jocelyn

i want you more than any stupid song could ever say ᢉ𐭩 requests are open

[heaven4lostgirls]

you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love ᥫ᭡.

𝒿𝑜𝒸𝑒𝓁𝓎𝓃 ── .✦

𝒷𝒶𝒷𝓎 𝒷𝑜𝓎, 𝒽𝑜𝓃𝑒𝓎𝒷𝑒𝑒

𝑔𝑜𝒹 𝒾 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝓎 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓁𝑜𝑜𝓀 𝒶𝓉 𝓂𝑒

𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒾𝓉’𝓈 𝓉𝑜𝑜 𝒽𝒶𝓇𝒹 𝓉𝑜 𝒹𝑒𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒾𝒷𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒾𝓃 𝒶 𝓌𝒶𝓎 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒻𝑒𝑒𝓁𝓈 𝒽𝑜𝓃𝑒𝓈𝓉

𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓃 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝒾’𝓂 𝓆𝓊𝒾𝑒𝓉, 𝒾 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒷𝒶𝒷𝓎, 𝒾 𝓅𝓇𝑜𝓂𝒾𝓈𝑒

𝓃𝒶𝓋𝒾𝑔𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 ── .✦

[heaven4lostgirls]

clubchalamet stay AWAY FROM SHAWN HATOSY SO HELP ME GOD

[nowimconvinced]

18+ or tmi

Dress-up with Pope

Pope Cody

'Pope? Which one?'

Pope's face was half-lidded, his hands crossed over his waist.

'What?'

'Blue bows or pink lace?'

You held up two sets of knickers. One gauzy, blue baby doll with cutesy bows on the straps and soft, satin, matching suspenders. In your other arm is a more structured piece, a pink lace bra with criss-crossing black straps and peekaboo knickers with the split down the middle.

Pope averted his eyes and looked at the ground.

'I don't know,' he grunted.

'I need help!'

'You choose.' Pope's hands were crossed firmly across his lap, hoping you didn't see his semi.

'I don't know what he likes,' you wheedled.

Poor Pope was trying to watch his Sahara documentary, and you were stood in the living room, blocking his view of the TV.

'And I do?' Pope looked up at you.

Your expression was pleading.

'... the blue bows are pretty.' He mumbled finally.

You smiled in relief, glad he'd finally given an opinion. 'Thank you,' you breathed.

The hands crossed over his waist moved slightly centre and you could see Pope's hard-on in his jeans.

You bit your lip to disguise your smirk and skipped off. Pope breathed a sigh of relief and tried to watch his documentary again but the peace he sought was long gone. Why you needed a best friend's opinion on your sex clothes was a thread better left unpicked.

Pope heard you skip back down the hallway and tried to palm down his tented jeans.

'What do you think?'

This man, built like a fridge and so strong, was almost reduced to tears.

You did a twirl in the blue babydoll. As you spun, the gossamer fabric skimming your thighs gave Pope a quick glimpse of your panties. Pope gave a soft moan.

He watched you from his chair. Pope desperately tried to make eye contact but they wouldn't obey him; instead dancing across your body. You watched them dart side to side, looking across your stomach and tits. Pope let out a soft whimper.

He was covered in someone else's blood less than an hour ago and now he was coming undone because of you in a see-through babydoll. Pope's wrists strained in a clench, forearm muscles bulging as he tried to cover the hard-on painfully straining against his zipper.

'It's-' Pope's voice comes out as a squeak. 'It's nice.'

'Nice?' You ask, slowly creeping forwards. Pope could smell your perfume, leaving him heady and drunk on you. He nodded dumbly as he shamelessly gaped at the swell of your tits. The sheer coverage wasn't functional, but introduced a layer of you can't have me.

Pope gave a low growl when he focused in on your pert nipples brushing against the fabric. Pope felt sorry for them. They were caged in and they needed to be free. He could make them feel so much better.

'My eyes are up here,' you murmur softly and Pope's eyes flick immediately back to yours. 'Good boy.'

It really shouldn't affect Pope but it does. A shudder runs down his spine at being called a good boy. That's what Pope really wanted to be. Your good boy. He wanted to please you so you called him that over and over.

'What about your date?' Pope asked.

You were in front of the TV but the Sahara documentary was long forgotten.

'This is the date,' you whispered.

Pope's body was practically vibrating. His thick length flopped against his inner thigh in response like a dog's tail.

You slowly bent your knees until you're straddling Pope's lap; your suspenders silky against his jeans.

'You're so hard,' you coo, 'is this all for me?'

'Mhm,' Pope flushes red.

'And I haven't even done anything yet.' You smirk.

Pope shook his head, eyes back on the ground.

'Good boy.'

The praise shot through Pope's veins like adrenaline.

'It's just... those baby blue bows are really pretty.'

[laceoddity]

Thinking about Shawn saying Abbot is out of shape...

Maybe Jack and Dennis coincidentally go to the same gym and Jack notices how much buffer the younger man has gotten.

"You sure have filled out these past few months, Dr. Santos must be feeding you right." He chuckles, his eyes examining the lines of muscle on Dennis´ arms.

Dennis blushes furiously and stutters his way through a thank you.

"Y´know I remember being all cut like that when I was younger" Jack continues, not without a bit of wistfulness, "It just gets harder to maintain when age catches up to you"

Dennis splutters, eyes wide and disbelieving. "I´m sorry Dr. Abbot but what the hell are you talking about?" He might´ve not been around for the time the veteran had been shirtless in the middle of the ED (much to his chagrin) but he´s heard Trinity talk to Samira about it and he´s seen the way the man´s thick arms and chest stretch out his tight T-shirts and scrubs.

"You don´t have to flatter me, Boy. I´m barely even your boss and even then-"

"I´m not flattering you, Sir" Dennis snaps back, not without a bit of irritation at how being called boy makes him feel.

"So you wouldn´t call this being out of shape?" Jack asks and takes off his shirt.

Dennis passes out.

They fuck in the shower.

[midwestprentiss]

popeamy is genuinely such a sensitive topic to me i’m sad no one talks about them more. i’m glad i see edits on tiktok but everyone get more popeamy pilled NEOWWWW

[heaven4lostgirls]

no guys i’m so emotional about amy and pope. in my head they’re married somewhere with kids and ran away from oceanside and never experience anything bad ever

[tripleabatterybuni]

It's ok pope, he really didn't mind

[minimarvelh]

Tony: Why don't you have children?

Steve: ehm Tony, if you didn’t notice I’m kinda single?

Tony: That’s not an excuse. It’s a good weather outside, go find yourself a child.

Steve:

Steve:

Tony: I found one, so that can’t be that hard.

[iwannab3adored]

the veins, the hair, oh my glob…

[ridgeflaw]

18+, MDNI

andrew pope cody who's self conscious about his dick because it's uncircumcised. who gets nervous about anyone seeing it for the first time. always feels this need to explain first, to grab their wrist before they shove their hand down his pants. i was born on a farm. there wasn't time. i don't know, my mom didn't think it was important. and like, he's more than used to it by this point. he's a 40-something year old man who's lived with his uncircumcised penis for just as long; he doesn't know what the alternative would even feel like. he just knows it's unusual, statistically, to be an american man with a dick that looks like his.

sometimes women in oceanside are weird about it. sometimes more or less so taken aback, surprised with an experience they've never had and didn't necessarily want to begin with. and while it usually just makes them pause, rather than reconsider completely, it does make him a little tired after a while of the same old song and dance. of getting to know someone and falling into bed and the usual disclaimer, the 'my dick is a little different, i hope that's okay’ content warning. having to prepare for whatever happens with their face, the unguarded expression that quickly slips behind closed doors, shutters the way polite women know how to with their eyes and their mouth. pretending, being nice. that's almost worse, he thinks, than if they were just plain mean about it.

it finally reaches a breaking point and so he just decides to add the information to his dating profile.

andrew, 43, uncircumcised.

and yeah, it kind of makes him feel like he's a prized hog being weighed at the county fair. but he also doesn't know what else to do, tired of trying to ease into it, to hold the words like delicate eggshells in his hands, hoping they don't shatter and make a mess all over the floor.

he's surprised, when he wakes up the next morning to a message from an account he's never seen before. a profile of a young woman, younger than he's usually interested in and out of his set distance range. still in california, but up north, near santa barbara. you only have one photo of yourself, standing at the base of the eiffel tower, hair half-blown into your eyes and smiling, a bright toothy grin that seems to take up half your face. the other three photos are of a border collie with a lolling pink tongue and curious disposition, its head cocked to the side. the description is rather short too. all it says is your name and one line: i like dogs.

you: hi andrew, 43, uncircumcised. is that your full name? :)

andrew blinks down at the message, then he looks at the photo again, at the big smile, the dog. he types a response.

andrew: no

it doesn’t take very long for him to get one in return, phone buzzing in his hand.

you: no?

he types out another response.

andrew: it’s my first name, my age, and my dick.

his phone buzzes in his hand almost immediately. he looks down at his screen.

you: lucky me :)

you: can i see it?

his brow furrows.

andrew: see what?

you: your dick, silly

andrew regards the messages for a moment. then types back,

andrew: why?

you: just curious to see if it’s as pretty as the rest of you :)

slow warmth spreads up his chest, his neck, settling in his cheeks. he rubs at his face, sitting up a little straighter against the wall.

andrew: i’m not hard

his phone vibrates a few times as you message him.

you: oh that’s okay

you: can i still see it?

you: i really want to

you: pretty please, andrew

andrew stares down at the influx of messages, like maybe they will clarify into something else. something that’s not a rather insistent request from a stranger to see his soft penis. did women even like that sort of thing?

the messages stare back up at him, unchanged. unmoving. unmistakable.

andrew doesn't send nudes. to tell the truth, he doesn't think he's sent a photo of himself to anyone, ever. any part of him. what's up on his profile is all he's shared. a picture of him at the beach. one of him surfing. an old photo deran took years ago of him and craig wrestling in the living room at smurf's. a hand on his skateboard.

he looks at the photo in your profile again, the one of you, not the dog. your arms are stretched out wide, the lights of the eiffel tower twinkling behind you, like get a load of this. you look happy, content. young.

he slips a hand below his waistband, cups his balls and tries to imagine you standing in front of him instead, at the edge of his bed, maybe. that same pretty face but a softer smile, arms at your sides. a sweet voice he makes up to say a version of the same words, ‘pretty please, andrew. can i see it?’

yeah, okay.

he closes his eyes, inhaling, a small tug of pleasure in his belly, warming him from the inside. it makes his dick plump up just a tad against his thigh.

in his fantasy, you’re climbing onto the bed now, one knee pressed into the mattress and then the other. you're wearing the same dress as in the photo and he can see the curve of your breasts as you start to crawl. crawling up the bed, between his legs. this look on your face like you want nothing more than to see what he’s hiding beneath his waistband.

andrew lets go of his phone and slips his other hand into his shorts, wraps his fingers around the base of his cock. not jerking it, not yet, just holding it, just letting the warmth from his palm bleed through. it feels good, feels familiar. the same as it has since he was thirteen.

you’re close enough now that your head is between his knees. you’re lowering yourself down, tummy to mattress and crossing your ankles behind you like in one of those teeny-bop shows julia always had on tv when they were kids. no magazine though, just a coy smile as you prop your chin in your hand, draw a light finger over the inside of his left knee.

‘show me?’ you ask, voice still just as sweet as the first time and it makes his stomach swoop, his dick twitch a little in his hand.

maybe he's secretly a pervert and he just never knew it. a sick desire lain dormant until a woman half his age messaged him on a dating app and asked, apropos of nothing, to see his uncircumcised penis.

andrew tugs the waistband of his shorts down, lets it bunch up under his balls, the elastic pushing them up, showing them off to you, showing you everything really. the hand, the back of his bruised knuckles, the soft but warm length slowly filling out in his palm. eager beneath your gaze as you smile at him, roll your bottom lip between your teeth.

‘yeah,’ you murmur, cute, wet tongue peeking out, and drag your eyes along his dick, like you’re filing a memory for later.

andrew’s hips tilt up and he squeezes his dick and balls at the same time, his mouth dropping open a little. he’s filling out now, properly, thickening up as more blood rushes south, giving him shape, definition. enough so that he thinks he can risk it, the photo.

he picks up his phone again, sparing one last glance at your profile before he opens the camera app and tries to snap a photo at a flattering angle. it takes a couple tries. the first few are too blurry. the next has a shadow of his phone cast over half of it. the last one isn’t too bad, well-lit, soft morning sun streaming in through the windows and making sure you can see the whole thing. his dick, his hand, the bare skin of his stomach where his shirt's been rucked up.

he sends it off before he can second guess himself or the decision. and then he sits there, dick slowly softening against his thigh as the nerves eat away at him. one minute, two.

fuck, what if you hate it? what if it’s the ugliest cock you’ve ever seen? shit, he shouldn’t have sent it. shouldn’t have bothered at all. he should delete it. maybe if he deletes it fast enough you won’t have time to see it. he’ll have spared you the horrible experience completely. he’ll delete it and then he’ll delete his entire account right after.

he picks up his phone right as it buzzes in his hand. it buzzes and then it buzzes again, and again, and again and again.

swallowing his trepidation, andrew swipes open the dating app.

you: oh fuck

you: oh fuck you’re so pretty

you: like i knew you’d be pretty but seeing it is totally different

you: i knew you’d be a big boy. big like the rest of you, yeah?

you: god it’s probably heavy when you walk

andrew stares down at his phone, a burning warmth beginning to spread from the tips of his toes all the way up to the tips of his ears. his entire body feels electrified, like his skin is one second away from sparking from the heat.

another message comes through.

you: fuck, andrew. i’m really wet

he closes his eyes, sucking in a shaky breath. you’re wet. you’re wet just from seeing a photo of his half-hard cock. saliva pools in his mouth. he grinds his teeth together.

he picks up his phone.

andrew: for real?

you: yeah, for real

you: you wanna see?

he presses the heel of his hand into his cock, rolls his hips up into it.

andrew: yes

then remembering his manners, he says,

andrew: please

a minute goes by, during which andrew grips his phone in his right hand and rocks into his left. stares at the photo of you, at the messages calling his dick pretty. then his phone buzzes again and it’s not a photo you’ve sent at all. it’s a video file.

he presses play with his thumb so fast and so hard, it makes a tapping noise.

the video starts to play. a little shaky at first, like the camera (phone?) is unsteady in your hand and then it focuses, a low-lit grainy view pointing down between bare thighs, soft and spread open just enough to fit your hand. he can hear your breathing, a little fast, as you slide two fingers up and down your wet slit. he can’t see your pussy too well like this, but he can hear it, when you move the camera close enough, can hear the slick sounds it makes when you rub yourself, over your clit, he thinks, as you let slip a quiet, soft moan. the video abruptly ends.

andrew plays it again. then again. he clicks the volume button all the way up to try and catch that moan at the end, presses the speaker against his ear and pretends you’re moaning with your mouth pressed against his neck while he’s filling you up. fitting the head of his cock against your entrance and guiding you slowly down with a hand on your soft waist. the fantasy is so good. you sound so good.

he types out a message, left hand fisted around his cock, squeezing tight.

andrew: you have the sweetest voice

then,

andrew: i want to hear you say my name

when you don’t immediately respond, he thinks maybe he’s pushed too far. then another video file comes through.

the camera is balanced on your tummy this time, a straight forward view of your knees raised, hand snug between your thighs. you must be lying down now. andrew watches, ears and eyes focused to catch every single detail. you moan again as your hand moves and it takes a second for him to realize you must be fucking yourself with your fingers.

shit. andrew slowly drags his hand up and down his cock in time with your breathing.

‘andrew,’ the voice on the video suddenly murmurs, almost a whine, and he nearly dents his phone with how hard he squeezes it. ‘andrew, please.’

andrew, please.

oh fucking hell, andrew thinks, spitting in his palm and jerking himself a little faster. sweetest voice, all breathy and needy saying his name. he doesn’t even know you. a stranger messaging him from almost 200 miles away, soft and pretty and, for some reason, begging for his cock.

he flips open the camera app again, taking his own short video. fucking his fully hard dick into his hand, foreskin pulled back to show how wet and pink he’s become. he sends it over.

andrew: you’re driving me crazy

you message back almost immediately.

you: oh my god

you: oh my god fuck

you: need to feelyou inside me

you: youd stretch me out so god

you: pleasjcr nbe ver had a dick so big

the messages are full of typos, like you’re too distracted to pay attention, too busy fucking your pussy with your fingers, maybe close to release. andrew grunts, dick kicking up in his hand. he’s imagining you squirming in his lap, nails digging into his shoulders as you cry out, ‘so big, so big andrew, fuck oh my god.’

andrew: you gonna cum?

andrew: i want to hear you cum

andrew grabs the bottle of lotion off his nightstand while he waits for your response. he depresses some into his hand, warming it, then spreads it all over his dick. his bites his lip at the sensation. slick, wet. he can almost pretend it’s your pussy.

his phone buzzes. fuck. a new video file. andrew squeezes the base of his dick to keep himself from shooting off too early. just the anticipation of what’s waiting for him in that video has his head going fuzzy. he swallows and presses play.

you’ve set the camera up across the room. must have, on some type of surface. a dresser, maybe. it’s facing the bed. he can see you from the waist down and thinks you’re fully naked. because you’re kneeling upright and all he can see is gorgeous, soft skin.

god, he wants to touch you, he wants to know what sounds you’ll make when he runs his hands over your stomach, your thighs. he wants to shove his head between them and lap at your pretty cunt until you’re pushing him back with both hands, overstimulated and sensitive.

a quick, and deeply selfish thought runs through him: disappointment that he can’t see your tits like this, and then the thought is immediately diverted when he sees what’s in your hand.

a dildo. a rather life-like one from what he can tell from his vantage point across the room. thick, mushroom tip and a pair of silicone balls at the bottom. not as thick as him, of course, but still impressive. andrew hates it immediately. he’s gonna throw it out the first second he gets. when he meets you for real, in person. he’s gonna throw out all your toys and fill you up with his cock instead. let you use his dick whenever you want. every day, every hour if that's what you need.

you’re balancing the stupid thing on a pillow, flat base held still as you slowly sink down.

oh fuck, he thinks, fisting his cock, watching your pussy swallow it whole.

you whine as you begin to shift your hips back and forth, grinding on it like it’s real, like it’s him, your stomach muscles tensing as you move.

andrew makes sure to time his hand perfectly in tempo as you grind. this is what you would look like if he was there with you. shaky, trembling legs and desperate noises, except his hands would be all over you. he’d make sure to cover every inch of skin.

‘andrew,’ you moan, and your voice is just as a sweet as the last video. ‘fuck, you feel so good.’

yeah, fuck. he’s gonna lay you out on your bed and use your soft thighs as earmuffs. he’s gonna stretch out your cunt so slow on his dick that you're begging him to move, hips tilted up as you whine. he’s gonna watch your tits bounce and your eyes roll back and your mouth drop open and he's gonna give you absolutely everything you ask for. he’s gonna make sure no one ever compares.

‘ohh,’ you cry, slipping your free hand between your legs to rub at your clit. ‘i need it, i need it, i need it.’

‘yeah,’ andrew says, aloud, even though you can’t hear him. ‘yeah, fuck, you do.’

‘m gonna come, please, please, andrew, i’m gonna come.’

andrew groans, fucking his fist, pleasure coursing through him as he watches you spasm and shake around the dildo, whining and grinding your way through your orgasm. he shuts his eyes and lets himself imagine coming inside you as you do, filling you up and feeling it all slide back out, getting his lap all messy when he lifts you up in his arms.

he paints his own chest with his cum, thick, steady ropes of it as stars burst behind his eyelids. he lies there, half lying, half sitting up against the wall, panting for a full minute until his heart rate slows.

jesus christ, he can't remember the last time he came that hard. he takes a photo of the mess and sends it back to you.

you: wowie

you: any chance you're open to long distance?

andrew is already pulling on real pants and grabbing his keys.

[mcybank]

Fired, With Love – Jack Abbot

⊹ pairing: jack abbot x fem!reader ⊹ summary: you have a mean jealousy streak, and jack’s favorite hobby is to set it off. when he mentions an ex, he figures he’s in for a good morning. for the first time, he takes it too far. ⊹ warnings: [ wc: 15k ] angst – Lots of it im sorry but it gets resolved! hurt/comfort but it’s very obvious (i hope!) that they love each other. established relationship, age gap. insecurity spiral (age gap related), jack’s got a made-up ex named diane but she never appears on page, reader’s having a Sucky morning; she’s also a little spiral-y, very self-deprecating thoughts (jealousy, comparison, fear of not being enough in relationship), she isolates, cries in the shower, jack messes up and Immediately Knows and is making up for it, mutual fears, they are very healthy communicators eventually, jack and reader are really really obsessed with each other, jack grovels + Hey did you know this was going to be a short fic ⊹ notes: writing this felt like giving birth!!! spent hours and hours and hours on it bc i couldn’t stop writing them thank you SO much for this request! a LOT longer than i intended buut it was so much fun to write + i’ve never been in an age-gap relationship but i imagine This exact thing would fix me !! i literally have a big fat crush on this - also probs one of the last longfics i’ll be able to write in such a short time bc i’m going back to school soon :/

Last month, Jack had ran himself into the ground trying to make sure you understood that there was no mystery woman on his phone. It’d lit up with a text from an unknown number – a scammer, really, trying to paint the picture of a generous human, taking advantage of his old age ‘Hello! It has been forever! Do you still have this number, Jack Abbot? – and Jack had spent one beautiful, incandescent hour being investigated. It’d felt like being back in the military, if he was being honest. He’d last been interrogated like this at a desert, and the girl was clearly better at it, because he’d happily surrendered his phone, his passcode, his call log, and his theory of the crime.

( “It’s a scam, baby. They take advantage of the old guys. But check for any women. You’re only gonna find yourself in there.” ) 

He’d watched you bite down on a smile as you tried to keep the act going, and Jack had fed you all truths ( that he’d picked up once, stupidly, and someone asked him for his SSN; they didn’t know what a smart man he was; that he loved you, and only you; that the scammers may have the number, but only you got the man; that his passcode was your birthday, which you’d known, which you’d set ) and you’d recieved each one, nodding, refusing to let the corners of your mouth win. 

( “You’re being charming,” you said to him, sternly. “It won’t work.” / “No, ma’am.” / “It’s working a little.” / “I know, ma’am,” he said, grinning. )

Then, you’d finally decided with reluctance that he was, in fact, “Free to go,” after making note of how scammers are becoming immensely mean, using buzzwords for people Jack’s age. “Forever,” you’d repeated, now disgusted on his behalf. “Who sends that to a veteran? That’s a targeted word. I should report the number.” 

If he was honest, the least your jealousy had shown that week. Jack had never considered himself to be a ‘get an inch, take a mile’ sort of man. Decades your senior, he’d figured himself past the age where he took liberties. He asked before he took; he gave more than he got; he was, by every account, a reasonable man. You’d made a liar of him. He’d become crazy, had started finding childlike joy in small trouble; the sort a boy makes by poking a hive with a stick, except the hive was you and the stings brought him immense satisfaction. Each one, after all, was proof that somebody in this world considered him worth protecting and keeping tucked to themselves.

And you were crazier. Not about him – well. Also about him. But crazier as a baseline condition, a factory setting. You’d woken him at three in the morning by sliding one of his eyelids open with your thumb because you’d dreamt that he was texting another woman and needed to check his phone while the wound was still fresh. He’d handed his phone over, half-blind, and you’d scrolled through it sitting on his stomach. When you found nothing, you’d flopped down onto his chest and gone straight back to sleep. 

It was, frankly, a lot of crazy to be on the receiving end of, and Jack – who’d spent much too long being the most even-keeled, unbothered man in most situations – had taken one look at your little feral devotion pointed square at him and thought that yes, he wants in on all of that.

He would gladly take that your whole storm wrapped up in a package, had done just that, and was not planning on letting go. 

Being loved by you was full-contact, hands-on, and all consuming. You bit and you climbed him on the kitchen while he was holding hot pans; you pulled his face around by the jaw when you decided his attention wandered. He let you, always, going soft-eyed and pliant the second your hands landed on him, and had long ago stopped pretending otherwise. 

That wasn’t to say that he hadn’t had his moments, especially when it came to his girlfriend. He was, in all senses of the word, protective over you.

He’d known enough men – had been a different man through each decade – to know that you in the wrong hands would have ruined someone, like you had him.

He’d considered himself lucky to have your devotion – a thing so pure, presented with such ferocity – pointed at him. The thought of it being pointed at someone else made him sick simply because he knew how difficult it was to not fall in love with your claws. He knew how it felt to have you scruff him by the collar and inspect him for another woman’s perfume that even you knew did not exist, how it felt to be counted and guarded and kept, and he knew there was no single man alive who could feel that and walk away sane.

He’d take a bullet before he let anything happen to you and consider it a fair trade.

Jack was nothing less than smugly, bone-deep, sure of you. And a man that sure, holding a jealousy that pretty, developed habits. He’d learned (through research he’d conducted, very selfishly, for his own benefit) exactly which levers produced the show.

A waitress lingering around him for a second too long; a squeeze of your hand going tight in his, and him spending the next thirty minutes in the parking lot outside the restaurant making up for another woman’s slow legs.

Mentioning, idly, that a pharmacutical rep had been ‘friendly today’; good for a whole evening of you cross-examining everything about him, her, her tone, his response. 

He knew the difference between small provocations and the premium ones, and he deployed them the same way he planned date nights. He would’ve gone as far as to say they were date nights, impromptu, functionally; every match he struck brought him an evening of you staking your claim with both hands, and then the long, sweet business of being claimed. 

He’d never once found the bottom of it. He’d never once thought to even look for one, where the jealousy cut off and turned inward. It had never once pointed that direction. Your claws faced outward, out at the world, never once you, carrying them.

He didn’t know there was a depth where that happened. It was why he poked the proverbial bear. 

When he’d gotten off his shift at seven in the morning, tugging his bag over his shoulder, he’d leaned his hip against the driver’s door and opened your texts. Some people had a cigarette after a shift. Jack had you, delivered in installments, and he stood there in the cold biting down his smile as he scrolled through the night’s yield.

( a photo of a cat that lived outside the bar; a voice memo at 1:30 he already knew was you narrating something you’d decided was urgent; a link to a lamp with no explanation, which meant ‘buy me this lamp’ (he did, immediately, Apple Pay and its joys of quick payment); a text at 2:47 that just said that your feet were cold; and finally, a goodnight! i love you! sent at 3:15 am )

He’d thought, not for the first time, that he was genuinely a lucky bastard.

