don't you worry, there's still time | chef luca x fem!reader, feat. marcus brooks
summary: after losing his mother, marcus searches for joy and stillness in copenhagen. you and luca, who are more than happy to host, decide to take a big next step in your relationship. a oneshot from the world of 'burn your life down.'
warnings: fluff, light angst, grief, death, light smut, second person pov, swearing, danish inaccuracies, off-canon connection to the storyline of the bear.
word count: 5.8k
listen to: the playlist
a/n: wow, i missed this world! who is ready for the reveal of chef's restaurant name?! while i don't think i have the bandwidth to write another full series (nor a linear story to tell) i'm thinking of creating a second part to 'burn your life down' where we just get to drop in and see what they're up to. thoughts??
chef luca masterlist | full masterlist
After a tumultuous holiday season, it doesn’t take long for Sydney to realize that her friend is in need of a little help. A reprieve, she so kindly explained to both Marcus and Carmy when she’d proposed the idea.
It was Sydney this time, who called Luca, knowing that she and Carmy would have to find something to do with Marcus. It wasn’t fair – that he’d lost his mom just before Thanksgiving – and they both agreed that Marcus needed to get out of dodge. Quick to act, Carmy set up a few stages in NYC for a week or so, which, while seemed to inspire Marcus, seemed to only plunge him further into a slump come Christmas.
“I don’t know. I think we gotta send him on some kinda… eat, pray, love trip. The guy can only sulk on my couch for so long before I consider jumping out of the window,” Sydney says, her attempt to lighten the mood with humor still genuine. “It’s getting sad, Carm. Like… real fuckin’ sad.”
“You’re right. Uh… what about Copenhagen?” Carmy pitches with a shrug, because he knows what all consuming grief feels like.
“Again?” she asks, uncertain of whether it’s the best choice that they could make.
“Yeah,” Carmy shrugs in response. “Think he got a lot of it last time. Could be good for him to go back to somewhere familiar… work with Luca again. You don’t think it’s a-?”
“No I do! I just-,” Sydney hesitates, though she knows her business partner makes a good point. “Familiarity will be good for him. To be around people he can trust.”
“You want me to uh-,” Carmy begins to offer, figuring he’ll make the call.
“Probably best if I explain the situation. Just ‘cause, you know, I know more of what’s going on… just send me his info and I’ll call later,” Sydney interjects.
Carmy agrees with a curt nod before adding in:
“Uh… okay yeah. Yeah.”
*
You get plenty of time to prepare for Marcus’ visit, performing all kinds of fancy footwork to arrange a proper visit – a week’s worth of time spent staging and living in Copenhagen. When Luca finds out that the prolific houseboat, a chef retreat of sorts that’s always been an option for lodging, is booked for the week and a half that Marcus plans on visiting, you offer up your place without hesitation.
The arrangement goes as follows: while Marcus stays at yours at no cost, you’ll stay with Luca for the duration of the time.
This is how you find yourself at the massive Ikea on Dybbølsbro on a Saturday morning with Luca, in search of a set of fresh bed linens intended for guests.
“I really should host more. And Astrid said she and Lina were planning a trip out here so… why not kill two birds with one stone?” you’d reasoned to your boyfriend, making a strong case for why you and Luca should make this little shopping trip.
“What do you think of the blue?” Luca asks you, as you run your hand over a set of the display sheets, checking for softness.
“Don’t know if the blue is what I’m going for. I was thinking of something warmer. Maybe a yellow or… I don’t know. I’ve kind of been into that trendy rust color as of late,” you reply with a shrug, moving onto the warmer colors.
Luca chuckles and with a small shake of his head, he clarifies his previous questions with:
“No, I meant for me.”
“What do you mean?” you ask him curiously, his comment pulling all of your focus as you search his face for answers. “You just got new bedding.”
And expensive ones too.
But as your eyes follow his gaze, you realize that he’s not talking about sheets, focused on the XL Twin-sized duvets just above where the sheets messily fall along the shelf.
“I was thinking…” Luca trails off, checking in with you before he continues, with “... maybe it’s time I get two duvets… you know… for us.” He takes a beat, and a step towards you, and you know you’ll never stand a chance against his boyish charm as one side of his mouth turns up into a smile.
You’re no stranger to the Scandinavian duvet method – two twin duvets for one king sized bed – but it sounds like Luca’s suggestion is about way more than buying an extra duvet on this trip.
“I want you to feel at home… at my place."
“I do,” you reply, almost instantly, a warmth spreading through your belly as you take a step towards him.
“But I mean really… feel like it’s your home. Because it is. It could be. You know… if you want it to be,” Luca continues, this time with more insistence, a look of hopefulness in his deep blue eyes.
“Are you… are you asking me to move in with you?” you manage to get out, your heart skipping a beat.
“Why not? We could use this week to try it out,” he suggests so casually that you practically have to do a double take. “See how it goes while Marcus stays at your place?”
“Yeah I-... that sounds like a good plan, yeah,” you stammer out, the grin on your face undeniable as you nod enthusiastically in the middle of a goddamn furniture store.
“Besides,” Luca says, clearing his throat as his tone changes to one that’s much more playful. “You’re an absolute blanket hog and a repeat offender at that.” Luca winks your way as you roll your eyes with a laugh in response. “This could prevent some of our silly little quarrels, don’t you think, love?”
“Uh huh,” you sound, your face skeptical as you look his way again. “Preventative measures. Sure, babe.”
Luca chuckles before leaning down to press a chaste kiss to your lips, right then and there, in the Ikea bed linen section, the place you’ll now forever think of as the place your boyfriend asked you to move in with him.
Connection
When Marcus arrives in Copenhagen, you’ve arranged your home with the most comfort in mind, having already packed a week’s worth of things and left for Luca’s. You can only imagine what he must be going through, deciding that something like that – losing your mother – though inevitable, is your goddamn worst nightmare.
“Marcus,
Enjoy your stay and please reach out if you need anything. I can’t wait to meet you!”
…is the note that you leave him, along with a few morning pastries you picked up from your favorite baggeri across the street, and your number scribbled down at the bottom of the notepad.
As Marcus arrives, his eyes drawn immediately to your note and gift, Marcus smiles to himself, noticing that you left a very nice looking bottle of wine on the counter as well. He’s moved by your generosity, considering you’ve never met, and the fact that you’re willing to take so much care, extend this much kindness to a stranger, causes a wave of softness to wash over him.
Maybe, just maybe, he can find softness again – the last few months riddled with pain, grief, and numbness to get through the days.
While he came here to work, encouraged by his friends that a change of scenery may do his broken heart some good, it’s the first time Marcus has had a chance to be still. His feelings of grief sit heavier here and it catches him off guard, uncertain that he’s quite ready to sit with them yet. He pushes aside the thought, focusing on exploring your home and unpacking his bags. Marcus knows how to stay busy – he’s become an expert at it by now – reminding himself that he’s got work at 5 am sharp tomorrow.
*
“A little too much, chef. Take it down by about 15 grams,” Luca directs, his voice even and sure as he inspects the balls of dough that Marcus currently shapes.
“Yes, chef,” Marcus nods in understanding, plopping the ball of dough back on the scale to adjust the measurement.
The two of them work like this for the rest of the morning, Luca treading carefully while keeping things professional, while Marcus buries himself in the work – something that feels good, safe, right.
He’s missed this. While Marcus has one chef he works with directly at the restaurant, he’s the expert – the head patissier. He misses being surrounded by excellence, getting to be a student of someone who is just as driven, if not more, and inspired. It’s good, quiet, calm, yet there’s a focus and intensity in Luca’s kitchen that feels like a breath of fresh air.
His stage trip to New York has been more of a mess than beneficial. Maybe it had been the chaos of the city, or the chaos of the chefs he was working with. Maybe it was the fact that Marcus, though hungry for a distraction, hadn’t quite been ready to walk directly into the line of fire yet.
As Marcus’ practiced hands move with the dough, there’s a newfound confidence in the way that he works that's not lost on Luca. Luca watches his friend carefully, pride swelling in his chest as his mentee makes the adjustment with ease and diligence.
“Can I join you?” Luca asks, gesturing towards Marcus' workstation.
“‘Course, chef,” Marcus replies, his response short yet reverent.
As Luca joins him, finding a space to the right of Marcus, he busies his hands with rolling each perfectly measured ball of dough into mini boules, ready to proof. The two of them work quietly, side by side, the air between them heavy with words unsaid. He can feel it – the weight that lays so heavily on Marcus' heart – but Luca doesn’t want to bring it up, uninterested in forcing the conversation. Especially about something so painful, something he knows that Marcus has barely begun working through.
“Thanks, again. For uh… you know… letting me come work,” Marcus begins, momentarily checking in with Luca to gauge a reaction.
“‘Course,” Luca replies, his answer instantaneous. “You’re welcome here any time, mate.”
“Yeah?” Marcus asks, stealing a glance in Luca’s direction.
“Yeah,” Luca responds with a certain nod.
“And uh… shit. I can’t thank your girlfriend enough for letting me crash at her place,” Marcus adds, as he works through his discomfort and overwhelm from the wave of feelings that begin to bubble up in his chest.
“You can thank her yourself on Saturday,” Luca brings up, excited over the fact that Marcus will not only be meeting his girlfriend, but staging at her restaurant too. “She’s really looking forward to meeting you.”
Marcus nods slowly, his hands the only steady thing about him as he continues to focus on his work.
“I just mean-, well, she didn’t have to-. ‘S not like either of you owed it to me or anything and I-. You guys just really came through…” Marcus trails off, wanting to make his gratitude clear. It means more to him that he can articulate so instead he settles for, “So thank you. Again.”
Luca shrugs with an aplomb about him as he returns with, “We got you, mate.” He pauses before continuing, fully aware that Marcus isn’t quite comfortable with the feelings that have presented themself in this moment. “And the way I see it, I wouldn’t have met her if it weren’t for you – for our conversation the last time you were here – so we really do owe you for it.”
This time Luca makes an effort to check in with Marcus, gauging his emotional capacity as he concludes with:
“But that’s not what any of this is about: debts, who owes who what. We were both more than happy to host you. That’s what mates are for.”
It’s not till the end of the next shift that it hits him, and Marcus finds himself sitting outside of the restaurant on a bench across the street. He’s not sure whether it’s the jet lag or the exhaustion of the 5 am start time in another time zone, but it hits him all at once, like a ton of bricks. Suddenly consumed with the feelings that he’s been trying his best to avoid, all he can do is pause, completely caught off guard by the strength of them.
Quietly, Luca joins him, having spotted him on his way home, rerouting himself in Marcus’ direction instead.
All he can think of are the words you’ve asked him, and he you, time and time again – the ones that cut right to the core of you each and every time – that show you how much he cares.
“How’s your heart?” Luca asks Marcus, after a few minutes of sitting on the bench together in silence.
And how is his heart?
He’s not sure how to answer, considering it’s been a while since he’s really had a chance to check in, the crippling reality of this great loss is too much to bear alone.
His heart is broken, shattered into an infinite amount of pieces.
He, and his heart will never be the same again and he doesn’t know where or how he’ll ever put it back together.
His heart is… lost, in desperate need of finding a soft place to land.
Marcus takes a while to answer, racking his brain for any semblance of a cohesive answer.
He waits. And then he waits.
Until finally, he can answer.
“I uh… don’t know. But I’m hoping this trip will help me figure that out.”
Creativity
“do you remember the 21st night of september? love was changin' the minds of pretenders while chasin' the clouds away.” (earth, wind, and fire.)
Everything about the way you run your kitchen feels different than what he’s used to.
It’s sure as hell different from his last stage trip to New York, Marcus thinks to himself.
With Carmy and Syd, working with them, there’s a buzz of chaos that runs underneath even the most organized and efficient service. It’s something integral to what they have, gives an edge to The Bear that seems to make it hum in all the right ways. Even with Luca, who comes from fine dining and Michelin-starred restaurants, there’s a quiet and determined focus – an intensity to his work – even without the undercurrent of chaos.
But this. But you.
Your kitchen somehow teeters the line of organized chaos and reckless play so well that Marcus understands why this works – why it’s efficient.
Still, he watches as you and your staff dance – no, literally dance – around each other to the highly recognizable Earth, Wind, and Fire tune. Mathilde sings along while chopping chives for the brothy mushroom grain bowl, while, mid-phrase, manages to yell out a short command to a line cook in Danish. Out of the corner of his eye, Marcus catches Jesper working the dining room, while you finish plating two more dishes, ready to be walked out.
It’s as if you find focus in the center of all the noise, somewhere between the electric energy between you, Mathilde, and your staff, and the feel-good vibes and homeyness of the restaurant that you’ve created.
You had been more than welcoming when Marcus had walked through the doors of your restaurant, Kokuore, mere hours ago. You’d given him the tour, shown him which station he’d be working this evening, then warmly introduced him to your entire team before family meal started. Marcus can’t stop moving, too afraid to be still in fear of falling apart in the presence of how comforting you’ve been.
And this? Your kitchen. It’s all joy, connection, and artistry.
It’s not hard for him to see why Luca fell in love with you.
“Marcus, feel free to take a break,” he hears you say, as you nod towards the dining room through the open kitchen.
As Marcus follows your gesture, he notices that Luca’s arrived, remembering something about a standing Saturday date.
“You sure, chef?” Marcus asks, looking to you for approval.
“Positive,” you nod, reassuringly.
Marcus nods in return to confirm, before taking his apron off and making his way over to the dining room where Luca is exchanging a few words with Jesper.
“Wassup, chef,” he greets his mentor.
“You know, you can call me Luca,” Luca reminds him with a crooked smile. “At least when we’re off the clock.”
Marcus chuckles, “Uh… yeah alright. That’s gonna take some getting used to.”
Luca chuckles in return, before Jesper shows them to his table, mentioning something about Americans being so afraid of fluidity.
“She’s brilliant isn’t she?” Luca asks, in reference to you as his eyes catch yours from across the room.
“Nah for real. Like… mad scientist vibes,” Marcus concurs with a smile. “She can throw down for sure.” He pauses as they sit down at Luca’s table. “So you come every Saturday night, huh?”
“When I can, yeah, which is… most Saturdays,” Luca replies honestly, before beginning to list why he’s kept up this routine. “But it’s nice. Keeps me inspired. I get to see my girl, walk her home at night which makes me feel better.” Luca leans back in his chair this time, crossing his arms over his chest. “And I never mind helping close down at the end of the night.”
Marcus hums in response before one of the waitstaff comes to their table, with a glass of wine in hand, on the house. They chat for a little longer before Marcus returns to the kitchen, his excitement for what you’re doing here filling him to the brim.
As dinner service comes to an end, Marcus can’t help but notice the chemistry and how unique it is as you all work together in perfect harmony. There’s a warmth to it, something different, and he begins to understand why the name of the restaurant comes from the word, heart.
Luca is quick to get up from his table, quickly finishing his glass of wine as he offers to help close down. The music volume goes from underscoring the buzz of a busy night of service, to the main attraction, as a motown throwbacks playlist begins to blare from the speakers. You all work quickly and efficiently, eager to close down, get home, and begin your weekends, but it’s when an old Otis Redding track that Luca decides to put a pause on the progress.
“Dance with me, my love,” he says, offering his hand out to you as a huge gesture that earns a few looks and giggles from some of your staff.
“Luca,” you begin to protest, looking around.
“You can take three minutes,” he offers, exchanging a look with you this time.
You nod, taking his hand as you agree with, “Okay.”
And as Luca wraps you up in his arms, engaging you in a slow dance to Otis Redding’s “That’s How Strong my Love is,” you chuckle, relaxing into him.
“Oh, get a room, you two!” Jesper calls out after you, teasingly.
“She pretends – always puts up a fight – as if they don’t do this every single week,” Mathilde adds, as an explanation to Marcus.
“Every week?” Marcus asks, a little surprised by both you and Luca’s willingness to pause and revel in a moment with each other, instead of just pushing through.
“Yeah. Romantics, they are,” Jesper chimes in.
Marcus smiles to himself. It’s a reminder of slowness – something he hasn’t let himself experience in a long time – and for just a moment, he lets himself settle into the feeling.
*
You don’t even mind that you woke up an hour before your alarm the moment you feel Luca’s arms wrapped around you, and his lips against your soft skin. The low rumble of his voice resonates across your shoulders, sending chills down your spine as you arch into his hands, his arms wrapped around you.
“I know we’re only a few days in… of our little trial,” Luca begins, the bass of his voice reverberating through your shoulder blade.
“Our living together trial?” you clarify with your ask, letting out a gasp as he nibbles on your shoulder gently.
“Yeah. Just wonderin’ where your mind’s at,” Luca murmurs, his eager hands beginning to explore underneath the oversized shirt you put on before bed last night.
“Well… I really like this,” you reply, the sound that comes out of your mouth somewhere between a giggle and a moan.
“Hmmmm?” Luca sounds, innocently.
“This… Waking up to you thing.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mhm.”
Luca’s name escapes your lips as his fingers gently begin to play with your nipples, his erection hard against your back as you begin to grind your hips back against.
“And the access to round the clock sex is really a bonus,” you sigh, blissfully.
“Oh yeah?” he asks you again, a large tatted hand slipping between your legs.
“Yeah… I’d even be… interested in leaning into that part… right now,” you hiss in reply to his touch. “Considering you’re distracting me with sex.”
“Hmmmmm. ‘S not just it, love. Have I told you how grateful I am for what you’ve done for Marcus?” Luca asks, his mouth back on your neck. He presses your body against him, your back to his chest as he rocks his hips against yours.
“Luca!” you protest, unable to focus on the conversation.
“It’s your kindness. Your heart… I’m in awe of it,” he continues to praise you as the two of you begin to set a rhythm between your bodies.
It’s all heat, and soft sighs of pleasure, and foreplay.
“Well, I know a little something about what he’s going through,” you answer breathlessly. You begin to impatiently push the hem of your shirt higher so that you can give Luca more access to your body.
“That’s why I love you,” Luca murmurs into your skin, his hands all over you, his focus unbroken and your mind beginning to go blank. His hands are tearing your shirt over your head as he continues to praise you. “Your heart, the way you share it.”
“You helped me get there, baby,” you gasp, turning your head so that you can kiss your boyfriend.
Instead of answering, Luca nods knowingly, before crashing his lips into yours. His mouth on yours feels like heaven, and you can’t believe that you ever fought your feelings for him.
“Ah fuck it. Let’s do it. Let’s move in together,” you surrender to him, lost in the moment.
“Yeah?” Luca pauses, pulling away, as if almost can’t believe what he’s hearing.
“Yeah. I mean it, baby,” you nod, catching his gaze, certain in the way you answer. “I wanna wake up to you every morning.”
“Me too, my love,” Luca grins, before pressing his lips to yours again. “Now will you please let me fuck you, darling?”
“Fuck yes.”
Luca spends the next hour showing you just how grateful he is for you, while you in return, spend the next hour showing him just how sure you are about this decision.
And you are sure. If mornings like this are a constant for the rest of your life, you think you’ll die a happy woman.
You’ve found a home in him, and he, you. He’s the person you want to come home to at the end of the day. He’s the man that puts a smile on your face every single time he gets on his soapbox about how Beyonce is the performer of your lifetimes, and he is unequivocally the best, most unexpected thing in your life.
Luca Davies, in almost a year of knowing him, and eight months of getting to love him, has somehow become your favorite person.
By the time you and Luca are both showered and decent-for-company, you’ve begun your mise en place for brunch, completely content with the fact that you’re running a little behind schedule (and in all fairness, the sex was worth it – it’s always worth it). The smell of bacon sizzling away on your carbon steel fry pan fills the entire apartment, and you’re glad that Luca opened a window earlier. It’s not exactly window weather yet, but the air ventilation is a must when it comes to smoked meats.
While you play catch up with your brunch plan, Luca’s busy welcoming Marcus in, pouring him a cup of coffee using the extensive ten-step pour over he’s been fixated on ever since he purchased it, while they chat here and there about what else he’s explored in Denmark.
“Been too busy working, to be honest but… I don’t know. I might wander around today… see what kind of stuff I can get into,” Marcus answers frankly with a shrug.
“Ah, mate. We just had a walk at the Frederiksberg Gardens. Definitely something I’d recommend checking out,” Luca suggests, his eyes lighting up with excitement as he mentions it.
Luca continues moving through his list of recommendations, Marcus chiming in with places and things he did the last time he was here, excited to spend a few days exploring the city instead of just working.
“Wanderin’ around. I dunno. There’s something about it. ‘S good for the spirit, you know?” Luca concludes.
“Yeah,” Marcus nods in agreement, before turning his attention over to the French toast you’re working on. “Okay, I see you. What is that? Mascarpone?”
“Yeah, good eye. It’s just something new I’m working on: a mascarpone stuffed french toast. We’re actually talking about extending our hours… maybe doing weekend brunch,” you answer thoroughly, as you dip the stuffed pieces of bread into their egg batter, pre-cook.
“For real? That’s sick,” Marcus compliments, watching you carefully. “I mean… shit. You could have a whole brunch spot.”
“What do you mean?” you ask, looking up from your cutting board.
“A Brunch spot,” Marcus repeats, simply, the excitement in his eyes at the new idea, evident. “Yeah, you know. Luca could do the morning pastries. You work your magic on the rest of the menu.”
“That’s a novel idea! What do you think, my love?” Luca asks, intrigue in his voice as he searches your face for a reaction.
“I-,” you begin, looking from Luca to Marcus, then back to Luca again. “I… never thought about it like that.” You take a beat, eyeing Luca carefully. “We’ve never talked about going into business together.”
Marcus shrugs, before picking up his coffee mug, “Yo, it’s just a thought. I think you two would be unstoppable together.”
“Unstoppable, eh?” Luca asks, his eyes locked with yours.
You only hum in response, raising a quirked eyebrow in Luca’s direction before adding:
“It’s certainly one hell of an idea, Marcus.”
Kokuore
Monday afternoon, you find yourself at your restaurant with Marcus Brooks, on a day off.
“I might need a little extra help with something tomorrow. We’re closed tomorrow, but I want to get ahead on this special I’m working on. Could use the help of a pastry chef. What do you say?” you’d proposed to him, over one more espresso before he left.
