and the Beast in my head right now. HAHAHAHAHAHA Kumu, Rick, and T.C. are now Mrs Potts, Lumiere, and Cogsworth in my head, peeking around corners watching these two. "Well, who'd have thought?" "Well, bless my soul!" "Well, who'd have known?" "Well, who indeed?" "And who'd have guessed they'd come together on their own?"

Oh God, I need to stop. I blame the drugs from my emergency surgery yesterday. Yes, definitely the drugs.