After years of pagers and reports and envelopes, somewhere his correspondence had started to include a nightly paper trail proving that somewhere in Pittsburgh, you moved through your night with him present in it. They were simply dispatches you sent because things weren’t fully real to you until he’d been notified.

A man could be told he was loved a hundred ways, but there was no proof on earth like being your first call about nothing. 

If he were a better man, he would have told you about the name that had popped up on his message thread under yours the second he’d unlocked the phone – right there, sandwiched between your goodnight and a spam text about his car’s warranty, a name he hadn’t seen light up his screen in the better part of a decade. 

Diane: Hey stranger. In town next week for a conference - would be good to catch up if you’re around. Coffee? It’s been too long. Hope life’s treating you well. 

It was a strange sort of vertigo of a past life reaching out to tap him on the arm. Diane – Jesus. He hadn’t thought about her in years; it’d been long enough that the name landed without a hook. It was a faint mothball smell of a version of himself he’d long since folded up and put away. No, he had felt near to nothing for her name for the only one that popped up in his head was yours. 

Jack had spent months getting fat and happy on your jealousy; he’d learned there was no sweeter sound than you getting worked up over nothing.

Jack had, right there in the parking lot, a plan because Diane was – he’d assumed, for you – not nothing. No, Diane had history, and it was a real, verifiable history. If a stranger’s coffee order could get you draped over him like a bodyguard, then this – Jack immediately thought – was going to be a show.

Before he’d got in the shower to start his ritual of getting in bed with you – the shower, the hygiene of it all – he found you sprawled across the entire acreage of the bed with the blanket cycloned around your legs. He crossed over and crouched at the edge of you, heart beating gratefully at the sight, because this part couldn’t wait for hygiene. 

He settled for tucking the hair off your face – two featherlight fingers, hooking it back behind your ear – and your nose scrunched in your sleep before it turned into his hand.

“Hey,” he whispered, not to wake you (secretly hoping you would, anyway), and leaned in to press his mouth to your temple that made you make a tiny sound at the back of your throat.

Your fist unclenched from under the pillow and groped out blindly to his forearm, fingers curling around it without opening your eyes. 

Jack stayed crouched there a moment longer than his knee approved of, grinning down at you. 

“I know,” he murmured, working your fingers off his forearm one at a time and folding them back against your palm, pressing them there with a squeeze. “Ten minutes.”

When he tucked himself into bed beside you, arms instinctively falling over your waist to pull you flush against him, you were half-turning to him before you’d even surfaced. You made a tiny sound, unintelligible words – something about the temperature of his hands – and burrowed closer, one leg sliding under his waist and over the mattress, your cold feet immediately seeking out the warmest available part of him. 

“You’re cold,” you mumbled, not opening your eyes, wounded.

“I know, right,” he murmured, pulling you in closer to his chest. “You, though, are warm.”

You wrapped yourself tighter around him, hand finding its way under his shirt to flatten against his ribs. “You can borrow me.”

His hand moved up your spine, thumb catching each notch, and he pressed his cold nose to your temple just to feel you flinch and swat at him, which you did, gorgeously, with a wounded utterance of his name that made his entire body feel like it’d gone under the sun. “Missed you.” 

You smiled, tipping your face up, eyes still shut as your mouth searched. He met you there, pressing a slow, morning-soft kiss that just stayed. When you finally pulled back and sighed, boneless, he cradled you to him. 

“Hey, so,” he murmured, thumb still stroking your back, “old friend of mine’s in town next week. Reached out this morning.” 

“All your friends are old.” You hummed into his chest, still processing the words, and he felt your body still in his arms. “What old friend?” 

“Just an old friend, baby.” 

You lifted your head off his chest at that, one eye cracking open then the other, the sleep burning off you so quickly. He exhaled a sigh as he watched that beautiful, familiar spark catching behind your face. You propped your chin on his sternum and narrowed your eyes at him.

“This old friend doesn’t have a name?” 

“Mhm. Does.” He kept his face maddeningly neutral, thumb still sweeping your spine, savoring the little furrow in your brows and the way your hand had started gripping the side of his waist, staking a claim. He loved you. “Diane.” 

Your lips pursed as you processed the name, as if checking everything you know about Jack in real time. Then you shook your head a little, lips curving up into what he could only consider your angry-smile. “Who the hell’s Diane?”

“We go back a ways.” He shrugged easily, that confidence of having done this a hundred times and always getting sweet, sweet you packing up in him. “Dated, for a bit. Long time ago.” 

You took in a sharp inhale, snorting softly as your hands left him completely. He tried to bite down his frown from showing.

“Dated,” you said, through a small breath with wide eyes. “You dated and she texted you?” 

“She did.” Jack laced his hands behind his head and settled back into the pillow. “Wants to grab a coffee. Catch up.”

“Well, are you going?” You were up on your elbow now, the blanket pooling at your chest, as your brows went up to your hairline in thorough dissatisfaction. 

No, he wasn’t. The possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind. He’d read the text, and moved on to the far more interesting business of what it could do for this morning. The coffee itself was nothing; he had no interest in sitting across a woman who hadn’t crossed his mind at all to trade summaries of decades.

You existed. There was, now, no hour anyone could offer that beat an hour of you doing anything at all. 

He had sat through watching you decide whether or not you’d return a sweater for forty minutes; trying it on over and over again, the same sweater, then tucking it into parts of your existing clothes to test it (into jeans, out of jeans, under the jacket, sleeves shoved up, sleeves shoved down, “should i just cut the sleeves off?” with the scissors already located, and he’d told you “do the crime and you can’t return it,” and watched you reconsider, setting the scissors down). You’d kept it and worn it while sitting on the couch for the rest of the day, then never again. 

“Thinkin’ about it,” Jack said, hooking a lazy finger into the strap sliding off your shoulder and tugging it back up, a tending gesture entirely at odds with the trouble he was stirring. “Just coffee, angel. She’s only in town a few days.”

“Well, your girlfriend is in town all days,” you said, swatting his hand away. “You can’t just get little catch-up coffees with women you fucking dated, Jack. That’s not – it’s not a thing people in relationships do.”

“No? But it was so long ago.” 

You’d pulled yourself upright now, cross-legged in the sheets, the blanket in your lap and the one strap already sliding down again. “Doesn’t matter, Jack.” You jabbed a finger at his neck. “You’ve got a girlfriend. A very good one –”

“Best one I’ve ever had,” Jack agreed, catching your finger and kissing the tip of it, entirely pleased. “I like her. Love her, even.”

“Then why think about it at all?” you asked as he tucked a piece of hair behind your ear, thumb grazing your cheek. 

“Just surprised, baby,” he said, shrugging. “We go way back. Before your time. It was – a real thing, for a while.” 

Your eyes quickly flickered down to his chest, mouth opening, then closing again. “How long were you together?”

He clicked his tongue, brows furrowing as he genuinely tried to reel back the memory. It was funny the way time did that.

“Couple years,” he murmured. “Give or take, three. Yeah. Around three.”

Your eyes had gone slightly wide as you looked at a spot on the blanket with your bottom lip tugged between your teeth.

“Three years,” you murmured, more to yourself than him, huffing slightly through your nose. 

Your eyes flicked up to him, and Jack’s hand went still against your spine. They eyes were wide, glassed, and lost, blinking up at him with some unguarded confusion. You looked at him the way you did when a word went missing on you mid-sentence (your fingers snapping restlessly at the air like you could catch it, ‘you know the one, Jack, the word – the – the thing,’ while he supplied guesses just to watch you swat them away), except there was no word being hunted now. 

“That’s – a long time, right?” you asked him then, tilting your head to the side, looking at Jack like he had some sort of conversion chart on what three years were ought to weigh. 

Jack’s eyes landed on your fingers tugging closer to him on the blanket, not landing on him. They stopped an inch short of his ribs, curling back into themselves. 

His eyes went from your fingers, to your face, which was still waiting for his answer. He sucked in a small exhale, buying a second, though he couldn’t have said for what. 

There was some low-grade, humming static on his skin, and he forced himself to override it, because you’d asked him so gently, and he always answered your questions. You asked him things at all hours, in all states, with your mouth full, from the other room, half-asleep on his shoulder blade.

( What’s the worst thing you ever ate? You’d help me hide it, right? What’s your favorite planet? If we were both dogs, who’d be walking who? Am I the funniest person you know? Would you still love me if I couldn’t talk, only hum? Who taught you how to drive? ) 

He’d answer every single one thoroughly, treating them all like he would’ve a question for boards, because early on he’d discovered your asking was an act of love; you collected his answers, kept them somewhere in that beautiful head, stored him. Nobody had ever wanted his mind so thoroughly before. 

So when you asked, he answered.

It was who Jack was to you. It was maybe his favorite thing to be, just Jack. Jack and all the little things he thought about all the little things he’d given little to no thought to. 

“Felt both long and short, if that makes sense,” Jack mused, wandering back into it, because you’d asked and the memory was a harmless thing to ignite. It was cold hearth, ash-dead, nothing in it did a single thing to a single fold of his brain.

“We took some trips – did two weeks through Italy one summer.” He shook his head slightly, blowing out a short breath at that fact of his life. “And her sister’s wedding in Maine.” 

“Italy,” you said, lips curving around the little word. Your eyes flicked down to his chest, then his torso. “You went to Italy?” You breathed in softly, and your head tilted again. Jack wondered if this was where the claws came out – Italy. “I didn’t know that.” 

“Lots you don’t know about my misspent youth,” he said, lips curling in a casual smile. His fingers reached out then to catch yours and folded them in his palm, bringing them up to his mouth to press a kiss to the knuckles. 

“What was it like?” you asked, brows rising slightly. “I’ve never – I don’t really know what it’s like there.”

“Rented this Fiat, did the coast. Amalfi, Positano – she had the Italian, so she handled the talking. I just drove and pointed.” A huff moved through his chest where he’d trapped your forearm. “She’d order. I’d eat whatever showed up.” 

He waited for the strike. She ordered for you? Then your fingers would go to his throat. Nobody orders for you. What did she order? Was it good? 

Your lips had made this small shape of an ‘o’ as your eyes had snagged on him as he spoke, criss-cross and those small inches away from him on the bed. 

“What’d she – where’d you even find the time?” you said through a short laugh, shoulders coming up slightly.

“We’d come out of residency and the schedules just –” He’d left your fingers for a second to lace his own loosely over his chest in the air, two combs of a zipper missing. “Lined up.” He retrieved your hand automatically, repocketing it to him. “Traded calendars at the start of the month, find the overlap. Italy was a big overlap we got lucky with. Had a little cash for once, and somebody said to go now or never go.”

The word ‘residency’ had barely left his mouth when he heard you take in a small inhale, your lips jutting out slightly.

Now? Jack wondered dumbly. Now you’d get mad, say something territorial, something pretty and unhinged about schedules. I’ll make your schedule. He readied his face for it, schooling the grin down in advance so you wouldn’t catch him enjoying it. He also would have let you make his schedule, had you asked, even though he wasn’t sure how that would’ve worked. He’d have found some compromise between his job and you. He’d have nodded along solemnly, and asked you when it was effective.

“I didn’t know you’ve been to Italy,” you murmured, almost musing, as your eyes went to the desk beside the bed, past his shoulder. He followed your gaze to the little basket where you kept your folder of documents he’d made you organize last spring. 

“Long time ago,” Jack said, because it was. It was a very long time ago, and he felt the need to clarify that. He didn’t know why he was elaborating like he’d been accused. He hadn’t. You hadn’t accused him. “Very long time ago.”

His palm tightened over your fingers – a small, reflexive press – and got no answering flex back.

Your fingers lay there in his hand, warm, accounted for – like Jack always needed them to be – but absent. Jack found himself pressing again, interrogatively this time, you in there?

“That’s –” you started.

Jack’s eyes snapped back you again, like a dog hearing it’s name. Your mouth twisted, working like you were deciding on a seed and what to do with it.

You gave a small shrug – one shoulder, half-mast – and reached over with your other hand to roll a little lint of fluff off the blanket around your finger.

“That’s really far to go with someone,” you said, softer. “Italy. That’s like – a whole thing to do.”

“It was,” he said, absentmindedly, though, as he watched you.

There was something about the set of you he didn’t quite like, though he couldn’t have said what. The way your shoulders had come in a little? The way you seemed all gentle and docile now, when a minute ago you’d been jabbing him in the throat?

Jack prided himself on knowing you; he’d taken it up as a personal study. Your spine, usually all insolence, all sprawl, had gone considerate. Even your knees, criss-crossed under the sheets, had tucked in closer. 

“You okay, baby?” he asked, feeling that need to poke at it directly.

“Mhm.” You nodded quickly and looked up at him with a smile.

His fingers immediately reached up to settle under the hinge of your jaw, as if to hold your smile there, thumb laid along your cheek.

“Yeah, I just didn’t know it was – so serious. That’s all. I thought it’d be, like, some girl you dated a few months.” You let out a little breath of a laugh. “Not an – Italy person.” 

Jack’s brows furrowed. He didn’t really know what an ‘Italy person’ entailed, but he didn’t like how it sounded in your voice. 

You sometimes said things that made him want to burrow into your mind. They were little nothings, coinages, a whole private mint going on up there.

( It feels like a July day, when it was very clearly December and you were snowed in; he’s looks like a Tuesday guy, about a stranger at the DMV on a Friday; my feet are homesick, which turned out to mean you wanted to go to the beach, and also somewhere deserted sometimes, and a hike. ) 

He never asked you to translate. Half the time, it was impossible for you to do so, anyway; the words just arrived to you whole, and he’d learned to hold them up in the light until they made sense.

They always made sense, for there was always a ‘you’ inside of them. And he’d found that whatever came from you, it was worth keeping to dig into. 

( Sometimes, it made sense days later. Like when you’d said, one night in the car, engine off, “I like you when you park.” 

He’d laughed and asked, “As opposed to what?”

You’d had no answer, but he understood, days later, that you liked Jack in-between things. You liked him with the engine off, day done, night not started, with nowhere to be just yet.

He supposed it meant you liked the little pockets of nothing that every life has and nobody claims; idling, as opposed to mid-shift, the one where there was no overarching function making him do something. He’d found he liked those little pockets of nothing, too. )

He supposed that ‘Italy person’ would turn out to mean something exact, too. 

He waited, again, for the claws. What am I, then? with a finger at his chest, and he’d catch the finger and kiss it again and tell you what you were – everything – and you’d pretend it wasn’t enough, and demand he phrase it better, and he would.

Jack would phrase it better then better than that, mouth at your knuckles, your wrist, working up the arm between clauses. 

Mine, obviously, don’t be stupid. You’d hum, and he’d say it slower – mine, ob-vi-ous-ly – and you’d call him useless, and somewhere you’d end up bickering about whether Italy even had good food. He’d take your side on, traitor to decades in under a minute, and your sulk would die of neglect without either of you watching it. 

“I don’t know what that means, sweetheart,” he said, trying to force a casual smile through a small, chuckle. He shook his head confusedly. 

Your lips pressed together as you shrugged. “I don’t, either. Not really,” you said.

Before Jack could respond, you reached over and patted his chest twice and said, “Long night?” 

It took Jack a second. He heard actual sound, cogs audibly changing gears, because you’d been in Italy, and now you were in his shift, and the border between those two had been crossed with no warning. He’d been asked this normal question a thousand times; it was a fine question, a normal one. He’d answered it a thousand normal ways.

“Uh, yeah – middling,” he said, hand now coming to find your waist where you sat and tugging slightly, getting you back down into him. “Don’t wanna talk about the shift, though.” You landed against his chest and his chin fell to your head, some unscripted instinct in him kicking in. “Wanna talk about you.”

“Me?” You laughed slightly. “Nothing to report here.” 

“Disagree.” His hand started running over your spine, pressing his mouth to your hair for a second, breathing you in. “Missed you today,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Listened to your voice memo twice on the way back.” 

“Really?” 

His arm tightened around you, bring you up closer to his face, where he could reach your temple without any work. He pressed one, then another, and another kiss against them slowly, mouth lingering against your skin on the last one as he waited. For what? He had no idea. 

Your hand traveled up from his ribs to his jaw, cupping it, then running your thumb against the stubble once against the grain, the way you liked. It usually came with commentary (you’d make such a good beach, Jack; this is my favorite texture on earth; Jack, keep it like this always) and tonight he got none of it.

Jack turned his mouth to it on reflex and pressed a kiss to the middle of your palm, and felt your fingers curl slightly on the contact, gathering the kiss like you were keeping it. 

“Love you,” you murmured. “Go to sleep, Jack.” 

“Love you, too,” he said.

He couldn’t ignore how you’d practically shut off right in front of his eyes. So, he asked, “You tired?” he asked, feeling some base need to clarify.

“Yeah,” you whispered between your faces, and you did sound tired. Tired, Jack knew how to work with. 

“Good,” he murmured, softer, relieved to hear it was that. “We’ll be tired together, then we won’t be tired.” 

Your breath billowed softly over his mouth, something like a laugh, and his hand slid down to your arm to find your hand, tucking the whole laced knot of it down between your chests where it lived. Your head ducked slightly to go under his, burrowing in his neck, and he smiled as his chin came to rest at the top of your head. 

“Sleep,” he said gently, with all of the command he could muster whilst three-quarters gone himself. “We’re gonna sleep the whole day away.” 

You did. Sleep – that is. Or stayed in his arms until his breath went long and even and unmistakably out. When you were sure – when that deep untroubled weight of him told you he was really under – you extracted yourself out of the bed.

You didn’t want to, but sleep wasn’t coming easy with Jack tonight. It sucked; sleep always came easy to you with Jack. Getting out from under him, too, wasn’t easy. He slept like he meant it now, all of his weight poured over you, one heavy arm slung across you like a seatbelt. 

You lifted his arm by the wrist, an inch at a time, and slipped out from underneath it. He stirred and made a rough sound of protest and reached for the warm gap you’d left, patted once, then again, searching, and you winced at the sight of it.

You hurriedly fed your pillow to his arms and watched him gather it against his chest, watched him settle, thinking it was you. 

You should have gone outside now, like you’d planned, and instead you leaned in over the mattress, drawn back down by some law you had never once repealed.

Because – even now – you couldn’t leave Jack Abbot undecorated, you weren’t functioned that way.

Every time you left his vicinity, you’d paid a toll at the door; a kiss to the knuckles, the shoulder, the one time you pressed his closed eyelid so gently he’d told you about it during breakfast, thinking he’d dreamed of it, that it’d felt nice.

You picked the stubbled jaw and pressed the smallest kiss there for half-a-second, and he hummed just as you leaned away. His arms pulled the pillow tighter.

You felt heat build up behind your eyes at it. Jack was, somehow, reassuring you unconsciously, four fathoms down. You blinked at the ceiling, because this was just Jack sleeping with a pillow. Normal girls do not cry about things like this. 

When you successfully made it to the kitchen to make some coffee, which you didn’t end up making, you scrolled through your phone absentmindedly for a few minutes.

Your teeth were digging into your lower lip, and you were sure they could’ve left a permanent dent on them because of how long you’d been sitting on the countertop next to the coffee 

You were being mature. You were being so very mature about this.

Any second now, the maturity would kick all the way in and you’d feel it; the maturity, the security, the calm, grown-up ease that’d let you hear about your boyfriend’s beautiful doctor ex-girlfriend and their beautiful accomplished Italian holiday and simply nod. Maybe you’d be glad he’d had love before you, had something great enough it’d taken a tour across oceans.

You wouldn’t be this.

She was three years to your year.

You’d been counting since the bed, some sick little voice in the back of your head clicking away – that’s longer than you, so much longer, it’s double! and then one more!

She got a whole coast and you? Every time you tried to set the voice down, it just picked itself back up and started again.

You had – after a year – found the one proof that you’d always been, cruel-to-yourself, looking for. Jack Abbot had lived a life before you, several lives, and he’d had love.

So much time she’d had with Jack.

When you reached for your enormousness, for the claws, for the whole arsenal, you found your armor completely empty.

She predated you; you had no way to be big at her. You couldn’t bodyguard Jack from his own past, though you wished he’d have been a bodyguard to it from you. It was an insane thing to wish. All he did was answer your questions, because you’d come knocking.

An unfair, childish, foolish part of you wished he’d lied and decided the truth was too heavy for you and carried it himself. 

She had Jack, and she let him go. You could hardly let Jack go for the length of a shower. You’d have died.

What did she know that you didn’t? What was it like, being a woman who could afford to lose him? She’d walked away from Jack and was whole; if you’d lost Jack, there’d be nothing left.

You knew it was dramatic, that it didn’t work that way. It wasn’t true, but it sure felt like it. Jack had filled your life completely, and you didn’t ever want that space ever again.

Nothing about that is romantic. You’re just a girl who bet everything she had on the first big thing she saw. 

Jack had lived a whole entire grown-up love – the real kind, the serious kind – with her.

Your cruel brain wondered if there were others. You’d never heard about Diane before, what was one more name he’d never mentioned? He had decades you knew nothing about.

It all happened before you’d ever set your eyes on him and thought he was the only man that existed. It had happened before you’d seen him and thought he could be the one, then wished that he would be the one. He’d had that before.

You’d always known that, abstractly. But the idea of years and years of Jack being loved by great women who understood his work, women his own age, women who’d been there for parts of him you never got to meet. That a door swung open all the way tonight. 

You were the latest in a line you didn’t even know the length of.

You’d never even thought about Italy – it was so far away, and you didn’t even think you’d said the country’s name out loud until tonight.

Italy was – you always thought – a thing that happened to other people. It happened, you understood, to Jack. Not your Jack, another woman’s Jack, back when he was somebody’s whole future instead of their past.

He had been loved over there. He'd been to Maine with a family who’d probably thought he was the one.

You were holding the frayed end of a rope whose length you’d never wanted to measure, because you’d assumed stupidly, sweetly, that the rope started when you’d grabbed it, that Jack began the night he met you.

Stop. You’re being crazy – like always. A part of you always had known Jack liked getting a rise out of you, and you liked giving him one. Get a rise out of him, the petty, young part of your brain supplied. 

You laughed softly to yourself, clutching your arms around your waist as you folded over, forehead dropping to your knees.

With whom? If you looked for ammunition, you found no Diane.

The guy before the last guy whose last name you couldn’t even remember anymore; a handful of small-time relationships that had lasted one season and ended not because they were wrong but because they were nothing.

You had no great, grown love in your belt that you cold hold up to the light and make Jack ache over. 

You had Jack. Jack was your Diane and Jack was your Italy – your three years, your coastline, and your entire globe, probably even more – the biggest love you’d ever had by a distance so vast it was hardly a competition.

Jack knew about your entire life and every supplementary information about you that held no weight on you, or only very little.

Jack knew about your first pet’s name, and its cause of death, and the movie you still couldn’t watch because of it. He knew your worst subject’s grade and, worse, the teacher’s name, and had once gotten angry at that man on your behalf.

He knew the reason you hardly talked to your family; he knew it all by now, because you’d kept handing out pieces over this year, and somewhere around the eighth month you’d realized he knew the story completely now. 

He’d learned it all, greedily, like each fact was worth having. You’d hand him a dusty nothing – a camp story, a recurring dream since seven, your opinion on cilantro – and watch it get written down somewhere behind his eyes. Weeks later, he’d produce it at the right moment. No cilantro, she hates it.

It had felt like Jack had opened your junk drawer and thought of it as treasure.

Your life was small and short enough to fit into his hands entire. It was a carry on. He held all of it and had room left over for more. You just didn’t have any more to give him.

Jack had finished reading you.

You’d been collecting him, too, greedy in your own right, thinking you were getting, at the very least, to the hallway. Now, you were wondering if you’d only just walked up the porch to the door.

You could produce Italy in your brain now; Jack against some sun-warm railing over water; Jack driving a little car on the wrong side of the road with confidence; Jack looking longingly at a woman who was speaking a language he couldn’t understand, holding him up.

Some parallel-Jack, out in the corner of your mind, who’d married the doctor.

Jack who was, right now, in some other version of this morning, drinking coffee, happy, whole, entirely fine. Jack, who was talking about some case from a journal – in his fluent doctor-language with someone who never needed the glossary – never pausing to translate English into – well, English. He was never smiling patiently and having to shrink his work down to a bedtime-story size like he did you. That Jack’s wife could meet Jack in the dark after his bad shifts instead of standing at the edge with a flashlight, calling in.

You couldn’t even imagine parallel-Jack lonely with something missing at his table. Your imagination – which loved him, which had only ever been able to love him – refused to even draw him sad. It kept handing you Jack complete; a whole finished Jack, out there in the corner of your mind.

This Jack’s completeness had to require your absence. It needed you to put yourself out of this world and into the crevice of your mind that hated you.

You had to widen your eyes on the floor. Your heels knocked the cabinet.

No. No. Your Jack – the real Jack – was thirty feet away and had never once been anything but certain of you.

Jack had never once not been certain of you. You were sitting on the countertop in his sweatpants right now. Your fingers were curled into the cotton of the pants, holding it like it was his hand, because Jack himself suddenly felt like too much to deserve.

You were getting homesick of him, getting jealous of women in your own head, grieving trips that had already happened, creating an entirely one-girl production in your mind that was only cruel to you, and the man who’d done nothing to put it there.

Go to him, you tried to tell yourself. Go to Jack. Wake him up. Talk to him.

He never turned you away. You had come to him with nothing, a whole lot of nothings, and he had never once turned you away. 

( You’d had a terrible dream that your childhood house was empty. It was the whole dream. You’d walked through it, room-by-room, and everyone was gone and the furniture was gone and your voice didn’t work. It was classic dream-physics. You’d woken up with shaky breaths, body tensing up over, well, nothing. Over the fact that the wallpaper was gone. You’d lain there for four minutes being reasonable about it, then you’d poked Jack. 

Poked him once, then again. Then again – his hand caught your finger, eyes still shut, reflexes working. He folded your finger in his fist and kept it there, on his chest as one eye dragged open, looked at the little digital clock, looked insulted, then looked at you. 

“What?” At your silence and the sight of your small pout as your body went still, both his eyes opened, everything in his face shifting around not making this worse. “What happened?”

“Bad dream,” you said, and because he’d wait all night without asking, you added, “My old house. Everything was just gone. It’s stupid, it’s not even –”

“Not stupid.” His arm had come up to haul you down onto his chest in a drowsy motion, your ear landing conveniently over the slow bass of his heart as his hand rubbed over your skin. “Empty house,” he murmured, clicking his tongue. “Yeah. That’s not a great one.”

He always agreed with you. Then, he added, “This place has got everyone we both need in it. Go back to sleep.” )

Your mind had, finally, gone quiet. Finally. Even it knew overkill when it saw it. 