To Luca’s dismay, (“ you silly Americans just can’t enjoy a day of doing nothing,” he’d teased the two of you) Marcus had given you an unwavering yes, reassuring you that he was down to learn everything he possibly could from you, especially while he was here.
And it’s true. You do need the help. But should he want someone to talk to – someone who gets it, even just a little bit – you want to offer him the space and the opportunity to do so.
“As a patissier, do you get tasked with pasta? At The Bear?” you ask Marcus, as you pleat a dumpling in hand with a speed that only comes with practice.
“Nah,” Marcus sounds, his focus on the dumpling he’s pleating too. His concentration on getting the pleats right is reverent and unbroken, even as he answers your question. “Our head chef, Carmy, he uh… he comes from an Italian American family so when we’ve done a stuffed pasta… he usually takes the lead on that.”
You nod in understanding, placing the dumpling you’ve just finished down on the full-sized sheet pan. The two of you sit across from each other, having pushed a few dining tables together as a makeshift workstation.
“Think Luca’ll take over this kinda stuff when you guys open a restaurant together?” Marcus asks, lightheartedly pushing his agenda from yesterday.
You laugh in response, your hands working quickly on yet another dumpling.
“For someone with no skin in the game, you’re really insistent on this idea,” you tease him in return.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it,” Marcus pushes right back, his tone still light.
“I…” you sigh, trailing off as you pause your work for a moment. “You know, we just said we’d move in together. That and a restaurant? Feels fast.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Like… a few hours before you came over for brunch,” you elaborate, earning a whistle from Marcus. The two of you exchange a look, and a laugh, as you pick up another dumpling wrapper that you and Marcus rolled out together earlier.
“It’s a good idea though,” you add, stealing a glance his way so that he knows that you’re serious.
“Well, when you two inevitably do open a restaurant… I want ten percent,” Marcus jokes, earning another laugh from you.
“Deal,” you agree with him.
You and Marcus work like this, exchanging a few words, the conversation light, underscored by a softer acoustic soundtrack from one of your Spotify radio stations.
“So how’d you learn to cook like this?” Marcus asks you curiously.
“Uh…” you hesitate, treading carefully as you realize this conversation could open a can of worms.
“I don’t know how much Luca’s told you about me… but I was married… before him,” you begin, cautiously. “And… well, I learned a lot of this… a lot of traditional Japanese cooking from my mother-in-law.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. These are her dumplings actually – her recipe. She passed away last Fall and… well, it was important to me to celebrate her – to celebrate her life – by creating a few dishes for her,” you continue, and it’s as if all of the air has been sucked out of the room. “We’re bringing this one back as a special this month but um… yeah. I’m… still very much grieving and… it helps me remember her. Cooking her food helps me feel close to her, you know?”
“Yeah,” Marcus sighs, his heart heavy as he exhales.
He waits a beat.
And then another, having paused his work as he watches you pleat, head down, with expert hands.
The silence between you and Marcus is full, heavy, connected by shared experience. You wait for Marcus to say something, and when he doesn’t, you decide to continue.
“This restaurant… has so much of my heart in it: it’s got my love for Italian food from growing up in my best friend’s family’s restaurant, and it’s got my love for her – for Aiko – and everything she taught me,” you begin to explain. “And lately… it’s got a fresh perspective… inspired by the love I have with Luca, I think. Well, I know. Inspired by him… how this place brought us together.”
“The name itself is… totally made up, but means a lot to me. The Japanese word for heart is, kokoro, and the Italian word for heart is, cuore. Somehow an homage to my past… and was… Prophetic in so many ways too.”
As Marcus listens, Luca’s previous question lingers in his head:
How’s your heart?
At the time he didn’t know how to answer, and after five days in Copenhagen – after five days of doing what he loves in a place that he loves – his heart is somehow so full, yet so broken all at once. He’s filled with deep sorrow and with the spark of creativity all at the same time, and he’s just not sure how to hold all of this feeling inside of him.
Marcus waits a beat, opens his mouth, then lets the words fall out.
“It’s evident. In your food,” is all he manages to say. “It’s got soul. It’s got heart. I-, it’s inspiring. That’s for sure.”
“I made a dish. For Michael,” Marcus adds, his eyes on the dumpling he works on, but the guard on his heart beginning to fall away. “He was uh… well, he was the old owner of the restaurant, called The Beef back then. Carmy took over after he died. Felt right to honor him and his life, you know? When we reopened as The Bear.”
“Food is… it’s our art, you know?” you agree. “Sometimes it’s the only way I know how to express myself and… sometimes it’s just the thing that makes sense.”
“Yeah.”
A beat.
“Maybe one day I can make one for my mom,” Marcus says, his voice stuck in his throat as he admits, “I don’t know if I’m ready yet. But I think… I think I’d like to eventually.”
“Of course,” you reassure him gently. “You don’t have to be ready now. You don’t have to be ready ever. But when you are, your art will always be there.”
“Thanks,” Marcus nods solemnly.
You get up this time, realizing the sheet pan is full, and ready to be placed on the baker’s rack. As you return to the table with a new empty sheet pan, lined with parchment paper, Marcus finally asks you, his eyes soft, the heartbreak in them present.
“How’d you get through? You know. Losing her? Your mother-in-law?”
You return to your chair with a heavy sigh.
“I’ll let you know when I do,” you answer, letting up a soft chuckle. “It helps to have good people and… from what Luca’s told me, you do. But… I had to let ‘em in, let ‘em help me. Let ‘em love me. And in all honesty, most days I’m still just… taking it day by day.”
“Yeah, I-. I do. I got some really good people. Back home,” Marcus drags out slowly.
“Then that’s all that matters. Your people and your heart. The rest… you just-,” you start.
“Take day by day?” Marcus interjects, pausing to catch your eyes.
You and Marcus exchange a knowing look, the recognition of each others’ pain is met with empathy.
“Yeah. I think that's all we can do.”
By the end of your work session with Marcus, you’re ready to head home so that you can spend the rest of the day with Luca.
“What’re you gonna do with the rest of your day?” you ask Marcus, curiously.
With a sigh, and then a shrug, and a heart that feels just a little lighter, he answers with:
“Think I might wander around a bit. Someone once told me it’s good for the spirit.”
The gurney breaches doorways, breaks crowds of baby blue scrubs. The wheels scream, unoiled and abused. Everyone is talking--terms you usually can synthesize but cannot now. You stare at the ceiling tiles, desperately trying to keep your heavy lids open.
You’re not in immeasurable pain now, but you would be without the needle in your spine. Maybe you’re going to be on the table and the monster you’ve been incubating is going to break through your skin and then a fire is going to eat the both of you--unless, of course, you bleed out first.
Maybe this is the end. Maybe this is what your summer has been coming to all along.
This is it. What a silly thought that is. What gives?
With the world flying by you from up above in shades of white and crisp blue, you wonder what this was all for. All this pain, all this torture, all this fever. What good did it do anybody?
Flames over flesh.
It’s the last thing you think before your eyes close and you sink into a meperidine haze.
♀
The sun is warm on your cheeks and shoulders as you step out of the passenger side of Maverick’s Jeep, the worn straps of your duffle digging into the bare skin of your shoulder. Your flimsy sandals--you should’ve known better than to wear sandals--sink into the gravel and gray dust kicks up your shins.
Inhaling deeply, you’re almost startled at how clean the air smells. Nothing like the choking scent of leather and gasoline in Maverick’s Jeep--it was making your eyes damn near water on the ride up. But here it is fresh and purified by pine and oak and crabgrass.
“Got anything in the back?” Maverick asks you, already headed towards the trunk with his shades intact and his jet-black hair wind-kissed from your ride with the top down. You shake your head. “Just the duffel then, huh? Light packer! I like that in a woman! Would you so mind helping me grab some of the supplies from the back?”
“Sure thing,” you tell him, setting your bag on the gravel and following him to the back of the Jeep.
He’s grinning as the two of you begin unloading.
“I love it here,” he tells you with a content sigh. He glances around the property, notes where a screen needs to be repaired and a hinge reattached and paint touched up, and glances at you. You’re diligently unloading jugs of water and big boxes of raisins with your brow knit. There’s a faint smile tugging on your lips, a heat about your face and chest that gives you a sheen of excitement. “You’re going to love it here, you know. What do you think so far, nurse?”
Face warm from his nickname for you, which feels like a pretty high compliment for a prospective nursing student, you smile very politely.
“Well, it's sure…picturesque. If that isn’t too corny,” you tell him, quickly glancing at the trees scraping the endless blue sky. “Quiet, too.”
“Just wait until the rugrats get here. You won’t even remember what the word quiet means. It’s completely fantastic,” Maverick tells you, wiping his hands on his khaki-colored shorts. He slams the trunk of the Jeep shut. “I’ll give you the walking-talking tour if you carry that jug aaand those boxes for me.”
Trailing behind him, arms full of water and pantry goods, you’re only half-listening to him. Your heart is beating steadily in your throat, arms already aching.
“--officially opened the doors with Pen about two or three years ago--oh, that’s my wife, by the way. Penny, Pen, P. You’ll probably meet her sometime this summer, I’d guess! Anyway, it was the year our daughter, Mel, started school. Didn’t have anything to do, so we thought--why not?” Maverick says. He stops suddenly and props a heavy wooden box on his thigh so he can wipe the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. He glances at you and notes you taking it all in still. He smiles. “Pen used to go here as a little girl. Some of her favorite memories of her childhood are--well, right here. She’s always passing the camp folklore down to the masses. Don’t believe a word Jake says, alright? He’s gullible and he embellishes.”
You imagine writing it down on a sticky note and plastering it to the inside of your skull: don’t trust Jake--he’s a storyteller.
“Has it always been open to the public? Camp, I mean.” You ask. “Heck, I’d never heard of it until this summer.”
Maverick shakes his head.
“So much for advertising, right? Guess word-of-mouth isn’t the best way to spread the good news about camp,” he laughs. “It’s got kind of a funky history. Opened first in 1945 after the war and stayed open until--huh, I think about…’57 or ‘59? And then it was closed until Penny and I opened it up again in ‘80.”
“Wow,” you say softly. “Was it in rough shape?”
“Everything but the camp sign,” Maverick says, nodding towards the large arched sign at the mouth of camp. It is a heavy and thick thing made of wood--hand painted in clear, concise letters. “That's why we kept the name.”
“Camp Arcadia,” you say aloud. “It’s got a nice little ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t remind me,” you say, laughing softly. “I’m trying to forget about that film’s existence.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Maverick says. “Do you know what Arcadia means?”
“Uh,” you say, thinking. Heat has sprouted in your chest from the exertion of carrying such heavy items. “I don’t think I do.”
“Get this,” Maverick starts, grinning. “A place of simple pleasure and quiet.”
“Well, then. It sure lives up to its name!”
“That’s what Penny says,” Maverick sighs. “But she usually stays away during the talent show.”
“There’s a talent show?” You ask, grinning. Maverick nods. “How sweet. Must get all the kiddos excited.”
“Oh, boy--does it ever.” Maverick glances at you, but then stops again. You’re both panting when you dig your heels into the gravel and halt. He nods to your strained arms. “That too heavy? You alright?”
Really, you’re struggling to carry all the items in your arms. But dammit if you’ll so much as let your bottom lip quiver.
“Nah, I’m good!” You say, panting. “I’m great, actually.”
Maverick has already decided he likes you. But he especially likes you when you’re lying to save face. It reminds him of himself.
“From your lips to God’s ear,” he says with a wink.
Maverick takes you through the courtyard and into the mess hall, where he tells you to just throw the items anywhere. And you quite literally hardly make it through the door before your knees are buckling and you’re setting everything down with complete haste.
“That’s quite a hike,” you pant to Maverick, slightly embarrassed as you fan yourself. “You didn’t give me a fair warning.”
“Would you have come?” He asks, all charm and charisma as he wipes his balmy hands on the thighs of his jeans.
“Touché,” you breathe.
“Thanks a million, by the way,” Maverick tells you, plucking his sunglasses off and hooking them to his linen button-down before he grins at you again. “How you feeling? Nervous? Scared? Excited?”
Maverick moves about a million miles a minute--he’s a fast talker and an even faster driver. As you catch your breath and chew on your answer, you begin to feel like you have a crick in your neck and a Hell of a summer ahead of you.
But you just smile at him.
“I’m feelin’ dandy,” you answer him. You glance around the cavernous mess hall, which has been freshly mopped--diluted bleach stings your nostrils, coats the roof of your mouth. “Where is everyone?”
He points at you, eyebrows coming together.
“Good question,” he sighs. “Let’s go find ‘em, huh?”
You don’t have to go far to find everyone. Just as soon as the two of you are out the door and in the heat again, you hear splashing and hollering. Turning your face towards the water--a beautiful, blue lake that stretches from one side of the tree-lined horizon to the other--you see them all.
“There they are,” Maverick grins, hands on his hips. “Guess they needed to cool off.”
“What were they doing before?” You ask, brow furrowed. You wring your hands together as you scan the water--a handful of men, all brawny and tan and long hair and sex, and one petite brunette--swallowing hard. “Like, you know. What got them so hot?”
“Orgies tend to get a tad steamy,” a voice says from behind you, a teasing lilt sinking into the notes. “But so does repainting the latrine.”
“Ah,” Maverick says, grinning at the man that has suddenly materialized behind you. Maverick throws an arm over his shoulders and doesn’t seem to mind how much he is dwarfed by this man. He slaps the man’s bare chest a few friendly times. “My favorite nephew.”
“Don’t worry,” the man says, eyes wide. He holds his hands up to you like you’re an upset animal he’s cornered and he’s trying to get back on your good side. “Not related biologically.”
“Why would she worry about that?” Maverick asks him, already fighting an eye roll.
“‘Cause I don’t want her thinking my genes are tainted or anything,” the man answers with a boyish grin. “In fact, I don’t want anyone thinking that!”
“Tainted? You mean blessed,” Maverick says, letting his eyes finally roll. He glances at you, still smiling. “Nurse--this is Rooster. Rooster, this is nurse.”
Rooster’s sopping wet, only wearing a small pair of swim trunks, and his curls are dripping lakewater down his back. His hair is dark gold, curly, and long enough to sit just below his shoulders. And his chest glistens in the sun, wide and hard from manual labor.
And you--you look way too young to be the new nurse here. The last nurse was closing in on her seventies and always had a butterscotch candy tucked inside her cheek. You aren’t in uniform--camp or otherwise--and he wonders if you’re the new counselor he heard about last week. A last-minute hire, someone Maverick was going to bring in personally.
“You’re the new camp nurse?” He asks, brows furrowed. He looks you up and down, sizes you up. He’s wondering how old you are to already be a nurse--you can practically see the question on his tongue.
You hold your hip with one hand and shade your eyes from the sun with the other.
“You’re named after a farm animal and you’re worried about him tainting your genes?”
Maverick laughs--a deep and proud belly laugh--before clapping Rooster on the shoulder.
“Ouch,” Rooster says, mocking offense. He can’t wipe the grin off his lips. “That cut deep, little mama.”
“Great. A regular Elvis Presley,” you say. “Just what I needed.”
“Hey, I take offense to that,” Rooster says as lake water rolls off his tanned shoulders and down his arms. You’re trying not to stare, nose twitching with concentration. “I’m much more of a Jerry Lee Lewis type! It’s undeniable!”
“Cry about it,” you say.
Smiling yourself, you bring your index finger to your eye and drag it down your face--mocking the rolling of a tear.
Rooster laughs--a laugh that you can feel in the soles of your feet like it’s coming from deep inside of the earth, like it was born there just to die in the foundation of your body.
“Only if you’re there to make it all better,” Rooster says.
It feels like a challenge.
You’re just about to lip something back when Maverick glances at his watch and cringes. Amelia has a ballet recital later and he doesn’t even want to think about what Penny will say if he’s more than five minutes late.
He claps to draw both of your gazes to him.
“Here’s an idea. Why don’t you two get acquainted while I get some work done, huh? I’m in a crunch here. Give her a tour, Rooster! Introduce her to the flock! Finish that latrine!” Maverick lists as he starts for the Jeep again. He stops and turns quickly, a shit-eating grin plastered across his face. You wonder, momentarily, if he’s made of plastic. “And play nice, kids!”
You and Rooster look at each other for a long moment, each of you biting smiles, taking each other in as Maverick jogs back towards the Jeep with all the haste and grace of a prancing deer.
“Who’re they?” You ask, nodding towards the water.
He crosses his arms, stepping closer to you.
“The others,” he says.
“The others?” You mock. “Ominous.”
“Coyote, Hangman, Fanboy, Payback, and Phoenix,” he answers.
“Which one’s the girl?” You inquire, brows pinched.
He grins at you. His lips are pink with enjoyment.
“Guess,” he simply says.
“I’ll go out on a limb here and say it isn’t Fanboy or Hangman,” you answer. He nods, amused. “Payback?” You ask.
“Other P,” he says, impressed and delighted.
“Damn,” you answer, tutting. “Phoenix, then.”
“Bingo,” he tells you.
“Nurse is a nickname,” you say finally, pressing your toe into the gravel.
“So is Rooster,” he says, nodding. “Thank God.”
His Adam’s apple bobs. Something between your leg twitches--you want to know what that bobbing would feel like below your open mouth.
Swallowing hard, you nod.
“I know,” you say. “I was only kidding before.”
“Yeah, me too,” Rooster says. “‘Cause no way you’re old enough to be a nurse.”
“I’m not,” you say, crossing your arms. “But I’m old enough to be a counselor.”
“Righteous,” Rooster says. He thinks for a moment and then slowly says your name, unraveling it from his memory like a fragile thread. “Right? Did I say it right?”
“Yeah,” you answer. Your name coming off his tongue sounds ultra-casual and cool, like it’s just been said on the radio or over the loudspeaker on a beach. “But I’m gonna go out on a limb here and deduce that everyone here gets a nickname.”
“Are you studious or just one of those people?” He asks, pushing his wet hair back.
You grin at him and warmth blossoms in his chest. You’ve got a pretty smile--especially this one that eats your whole face and scrunches your eyes. This one, the one he’s staring at, is harder to earn than the docile smile you wore on your way in.
“Just one of those people?” You ask, eyebrow cocked. “Do tell me what kind of people you’re talking about.”
“Well,” he says, stretching. “The kind of people that know everything.”
“Ah,” you say, nodding. “A know-it-all, in other words.”
“Hey, I never said that,” Rooster says, laughing. “You’re already putting words in my mouth!”
Shrugging, you sigh.
“Yeah, well--I already knew what you meant! Apparently.”
He licks his lips.
“So, you are one of those people then, huh?” He asks, his brow cocked identically. You blink at him, opening your mouth, when he suddenly stops you. “Wait a minute--don’t tell me. I wanna figure it out myself.”
You nod, pretending to zip your lips.
“Game on,” you tell him. “You’ll report your findings by Labor Day, right?”
“Right-o, captain!” He grins, saluting.
Cringing, you sigh through your clenched jaw.
“I’m hoping that one doesn’t stick,” you tell him.
You imagine everyone having to call you--the newest counselor--Captain. Yuck and a half.
Rooster imagines it, too, and laughs again. Hangman would get a real kick out of that.
“Consider it forgotten. Here, lemme get changed and I can finish the tour.”
He starts for his cabin, nodding for you to follow, and you do. You don’t even know that you’re doing it--your feet are just picking themselves up and dropping themselves down on the gravel a few inches further from where they started.
“Where’re you from?” You ask him, just to fill all the air around the two of you.
He grins down at you.
“Everywhere,” he says.
Smiling, warm from the sun, you nod.
“Military brat or on the lamb?” You ask. “Wait--don’t tell me. I wanna figure it out for myself!”
He’s laughing again--that booming laugh that is like your own private earthquake.
“The former,” Rooster says, laughing. “How about you?”
“Here,” you answer, pointing to the ground.
“Weird,” Rooster teases. “I’d think I’d have seen you before now since you’re local.”
He opens the door to his cabin--cool air rushes out, kisses your cheeks. The air smells thicker in there--like mint and pine and vetiver. It’s an undeniable boyish smell, one that you can’t seem to get yourself to mind inhaling.
Stepping over the threshold, you find yourself inside of his cabin for the first time. Everything is happening so fast--first you’re being whipped through the thick wilderness in a speedy Jeep, then you’re unloading non-perishable items with Maverick, and now you’re in Rooster’s cabin with him and he’s shirtless and flirting with you mercilessly.
“I’m from just outside of Portland,” you answer distantly, glancing around at the bottles of half-empty colognes and random nail clippers and bandanas strewn about. “So, pretty much here.”
“Ah,” Rooster answers. “A Maine native. What are y’all called again?”
“Mainers,” you answer. “You might be onto something with Maitive, though.”
He grabs a towel that’s been drying on the back of a chair and begins to pat himself dry of the fat water droplets. He’s watching you look around the cabin, all your features seeped in delicate curiosity and a quiet sort of pleasure. He’s suddenly hyper aware of his unmade bed and mustache trimmings and unpacked duffel bag and the scraps of posters he was cutting earlier to hang on the wall above his bed.
“So, you share with the kiddos?” You ask, nodding to the empty bunks. You know which bed is his--it’s the one in the corner that’s unmade, the one that is so heavy with his scent that you can practically see it wafting upwards in waves of amber and white. “What if they aren’t Deadheads?”
He looks at you and you’re looking at The Grateful Dead poster he puts up every summer, the one that is faded from the sun and water damaged and older than most of the kids at camp. His old man had it hung in the hanger way back when--when he was still alive and young and flying with Mav.
Rooster lets the towel drop to the ground as he holds his hips, shrugging.
“Then they’ve got a whole summer to become one,” he tells you. He looks you up and down again. “You a Deadhead?”
“Please,” you say, nose wrinkling. “You ask every lady that?”
“Just the ones trying to get in my bed,” he says. He glances at you and you’re indeed touching his sheets, freezing when you feel his gaze. “Go on--sit. Where are my hosting skills? Would you like anything? A water? Glass of wine?”