Fuck, maybe you were fucking crazy. Jack should have gone running. If he had any sense, he’d have looked at you and walked calmly in the other direction. He hadn’t. He had stayed.

This morning your enemies included a hypothetical, a memory, and Europe al-fucking-together. 

He hadn’t let you go, you had to remind yourself. He’d kept you. Had, a few times, put a foot on the door to keep you there.

You slid off the kitchen counter to make your coffee, almost distantly. You made it this time, too. By the time the machine started its slow gurgle, you’d forced yourself to wrestle the whole thing back where it belonged, blinking your eyes clear and dry. It was the deal you’d made with yourself, you supposed, when Jack had said Italy and that she was a doctor, just like him. 

You weren’t going to be the crazy, young girlfriend who spiraled over an old flame. You were going to be so graciously secure about all of it that Jack would never, ever know the morning had touched you at all.

You’d nearly convinced yourself of it, too, as you settled on the couch with the mug on the little glass table beside you as you scrolled through your phone. Then, you’d heard the bedroom door, and the soft knock of crutches against the floorboards as Jack shifted his weight. 

You felt your heart drop at the sound of it, and had to force yourself to look up at the ceiling for a few seconds before he materialized, because you had never – not once – felt that feeling in your body in the three-sixty-five and a few more days you’d loved him.

No, you had to tell your body. We don’t feel this way for Jack. There’s no need to start now.

He came around the corner a second later, crutches under his arms and squinting against the light, hair flattened up on one side of his head from all of forty minutes on the pillow. His eyes swept across the room quickly and landed on you, face easing slightly.

“There you are,” he said, voice rough with sleep. He stayed there for a second looking at you, head-to-toe, checking. “Woke up to a pillow,” he said, one brow going up, dipping his chin at you in soft accusation. 

“Jack –” You pushed yourself up off, padding over to him on instinct, because you were you, it was now nine in the morning and he’d hauled himself out of bed after only one tiny blink of sleep after his shift. Every single step he was taking on those crutches was a step he shouldn’t have been taking. “What are you doing up? Go back to bed –”

“Could ask you the same, baby. You’re never up this early.” When you got close enough, his eyes immediately came down to yours and stayed, moving over slowly. Then, he flicked his gaze to the entirety of the living room behind you.

“You get lonely out here? Something wrong? Should’ve come got me.” he fired off at once, so quickly that your mind had to catch up to process it.

“Not lonely. Nothing’s wrong. You needed sleep – ” 

False. False. True. You were a liar more than half the time today, and you knew you were making this bed all by yourself.

“I need lots of things.” His hand came up off the crutch grip – balancing himself there on one – and reached out to you, knuckles first, dragging down your cheek slowly as his head tilted to look at you. The touch was so, so tender it almost undid the whole act you had running. “Sleep’s like – fourth.” 

You leaned into his hand before you could stop it, and his face flickered for a second – relief, there and covered – and his thumb pressed in to hold it, keeping it. 

“I just couldn’t sleep,” you said into his palm, because half-truths were easier to say to his palm. “You can, though,” you said quickly. “You worked all night. I’d already slept before you came home.” 

He appeared to weigh this, and when your eyes finally moved back to his face, it was tilted slightly to the side, lost. Like a dog, hearing a new sound. It was a new sound, you realized the second it left you. It sounded like exactly what you had decided you were going to be – reasonable and considerate – and you had never once been reasonable about Jack going to bed. Sending him off to rest, so generously, without you, sounded – to you and him both – like another person’s girlfriend talking. 

He took in a small breath, a chuckle dying in his throat, and his head dropped closer, the stubble catching in the light.

“Counter-offer?” he murmured. His hand slid from your cheek to the back of your neck, settling there. “Couch. Both of us. Nobody sleeps. Nobody does a single thing.” 

“Like gremlins,” you murmured. 

The crease in his brow lost a little bit of its altitude. “Exactly like gremlins, angel,” he said gravely, instantly. 

Your lips moved hesitantly, and your hands came up to his bare chest, pressing slightly. “You’ve been up all night, Jack,” you said through a short laugh, fingers skating around the breath of his chest to sit at his ribs, trying to turn him. 

“Stop it – please, no.” He stayed put, eyes flicking down to where your hands had come up and lips twisting in, what you could only describe as a snarl. “I’m not tired.”

It was such a bald, indefensible lie that you visibly shook your head at him. The evidence was all over his pretty face, the pretty, lying face. The curls were silvering mess flattened on one side and standing at attention on the other, and you had to physically stop your hands from going to them.

The morning stubble had come in along his jaw in that salt-and-cinnamon scatter you’d once spent a full minute petting against the grain while he sat there letting you, patient as a trained dog. Still, tired lived well on him. Everything lived well on him. You’d told him once, and he’d thanked you, because he’d found himself tired a lot and hadn’t quite found a way to ease it. He’d tried.

“Jack,” you tried, voice warming a touch.

“What?” he drawled, shaking his head at you now, like he was deciding to show how scandalized he was now by all of this. “I’m not allowed to sit with my girl?”

He started moving to the direction of the couch – crutches finding their rhythm – without giving you any time for defense. “Man works a night shift and isn’t allowed to sit with the prettiest thing he’s ever seen?” 

You huffed. “Thanks.” 

“Don’t thank me,” Jack called over his shoulder. “Come sit.”

You trailed after him, because what else could you do? Dig your heels in, tell him no? That would’ve been a tell the size of five fucking houses. The second you were in range, his arm left the cushion and hooked over your waist mid-step and hauled you onto his lap. Your yelp was swallowed by the drop, and you landed sideways across his thighs with his arm already snaked across your back. 

“Your leg, Jack – ”

“My leg’s thrilled.” His other hand collected your knees and folded them up toward his stomach, tucking you in closer, arranging you into the compact bundle he preferred, until you were sitting in the wide, warm bowl of him with nowhere to look that wasn’t him. His hand then came up to your back and pressed, instructively, until your cheek gave up and landed against his shoulder. He let out a long, slow breath at the contact, chin coming to rest on your hair. “There we go.”

You breathed in a lungful of air as you settled against him, his presence like fire and water over you right now. You were so scared of someday losing this, this exact thing. His chest hair scratching at your cheek; the weight of his head – carrying so much – on your head; the way he smelled like your soap because you’d asked him to once and he’d never gone back, and now this man walked around his emergency department smelling like pink fruit all day and let everyone at work deal with it.

It was so, so unbelievably simple to be with Jack, to be in this flowery presence of this gruff man, being his. Jack had come along and he’d made you put everything down – the checking, the second-guessing – and you had, you’d put everything down, and dumped both arms around his neck instead. 

“How do you wanna use our nights off today, hm?” he asked softly, moving his head to press a quick kiss to the top of your head. 

This was your event. You knew that was why he was asking, dangling it, because the planning was half the having for you and he’d learned to just hand you the whole day and watch you go. You always had opinions.

Before you’d tucked yourself into bed last night, you’d thought maybe you and Jack would go to the diner whenever you woke up, breaking fast in the afternoon like degenerates. 

Maybe the flea market afterwards, because Jack, at a flea market, haggled in such a nice, slow voice that made grown sellers fold like the lawn chairs they were selling. He’d followed you around from table to table for two hours, never once questioning why you were suddenly looking at doorknobs. You could’ve looked at gravel, and he’d have carried it. Then you’d come home, couch, a game on, his head in your lap – heavy, trusting, king of some small kingdom – while you messed with his curls.

It all seemed so unbelievably wrong now. It seemed nice at the same time, the same as before. But the diner. She probably never made him eat at diners. The flea market; she went to Positano. You had no idea what Positano even looked like, exactly. It was probably the most beautiful place on all of earth and Jack had stood in it, years before you existed to him, being well-loved, and you’d spent this morning secretly hoping it was ugly. 

You pressed your cheek harder into his chest and he hummed, appreciatively, and adjusted his arm to noodle you.

She got this, too.

You had to stop yourself from groaning at your own voice, from yelling at it altogether. The thoughts were just pushing you closer and closer to him, your cheek nuzzled against his chest, shifting slightly like the bare contact of his skin could just scrub it all out; your cure and disease were Jack. Every awful, awful thought sent you burrowing closer into his exact chest that had caused it, and he kept receiving you, warm and obliging, having no idea he, right now, was both your wound and bandage. 

You just wanted your day back. You couldn’t tell anyone how insane this was, least of all Jack. You’d have crawled inside his ribcage if it zipped.

You knew that Jack had been trying to get under your skin – you knew that he liked it – but you’d figured this game was one that was built for you to win. Every round was just Jack setting up an excuse to spend the afternoon demonstrating with his mouth, his eyes, his face, that there was no contest to even worry about.

Because you couldn’t very well go to Positano today, and because you suddenly felt like a kid handing over a macaroni necklace to someone who owned diamonds, you said, “I don’t know,” into his chest. “You decide.”

His thumb paused on your skin for a second, then it resumed.

“Me?” he murmured, chin tilting for a second to press his lips to the top of your skull again. “I wouldn’t have the first clue, angel.” 

“Try,” you said. 

He huffed slightly. “Alright, then. Bear with me – first day on the job. We stay here till noon, then the diner with your jams. Then that stretch by the river you like, lemonade from the good cart guy.” He squeezed your arm and pressed another peck to your head. “Home by dark and it’ll be the best outing in the world.” 

It sounded so perfect. You pressed your whole face down into his chest, even as you thought about how his outings were once grander, with people who’d done grander. With a doctor, no less. “Sounds perfect.”

For a moment, the two of you just breathed there. It may have been the fact that when it got quiet when you were with Jack – instead of quiet with just yourself – things seemed a little easier, but you found yourself saying, against him, “Jack?”  

“Yes?” he said instantly, chin lifting off your head and you felt his attention come down on you, whole and immediate, like he was summoned.

“Are you gonna get the coffee?” you asked. 

“Huh?”

“With her,” you said. “You know –”

Your words cut off as you shrugged, suddenly feeling stupid all over again. Saying it made it real again, and now you’d brought the topic to the couch. It happened on the bed, and you’d carried it to the kitchen, and now it was on this lovely couch. You were going to taint it all with it.

“You should probably go. To catch up.” You lifted your head up to meet his eyes, forcing your voice even. “I don’t mind.” It felt like it’d come out with steel; you almost winced at your own words. 

Jack blinked at you, then his head tilted, and the softest, most confused grunt left him. 

“Baby,” he started gently, amused, almost, reaching for the joke in it at first. His knuckles came up to brush against your cheek for one second. “I’m not going anywhere near that coffee – you’d have me chipped like a dog by Tuesday.” 

It was a gift, you could see his words wrapped and extended – him invoking your domestic insanity, holding it up like the reason the sky was blue – and all you had to do was accept it. The morning would become the, in all senses of the word, usual.

You would’ve preened at the portrait of you, and now you heard it from the morning’s new ears – he’s got an ex who speaks Italian and you think it’s fun to threaten him with 24 hour surveillance. 

“I wouldn’t, though,” you said quickly.

When his knuckles paused on your cheek, questioningly, you continued, “You should go. I won’t be mad at you.” Your lips pressed together for one second. “I promise.” 

Jack’s hands went to your hips and his jaw shifted from side to side, as he looked away from your face for a second. “Yeah. Okay. I’m not grabbing coffee with another woman.” 

“She came all the way. You guys are old –”

“Stop,” he interrupted with a laugh – disbelieving and no humor in it – as his head reeled back.

“Stop it – I don’t want this.” His hands flexed on your hips, then came up to wave in the general direction, then fell back down. He looked at you really, really upset, or baffled, or both. “Who cares how far she came? People fly places. I don’t want to have coffee with anyone.”

You shrugged, letting your head drop into his chest again. “If that’s what you want. You don’t have to do it because of me.” 

“I am absolutely doing it because of you.” His arm came around you, bringing you back close to him. “I’m not going ‘cause my girlfriend exists. That’s a whole reason. It’s a great one. So don’t talk me out of it.” He pressed his lips to the top of your skull. “Not your reason to give away. And you can get me chipped, if you like.”

You opened your mouth, then closed it. What could you even say to that? You felt him nod over you at the silence, felt some hesitance creep into his body, as he pulled you in. 

“Actually,” he said after a moment. “Let’s put a pin in the plan.” One hand lifted off you and made some small motion, you couldn’t see it but you felt the absence where it had been, before it came back. “We’ll do it tomorrow. Next week. River’s not goin’ anywhere.” His arm resettled around you, snugger than before. “Today we’ll stay in.” 

“Jack –”

“Blanket, couch, girl.” He counted your day off your spine, three soft taps of his fingers. When you made a sound of protest, his said into your hair, quieter, “I’ve got all I need. I’m not feeling the outside today. That okay?”

“No, it’s not – let’s go. I’m just tired right now. I’ll be up later.” 

You felt him breathe, then, the gust of air pooling into your hair.

“Then come to bed,” he tried weakly, and he sounded so broken you wanted to cry. You could hear him knocking at the door of you. “Sleep. Let’s sleep together, if you’re tired.”

“Not sleepy-tired,” you said, and heard how little it made sense even as it came out of you.

Then, you pushed yourself up off him, palms to his chest, trying to keep the motion casual. “I think I just need to wake up properly. Move around a little.” You stood, angling your face away, blinking fast as you looked at the dark TV screen. “I’m gonna get in the shower, if that’s okay?”

When you tried to look over your shoulder, he’d straightened up, palms falling down to his sides on the couch as he looked up at you. 

“Course it’s okay,” he said, hands following up then to settle for your hand, thumb passing over your knuckles. He gave your fingers the gentlest tug and pulled his head back, catching your eyes for a second before you could look away again, and the look on his face was so, so soft. “Do you want breakfast?” 

You nodded quickly. “Yeah – thanks.” 

He made a small sound, then pressed his lips to your knuckles, then let your fingers go one at a time. You made it four steps down the hallway with his gaze heavy on your back, and you couldn’t stand it.

There was a great, large, incessant bug in you that couldn’t stand Jack back there with his worried face and scared smile. So you half-turned over your shoulder, your eyes down at the baseboard, and called out, “Love you, Jack.” 

You’d told Jack you loved him at full speed, into his mouth mid-argument, into the phone before you’d even said hello, at grocery stores, at funerals, at red lights, six times a day minimum. It was the surest sentence you owned. This time, it went out like a paper boat, pushed onto the water with two fingers, and watched all the way across. 

“Love you, too,” he called back warmly, after what felt like a hundred years.

Jack had once spent a very, very long time to get you to believe that even if you held onto something good loosely, it won’t run away. He’d had to get you to believe that even if your grip on him loosened, even just for a second, even for a month, he would still be right there. Why was he feeling the need to hold you so tightly now? 

He set your plate at your spot, and his at his. He poured the coffee, saw the first coffee you’d abandoned on the counter, full and stone cold, and stood there looking for a second longer than the mug deserved.

He’d put on his prosthesis after plating the food, a part of him too large and hopeful – instead of its usual, content, un-worried hum – expecting you to come out of your shower wanting to do something, the diner, the river, after all, trying to change his mind.

He’d hoped you’d come out wanting to be carried somewhere on his back. He wanted to be ready, he always was now. He kept himself pre-approved for whatever you thought of next.

The inside of your head was a busy little harbor, boats coming in at all hours, and he’d been granted a standing spot on the dock. You’d let him become the first to hear about octopus, cats, furniture, which part of your body felt cold, warm, or lukewarm. A year of receiving your pretty cargo and he’d never once been bored. 

He, decades your senior, had seen the world be made interesting again by you just narrating it at him. He had the sneaking suspicion he’d follow your voice wherever it went, into traffic, a dock, into old age, and the shower.

The water kept running. He wasn’t the kind of man that’d track your showers, but years of working in emergency and emergency-adjacent situations had honed up his internal clock eerily well, smoothened out his pattern recognition.

He had to tamp down the urge to deploy it, to use this innate, terrible, awful instinct in his brain on you – you, who he felt more than monitored, who he’d only ever read with love, no grains of salt, no instruments. 

You were the girl who rearranged things in his cabinets by feeling and left in it a system he still couldn’t crack and refused to fix. Opening a drawer looking for a spatula and finding your hair ribbons had become one of the small startling joys of his one life.

He’d been a clinician for so long, and you’d built with him a corner of the world where he was just a man, holding a girl, and being completely in love with her.

Jack, bring me the towel even though it’s right there. Jack, come look at this bruise. Did I not wash out the conditioner out properly? Jack – Jack, Jack, come and just sit with me while I shower.

His knee bounced under the table, and he stopped it. 

Your eggs had gone cold, glossy, and began settling into themselves. The toast had lost its heat, and the jam sat unopened with its little lid on – the grape, the good one – and the jam was a small purple fact that he could not find himself liking to sit across from. You’d have opened it by now and started walking the length of the place, spoon in your mouth, talking. 

A year of you had taught him what mornings looked like when they were going right. He knew this one had gone wrong so quietly and terribly, that he’d been able to hold you the entire time it was happening. 

It was the bitter feeling of the surge he’d had in his chest this morning at the thought of your instincts.

He’d read a woman’s name off his screen and come home with it like it was a match to your pretty fire. He’d carried it into bed with you, and all Jack knew was that at this morning, his girl had been in his arms so sweetly, and minutes later, her fingers were hesitant to press into his skin. The only thing that happened in between was his own mouth, having fun. 

Jack wasn’t sure when he’d stood up, but he was walking to the bedroom now, to the ensuite bathroom. A year ago, this hallway had been a hallway. Now, it was a museum of you mid-motion, and he moved through it with his heart going at a pace he hadn’t earned sitting down, past the bed still holding the shape of the forgery you’d left him in, a pillow. He had to look away from it like the sun. 

He told himself that the bathroom door being closed was normal. Steam, privacy, nothing; all of it were real things. 

“Hey,” he said to the door lightly, knuckles going in two soft taps. It was the same knock he used with the you in the bath going pruny as he was happily serving you wine. “You fall asleep in there? S’been a minute.”

He tried to force his lips into something close to a smile even though there was a door between you right now.

Perhaps it was because Jack – even now, even morbidly confused – knew you, and knew that the door would be locked before he confirmed it with his shaky fingers. 

( You, who talked to him through the glass of the shower, sat cross-legged on the counter while he shaved – you missed a spot, no, the other spot, how do you have a medical license, genius – and stole his coffee between critiques and made him laugh hard enough he’d nicked his jaw and you’d gasped like the injured party, then kissed it before pronouncing him stable.

You, who had once flung the shower door open mid-rinse to tell him that you’d figured out what you both were in a past life. He never got to hear the answer. You’d seen him standing at the sink in his towel and lost the thread altogether, and the past lives were never mentioned again, and Jack had walked around for the next twenty-four hours unreasonably pleased about being distracting at his age to you. 

A door had, simply, never existed in your relationship. )

The key was right there. He’d put it there himself, two summers before he’d ever met you, the day the door had swung shut at its own draft and locked an empty bathroom. He’d forgotten it existed, but his hand went up and found it first try, blind, and came down holding this tiny cold thing. 

His fingers were unsteady fitting it in, which was new. He’d threaded needles into people in moving vehicles. Now, in his home, his fingers trembled over a privacy lock like a first year, because on the other side of the door was the whole of his one life, in falling water, hiding from him – him – and every second the key took was a second you sat in there believing you had to do so. 

“I’m coming in,” he said to the door, softer than an announcement this large should’ve been, like some part of him was afraid of the wrong reaction at your response to it. “Just me. I’m coming in, okay?” 

His chest caved – folded in on itself, turned over – because there you were, on the floor of the shower, curled up under the pour of the water, your knees to your chest and your arms wrapped around them, your face hidden down against them. His girl – the loud one, the strongest person he’d ever let himself love – made small and quiet and hidden on the floor of the shower. He had seen you in this place a thousand times and never once, not ever, like this.

“Oh – baby. No, hey –”

Your head snapped up at his voice, and just that sharp little movement of you made him tilt back slightly. Your face – wet and swollen, eyes red at the rims, gone raw and young and caught in a way he’d never seen it – did something terrible when it saw him in the doorway. It crumpled then hardened, both at once, a door slamming behind glass, and you scrubbed the heel of your hand over your eyes like you could take back the last thirty seconds if you were quick enough about it.

“No,” you said quickly, the word cracking out of you with a sharp edge under the thickness. Your hand came up between you, a flat little barricade under the steam. “No – get out, Jack – I told you I’ll be – please, get out –” 

You didn’t push him. This wasn’t a thing that happened. You pulled – you reeled him in by the shirt, you climbed into his lap, you fought tooth and nail for every inch of distance he’d tried to keep, whose entire love was a set of hands hauling him closer, closer, closer.

He had spent all this time being pulled by you, gladly, helplessly, and he did not have – had never needed – a single instinct for being pushed. 

“Hey – hey, no – don’t –” His hand came out to the glass, pushing slightly. “It’s just me. It’s me. Look –”

“I don’t want it to be you right now,” you said, and the words were so awful and completely jagged.

You turned to face away, like you were trying to push yourself out of his sight entirely. “Please. Please, just go and get out. I don’t want you here – please, Jack.” 

“No, don’t ask me that,” Jack said immediately, voice breaking clean in half as his eyes went glassy and desperate. “It’s me – you don’t hide from me – we’re not that –”

“Please,” you said, voice barely audible over the running of the water, and his nose burnt as he caught sight of you shaking. “Please, just give me a minute – a minute. I’m – I’m asking you to leave.” 

Jack’s hand hung empty in the air as he looked down at you, heart in actual pieces on the tile, and he understood – quietly – that the only thing you were begging him for was the single thing he’d have rather died than do, to turn around and leave you crying. 

So – because you’d asked, because pushing past a plea like that would only carve you open worse, because loving you had never once meant taking what he wanted when it wasn’t what you needed – he made himself.

“Okay,” he said, voice coming out in ruins. “Okay, baby. Okay. I’m going – I’ll go.” He reached up and took your towel off your rail and set it closer to the shower. “I’m right outside. I’m not far – I’ll be right there and you come get me the second you want me, you hear? The second.”

You stayed silent, so Jack, clumsy with grief in a way his body never was, made himself turn his back on you. At the door, he paused, eyes pinching shut to make himself not look over his shoulder. Instead, he said, “I love you.”

He pulled the door behind him, left it breathing half ajar with the steam sighing out through the gap, and pulled himself to sit at the edge of the bed, facing the bathroom. Like you were going to run from him, like some part of him needed both feet under him and the door in his eyeline needed to be ready. For what? He couldn’t have said. To catch you, he supposed. To get you the second you’d let him. To not be caught sitting down when you finally opened the door and needed him standing. 

He sat there with his elbows braced on his knees and his hands pressed together against his mouth and waited, and it was the longest ten minutes of his recent life.

Every second of it was stretched unbearably, because he was learning there is this particular hell in loving someone past all sense and being made to sit on the other side while they hurt. He didn’t know what to do with this feeling, had never had to think it was a possibility between the two of you.

When the door opened, Jack was on his feet before he’d decided to be. There you were, towel-wrapped, hair dripping onto your shoulders, face swollen and turned just slightly away, eyes on the floorboards. You crossed your arms over your chest, gripping the towel closed.

“Hey,” he said, breathing through it, his voice half-ruined, shaking. He caught it and hauled it down a register by force, into the very low, sure place his voice lived when everything depended on it.

He made himself stay planted – made himself open his arms instead of using them, wide, a whole doorway of him – while every muscle strained against its leash, because his body had exactly one theory about you crying and the theory was to go, and he stood on that theory with all his weight. 

“Come here,” he said instead, begging with a steady voice, a whole vacuum sealed into two words. 

Your eyes climbed as high as his chest and gave up there, arms tightening. You shook your head dimly, water flicking. He nodded to himself, made himself stay standing, without letting an ounce on his face where you’d have to carry it. 

“One step. That’s all I’m asking.” His arms turned palm-up at the ends of his open arms, still, though nothing behind his ribs was. “You don’t have to talk. Or explain anything. Not tonight, or ever. I’ll die curious – but I’m standing here figuring out I don’t work right until I know how you feel in my arms and I haven’t known for hours and I am asking you –” His voice strained, and the words came out bare, “ – Please, I am asking you to come let me hold you.” 

You let out a small sound, eyes pinching shut, and he watched a whole war happen on your face. Jack thought, uselessly, hopelessly, that he’d have stood there through a winter or as the building came down, holding a door ajar in himself for as long as doors took.

You crossed, though. Your body came to him hard, all at once, like you were dropped from a height, and Jack caught you with one arm crushed around your towel-wrapped back. The other flew to your wet hair, his palm rounding the whole back of your skull, pressing you into his heart, gathering you in and in and in, past where space existed, trying to find one more setting past where proximity itself existed. He let out a sound that was – dangerously – close to sob into your hair, finding himself completely undone for the first time in a very, very long time. 

“There you are,” he murmured, rocking you slightly as his mouth pressed to the top of your dripping hair. “I’ve got you. Got you now.”

You shook against him, and Jack winced at the feeling of it, gently reeling both of you down onto the edge of the mattress, then back, then over, until he had you sideways across his lap, your knees folded over his thigh, your face tucked into the crook of his neck, his arms locked around you like a cage. The towel gave up at under your shoulder, so he pulled the corner of the blanket up over the bare curve of it – wrapping you precious – and then his arm closed the last of the circuit and locked. 

For a while, he simply let his hand move up and down your spine while you cried into his throat, and every shudder that went through you went straight through him, too. He pressed his lips to your temple and left them there and rode it out with you, breathing slow on purpose, loud enough for you to borrow the rhythm off of his nose, an old medic’s trick he was running on the only patient he’d loved past all sense. 

Somewhere in the middle of it, with your tears running down his throat and pooling at his collarbone,

Jack thought, helplessly, that even this was somehow yours and somehow beautiful; you cried like you did everything, with your whole body, holding nothing residual, generous, so generous, even in grief. You’d never given him a partial anything, and Jack tightened his arms around the full, shaking entirety of you and thanked the universe, genuinely, that when you’d finally fallen apart, you’d walked the few steps and done it on him. 

When your crying wore itself down, Jack made himself stay silent. The questions, fully formed, seventy versions of them and redrafted since the kitchen, he swallowed, because he had a feeling he had pushed enough for one simple morning. He’d pushed this morning smiling. He held you and let the question live in him like a swallowed stone and, apparently, he was less subtle about it than he thought.

Your voice came up out of his neck, waterlogged and small, as you said, “I know you want to ask.” Your fingers moved faintly against his chest, a fidget with no strength in it. “It’s okay. You can.” 

Jack had to close his eyes at your first full sentence being a door held open for him; you’d crawled out of your own wreckage to check on the driver. 

“I do,” he said into your hair, honestly. “But I’m not gonna spend your turn. So here’s mine first.” 

He felt you go still against him – attention gathering, a tiny tilt of your head at his collarbone – and he breathed in heavy, big enough to lift you where you lay, to pay up. 

“I got really scared today,” he said, voice going into a whisper as he leaned down to talk to you. “I woke up to you not in my arms and my whole chest felt – wrong. I do this for a living, I’ve got all the words. It wasn’t – wasn’t sick. It felt wrong, you not being somewhere you’re supposed to be. First time in – forever, if I’m being honest.” He tapped you skin twice, to hold himself. 

“And when I found you, I couldn’t reach you. And now – seeing you –” He felt you stiffen up at that, and he nodded in understanding, skipping over. “I’m thinking of getting rid of all our doors.” His hand kept moving down your spine, and he faced your head then. “Bathroom’s the priority. Bedroom might be load-bearing, but. Front door stays. Everything else is beaded curtains by Friday.” 

You made a small sound against his neck, and Jack had to stop himself from crushing you into the tightest hug at the bridge of a laugh. He pressed his mouth to your temple for a few seconds instead. “Another thing while I’ve got the floor. Telling me to go get coffee with an ex – don’t do that again. I’m not gambling with you. I’ve only got one of you. So, I’m never going to coffee with anyone else again.” 

“You’re allowed to cry,” he said, setting the joke aside. “I’m sorry I made you feel you couldn’t do it with me knowing about it. That’s mine, and I’m gonna find it and fix it if it takes me the rest of my life.” 

“You didn’t do anything,” you protested, sounding wounded. 

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “That’s mine. That’s what I felt today. You don’t have to give me yours.” 

His arms adjusted, and some helpless, incurable corner of him – the one that had flirted with you through every disaster you’d ever handed each other – added, “But, if you wanted to trade, I can make it worth your while.” 

You laughed at that again, and the two of you stayed silent again for sometime. Your fingers crawled up his chest, up over his collarbone, curling loosely around his neck, your palm settling in like you needed contact to speak. 

“You went to Italy,” you said. 

Jack’s brain did one, full lap around the words, and came back with nothing. He did the only thing he could when you handed him a coin he couldn’t read, which was holding it up to the light and keeping his voice soft and not dropping it. 

“I did,” he said, carefully. “Long, long time ago, baby.”

“Was it nice?” you asked, the words coming out so small. In the same breath, like a small dam breaking, you added, “Do you miss it?”

Jack never had to look for a trap in your words, not like this.

There was none now, either. You’d asked about Italy like you asked him about bad days, ready to receive whatever came back, your thumb doing a nervous sweep against his neck like you were comforting him in advance. You’d found the one grief in the world with his fingerprints on it and your first instinct was to ask if he wanted it back. 

For an ugly second, he thought he could have lied. No, it was overrated, beds were weird, bad food. You’d have heard it, and Jack thought that it would’ve taught you that you couldn’t survive the truth. 

“It was nice,” he said quietly, hands moving up and down your spine. “I was young. Younger, anyway. Whole trip was –” He exhaled, shaking his head as he tried to hunt for the honest size of it. “It was a trip, baby. It was nice.” 

He pressed his lips to your hairline. “I don’t miss it. There’s nothing in there to miss. Like –” He clicked his teeth, searching for the words. “Driving past a house I used to live in. Half the time, can’t even remember which window was yours. You just keep going, ‘cause everything you own’s at the new place now.” His fingers tightened on you. “Think if I’d known what this was, back then, I’d have kept missing this, there.” 

Your breath shifted against his throat, and you nuzzled your face into his neck.

“What’s got you worried?” he murmured. He closed his eyes, letting his head lean to rest against yours, palms moving from your waist to your nape, then down. “I can get us to Europe by Thursday, just say the word. I’ve got PTO and miles I’ve been sitting on for years. I think they were for this.” 

“I don’t wanna go to Italy,” you said, smiling against his neck. “I think this is something I have to get through myself. It’s not anything you’ve done to me.”

Jack felt that familiar twist in his chest. It’d come to him for the first time today, and it kept coming up and up and up, and he couldn’t help but want to claw at his own mouth for his selfish, cruel little game, for every grinning careless word he’d dropped on you like they weighed nothing. And now you felt that you had to deal with it yourself, like it was yours to carry alone, off in a corner, someplace he couldn’t get to. Because he had done this. 

You were, simply, acting like the two of you weren’t the two of you; you had spent a whole year proving to him that ‘by yourself’ was a thing that, now, never existed. 

He drew you back, fingers threading through the back of your hair, trying to physically take you back from wherever – whatever – this by yourself was. He put your face in the light, wet-lashed, trying so hard to keep it together, and his thumb swept the damp while his own face did whatever it was doing, open and scared and thoroughly past the point of keeping it in check. 

“You don’t have a ‘yourself’ anymore, sweetheart. I don’t have that anymore. You woke me up at three in the morning to tell me how you fell off the monkey bars in third grade – remember? You didn’t think twice about it.” His forehead came down, brushing your nose with his. “And now you’re gonna sit here and tell me this – the saddest thing that’s crossed that pretty head all year – this one you’re keeping alone?” 

“Jack–”

“What is going on in that head of yours?” he interrupted, words soft but pointed, suddenly having given up all pretense of coaxing and gone straight to needling.

He watched you open your mouth as you took in a breath, and maybe it was the closeness or the way his thumb kept moving along your jaw, but you said, “I don’t know if I’m the real one.”

Jack’s brows furrowed, feeling heat build up behind his eyes as he looked at you with a pained, confused expression.

“I don’t know if I’m the one you do it for real with, Jack, or if I’m just – the young one. The one you get before – or after – I don’t even know how it works.”

Your hands came up between you, aggravated at yourself, at him, at the lack of vocabulary. 

“You’ve done so much. You’ve got countries. Experiences. So many of them. And I’ve got –” Your shrug came out tiny. “– you. You’re my biggest everything. You’re my Italy and I feel like I’ve been with you for three years and my – you’re all of it, Jack. I’m terrified I’m just the person that came after your big thing.” 

You blinked, and Jack’s fingers reached up to catch the little tear falling over your lashes, his own eyes blinking furiously. Jack wanted, so badly, to reach to you and press your kiss to your mouth to stop this, to to kiss this whole wilted garden you’d created in your head out of you.

He shook his head. “I hope I’m not your – her,” he said, a wince in the words, finding it difficult to even get them out. “Or your Italy.”

“You are –” you said, with so much conviction, chin coming up, ready to fight him for the honor of it, “you are – that’s what I’m telling you –” 

“I’m your Jack.” His hands tightened on your face, voice coming out slightly cracked. “I’d forgotten about this woman until this came up. I don’t want you to forget me. I’m your Jack and I’m the luckiest man for it everyday. So you pick a better word soon, and don’t take that title away from me.” He shook his head. “I like it. I like it a lot.”

You bristled slightly, your eyes shining into his as they went wide, the whole of you locking up at the words. He tapped his palm gently against your cheek once, then again, frowning as he thought he really ought to tell you this more, for a girl who kept a running tally of everything else.

You’d created a museum out of things he’d said, and somehow this one, the biggest one – the luckiest man of it – he’d been rationing. He’d been handing it over in the glances and over eggs, assuming it was arriving, that a girl who read him so fluently was taking what he’d said to you over and over again, so simply because it was just a fact. 

Never again. He’d tell you daily now, remind you of it while making you look him in the eyes. 

“I tried to make you jealous,” you said, the words coming out through a sad, shameful laugh. Something in his chest broke hearing you confess it like it was a crime. “I’ve got nothing, Jack. You won’t care about Sam, or Dave, or – I don’t even remember one’s name. That’s all. You had a doctor you went to Italy with.” 

His eyes fluttered for a second, the muscle in his jaw clenching as his fingers ran over your cheek. The nature of it all was too backwards. Jack had made a very sad sort of peace with himself – he’d known what he was – and somehow, at the end of all that, at the bottom of the ninth of his whole entire life, you’d walked into it glowing like something confiscated from heaven. You’d looked at the full of him, and decided you wanted him. You, dished out to him probably because of some fate-giver who’d been asleep at the desk, who had let the single best thing walk out to him.

If a single one of those guys had stayed awake one more hour, asked one more question, been at the right angle to see who was sitting across them, you’d be – Jack grimly, awfully thought – somewhere else right now. And Jack never would have known; he wouldn’t have known to miss you. You’d have been long gone and loved properly, early, by someone with the sense to do it. 

Jack would have worked his nights and run the bay, choosing every day to enter a new crisis, and never known the whole time that the best thing that would ever happen to him had happened to somebody else instead, on time, the way it properly should have. It was their loss, and he was going to make his entire life out of it. 

His arms moved before the thought even finished, hauling you in impossibly closer, resettling the whole, true warm weight of you against him. “Stay right here,” he murmured.

You did. Your lashes stuck wet in little points and your fingers resettled on his neck. You were wearing his shirt, drowning in it. Jack had been the steadiest set of hands in many rooms, he knew it without vanity. But nothing in his skill set covered you; steady hands didn’t win a girl who lit up rooms; being good in a crisis didn’t earn a woman who made every ordinary Tuesday feel like a celebration. He’d spent so long getting excellent at the exact things nobody falls in love with – triage, containment, blood – and you’d walked into his life and fallen for him anyway, for reasons he couldn’t successfully point to, and he’d stopped asking why out of superstition. You, he was not in the mood to reasonably place; Jack knew when a person was handed one, that they should keep showing up for a miracle, quietly hoping it stayed. 

Jack, falling apart at every seam of him, eyes hot and jaw aching, huffed. It was one, soft breath of a laugh, and your eyes snapped up to his, betrayed, and he shook his head fast, thumb pressing to your cheek to stay with him. 

“I’m not laughing at you,” he said, shaking his head softly, thumbs framing your face to tilt it up. “I promise. I’m laughing ‘cause you’ve got no idea what I’d give to have your problem.” 

You blinked at him, mouth curved into a frown. That one, he was sure, was aimed at him. His hands were shaking slightly against your jaw.

“I mean that I am very, very glad that you’ve got no Italy to wave at me. You think I want you to have another big grown love in your pocket? Some guy you crossed the country with?” His hands tightened on your face, eyes shining. “It would ruin me. I’d never sleep again. And I’m sorry for waving mine at you this morning, because I didn’t think it’d make you not sleep.” 

He held your eyes through it, taking his medicine looking at you. “I said it ‘cause I love you jealous. It makes me feel nice to know you care about me.” His lips curved into a sad smile. “I didn’t think what it’d do when I brought this up. I will be very, very sorry about that for a long time.”

When you smiled softly, eyes hooded as you looked down at his mouth, he nodded to himself.

“And I had a nice trip with a woman a hundred years ago, and it ended, and I have zero photos of it. That’s a thing that happened to me. You are not a thing that happened to me. You are what it was all for. All the years, the whole time, all the wrong turns. That was just me taking the long way to find you. You are my biggest thing – biggest one that’s ever happened to me – and I want you to know some pretty life-changing things have happened to me.” 

You stared at him, mouth open, tears going uncaught now, because Jack had gone completely still, needing you to see all his years on his face at once. 

He huffed, mind flicking through this haze of memories. He could reach back and find the years, the apartment, and it all came as nothing. He’d loved women, had meant it completely, with everything he’d had on hand, and he may not have been wrong. And now he can carry the tender knowledge that a person can feel absolutely certain there is everything to be felt and be off by a whole magnitude; he’d stood inside his biggest feeling and called it the biggest and had simply, innocently, not met you. 

“And since you told me yours,” he said, quieter, eyes going down because he found he couldn’t quite hold your gaze for this.

“I know what it feels like to think you’ve found what good love is, and then to find out how it is to love someone bigger. That the thing you could’ve sworn was everything was just – nothing, in the grand scheme.” 

He turned his face to the side as he held your face, suddenly finding the enormity of this simplicity pressing at the back of his eyes. Everything – he was sure of it – had just been the longest drive over to you.

“But you got this first. You’ve got nothing to check it against.” His thumb swept your cheekbone, and his eyes came back to you. 

“I know how big this is because I’ve got my whole life to look at it against. And you just have to take my word for it.”

He tugged his lip between his teeth, searching your eyes with question, checking whether the words were pushing through, whether they had the gap to push through. Your face was tilting toward him, listening with every feature at once; he could see the whole war playing out on your face you had never once been able to conceal from him. You had no poker face, at least to him, you didn’t.

“This is the one,” he said, nodding just barely. “There was never a morning I woke up and had to think about anything before you. You are the reason I know what you think is the big thing is small.” 

Your breath stuttered, and your chin trembled once before you caught it from gritting your teeth inside your mouth. 

“And sometimes –” He nodded, more to himself, as he forced himself to continue. “– I have felt a similar thing. I see you, and I wonder if you’ll think about some guy your own age, out there somewhere. Standard legs. Normal hours.” He shrugged. “No years of the stuff I’ve carried. And I think, someday, you’ll look over at me and think you settled for the –”

“That’s crazy,” you interrupted, the words shooting out of you instantly. Your fingers flew up to grip both his wrists. “That’s crazy, Jack – I don’t want – I would never. There’s no guy, I don’t want standard legs. I want your legs – leg – fuck, Jack.” Your voice broke off as you let out a small, pained groan. “I would pick you over any person who has ever lived.” 

“Yeah, see,” he murmured, a small smile coming up as he let the weight of your words land on him. “Can you see how it sounds crazy when it’s coming at you?”

He brushed his nose against yours at your stunned silence. “I feel the exact same way about what you said. It’s crazy.”

He had to blink over and over as he settled on the weight of your words, said so simply and furiously with no build up. The biggest sentences of his life just slipped out of you, unwrapped, and you had not the first clue what they weighed. Any person who had ever lived. God, you’d waved off the whole crowded history of the species in one breath to pick a tired man in Pittsburgh.  

“Let’s go,” he murmured, wrapping you up and pulling both of you back against the cushions, resettling you on his chest. Your ear was at his heart. The blanket was up to your shoulder. “We’re gonna lie here a while now. I think we both need it.” 

“It was a weird morning.” 

“Mhm.” His hand went to your spine. “Top five weirdest.”

And he should have let it be, but there was still something sitting in him. 

Jack pressed his lips together as he once again said, “I am sorry for this morning. I was –” He breathed in through his nose, fingers coming up to your head, tapping it twice to get you to look up at him. You did, chin pressing into his chest and your eyes tired yet focused. “Immature.” 

Your lips twisted slightly, then you tugged them with your teeth once and looked away, like you were trying not to agree. 

“I was,” he said, easily, agreeing for you. His thumb traced your hairline. “Good thing for me, I happen to be with a girl who likes getting her revenge. Even when I don’t think I did anything.” 

“You do –”

“I do. I do. You’re not wrong,” he said, the opposite of a complaint in it. “You know how to settle a score. And this morning I racked up a real big one. And you’ve just been sitting on it, being gracious.” His nose wrinkled, his fingers going to cradle the side of your face. “You keep that up, you’ll start minding your business and I’ll be living with a stranger.”

At your small, hesitant smile, Jack continued, “I know you don’t like the paintjob of my truck.” You nodded at that, honest as ever. “What I’m thinking is, you key it.”

Your eyes widened.

“Go nuts on the thing. Do some drawings. Write nice words. I drive it around after, everyone sees it. And when we’re good and done with that show and tell,” he continued, fingers threading into your hair, “we take it in. You pick a new color. Any color. Change the seats if you want, too.”

“People will think –”

“People will think a woman loves me enough to key my truck. Do we have a deal?”

[s-writing-s]

𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐆𝐫𝐢𝐩 | 𝐉. 𝐀.

summary: you’ve been able to see ghosts since you were a child, but years of bad experiences have taught you one thing: keep it secret. people don’t take kindly to the things they can’t explain. then you meet jack—a highly observant doctor with a ghost of his own, and what begins as an unlikely friendship slowly becomes something more. but trusting him means risking the one thing you’ve spent your entire life protecting: yourself.

tags: hurt/comfort, angst, romance, fluff, flirting, explorations of grief, supernatural elements, mentions of an ex, reader doesn't take good care of herself

word count: 18.3k

a/n: my baby is finally finished! i've been working on this for months now and tbh i could probably keep doing it. there's just something so interesting about this theme and how two people are affected differently by death. this fic was inspired by the show ghost whisperer and i see reader's abilities as somewhat similar to melinda's. as always, feedback is greatly appreciated! i really hope you guys like it! <333

The Pitt | Masterlist Main | Masterlist

You hate hospitals with a deep passion. 

They're too loud, too bright, and too crowded. Waiting rooms that make you feel like tinned fish, packed together beneath harsh fluorescent lights and the constant hum of voices. It's not even a busy night, and you're still counting down the minutes until you can leave. 

There's a man with a clenched look on his face that suggests why he's choosing to stand despite the unusually empty seats. A woman nearby desperately hums to her wailing child, rocking her back and forth against her chest with a feverish gleam on her face. A man coughs wetly into his mask while a group of drunk girls giggle away in the corner. 

It's a relatively empty waiting room considering it's the E.R—if you don't take the other people into account. There's a woman in a white gown wandering through the room before disappearing into a wall. A man with a gash on his head sits in one of the chairs, patiently waiting for his turn that will never come. Only the occasional flicker of his form reveals his true state.

It's only been half an hour, but from where you're sitting, you've already spotted five ghosts. And the longer you wait, the more they'll feel the pull of you—previous experience unfortunately lets you know that. So, if you can help it, you stay away. 

But midnight ideas involving a ladder, a light bulb, and an unexpected vision hadn't proven to be a good combination. You'd been on the third rung, reaching overhead, when the familiar sensation hit. Your body had locked, your vision hazing as your mind left your apartment, and by the time the vision released you, your foot had slipped, and you'd fallen hard onto the ground. You'd blinked back to a shattered bulb beneath your palm and a sharp flare of pain where your head had clipped the coffee table. This was, unfortunately, an injury too severe for you to fix yourself. 

Now it's three a.m., and you're holding a soaked dish towel to your bleeding hand as you try to avoid eye contact with the spectres drifting past. It takes another twenty minutes of staring insistently at the ground before your name is called and you're led into a room. 

You sit on the crinkly paper, tapping your fingers against your pants as the door shuts again. Another five minutes pass before the door opens again, but you don't mind. At least, it's quiet in here—no ghosts following you. 

"Hi. Sorry for the wait." A man in black scrubs steps inside, smiling at you kindly. "I'm Dr. Henderson." He's got one foot on the rolling chair, about to sit down when the door opens again. 

"Crus." An older man interrupts, one hand on the door as he holds it open. He nods out towards the hallway, greying curls falling slightly forward at the motion. "Head to Trauma 1. You can assist with a lumbar puncture." He turns to you with a charming smile. "I'll take over here."

Heat rushes to your cheeks when his intense gaze lands on you, and you quickly avert your eyes. Instead, you watch as Dr. Henderson's face lights up. He sends you an apologetic smile, clapping the other man's shoulder on his way out. 

"Sorry about that." The door shuts behind him as he finally steps fully inside and draws the curtain. "I'm Dr. Abbot." He picks up the tablet left behind and scans your chart quickly. Snapping on a pair of gloves, he drops down onto the chair. 

"So," he says, eyeing the towel around your hand and the dried blood on your temple. "How bad did the other guy look?"

You blink. "What?"

Dr. Abbot gently tips your head toward the light to inspect the cut. His gloved fingers are surprisingly warm against your skin. "Whoever hit you got a decent shot in. Still, it's nothing we can't patch up."

"I didn't fight anyone."

"No?" A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as he turns his attention to your hand, carefully peeling the towel away. His gaze flicks down to your heart-patterned pyjama pants. "I don't know. You look like you could be hiding a professional boxing career."

Heat creeps into your cheeks as you realise he's teasing you. "Oh. Ha."

His grin widens, and you find yourself watching the way his eyes crinkle. "So, what happened?"

"...I fell off a ladder."

His eyes flick up to yours. "Strange hour to be climbing ladders." He shifts your hand back and forth, testing your grip.

You shrug. "Couldn't sleep."

"Ah," he says. "That, I get." He rolls the chair back to gather supplies once he determines it isn't a severe cut. "There's a bit of glass stuck inside, so I'm gonna give you a shot for the pain, pick out the pieces, stitch you up and then send you on your merry way. Sound good?"

You nod, glancing down at your hand, expecting your stomach to roll, but feeling strangely detached from it. You guess you've seen worse in visions before. A surprising positive, you suppose.

He pulls off his gloves, throwing them into the trash behind him. As he leans forward to grab a new sterile pair, the chair suddenly rolls forward beneath him. The wheels squeak as it turns to face you, and Dr. Abbot's hands shoot out instinctively, landing briefly against the plush of your thighs to steady himself.

You both freeze. His eyes flick down to your thighs, then back up.

"Sorry," he says, pulling away immediately.

"No, that's—" You swallow. "That's okay."

Dr. Abbot rubs the back of his neck before turning back to the task at hand. The room suddenly feels too warm. Something metallic flashes beneath the fluorescent lights, drawing your attention to his wedding ring. He's married. Of course. A man like that doesn't go through life without attracting someone. You look away before you can wonder why that thought bothers you.

You focus on the ceiling tile above him instead. A faint crackling sound brushes against your ears before disappearing. Your attention snaps to the corner, but no one is there. The sound comes back, like an old radio searching for a station. Your skin prickles, and the hairs at the back of your neck rise in warning.

You're not alone, but no one appears. No one speaks. It's just that crackling sound, continuing for another minute before it disappears again.

Dr. Abbot reaches for your hand again, oblivious to it. He administers the shot as you try to look around the room without him noticing.

"So, what were you doing on the ladder?" he says, breaking the awkward silence. He moves to clean your forehead as he waits for the lidocaine to set in.

You huff a laugh. "Putting in a new light bulb. I've been putting it off for weeks. Maybe this was a sign that I shouldn't have waited that long." Your chin lifts, a sense of pride filling you when his lips twitch. You get the feeling that he isn't that easy to get a reaction out of. 

"Not handy, I gather?" he says as he finishes placing the butterfly stitch on your forehead.

You glance down at your hand. "What gave it away?"

He huffs a laugh.

The saline feels odd, but not unpleasant, and you barely notice as he plucks out the glass pieces. The silence that settles over the room is comfortable, and for a moment you believe the ghost has left you alone. Maybe it has finally decided you're not worth bothering. But as Dr. Abbot dresses your wound and turns to write follow-up instructions on a notepad, the crackling starts again. Then, his pen flies off the desk.

"Oops," he says, not sounding particularly surprised. He ignores it and turns back to you. "The stitches are self-dissolving, but come back if there's any swelling or irritation." He hands you the note, his mouth curving into another teasing smile. "And no more fights, at least until you're healed."

"No promises." You grin. "Thank you."

He gives you a small nod. "You're welcome."

You slip off the bed, clutching the note in your good hand. At the door, you glance back without really meaning to. He's still looking at you. For a second, neither of you says anything, then you leave. There's a slight pull, almost as if something is trying to keep you in the room, but you push forward without placing much thought on it. Whatever ghost is trying to communicate can find you tomorrow.

The bookstore Cordelia's is located next to the park and has been yours for almost three years. It's small, but you've managed to make the most of the space. Tall shelves line almost every wall, some of them old enough that you constantly worry they'll fall apart at the slightest touch. There's a little reading nook tucked beneath the front window, two mismatched armchairs beside a low table, and a counter near the register that has been scratched and dented by years of use. The bell above the door has a slightly different ring depending on how hard someone pushes it, and the floorboards creak in places you've long learned to avoid. 

It's comfortable. Warm. The kind of place where people come in intending to browse for ten minutes and somehow end up staying an hour. 

Ethan is similar in that way. He never dreamed of working in a bookstore, and somehow, he's gone from a part-time worker to being here more than you are. He's always liked books—even has a minor in English literature—but he'd always imagined himself doing something more. Maybe teaching or being a famous author—something that involved people knowing his name. Definitely not standing behind a counter for eight hours a day arguing with customers about whether a particular first edition was worth what the internet claimed it was. And yet, he loves it. 

He hadn't at first, but that was before his roommate started haunting him.

Ethan had been drawn to the store, and you'd found him overwhelmed in the back row, head in his hands. Somehow, without even meaning to, he had divulged it all to you, and you hadn't been even a little bit unnerved by the strange things he'd told you. You hadn't laughed. You hadn't suggested he was imagining things. Instead, you'd asked him what his roommate's name was, and then you'd revealed your abilities. 

You were able to see and speak to ghosts.

Ethan had laughed at first—right up until his bathroom mirror had smashed in his face and the pieces spelt out his name on the ground. After that, he was a true believer. And with his roommate crossed over, Ethan put his plans on hold to follow you. He'd offered to work in your store, which was closed more often than not with you out dealing with your ghostly companions. He'd expected it to be temporary. It wasn't.

The bookstore came with its own companions. Lydia and Delia, the couple who had owned the store before you, who had apparently decided that death was no reason to leave. It had taken Ethan a while to get used to them. It had taken them even longer to get used to him. Now he can't imagine the place without them. Even if he does wish they'd stop throwing the books they dislike at him.

Still, it's nice to have some company, even if he can't see them. Especially since he never knows exactly when you'll be in or for how long. He knows it's one of those days where you disappear for hours when you enter the shop with two coffee cups and an already apologetic smile.

His attention immediately catches on the stitches on your forehead and the white dressing covering your hand. "What happened to you?"

You shrug casually. "Ladder. Light bulb. Ghost. It was an accident." 

Ethan's brows pinch together. He reaches out, fingers catching lightly beneath your jaw in an attempt to get a better look at the cut, but you duck away before he can inspect it properly and push one of the coffees into his hand instead.

"I think I figured out who it is. Is it okay if I—?" You tilt your head towards the door.

Ethan worries his lower lip for a second. It's not the first time he's seen you hurt by a ghost, but he still doesn't like it. He knows better than most how casually you treat your injuries. If it weren't for him reminding you, you'd forget to eat during cases. "Be careful. This ghost doesn't seem too happy with you."

"This was just bad timing." You brush it off. 

He stares at you. You stare back. Eventually, you sigh. "...Fine. I'll be careful."

"Good." He nods. "Call me if there's anything."

You hum, already halfway across the store again. "Sure. Thanks!" The door slams shut behind you.

Ethan sighs and takes a sip of his coffee. He knows you can take care of yourself. It's just that the two of you have very different ideas of what that means.