You sink into his bed and the mattress squeaks with your weight--Rooster tries hard not to look at the plush skin of your thighs expanding on his sheets.
“Got any Blue Nun?” You tease.
“It’s chilling,” he says. “Would a lukewarm water bottle do in the meantime?”
You nod.
He grabs one out from under the bed and presents it to you like a fine wine.
“It’s vintage,” he tells you.
“What year?”
“April of this one,” he says with a wink.
You twist the cap off and he grabs a t-shirt from his duffel and slips it on.
“Is it a bummer sharing with the kids?” You ask. You graze his pillow and then glance back up at the Polaroids on his walls. You can tell, even from where you’re sitting, that a few of them have been taken here. “You know, without privacy and everything.”
“What would I need privacy for?” He asks, slipping into a pair of denim shorts. He is watching you as you scan the room, your hair a touch messier than it was before. “Usually can’t get any of the outside folk to trek through the wilderness for a slumber party.”
“Outside folk?” You ask, brow perched. “You mean girls, right?”
“Do you want me to mean girls?” He asks.
Your face is hot.
“You have a radio,” you say when you suddenly spot it perched on the windowsill. “Can I turn it on?”
“Be my guest,” Rooster says, shrugging the towel around his shoulders.
While your back is turned, he takes a few seconds to sweep away his mustache hairs from the dresser and tucks his duffel beneath one of the other bunks.
You tune for a little while, listening with half a heart as you look out at the courtyard.
“It’s really beautiful here,” you tell Rooster. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.”
“Trust me--you will,” Rooster sighs good-naturedly, leaning against the bunk opposite his bed. “Especially when you’re wrangling a bunch of ankle-biters.”
You hum, shaking your head.
“So, is it hard work?” You ask him, still tuning. “I mean, I’ve babysat and all that. But never anything like this.”
He drinks you in--the sun is shining on you through the window, grainy from the film of dust on the glass. You’re smiling, peachy and warm, as you try and find a song to punctuate this moment the two of you are sharing.
“Yeah, I mean--there are moments. You know?” Rooster asks. You nod, not looking at him. “For the most part, it’s chill. Super chill.”
“Good,” you say. “I’m trying to save up, so it’s good to know I won’t wanna quit by July.”
Rooster smiles.
“What’re you saving up for?” He asks. “A radio of one’s own?”
You grin.
“Nursing school,” you say. “Made the mistake of telling Maverick that already.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Rooster laughs.
You pause suddenly when Sugar Mountain by Neil Young begins.
Pleased with your choice, you turn back to Rooster and find him biting a grin.
“What?” You ask.
“You’re making fun of me for being a Deadhead and you’re a Rusty?”
Warm all over, you nod.
“Loud and proud,” you say.
“Bold,” he tells you. “Super bold.”
“Well, that’s me,” you tell him. “Bold.”
It's so noisy at the fair
But all your friends are there
And the candy floss you had
And your mother and your dad
“I think you’re gonna fit in alright,” Rooster says decidedly.
You turn your head to the side, swallowing a face-eating grin.
“Oh, you do, do you?” You ask. He nods, eyebrows raised. “Hallelujah, the chicken thinks I’ll fit right in!”
He sits down beside you on the bed and you’re suddenly more aware than you’ve been since stepping into this cabin how beautiful he is. Curls still dripping onto his red t-shirt and tan skin smooth as it coats rippling muscles, you almost can’t breathe with him this close to you.
“You’re really saving our asses this summer,” Rooster says, leaning back on his palms. You try not to look at his hands--his fingers spread out and gripping the sheets that his skin touches every night. “We desperately need another lady.”
You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon
You're leaving there too soon
“It shows,” you tease. “How has Phoenix survived all this time? It’s a real…testosterone-ified place.”
“She’s survived by the skin of her teeth,” he tells you, smiling. “And by batting for the other team, if you’re picking up what I’m laying down.”
Oh. You nod. Okay. Cool.
He looks to the radio and at the sheets--you’ve touched both these things now. Later, when he’s sharing you with everyone and you’re in your own cabin and everyone is excited, he’ll have this private part of you. Pieces of you, particles, that will stay his.
You move to say something when you suddenly feel a sharp and distinct pain. Immediately, you draw your hand up from the bed, gasping. Your finger is bleeding--just a little bit, just a few drops.
“Shit,” Rooster tuts, grabbing the scissors off the bed. His ears are bright red. “I’m so sorry--I totally forgot to throw these back on the dresser earlier.”
“It’s alright,” you tell him hurriedly, cupping your hand. “Don’t let me bleed on your sheets!”
He chucks the scissors and the land somewhere opposite of the bunks. Then he turns towards you, puts his hand out.
“Let me see,” he insists.
You do--immediately.
He inspects the wound carefully. Just a little slice, a parting off your delicate skin and a few droplets of red coating it. He nods like he’s seen this all before.
“It’s not deep,” he says.
“I know,” you say with a soft smile.
“I probably won’t get away with just spitting on it, though,” Rooster sighs, brows raised.
Too flustered to say anything, you just shake your head. But you know, deep in your gut, he could get away with just about anything. Especially spitting on it.
Rooster takes your water bottle and opens it with one hand, keeping your injured hand in his own. You watch him with half-lidded eyes, your pulse racing in your throat and beneath your tongue.
There's a girl just down the aisle
Oh to turn and see her smile
“This won’t hurt,” he says, brows raised. He has the cadence of someone who’s used to bandaging up tikes--his concerned voice not without a fun lilt. “Squeeze me if it does, huh?”
“I’m really getting the full treatment,” you say, tickled. “You must’ve run the other nurse outta town.”
He pours some water over your cut and it drips into your own lap like pink nectar.
“Tape,” he says. He looks up at you. “Stat!”
“Watch it,” you warn, still smiling. You hand him the pale masking tape. “Not too tight.”
“This ain’t my first rodeo, birdie,” he says.
It’s natural--the name that falls from his lips. Like this isn’t his first time saying it. Like he’s uttered it to you over many summers, here and there, back then and in days to come. The feeling sits warmly on your tongue, peculiar and comforting.
He wraps your finger and you watch with your heart in your throat.
“Good as new,” you say, inspecting the tape job. “Didn’t hurt a lick!”
“Good,” Rooster says. “You know, not to be a pig or anything, but I’m pretty good at this.”
“Taping girls?” You ask, tilting your head and biting your lip.
Rooster nearly chokes as he swallows, smiling and face freckled from the sunshine and so very warm. He brings his brows together dubiously, shrugging.
“Do you want me to be good at that?” He asks.
Now you’re the one narrowing your eyes and chewing your bottom lip as you stare at him, wondering already how you’re going to survive this summer when he looks at you like that.
“You’re pretty easy to like,” you tell him decidedly.
“You aren’t too bad yourself,” he quips instantly.
“Really?” You ask, slightly surprised. You’ve been accused, mostly from the peers in your clinicals, of being cold. Callous. But, really, you’re just focused. In the zone. Careful. Precise. You think that will count one day, will make you a good nurse. Rooster nods immediately, smiling with his brows knit. “Well. Thanks a million, then.”
“What? People call you frigid?” Rooster asks, teasing. But then you nod and he leans back, surprised. “No way. Get outta town! You’re bluffing.”
Silky laughter falls from your lips--easy. It’s so easy to laugh around him. Despite the humor in all of this, you’re still warm. But it’s a warmth you welcome, like lying back on hot concrete after a long swim. Looking at him, laughing with him, it makes your stagnant limbs feel sore like you’ve been cutting water for hours. You can finally sit still, though.
“They really do,” you say, only a little bit embarrassed. It feels a bit pathetic to argue this with him, like he knows you better than you know yourself. “What, like you even know me.”
Rooster stiffens, a smile still tugging on his lips, as he crosses his arms defiantly.
“Yeah, well, maybe I do know you,” he challenges. You’re wrestling a grin. “Try that on for size, Miss Know-It-All!”
“A-ha! Guess you do have me figured out,” you say with a shrug. “Didn’t even take half the summer!”
The two of you look at each other for a moment. And when the sun kisses his face, golden and warm, you get the overwhelming feeling that this is not your first time meeting him. No, it can’t be. You know those eyes and those flecks of gold that surround his pupils. You know the feeling of his hand on yours. You don’t know how you know these things, or why they’re tinged with pain like the delicate edges of antique paper rolling in on itself, but you just do. And you don’t even consider yourself a know-it-all.
Rooster holds onto your thighs, his thumbs pressing into your skin.
“Oh. You’re here,” Rooster says in realization, chills running up his legs and halting in the pit of his knee. “I was--well, shit, I was--I was…waiting for you. Hi, birdie.”
He doesn’t look away from you, gauging your reaction. You’re blinking back at him slowly, brows coming together in an innocent confusion. But he can see in your eyes that you know him. He can see in your eyes that you’re here with him now the way he’s always here.
“Hi,” you whisper. You glance around and everything is fuzzy and warm and pink. The radio is still playing in the corner. This is a memory, you realize. Memories are always tinted pink, which just happens with the passage of time. Like skin cells regenerating. Like cuts scabbing. “Are we…where are--?”
“Camp Arcadia,” Rooster answers. “Your memory of it, at least.”
“My very first memory of it,” you whisper to him, glancing around the cabin. And, yes, everything is exactly as you remembered. Even the discarded scissors in the corner. Even the tape around your finger and the heartbeat in your neck. “And my first memory of you.”
Cupping his cheek, you thumb at the damp stubble on his cheeks.
“I never dream about you,” you whisper to him, holding his cheeks in your hands.
“You dream about me all the time,” he tells you carefully. “You just don’t remember.”
It must be true if he’s telling it to you. You know this. Maybe the nightmares have been drowning out all the goodness that happens behind your eyelids.
“What makes this time different?” You whisper.
“Usually you aren’t sleeping under anesthesia,” he whispers back. “What’d you call it? The meperidine haze? That’s a good one, baby. Very psychedelic.”
Yes, he’s right. The meperidine haze. You’re not really here, at camp, baking in the sun and inhaling vetiver and mint and pine. No, you’re laid out on top of an operating table and the stranger is breaching and you’re artificially asleep. Really, you couldn’t be further from this moment you’re living right now. Why this faux one feels so much more grounded than reality stupifies you.
Looking down at your hand and they’re the hands of a twenty-year-old girl halfway through her bachelor’s degree. The rubber ring you will lose on your twenty-first birthday is sitting snug on your pinkie, safe for now. Your knuckles are free from scars and cracks acquired at the hospital. There are so few indentations on your hands, lines pressed there by age and work and life.
You suddenly feel so much older than you were in that moment--older than you really are. You quietly begin to cry.
Rooster leans into your touch, smiling fondly at you. He’s missed these palms, these fingers. He doesn’t mind looking at you, meeting you, teasing you over and over again. Sometimes you remember him and other times you don’t. Most of the time, you don’t. He doesn’t mind--he always plays along, never misses a line. Anything to just be near you again--to be held by you. Even if he knows he isn’t real, even if he knows he’s just a figment of your imagination.
“I don’t understand,” you tell him.
He knows he can’t say anything to make you understand something he only distantly understands himself. So, he just kisses your fingers.
You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon
You're leaving there too soon
“Is this where you are?” You ask him. “Here? Forever?”
“It’s where you want me to be,” he answers you. “But only on this day. The first day.”
“Rooster, I--!”
A sob rips from your throat. He holds tight to your legs, still smiling sadly up at you.
He knows that he is dead. He knows that you are dreaming. He knows what’s happening on the outside and the inside. He isn’t real. He knows that. But it all feels very real in this moment--he has the sudden and overwhelming urge to hold onto you tight, even if he knows it won’t stop you from going. He wants to dig his nails into your body until he meets bone. He wants to keep you here with him in this obscurity, when you’re both young and untouched by horror.
You don’t belong here, though. This--this he knows in the depths of his body, in the arches of his feet. You belong on the outside, in the real world, where your skin gets bruised and scarred and your chest rises and falls.
“Don’t spoil it,” he tells you, thumbing some tears from your cheeks. He swallows all the metal in his mouth and smiles at you sadly. “Just be here with me.”
Another sob wriggles out from your lips, but you nod. You’ll do whatever he wants.
“You’re so young,” you marvel, stroking his face. “I can’t believe it. Really, I--I hardly remember you looking so…boyish.”
“You’re pretty young yourself,” he whispers with a smile. “In the springtime of your life. Or whatever the poet’s say.”
If this was the springtime of your life, you wonder what season you’re in now. Surely winter hasn’t come so quickly, even if it feels that way. You’re not in the summer or the autumn, though.
You’re in-between.
A blizzard in April.
Another beat passes and you still drink him in, unable to tear your eyes away from his dripping curls or his sweet gaze. It has been a long, long time since you’ve thought about this day. It has been a long, long time since you’ve thought about this first meeting with Bradley. You cannot afford to linger in hurtful memories such as this one--not after everything.
“I miss you,” you whisper. Another sob sits pert in your throat. “I miss you more than…more than anything in the world. I miss you all the time. I have so much I wanna talk about.”
Bradley’s chest tightens. If he was being completely honest right now, he’d tell you the same. But he can see how hard you’re trying to stop crying, can see the tears beginning to breach your waterline.
“I’m always around,” he says and you know that he means here, as a figment of your imagination, in your dreams. “Just close your eyes and poof! There I am.”
“I think about you,” you tell him, nodding and sniffling and trying not to cry again. “When I can afford it. When I can stand it.”
He nods solemnly, chewing on his bottom lip.
“Oh, yeah? Like when?” He asks. He tries to sound not-so-severe, tries to sound teasing and sweet. But his voice is flat and his tone is serious.
Choking back another sob, one that makes your nose ache, you hold onto him tighter.
“Every time I hear The Police,” you say and a dry laugh crumbles from your lips and into your lap like peeling drywall. “Which is, like, all the time now.”
He laughs--his eyes are wet.
“Yeah, I bet,” he says.
“And whenever…whenever I feel them move,” you tell him and you mean the baby and he knows that. Cautiously, you move to hold your belly. And, yes, it’s empty--just like it really actually was when you were twenty. Rooster watches the movements, chews on his bottom lip. “Whenever they kick or-or elbow or…”
He can fill in the blanks. Whenever they roll, whenever they hiccup, whenever they flex, whenever they stretch, whenever they twitch. What you mean is that every time you feel the physical evidence of the life inside of you, you think of the man who put it there.
He nods, jaw clenched. He can’t say anything for a moment. He’s certain the dam will break. He’s certain he will hold onto your legs and never release you.
So, then it’s quiet for a moment. Neil Young is still crying quietly on the windowsill.
“I love this song. I forgot it was playing,” you whisper to him. The two of you look at the radio together. “Was it really playing?”
You’re wondering if Dr. Titus is playing the radio during your operation. Yes, operation. You’re being operated on. Right now, you’re not really sitting on Bradley’s bed at Camp Arcadia. You aren’t really breathing in clean, clean air. You’re breathing in oxygen from a mask and antiseptics.
“Yeah, it was,” Rooster answers. “And you really made fun of me for being a Deadhead.”
“Warranted,” you whisper, a few tears streaming down your face. “You kinda ruined me, though.”
“In what way?” Rooster asks, hoping the answer isn’t the obvious one.
“I remember that after this--after this moment, this conversation--I stopped changing the station when they came on the radio,” you say and it’s the honest truth. You’ve never told anyone this. “Ripple isn’t half bad, you know.”
That’s when a few tears slip down Bradley’s face. He’s still smiling--just barely--and he nods a few times.
“Will you show them?” He whispers.
You know what he means--will you show your child the music he so loved?
“Of course,” you tell him, sniffling. “But no promises they’ll be a Deadhead.”
“Their dad sure was,” he whispers. A few more tears slip down as his bottom lip quivers. “Just like my dad was.”
“Runs in the family,” you say quietly.
So does having your old man croak, I guess, Bradley thinks. Must be fate.
You hold his cheeks, thumb his tears away. You wonder, marvel almost, at how real this all feels. This is what his face felt like that day all those years ago, freshly-shaven and smooth and boyish. Untainted by time and its pinkness.
The feeling comes on suddenly--starting in your toes and shooting up your shins, your knees, your thighs.
“I’m cold,” you whisper to Bradley.
Rooster nods, flat palms grazing your goosed skin. He wipes a few of his tears away.
“It’s just a side effect,” he tells you. You nod. You know that shivering--that your temperature falling--is a commonplace issue during deep sedation and general anesthesia. “It’s almost over, you know.”
“Yeah,” you whisper. “Emergency cesareans are usually pretty speedy.”
He imagines what you really look like right now--laid out on the table, cut open, bleeding. It seems so utterly against your grain to take something so heinous lying on your back. He feels like you could be the first person to ever elect to be awake during a major surgery, blinking up at the ceiling and gritting your teeth and meditating through the pain.
“You’re having a baby right now,” he says and incredibility drips from his tone like honey. “Our baby. How trippy is that?”
Belly turning, fingers quivering, you nod.
Yes, you’re not really here. You’re not really here.
“I’m scared,” you admit quietly. It’s the first time you’ve said it out loud in almost ten months. Rooster looks up at you, listening and watching and waiting. “I’m so scared.”
He doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t need to. Maybe it’s because he understands--or maybe it’s because he’s you and you’re him.
“I wish I was there with you. I wish I…I wish I could’ve stayed. For you. For the baby,” he tells you. “I wish I could hold them,” he admits.
It’s silly. You’ve wanted nothing more than to not hold them, than for them to be removed from your body. You’ve held them for nine months. You’re tired--anyone would be. But Rooster--Rooster will never get to hold his child. Not even in your dreams.
“I wish you could, too,” you whisper.
There is so much more he could say. He could say that he considers himself the luckiest man in his recent knowledge for having you as fleetingly as he did. He could say that his version of Hell is watching from far away, where he is now, and not being able to touch you. He could say that he hopes the baby looks a lot like you and a little like him so they don’t break your heart. He could say that he’s always thought of the name Ruth fondly and he’s never like the whole Junior thing for boys. He could tell you how much you meant to him, that he’s never felt alone, that he never did feel alone. He could tell you how sorry he is for dying, for leaving you behind pregnant with his child. He could tell you how much it hurts that his child will grow up without him.
He won’t break your heart today--the day your child is born. So, he just kisses your hands and feels the bones delicately pressing against your skin. He holds you tight.
“Do you think I can, like…do you think I have what it takes?” You whisper.
Rooster doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t tease. He just nods very solemnly.
“Of course I do,” he answers. “I don’t really have a doubt.”
“Not a single one?” You whisper.
Now he solemnly shakes his head.
“Afraid not,” he whispers back.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” you utter to him. The seams on his wrists are pressed against the back of your eyelids for eternity--the jagged, loose slices that didn’t hold for more than a few minutes. “I wish I could--I would do it differently if I could do it again.”
“I wouldn’t,” he whispers. He shakes his head. “I couldn’t have…”
Lived with himself. You both know it.
You kiss his fingers, try and remember the way they smell right now. Like lakewater and skin and wood.
“We would’ve been good together, huh?”
“Yeah,” you whisper. “Yeah. Maybe we would’ve.”
The song is almost over.
Now you say you're leaving' home
'Cause you want to be alone
Ain't it funny how you feel
When you're findin' out it's real?
“Is he good to you?” Rooster whispers.
He’s talking about Jake.
“The best,” you whisper back, nodding. “I love him. But not like I loved you.”
There is no way to measure these things--more or less, bigger or smaller, wilder or calmer. There is just love and different love. That’s all.
Rooster is choked up.
“Birdie?” He whispers.
“Yeah?” You whisper.
“Can I hold you?”
Without another moment of hesitation, you fall into his arms. You slip off the bed and into his lap and he wraps his arm around you and you wrap your arms around him. You’re overwhelmed by his heat, by his scent, by his breathing. There is salt and there is cloth as the two of you mold against each other.
Really, in these younger bodies, you didn’t hold each other like this. The first summer was chalk-full of merciless flirting and stolen glances and chaste touches. You never fell into his arms like this, a desperate heap, and cried into the red t-shirt that was still wrinkled from his duffel.
It is not in your nature to beg. It never has been. There are very few times in your life where you’ve resorted to it and Bradley was there for most of them, a figure looming or a warm body near you. The urge to beg right now--for him to hold you so tight that you can’t breathe, for him to keep you here with him forever, to stay--sits like a lump in your throat.
“I miss you,” you say instead of please, please, please. Your teeth chatter and you hold him tighter. “I miss you so much.”
“I know,” he whispers, voice strained. “I know.”
You look at him--really look at him. It feels like it is the last time you will ever see him. It feels like you’re on your knees in the mess hall and you’re about to pull a sheet over his face, like Joni Mitchell is dying on your tongue again. It feels like you’re standing in a morgue and you’re worried about him growing lonesome and cold. You’re crying too hard to memorize his nose or his sun kissed cheeks or the stubble on his chin. You just look at him and let your vision grow blurry with tears.
“Bird,” he whispers, brows drawn together in a happy sort of anguish.
Your entire body is cold now. The shivering is coming from deep within your connective tissue and marrow and nerves.
“Bradley,” you whisper. His name dies on your tongue.
“She’s waiting for you,” he tells you.
Something is tugging you backwards--like an invisible rope made of your own hair, a strong wind made of your own perfume.
“Who?” You ask.
He kisses your hands. His mouth lingers there--his breath is warm, his mustache is neatly trimmed. It is all so achingly familiar, so achingly real.
“Our daughter.”
♀
Two days blink by.
Well, really, they don’t blink by. They slink past Jake at an agonizing pace, like he is seeped in gelatinous animal fat. He used to like slow days--days that were dipped in honey, when the two of you were suspended in a quiet sort of sweetness--and the way they crawled forward.
But this diverges severely from that sweetness. It’s harder to move. He feels, for all intents and purposes, like he’s rotting. Decaying.
They brought you back into the room sometime between the afternoon and evening the next day. You’d spent a night in recovery, completely sedated, and been given two blood transfusions. The doctor explained something about injections, something about vitamins and narcotics, but Jake was having a hard time hearing because he was holding her.
Every time he held her--the baby girl you brought into this world with your eyes closed--his ears rang. It was like someone was firing a shotgun pressed against Jake’s cheek, like the kickback had sent him reeling and buckshot had deafened him.