He steps behind the counter again and slumps down onto the chair. A few boxes are waiting to be unpacked and placed on shelves, but they can wait until he's finished with this cup. He's got at least another hour until the first customers filter in, so he leans back and grabs his notepad. His novel won't write itself. He stares at the blank page, then writes two words. Deletes them. Takes a sip. Writes another sentence. Deletes that too. He sighs. Maybe he should've stuck with teaching.

The bell rings again, barely a minute later. 

"Forget something?" he calls out, still staring at his paper while chewing on the end of his pen.

"I don't think so."

The male voice makes him look up.

Ethan shoots to his feet, notepad clattering to the ground. "I'm so sorry. I thought you were someone else." He bends to pick it up, cheeks burning with embarrassment, before his flustered gaze meets the eyes of an older man.

Scrubs. Tired-looking. Handsome. 

The man looks around the store, almost confused, as though he's not entirely sure why he's here. Seeing that, Ethan's customer-service persona finally clicks into place. "Looking for anything special?"

The man hesitates, frowns, then shakes his head.

 "Okay. Well, we've got a bit of everything." Ethan gestures to the aisles. "Give me a shout if you need anything." He logs onto the computer to give the man some space to explore, but keeps an eye on him out of the corner of his eye.

The man wanders slowly between the shelves, fingertips occasionally brushing over the spines. He doesn't seem to be looking for anything in particular. Eventually, he stops at one of the displays and picks up a book. "How long have you had this store? Don't think I've seen it before." 

"Oh, I'm not the owner; she's out at the moment—" The light flickers above him, and he looks at it with a frown. It's not like Lydia or Delia to interrupt when there's a customer. "It's been here for about three years now."

The man nods, puts the book down, then takes a step toward one of the aisles. A book flies off the shelf next to him.

Ethan freezes. The man doesn't. His shoulders rise, tensing, but not in a way that suggests surprise. It's more like resignation. Another book flies from the shelf on the opposite side. Then another. It lands directly in front of him.

Ethan's certain now. There's a ghost attached to this man. But it's the man's reaction that unsettles him most. He barely reacts. No startled jump. No nervous laugh. No frantic glance around the room. He simply looks down at the books, bends down, picks them up and puts them back.

Ethan watches him carefully. He's seen people react to ghosts before. He knows the usual responses. Fear. Confusion. Denial. This man looks like someone who's seen this before. Before Ethan can say anything, the stranger nods at him and hurries out of the store. 

Ethan stares after him, waiting for something else to happen, but the store is quiet again. "If you're still here, I can't see you, but my friend can," he calls softly. He looks toward the aisle. "She'll be back later."

He waits for an answer, but nothing happens. No books fly out. No lights flicker. His shoulders drop a fraction. Even after years of seeing you interact with ghosts, he can't help his instinctual fear when he's alone. At least when you're around, he has an idea of what the ghost wants. On his own, he's completely clueless about their intentions.

He looks toward the door again. Who was that guy? 

Ethan wanders over, fishing out the books that had been pushed half-hazardously back between the others. His fingers brush the spines, reading the titles, then he crouches to retrieve the last one. The theme is clear, but the one that landed closest to the man says it best.

The Art of Dating.

Ethan stares at it. "Well," he mutters, putting it back on the shelf. "That's subtle."

It's close to midday when you enter the store again, but instead of this morning's excitement, there's a dull headache throbbing behind your eyes. It sits stubbornly at your temples, refusing to ease no matter how much you rub them. You're not sure if it's the lack of sleep that's finally catching up with you, the hit your head took last night, or the disappointment of your visit, but either way, you feel drained.

"Hey, how'd it go?" Ethan calls from somewhere between the shelves. He emerges a moment later, a book tucked beneath one arm, and takes one look at your face. "Bad, huh?"

You don't bother pretending otherwise. "Yeah..." You sink onto the plush chair behind the counter, letting your head fall back against it with a sigh. "I'm gonna try again tonight. Maybe I'll get a read of something."

Ethan hums, leaning his elbows against the counter. He studies you for a moment, his expression telling you he's considering arguing before apparently deciding against it. "I'll come with you."

You close your eyes and shake your head. "You don't have to."

He shrugs, completely unconcerned with your refusal. "It's good research for my book."

Your eyes open again. "Oh! How's that going? When can I read something?"

"I'm nowhere close to that," he groans, his head dropping dramatically. "I've been stuck on the same paragraph for hours now."

You blow a raspberry at him. The sound earns you a look, but you can see the corner of his mouth twitch. "Lunch then?" you suggest, sitting up slightly. "We could try that new place down the street?"

He pushes himself off the counter, already reaching for his jacket. "Yes, I'll go get it. Some fresh air might get rid of my writer's block."

You lean back again, closing your eyes once more as he heads toward the door. You hear him rummaging around for his wallet, then the soft jingle of the bell as he pulls the door open. "Oh," he calls out, the door halfway open. "Some man came in earlier with a ghost attached to him. I told it you'd be back later."

"Did you get a name?"

"No, he ran out before I could ask. He was in scrubs, though, so maybe a doctor or nurse?" He shrugs, then shuts the door behind him, leaving the store quiet again.

Scrubs?

You frown. For a second, your mind supplies the image of Dr. Abbot before you can stop it. The kind man from last night. His warm fingers against your skin as he'd examined your forehead. The crooked smile when he'd teased you about fighting someone. The flash of his wedding ring beneath the fluorescent lights.

You shake the thought away. The hospital is across the park, and you've never seen him here before. The chance of him coming into the bookstore afterwards is low. It was probably just an odd coincidence.

You let your head fall back against the chair again.

"He was real handsome, too," a warm voice croons from your right.

You don't even open your eyes. "You say that every time a man walks in here."

"I do not," Lydia protests. You crack an eye open, finding her beside one of the shelves, arms folded across her chest, looking deeply offended by the accusation. She turns her head to Delia. "Do I?"

"...You do," Delia says, wincing when Lydia turns to glare at her. "But"—she points a finger at you—"this time she is right."

You roll your eyes before closing them again. "Mm," you hum. "I'm not looking for anything." You settle deeper into the chair. "You know that."

There's a pause before Delia clears her throat gently. "Honey, maybe it's time to—"

"No," you cut her off, opening your eyes just enough to look at her. "But thanks."

You close your eyes again before she can start arguing, effectively ending the conversation. The two ghosts sigh in unison. You can hear the soft rustle of fabric as Lydia moves, followed by Delia's faint scent of roses. Then a rush of cool air brushes across your skin, signifying that they're gone.

You let out a slow breath as the bookstore settles around you again. You know they're trying to help. You know they have the best intentions. But Lydia and Delia have been together for decades, including the years after death. They've managed to find the kind of love that survived everything—life, death, and apparently even the refusal to cross over. 

You're happy for them. You really are. But sometimes, when they talk about love like it's something inevitable, something that simply arrives and stays, you can't help wondering if you're the exception.

Because you've already been given this gift. Maybe that's it for you. Maybe you're simply meant to spend your life helping other people find their way to the other side while you stay back. The thought shouldn't still bother you. You've told yourself that often enough that it shouldn't, and yet, when you do think about it a little too seriously, it aches and pulsates somewhere deep down. 

So, you try not to. And with the embers of your last relationship still burning after its fiery end, it's becoming easier to believe. Your ex, John, had made it clear how he thought you were crazy for believing in things nobody else could see. You'd loved him. That had been the worst part. You'd finally trusted him enough to open up, and that was his response. For a long time afterwards, you'd wondered whether he had been right about everything. Maybe you were too strange. Too difficult. Too much. 

You stare at the ceiling through half-lowered lashes. You don't doubt it anymore. It's easier that way. Easier to believe you're not meant for love than to risk it all again. 

You don't think you can handle it. 

Considering that you've been involved in ghost activities since you were a little girl, you should know by now that nothing is ever a coincidence when ghosts are involved. You'd seen it, following your mother around, fingers clutching her skirt as she got roped into ghostly schemes, openly parading her abilities—right up until your father had her committed when her visions took over.

You learned then and there that what she had considered a gift was best left hidden. That it wasn't everybody who understood. That, at times, it was more a burden than a gift. 

Despite having all that experience, you don't think much of it the first time you see Dr. Abbot again. You see him in the supermarket, his hand reaching for a bunch of bananas as you turn into the fruit aisle. Your eyes meet across a display of apples, and for half a second, both of you stare at each other, until recognition flickers across his face. You send him a brief, polite smile before ducking into the nearest aisle and pretending to become intensely interested in a selection of tinned tomatoes. You stay there until you're reasonably certain he's gone.

The second time could be coincidence. The third is harder to explain. By the time you see him in the park, you've stopped counting.

It's late evening, the last rays of the sunset shining across the park and through the store windows. You'd sent Ethan home earlier, telling him you'd deal with the odd technological error that had somehow deleted all your online orders and the ones you'd placed for new books. Once that is sorted, you close the shop, a little later than usual, and head home.

But rather than taking the fast way, you turn right at the park entrance, choosing the scenic—and considerably longer—route. An unexplainable feeling guides you, but you're too tired to examine it. 

You walk past friends sprawling across picnic blankets with half-finished drinks between them, couples walking hand in hand along the paths, and children chasing one another through the grass while their parents call after them. Then you hear laughter. Your attention drifts toward a group of scrub-clad people gathered beneath one of the trees, several cans of beer scattered between them. You take another step, let your gaze fall forward, and then the sight of a familiar face registers.

Your eyes snap back.

Dr. Abbot's already looking at you. His lips twitch when he sees your surprised expression, and he lifts his beer in greeting. Your mouth lifts in an unwitting smile before you can stop it, and you give him a small nod in return. A few of the people around him follow his gaze, curious eyes turning toward you. You immediately look away and hurry down the path before any of them can catch your gaze properly. You try to ignore the heat that's flaming under your skin. 

It's a coincidence, you repeat to yourself. Just a coincidence.

That assumption promptly gets thrown out when he shows up at the store. Now you're certain that something is going on. 

It's just you this time, with Ethan having been given the day off after you'd closed your last case. The death had been accidental—a slip and fall down a flight of stairs—but things had remained dramatic until the very end. Things had been thrown before your ghost was ready to listen, and the family was ready to talk. You'd been caught in the crossfire, leaving bruises scattered across your arms and a particularly ugly one blooming near your elbow.

Still, books needed to be placed on shelves and with Ethan out, you were forced to make your aching arms comply. You bend to pick up another box, already mentally calculating how many more trips you'll need to make before you can finally sit down. Maybe you should order a take-out for lunch to celebrate? 

"Do you need help?" A gruff, familiar voice says from behind you.

You huff, half amused, half annoyed. You're used to ghosts appearing without warning and asking for help at the worst possible moments, so you don't bother turning around immediately. "And how would you do that?"

Warm fingers brush against yours as he takes the box from you. "I may be older than you, but I'm not decrepit."

You gasp, your eyes snapping up to meet Dr. Abbot's warm, teasing hazel gaze. For a second, you're too surprised to say anything. "I'm so sorry, I thought you—" You shake your head and gesture toward the cart. "Never mind. You can just put that there. Thank you."

Your gaze follows the box as he sets it down, lingering despite yourself on the way his arms barely strain beneath the weight of the heavy books you'd struggled to lift just moments earlier. Without a word, he picks up the remaining boxes and sets them down beside the first.

You stare at him. He glances at you. "What?"

You smile awkwardly. "Nothing."

When he turns back, his eyes fall down the length of your arms. They narrow slightly.

You snatch the cardigan you'd abandoned on the counter when you'd gotten hot earlier and tug it on, trying to make the gesture look casual. "So, what can I help you with?"

He frowns, but decides to leave it alone as his gaze turns to the aisles. "One of our med students just landed a residency, and I offered to get the gift for her."

"And you have no idea what to get her?" you ask.

"Yeah." He grins sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

You step out from behind the counter, your arm brushing against his. The contact is brief, barely anything; still, heat sparks through the fabric. You ignore it. "Do you know what she likes?"

"Uh... She's big on social media and very into astrology." 

"Ah." You nod, moving with certainty to the cart. You grab a box cutter, slice through the tape, and fish out a book from the box. "Get her this. It's been sold out for months, and I just got it back in stock." 

You hold out a book with astrological signs circling the cover. He takes it, turning it over once in his hands. "You're lucky you came in now. I was gonna update our socials after I'd finished shelving the books. They'd probably be gone in a few hours."

He hums as he follows you back to the counter, scanning his card without glancing at the price. "Guess my intuition proved me right."

Your fingers pause against the wrapping paper, glancing up at him. "Intuition?"

"Yeah." He rubs the back of his neck again. "I don't really believe in it, but I was here a few weeks ago, and I just had this feeling that I would find what I was looking for here."

Your fingers still for the briefest second before finishing the bow. When you look up at him, he's watching you with an expression you can't quite read.

"I see." You put the book into a bag and hand it over to him, forcing a smile onto your face. "Guess you were right."

He nods. For a moment, neither of you moves. He hesitates, swallowing down whatever he was about to say before settling on a soft, "See you around?"

You nod, smiling. "I'll be here." 

He smiles back, lifting a hand in an awkward little wave before turning toward the door. The bell gives its familiar little chime as the door swings shut behind him. The grin on your face falls the second you can no longer see him through the windows.

He's the scrub-clad man Ethan told you about, and after all these encounters, you're forced to admit that his ghost has proved more persistent than you thought. You're just not sure what it wants.

"Handsome, right?" Lydia grins as she appears beside you.

You roll your eyes and move to roll the cart toward the shelves.

"Oh, ignore me all you want, sweetheart. You have a tell."

"I do not." You turn to glare at her.

Her smile widens as she shrugs. "If you say so." She disappears before you can argue.

A second later, Delia appears in her place, softer around the edges. She winks at you before following Lydia's path through the shelves.

Ghosts.

It's early morning when you settle onto your usual bench in the park, thermocup warming your hands as the last rays of the sunrise fade over the horizon. The air still carries the faint chill of the night, drops of dew clinging to the blades of grass. 

You take a slow sip and lean back against the bench. It's been a nice couple of days—ghost-free and able to fully focus on the store without somebody dead demanding your attention.

A blur materialises out of the corner of your eye. It was too good to be true, you suppose. 

You sigh lightly, then turn to face it. "Hi."

A woman blinks at you. Water drips steadily from her clothes, darkening the fabric around her shoulders. Her hair hangs in wet strands around her face, and she looks incredibly confused. "Where am I?"

"What's your name?" you ask her instead.

"I—I'm—" She spins around, sending droplets of water in every direction. You cover yourself instinctively, even though none of it can actually touch you. "What's going on?"

"Hey, it's okay. I can help you."

She frowns. Her mouth pulls into a tight line, but just as her shoulders begin to loosen, a figure steps straight through her. She disappears immediately.

You bite back a groan. You were just about to reach her.

"Sorry..." A low voice pulls your attention away. "I didn't mean to interrupt, but... are you okay?"

You glance up to find Dr. Abbot standing a few feet away, one hand half-raised like he wasn't sure whether he should approach. Of course.

You look toward the empty space where the woman had been. "Sorry. Just a second." You hold up a finger to him and turn your head slightly, pretending to listen to something only you can hear. "I gotta go. Yeah... Bye."

You turn back to him and pull out your headphones, feigning confusion. "Sorry, what were you saying?"

He studies you for a second longer than feels comfortable. His eyes move briefly to your hand, then back to your face. "Nothing. Sorry."

You smile awkwardly at him, thanking your past self for the foresight. 

Dr. Abbot leans slightly to his left, an expression of pain flickering across his face, and before you can talk yourself out of it, you gesture to the space beside you. "Do you wanna sit?"

He hesitates, glancing toward the empty stretch of bench before lowering himself onto it, leaving a polite gap between you. Silence falls for a second before he speaks. "My resident loved the book."

Your face brightens. "Really?"

"Oh yeah," he says, his mouth curling slightly. "I'm apparently her favourite attending now." He nods in your direction. "All thanks to you." 

"You're welcome!" You grin. "Next time you need a recommendation, you know where to find me." You take another sip of your coffee. "Is she the reason our page is popping off?"

He hums. "She did say something about posting it on her TikTok..."

You smile at the unsure grimace on his face. Clearly, he's not an avid user of the platform. "Give her my thanks, then. The store's been buzzing the last few days. The coffee corner's been packed since."

"Oh, you have coffee now?"

"Yeah! New addition. Ethan thought it would be good."

"Coffee's any good?"

You shrug. "Depends who's asking."

His mouth curls. "I am."

"Then I'll say yes."

He huffs a laugh.

Silence falls between you again, but this time it's more comfortable. You find yourself noticing that with him, silence doesn't seem to demand anything. You don't have to fill it, and neither does he. He just sits beside you, looking out across the park.

You lift the crinkly paper bag beside you and take out a croissant. You break it in two and hold out one half to him. He looks from the pastry to your face, as though checking whether you're serious.

You nod. "Take it."

The corner of his mouth lifts before he accepts it. His wedding ring catches the morning light as he does. The reminder sends a quiet swoop through your stomach, though you're unsure why. 

You take a sip. "Feel free to bring your wife with you," you add. "We get lots of couples coming in."

"Oh..." His expression changes almost imperceptibly as his eyes drop to his hand. His thumb brushes over the edge of his wedding ring. "She passed away a few years ago."

The words are simple. There isn't a dramatic pause afterwards, no visible struggle to say them. Just a quiet fact placed between you. It explains the weird feeling you've gotten each time you've seen his ring—you must've picked up on it subconsciously.

"I'm sorry."

He shakes his head. "Don't be."

You glance at him.

He looks down at the croissant in his hand, turning it slightly between his fingers. "I was lucky to have her."

You smile softly. It's clear from his voice just how much he loved her. "She must've been special."

His own smile appears, small but genuine. It's still wider than any you've seen from him so far. "She was."

You've seen enough death to know there's no right thing to say afterwards. Sometimes people want sympathy. Sometimes they want to talk. Sometimes they just want someone to acknowledge that it happened and then let them breathe. So you don't try to fix it. You just sit beside him.

After a moment, Dr. Abbot takes another bite of his croissant and changes the subject. "So, was it always in your plans to own a bookstore?"

You breathe out. "No, I actually stumbled on it a few years ago." 

You don't tell him about Lydia and Delia making life hell for the new owners, or how their refusal to move on had eventually led to the place being sold to you for barely a dime. Instead, you tell him, "I've always loved books. So, it just felt right to share that love with others."

He hums, smiling slightly. "That makes sense."

"What about you? Did you always want to be a doctor?"

"Couldn't afford college, so I joined the army. Lost my leg." He pats his right leg, but doesn't make more of it. So you don't either. "Then after that, I entered emergency medicine. And that was that."

You glance at him. "That was that?"

He shrugs. "Seemed like a reasonable way to spend the rest of my life."

You snort. "Most people would say they wanted to help people."

"Well, I try to keep the inspirational speeches to a minimum." 

You laugh. The conversation drifts again. It's strangely easy. You talk some more about the bookstore. He tells you about some of the residents who have passed through the ER, right until a yawn interrupts his words. 

You fight back a smile. "I'd better get going," you say, standing and brushing pastry flakes from your jeans. "The store's not going to open itself." Well... it might. But the last time Lydia and Delia tried, it hadn't ended particularly well.

Dr. Abbot's eyes flick briefly to the fading bruises on your forearms before meeting yours again.  He opens his mouth, hesitates, then simply says, "Take care of yourself."

You smile. "I usually do."

"Thanks again for the book recommendation."

"Anytime," you say, smiling at him. You give him a small wave before turning towards the path. 

The tension in Jack's shoulders eases the second he steps into Cordelia's and is met by the familiar smell of paper, ink and coffee. The bell chimes softly above him as he swipes his wet feet at the mat. 

"Oh no, poor you." You emerge from the back, taking in how the rain clings to his hair. 

He waves his hand. "It's not that bad. Just a light—" A loud boom of thunder interrupts him, followed by rain pelting hard against the windows, "—drizzle. Huh." He leans slightly to his left, trying to place more weight on his good leg, but even that one is hurting today. 

He can feel your gaze on him, so he turns back to you with a charming little smile in place, trying his best to avoid letting you know how bad it is. 

"Go sit." You nod towards the armchair, an air of resolution over you as you head for the coffee machine. Somehow, you see right through him every time. 

Jack doesn't have the energy to argue. He settles into the armchair, propping his leg on the ottoman that appeared after his second long visit. He's not sure when it became tradition for him to show up after shift. It just did.

You're not even open yet, so most mornings you sit with him. Sometimes you talk. Sometimes you don't. It's nice. You've become an unlikely friend, someone who he looks forward to seeing after shift. It certainly beats going home to an empty apartment. Somewhere along the way, Cordelia's had become part of his routine.

"Here." You reach over, bringing him his cup. He lets his hands warm against the porcelain before taking a long sip. 

"You've done it again," he breathes out. "You really are magic."

You shake your head. "I thought we agreed not to call me that."

"You agreed. I didn't." He shrugs. "You always find the best books and, somehow, make this coffee taste good. Magic."

"Uh-huh." You roll your eyes, heading back towards the counter with your own mug. Jack rests his head against the chair, letting the quiet rustle of the bookstore and the sound of rain wash away the beeps and shouting voices still ringing in his ears.

His eyes follow you as you lift a box up onto the counter. "What'd you got there?"

You grin widely. "One of our customers left us a few boxes of vintage books." You slice cleanly through the tape. "I mean, look at this." You pull out a gorgeous green-covered book, holding it carefully in both hands, your entire face lighting up.

Jack can't help the little smile that tugs at his lips. You're cute when you're excited. He looks away before you can catch him staring, spinning his ring around. He's not sure where that thought came from.

"It's beautiful," you say, running your thumb carefully along the spine. "Look at the binding."

The bell rings again as Ethan drags himself in through the door, shaking his umbrella and leaving it at the entrance. He waves to Jack before immediately slumping down behind the counter with a yawn.

"You look like a wet rat," you tell him.

"Oh, thank you." Jack hears the offended tone in Ethan's voice as he stands up, shaking his wet sleeve at you. 

"Hey!" 

Jack chuckles quietly to himself as the two of you begin bickering.

"What's all this?" Ethan asks, finally noticing the box. A low whistle escapes him. "This might be worth a pretty penny."

Jack watches the two of you fall into your familiar rhythm. You inspect every book before Ethan checks the condition. You argue over whether certain editions should be sold or kept. Ethan reads out the occasional title with a laugh. You keep nudging books toward him for him to look at.

Jack mostly stays quiet. He doesn't mind. That's one of the things he likes about the store. He doesn't have to perform here. He can sit with his coffee and listen to the two of you bicker about books while the morning slowly settles around him.

His gaze drifts back toward you. Your hands are scratched. Again. He notices immediately. Fresh little cuts cross your fingers and knuckles, some still pink around the edges.

At first, he worried someone was hurting you. Ethan had been the obvious possibility, if only because he was the person Jack saw you with most often. But a little careful observation—and a few questions asked in the casual way only a doctor can manage—put that suspicion to rest.

You trust Ethan. Completely. There is nothing between you that suggests otherwise.

So now he's left with another question. What's happening to you? He doesn't like the thought. You've always been a little accident-prone. He knows that much. There was the initial fall from the ladder. The bruises. The scrapes. And now this. He could ask. He should probably ask. But he doesn't. Not yet. You aren't his patient. You aren't even—

He doesn't finish the thought.

Instead, he takes another drink of coffee and watches you laugh at something Ethan says. You're both leaning over the same box, shoulders nearly touching. For some reason, he finds himself smiling again.

Then you pick up another book. It's blue, covered in tiny butterflies. "Oh, this is so pre—"

You stop. Completely. The change is so sudden that Jack sits up. Your fingers remain frozen against the open page. Your eyes stare somewhere beyond the book.

"Magic?" He says it lightly at first, his eyes roaming over your frozen figure. You don't respond.

Ethan notices at exactly the same moment, but unlike Jack, he doesn't move toward you. Ethan moves toward him, stepping directly into his line of sight, and blocking you from view. "You want another cup?"

Jack frowns. "I—" He leans sideways.

Ethan shifts with him. He tries the other way. Ethan follows.

"What are you doing?"

Ethan's face is neutral, but the tightening around his eyes reveals his true position. He doesn't want Jack to see you for some reason. "Offering you coffee."

Jack looks down at his still half-full cup, his frown deepening. He shifts forward, planting his good foot firmly on the floor. Ethan still doesn't move. Jack pushes himself upright, his prosthetic taking an extra second to cooperate. By the time he's standing, Ethan has finally stepped aside.

And it's like nothing happened. You're fine. You're flicking through another book with the same casualness as before. Jack stares. "Hey, you okay?"

A smile immediately settles over your face. "Yeah." It arrives too quickly, too smoothly.

He doesn't believe you. You know he doesn't. For a second, something passes between you. A silent acknowledgement that whatever just happened, you both know it did.

Ethan clears his throat. "So, coffee?"

Jack looks at him, then back at you. "I—no. I should head home."

You frown. "So soon?"

He pauses. 

Your expression changes the second you realise what you've said. "Sorry, go on. You're tired," you add quickly. "You should sleep."

He smiles faintly. "Yeah." He looks at you for another second. "See you tomorrow, Magic."

You roll your eyes, waving him off.

The bell jingles softly behind him. Outside, out of sight from the store windows, he pauses on the pavement. He barely takes notice of the rain, his mind busy running through everything he's seen. Bruises. Scratches. Lethargy. Disassociation. The way you froze just now. His thoughts begin sorting possibilities automatically.

Anemia. Thrombocytopenia. Something autoimmune.

He discards some almost immediately. Others linger. His stomach twists. He knows better than to diagnose someone from a handful of observations. He knows better than to let his mind run ahead of the evidence. But his brain doesn't care. It keeps circling back.

Cancer.

He closes his eyes for a moment. Not again.

You've only seen Jack once this week, a significant enough break in your routine that you find yourself thinking about him all the time. You catch yourself wondering whether he heads straight to bed instead of coming to the store, whether he's been working more shifts, whether he's okay.

You'd made Ethan leave him a note after you'd missed two mornings in a row. Somehow, the two of you have never exchanged numbers, so you don't even know he's seen it. Maybe he hasn't even come by, and you've been worrying for nothing. He's a busy man, after all. 

You hope he doesn't think you're avoiding him. The last time he came by, you could see the questions swimming in his eyes. Questions you had elegantly sidestepped, but the doubt was still in his posture when he left. 

You're just not sure what to tell him. Oh, that? That was just a vision. I get those sometimes—ghosts like to talk to me through them. What? Yeah, I talk to ghosts. It's no big deal.