He was still on the phone with his ma whenever the nurse wheeled an incubator in. It was only an hour after the flurry of white coats and scrubs that wheeled you out of the room, and he was still trying to catch his breath between broken sentences.
The nurse was whistling joyously like everything was hunky-dory, smiling down at the baby girl inside the glass. She glanced at Jake, smiling, and cleared her throat as she parked the incubator by the guest chair.
“Delivery!” The nurse sang.
Jake turned at once, eyes wide and wet and still crying.
“What--?”
He nearly fell out of the chair when the incubator registered. The phone slipped from his hands, hung on its cord and bounced like a plastic bungee jumper. His mama was still on the other line, southern drawl thick as she tried to get his attention.
“--Here she is! The lady of the hour!” She sing-songed, presenting the bulky machinery like a rare cut of steak at some snobby restaurant. He imagined the baby lying on a silver platter on a bed of inedible greens and the nurse pulling away the dome cover, wafting the scent of baby powder and milk towards him. “Your baby girl!”
Jake was frozen. There he sat, his hands empty and his face red and blotchy, and there the baby was only a few feet in front of him. The room changed--a small change, like being attuned to the frequency adjustment of a television--and he suddenly felt warm all over.
“My--my what?” He asked. “That’s--you mean it’s a girl? Mine?”
Quickly, glancing down, she read the label on the side of the incubator carefully.
Baby Girl Seresin.
“You’re Mr. Seresin, right?” She asked, suddenly feeling faint.
He nodded slowly, the lump in his throat impossibly large.
Her shoulders relaxed--she should’ve known better. She’s never mixed babies up before.
“All yours, daddy. Trust me, you’ll get proof of purchase at check-out,” she said jovially. She hummed, leaning down to tuck the white blanket beneath the baby’s chin. Already the nurse was touching her with such conviction, like they were old friends, like this little creature lying and crying wasn’t the reason Jake’s shoulders were stuck pinched by his ears. “And, yes--a girl. A blushing baby girl.”
He stared at the incubator. Yes, he could see her there. He could see that little nose and those big cheeks and those closed eyes. He could see her tiny face finally. He’d dreamed about her--about what she’d look like, about who she’d be. And she was finally there, right there.
But you weren’t.
“What’s going--is she okay? Is--is Gale okay--?”
The nurse’s cheeks flooded red, her smile dying slightly. She cleared her throat, looking down at the baby girl before her. She wished Jake would look down at the baby girl, too. Babies make everything better--they soften the blow with their ruddy cheeks and little lips and curled fingers.
“So, before the operation, she suffered what we call a placental abruption. Now, a--well, a placental abruption is when the placenta detaches from the uterine wall. In layman’s terms, it means that the baby couldn’t breathe--hence all the hullabaloo before the operation. But baby is okay--her levels are great and she gave us a good and loud cry when she was born,” the nurse explained softly, smiling at the thought of the baby’s first piercing cry. Even after all this time, all these years and these births and these babies, it still felt like a bell that called her home. “Passed all her tests with flying colors.”
Jake’s knees felt weak at the thought of the baby crying for the first time, suddenly in the air above your open abdomen and in a stranger’s hands and covered in your blood, and him not hearing it. He didn’t hear it. He was all the way in there, talking to his mama, and you were in there alone and asleep and bleeding.
The nurse sucked in a deep breath and met Jake’s gaze. She hated this part. Her palms were clammy as she slid them down the front of her nurse’s uniform, swallowing thickly and straightening her shoulders.
“Now, because of the sudden separation, mama’s uterine wall got knocked around quite a bit,” she explained. “Which, in layman’s layman terms, means that it poked a big ol’ hole. That can cause--well, it can cause a slew of issues, including internal bleeding, which we want to avoid at all costs. Obviously.”
Jake’s mind was racing--images and sounds and feelings and smells swirling around him, flitting past in milliseconds. Behind his eyes, his veins throbbed and pulsed.
“Okay. Okay--what does that mean? Like, you mean, she’s gonna be alright?”
The nurse sucked on the back of her teeth shortly, wishing there was something she could say or do to ease Jake's worries. But she couldn’t. She knew this.
“Her uterus experienced very severe trauma during delivery. It was already weakened from carrying to full-term and prior medical history. So, with all of that in mind, Dr. Titus went ahead and did a full-fledged hysterectomy. Well, he’s still--it’s still happening now. It was touch-and-go for a while there,” she said softly, nodding at Jake with soft, soft eyes. And what she meant by that was that your heart rate had dropped dangerously low after the baby was born. So low that it had been considered a Code Blue. “But she’s a tough cookie. Right? We’ll bring her back in after her time in recovery.”
Jake didn’t know what to say or do.
He was being turned inside out by grief. There you were, short corridors and white tiles and chrome door knobs and metal chairs separating your body from his, and you were being dissected. A part of you had been killed by the little baby in front of him, faultlessly, and was being cut out.
“No, you decided it. And never for a second have I second-guessed it,” Jake says. You’re watching him with big, soft eyes. “I’ve been game from day one. I…Gale, I love that baby already. I’m all in. But are you?”
“Ask me that tomorrow,” you whisper.
Something heavier than guilt and thicker than anguish slammed down on top of Jake’s head, grabbed him by the ears, and forced him back into the chair he was sitting in. The nurse watched him cautiously, just then noting the crutches beside him.
“When is she coming back?” He heard himself ask.
“No telling,” the nurse said. She wished she had a more concrete answer--she knew how awful it must be to be on the outside of it all, waiting and worrying and wringing your hands together. “We’ll keep you posted. Hell, between me and you, I’ll keep you posted. That’s a promise. Okay?”
Jake nodded flatly.
“In the meantime, I thought I’d bring this little angel in to keep you company,” she’d said, then. A weight was lifted from her chest as Jake looked down at the baby for the first time properly--that was usually the part they melted. And she watched him melt--watched his shoulders fall and his brows slope and his lips tremble. “Ain’t she a beaut?”
Jake’s jaw trembled.
“Is she…is she okay?” Jake asked, eyebrows furrowed. He suddenly couldn’t stand the prospect of something happening to your baby girl, too. Already he loved her so much--she only just got here. She couldn’t leave. “She’s not…she isn’t hurt or anything, right?”
The nurse smiled at him, prideful by proxy.
“Healthy as a ham,” she confirmed. “All seven pounds of her are perfect.”
“Seven even?” Jake mused, unable to stop himself from smiling.
The nurse nodded.
“It’ll be her lucky number,” the nurse offered.
Seven. Seven’s have followed him all his life.
He was born on the seventh of June, the fifth child, which rounded out his family unit to a party of seven.
On his seventh birthday, the song Crystal Blue Persuasion debuted on the radio and he thought, very concretely, that he was the luckiest kid on the planet. Who got to share a birthday with the song of the decade?
He graduated college on the seventh of December, a semester later than the rest of his friends.
And you--he saw you for the very first time on the seventh of May at Camp Arcadia.
You were standing just up the gravel hill, talking to Maverick with your hands on your hips. The sun was so blinding that he had to squint and hold his hand over his eyes. He could see from the water that your feet and calves were covered in gray gravel dust--kicked up your shins, coating your knees. He watched you for a long time, ignoring Coyote’s splashing and Phoenix’s diving and the beating sun, watching your lips curve around every word that fell from your mouth. His spine suddenly prickled when your calves flexed and your belly tightened with laughter, when you smiled and the sun kissed your cheeks and sweat dripped down the column of your spine. He didn’t even mind that Rooster was the one who’d made you laugh, standing across from you with his arms crossed over his damp chest.
Things just melted away. Things like long division and baseball scores and Pink Floyd lyrics and urban legends and the memory of his tenth birthday--they were all gone, dissolving, pooling out of his ears. Nothing else besides this one thought sitting fat and proud in the soft shell of his skull: I want to wash the dust off her.
He had never thought anything like that before. It made his jaw quiver.
“What’re you looking at?” Coyote had finally inquired, hooking a sopping arm over Jake’s warm shoulders. Coyote turned, noticed you, then smiled. “Hey! Fresh meat.”
Jake didn’t look away from you.
“Javy,” Jake said seriously, evenly. He sucked in a deep breath, brows knitting. “I’m gonna marry her.”
“Yeah, good luck,” Javy had said back, chortling. “Girl wore her flip-flops on a hike.”
“It’s my lucky number, too,” Jake said quietly to the nurse, unable to stop himself. His brows knit. “Seven.”
“Aw, are you trying to impress daddy?” The nurse sang jovially down to the baby, a grin splitting her features. “You planned this, huh? Didn’t you?”
Jake swallowed hard, reeling.
“She’s so quiet,” he whispered to the nurse. He was the youngest child--he wasn’t ever around fussy baby sisters or even cranky cousins.
She glanced up at him, nodding.
“Just wait ‘til it’s time to change her diaper--that’ll get her hollering,” she said. She kept watching Jake and his clenched jaw. “Would you like to hold her? I can bring her to you--I see you’re a bit disposed currently.”
She pointed to the crutches.
Jake swallowed hard, his tongue suddenly made of sandpaper.
“Okay,” he said, too scared to say anything else.
“Go ahead and take your shirt off,” the nurse instructed Jake, not taking her eyes off Baby Girl Seresin as she carefully cradled her head. Jake blinked at her, brows furrowed. “We call it skin-to-skin or Kangaroo Care if you’re a fun nurse like me--the hours after birth are crucial for bonding. Best to do that with her skin on your skin.”
Jake nodded, slowly moving to slip out of his sweatshirt.
The nurse turned, cradling your baby in her plush arms, and Jake had never felt so small in his entire life. He sat still, skin goosing from the cold air, and watched the nurse move towards him with the bundle of blanketed baby in her arms.
“Just hold her head now,” the nurse urged as she transferred the baby into his arms.
“Like--?” Jake said, red in the face and neck and chest. “Like that?”
The baby was against his body, her little cheek pressed up against his collarbone, her tiny body sinking into his chest and stomach. He didn’t hear the nurse’s answer--he didn’t need to. As soon as his body registered her heat, the heat of a tiny and most precious human life, he knew the answer.
Yes, he was holding her right. He knew how to hold his daughter. It came to him suddenly and naturally, which people said would happen. He cradled her head with all that soft hair, which was the color of yours, and carefully touched her plush cheek.
“Oh,” he whispered quietly. Two fat tears rolled down his face and onto his neck. “Well, you’re just a tiny thing, aren’t you? You’re just a…a little mite.”
She whined, shuddered against him, before her body relaxed into him.
The nurse softly situated the blanket so it covered the two of them, pink with joy, and watched on for a few moments as Jake craned to look down at his daughter’s face. She knew he was gonna be a crier from the moment she laid eyes on him. She’s always privately vindicated when she’s correct about these things--some sort of nonverbal reinforcement that she’s meant for this.
He wasn’t sure how long the nurse stayed after that--his ears were ringing too loud for him to hear anything outside of the baby girl’s breaths.
He held her close, back teeth still clenched, and overwhelmed by her scent. She smelled like you--like your skin, your body. He knew, just from holding her, that you had held her. Held her close, inside of your body, closer to you than anything or anyone ever had been.
Already he could see you in her face--your brow, your nose, your mouth.
“My, my,” Jake whispered. It was funny--he had never been the kind of guy who said my-my before. His dad was the kind of guy to say my-my. Or maybe, Jake thought, every dad is the kind of guy that says it. A sad smile tugged on his lips. “Aren’t you just--just pretty as a picture? You look just like your mama. And your mama is the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Can you believe that? Huh? Well, I’m no liar. I really mean it.”
She whined shortly, brow furrowing. He moved her down so her cheek was resting between his pecs, her little lips puckered and parted.
“I would’ve shaved for you if I’d known,” he whispered weakly, stray tears rolling off his chin and onto her hospital blanket. He stroked her cheek as she continued to slumber. “I’m sorry, baby-lou.”
♀
People have been in and out of the hospital room since, filtering like transients.
A nurse comes every hour to check your vitals, fiddling with your IV stand, pressing buttons on the machines beside your bed, smiling apologetically when the baby cries.
Doctors do their rounds in the morning and at night, talking about you and your condition just outside the door, giving Jake a curt nod in greeting.
And in between all of the people, the masks and the gloves and the hand sanitizer, Jake sits at your bedside with the baby tucked close to him. Everything is sterile and white and your oxygen is a constant hum in the background.
It’s late at night now--so late at night that it’s really almost morning--and Jake is slumped in the chair beside your bed. The baby is asleep just beside him in the incubator, lying on her back and dreaming silently. She’s a good baby--quiet. Peaceful. But he still won’t be more than a few feet away from her at any time--Hell, he won’t be more than a few inches away from her at any time.
Here he is, then. Sitting between his girls, both of them sleeping, waiting for something to happen.
“She should gain consciousness at any time,” he heard the doctor say that morning during rounds. “The extended loss of consciousness is due to the trauma sustained during operation.”
Your face is placid. You hardly wrinkle your nose or crinkle your brow or frown or do much of anything at all. You just sleep, reclined, wrapped up in tubes and wires and cords.
Beneath his aching fingers, your hair is soft. He strokes it carefully away from your face so it falls over the pillow, wishing he could smell your shampoo from here. He wishes he could smell any of you right now. You smell like the hospital now--more than you do after a twelve-hour shift.
He wonders what’s going on beneath your eyelids--if you’re dreaming or if there’s nothing like you’re sitting in a pool of black water. He hopes that you’re dreaming. Sweet, sweet dreams about all the summers before last, about all the almost-good days you’ve had since May. And if you’re not having sweet dreams, he hopes you’re just resting. That you’re just catching up on all the sleep you’ve missed having to sleep on your side, curling around a belly you resented.
“I hope you’re havin’ good dreams in there,” Jake whispers to you. He sniffles, itches his nose. He keeps trying not to cry--not once with success. “Like when we drove all around town, grabbing furniture from the curb. I’m still shocked you could pick that table up by yourself. I shouldn’t be, though--I don’t know why I haven’t learned by now. You’re stronger than me. Like, way stronger. Stronger than I’ll ever be.”
Nothing. No response. Just sleep.
He glances at the baby girl beside him--she’s still sleeping peacefully. He’ll have to wake her up in an hour or so to feed her. She’s a pensive little thing when he gives her a bottle. She furrows her brow as she gazes up at him, somewhere between cranky and grateful, trying to figure him out the same way he’s trying to figure her out. He feels like he’s being sized up each time he feeds her--it reminds him of you. When you look at him, it isn’t just that you see him--you see right through him, too, as if he’s just a piece of thin membrane you cohabitate with. He’ll always be honest with you and her because he knows dishonesty wouldn’t even get as far as the front door.
Now he looks back at you. No change again.
He keeps hoping that one of these times he looks away, he’ll return his gaze to you and find that you’re already looking at him. He bides his time, measures the movements of his eyes, when he isn’t looking at you to give you enough time to come to. Hoping. Praying.
But no change.
“I want you to wake up,” Jake whispers, voice trembling. “I know that you’re tired and I know that you could probably sleep for the next--for the next millennium and still be exhausted, but I want you to wake up, honey. C’mon, girly--wake up now. Wake up for me--wake up for her. You’ve got--we’ve got a daughter and you haven’t even met her yet. Well, maybe you have--like somewhere in the cosmos--but I don’t feel like that counts. So c’mon now and open your eyes. I wanna…I wanna talk to you. I wanna tell you that I’m sorry for picking a fight, that I’m--!”
Jake thinks about the blue light in the bedroom and the way it goosed your skin, chilled the marrow in your bones. He wishes he could puncture that moment, like a needle sinking into a balloon, and let all the cold air out. He wishes he could wrangle the sun and pull it close to you, close enough to burn the tip of your nose and make the hair on your head hot to the touch. He wishes he could just stop thinking about the argument--everything he said, everything you didn’t say. He just wishes you would wake up.
“Just wake up. Please.”
Without stirring at all, face calm and still, you wake up. It happens suddenly, like someone’s just said your name.
It is still dark and blue and pink and quiet. The snow is still falling outside the window and you’re still numb from below your chest, so your breaths are heavy and unreal. It’s still night--or, at least, it looks like it is.
Jake is sitting just beside the bed--you can imagine him pulling it all the way out and plopping down in it with his hair askew and his breathing hard--tears slipping down his cheeks and his brow furrowed as he strokes the back of your hand.
“What?” You whisper. Your voice is ragged and crumpled--this is when you know that it’s been a long time since you’ve spoken. Probably days.
Jake’s head snaps up--his face is suddenly facing yours.
“Baby?” He asks, on the edge of his seat as he reaches forward to fuss with your hair and your cheeks. He cups your chin, carefully navigating around the nasal cannula. “You wakin’ up, girly? Are you confused?”
He doesn’t know what you’re saying what about.
The muscles beneath your skin unfold like pressed flowers, brittle and delicate, as you reach up and wipe a tear from his chin. It’s a small and stray one. You weakly present the finger to him, the pad wet and glistening with salt, then nod.
“Did they find cancer or something?”
And it seems like precisely the moment Jake finally lets go. You don’t know how you know, but you know suddenly that he has been the cracking wall that’s held everything together, standing up straight and tall against thousands of pounds of dirt and water to protect the pristine valley below.
But he lets go now--his sobs suddenly puncturing the stale air in the hospital room, rousing the hair on your arms and legs and the phantom searing burn in your underwear.
He stands--it isn’t an easy thing to Jake Seresin to do, especially after missing a physical therapy appointment yesterday. But he does it, does it for you, locking his knees and gripping the metal rails on your hospital bed.
“I’m so happy,” he tells you and his Southern accent sounds thick right now--you know he gets like this when he’s been talking to his mama.
Okay; you know you must’ve been out for a while and he must’ve been calling his mama. You can deduce this. Make an educated guess.
He’s rapidly stroking your hair, in utter disbelief that you’re here again with him. It has only been two days without you--which is only forty-eight hours--but that is enough to make Jake feel like you’ve been out for an entire lifetime. Even one hour without you is one hour too long.
“Baby, I’m so happy,” he mutters over and over again, kissing your face--your eyelids, your nose, your ears, your cheeks, your chin. “I’m so fuckin’ happy.”
Reality is beginning to dawn on you now. It’s been days. Days since they cut the baby from your womb. You’re doped up enough to not feel anything at all, and you know they only give the good stuff when it’s serious. This must be serious.
Looking down, beyond the flurry of blonde hair and salt and skin, you see the deflated pit of your belly. Yes, the little stranger is gone. All that remains is the excess skin and fat and fluid that kept them warm and safe and quiet.
“Are you okay?” You ask Jake.
Jake holds both of your cheeks, presses his forehead against yours. Your face is wet with his saliva, his tears. He kisses your dry lips a few times.
“I’m the happiest guy around,” he tells you. “You’re awake.”
“Has it been that long?” You ask, straining and willing yourself to just know how much time has passed.
“Two days since they took you,” he tells you. “We were just waiting for you to wake up. Me and the little lady.”
Something punctures you--it feels like an ax. Sharp blade digging into the skin of your chest, snapping your bones, stopping the precise beats of your heart. But then it makes you warm all over your body, warm from the tips of your ears to the soles of your feet.
You have a daughter. Just like Susie told you that you would. Just like Bradley told you that you did.
A daughter.
Jake realizes what he’s said to you and watches as your face falls--fuck. He meant to tell you slower than this, meant to break the ice. He didn’t mean to throw you into the middle of it.
Two tears roll down your cheeks and he thumbs them away, tutting.
“A girl?” You whisper. “We have…a girl?”
“Yeah,” Jake answers, unable to bite the grin on his lips. “We do. A little mite--seven pounds even, eighteen inches long. She’s…well, she’s a mite. Tiny. Tinier than anything ever in the world. We’re gonna have to bathe her in a spoon.”
That makes you cry harder--you don’t know why. Maybe it’s because you’re scared or maybe it’s because you’re in love or maybe you’re scared to be in love. You don’t know. But you clutch him.
“Is she…?”
“She’s healthy,” he answers even though that is not the question you’re asking.
All the same, you nod. Petrification sits coiled in your belly like a slick snake.
He doesn’t want to pop the pink bubble you’re in right now, overwhelmed with goodness and graciousness that you’re finally awake, so he doesn’t say anything about the complications. He knows you’ll ask--and when you do, he’ll tell you. But for now, he just wants to be close to you and watch your pupils dilate in the dark room.
“Can you believe it?” Jake asks, sniffling. “A baby girl. A girl!”
Unable to speak, you just shake your head.
But you can believe it. You don’t know what happened and you don’t know where you went or why you didn’t stay, but you know that Bradley told you the truth. Your daughter, the one he gave you, was waiting on you.
Carefully, you peer over his shoulder. And, yes, right beside the chair he was sitting in is the incubator. It’s a big and bulky piece of machinery, but inside there is a little tiny baby’s face peeking out from a white cotton blanket. Her eyes are closed. Your toes are numb.
Jake follows your gaze.
“Do you wanna hold her?” He asks softly.
“No,” you answer quickly. “I’m still numb.”
Your arms aren’t numb--you could hold her. But you’re too afraid that she’ll open her eyes, that she’ll look at you, that you’ll know. Then what will you do? You never got this far in any nightmare.
Jake nods, kissing your forehead again.
“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay, baby. That’s fine. That’s all good.”
♀
Jake isn’t in the room. He left only a few minutes ago, crutches tucked beneath his arms and hands holding your empty dinner tray, pleased as ever before that you were awake with an appetite and sitting up in bed. He kissed your face one thousand times, grinning, before leaving his girls alone to make some calls in the hallway.
So, it’s just you and her now. She’s still sleeping in her incubator, all tucked in, which has been pulled up against the side of your bed so you can hold her when you’re ready. You know that Jake is eager for you to hold her--you know that it’s what he’s dreamed about for the past nine months.
But the potential horror of it all is sitting in your throat, making it hard to swallow. You won’t survive another summer like the one before. And if you take her in your arms, if you look into those eyes and know, then you’ll have to reckon with terror all over again. You can’t. You can’t do it.