He'd think you were crazy. 

And you're genuinely busy. The vision from the blue book has led you through one dead end after another, the child ghost attached to it proving considerably harder to cross over than usual. Every time you think you're getting close, something changes. A new location. A new clue. Another fragment of a memory that sends you in the wrong direction.

So the bookstore has been running mostly without you. Ethan has taken care of most of the day-to-day things, with you dropping in whenever you can. Long enough to check the register. Long enough to unpack a few boxes. Long enough to make sure Lydia and Delia haven't started another argument over which section needs reorganising. Then you're gone again.

You push through the bookstore door late in the afternoon, the bell giving its familiar little chime above your head.

Ethan looks up from behind the counter, his eyes trailing over you. "You look awful."

You drop your bag onto the counter. "Gee, thanks."

"You know what I mean." He closes the book in front of him and crosses his arms. "You look exhausted. Have you been sleeping?"

You shrug, already heading toward the boxes stacked in the back. "I'll sleep after."

"After what?"

You crouch beside one of the boxes and start digging through it. "After."

"There's no after with you." His brows pinch together. "You can't help anyone if you're not taking care of yourself."

You ignore him, pushing aside a stack of paperbacks. "You sound like my dad."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It wasn't."

"Still taking it."

You finally find what you're looking for. The blue book. You pull it free and hold it against your chest. You stand again and turn toward the door. "I'll see you later, okay? Close the store early if you want."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Your hand closes around the door handle. "I'm sorry for leaving it all to you. I'll make it up to you."

He waves you off. "You know, I don't mind... Jack's been asking for you."

So he has been by. Not directly after shift, because Ethan doesn't open that early. He's taken time out of his day to actually come by, disturbing the little sleep he gets. You stop, the bell above you giving a tiny jingle as the door shifts beneath your hand. "What did you say?"

"That you were busy." He leans back on the counter. "He's worried about you."

You swallow. "Well, tell him I'm fine."

Ethan's eyebrows lift. "That's it?"

"What else am I supposed to say?"

"Maybe ask why he's been asking about you."

You give him a flat look. A faint thump comes from somewhere behind the shelves. Ethan's eyes flick toward the sound, but you keep yours straight ahead. 

"Tell him I'm fine."

"You could tell him yourself, you know."

You pause. For one brief, stupid second, you're tempted. The temptation is sharper than it should be. You could stop by the store one morning, let this ghost wait a little longer, but the wide-eyed, fearful gaze of your ghost reminds you that this is a little more important.

Jack can wait. Besides, it's not like the two of you really are anything to each other. He knows what you like to eat at breakfast, the books you prefer to read, and how your mother died when you were young. You know how he likes his coffee, the way he walks when he's trying to hide how his leg is hurting, and the passing of his wife. He'd even told you how his mother passed just a few years later and how he hadn't coped well with it.

Normal things. Things friends know about each other. Nothing that meant anything. 

You push it down. "I'll see you later, okay?"

Ethan watches the door swing shut and sighs. Delia and Lydia join him from their hiding spot behind the shelves. 

It's yet another early morning when Jack heads toward Cordelia's. He's stopped telling himself he's only going for the coffee by now. At first, it had been an easy excuse. He liked the place, the coffee, the books, and the quiet.

And, admittedly, he liked seeing you. He liked the way you made the silence feel comfortable. He liked that you noticed when his leg hurt even when he tried to hide it. He liked that you never made a big deal out of it.

That last part had been easier to ignore when you were actually there.

Now it's been over a week since he last saw you. Still, every morning after a shift, he finds himself turning down the same street, parking in the same spot, and walking toward the same little bookstore with the faint hope that this will finally be the morning he catches you. His hope grows when he sees the lights are on, which normally doesn't happen this early unless you're in.

Ethan looks up when the bell rings. His smile is polite, almost apologetic. "Morning."

Jack steps farther inside, letting the door swing shut behind him. He tries not to let the disappointment show on his face. Ethan is fiddling with something in the middle of the store, adjusting one of the little displays.

Jack leans against the counter, watching him for a moment. He doesn't bother pretending he's here for a book. He stopped doing that after the first two times. "...You talk to her?"

Ethan glances over. "Yeah, she came in yesterday."

Jack's shoulders ease slightly. "And how was she?"

"Fine." The answer comes too quickly. Ethan turns back toward the display.

Jack watches him. "Fine?"

"Yeah."

Jack nods slowly. Something about it doesn't sit right. He's seen you. Not properly, but he's caught glimpses. Once through the hospital window when you'd been crossing the street. Another time when he'd been driving past the bookstore and spotted you leaving through the side entrance.

You'd looked different. Paler. Thinner. Tired. He'd wanted to ask if you were okay, but each time he'd tried to get your attention, you'd climbed into your car and driven away before he could reach you. He'd told himself you were busy. Then he'd told himself you were avoiding him. That thought had bothered him more than it should have. Then he'd wracked his mind for a reason but ultimately landed on none.

"Is she sick?"

"What?" Ethan's head turns sharply.

"Is she sick?" Jack repeats. The words sound worse spoken aloud. "I've been seeing her around. She doesn't look well."

Ethan's expression shifts.

Jack's stomach drops. "She is sick."

"...No."

Jack catches the hesitation immediately. "Then what?"

Ethan looks away.

Jack's pulse starts beating harder. "She's been exhausted. She's lost weight."

"She's busy."

"She looks pale."

"She's been busy."

"She keeps leaving before I can talk to her."

Ethan sighs. "Jack—"

Jack watches his face. He's a doctor. He knows what people look like when they're trying not to tell you something. He knows what hesitation means. His mind starts filling in the blanks before he can stop it. Bloodwork. Imaging. Specialists. Treatment. His stomach twists. He pushes away from the counter. "Please."

Ethan finally looks at him.

"I'm a doctor. I can help."

"You can't."

"Please."

Ethan's expression softens.

Jack swallows. "If it's money, I'll take care of it." The words come out before he can think better of them.

Ethan blinks. "Jack—"

"I mean it." His voice is quieter now. "I'll pay for whatever she needs. Tests. Treatment. Whatever."

He doesn't explain why. The memory is already there in his mind. A hospital room. A diagnosis he'd wanted to believe wasn't serious. A woman he loved telling him she was fine when she wasn't. All the little things he'd missed. The things he should have noticed. The things he should have done differently. He'd promised himself he'd never make that mistake again. Not with someone he cared about.

Ethan stares at him, then shakes his head. "...She's not sick."

"Then what?"

Ethan bites his lip. For a moment, Jack thinks he's going to tell him. Instead, Ethan looks down at the display. "That's not for me to say."

Jack's jaw tightens. "Ethan."

"I'm sorry."

"Please."

"I can't."

Jack stares at him. There is something desperate in his own voice now, but he doesn't really care. "You know something."

Ethan doesn't answer.

"You know what's wrong with her."

"I know she's dealing with something."

"Then tell me."

"I can't."

Jack exhales sharply. His hand curls against the edge of the counter. "She doesn't have to know I'm asking."

"Jack."

"She doesn't even have to know I can help."

Ethan shakes his head. "It's not my secret."

Jack looks away. For a moment, the anger drains out of him, leaving only exhaustion. Right. Of course. He can't demand this. You aren't his patient. You're not his responsibility. You're—

He doesn't know what you are to him. He grabs his keys from his pocket. "Okay."

"I'm sorry."

Jack nods once. "Yeah." He turns toward the door. 

"Jack?"

He pauses.

Ethan's voice is gentler now. "She's okay."

Jack looks back.

Ethan gives him a small, reassuring smile. "She'll be okay."

Jack searches his face. He wants to believe him. He wants to believe him more than anything. "Right." He steps outside, the door closing behind him.

He stands on the pavement for a moment, staring at the bookstore window. His chest feels tight. He should go home. Sleep. Forget about it until tomorrow.

He thinks about the first time you'd met. The stupid heart-covered pyjama pants. The cut on your forehead. The way you'd laughed at his terrible jokes. The coffee you'd started making exactly the way he liked it. The bench in the park. The croissant you'd split with him. The way you'd listened when he'd talked about Rachel without making him feel like he was saying too much. The fact that he'd noticed your absence almost immediately when you stopped coming around.

He'd told himself it was because he'd grown used to seeing you. That was all. Just routine. Except now he has to admit how much he misses you.

Jack exhales slowly. Because whatever you're dealing with, you're dealing with it alone. And for reasons he's not ready to examine, Jack really, really doesn't like that.

You feel like you're losing your mind. 

Your ghost won't leave you alone. She's there when you wake, when you eat, when you try to work. Barely a second passes without seeing her somewhere in the corner of your eye, hovering close enough that you can hear the quiet hitch of her breathing. When you try to sleep, she cries because she's scared. When you're at the bookstore, she cries because she's scared of Lydia and Delia. When you tell her to stay away from the shelves, she cries. When you tell her you'll help her, she cries harder.

For your own sake, you need to cross her over. Soon.

But it's not proving easy. She doesn't remember anything. Not where she lived. Not how she died. Not even where her mother is. You know exactly one thing about her. Her name is Poppy. That's it.

You've tracked down the customer who left the blue book behind, hoping there might be some clue in where they'd bought it or who had owned it before them. Nothing. You've searched. You've asked questions. You've followed every lead Poppy has given you. Every single one has ended nowhere. You're completely lost. 

One lead keeps bringing you back to the same place, though. An old house on the edge of town, where you've felt the presence of more spirits than you can count. Not the lost, confused ghosts you're used to. These are different. Angry. Territorial. The kind that makes the air feel heavy before you even cross the property line.

The first time you went near the house, something had whispered your name from inside before you'd even reached the door. You hadn't gone back alone since. You're not sure what Poppy's connection is to these spirits, but she always seems more frightened after you've been near the house. You haven't been able to figure out what they want from her.

So, trying to change your surroundings in the hopes that it might clear something up, you head to the park. You sit on your usual bench, which you haven't done in a long time, with a thermocup warming your hands. For once, there's no one around. No customers. No Ethan. No Lydia or Delia. No Jack. Just you.

And Poppy sitting cross-legged in the grass a few feet away.

"I miss my mommy," she whispers.

Your eyes close. "I know."

"She'll find me, right?"

You swallow. You don't know. "Try to see if you can remember something."

Poppy looks at you. "I'm trying." Her voice is louder this time.

"I know." You keep your voice gentle, trying to soothe her. "But—"

"You're just trying to get rid of me," she accuses.

"What?"

She stands. "You don't want me here."

"Poppy—"

"You don't want me!"

You lift a hand. "I want to help you."

"You want me gone. Just like they said." 

The words catch somewhere in your mind. They? But Poppy is crying again before you can ask.

"You need to cross over," you say, more firmly now. "This isn't where you're supposed to be."

Her face crumples. "You don't want me," she cries louder. "I want my mommy."

"I am trying to find your mommy."

"I want her!" Her voice rises.

You wince. "Poppy—"

"I want my mommy!"

The sound tears through you. You press your fingers against your temples. "Stop."

She freezes.

You breathe hard. "Just stop. I can't take it anymore."

Poppy's lower lip trembles. "You don't want me."

The anger drains out of you immediately. You rub a hand over your face. "Wait. Poppy, I didn't mean it like that."

She's already disappearing.

"Fuck." You stare at the empty patch of grass, your chest rising quickly. You don't notice the footsteps approaching until a familiar voice speaks beside you.

"Hey."

You look up. Jack. He's standing a few feet away, concern written plainly across his face. Of course. Of course he's here now.

You wipe quickly beneath your eyes. "It isn't what it looks like."

Jack's eyebrows lift. "No?" He gestures toward the empty grass. "Then what is it?"

You stare at him. Your heart starts pounding. You can't do this. Not with him. Not after everything. You remember Ethan's words. He's not like John. You swallow. "I—"

This is much harder than when you meet the family members or friends of ghosts. You can show them proof—hand them something that assures them you aren't crazy. You can't do that with Jack. He might have a ghost attached, but his mother hasn't tried to reach out to you in weeks. You haven't seen or spoken to her. You have nothing that will convince him.

Jack doesn't interrupt. He simply sits down beside you, leaving enough space between you that you don't feel trapped.

You fiddle with your fingers. He waits patiently. Maybe Ethan was right. Maybe Jack isn't like John. "This is gonna sound crazy."

"Okay."

You glance at him. His expression doesn't change, but he reaches over, placing his hand on top of yours.

With another deep breath, you finally say, "I can see ghosts." The words sound ridiculous the second they're out. You stare at your intertwined hands and wait for him to pull away. He doesn't.

When Jack doesn't say anything, you look over at him. He's watching you. His eyes are kind and curious. Not horrified or pitying like you suspected.

"I've always been able to," you continue quietly. "I help them cross over. Go into the light. Like my mom." You swallow. "Do you believe me?"

Jack nods. "I do."

The relief that moves through you is almost painful. You let out a breath you didn't realise you'd been holding. He doesn't ask for proof. Doesn't ask you to demonstrate. Doesn't ask whether you're sure. His thumb brushes over your palm, then he looks at you again.

"Would you be willing to come to the hospital with me?"

The relief stutters in your chest. "Why?"

The warmth in his voice remains, but concern slips into it. "You're thinner than when I met you. You show up with random bruises and scratches."

Your stomach sinks.

"You're tired. You freeze up sometimes, and just now you were talking to the air."

Your other hand curls around the thermocup, holding it tightly. You stare at him, tears welling up.

He squeezes your hand. "I want you to get checked out."

It's like it all processes at once, the air in your chest rushing out of you. "You think I'm crazy."

"No." He shakes his head immediately. "I think you're sick, sweetheart."

The words hit harder than they should. For a second, you're back somewhere else. Not the park. Not Pittsburgh. Years ago. John sitting across from you. A much different expression but that same certainty. You're imagining things. You're crazy. You're just like your mom.

And now Jack—

Jack, who you'd thought was different. Jack, who had listened. Jack, who had made you feel normal. Jack, who has a ghost attached to him and has seen strange things happening around him. Who acts like it isn't unusual—

He doesn't believe you. He thinks you're sick.

You shake your head. "I'm not."

"Honey—"

"I'm not." You stand so quickly your coffee nearly spills.

Jack rises with you.

"I'm not sick."

His brow furrows. "I'm worried about you."

"No." You shake your head. "You're worried because you think there's something wrong with me."

"There could be." His voice is gentle, which somehow makes it all worse.

"I don't understand. You should know better than anyone that I'm not crazy. You've experienced things you can't explain—I know it."

Jack goes still.

Your eyes burn. "I know what I'm seeing."

He takes a small step forward. "I believe that you believe you're seeing—"

You flinch and move backwards. "Don't."

Jack's face changes. He realises too late what the words sound like. "That's not what I meant."

"I'm not sick." A tear slips down your cheek. You wipe it away angrily.

Jack's expression twists. "Magic—"

"Don't call me that." You look at him through teary lashes. "I thought you were different."

His face falls.

For a moment, neither of you speaks, then you turn away. "I need to go."

"Please." His voice is suddenly unsteady.

You shake your head. "I can't do this. Don't come to the store again."

His expression breaks, and his lips form your name, but nothing comes out.  You turn around. You don't wait for him to say anything else. You walk away, and for once, you don't look back.

You hole up in your apartment after that day. Steer clear of anything that could lead to a ghost finding you. You don't go to the park anymore. Jack doesn't come to the store. Ethan checks in every day, but you keep your replies short and insist you're fine. He eventually decided to stop asking, but you feel his eyes following you in the store constantly.

Poppy also doesn't show herself again. Part of you is relieved, another part of you worries that you've made things worse. You don't have the energy to figure out which feeling is winning.

You're sprawled across the couch sometime after midnight when the crackling starts. The sound grows louder. Your hands fly to your ears. It doesn't help. The static crawls through your skull, sharp and distorted. Your vision blurs at the edges. You squeeze your eyes shut. The crackling rises. Louder. Louder. Then—

It quiets.

You slowly open your eyes. A woman is standing in front of you. She's watching you carefully. You stare back.

"Can you see me?"

You let your hands fall into your lap. "...Yes."

Her eyes widen as her face lights up. "Finally!"

That's not the usual reaction you get from ghosts.

She grins. "You have no idea how long I've been trying."

You blink as the pieces connect. "You're Jack's ghost, aren't you?"

Her smile wavers a bit. "Yes."

His mother looks younger than you expected, with kind eyes and an expression that's almost painfully patient. Frail. It's the lack of hair that surprises you most—her head is entirely bald.

"Is he okay?" The question comes out before you can stop it, even as your stomach twists.

Her smile returns, softer this time. "All things considered, yes."

You look away. "Good."

"He's worried about you." 

You stand immediately, turning toward the kitchen. "I mean no disrespect—I know, he's your son—but I don't really care."

A burst of laughter follows you. You turn around slowly.

The woman is laughing so hard she's doubled over. She wipes beneath one eye. "Oh, no, I'm not his mother."

You frown. "Then who are you?"

She straightens. "I'm his wife." Rachel.

The words move through you strangely, hollow and sharp at the same time. "Oh." You make it three steps. "Wait." You look over your shoulder. "It's been you this entire time?"

Rachel appears next to you in the kitchen. "Yes."

You exhale slowly. "You've been here for a long time, then."

She hears the question behind it. "I can't leave yet." Her expression softens. "Not until he lets his guilt go."

You turn to her fully. "Guilt?"

She sighs. "He blames himself for my death."

You lean against the kitchen counter. "Why?"

"By the time we found the cancer, it was too late. Jack thought he should have seen it as a doctor, but—" She looks down at her hands.

No one could have known. Sometimes life is cruel like that. You know that better than most. Sometimes people die. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. Sometimes the world simply decides that someone isn't getting another day.

You fill the kettle. "So you want me to help him?"

"Yes..." She hesitates.

You narrow your eyes at her. "What else?"

Rachel gives you an innocent smile. "Well... We thought maybe you could help each other."

You stop filling the kettle. "We?"

"Us ghosts."

You stare at her.

"We talk."

"You talk."

"Yes."

"About me?"

"Sometimes."

Your eyes close. "Wonderful."

"I followed Jack into the park one morning and met Lydia and Delia. They told me about you. We thought you might understand each other."

You stare at her, then the realisation hits you. Your mouth falls open. "What?"

Rachel's expression turns sheepish. "We thought..."

"You thought what?"

She doesn't answer.

"You guys thought you could set us up?"

She has the decency to look embarrassed. "I—well..."

"I can't believe this. This is insane."

"We didn't mean to hurt you."

"You're his wife! Why are you involved in this?"

"His dead wife!" she counters, voice rising slightly. "He deserves more than this. He deserves to be loved. I want that for him. I want him to be with someone who understands him—and you do. You get it. You know what death does to a person. You understand what it means to carry someone with you even after they're gone. And he'll understand you if you just let him. If you give him another chance—"

Your voice is hoarse as you cut her off. "Please, get out."

Rachel looks panicked. "Please, we didn't mean—"

"Get. Out." You tell her, pointing toward the door. "I won't ask again."

She looks at you for a long moment, then she nods. "I'm sorry."

She disappears without another sound. For several seconds, you don't move, not until the kettle pings. You blink back tears, cursing out Delia and Lydia in your mind.

Maybe they'll be able to hear you. You hope so.

Weeks later, the bookstore has been quiet. Not just quiet in the ordinary sense. Quiet in the supernatural sense. No books flying from shelves. No lights flickering. No crackling static in the middle of the day. No Lydia appearing beside you with unsolicited advice. No Delia whispering things you absolutely didn't ask to hear. After your last conversation with Rachel, you'd made your feelings very clear to everyone involved. Apparently, they'd listened. For once.

Ethan is behind the counter when you emerge from the back room. He looks up, then does a double-take. "You look pretty."

You glance down at yourself. You've traded your usual jeans and cardigan for a dress, slipped into a pair of heels, and touched up your makeup. You put in one earring. "Thanks."

Ethan continues staring. "Got a hot date or something?"

"Yeah."

He straightens, the teasing tone disappearing from his voice. "What?"

You laugh. "Yeah."

"Really?"

"Is it that unbelievable?"

"No," he hurries to say. "I just thought..."

You pause. "What?"

"Nothing."

"No, tell me."

He sighs. "I thought you were in love with Jack."

Your fingers still around the clasp of your earring. For half a second, you don't say anything, then you scoff. "I was never in love with Jack." 

Ethan raises an eyebrow.

"We were friends." You grab your purse from the counter. "And now we aren't." You check that you've got your phone, wallet, and keys. "End of story." 

There is also some stubborn part of you that wants to prove to Rachel, Lydia and Delia, and every other ghost who'd decided they knew better, wrong. You and Jack don't fit together. Whatever they thought they'd seen between you was wrong. 

"Right, sure." His tone is carefully neutral. "So, where are you going?"

"Uh… that restaurant that serves that pasta dish you like—Angelo's!"

"Damn, I'm jealous." He shakes his head. "Where you'd meet this guy?"

"Hinge."

Ethan makes a face as he fiddles with a piece of paper. "I thought you were over dating."

"Boyfriends," you correct.

"There's a difference?"

"Obviously." You check yourself in the reflection of the darkened window. "A boyfriend gets to know everything."

"Everything?"

You shrug. "About me."

Ethan watches you.

You adjust one of your earrings. "A date doesn't. We can just have fun and let it be that."

"If you say so," he replies.

"You're the one always telling me to get laid."

"I didn't mean this."

You give him a warning look.

He raises both hands. "Fine. Have fun. I'm a phone call away if anything happens."

You send him a small smile and sling your purse over your shoulder. "Got it. You have my location. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, tomorrow."

Your dating attempts all go down the drain. Every single one. Even if it starts promisingly enough.

The first guy is named Daniel. He's handsome in an unassuming sort of way, with dark curls, a charming smile, and the kind of manners that make you able to imagine going home with him. He holds the restaurant door open for you. He compliments your dress without making it sound like he's expecting anything in return. He even listens when you talk.

You make it through appetisers without incident, then the wine glass beside his hand tips over. It spreads over his shirt, soaking into the fabric. You don't suspect that it was anything but clumsiness until the dessert, and his plate shoots sideways, landing straight in the lap of the woman sitting at the next table.

You don't see anyone, but you know exactly who did it.

You haven't forgotten what happened by the second date, but after forty spectacle-free minutes, you've relaxed. It's pleasant. There's no sparks flying, but you don't need that. You don't want that, actually. The pleasantness comes to an end when his salad bowl jerks sideways, launching dressing straight into his eyes. And that was that.

The third, fourth and fifth go exactly the same. One man receives a drink he didn't order and has it thrown directly into his face. Another finds his phone repeatedly dialling the same number despite the fact that he hasn't touched it. One poor bloke gets locked in the restaurant bathroom for twenty minutes while you stand outside listening to him insist that the door "just won't fucking open."

No one shows themselves, but you feel their presence, that tell-tale feeling of ghosts being near. Delia's perfume drifts past your nose one time. Lydia's laugh echoes another time. You even hear Rachel's voice in between other ones that you don't recognise. It seems like your matchmaking ghosts have made all their friends part of their schemes. You can't even blame your dates for leaving. You'd leave too. 

And the worst part is that, even before the ghosts got involved, none of them had felt right. Daniel was charming. The second was funny. The third had made you laugh so hard you'd snorted wine through your nose. They were all perfectly nice. Perfectly suitable.

None of them is Jack.

You hate that your mind keeps making the comparison. Jack's dry humour. His crooked smiles. The easy silences between you. The way he's never made you feel like you had to perform or explain yourself. With everyone else, you find yourself waiting for something to click. Some spark. Some feeling that tells you this is worth pursuing. It never comes. 

By the time you finally stomp into Cordelia's, you're furious. You slam your purse onto the counter. "Show yourselves." You fold your arms. "I'm not in the mood for this." You glare toward the shelves. "I know you're here."

Slowly, three figures appear across the room. Rachel at least looks apologetic. Lydia doesn't. Delia looks like she's trying very hard not to smile.

You stare at all three of them. "You need to stop."

Lydia opens her mouth. "But dear—"

"No." You hold up a hand. "Nothing else. This stops now."

She looks offended. "We're only trying to—"

"I don't care." Your voice cracks through the room. "You've ruined every date I've been on."

Delia winces as Lydia folds her arms. "They weren't right for you."

"You don't know that!"

"They were boring."

"That doesn't mean you get to throw food at them!"

"We didn't throw food at them," she argues.

You stare at her.

"We threw the plates." Lydia gives you a tiny shrug. "Technicality."

You breathe deeply, eyes flaring. "Are you serious?"

Delia loops Lydia's arm in between hers, holding her back.

"If you do this again, I'm selling this place."

All three look at you. Delia hesitates. "Dear—"

"I mean it."

Rachel takes a hesitant step forward. "We only wanted you to be happy."

"You don't get to choose for me." You look between them. "Are we clear?"

Rachel nods first. Slowly, reluctantly, the other two follow.

"Good." You grab your purse.

You're over dating. Completely. It's not worth it anymore. Unfortunately, that leaves you with a lot of extra time to think. To think about Jack's face when you told him to stay away.

So, you start seeking ghosts out deliberately. Cemeteries. Old houses. Anywhere you hear rumours of someone who hasn't crossed over. It's easier when you're busy. If you're talking to a ghost, you don't have to think about Jack. You don't have to wonder whether he's angry with you. Whether he hates you. Whether he still thinks you're sick. It also means you're spending more time around hospitals than you used to, but you've been careful around PTMC. You tell yourself that's enough distance. 

Until the ghost in the park finds you. He's flickering badly, his form disappearing every few seconds before snapping back into place. He begs you to tell his family he's fine—that they don't have to worry about him. You promise you will.

You reason with yourself that there's no reason that you'd meet Jack. It's daytime. Jack works nights. Even if he's here, he's an attending in the E.R. You're not heading there. Ergo, you're not going to see him.

You really should have known better.

The elevator doors open, and as you step in, you find Jack already inside. His expression changes the second he sees you. Surprise first, then something softer, something that looks painfully close to relief.

"Hi."

Your breath catches at the sight of him. He looks tired. More tired than you remember. You manage a small nod. "Hi." 

You stand beside him, folding your arms and fixing your eyes on the numbers above the door. He glances at you. You can feel it without looking. He doesn't say anything. Neither do you.

The ghost stands in the corner beside you, watching the two of you with open curiosity. "Is that Jack?"

Your head nearly snaps to the side. How does this random ghost know Jack? Does the entire ghost community gossip about you? You stare straight ahead. 

The ride takes thirty seconds. Thirty seconds of Jack standing close enough that you can feel his warmth beside you. Thirty seconds of remembering what it felt like when that same closeness had once been comforting. The doors open. You step out immediately.