You’re only alone for a few minutes whenever you decide to pull down your blankets--they’re thick and heavy, warm from trapping all your heat. A gust of you-perfumed air slips underneath your nose and onto your tongue. You smell like the hospital.
The gown you’re wearing is new--it’s not the one you wore before, when you first came to the hospital and they told you that you were already three centimeters dilated. You know because there is no jell-o stain on your chest, because there are hardly any wrinkles. It’s pristine. Placed on your body by a nurse while you were still under anesthesia.
“Weird,” you mutter to yourself because it is weird and you need to hear your own voice. How out of control you were just hours and hours ago, asleep while you were cut. “Strange. Odd.”
Pulling the hem of the gown, your tongue thick with saliva, you pull it up slowly. The fabric is warm as it pools beneath your breasts, already crinkling with the movement. Part of you was expecting to see red streaks, puss-filled burns, loose stitches--but that isn’t what is really there.
No, what’s there is everything that should be. Bandages. Yellow antibiotic. Gauze.
Gently, you reach down and press your fingers to the gauze. You can’t feel it on your belly, but you can feel it with the tips of your fingers--it’s smooth and warm. If you didn’t know better, you would rip it off and look at all the scars that make up your belly now.
A very quiet whine breaks your gaze from your belly.
Looking up, squinting in the dark room, you glance at the clock. It’s closing in on six in the morning, which you know you’re gonna regret later today. Shit. She needs to eat--Jake said he’d wake her up before he left but had forgotten to in all the excitement and relief of you waking up.
“Shh,” you whisper quietly, rolling your gown back down and letting your curled hands fall in your lap. With wide eyes, you watch as she begins to turn her head slowly from side to side, blinking herself awake. She whines again--louder, longer. “Hush now, it’s okay. It’s fine.”
That’s when she cries for the first time--it sounds like a baby’s cry, like all the other babies in the world. It’s not deep and guttural or strange and silent. It’s just a baby’s cry.
“It’s okay,” you try again, voice weak. You glance at the closed door, willing Jake to bust through. “Daddy’ll be back any--he’ll be back any minute now, alright? Can’t you just wait it out?”
It becomes shrill--finally, you move.
Ears ringing and pulse quickening, you scoot yourself closer to the edge and look down at her. She’s becoming more and more upset by the second, her fists balled and her mouth parted and wet.
“Here,” you whisper, grabbing the corner of the incubator and pushing it before pulling it. Makeshift rocking. “There, it’s okay. See. I’m here.”
You continue pushing and pulling, the wheels squeaking, and the baby does not stop crying. You glance at the door again--Jake is still not here.
It’s like something pops--all of the sudden, you can’t take it anymore. Fibers that make up your body and soul and heart suddenly vibrate like splitting atoms and move your body for you. Suddenly you can’t just sit on the edge of the bed and rock her with your teeth grit--you have to reach down and take her in your arms.
Blinking, sitting back against the bed, you look down at the baby stunned. She’s in your arms, wrapped in cotton, still crying herself into a cloudy face. But she’s pressed up against your body and you can feel her weight in your arms--all seven exact pounds of her--and you can’t help but marvel for a moment. She’s real. A real human being with frowning lips and a voice and hair sticking out from beneath the ridiculous hospital beanie.
“What’s got you so upset?” You whisper to her because you don’t know what else to say. “Huh? You just a feisty little thing or something? You’re…well, you’re like me, then. I guess.”
When you speak--the cries begin to quiet down. Like all she needed to know was that you were there with her, that you would speak to her. Her mouth slowly closes and her eyes begin to slowly blink themselves open.
Your heart nearly stops when her eyes meet yours for the first time. You’d imagined this before, thought about it on coffee breaks and while brushing your teeth or stirring a pot of soup in the kitchen. You’ve imagined them one thousand times since you looked into them for the first time at Camp Arcadia, when you saw all the light dissipated and flecks of gold washed away from Bradley’s eyes.
All this time, these long nine months since the Camp Arcadia Annihilation, you’ve imagined that this creature is the one that ushers in your demise. But now she’s here, blinking up at you with her father’s eyes--flecks of gold surround her brown velvet irises.
“Oh, my--!” You choke, bringing a quivering finger up to touch her cheek. It’s plush and warm and she keeps slowly blinking up at you. “Well--my, my, my, aren’t you so…you’re so pretty. You’re the prettiest baby I’ve ever seen.”
Parts of you are melting that have been frozen since July.
“Oh, my baby,” you whisper to her. She gazes up at you, eyes glazed over with sleep and love and antibiotics. “It’s so good to meet you.”
Jake comes back into the room ten later, having called Javy and Natasha and rattled off all of the baby’s statistics and updated them on your condition. When he opens the heavy door, he finds you on the bed and holding the baby in your arms as she nurses. There are tears falling off your nose and onto her blanket, a small smile tugging on your lips.
His heart swells in his chest. He thinks he might keel over for a minute.
But then you look up at him, awestruck and so in love that it’s practically written across your forehead in Magic Marker. And he can’t help but come to your side, can’t help but keep moving forward to be near you.
He kisses your temple long and hard, glances down at the baby as she suckles. Her hat is gone--you must’ve taken it off to look at all of her hair. He strokes her hair gently and watches her eyes slowly slip shut.
“She’s kind of perfect,” you whisper to him. “I wasn’t…I wasn’t expecting that.”
Jake glances at you. You’re looking at him with knit brows, with your lips held in a partial frown.
“Yeah?” He asks. “What were you expecting?”
“More of the same,” you whisper.
He knows what you mean: horror. For things to end the way they ended at camp--in flames.
He kisses your temple again.
You look at him, tear-stained and worn out and lovesick. This man, this man who threw himself in front of an ax for you and somehow lived through it just to live in a little house with you and share a carton of orange juice every week, looks back at you like he’s never loved you more than this very moment. Maybe he hasn’t before--maybe every moment beyond this one will be just like this, so chalk-full of love that it spills out of your ears.
And you have left him on the outside of everything. Everything bad and everything good, everything you’ve thought and felt and said to Dr. Messina. It’s on the outside of this bubble, waiting for you to come back. But you know, without a doubt, that he will love you through all the ugly.
“I’ve got a lot to tell you, Jake,” you whisper to him.
He’s choked up. So, he just nods. He kisses your forehead again.
You nod, laughing quietly. You don’t have a crib set up. You don’t have any clothes washed. But there’s a certain peace sitting in your chest, a certain calmness that you haven’t known in a very long time. Because it’s okay. It’s really, really okay. You will do all of these things in time, but for now, you’ll just hold the seven-pound baby girl against your breast and give her every single part of you. It’s all that matters to you.
Suddenly, the baby turns her cheek away from your breast. She doesn’t cry, but she whines, nuzzling against your gown and balling her fists.
“You’re okay, birdie,” Jake whispers, stroking the top of her head. Her hair feels like feathers. “It’s okay, baby.”
“Birdie,” you repeat yourself, looking down at her placid face as she finds your chest again and resumes eating. Your spine prickles. “Birdie.”
“Haven’t heard that name in a long time,” Jake says slowly. “I don’t know why I--it kinda just fell out of my mouth. Couldn’t help it.”
“Maybe it’s what she wants to be called,” you whisper. “Do you wanna be Birdie?”
Sunlight suddenly breaks through the gray clouds and punctures the cracked asphalt parking lot. It is not a lot of fun--but it is just enough to draw your gaze over to the window, where you watch as it gleams off windshields and piles of sludgy snow.
Oh, you think. It’s finally morning.
𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄: SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG. WE COULD TALK ABOUT HOW THIS WAS ME AVOIDING THIS STORY ENDING BECAUSE I LOVE IT SO MUCH + I'M REALLY BAD AT GOODBYES. BUT WE COULD ALSO SAY THAT IT'S BECAUSE I WANTED IT TO BE PERFECT. EITHER WAY...
FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY LITTLE HEART, THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO READ THIS STORY. THE REACTION I'VE GOTTEN HAS BEEN SO UNEXPECTED AND MAGICAL AND FANTASTIC. I HAVE ENJOYED EVERY SINGLE MOMENT OF SHARING THIS WITH EVERYONE. Y'ALL ARE SOME OF THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET AND YOUR REACTIONS TO THIS STORY PROVED THAT.
THIS IS MY LOVE LETTER TO HORRO, BUT ALSO GRIEF. I'M PROUD OF IT. I'M PROUD OF ME. I'M PROUD OF YOU. THANK YOU FOR ALLOWING ME TO SHARE THIS. I'M HUMBLED AND GRATEFUL. STAY TUNED HERE ON ROOSTERBRUISER BECAUSE WE HAVE SOME REALLY FUN STUFF COMING UP. I'M NOT DONE YET!
It’s an ordinary Tuesday morning at the 141 base when Laswell walks into the room with a rather annoyed looking woman in tow. The guys look up from their breakfast and tea, to Laswell, to the woman, then back to their breakfast, and it’s only Price who breaks the silence.
“This her?” he asks and Laswell nods, shoving her forward.
“This is indeed. Introduce yourself.”
“I’d rather not,” the woman mutters, crossing her arms over her chest.
“There are a lot of things I’d rather not do and babysitting you is one of those,” Laswell retorts. “Introduce yourself.”
The woman rolls her eyes, lets out an exaggerated sigh and greets, “Name’s Snapper.”
At this, Soap looks up from his eggs. “Snapper?”
“That’s what I said, William Wallace.”
He ignores the swipe. “Why do they call you ‘Snapper’? Bonnie lass like you should be called something nicer.”
Snapper blinks, eyes hardening as she answers, “I once got attacked by a drunk guy who though it would be a good idea to stick his hand in my face. Three guesses as to what I bit off and how many.”
“And there goes my desire to ask you out,” Soap jokes and she turns to Laswell with a glare.
“I’m gonna hurt this boy’s feelings.”
“Play nice, niece,” she sighs and this time, Gaz looks up.
“Niece? You have a niece?”
“My wife’s.”
“Ah,” he nods and looks to Snapper. “Kyle Garrick. But everyone calls me Gaz.”
“I cannot physically believe you’re sticking me in a base full of men.”
Laswell rolls her eyes. “As much as I hate to actually admit this, you’re one of the best information specialists I’ve ever seen. The 141 can benefit from your help.”
“Men. I’m stuck on a base full of male soldiers. Who shit and fart and laugh loudly with no regards to their surroundings. Why would this be enjoyable for me?”
“Consider it punishment for hacking into the Pentagon and changing the official records to say that Clinton did in fact have sexual relations with that woman.”
Snapper glares at the floor. “You just can’t appreciate good humor.”
“I appreciate my wife not being beside herself in tears that her only niece is in federal prison.”
“Had to get your attention and entrance to the CIA somehow,” she griped.
Finally, Ghost meets her gaze. “You hacked into the Pentagon so you could prove you were good enough to join the CIA?”
She glares at him. “Yeah, kinda how you joined the army so you could find a family that actually cared about you.” She looks at them. “Anybody else want their feelings hurt or just the obviously PTSD-ridden, antisocial, masked freak?”
“You’re out of line, Snapper,” Laswell hisses and she turns her glare onto her aunt.
“I didn’t ask to be here. You could’ve put me anywhere else. You control where I go but you sure as shit don’t control what the fuck I say or do.”
The two glower at one another before Laswell shuts her eyes, breathes deeply for a few moments, then opens her eyes and looks at Price. “Her file is on your desk, her bags are outside the door. She’s a handful but she’s good. If you need me, call.” She turns to Snapper. “You piss me the hell off, I want to kill you, I love you, I’ll call you when I land. Goodbye.”
“You can’t just leave me here!” she shouts in return but doesn’t follow, instead she cocks a hand on her hip and looks at the four men at the table. “So…what’s on the agenda first?”
Price lets out a breath. “Manners, for starters.”
“Kiss my left ass-cheek,” she retorts. “I’m not letting a forty-five-year-old man tell me how to be ladylike.”
Soap and Gaz both snort into their drinks and Price falls stricken with a look of disbelief. “I’m thirty-eight?”
“Uh huh, and I’m the fucking Queen of England.” She gestures to them. “Have fun in your circle-jerk club. I’m gonna go wander.”
“No you’re not, lass,” Soap says, jumping up to grab her arm and she pauses, looks down at his hand, then back up.
“You wanna play this game with me?” Snapper asks coldly. “Because I’ll win.”
He points a finger in her face. “You keep your hands to yourself and your teeth off people.”
“I find I don’t like men telling what to do particularly pleasant. Let go or you’ll be two fingers less than you were five seconds ago.” He glares but lets her go and follows when she turns around. “I don’t need a babysitter. Fuck off.”
“This base has sensitive information you’re not privy to.”
“Yeah, like how you take the lieutenant up your ass every night?”
Soap stalls. “H-how?”
“I’m very good at what I do,” is all she tells him, then pauses and turns back to the table. “I want that one to lead me around.” Her finger is pointing straight at Gaz, who looks like he’s about to shit a brick.
He looks at Price in terror. “I do not want to be her friend.”
“Fuck you,” she barks, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m a great friend.”
Price glances between the two glaring at each other. “Gaz, give her a tour of the base.”
“Price—”
“That’s an order,” he adds and Gaz grunts, getting up from the table to follow her.
“C’mon,” he says, and she clears her throat with exaggeration, getting in front of him.
“Oh no, I’m not being led around like a dog.”
“I’m not treating you like a fucking dog,” he gripes, opening the door. “Just go.”
“Make me, princess,” she retorts and the two start arguing as the door shuts behind them.
No one breaks the silence for a few moments, then Price groans, lays his head on the table and swears. “Fuckin’ Laswell. When she said she had a specialist in mind, I thought it was gonna be someone enjoyable.”
Soap tipped his head side to side. “I dunno, Price, she seems like an…acquired taste.”
“More like sour,” he bites back, sitting up to run a hand down his face. “God help Gaz.”
“He’ll be fine,” Soap says. “What’s the worst that could happen? They hate-fuck?”
“Exactly. I’m too young to be a grandfather,” he says, looking at Ghost. “They’re not allowed to sleep in the same room. Ever.”
“Who fucking died and put me in charge of them?” Ghost snaps.
“Because I trust you.”
“You don’t trust me?” Soap asks, hurt.
“You’ll encourage them, Simon won’t.”
“But don’t you want Gaz to be happy?”
“I want Gaz to not be arrested for killing a CIA agent.”
“Think she might bite his head off before that happens,” Ghost says.
“She’ll bite somethin’,” Soap snorts.
Price grunts, rising from his seat, tea cup in his hand. “I’m going to my office. Come get me if they get into a fistfight.”
“Still questioning why I’m in charge of them,” Ghost gripes.
“Because I fuckin’ said so. That’s why.”
“Permission to not be nice to her.”
“Granted. Lethal verbal decimation allowed.”
“Copy.” Ghost rises, pointing at Soap. “You. Come on.”
“You?” he sputters. “I have a name, ya fuckin’ reprobate.”
As the two argue while they leave, Price leans against the table and frowns at his feet. “I need a partner…or a fucking hobby…or both.”
The subdued illumination within the church accentuates your aura of sanctity.
“Why?” Jason inquires with a quivering voice. “Why didn't he respond to my prayers?”
Your majestic wings are unfurled before him. During his captivity under Joker's cruel grip, this was the vision that haunted him: a divine savior, whether it be God, Bruce, or anyone else, coming to his rescue. Jason's clenched fist crashes onto the ground, causing his knuckles to bleed, yet he remains unfazed.
You are an Angel, and yet, you also did not heed his call. If God truly exists, could it be that Jason simply did not merit salvation?
You grace the moment with a beautiful smile, descending like a delicate feather to caress his cheek, “All is done in due time.”
Your presence brings Jason to tears.
“Can…can you really hear me?”
Jason is a mess. He feels like he’s been in hell for months, but to be seen and recognized by an Angel has brought him to his knees.
“I did so much wrong,” Jason choked out. “Did he ever hear my pleas for help?”
You guide him to his knees, cradling his head against your chest, “In a world where so many stray from the path of righteousness in the name of justice, the Holy One's pleas for understanding remain unanswered, eternally unheard.”
Jason cries, head buried in your chest. You’re warm, so comforting. But your words ring true: he did so much wrong in the name of right.
“Can I ever be forgiven?” Jason asks. “Can I ever truly be redeemed?”
You delicately cleanse away the blood and grime from his face, your smile a graceful enigma. “The answer,” you whisper, placing your hand upon his chest, “lies within the cadence of your actions.”
“But is he real?” Jason asks in despair. “Does he even hear me?”
Jason’s eyes meet yours, filled with anguish.
“Of course, he is real. He dwells within every breath you draw, every tear you shed, every drop of sweat that glistens on your brow, every peal of laughter that escapes your lips, and every beat of the blood coursing through your veins. He is none other than your very essence.”
“No, I’m nothing like him,” Jason says sadly. “I’m a monster. He’s perfect.”
Tears streak his face. He feels lost, broken, and in the presence of a divine being.
You laugh, your hair cascading gracefully as you brush the ground beneath you, where flowers bloom in all their imperfect beauty. “Imperfection,” you muse, “is akin to perfection, my child. Just as he is, just as his choices are, and just as you are yourself.”
Jason feels the weight of those words. Perfection being imperfect, and God being imperfect. How can that be true?
Jason looks up at you.
“Are you him?” Jason asks softly.
You gently trace your fingers across Jason's face, causing his eyelids to flutter close, a knowing smile graces your lips as you opt to remain silent.
Jason experiences the gentle touch of your hand upon his face, a sensation as comforting as a sunbeam's embrace. A divine warmth envelops him, and in that moment, he finds serenity, prompting him to open his eyes and behold your presence.
Jason looks lost in your eyes. How could one have ever created such an entity?
How could he be worthy of something so perfect?
“Why are you here?” Jason whispers. “Why me?”
You smile, “I am a mere thread woven into the tapestry of existence, a part of everyone and everything. The very air you nourish, the blood that flows, the tears that fall, the laughter that echoes, and the prayers that ascend. You are no different, my child.”
Jason is a bit taken aback by your words. You are part of everything? Part of him? And he is part of you?
“If you are here, that means he is listening to me, right?” Jason asks..
“I hear you, don't I?” You chuckle.
Jason nods in the dark. The candlelight caresses your hair, giving it a golden sheen. Your eyes sparkle, radiating beauty.
Jason feels as though anything is possible.
“Does that mean…does that mean I can be redeemed?” Jason whispers.
“That, my child, is in your hands,” you say with a gentle smile, your touch tracing his cheek like a whispered promise.
Jason's fingers graze your hand as it caresses his cheek, the reality of your presence seeming almost surreal, like a reverie.
“What should I do next?” Jason implores, his desire to make amends and seek forgiveness from a higher power burning within him. “I yearn for my words to reach God's ears.”
You release a weary sigh, gently closing your eyes.
Jason envelops you in a fierce yet tender embrace, his arms encircling your form with an unwavering grip. You sense the tremors coursing through him, a stark departure from the Jason Todd you once knew.
Jason's voice quivers, breaking like fragile glass.
“I’m scared,” Jason whispers.
You catch your breath for a moment, a smile dancing across your lips as you embrace him, your arms encircling him like a comforting shroud. “Do not fret,” you whisper, brushing his hair tenderly. “After all, am I not your mother?”
“My mother…” Jason murmurs.
You’re warm, loving. Jason craves this intimacy.
“Yes, you’re my mother,” Jason replies. He’s almost in tears.
He can feel his emotions flowing through him, and they are overwhelming.
You hush him with a soothing gesture, rocking him gently like a fragile vessel on calm waters.
Jason clings to you as though you are his lifeline as if releasing you would shatter the fragile illusion around him.
You sway him tenderly, your presence a balm to his troubled soul. Jason shuts his eyes, savouring the sensation, wondering if this is the ethereal touch of a mother's love, a feeling long yearned for.
You’re his mother.
Jason squeezes you tighter, tears streaming down his face. The sensation of a mother’s touch is beyond words.
“Can I stay here?” Jason asks. “With you. Always.”
“Jason, I've been a constant presence in your life,” you say, your words a comforting anchor in the tumultuous sea of his existence.
“Is it true, ma?” Jason asks, still clinging to you.
He wants to believe your words with all his heart. All he has ever wanted is to be loved.
“You love me?” Jason whispers.
“I will endure for eternity, in every conceivable universe,” you murmur softly, your words brushing across his soul like a gentle caress, sealing the promise with a tender kiss upon his forehead.
Jason's heart soars, an unfamiliar warmth flooding his senses. Throughout the long years of his agonizing existence, this emotion has eluded him—never has he experienced such profound love and solace. He realizes with unwavering certainty, “You're my mother.”
With his head nestled against your shoulder and eyes gently shut, Jason finally basks in the embrace of love and solace he has long yearned for.
“Are you tired, Jason?” you inquire, lowering him gently to the ground. Your arms cradle his form, and your wings wrap around him like a protective cocoon, offering solace and shelter.
“So tired, ma,” Jason says as he closes his eyes. His body seems so small next to yours, and he feels as though he is truly returning to a womb. He feels safe, loved, and peaceful.
The torment is gone. It’s just him and you now.
“Then surrender to slumber, my child… let joyful dreams be your refuge,” you murmur tenderly as you rock him, your touch tracing the path of his scars, each mark a story etched in his journey.
“What if I never wake up?” Jason whispers.
Your caress is so sweet, so tender.
“Don’t leave me, ma,” Jason murmurs. “I don’t know what I would do without you.” There is so much he wants to tell you, so much he wants to cry about.
“I don’t want to die,” Jason cries, tears streaming from his eyes.
“Can I ask for one thing before I close my eyes, ma?”
“Whatever you desire,” your hushed words a gentle breeze ready to carry the weight of all 7 seas.
Jason looks up at you, his eyes raw. He holds on with all the strength he has left. He can feel himself wanting to let go, to let sleep wash over him. But his eyes remain open.
“Stay with me, ma.”
“Forever my angel,” you whisper with a tender smile, resting your head against his as he draws his final breath in your embrace. A solitary tear descends down my cheek, an eloquent tribute to the moments shared.
Jason’s breathing grows shallow. His eyes flutter closed. He holds you, and he knows that you are with him as he closes his eyes.