Jack's brows rise when he registers the floor. Oncology. His expression changes.

"Wait—" 

You keep walking. You don't turn around.

That was just the first awkward meeting. The next time, you're sitting in the waiting room for bloodwork with your phone in your hand, pretending to scroll while a ghost whispers in your ear.

You're tired. You're always tired lately. You haven't slept properly in days, and your body feels like it's made of something heavier than bone. You rub at your temple, trying to ease the dull ache behind your eyes as you listen. A familiar pull makes you look up, and your eyes meet with Jack's.

He's standing across the waiting room. His eyes travel over you. Your face. Your hands. The dark circles beneath your eyes. His expression tightens, concern flashing across his face. As he takes a step toward you, you finally regain control of your limbs. You stand immediately and leave before he can get any closer.

Somehow, he's everywhere you go. 

Hallways he has no business being in. Elevator rides that you were certain would be clear. Waiting rooms you thought would be empty. Once, you even catch sight of him through a glass door just as you're leaving. 

And every time, his expression gets worse. More worried. More confused. He tries to talk to you more than once, but you don't want to listen.

The more you see him, the harder it becomes to keep your walls up. Every time he looks at you like that, some small part of you wants to stop running. Wants to tell him everything. Wants to let him explain. Wants to believe that maybe you were wrong. Maybe he really would understand if you gave him the chance.

And that's exactly why you start avoiding the hospital again. Because if you keep seeing Jack, eventually you're going to stop running. And you're not sure if you can survive another rejection. 

It's another lonely afternoon again. You're sprawled across the couch in an old sweatshirt, a carton of takeout balanced precariously against your stomach. Some terrible rerun plays on the television, the kind you've seen often enough that you don't really have to pay attention. You take another bite. For once, you're not thinking about ghosts. Or Jack. You're just tired. 

The lights flicker.

You sigh. The television crackles. You slowly lower your fork as the lights flicker again. A cold gust sweeps through the room, lifting the edge of the blanket pooled around your legs.

The air shifts, and Poppy appears in front of the television. Her eyes are wide. "Help me!"

"Poppy?" You stand, moving toward her. You haven't seen her in weeks. Her hair is tangled around her face, her little body flickering so badly that pieces of her seem to disappear before snapping back into place.

She takes a step toward you. "Please."

"What's going on?"

"They're gonna get me." Her voice breaks.

"Who's going to get you?"

Poppy looks toward the front door, seeing something you can't. Pure terror crosses her face. "Hurry. They're so angry."

"Poppy, wait."  

For a second, she's gone. Then she appears beside the front door. 

"Who is going to get you?"

She doesn't answer. She just looks back at you. "Please." She disappears through the door.

You stare after her. "Goddammit." You grab your jacket from the back of the chair, shove your feet into the nearest pair of shoes, and snatch your keys from the counter. You barely remember to lock the door behind you.

You hurry down the steps, shivering slightly in the cold autumn weather. Your jacket is too thin, but you don't care; you just need to find her.

You don't know what has changed, but it's enough that she was terrified enough to return to you.

Jack can't shake the feeling that something is wrong.

It starts small. A nagging sensation in his gut that he can't quite explain. He's spent weeks trying to convince himself that you're fine. Ethan said you were fine. You told him you were fine. He should leave it alone. Instead, by the time he's getting ready for work, the feeling has grown too large to ignore. So he calls Robby and asks him to cover his shift.

He doesn't even know what he's going to do when he gets to the bookstore. He just knows he needs to see you. There's something restless in the back of his mind. Not a thought exactly. More like a pressure, an insistence he can't quite place. It eases as he nears the store. 

When he pulls up outside, Ethan is locking the door with frantic, fumbling motions, panic written across his face.

"Hey," Jack calls as he steps out of the car.

"I don't have time to talk right now." Ethan hurries past him to his car.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing I can explain right now."

"Ethan."

Ethan keeps moving. "I'm serious. I don't have time for this right now."

"Why? What's going on?"

Ethan slams the car door, but Jack opens the passenger door before he can pull away. "Ethan."

Ethan sighs, clearly conflicted. "Just—get in or close the door."

Jack hesitates.

Ethan turns toward him, anger flashing on his face. "Get in the car or stay here. I don't care. I need to go."

A gust of wind rushes past Jack, and he stumbles into the car, more pushed than moving under his own power. For a second, he could swear someone shoved him. 

Ethan hits the accelerator so hard that Jack is thrown back against the seat. "Jesus, Ethan."

"Put your seatbelt on."

Jack buckles himself in. "You could've mentioned that before you launched me."

Ethan doesn't respond. 

"What happened?"

Ethan glances at him out of the corner of his eye before returning to the road. "I don't know."

"Ethan."

His hands tighten on the wheel. "I'm not sure you want to know."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Ethan swallows. "I got a message from Lydia and Delia."

Jack frowns. "Lydia and Delia?" He's heard the name before in the store when you and Ethan have been whispering back and forth, but he's never put a face to them.

"The ghosts in the store."

Jack stares at him.

Ethan keeps his eyes on the road. "They said she's gone somewhere she shouldn't be. They're scared."

"How did they tell you?" Jack forces himself not to dismiss Ethan outright, even as his mind starts searching for a rational explanation.

"They wrote me a message." Ethan sighs. "I told you she wasn't sick."

Jack breathes out. "Ethan."

"No." Ethan cuts him off. "I told you. She told you. I thought you were different." His jaw tightens. "I was wrong, apparently."

Jack's brow furrows.

"She's not sick. I need you to trust me—or her, or whatever you have to trust—when I tell you she was telling the truth."

"I—" Jack starts carefully.

"No." Ethan's grip tightens on the wheel. "I need you to have an open mind, or you need to get out of this car. She's in trouble, and I can't help her if I have to worry about you."

"...Okay." Jack is silent for a moment. His worry for you wins. "Where are we going?"

"Somewhere bad."

The sun has set by the time Ethan and Jack pull up to the house. The place looks abandoned from the outside. No lights. No cars. Nothing to suggest anyone is inside. Then a light flickers behind one of the windows.

Ethan's hand is already reaching for the door.

Jack gets out after him. "Ethan, wait—"

But Ethan is already heading for the front door. Jack follows, every instinct he'd learned in the army and SWAT kicking in as he crosses the threshold. He scans the room automatically, checking corners, doorways, anything that could be a threat. Then he sees you, and everything else disappears.

You're standing in the middle of the room with candles surrounding you. Dozens of them. They're arranged in a perfect circle, their flames flickering wildly despite the fact that there isn't a breeze. Your head hangs forward. Your arms are loose at your sides. You don't move.

He breathes your name out quietly.

Ethan takes a step toward you, calling out for you in a louder voice. You don't react.

Jack's pulse hammers against his throat. "What's wrong with her?"

Ethan doesn't answer. He looks just as horrified. Then the air changes, a sudden rush of cold tears through the room. Every candle flame bends toward you. Your body jerks harshly.

Jack takes a step forward, calling out for you again. 

Another shudder runs through you. Your head snaps back. Your feet leave the floor. Jack freezes. For one impossible second, he simply stares.

You're floating.

Not stumbling. Not being lifted by anything he can see. Just—floating. Your hair shifts around your face as though you're underwater. Your eyes open, two black pools staring back at him. 

Jack's heart stops. "What the fuck—"

Ethan lunges forward. Jack follows before he can think. He steps straight through the circle. The instant his foot crosses the line, something slams into him. He staggers. It feels like walking into a wall. "What—"

He pushes forward anyway. The pressure bears down against his chest, trying to force him backwards. He grits his teeth, taking another step. His entire body strains against whatever is holding him there. Finally, he reaches you. His hands close around your waist. You're cold. Far too cold. "I got you."

He pulls. For a moment, nothing happens, then the resistance changes. The pressure eases. Jack feels something tugging at you from the opposite direction, but it's no longer trying to keep you there. It's almost as though something else is helping him. "Come on."

He pulls again, and your body suddenly tears free. Jack stumbles backwards, dragging you with him. The candles go out. All at once. He doesn't stop to wonder; he keeps moving and gets you through the doorway and onto the grass.

He drops to his knees, keeping one hand beneath your head so it doesn't hit the ground. He calls your name, fingers pressing against your pulse point. It's weak.

"Call 911," he orders Ethan, without looking away from you. Ethan is already reaching for his phone, but Jack barely hears him. His entire world has narrowed down to you.

"Come on." Jack brushes your hair away from your face, his hands shaking. He checks your eyes for any reaction, but there's still nothing behind your eyelids but that unnatural darkness. He's never seen anything like it before.

"Don't do this. Come back." He bows his head over you. He thinks about the last time he'd seen you. The way you'd looked at him. The hurt in your eyes. He'd been so sure. So fucking sure. His eyes burn.

"I'm sorry." His voice cracks. "I should've believed you. I should've believed you." A tear drops onto your cheek, followed closely by another. "I knew something was wrong. I knew it." His hand cups the side of your face. "And I still—" He can't finish, his chest heaving. "I'm sorry." He repeats it again, and again. Until the words barely sound like words anymore.

Ethan kneels beside him. "Come on," he murmurs, taking your hand. "Stay with us."

Neither man notices the figures gathering around them. A woman with kind and patient eyes. Two ghosts who have spent years watching over you. A little girl who had been frightened into trusting the wrong people. Ghosts from the hospital. Ghosts you have helped, even if they didn't want to cross over.

They gather in silence. One by one, their hands link, until they form a circle around you. Together, they turn toward you. The darkness inside you pulsates, but the ghosts hold their ground. The air grows colder as the darkness recoils. It fights. The candles inside the house flare back to life one by one.

You arch violently in Jack's arms, and your mouth opens. A strangled gasp tears from your throat as black smoke pours from your mouth. Thick and unnatural, it twists through the air before disappearing into the darkness of the house.

Your body goes limp again.

Jack catches you against his chest. For one terrifying second, there is nothing. You're completely still. Then your chest rises with a shaky, shallow breath.

Jack presses his forehead against yours. "That's it. Come on, baby." His voice is barely audible.

Your eyelids flutter, opening slowly. They're normal again. Your gaze struggles to focus, then finds him. "Jack?"

He nods. "Yeah. I'm here."

Your mouth parts again, but before you can say anything else, your eyes roll back, and your body slackens again.

Jack immediately checks your pulse. He pulls you carefully against his chest when he's certain it's there. "I've got you." He holds you tighter. "I've got you," he whispers again.

Ethan can't remember much of the past day.

The ambulance ride is a blur of flashing lights and clipped voices. The E.R. is worse. People moving around him, asking questions he can't seem to process. Someone taking you away from him. Jack refusing to move until someone physically makes him. Then the ICU. Monitors. Machines. A bed that makes you look impossibly small. It all blends together into one long stretch of panic and fear.

There had been a moment in the ambulance when Ethan was certain they were too late. You'd been so still. So pale. He'd watched the paramedic work on you and thought, you're going to die.

He'd thought he'd failed you. That he'd found you too late. That the last thing you'd ever hear would be him telling you to hold on. He'd never been that scared in his life.

Now he's sitting in the ICU waiting room with a cup of coffee he hasn't touched, staring at the wall. You're still unconscious, but you're alive. That's all that matters. Ethan looks toward your room. Jack is there. Of course he is. The man hasn't left your side once. Not when the doctors explained what they knew. Not when they explained what they didn't know. Not when Ethan finally went downstairs to get something to eat and came back to find Jack sitting exactly where he'd been before.

He's barely spoken. Ethan can see how he's trying to wrap his mind around it—trying to find a medical explanation for what happened. Ethan knows there isn't one. He doesn't know what happened inside that house. He doesn't know what took hold of you. He doesn't know what drove it out of you, but he knows you were dying. And he knows Jack brought you back. Or at least helped.

Ethan and Jack haven't talked about the ghosts. Not really. There hasn't been time. But Ethan isn't angry with him anymore. He'd seen Jack's face when he found you. He'd watched him walk straight into something impossible without hesitation because you were on the other side.

Whatever Jack had believed before, Ethan knows he believes you now. That's enough for him.

Ethan stands and looks into the room. Jack is sitting beside your bed, one hand resting over yours. His head is bowed. He looks exhausted, dried tear tracks still visible on his face.

Ethan knows that look. Maybe Jack doesn't. But Ethan does. Because he's watched the two of you for months. The way Jack always showed up at the bookstore. The way his face changed whenever you walked into a room. The way he'd ask Ethan how you were doing and pretend he was only making conversation. The way he'd worry. The way he'd look at you when he thought no one was watching.

Ethan glances through the glass again, watching as Jack lifts your hand to his mouth and presses a kiss against your knuckles.

The room is quiet when you wake. Not silent; there are always noises in a hospital—the steady beep of the monitor beside you, the faint hiss of oxygen, footsteps passing somewhere beyond the door—but quiet enough that you can hear Jack breathing.

He's asleep in the chair beside your bed, his hand wrapped around yours, even in sleep. You stare at him for a moment, taking in the exhaustion etched across his face. He looks terrible. His hair is a mess, his shirt is wrinkled, and there's a faint shadow of stubble along his jaw.

You squeeze his fingers weakly. He doesn't wake.

Your eyes drift shut again. The lights flicker, sending different shapes across the back of your eyelids. When you open your eyes, Poppy stands at the foot of your bed.

She's crying. Not the frightened, angry crying you've grown accustomed to, but a silent, guilty outpour. Her shoulders shake as tears stream down her face. "I'm sorry."

Your heart aches. "Poppy."

She takes a hesitant step toward you. "I'm really sorry," she repeats. "I didn't mean to."

"I know."

"They said if I brought you there, they'd help me find my mom."

You swallow. "They were lying to you."

She nods, tears dripping from her chin. "I'm sorry"

"It's okay."

"Are you mad?"

You shake your head. "No."

"But I hurt you."

"You didn't mean to, sweetie." You reach a hand toward her, even though you know you can't actually touch her. "You were scared. They used that."

"I'm really sorry."

"I know."

Her crying finally quiets, and you give her a tired smile. 

She takes another step closer. "I found my mommy."

Your breath catches. "You did?"

Poppy nods. "The others helped me." A smile slowly appears through her tears. "She's waiting right there." Poppy points toward the corner. "Can you see her?" 

You smile back, only able to see the light warming Poppy's face. "I can't."

"Oh. Maybe you will later?" Poppy looks toward the corner of the room, then back at you. "Can I go now?"

You nod, blinking back tears.

She smiles. And for the first time since you've known her, she doesn't look frightened. She turns toward the light and steps through. 

You breathe deeply, fingers tightening around Jack's. You take a moment before turning your head toward him. "You can stop pretending to be asleep now." 

Jack's eyes open slowly. 

"Hi," you murmur.

"Hi."

"I'm guessing you heard that?"

He nods.

You bite your lip. "Still think I'm sick?"

His face falls slightly. "I'm sorry. I should've—"

"It's okay," you interrupt. "I know it's a lot."

"It isn't," he hurries to say. "I just... I saw you getting thinner. I saw the bruises. You were exhausted all the time, and then I found you talking to someone who wasn't there."

He swallows hard. "And all I could think about was Rachel. I watched her get sick, watched her get weaker and weaker, and kept thinking I should have noticed sooner. I'm a doctor. I should have known something was wrong. So when I saw you doing the same things…" He blinks wetly. "I thought I was watching it happen again. I thought I was losing you."

"I was scared," he says. "But that's not an excuse. I hurt you. I made you feel like I was just another person who thought you were crazy." His voice breaks slightly. "I'm sorry."

You have faint memories of what happened that night. Jack coming to get you. His voice breaking as he apologised. Tears on his face. But memories aren't enough. You need to hear it from him. "Do you believe me now?"

"Yes." There's no hesitation in his voice. "Completely."

You study his face for a long moment, searching for the doubt you'd spent your whole life learning to recognise. You don't find it.

Jack shifts closer, careful not to disturb any of the wires attached to you. "I don't expect you to forgive me yet." His fingers tighten around yours. "I just want the chance to earn your trust back."

You stare at him for a long moment. "I missed you." The confession slips out before you can stop it.

Jack's face softens. "I missed you, too."

You look down at your joined hands. You aren't ready to say everything is okay. Maybe you won't be for a while. But you don't pull your hand away.

Three days later, after you've been discharged, Jack joins you in the store. You sit on the edge of the armchair opposite him, your hands wrapped tightly around a mug you haven't touched.

For several minutes, neither of you speaks.

You'd thought about this conversation constantly since waking up. You'd imagined telling him everything in a dozen different ways. Some versions were angry, some were tearful, some were calm enough to make you wonder if they were even real. None of them prepared you for actually sitting across from him.

"I don't know where to start."

He shifts in his seat. "You don't have to start anywhere in particular."

You look at him. He's not rushing you, not filling the silence, just waiting. There's a familiar shift in the air as space refits itself around two new forms. Lydia and Delia stand near the shelves, their expressions softer than you've ever seen before. There's an apology in their faces. No excuses, no teasing, no insistence that they know what's best for you.

Just sorry.

You let out a slow breath, then you nod. Delia's eyes fill with tears; Lydia gives you the smallest smile. You watch them disappear again, then turn back to Jack. Somehow, it feels a little easier to speak after that.

So you tell him everything. About your mother and the visions. About your father deciding that what she called a gift was an illness. About the hospital, and how young you were when you learned that some truths were safer kept to yourself. You tell him about the ghosts you've helped, about Lydia and Delia, about Ethan. And eventually, you tell him about John.

That part is harder.

Your voice gets quieter as you explain how you'd trusted him enough to tell him the truth and how he'd used it against you. How he'd looked at you like you were broken. How, for a while afterwards, you started wondering if he was right.

Jack doesn't interrupt. Not once.

When you finally run out of words, the store is so quiet you can hear the faint hum of the coffee machine behind you. "That's everything," you whisper.

Jack looks at you for a long moment. "Thank you for telling me."

Your throat tightens. "I was scared you wouldn't believe me."

"I know."

You swallow. "I don't want to hide it anymore."

His expression softens. "You shouldn't have had to in the first place."

Your eyes burn, and you look away before he can see.

Lastly, you tell him about Rachel. His face settles into a quiet understanding as every strange thing that has happened to him finally falls into place. 

The air beside the window changes. You know the feeling before you even turn. Rachel is standing there. She smiles at you.

You glance at Jack. "She's here."

His expression changes immediately. "Rachel?"

You nod.

He sits straighter. "Can she—"

"She can hear you."

Rachel moves closer. For a moment, she simply looks at him. There's so much love in her expression. 

"What does she say?"

You look at her, then back at Jack. "She says you've spent enough time blaming yourself."

His jaw tightens.

You translate as Rachel speaks. "She says none of it was your fault."

Jack looks down. "Tell her..." He stops. "I should have known."

Rachel shakes her head.

"You couldn't have known. You did everything you could."

A tear rolls down Jack's cheek.

Rachel steps closer. "You loved her." You repeat the words softly. "And that was enough."

Jack closes his eyes. His shoulders shake quietly. 

You keep your voice gentle. "She doesn't want you to spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for surviving her."

You look at Rachel. She smiles sadly at him before looking at you.

"You're good for him," she says.

You sigh.

"I'm not telling you what to do. I'm telling you what I see. And life's too short for this. Be brave."

You bite your lip. "Rachel."

"Let yourself have something good."

Jack looks at you, his eyes wide. "What'd she say?"

You keep this to yourself, breathing out before repeating her next words.

"To tell you that she knows and that it's okay." You don't know exactly what Rachel means, but whatever she said reaches something in him that nothing else has. "She wants you to keep living."

His face crumbles. "Rachel."

She moves closer to him, sitting on the corner of the armchair. "It's okay, Jack." Her hand brushes against his cheek gently. 

Jack's eyes close, his head tilting toward a touch he can't really feel. A long breath leaves him, and for the first time, something in his face seems to loosen. Years of grief don't disappear in an instant, but the fight against it does. "Okay."

Rachel's smile widens, then the light begins to gather around her.

Jack sees the change in your expression. "She's leaving?"

You nod. "She's ready."

He looks toward her. "I'll be okay."

You squeeze his hand. "She knows."

The light grows brighter. Rachel takes one final look at Jack, then at you. She mouths two words, thank you, and disappears.

Jack stares at the empty space for a long moment, then he turns toward you. He looks down at your joined hands. For years, he's carried the weight of losing Rachel like a punishment. Now, for the first time, he lets himself put it down.

He lifts your hand to his lips and presses a kiss against your knuckles. "Thank you."

You squeeze his hand.

After that, things are slow.

Jack starts coming back to Cordelia's. At first, he asks if you're sure he can stay. You tell him he can. Then he starts bringing coffee, and you start saving him the chair he likes. Some mornings you talk. Some mornings you don't.

You don't call it anything. You don't need to. Little by little, the distance between you disappears.

Weeks later, the bookstore is thriving. Not just surviving but thriving. The shelves are stocked, the front window is decorated for Halloween, and there's a steady stream of customers throughout the day. The little bell above the door seems to ring constantly now.

Ethan is unbearably smug about it. Not just because of the bookstore and his coffee corner idea, but mostly because Jack is once again the store's most frequent customer. 

"Morning," Ethan calls from behind the counter as he spots him.

You look up from the books you're sorting through. Jack stands in the doorway, two coffees in one hand and a paper bag in the other. By now, the sight barely surprises you. 

"Morning." His eyes find you immediately.

You smile. "You know, I'm gonna get spoiled enough to expect this every morning."

Jack grins. "Wouldn't hurt anyone."

Ethan makes a noise of disgust. You ignore it and grab your coat. From somewhere behind you, Lydia makes an exaggeratedly pleased noise. You shush her.

Jack pauses, then glances toward the empty space beside the shelves. "Someone disapprove?"

Delia appears between the shelves, giving you an enormously delighted smile.

You roll your eyes. "The opposite, actually."

Jack lets out a pleased hum, grinning as he opens the door for you. The morning air is cool, carrying the smell of rain from somewhere nearby. You walk beside him toward the park and finally reach the bench. Jack sits first, stretching his leg out slightly as he settles. You sit beside him, your thigh pressing against his. He hands you the bag, and you break the croissant in half and hand him a piece. Silence falls as you watch the people passing through the park. Your shoulder brushes Jack's lightly as you eat.

His hand rests on the bench between you, right next to yours. Your fingers touch. You glance down. Jack does, too. His pinky hooks around yours gently. A second later, his hand shifts, palm turning upward, and you slide yours into it. Neither of you comments on it.

You lean your head against his shoulder after a moment. His cheek rests lightly against your hair. For once, nothing is demanding your attention. No ghost asking for help. No mystery to solve. No fear. Just Jack. His thumb moves slowly over the back of your hand. 

You turn your head when his cheek lifts. He's already looking at you. "What?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing." His eyes flick down to your mouth, then back to your eyes. He hesitates. "Can I kiss you?"

You smile. "You don't have to ask."

Jack huffs, his expression softening. He leans in slowly, giving you every opportunity to change your mind.

You don't.

His lips meet yours in a gentle kiss. His hand lifts to your cheek as your eyes close. When you pull back, neither of you goes very far. He kisses the corner of your mouth, then your cheek. Then, after a moment, your lips again. 

For once, you don't wonder whether this is a mistake. You don't wonder what the ghosts think. You don't wonder what comes next. 

You trust him.

thanks for reading!! <333

[spidey-official]

boot n cats n boots n cats n boots

[slasher-bunny-fics]

Andrew Cody and a partner that loves biting him

The first time it happened, Pope didn't really know what to do.

You'd been sitting there beside him on the couch in his apartment, watching the NatGeo documentary with him one minute, and then the next, your teeth were latched onto his shoulder, gentle cobbing movements clenching and unclenching your jaws around his skin like a cat.

Pope stared at you like you had three heads. You didn't seem to notice.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Pope's voice was devoid of inflection as it usually was, but you knew him well enough to tell that he wasn't mad. His brow was furrowed, head tilted and eyes wide and sparkly in that confused puppy dog way he had about him that he always vehemently denied.

"Biting you," you supplied unhelpfully, voice muffled around the skin of his shoulder.

Pope stared. "It's more of a gnawing motion," he said. You hummed affirmatively, attention going back to the documentary.

Pope's eyes returned to the screen, but he wasn't paying attention anymore. He'd had few hookups that didn't involve the exchange of cash and even fewer long-term relationships, none of which had involved the age gap that the two of you had. To say he lacked the experience to understand this behavior was an understatement.

Was this just a thing people did? Was this your way of taking out some secret aggression or resentment toward him? Your body language seemed normal otherwise.

"Is it normal for your partner to bite you?"

Craig looked at Pope the same way he'd looked at you when you first bit him. "What?"

Renn, however, looked endeared, her eyes softened in a way they never had when Pope was anywhere in the vicinity. "More than you'd think, actually. They have to be really comfortable around you to do that shit, though. Didn't know you had that kind of game, Pope."

Craig levelled an unimpressed look at her, glancing back and forth between Renn and Pope like he was trying to figure out if he was being pranked. "How come no girl's ever taken a bite out of me then?"

Renn rolled her eyes. "Cause you've rarely talked to the same girl twice, and you go days without showering."

"Hey!"

Pope tuned out the rest of their bickering, mind stuck on Renn's words. He knew, logically, that you felt comfortable with him. You ate with him, slept near him, and didn't mind having your back turned to him when you did things, all signs that you trusted him not to do anything to you when your guard was down. Of course, there were the more intimate things as well, kissing him, coming to him when you've had a bad day, eating food that he prepared for you, giving him the key to your place, letting him take care of you when you were sick and vice versa.

But it made the tips of his ears warm to think that you'd reached some new level of comfort and intimacy that even one of his brothers hadn't heard of before.

The next time you and Pope hung out was at your house. It was craft night, something that Pope would never dare breathe a word about to anyone but you, not because he was embarrassed but because it was sacred. If he told one of his brothers about craft night and they said anything short of reverent on the subject, he would simply be forced to start breaking bones.

Pope was halfway through a massive Lego set that he kept safe at your apartment, and you were crocheting a pair of couple's scarves. It was the end of the night when you both were in bed and doing your post-craft debrief.

You were talking about a particular stitch that was giving you trouble when you suddenly felt a foreign sensation on your arm. You looked down absent-mindedly, words stuttering to a halt as you did a double take.

Your boyfriend was biting your arm.

It was quite possibly the gentlest bite in history, his teeth barely grazing you. You stared at him with wide eyes, but he honestly didn't seem to be paying you any attention. He kept moving his head this way and that, chomping down at various velocities like he was testing things. "Um, Andy…Are you biting me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because we're comfortable with each other," he mumbled distractedly. He was getting more into it, grinding his teeth soothingly against the skin of your shoulder. Every once in a while, you felt the heat of his tongue laving across the area, tasting you with no sexual intent, though you had to try very hard to reel in the heat that pooled between your legs at the action.