You can feel him drift away from consciousness, as he drifts into sleep and finally…peace.
You hold him, and you hold the love of a mother. It’s a feeling he knew he would never feel again, and yet…you are with him.
“Rest, my child,” you whisper, the echoes of your words spanning eternities. With a serene smile, you cradle Jason in your embrace, a timeless lullaby at heart.
Time slows as Jason relaxes, his eyes finally closed as sleep envelopes him. He is no longer Jason Todd, haunted by fear and pain.
He is Jason, your beloved son, asleep and at peace in your arms.
The road rose up before them in the dark, the white stripe of paint glowing in the bike’s headlight.
Jason swayed with the gentle bends in the road. They picked up speed. Cars on the opposite lane were just blurs, each a muted roar, here and gone in an instant. The trees on either side flickered by like a faulty old film projector.
The only constants were the bike, the road, and Andy.
She clung on behind him, her warm body pressed snug to his. She moved so smoothly with him that it felt like they were extensions of each other. It made something so dangerous feel safe.
Even in the early days, before they were going out and he was studiously trying to focus on not wanting her, he felt a kind of peace when she was wrapped around him. Trusting him implicitly, reveling in the speed and the twists and turns right there with him. He trusted her in turn, to keep their balance. To feel his every move as he made it and move in tandem. Anything less and he would have to slow down or risk losing control of the bike. It was exhilarating.
In their little bubble, they were all that mattered.
He loved it. They had no reason to be out tonight, it was just for the hell of it. The silence and isolation of the road, the lights smudged against the night, all trials and tribulations left behind in the stationary world.
It had become what they did when they needed an escape, just the two of them. No words were necessary to feel each other here.
The trees on one side thinned, and then disappeared entirely. The dark ocean stretched away beside them. Silver glinted over the water, tiny glimpses of moonlight caught on the caps of gentle waves, and there, across the harbour, rose Gotham.
They slowed to a stop. The city was all aglow tonight, its haze of colour smudged against the dark skyscrapers and the shadow of zeppelins. The bridges were elegant silhouettes against the silver lights, and even the Narrows looked beautiful at this range.
His foot hit the gravel, and hers behind him.
She pulled off her helmet and leaned her chin on his shoulder. He settled back against her. They enjoyed the view in the cool of the night.
“I love you,” he said.
He’d never said it before. To anyone. But it felt so right. Surely it was obvious by now anyway.
The sun rose in her expression.
“I love you too,” she replied.
He knew. He really did.
He leaned his head back enough to kiss her. She smiled against his lips. She gave him an extra little peck when he pulled back.
“Keep going?” she asked, nodding at the road.
He leaned forward. “Where to?”
She pulled her helmet back on. She pointed into the silky darkness ahead, where the road rolled away forever. “That way.”
He revved the engine. She wrapped her arms around his waist.
Summary: After two years together, Jason takes her out somewhere special for their anniversary.
Masterlist
It was mid morning when Jason called.
That was deeply unusual, this month especially. He had been so busy lately she barely saw him except for the days she got up and found him dead to the world on the other side of her bed.
Idly cataloguing the possible reasons for the call, Andy turned down the radio and stepped away from her laptop.
A serious injury? Unlikely, that call typically came from Alfred and would have happened three hours ago. Location compromised, maybe? Pretty good chance, although it wasn’t usually a call but an emergency alert telling her to get her ass out the door. Maybe he was loopy on fear-toxin antidote again and needed to hear she was still alive.
Most likely situation was Jason calling to tell her he was leaving the country, or the planet, or possibly the universe. Given the timing, it would be… well. Not crushing, but disappointing.
Two years into this relationship, she knew better than to get too precious about calendar dates.
“Hello?” she said with a jaunty tilt of her head. No pre-emptive sulking, she refused.
“Hey beautiful,” Jason’s voice came through the little speaker. It was warm and low. “I’ve missed your voice.”
Her eyebrows rose and relief lit up her face. “Did you just? I’ve got a presentation tomorrow that needs some rehearsing, want to listen to my dulcet tones talk about community support funding?”
He laughed. “I would actually, but I’d rather hear the whole story from the beginning. Are you free this saturday?”
“Hmm, am I free this saturday?” she drawled. “On our anniversary?”
“Yup, that saturday.”
“Why, yes, baby, I think I am. Why do you ask?”
“You’re not free anymore. I’m calling dibs.”
“Oh?” She dared to feel not just relief but anticipation.
“8pm. I’ll come get you.”
“Alright. How am I dressing? Steel capped boots? Running shoes? Ballet flats?” She had learned the vital importance of this question since going out with him. Jason’s plans were best faced prepared.
“Heels,” he said, and she could hear the smirk in his voice. “Wear that slinky red number you hide at the back of the closet.”
She paused. Of course he’d seen it. “I’ve… never actually worn that before.”
“What did you get it for then?” he asked, teasing.
“Oh, you know. Maybe I’ll get invited to the Oscars.”
He laughed, low and promising. “I’ll make you feel like you did.”
She bit her lip. She was grinning like an idiot, alone in her own apartment. Two years in and she could still melt her with a word.
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you Saturday, sweetheart.”
They hung up and she drifted to her closet, eyeing up the dress.
He couldn’t make their first anniversary. The planet was under an invasion while Bruce was off-world dealing with some other, separate invasion, so Jason and Dick split up cowl temping duties. Dick went to go play Batman with the Justice League and Jason stayed to play Batman in Gotham.
He was more than capable of it and the average criminal didn’t even realise there was a different guy under the cowl. They just thought Batman was feeling extra mean this month. But it more than doubled his workload.
It didn’t blindside her. They were both disappointed but didn’t make a fuss, they had a system in place for these things. Both made compromises and extended grace to the other, and their relationship was stronger for it.
All the same, when Saturday night rolled around and she heard the purr of a car rolling up outside, excitement fizzed in her chest like bubbles in champagne.
She put on her finishing touches and went out to meet him.
Jason waited for her in a perfectly tailored black suit. He didn’t fancy himself up very often, or ever, in fact. Having him dressed up was more of a luxury than the McLaren sports car he was leaning against.
She drank in the sight of him. He looked like he could put Brucie Wayne to shame. The smirk on his face completed the ensemble.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said.
She wore her floor length evening dress, with a halter neck and the most indulgent plunging neckline she had ever worn, to say nothing of the split in the skirt. It was also bright red. She felt a little shy in it, but it wasn’t a dress for hiding in. She had towering black stilettos on her feet and a lazy swing in her hips. She wanted him to look his fill.
His eyes roamed over her with open appreciation. They were shortly followed by his hands, settling on her hips. He pulled her to him.
How was he still so much taller than her?
He kissed her, slow and deep and hungry. She leaned into him. He luxuriated in her.
Her night was off to a wonderful start.
Once they could bring themselves to part, he helped her into the car, and drove them off into the night. She put her hand on his thigh. He interlocked his fingers with hers and drove one handed. Gotham’s lights flashed by as they left their native little corner of the city behind. They wound through the Diamond District.
They slowed to a stop in the courtyard of a softly glowing restaurant. There was a cellist playing in the foyer. She recognised the name in a looping font over the door. She’d read it on some list of world best’s.
“You did not get a booking here on Wednesday. Did you?”
“I booked a year ago.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t going to miss it twice.”
She squeezed his hand. A ‘thank you’ wouldn’t encapsulate just how much it meant to her. She knew the case he was working on wasn't wrapped up yet. He lifted her hand and kissed her palm.
She looked out the window at the people getting out of cars ahead of them. Doubt niggled at the back of her head.
“I may not actually be fancy enough for these people,” she confessed.
Jason scoffed. “Sweetheart, you’re gonna put everyone else here to shame.” He killed the engine and turned to her. “They should be grateful for the privilege of seeing you. I know I am.”
She smiled, ducking her head a little. He tilted her chin back up and looked into her eyes, leaning down towards her.
“You know these windows are tinted?” he said.
She snorted a laugh. He snatched a kiss.
“If you smudge my makeup, so help me.”
“Sweets, you know that’s a challenge.” He tipped her chin higher and kissed her neck, expertly dodging where she had blended her foundation into her skin.
She sighed. She loved this ridiculous man so much.
A valet tapped his window and Jason drew back with a sly grin.
He got out and came around to open her door for her. It was a necessity given how low the seats and how tall her heels were, but she was happy to lean into the fantasy as he took her hand.
Doubt was for behind closed doors. With the world watching she stepped out into the courtyard in a flutter of red silk and her chin held high. Jason slung an arm around her waist, resting low on her hip. They walked like they belonged because who the hell was going to tell them they didn’t?
They were welcomed in by the maitre d’ and led across the packed restaurant floor. Jason caressed the curve of her hip without shame.
She spotted the empty table their path led them to. Jason stiffend at her side.
At the table directly next to it sat another couple, presumably also on a date. Bruce Wayne and a gorgeous brunette with a pixie cut, staring deeply into each other’s eyes.
Bruce glanced their way only briefly, and his expression froze.
Dread broke through his public persona for just a moment, a look perfectly mirrored on his son’s face. The collision course was set. Jason walked like he was approaching the gallows.
The brunette noticed the hiccup and looked back, revealing Miss Selina Kyle. She looked at Andy and rolled her eyes in commiseration.
“Actually,” Andy said, tossing her hair back and stopping in place.
The maitre d’ paused in his path.
“I would love to sit on the mezzanine floor. With the wall of flowers? It must be so beautiful.”
She ruthlessly silenced her internal scream over making a fuss. She was not surrendering her evening to Wayne bullshit. She got waxed for this.
“I’m so sorry, Ma’am, the orchid display isn’t currently available, we are preparing an exciting new display for the spring after Poison Ivy-”
“It’s what I want,” she said pleasantly.
“Of course.”
The maitre d’ redirected them with perfect poise. He whispered in a passing waiter’s ear, and led them to the stairs.
Jason took her hand and squeezed it in silent thanks. The tension seeped back out of him. She squeezed back.
The mezzanine was comparatively quiet, with a giant print of Monet’s water lilies erected to cover some construction works. It had a lovely view of the rest of the restaurant however and the glinting chandeliers hung down over the main floor.
Table settings were arranged for them with a swiftness and subtlety even Alfred Pennyworth would approve of. Jason got to sit with his back to a wall and with sightlines over the entire pace, which always made him more comfortable. The table was small, they sat very close together, making it feel more intimate and private.
There were no prices on the menu and she didn’t grasp what the minimalist dish names actually meant. For a moment it filled her with a mute panic. Jason gave her a calm look and played with her hand on the table.
“We’ll have the chef’s menu, and the paired champagne for the table,” he said.
She was more than happy to be swept along. And she could pronounce the champagne better than the waiter, which calmed her fear of making a fool of herself. Jason managed to look exactly as at home here as he did while having a smoke on top of a dumpster in the Alley.
The food was all delicious, albeit in tiny portions on very large plates.
Below the table Jason ran his hand up her bare thigh, his fingers sneaking under the split in the dress.
She made eye contact as she licked the last of a creamy sorbet off her spoon. He watched with unadulterated focus. She ran her bare leg against his briefly, tastefully, and then retreated. He smirked at her. It was the smile of a man who knew exactly where his evening was heading.
He lifted his glass, with the last of its golden liquid in it. “To another year, beautiful.”
This is purely a self indulgent piece of fluff because I think we all need a bit of Chef Luca love (featuring Choux the cat because I fully believe that Luca would be a proud cat dad)
Dance With Me
Oogum, oogum, boogum, boogum
Boogum now, baby, you're castin' your spell on me
The music woke you up first, then the sunlight streaming through the curtains. Your lips curl into a smile as you stretch your arms up over your head. Music only played in the apartment early in the morning on your favorite days. The days that Luca had off, the days where he wasn’t racing out the door before the crack of dawn to head to the restaurant. The days you had him all to yourself.
I say, "Oogum, oogum, boogum, boogum
Boogum now, baby, you're castin' your spell on me"
Sitting up and pulling the covers off you as you stepped onto the soft rug that covered the hardwood floor. You padded your way down the hallway, walls covered with pictures and memories the two of you shared, through to the kitchen.
The sweet smells of vanilla and cinnamon fill your nose as you found perhaps your favorite sight.
Luca has his back to you as he works over the stovetop, plaid pajama pants slung low on his waist, his tanned and toned body on display for you. He hadn’t spotted you yet, back still turned to the door as he cooked, head bopping as he sang softly along to the music. You smile to yourself leaning against the doorframe and watch as Luca moves around the kitchen with a relaxed, practiced ease.
Your little gray tabby cat rubs itself against your legs, leaning down you whisper “hi Choux” as you scratch his head. Luca turns around and sees you.
An easy grin graces his face, “Mornin’ baby, did I wake you?”
“No, but I appreciate the show” you say, your eyes drifting down over his tattooed arms and toned chest.
Luca smirks, holding his hand out to you “dance with me”. Grasping your hand, he pulls you close against his warm chest as you sway to the music. Laughing as he twirls you around.
Luca sings along as you dance and twirl together around the room
You got me doin' funny things like a clown
Just look at me
When you wear your bell bottom pants
I just stand there in a trance
I can't move, you're in the groove
Would you believe, little girl, that I am crazy 'bout you
Now go on with your bad self.
He spins you again and pulls you to him, wrapping his arms around you as you sway together, Luca’s head resting on top of yours.
When you wear those big earrings, long hair and things
You got style, girl, that sure is wild
And you wear that cute trench coat and you're standin' and posin'
You got soul, you got too much soul.
As the song comes to an end Luca dips you and he kisses you, lips moving languidly against yours.
“I made breakfast” Luca mutters against your lips.
“French toast?” You ask smiling, extracting yourself from his warm embrace and boiling water for your coffees.
“Mhmm” Luca comes up behind you, brushing your hair off your shoulder as he nuzzles into your neck, placing delicate kisses just below your ear. “With a strawberry coulis”
“My favorite” you smiling warmly, turning in Luca’s arms standing up on your toes and placing a kiss on his lips.
Luca lifted Choux off the kitchen table as you placed the coffee mugs down with the plates of French toast.
Sitting together in a comfortable silence, your legs draped over Luca’s lap as he mindlessly massages your calves. His fingers began to dance higher and higher upward, over your knees. You can see his grin form as he sips his coffee.
“What are you up too?” You ask chuckling as Luca fingers graze the edges of your sleep shorts.
“Nothing at all” He smirks, meeting your eyes, as his fingers continue exploring higher
“Mmm, sure” you say standing, you make your way towards the hallway before turning back “So are you coming or what, trouble?” You smirk before taking off running down the hallway.
Luca grins and chases after you towards your bedroom.
Jason pulled her head back and they both breathed hard. He leaned heavily back against the door, his legs shaky. She had been on a direct course to throw him over the edge and was only picking up speed. He wasn’t going to give in that easy.
She sat back on her haunches, panting and dishevelled in her slinky cocktail dress. Her lips were swollen, her eyelashes damp, and her makeup smudged, but she was in no way hazy. The look in her eye as she gazed up at him was entirely lucid and extremely pleased with herself.
Fuck, she was gorgeous.
“Look at you,” he said, brushing back a loose hair from her face, and tracing her cheek. “Are you tryna kill me?”
Her hands on his thighs flexed with eagerness, and she gave a light laugh. She leaned forward again.
He grasped her ponytail and held her back. He stroked himself, a couple of inches away, while she opened her mouth. He held her still, just enjoying the tableau. Breathtaking.
She huffed with impatience and flicked her eyes up at him.
He laughed.
She’d been a filthy tease earlier, this was her just deserts. The fact that he had loved every second of it was irrelevant.
He brought her just close enough to brush his tip. Her tongue ran through the slit. He shuddered and pulled her back again, smothering a groan.
“You despicable tease,” she said, sounding in no way opposed to the situation. “How could you do this to me?”
“I know,” he drawled. “Making you wait for my cock. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”
“I wish to file a complaint.”
“Considered it filed, and ignored.”
She whined. He could feel her hot breath on his sensitive, wet skin. He wanted her so badly.
“You hate being empty, don’t you? Like you were made to take my cock.”
The ravenous look she gave him was filthy.
“You want it?”
“Yes please.”
“How, needy girl?”
“Deep and slow,” a smile curled at her lips. “Indulge a little.”
“Sweetheart.” He sank into the warmth of her mouth. The relief of it travelled up his spine and down all his nerve endings. “You can’t just say that to me, how am I supposed to think clearly? Go on, all the way. You said deep.”
Her pleased hum was cut off. He moaned, helpless against the sensation as he passed the last wall of resistance.
Her hands sat relaxed on his hips, letting him know she was okay despite the fluttering of damp eyelashes and the tortuous flexing of her throat. He cradled her head and pulled out slowly. She hauled in one deep breath before he sank in again. It was agonisingly slow, the sweetest torture. He wasn’t going to last long.
She looked up at him intermittently, making sure she was doing a good job. She never did anything less, but she was thorough like that. He knew how badly she wanted to please him. She’d do just about anything to make him feel good. Such raw trust. It eviscerated him.
He moaned her name.
It made him impossibly more possessive and protective when she got like this.
This was his woman, putting her body in his hands.
“I’ve got you sweetheart,” he said, his voice rumbling and low as his climax approached. “You’re doing so good for me. That’s my girl. Fucking spectacular.”
She made a desperate whine.
“You gonna take it all?”
Her eyes flicked up to him, glittering and hungry. So full of affection. He loved her so much. She did something clever with her tongue.
Summary: After a night out, she is in the mood to tease.
Masterlist
-----
As soon as they were in the apartment, she pushed Jason against the door and kissed him.
“Hello,” he said, surprise seamlessly transitioning into smugness. He leaned in to kiss her back, his hands running up her arms in preparation to spin them around again, but she wasn’t having it. She knew his tricks.
If he got his way, he would have her naked and blissed out before he even considered his own pleasure.
She wasn’t letting him get away with it tonight. She put his hands against the door and leaned her weight against his chest. It wouldn’t hold him by any means, but it told him she wanted to call the shots.
“You’re in a mood.” He grinned and leaned back against the door. “Liked that little stunt, did you?”
She hummed and kissed her way across his jaw and down his neck.
She’d been in a mood all night really. She hadn’t worn her racy cocktail dress and heels by accident. She did her hair up the way Jason liked, then went to the club with her girl friends and was annoyed by every man who looked at her for being the wrong man. It was still a fun night, but she was really just hanging out to go home and see her boyfriend at the end of it.
Only she ran into trouble on the way home.
Her taxi driver did not take her where he should have, turning away towards the docks with a bald faced lie about closed roads. Presumably he thought she’d be too drunk to notice. She played up the tipsy college girl act and squeezed her panic button.
Jason came to collect.
The spectacle of her boyfriend violently protecting her probably shouldn’t turn her on quite so much, but here she was. Sinking down onto her knees.
He curled a lock of hair behind her ear.
The tightly controlled power of him excited her as much as his protective streak. He’d destroyed the taxi driver like he was nothing. And compared to the kinds of threats he normally dealt with, he was nothing. But there was no world where he didn’t treat someone planning to hurt her as worth his full attention. Jason would never let her go undefended.
She teased him with tiny butterfly kisses, the smoothness of her cheek, and coy slow pumps with her hands. He groaned at the provocation but made no move to push for more.
His head fell back against the door and he let out a gusty breath.
“You know you don’t owe me, right, baby?”
She scoffed. “Of course.”
She’d had her struggles with needing to defend herself. She asserted her independence for years and stood on her own against the world. She proved to herself she could. All she got from it was the realisation that she didn’t want to. She had nothing to prove.
“I let you defend me,” she said. She ran her tongue up his length and met his eyes. “Like you’re letting me do whatever I want to you.”
Jason looked down at her with rapt attention.
It used to make her shy, the blinding spotlight of his attention. Now she luxuriated in it.
He breathed in a pattern she recognised as a calming technique. The excited twitch of his fingers on her shoulder told her it wasn’t working. He carded a hand through her hair.
At last she relented. She sank her mouth over the head, tongue flat against the underside. His breath stuttered in his chest. She grinned around him.
She continued, as insufferably unhurried and thorough as she had been before. He tried to swallow his hungry whines and moans. Unsuccessful. Each little sound fueled her appetite for him.
“Don’t tell me you can’t take a little teasing, Jay?” she said, pulling back to stretch her jaw.
He gave her an unconvincing scowl. “I’m not the one who can’t take it." He cupped the back of her head.
Nevermind they both know how absurd a claim that was, or how empty the implied threat, she rose valiantly to the challenge set before her. She grinned.
“Oh yeah? Watch this.”
The noise that fell from his lips was sinful. It sent a shiver down her spine and had her moaning, in the brief moments she was able. His hand fluttered against the back of her head. The other brushed gently along her jaw. She could feel the twitch in his hips, the straining will to not thrust into her throat. His thick, powerful thighs were so tense under her hands. So much control. Another night she would set out to break it. Tonight, she had more generous plans.
She backed off, letting her mouth hang open as she breathed deeply. Her eyelashes were damp.
He whined at the sight.
Oh, she loved seeing him so needy. His hand at her jaw moved to her shoulder, desperately trying to anchor himself. She pulled it back, encompassing her throat.
His eyes darkened and he growled. The hand on the back of her head made a fist around her ponytail. There was so much tension and power coiled through him. Still he didn’t push. Such a gentleman.
She licked her lips and winked at him. “Oh, go on.”
pairing: chef luca x ex-wife!reader
word count: 4.7k
warnings: established former relationship, angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, discussions of separation and divorce, luca and reader has a son, unresolved sexual tension 👀
notes: this fic has been the bane of my existence for the last couple of months or so. it all started as a simple thought of "ooh it would be fun to have a steamy smut with ex!luca" and then it turns into a whole thing with like proper angst and stuff lol. this will be split into two parts, and i think i need encouragement to finish the second part. so please enjoy this first part and tell me what you think!
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03:49 PM
Everything is fine, you keep telling yourself.
Your soon-to-be ex-husband is flying in from Denmark to finalize the divorce—and even after two years of exhaustive paperwork and mediations and court proceedings, you still don’t know how to feel about this. His visit to New York is meant to be a consolation prize for your six-year-old son Alfie, whose only facetime with his dad lately is through… well, FaceTime. But, given how extraordinarily difficult he’s being—fussing over his breakfast, stalling shower time by a record of 48 minutes, refusing to wear anything you picked out for him… you have an inkling that he might be a little nervous to see his father.
And to make matters worse, it’s raining cats and dogs outside, which delays Luca by two hours now and actively threatens the zoo outing he has planned out for him and Alfie.
So… despite the shitstorm that is happening in your apartment and out, you keep telling yourself that everything is fine.
Because it is. Your home is tidy enough, with all the toys and the mess tucked away in their little cubbies. Your son is dressed up enough; he’s finally put on his pants and shirt, although you missed a button and he won’t let you fix it. The storm is outside, and you’re safely sheltered in. And your relationship with your ex is civil enough, so you feel…
Fine enough.
But the doorman buzzes in, and you can definitely tell the awkwardness in his voice. “Afternoon, Ma’am. I have your husband— I mean, Chef Luca— I mean Mr. Bailey—”
You sigh, not having the energy to let this go on. “Yeah, yeah. Send him up.”
Alfie looks up from his coloring book and practically jumps out of the couch. “My tummy hurts, I’m gonna make a doodie!”
“No running!” You remind him just a second too late, watching him dash over to the bathroom and slamming the door closed. He has a nervous stomach just like you, and as you feel the icky twist in your gut… you can’t help but empathize with his antics today. You would be fucking shit up too, if you only could.
There’s a knock at the door, and you brace yourself as if you’re about to let the storm itself in (although, quite frankly, you probably are). Your hand feels clammy, and you have to wipe it off on your dress before you unlock the door and turn the knob.
“Hey.”
If the storm was a person, you wouldn’t have associated it with the man standing before you. So tall and broad and sturdy. With boyish features and dark blond locks like gentle daylight. It feels like a reach to imagine the seven years of your relationship with him was, indeed, an epic fucking hurricane.
Still.
You can’t help that you miss him.
“Come on in.” You step aside, not really meeting his gaze.
He murmurs a small thanks and apology, a staple combination in Luca’s British vernacular, as he squeezes in through the door with his duffel bag and suitcase.
“I thought you’d dropped these off at your hotel before you came here.”
“I know. I was going to, but…” he puts down his bags close to the jacket closet, like he always does, “But I got held up for ages and traffic was awful and I didn’t want Alfie to wait even longer, so…”
“Right.” You nod absently. “Well. He’s in the bathroom, should be out in a second, so… have a seat. Do you want anything to drink?”
“Um, water’s fine.” He takes his seat on the dining table.
You’re not sure which one is more jarring; the sheer familiarity of this, or the fact that it isn’t anymore. The two of you just hovering in the home you used to share, courteous but distant.
Luca looks around the place, and notices all the differences right away. You kept the glass dining table and two of the chairs, but changed the corner seating into a plush dining bench against the kitchen island. He recognizes Alfie’s favorite stuffed bunny on the couch, although the throw pillows were new. But he takes one look at the wall… and his heart drops.
Gone are any traces of him in the snapshots of your life. The pictures are all of you and Alfie—eating ice cream in the park, grinning and showing his first lost tooth, dressed up on Halloween… He really shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed to find the wedding portrait gone, or the vacation selfie in Italy four years ago. But it hurts quite a bit to find a generic flower portrait replacing the picture of him kissing you on the forehead while Alfie, laying on your chest, merely hours after his birth.
“Yeah, I…” you clear your throat as you hand him the glass of water, “…did some redecorating.”
“It looks good.” He manages a stiff nod, taking a hesitant swig of water.
“You look…” good, you want to say. Because he is. He’s got that tan and the haircut that reminds you of when you first met him years ago. But you can’t say that. So you settle with, “You look well.”
He meets your eyes, really meets your eyes for the first time, and you try to convince yourself the little flutter you feel inside is just your nervous stomach. But he smiles, soft and earnest. “So do you.”
You turn back and open the fridge, welcoming the cold air and how it cools down the burning warmth on your cheeks. Trying not to freak out and decide what you’re getting, so you don’t look like an idiot. Your hand grabs a can of ginger ale, and you sigh in relief.
“How’s Alfie doing in school?”
“He’s doing alright. He’s enjoying his art classes. Math is still a struggle, but Ms. Rashad says his reading is quite advanced for his age.” You relax a little bit into the conversation. The topic of your son resets you a little bit into a somewhat common ground as co-parents. Plain and simple.
“Definitely takes after you. My dyslexic ass could never.”
You smile at that. Small jokes are still there, always a good sign.
“And the, uh…” he lowers his voice, “the anxiety?”
“Comes and goes. He’s been complaining about a stomach ache all day.” You glance towards the bathroom.
He frowns in concern. “Should we go check on him?”
“Sure…” You walk together with Luca following suit, tentatively knocking at the door. “Alfie? Hey bub, how’s your doodie?” It sounds silly, but you find it helps to ask open questions instead of showing your worries outright.
A flush from inside. “There’s no doodie,” he hollers. His voice is murmured from the barrier, and then the running tap water.
You catch the unease in Luca’s features, and you feel a little bad for him. It wouldn’t feel great that your own son is nervous to see you after many months apart. “You wanna come out, then? Your dad’s here.” You try to sound cheerful and upbeat, hoping it’ll hype them both up.
The two-second gap never felt so long. But the door opens, and there he is, standing meekly against the frame. Staring up at you and then at Luca.
Luca’s heart nearly stops as those big doe eyes stare up at him, a spitting image of you. The same softness. The same spark of stubbornness.
The same vulnerable look.
“Hey, bub.”
“Hi.”
“Can I get a hug?”
There’s a brief pause, before he steps forward and throws his arms around his father’s middle. Luca grunts softly, a little surprised by the sheer force Alfie is hugging him, his heart swelling three times over.
“Oh my God, look at you!” He ruffles the boy’s dark hair and kneels down to level with him. His cherubic face is small cupped in his large hand, but not as small as Luca remembered it. “You’re so tall now!”
“Of course. I’m 3 feet and 8 inches tall now. Right, Mommy?” He proudly announces, getting the exact height completely memorized.
“That’s right,” you confirm with a grin.
Luca gasps, a smile blooming on his face. “What?”
Alfie nods. “I’m gonna be as tall as you.”
“No! Don’t grow up so fast!” He playfully cries out.
“Why?”
“Because I won’t get to do this anymore!” Luca seizes his boy into his arms and sweeps him off of his bunny-socked feet, sending Alfie into a fit of hysterical giggles.
The sight makes you chuckle, but the feeling could bring Luca to happy tears. He’s been gone for so long, he’s afraid he’d forget how it feels to hold his son in his arms again. Or worse, that his son would find his presence alien.
But he’s here now. With you and the son you share. Attacking Alfie in tickles and noisy kisses, and letting the boy climb him like monkey bars. And it calms his anxious heart a bit as he reminds himself, everything’s fine.
And as things fall back into place, thunder crashes outside, as if sobering all of you back into reality. Alfie shirks into himself, climbing off of his father’s back. You want to reach out for him so badly, but at the same time, not wanting to interrupt his bonding time with his dad.
“It’s okay, bub. It’s just thunderclap,” Luca soothes emphatically over the sudden silence, bringing Alfie back down to his feet. He smooths his son’s hair gently, comfortingly. “I got you, I got you…”
“Do animals even come out in the rain?” Alfie is back to his withdrawn self, mumbling his words and avoiding Luca’s gaze.
“Some animals actually love playing in the rain,” you chime in helpfully.
Luca keeps his tone cheerful and bright. “Yeah, and you can wear your raincoat and your wellies and I’ll even let you jump in puddles—”
“I don’t wanna do that! I wanna stay home!” He whines, voice raising a little.
“It’s your dad’s time—”
“No!”
“Alfie.” Your tone is firmer now, as he struggles out of his father’s arms and runs to his favorite corner of the couch in the living room, holding his stuffed bunny tight.
But Alfie’s got a point. This is not the kind of rain where you can take a leisurely stroll in. No, this is the kind where you stay huddled inside and hope it doesn’t flood the streets. Luca takes a thoughtful look at Alfie who is sulking and shrinking from the sound of thunder, at the window completely obscured from rain, and then at you… offering an apologetic smile.
So much for quality time with his son.
Luca’s heart sinks a little. He sighs in defeat. “Maybe we should just wait it out…”
“Are you sure? I mean, you flew 9 hours to see him—“
“And I don’t want him to be pissed at me the whole time we’re hanging out,” he reasons. “Besides, I don’t think any Uber would take our order at this time.”
It makes sense, you think. As much as you want this awkward little broken family dance to end, you know that staying in and waiting it out is the best option. Alfie would feel much more comfortable at home than in whatever hotel Luca is staying in. And maybe it’s your protective side talking, but if he ever gets fussy, you’d prefer to be around to deal with it.
“Alright, fine.”
“Yeah? Is that okay with you?”
You shrug. The truth is a little more complicated, but ultimately you settle with a simple, “yes.”
Alfie takes a quick glance at you and Luca emerging from the hallway (you have your mother’s side eye, Luca always said), before returning to fiddling his stuffed bunny’s ears (your father’s neutral look of disapproval, you would say). Like clockwork, Luca takes the seat next to Alfie, while you take the puffy stool in front of him.
“That wasn’t very nice of you to raise your voice at me and your dad like that. I get that you’re nervous about the weather—a bit startled, too— but still. We don’t raise our voices in this household.”
Alfie looks at you and Luca. “I’m sorry.”
Luca nods in acknowledgement. “I’m sorry for being late, buddy.” He gingerly reaches out to touch the boy’s hand. “You’re right, though. It might be best to stay in for a bit.” He motions at the rain hammering down on the window outside.
“I told you. I wanna stay at home.”
“I know. And we are for now. We can…” Luca scans around for something to do. His eyes fall on the coloring book and the open box of color pencils next to it. Bingo! “We can… color some drawings in that book?”
He pouts, not entirely sold on the idea but not outright refusing it either.
“Or, hey, I got some new drawings on me. You can color them, too.” Luca takes off his hoodie and shows off the tattoos on his arms.
God, you forgot about the plethora of trashy tattoos adorning his skin. Even worse, you forgot how it highlights the defined curves of his biceps. Focus, for fuck’s sake! You avert your gaze towards the flower portrait on the wall.
Alfie perks up a little. “This is my old drawing.” His tiny finger pokes at his forearm, on a tattoo of a stick figure climbing up the stairs. “You still have it?”
“Of course. It’s there forever. I’ll always have it.” Luca finds himself choking up at that simple admission. A little token of childhood of his ever-growing love. “Go on, get your crayons.”
Alfie looks at you as if seeking permission, and it makes you want to laugh that he shares the same animated eyebrows as his father.
“Go ahead, bub,” you usher him off lightly, and as soon as he’s out of sight, nods at your ex. “Good save.”
Luca half-smiles. “Thanks. You should chill out. Read a book, take a nap or something. I got him.”
“What, are you trying to kick me out?”
“No, I just—”
Your smile breaks out. “I’m kidding! Go hang out with Alf. I got a Zoom meeting in a few minutes anyway.”
He sighs in relief, chuckling lightly. “You almost got me there…”
You briefly pat his shoulder and for an even briefer moment, his hand is atop yours. The big ‘A’ tattoo on the back of his hand—your son’s initial in a bold Gothic letter— serves as a reminder of what’s past; a whirlwind romance, the wild days of being a family of a merry band of misfits…
Misfits. That’s the biggest takeaway here, you suppose. Your pieces don’t quite fit right. Not without little Alfie gluing you together.
With a final squeeze on Luca’s shoulder, you make your way to your bedroom, making space for Luca’s puzzle pieces to fit with Alfie’s because they don’t fit yours anymore.
***
05:04 PM
By the time your Zoom meeting ends, the pelting rain outside is louder and the chatter inside is nearly inaudible. It feels nice for about ten seconds… until you remember that you have a six-year-old at home and long bouts of silence can be quite… well, suspicious. You pad out into the hallway to check on him.
“Let’s see. You wanna do the sunflower next? What do you think, my love?”
Oh right. For a moment, you forgot that the thirty-year-old other parent is here with him.
Luca has his t-shirt sleeves hiked all the way up, biceps in full display as Alfie colors in a tattoo on the back part of his upper arm. The boy’s tongue sticks out and his eyebrows furrow in focus. It seems like a delicate operation between them, so you linger out of sight for just a while longer.
“Why do you like sunflowers, Dad?”
The two of you have always supported his inquisitive mind, and he missed these kinds of questions most of all. Even if the answers can be a little complicated. “Because of your mum, actually.”
“You like it because Mommy likes it?” Alfie’s little nose crinkles.
Luca chuckles in amusement, sensing the judgment in his son’s tone. Damn you guys for teaching Alfie not to get carried away by trends. “Well… when your mum and I first met, it was winter in Chicago and it’s pretty bleak and gloomy and freezing. But, your mum had a little sunflower by the window—just like that one.” He glances at the little potted sunflower on the windowsill. “She said it’s a reminder to let the sun shine in. I thought it was adorable. We started doing that everywhere we lived and… I don’t know, it reminds me of home.”
“Do you have a sunflower by your window, Dad?”
His heart catches as he realizes the answer. “No, I don’t…”
“Why? You don’t miss home?”
There’s a sharp pang of hurt in hearing that innocent query. The apartment in Copenhagen, as nice as it is, has never been much of a home for Luca. He would get up before the sun is up and return from work late at night—lather, rinse and repeat. On his days off, he would either go on a morning run and spend much of his time outside, or sleep til noon and live on instant ramen and takeout. There’s no time for a sunflower by the window. No room. He made sure of that.
He doesn’t deserve one after leaving his wife and son for fucking Noma.
Luca swallows back the lump in his throat, although the slight waver in his voice gives him away. “I got my sunflower right here, bub. My little piece of home.” He taps on his arm softly as his son finishes up.
Alfie hums, pleased with how the tattoo looks, now filled in with yellow and black and brown crayons. “I think this is my favorite one.”
“Yeah? Not the tabasco?” Luca grins, looking down at his forearm—specifically at the mostly accurate red and green of the hot sauce bottle.
“No…” Alfie taps his chin with his finger thoughtfully. “This one is prettier.”
Luca maneuvers around to look at the sunflower tattoo a little better. “You’re right, it is much prettier. Maybe I should get the colors in permanently, huh?”
The boy’s face lights up. “Can you?”
“Yeah. I think I will. Nice job, my little tattoo artist.” Luca pulls him into a bear hug and kisses the top of Alfie’s head.
You can’t help but chuckle, glad to see them bonding again, lost in your thoughts for a moment.
“Mommy! Dad says I can be a tattoo artist!” Alfie snaps you out of your reverie.
“Is that right?” Your eyebrows shoot up, struggling to maintain a neutral expression while staring at Luca like with all due respect, what the fuck?
He raises his hands in surrender. “I just said he’s my little tattoo artist, that’s all.”
“I colored in all of Dad’s tattoos! Look!” Alfie tugs at his dad’s arm, beaming as he shows off his work.
You step forward, studying the results of the tattoo makeover. Every single tattoo is colored in; some accurately, like the sunflower and tabasco, while others (like the purple fish and chips and blue scotch bonnet)… not so much. You don’t know which one’s more amusing; your son’s artistic style, or your ex’s bashful look as he models the art works on his arms.
“Looks great, bub. Well done!” You ruffle Alfie’s hair, enjoying his improved mood.
“Can I watch Bluey now?”
You purse your lips comically. “I don’t know, bub. Why don’t you look at your checklist on the fridge and see if you can?”
Alfie bounds past you, towards the fridge, and reads the checklist out loud to himself. “Have you… brushed your teeth? Yes. Brushed your hair? Yes…” He flattens his wavy locks with the palm of his hand, continues reading with a lower murmur. “Mommy, I did everything except tidy up my room and play outside for 30 minutes!”
“Okay. Obviously we can’t play outside, so… why don’t you just go clean your room and I’ll let you watch Bluey for a bit?”
Alfie gamely nods and goes into his bedroom, his bunny socks muting his footsteps against the hardwood floor.
Meanwhile, it takes you an extra beat to realize how close you’re standing with Luca without your child between you. He rolls down the sleeves of his black t-shirt sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck.
“Your meeting went okay?”
“It’s alright.” You look at literally anything but the man in front of you, ultimately stopping at your potted sunflower by the windowsill. “That storm out there, on the other hand…”
“Yeah…”
You take an inconspicuous look at the hallway, making sure your son is out of earshot. “Weather reports say it might last a few more hours.”
Luca huffs, trying not to stress out about the possibility of street floods. Of all the things he missed, New York thunderstorms are not one of them. Still, this shitty weather has granted him some time with his son, at his former home… with his former spouse. And God, does he miss this more than he dreads the weather…
“Want me to make you guys dinner?” He offers earnestly.
You pull back, returning to your normal volume. “Oh. No, you don’t have to—”
“I don’t mind. Really. Might as well, right?”
You hear heavy footsteps from the bedroom and Alfie hollers from the hallway. “I’m all done!”
“Don’t forget your crayons!”
Alfie promptly makes a beeline towards his leftover mess. “Heard, Mommy.” He hurriedly puts his crayons back in the box and rushes into his room to put it away. Returning mere moments later with a newfound spring in his steps. “I’m done for real! Now can I please watch Bluey now?”
“I can cook while he gets his screen time.”
The two boys look at you with their best puppy eyes, and it’s the most disarming thing you’ve seen in a while—and the resemblance between them only makes things worse. You playfully roll your eyes in relent. “Alright, alright. Go ahead. Watch your TV and make your dinner.”
There’s a quiet little yesss from Alfie as Luca low-fives him before they scatter, one to the living room and the other to the kitchen. For a moment, you feel like you were transported back in time. For the first time in over two years, you’re caught between cartoon sounds from the TV and the kitchen alive again. All was well in the household.
“Is he still a picky eater?” Luca mouths the last two words inaudibly.
You raise your eyebrows in confirmation. “All he wants to eat is chicken nuggies.”
“I can do chicken nuggies,” he shrugs easily, rummaging through the freezer and takes out a pack of chicken breasts. “Or some version of that.”
Upon overhearing the key word, Alfie’s head all but whips toward Luca. “We’re having chicken nuggies for dinner?”
“Er, kind of.”
“Can I help?” He perks up from the back of the couch, excitement bubbling over.
Luca smiles apologetically. “Maybe later, my love. Daddy’s gonna be using a big knife…” he says as he checks the blade closely, swiping it with his thumb. “…which is dull, by the way. When was the last time you sharpened this?”
“I… have no idea.” You frown. You don’t even remember sharpening any knives… ever. Meanwhile, Luca simply rummages through the kitchen drawer, which makes you ask, “What are you doing?”
“I’m sharpening it,” he states matter-of-factly, already setting up a makeshift sharpening station which… what?
“Didn’t even know we had that,” you murmur plainly as you watch him work. Taking out a block of whetstone from the drawer (where did that even come from?) and running it under the sink. Laying out a kitchen rag and the stone on top of it.
He chuckles a little, scraping the blade against the stone at an angle, firmly but carefully. “Can’t leave you good Santoku knives without the proper sharpening tools, right?”
“You never taught me how to do it, though.”
“Yes, I have.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“What are you talking about? Back in Chicago, I—”
You burst out laughing. “Oh my God, that was one time forever ago! And you never let me sharpen the knives. You literally always do it.”
He pauses, grinning bashfully. “Fair…”
For the umpteenth time that day, Luca’s heart catches—this time from hearing you laugh. Your warm voice rings so pleasantly in his ears, and the way your face lights up… he almost forgets there’s a storm outside, because he’s got a lovely summer day right here in front of him.
And honestly, what is beautiful sunny Copenhagen compared to this warmth of the two people he loves the most?
“Alright, alright. You want a refresher? Come here.”
You gingerly take the place next to him, arms crossed so as to not invade his space. Neither of you say anything when your shoulders brush against each other. It’s brief, painstakingly so, but eerily familiar. You wouldn’t admit that you want to stay pressed against him a little longer, but… you do.
“Okay, so. You see this bit right here?” His finger runs up the line where the blade flattens into the edge. “Rest the knife on the stone on this angle, start from the heel—near the handle— and just… bring it in,” he demonstrates the inward sliding motion—short and precise and repetitive, “and work your way up to the tip.”
You silently watch him work for a moment, handling the knife. Firm and steady, but not harsh. On the contrary, it’s almost… delicate. You’ve seen many chefs work in your lifetime, but no one is as composed or stoic (or handsome, but that is beside the point) as Luca. It’s quite fascinating.
“And you do this on both sides, right?” You vaguely recall.
“Good memory.” He nods appreciatively. “Some people like to do each side one at a time, back and forth, but I like to do one side, get that burr forming…”
“What’s a burr, sir?”
Luca chuckles at your little Hamilton reference. “So when you work on this side, you’ll feel a nice little rough bit forming on the other side like this.” He slides his thumb from the knife’s spine to the edge and carefully guides your hand through the motion. “Feel that?“
Yes. That should be an easy enough answer, because yes, you do feel the rough edge of the excess metal on the blade. But it’s a bit hard to focus on that when you’re more fixated on the rough calluses of his fingertips instead…
In theory, playing a knife with your almost ex-husband is as bad as a bad idea can get. In practice, though… Having your hand in his again, feeling him so close to you, smelling his perfume…
“That’s the burr. Once you get it on one side, you can switch over to the other side and balance it out.” His voice is lower now. Softer. “And you just… do it over and over again until you’ve worked off the burr and have a smooth and sharp blade.”
Luca switches the knife to your other hand and stands behind you, hoping to God you can’t feel his pounding heart as his chest presses against your back. Gently guiding you through the sharpening motion—the firm, steady, angled scraping of the blade towards you. You swear to God, every pull brings him just a tad closer.
“So you basically have to break the knife a little to fix it?”
“That’s basically it, yeah.”
The storm feels miles away. His hands are still curled against yours. His chest flush against your back. His body heat emanates from within him and shrouds you like your favorite cardigan.
“Listen, I—”
“Thanks… for the refresher.” And with that, you put the knife down on the kitchen rag and pull away.
It takes him an extra second to snap out of it and step back to make way for you as you retreat back into your bedroom. “Yeah, yeah. No problem.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck your fucking life to hell.
***
if you've reached the end of this page, thank you so much for reading! do tell me what you think, reblog, send me asks, thoughts, ANYTHING. i would LOVE to hear your opinion!!!
and i think i'm gonna love you for a long, long time
Pairing: Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x GN!Reader
Word Count: 585
Warnings: alcohol mention, fluff, gaz and reader being complete saps for each other
Prompt: Dressed Up & "I really want to kiss you right now."
Disclaimer: I do not own modern warfare or any of the modern warfare characters.
A/N: up next we've got a sweet, little drabble for @glitterypirateduck's GazFest 2023 💜
The wedding for one John MacTavish is a simple, beautiful affair.
An outdoor event, themed in pale golds and dark greens, nestled in the soft glow of delicate string lights and moonlight. Love fills the air, swirling with a mix of laughter and happiness. There are no worries or stress, only the happy couple and their gentle dance as they smile and giggle with each other.
It’s pure and perfect, but you don’t think about any of that.
All you can focus on is the man sitting next to you. He’s not doing anything particularly special–his attention is elsewhere as he jokes and drinks with his captain while keeping a warm hand resting on your thigh–but you can’t help but stare.
Beautiful is the only word you can use to describe Kyle Garrick. It’s so rare for you to see him dressed formally without the military fanfare. Not that you mind seeing him in uniform, but there’s something different about seeing him in a dark-colored suit with the golden light haloing his rich dark skin.
He smiles wide, all shiny teeth and mirth, as he laughs at something Price says, and the exhale that leaves you is one of longing and desire.
You must’ve been some kind of saint in a past life. The universe’s allowance to have him in your life has to be a gift, a reward for a good deed of herculean proportions. There’s no other way you could be so lucky to have met him, to be bestowed the privilege of his love.
Price catches you staring, which isn’t hard considering that’s almost all you’ve done the entire night, and sends you a sly smile that you don’t pay attention to in the slightest. He tips his glass to Kyle, giving the sergeant–your handsome, perfect sergeant–a sly wink as he nods his head in your direction. Kyle tilts his head, turning around to catch your admiring gaze.
He chuckles the moment he sees you, hand squeezing your thigh as he gives you a soft kiss on the crown of your head.
“Having a good time?” he laughs, a look full of knowing as he meets your eyes. You hold his gaze, allowing yourself to get lost in the deep brown of his eyes.
When you don’t answer, too busy ogling him, he leans his forehead against yours with a knowing smirk.
“What are you thinking about?” he murmurs, watching your eyes fall to his mouth. You look back up at him, blinking at him almost pleadingly.
“I really want to kiss you right now,” you confess, a gentle purr of pure want.
He hums thoughtfully, pretending to consider whether he’ll oblige you. You know he will; he couldn’t deny you anything anymore than you could him.
You lean in, nudging his nose with yours in an attempt to get him to close the gap. Kyle laughs again, hand leaving your thigh to lightly grasp your chin and pull you in.
You compare kissing Kyle to what heaven must feel like. His love is all-encompassing, surrounding you with warmth and love, leaving you feeling nothing less than cherished.
He pulls away first, and you chase after him, peppering kisses along his cheeks as they swell with laughter.
You don't know how you got so lucky, but he kisses you again, and you know that it doesn’t matter.
The universe has given you your soulmate–the other half of your heart–and you have no intention of ever letting him go.
this is unedited, and born from a random thought as I put away dishes and cleaned my kitchen at 1am. warnings: none. themes: fluff, cute mug moment, ghost and a non-military partner. just toothrotting 1am thoughts.
you don’t like to think you live alone, but you know you spend more time waiting, than you have with him.
this time it’s been months. the last contact weeks ago. it’s normal, but it doesn’t lessen the frustration you feel—or how it balls and clumps with worry.
you know you signed on to this. married yourself to the wondering and standing by when you bought the house with him. it’s why you’ve perfected the art of keeping busy, remaining distracted.
today, your mind slips. falls down on the job, scrapes the skin from your knees and bruises your heart. thoughts appearing, the faint sound of his gruff voice echoing in the walls. unable to unsee the shadow of his last time here—how broad he appears in your door frames.
it’s the slip up that means you unconsciously make a tea for yourself in his mug. a no-go, a thing you never do. the cup sacred, forever off limits unless he’s here. the one you’d bought as a joke, wrapped it in paper and watched him stare at it when he unveiled the skull on the side with the bone handle.
“this bought for me?”
“well, it’s not for next door, simon.”
suddenly, you don’t fancy tea. your heart aching, all heavy and downtrodden in your chest. so you pour it away, washing it out and putting it away quickly. because you know it’ll sting seeing it on the drainer in the morning. practically punch you in the gut—because your mind will trick itself into thinking he’s home. that he’s back. for whatever time he can spare.
by the time his car pulls onto the drive, the house is coated in darkness. the moon full, high in the sky. shimmering a luminescent glow on everything and anything it can touch.
you must be tired, shattered. no murmur of his name or quickened footsteps when he slides his key on the lock, when he takes his boots off. he does do it with precision, care—almost mouse like for a man that’s more mountain than man. shoving them away in the contraption you bought sometime between the two of you moving in and him coming back to you.
and because the house is quiet, silent. a pin being dropped sounding like a shout, he begins his routine. the one where he shoves the things away he doesn’t need to have. not needing reminders of what he does as ghost when he’s trying to focus on being simon.
his routine concludes with a shower in the downstairs guest bathroom, watching the places he’s just been slide down the plug hole, all out of sight, out of mind. you know this routine, keeping some of his casual clothes—sweats and tees in a drawer, for moments like this.
even if he should expect it by now, he still smiles as your genuineness. your kindness. the one that comes ti you with ease.
it’s why he craves being next to you, being able to hear your breaths—close his eyes and allow the evidence to bury the niggling worries he amasses when he’s not with you.
but, joining you isn’t possible. discovering you star-fished, snoring lightly—one of his t-shirts covering and concealing you. practically burying you. and so he closes the door, heads back downstairs. running a hand over the back of his head, feeling clumps of long and short hair from his bad diy cut you’ll undoubtedly have things to say about.
but it isn’t until he’s walking past the kitchen, does he notice the mug and glass cupboard ajar. a thought appearing, his hand retrieving his mug and placing it on the side. a sign, he hopes—a bold exclamation that he is home, in case you wake before him.
you don’t wake before him. simon and fucked up body clock, as usual, wakes at the first break of sunlight. only rising from the guest bed when he hears the floorboards above. your feet eventually coming down the staircase, all slow and heavy, his mind imagining you rubbing your eyes, softly sighing at another day.
he waits in the doorway—the one connecting the guest bedroom to the kitchen—watching you come to a standstill, eyes blinking as you stare at the mug.
simon doesn’t know the error you made yesterday, that you’re going through a crisis of whether you’d put it away or not. whether you’d lost your mind from missing him so much.
he just knows you’re not reacting. not whispering, never mind shouting his name. so he clears his throat, loud, purposeful.
and your head spins—he’s even pretty sure he hears it crack—and then the reaction he expected lands.
it erupts over your face. an explosion of confusion and joy, tear-filled eyes and a large smile, before you’re in his arms, face buried against his chest as he feels you shake with sobs he hopes are because you’re happy.
“take it you’re happy i’m home?”
“more than you think.”
his chin comes to rest on the top of your head, fingers stroking up and down your back.
the mug becomes a sign, a beacon.
it only ever used to indicate he was home—a trophy that remains on the side, until he gets the call that he has to go.
then he is the one to put it away, hating how he turns to always find your lips being chewed by your teeth.
“it’ll be back out before you know it.”
“it better be.”
simon doesn’t promise. because he knows—as do you—that there’s none he can keep in the games he plays. he comforts you without words, his mouth slanted over yours.
Summary: She and Andy do the washing up after dinner with some old friends.
Masterlist
----
Jason followed Andy into Roy’s kitchen. Roy had given them strict instructions not to touch the dishes, which was cute of him.
With unspoken agreement, they descended in tandem on the mess left from dinner. Through the kitchen windows the first stray stars of the night were glinting through ragged clouds above the Seattle skyline. Inside was bright and comfortable. The house might have been small but Roy had made it a home. It always made Jason’s week to see how well the two of them were doing.
Roy was in bedtime negotiations with a now six year old Lian. Dick and Babs were in the living room deciding what movie the adults would watch.
Andy rolled up her sleeves and started rinsing off dishes, while Jason filled the dishwasher. They moved around each other easily, exchanging crockery and lightly bumping hips.
They were on day four of a much needed holiday. He never noticed just how tired he was until he left Gotham and took a moment to breathe, then it hit him all at once. He was just starting to recover from the initial exhaustion.
Dinner had been great, with surprisingly little work talk, and not just for Lian’s sake. Andy and Babs got to talking about library funding and the general state of the education system with great passion. It turned out the two were closer than he realised, which he thought was great. They were quite possibly planning an infiltration of Gotham’s local council to redirect funds to public schools, which was terrifying.
Lian asked if there could be more funding for silent reading time. Everyone agreed this was a very wise suggestion.
She was such a cute kid. She hung onto Jason’s neck when they first got there and refused to let go, making him cart her around the house. Andy took a couple of photos, because they were adorable together. He knew. They put on their best smiles for the camera.
They ran out of things for the dishwasher and Andy turned to what needed to be hand washed. Jason picked up the tea towel and got busy drying.
Andy bumped his hip. He bumped her back, maybe a bit too hard. She gave him a look and flicked soap suds at him.
He squawked and cracked the towel at her backside.
She yelped and burst out laughing. She brandished the scrubbing brush to ward him off. He smirked at her, and spun the towel to make it a better weapon.
“You two better not be doing dishes in there!” Roy called.
“Na, we’re drinking all your booze,” Jason yelled back.
“I knew it,” Roy said, stepping into the kitchen and ushering a pyjama-d Lian in before him. “Little Miss Pumpkin is here to say goodnight.”
“Goodnight! Goodnight! Goodnight!”
Both of them got swift hugs. Then she was herded off to the living room to say goodnight to the others.
Andy smiled at their retreating backs. She was good with kids, Jason privately noted. He focused on the gravy boat he was drying.
Soon he was done, everything was either set out to soak and Andy was left scrubbing a casserole dish.
Jason watched her narrow her eyes at the stubborn burnt bits, and set her shoulders with equal stubbornness. He smiled and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind. He rested his chin on her shoulder.
She made a soft sound and tilted her head to rub against his cheek.
“You enjoying yourself?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah. It’s always good to see Roy again. And Lian is so much bigger than the photos.” Her shoulders relaxed. “I’m glad we did this.”
“Me too.”
She held the dish up to the light and examined it critically, focusing again. He stayed holding onto her, but raised his chin to rest on top of her head.
“Those two have gone very quiet in the living room,” she said.
He hummed. Jason was sworn to secrecy, but Dick hid a diamond ring in his pocket. Technically those two weren’t on a holiday and were on this side of the country for work reasons, but he had plans to set up something romantic tomorrow before heading home.
Jason highly suspected he wouldn’t last that long, Dick had been watching Babs throughout the night like a man seeing stars for the first time. Disgustingly saccharine, Jason called it, without a hint of sincerity.
He was so happy for them.
He tightened his grasp on Andy. He was happy just in general, in fact. It was unnerving. Good things didn’t happen to him, and when they did, it was just a pretense for something worse to get its claws into him. He was the sucker who kept sticking his hand on the stove and kept getting burned, over and over.
Or at least, so he used to say. Somewhere along the way he had stopped believing it.
Now here they were, welcomed in by an old friend. Telling jokes with Roy who was more stable than Jason could ever recall, who didn’t hide the old track marks in his arm anymore. With Babs who was more confident and powerful in her wheelchair than she had ever been before it, and Dick, who you would never know forgot himself after a bullet punched a hole in his skull. Andy, who was free, and Jason himself.
The enormity of it choked him.
Andy made an inquisitive noise, even though he knew he hadn't said anything. She read him so well.
“Since when are we dinner party people?” he asked, a little disgruntled.
“Since, hmm, about three hours ago?”
“Weird.”
She chuckled. She put aside the last dish, and leaned back against him a little. He kissed her hair.
Funny, how you could yearn for what you already had.
“Alright, baby?” she asked quietly.
He wound his arms tighter, one arm resting over her heart, and the other across her stomach. He closed his eyes and relished her warmth.
Rating and warnings: T, brief description of violence.
Word count: 990
Summary: Red Hood comes to her rescue.
Masterlist
She woke slowly, sedately, to the touch of Jason’s fingers trailing down her cheek.
Eyes shut, she leaned into it.
The hand cupped her jaw, tilting her face up. There was no light scrape of rock hard calluses against her chin. The skin was smooth.
Andy’s eyes snapped open.
Black Mask looked down at her.
She recoiled. Or tried to. Her body responded slowly, groggy and jerky, against hard metal restraints. She was bound to a chair.
“Red Hood’s squeeze, hmm? Lucky find,” he said. He wasn’t talking to her. He tilted her chin back the other way to look her over. “I knew he was just a man under that helmet.”
A large man covered in tattoos stood behind him to his right. He looked down at her in disdain.
“Anything you want to tell me, Miss Wright?” Black Mask drawled.
She kept her mouth shut.
The second man hit her on the face. Her head rocked back. Her ears rang.
“He asked you a question.”
She bit her tongue to stop her pained whine.
“He doesn’t know you’re missing,” Black Mask said. “And he won’t, not for days. No masked maniac coming to rescue you. Your chances of getting out of here start and end with not pissing me off.”
She looked at the nasty grins on the face of the two hulking enforcers standing by the door. The uncaring menace in the man who hit her. The mocking glint in Black Mask’s eyes.
“You’re not letting me out alive anyway,” she said, with mounting terror. It churned in her gut.
Black Mask barked a hoarse laugh. “Don’t worry, I’ll wring every last secret out of you before I do you the favour of letting you die.”
One of the enforcers turned his head, his brow furrowed.
Something rattled onto the floor, then blinding white exploded everywhere. Her vision blanked out entirely, one final image burned into her eyes: Red Hood standing behind Black Mask, with his gun pointed at his head.
She was thrown sideways in her chair and landed hard on the ground. Guns fired with deafening reports, too loud for her to tell where or from who. Blind and still reeling from the impact, she felt the tattooed man grab her hair. He was ripped violently off of her a second later, and she went skidding sideways across the ground.
Everything got lost in the chaos and noise, before a blow to the head knocked her out.
-----
Andy woke to Jason’s hand in her hair.
Her heartbeat picked up, foreign alarm she couldn’t name or understand in her throat, until she registered the familiar calluses against the small of her neck. Strong hands, scarred and rough, massaged her skin with all the gentleness in the world. She breathed out in relief, and her eyes fluttered open.
Her head lay in Jason’s lap. He was reading a book, his wrist propped up against her shoulder. A gun sat on the bedside table. They were in a safehouse. She didn’t recognise it.
She felt perfectly safe. It took her a moment to process why that mattered, and why her mind even presented it as meaningful.
Her brows pinched and the side of her face stung at the movement. She brought up a hand, and felt butterfly strips across her brow.
Patchy memory filtered in.
Jason turned a page with his thumb, calm and measured. He radiated fury. It wasn’t at odds with the gentleness of his hold on her. His calm methodical rage was so dangerous it could burn Gotham to the ground if he loved it any less.
“What happened?” she asked. Her voice was raspy and her throat sore. She had the vague idea she might have been screaming during the scuffle.
“Black Mask’s second in command launched a coup and murdered his Boss,” Red Hood said, still looking at his book. “He’s trying to pin it on me to keep the support of Sionis’ loyalists. Nobody believes him.”
She remembered, sudden and clear as day, burned into her mind against the pure white of a flashbang grenade: Red Hood pointing a gun at Black Mask. A fan of blood and viscera, in a frozen still, exploding out behind the black skull.
She sat up. She stared at him.
Jason hadn’t killed anyone in years. He wasn’t allowed to, or Batman would run him out of town.
The enforcers, any witnesses, they’d know what happened, they would have to be– he couldn’t have just walked out with her, she was dead weight, had he really–? Had he– For her?
A quiet, hard thought cut through her muddling.
There had been a good reason Jason didn’t kill Black Mask during his initial rampage, and it wasn’t lack of opportunity. He had plans, counter plans, acceptable losses, and goals he wouldn’t bend on. Necessities balanced on delicate scales sometimes called justice but more accurately called reality. The power vacuum hadn’t been worth it.
And he’d done it anyway. He’d killed Black Mask, in the middle of Batman’s city, for her.
He looked back at her, unflinching.
She lay back down, putting her head in his lap.
He ran his hand over her again, carding it through her hair and burying it deep beneath her curls.
Those men, however many it was, died for her sake.
Did their blood stain her too? Did it stream down from his hands onto her head, dripping through her hair to streak across her face?
They would have tortured his secrets out of her, that hard voice said in the back of her mind. She was alive because Jason killed them first.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
He curled over her and looked into her eyes. The hard fury cracked and she saw the desperate storm in his gaze.
Rating and warnings: G, mention of violence between Bruce and Jason.
Word count: 750
Summary: She gives pampers Jason after he has a bad fight with Bruce.
Masterlist
Jason leaned his head forward, his expression hidden, as she massaged his tense and knotted shoulders. His hair was going frizzy in the steam of the bath, and his skin was buttery from the products she melted in it. Music played softly through the walls from the living room of his apartment.
He was usually bullish about letting her pamper him, or letting anyone look after him at all, but he was emotionally wrung out tonight. He gave only token resistance before caving.
He and Bruce were fighting. It was much worse than she had seen before. To her horror, everyone else was grieved but nobody was surprised.
Jason had dark bruising around his eye and his wrist was in a splint, elevated above the water. The bruising had bloomed so colourful it could only have been earlier in the week, but he didn’t actually tell her at the time. He didn’t know how to talk about the painful things, outside of throwing them back in people’s faces when he felt vulnerable.
She had to hear about the fight from Babs.
He made a soft noise as she steadily worked the broad expanse of muscle. She kneeled outside the partially sunken tub. The tension had been slowly seeping out of him since he sank into the fragrant, milky water. Coco-butter, vanilla, and sandalwood coaxed him into letting go.
She had known him long enough to know there was a rhythm to his relationship with Bruce, and his family as a whole. Like a tide, it ebbed and flowed. Sometimes it flooded, breached the barricades and destroyed things, sometimes it withdrew and exposed all the little things normally hidden beneath the waves.
And given time, it always rolled back. Even if she wished it wouldn’t.
Now wasn’t the time to be obnoxious about her opinions on his family. She was pretty sure he knew anyway.
He turned very quiet as she worked out the last of the tension from his upper body, then smoothed her hands over his skin. She pulled him gently to lean back against the back of the tub. She got up to fetch the shampoo.
His splinted arm reached out as she returned. He wrapped his hand around her leg and tugged her closer.
Hearing the silent request, she swung her leg around to sit behind him on the lip. A bare leg sank into the water on each side of him. He pulled one over his shoulder and held her calf. He pressed a kiss to her knee.
She poured hot water over his hair with a jug, carefully shielding his eyes with her other hand.
He began to silently cry.
She didn’t say anything. She worked up a lather and massaged the shampoo into his scalp.
“Why do you stick with me?” he asked, his voice rough.
Because I love you.
She bit her tongue.
“You make me happy.”
He scoffed wetly. “You can do better.”
“I can do a lot worse.”
He moved his head as though to look away. Only there was no looking away, no escaping her here. His hand on her leg flexed.
“I can’t promise you forever,” he said, tone hard with self hatred. “I can’t even promise next week. Or tomorrow.”
She gently rubbed little circles into the base of his scalp, just behind his ears, as she thought that over, and tried to hide away the ache in her heart. There were no rings or white picket fences in their future, she always knew that. But he would be at her side with just as much dedication as if there was. She knew that beyond any doubt. Jason didn’t know how to abandon people. If he did… he wouldn’t have two black eyes and a shattered helmet.
It wasn’t fair. To him, first and foremost. She hated it. He couldn’t promise what he did not have.
“Nobody can promise forever,” she said eventually.
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “Well, liars and fools can. But I don’t want empty promises.”
He grasped her leg tighter.
She rinsed the lather out, shielding his eyes again.
He tilted his head back against her. His eyes were shut, with shiny tear tracks down both cheeks. The last vestiges of resistance gave out and he went boneless in her grasp.
She leaned down, trailing her hands down his scarred body to rest over his heart. She pressed a kiss to his forehead and counted the beats, while he fell apart.
18+ content. minors, blank and ageless blogs DNI you will be blocked
college au jason who, after months of pining, dropping so many hints that he likes you too, hanging out with you without any purpose except to be in your company, when he finally, finally, gets you to understand, feels like he's gotten everything he's ever wanted and needed. he's so touchy and the both of you have been dancing around the other for so long, it feels like it all falls into place after that, urgent and frantic, as if to make up for lost time, whispers of wait, wait, maybe we need to take it slow and agreeing with nods that betray the desperation in both your eyes.
kissing in the backseat of the beat up old car he bought from one of his older brother's friends, tugging you over the centre console in a parking lot to press his mouth against your lips, stealing pecks at red lights despite your protests to keep his eyes on the road. he tastes like mint, he tastes like the sips of your soda he stole at dinner, he tastes like strawberry and you can't get enough. he takes so much pleasure in both flustering you and drawing out your confidence to take from him, too. he's so pleased the first time you make a move on him, eyes all dazed and lips kiss bitten. he's so smitten, sighs of your name into your mouth and hands on your hips, his own rolling up against you and once more there's this push and pull of slow, baby, slow and lurching away and fixing your clothes and climbing back into your seat but sneaking looks at each other as you do, swallowing because your throat has dried and there's an ache all over you that buzzes under your skin.
mini blurb for the baby...wishing he was in my bed so i could have given him the birthday he deserves :) also please come talk to me about this au if u have been enjoying it, i'd love to hear all your thoughts on the bits of jersey boy that have been written so far