"Keep going," he eventually said. "You were talking about the stitching for the scarves."

Congratulations, you've become Andrew Cody's new oral fidget toy.

It gets out of control fairly quickly. Biting quickly becomes a sixth love language in your relationship, and it's not uncommon for you or Andrew to show up places with bite marks or very strange-looking hickeys. His brothers are extremely weirded out. They've never seen or heard of this behavior before, though they think it's quite on brand. Only Pope could manage to find a significant other who was almost as weird as he was.

A/N: This was absolute dog shit, but I can't sleep and can't get Pope Cody out of my head, so I figured I may as well crank out something quick and test out the new laptop. I usually don't like writing drabbles, they're too short for me and don't fit my writing style, but I think I'll keep writing them just to get back into the swing of things if nothing else.

[heaven4lostgirls]

anytime someone utters a bad word about victoria javadi or samira mohan, an angel loses its wings

[samirasystole]

yeah i am forever mad that we don't get to see how samira changed during these four months under al-hashimi's leadership without robby present. how we won't get to see her reaction to him coming back and doing just as badly. their awkward tension and stunted communication. possible aborted apologies, samira going to al-hashimi as her attending and trying to avoid him, but wondering how he is regardless, hoping it's better but seeing that it isn't. samira's confidence having grown some, realising how hard it's been for her these past years under robby's supervision. him trying to find a time to talk to her and failing. al-hashimi seeing how much samira struggles with him being back but not wanting to overstep. some possible growth on all sides. sighs.

[of-apollo]

₊⊹ PITTFEST PHONE-CALLS !

PAIRING: Jack Abbot x Wife!Combat Medic!Reader.

SUMMARY: After weeks of begging from Jake and Robby, you finally agree to supervise Jake and Leah at Pittfest. Nothing could prepare you for the tragedy that occurs on the day, and nothing can stop you from trying to help Leah even as a bullet rips through your own body. All that keeps you going is adrenaline and the voice of your husband over the phone.

NOTES: Gun violence, mass casualty event, gunshot wounds (non-fatal to reader), Leah’s death, references to past trauma (combat, wife death), survivor guilt, alcohol references, angst, 5.5k words.

REQUESTED BY: @maxinebxrnes !

A/N: At risk of sounding insane, I loved writing this. This is exactly my kind of angst/comfort. I know Trinity is on her first day and I did not write it as such but she’s my babygirl so. We ball!

NAVIGATION | PITT MASTERLIST | KO-FI

You nearly stayed at home. That is the stupid thing your brain keeps circling after Pittfest. Not the gunshots, not the blood, not even the screams of pure terror. Just the fact you stood in your kitchen for ten full minutes debating whether you could really be bothered to deal with loud music and overpriced drinks and crowds of drunk university students.

Jake had begged you to come, and Leah had joined in after. Apparently the two of them ‘needed normal adults present’, as per Robby’s request, to stop Jake attempting something humiliating in front of Leah’s friends.

“You are aware I work nights in an emergency department,” you had told him flatly. “This is the last place I want to be, buddy. And not a lot about me says normal adult.”

“You’re more normal than Abbot.”

Jack had still been half asleep when you left the house, one arm hooked lazily around your waist while you sat at the edge of the bed and tried to tug your shoes on.

“Tell Jake if he gets arrested I’m not bailing him out,” he mumbled into your shoulder.

“You like Jake.”

“He’s still an asshole sometimes.”

You laughed quietly and leaned down to kiss him anyway. Jack barely opened his eyes for it, just pulled you closer with a rough hand against your hip and kissed you slow enough to make you consider calling out sick from life entirely to be in this moment forever.

“You staying in bed all day?” you asked against his mouth.

“Mm, absolutely.”

“Jealous.”

“Should be, but I wish you were here with me.” His thumb brushed once beneath your jaw. “Text me when you get there, sweetheart.”

You texted Jack, and then you forgot your phone existed for the next two hours.

PittFest is chaos in the way all music festivals are chaos. Sticky floors. Warm beer. Suncream and sweat and bass vibrating through your ribs hard enough to feel sick with it. Jake and Leah disappear into crowds every five minutes only to reappear holding different food.

You mostly just watch them. Young and stupid and happy. Leah keeps taking blurry pictures of Jake while he complains about it dramatically, which only makes her laugh harder. She slips easily into your space too, arm linked through yours while she talks over the music about gossip you barely follow.

It feels normal. God, it feels painfully normal.

Jake’s midway through telling you both some ridiculous story when the first gunshot goes off.

Nobody reacts properly at first. A sound too sharp to belong there. Then another follows. Then screaming. The crowd shifts all at once.

Panic spreads faster than fire. One second people are dancing and laughing and filming videos on their phones, the next they are shoving each other hard enough to fall trying to get away. Your stomach drops instantly.

“No,” Leah whispers.

Training is ugly sometimes. Instinct before thought. Your brain already cataloguing exits and cover and casualties before the fear even catches up.

“Down,” you snap.

Jake grabs Leah instinctively. Another gunshot cracks through the air, too close for comfort. People are crying. Running. Somebody slams hard into your shoulder trying to push past and you nearly lose your footing.

Then Leah jerks violently beside you. For one hopeful second you think that she just tripped. Then you see the blood, and Jake screams her name, and everything narrows.

You hit the ground beside her so fast your knees crack painfully against concrete. Leah’s staring at you in confusion more than pain, hands shaking as they press instinctively against her abdomen. You don’t need a medical degree to know that there’s too much blood already.

“Oh my God,” Jake chokes. “Oh my God.”

“Pressure,” you order immediately. “Jake, pressure now.”

He freezes. Completely freezes.

You grab his wrists and physically force his hands over the wound. Blood spills between his fingers instantly.

“Look at me.” Your voice sharpens hard enough to cut through panic. “You do not move your hands.”

Leah makes a soft, terrified sound. “It hurts.”

“I know, sweetheart.” Your chest feels tight suddenly as you smooth a hand over her hair, trying to offer comfort in an impossible situation. “I know.”

Gunshots still sound somewhere nearby. Your pulse pounds so hard it makes you feel sick. Jake is breathing too fast. Full panic and shock setting in right in front of you.

“She’s gonna die she’s gonna die—”

“No.” You catch his face hard between both hands. “Not happening. Stay with me.”

People keep running past. Nobody stopping to check if you need anything, if the girl on the floor who is far too young to be in this position is okay. You understand why. Fear makes people cruel without meaning to.

Your phone vibrates against your hip in your pocket. You answer immediately.

“What’s wrong? Is something happening over there? I heard something but didn’t get the details. Are you okay?”

“There’s a shooting.”

Silence. Not real silence. You can hear the hospital behind him faintly. Voices. Movement. A monitor somewhere. Still, something inside him goes absolutely still.

“Where are you hurt?”

You blink hard. “I’m not—”

Another gunshot. Closer. You duck instinctively over Leah. Something tears through your upper arm. The pain arrives hot and brutal a second later. You suck in a sharp breath.

“Sweetheart?”

Your hand flies to your arm automatically and comes away slick red.

“Oh,” you say faintly.

Jake stares at you in horror. Jack’s voice changes instantly. Lower. Controlled in that terrifying way he gets when something is catastrophically wrong.

“You’ve been hit.”

“Just my arm.”

“How bad.”

You press hard above the wound, vision swimming unpleasantly for a second.

“Through and through, I think.”

“Listen to me carefully.” Every word clipped precise now. Doctor mode. “Can you move your fingers?”

You flex them. “Yeah.”

“Good. Keep pressure on it.”

Leah cries out suddenly and your attention snaps back to her. Blood soaking through Jake’s hands faster now. You shrug your jacket off one-handed and bunch it hard against Leah’s abdomen to reinforce pressure. Jake’s shaking so violently he can barely keep hold.

“Jake.” Your voice softens despite everything. “Need you to stay with me, honey.”

“I can’t lose her.”

The fear in his voice cuts straight through you.

“You won’t.”

“I’m sending units your way now,” Jack says through the phonee. “Stay on the line with me.”

You know he’s already moving while he talks. Already taking over. Organising. Commanding. The image of him striding through the Pitt with that expression on his face flashes painfully through your mind. You want him here so badly your chest aches with it.

Another scream sounds somewhere nearby. Leah’s skin is turning grey. Jake looks close to vomiting.

Your own arm throbs violently. Blood slipping steadily between your fingers no matter how hard you press. You promise yourself that you won’t pass out, not here, not while they still need you.

“Sweetheart.” Jack again, quieter now somehow. “Talk to me.”

You swallow hard. “She’s losing too much blood.”

“How’s her breathing?”

You check automatically. Wet. Uneven. Bad. Your stomach twists.

Jake sees your face change and immediately starts panicking harder. “No, no, no, tell me what to do!”

“You keep pressure there,” you say firmly. “You keep talking to her.”

Leah’s eyes find yours. Terrified. You smile anyway because people always look less frightened when medics smile at them.

“You’re alright, angel, I’m here.”

It feels monstrous saying it while blood pools beneath her body. Sirens finally echo somewhere in the distance. Too far away, too slow.

Your vision flickers strangely at the edges. Adrenaline only carries you so long before the body starts demanding payment. Jack must hear something in your breathing again.

“How much blood are you losing?”

“I’m okay.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

You almost laugh despite everything. “I’m fine,” you insist weakly.

“Sweetheart.” Warning this time.

You press harder against your arm. Your hand is slippery with blood. Leah’s or yours, you genuinely cannot tell anymore.

Jake suddenly grabs your sleeve hard. “There’s blood on your face.”

You touch your forehead automatically and come away red again. Your hearing feels distant for a second. You know that feeling. Jack knows it too apparently because his voice sharpens immediately.

“Stay awake.”

“I am awake.”

“You’re fading.”

“No I’m not.”

It’s a lie so obvious that even you hear it. The world tilts unpleasantly. You force yourself to focus on Leah instead. On Jake. On pressure and breathing and survival. Easier than thinking about the fact your husband is listening to all of this happen over the phone while trapped miles away.

“Baby,” Jack says suddenly, very soft now. Dangerous soft. “Listen to me, please.”

Your throat tightens painfully at the desperation in his voice. You can practically see him in your head. Jaw locked. Hand pressed against the back of his neck. Fury and fear buried underneath clinical calmness.

“I need you to stay conscious until the paramedics reach you, okay? You know the drill.”

Your eyes sting unexpectedly. “I’m trying,” you whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m really trying, Jack.”

Then Leah stops responding properly, and everything gets worse.

“Leah?”

No response.

Jake says her name again, louder this time, voice cracking apart so badly it barely sounds human anymore. Your stomach drops.

“Jake.” You force steel back into your voice despite the dizziness crawling steadily through you. “Talk to her.”

His hands are drenched red now. Blood pushed deep beneath his fingernails. He keeps looking at you like you might be able to undo this through sheer willpower alone.

“Leah, baby, c’mon.” His breathing stutters violently. “Please.”

You press trembling fingers against her throat again. Weak. Too weak. Your own pulse pounds hard enough to make your injured arm throb in time with it. Every heartbeat feels wet. Hot blood still slipping through your grip no matter how hard you hold pressure.

Jack’s voice crackles through the phone near your knee where you dropped it onto speaker. “What’s happening?”

You swallow hard. “She’s crashing.”

Silence. Not real silence. You hear movement behind him. Orders being barked across the ER. Metal trays clattering. The Pitt already preparing for the casualties heading their way.

Jack knows exactly what kind of scene you’re sitting in. Exactly how bad it probably looks.

“She conscious?”

“Barely.”

You can feel Jake staring at you, waiting for something. You hate this part, you have always hated this part. The space between trying and failing where everybody still looks at you hopefully.

Leah’s eyes flutter weakly. “Cold,” she whispers.

Jake breaks completely at that. His whole face crumples. Tears running unchecked while he bends over her like he can physically shield her from dying through proximity alone.

“You’re okay,” he keeps saying frantically. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay—”

You grip the back of his neck hard. “Jake.” He looks at you immediately. “Need you to breathe.”

“I am breathing.”

He absolutely is not. His chest is heaving so fast you feel panic rising in yourself just watching him. The shock is setting in ugly now. His shoulder is still bleeding too, forgotten entirely beneath Leah’s worsening condition.

You grab the discarded sleeve of your jacket and shove it hard against his wound.

“Pressure there.” He obeys automatically, and you thank every cosmic force that might be out there.

Your vision blurs suddenly. You squeeze your eyes shut hard once and feel the world tilt sickeningly underneath you.

“Sweetheart?” Jack again. Immediate. Alert.

You hadn’t even made a noise. “I’m okay.”

“You keep saying that.”

“You keep pestering me.”

A horrible little laugh escapes him unexpectedly. Sharp with stress. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

You know that laugh. The one dragged out of him when he’s overwhelmed enough that humour becomes the only thing stopping him putting his fist through a wall.

Sirens are closer now. Leah makes another weak choking sound and your focus snaps back instantly. Blood bubbles faintly at the corner of her mouth. It’s bad enough that you already know where this is going. Jake sees your expression change again.

“No.”

You hate how small his voice sounds.

“She’s okay,” you lie.

“She’s not.” His face twists violently. “Don’t fucking lie to me like that. It’s fucked up.”

Your throat tightens. People think medics get used to this. They don’t. You just learn how to keep moving while it happens.

The first paramedics finally break through the crowd. Relief hits so hard your hands start shaking worse. One of them crouches beside Leah immediately while another reaches for you.

“I’m fine,” you snap instinctively.

The paramedic looks unimpressed. “You’ve been shot, ma’am.”

“Not dying though.” Your words slur slightly at the edges.

Jack hears it too. “Hey.” Sharper now. “Stay with me. Let them help you.”

The paramedic starts peeling your blood-soaked hand away from your arm and pain explodes through you white-hot and vicious enough to make your stomach lurch.

“Oh, fuck.”

“There she is,” Jack mutters darkly through the speaker. “Knew you were concussed or dying when you stopped cursing.”

Despite everything, your mouth twitches weakly.

The paramedic assessing Leah suddenly barks for more gauze. Jake flinches hard enough to nearly fall over.

“She needs transport now,” another voice says urgently.

Jake grabs Leah’s hand desperately while they start loading her onto the stretcher. He keeps trying to climb beside her despite the blood loss making him unsteady too.

“Sir, we need you checked out as well.”

“No.”

“Jake,” you say firmly.

He looks at you with tears streaking his face.

“I’m not leaving her.”

“You aren’t.”

His breathing catches painfully.

Your own head feels strangely heavy suddenly. Hard to hold upright. The paramedic wrapping your arm is talking to you but the words drift oddly in and out.

Jack’s voice cuts through the fog immediately. “What’s her BP?”

The paramedic glances towards the phone. “Who is this?”

“Her husband. Dr Jack Abbot.”

Something in Jack’s tone must land correctly because the paramedic answers instantly after that.

“Pressure is dropping.”

You hear the silence on the other end. Not empty silence, calculating silence. Dangerous silence.

Your chest aches unexpectedly at the thought of him hearing numbers instead of seeing you himself. Jack trusts his own hands more than anything else in the world. You know he hates this. Hates being trapped at the hospital while you bleed somewhere he cannot reach.

“They’re taking us to the Pitt?” you ask weakly.

“Yeah.”

Good. You need Jack. The thought arrives suddenly and honestly enough to hurt. Not Dr Abbot. Not your attending physician. Just your husband. Your Jack. The one who sleeps with one heavy hand spread across your stomach every time like he needs proof you’re still there.

Jake climbs into the ambulance beside Leah while they try to convince him to let somebody examine his shoulder properly. You force yourself upright too fast trying to follow and immediately regret it. The world blacks at the edges. Strong hands catch you before you hit the ground.

“Easy,” the paramedic says.

You feel weirdly detached from your own body now. Floating somewhere slightly behind yourself.

Jack’s voice sharpens again instantly through the phone. “She pass out?”

“Nearly.”

“Sweetheart.” Fear leaking through now despite all his control. “Talk to me.”

You try. Nothing comes out properly. Your tongue feels thick. The paramedic starts asking questions rapidly. Name. Age. Allergies. Orientation. You answer automatically between breaths while they push you towards a second ambulance.

Blood loss. Shock. Probably more injured than you first thought. Your arm burns savagely.

“You still with me?” Jack asks.

“Yeah.” Barely.

You hear Jack exhale quietly. “Good girl.”

The words hit you straight in the chest. So familiar. So him. Usually murmured against your skin in the middle of the night instead of through a phone while you bleed through dressings.

Your eyes sting unexpectedly. The ambulance doors slam shut. Everything becomes sirens and fluorescent lights and movement. A paramedic cuts your sleeve fully away and swears under his breath at the amount of blood.

“Looks worse than it is,” you mumble.

“That what you tell all your patients?”

Jack actually snorts faintly through the speaker.

“Yeah,” he says. “She does.”

You can practically picture him now. Leaning over a desk somewhere in the chaos of the ER. One hand braced against the surface hard enough to ache later. Eyes distant and furious all at once.

Somebody in the background says his name. You hear him switch instantly. “What’ve we got?”

Pure attending voice now. Steady. Cold. Commanding. You have seen entire trauma bays settle the second Jack walks into them, like everybody unconsciously trusts him to carry the worst parts. He comes back to you a second later, softer again somehow.

“Nearly there, baby.”

You close your eyes briefly. So tired suddenly.

“Don’t you dare,” he says immediately.

Your eyes open again. “Bossy.”

“Yeah.” No hesitation. “Especially with you.”

The medic checking your vitals suddenly goes very still looking at the monitor. Your stomach sinks.

“What?”

He looks up sharply. “Do you know how much blood you have lost?”

Nobody tells you the answer to that question. Which is answer enough on its own, really.

The ambulance feels too bright. Too loud. Every bump in the road sends pain shooting through your arm and shoulder hard enough to make your vision flicker. You focus on the ceiling instead. On breathing. On staying conscious long enough to get to the Pitt.

Jack keeps talking. You realise after a while he is doing it deliberately. Filling silence before it can turn dangerous.

“You remember Santos trying to tell me how to run a trauma bay last week? Pulling that shit again today.”

A weak laugh catches painfully in your throat. “She’s brave.”

“She’s annoying.”

“We like her. She’s fun.”

“Unfortunately.”

The medic beside you presses fresh gauze against your arm and you hiss through your teeth.

“Easy,” he says.

“Not my favourite word.”

Jack hums quietly through the speaker. “That’s true.”

Your chest aches with missing him. It feels stupid. He is only across the city. You have survived deployments and distance and night shifts and grief and all the ugly things life threw at both of you. Still, all you want suddenly is his hand around yours and his mouth against your forehead and the certainty that comes with him being close enough to touch.

You feel sixteen different kinds of exhausted.

“Leah?” you ask faintly.

The medic hesitates. Bad sign. Your stomach twists violently.

“She’s alive.”

Alive. Not stable. Not okay. Just alive. You nod once anyway.

The ambulance doors finally burst open into noise and fluorescent light. Controlled chaos already swallowing the ambulance bay whole. Stretchers moving. Nurses shouting vitals. Blood on the floor somewhere.

The Pitt. Home, in the worst possible way.

You barely make it two feet before spotting Jack. He is halfway across the bay giving orders to somebody when he sees you.

Everything stops.

Not literally. The ER still roars around him. Staff moving constantly. Sirens outside. Chaos everywhere. Still, something in Jack goes completely still the second his eyes land on you.

You have seen that look exactly twice before. Once overseas. Once after his wife died. It hits you hard enough to hurt.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes.

Then he is there. Hands on your face first. Immediate. Grounding. Like he needs physical proof you are standing in front of him. His eyes move over you rapidly after that, taking in blood loss, sweat and tears, and the dressing wrapped round your arm already soaked through.

You watch anger flood him in real time. Not at you. At the situation. At the blood. At the fact you got hurt where he could not protect you from it.

“Hey,” you whisper.

Jack grabs the back of your neck and kisses you hard enough to shut you up entirely. Desperate. Furious. His hand shakes once against your jaw before he gets control of it again.

“You scared the fucking life out of me.”

The words come rough and low. You almost cry at the sound of it.

“I’m okay.”

“No, you are not.”

Pure Jack. Sharp enough to cut.

A nurse approaches carefully. “Abbot, we need—”

“Give me a minute.”

Nobody argues. You sway slightly where you stand and Jack’s entire grip tightens immediately.

“Woah, okay.” Softer now. “Easy, sweetheart.”

The adrenaline is disappearing. Fast. Your body suddenly feels unbearably heavy.

“Jake,” you manage. “Leah?”

“They’re in trauma.”

Alive then, at least for now.

Jack guides you backwards towards an empty stretcher with one hand firm against your waist. You can feel him slipping fully into doctor mode again despite the fear still sitting raw underneath it.

“Sit.”

“I can still help.”

“No.”

“Jack.”

“No.” Harder this time. “You’re done.”

You hate how emotional that makes you unexpectedly. You do not want to be done. You want to keep moving and helping and fixing because the second you stop everything catches up.

Jack sees it happen on your face instantly. Always does. His expression softens just slightly.

“Baby.” His thumb brushes beneath your eye before you even realise tears escaped. “Sit down before you drop down. Please.”

You obey mostly because your legs are beginning to shake badly enough that you genuinely might collapse. Jack kneels in front of you immediately to assess your arm himself despite multiple staff hovering nearby ready to do it for him.

His hands are steady. Only his jaw gives him away.

“You got lucky,” he mutters after peeling the dressing back carefully.

“Always do.”

He shoots you a look. Not amused. Blood covers his fingers now. Yours too. Familiar in the ugliest way. You watch him mentally catalogue damage with frightening speed.

“You should see the other guy,” you mumble weakly.

Jack stares at you for one long second before a broken little sound leaves him halfway between a laugh and something else entirely.

“Shut up, sweetheart.”

His forehead drops briefly against your knee. That scares you more than anything else has tonight. Jack does not fold. He bends maybe. Cracks quietly where nobody can see. Never folds, especially not in the Pitt of all places.

Your hand moves automatically into his hair. “Hey.”

He breathes once. Twice. Then straightens again before anybody else notices. Professional mask back in place.

“You’re getting fluids and scans,” he says flatly. “And if you try arguing with me I’ll sedate you myself.”

“There he is.”

His mouth twitches despite himself.

The curtain nearby suddenly gets shoved aside and Trinity stumbles through looking wrecked. Blood dried across her scrubs, hair a complete mess.

“Fuck,” she says immediately. “What do you need?”

The words slam straight into your chest. Jack stands instantly. “It’s okay. I’ve got her.”

Trinity looks at you then and visibly pales. “You’re bleeding through that.”

You glance down. The fresh dressing is already red again. Jack notices at exactly the same moment and something inside him finally snaps.

“Get me another pressure dressing now,” he barks sharply at a nurse nearby. “And where the hell is her trauma consult?”

You stare at him slightly dazed. Trinity does too. Jack never raises his voice unless things are bad. Seconds later, Trinity is called away to treat another casualty, and you watch Jack pale as if he needed that extra lifeline in the room just this once.

“I’m stable,” you try weakly.

Jack rounds on you so fast it almost startles you.

“You do not get to tell us you’re stable while bleeding through gauze every five fucking minutes.”

The nurse returns quickly with supplies while Jack drags a hand hard over his face like he regrets snapping immediately.

“Sorry,” he mutters roughly without looking at you.

Your chest aches. “Jack.”

He crouches back in front of you again, pressing fresh gauze carefully to your arm this time. His touch gentler now. Almost unbearably gentle. He presses one quick kiss against your forehead.

“Don’t move.”

“Bossy.”

“Yeah.” His hand squeezes the back of your neck once. “You married me anyway.”

Jack exhales slowly. The attending disappears first, but your husband stays.

“You scared me,” he says quietly.

No sharpness left in it now. No irritation. Just honesty stripped raw. Your chest aches immediately.

“I know.”

Jack pulls the stool closer and sits in front of you with a pained wince before carefully peeling back the soaked dressing around your arm. His touch stays precise but impossibly gentle at the same time. You know all the versions of him by now. The trauma doctor. The exhausted veteran. The husband who wakes instantly from nightmares with his hand already reaching for you.

This version is frightened. You feel it in every careful movement.

“You should’ve let somebody help you sooner,” he mutters while inspecting the wound.

“There were people worse off.”

Jack’s eyes flick to you with a frown. You look away, standing by that ugly instinct to keep going until your body physically gives out because somebody else always needs more.

“Sweetheart.” His voice softens dangerously. “You were bleeding through your clothes.”

“I know.”

“You nearly collapsed in the ambulance bay.”

You swallow hard. He starts flushing the wound carefully with saline and pain burns viciously through your arm. Your face tightens automatically.

“Sorry, baby.”

“You didn’t shoot me.”

“No, but I’d still like to kill whoever did.”

That nearly earns a laugh from you. Exhaustion hangs too heavily for humour now. Adrenaline burned off enough to leave everything underneath exposed and shaking.

Jack notices immediately. “You dizzy?”

“Yes.”

“Nauseous?”

“Little bit.”

“Head?”

“Hurts.”

“Good. Means you’ve still got one.”

You snort softly at that despite yourself. Jack’s mouth twitches faintly in quiet satisfaction before settling again. His hands are steady.

“You sounded scared on the phone,” you say quietly after a moment.

Jack keeps his eyes on your arm while wrapping fresh gauze into place. “I was terrified.”

The honesty knocks straight through you. “You never sound scared.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is with everybody else.”

His hands pause briefly. “You aren’t everybody else.”

Emotion climbs sharp into your throat so fast it hurts. Before you can say anything, the curtain suddenly jerks open.

Jake stumbles inside looking destroyed.

Your stomach drops instantly.

Blood has dried down the front of his shirt. His eyes swollen raw from crying already. He looks barely upright.

Jack stands immediately. “What happened, buddy?”

Jake opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. Then suddenly he folds in on himself completely.

“She died. Leah died.” The words break apart halfway through. “She died and I wasn’t there and she was asking for me and I wasn’t fucking there—”

“Oh, Jake.”

You are moving before you even think about it despite the pain ripping through your arm instantly. Jake drops heavily into the chair beside your stretcher and puts both hands over his face like he physically cannot hold himself together anymore.

“I left her,” he chokes out. “I shouldn’t have left her.”

“No.” Your voice comes sharp automatically. “No, honey.”

Jack glances at you once before stepping back slightly, giving you space. Jake’s shoulders shake violently beneath your hand when you touch his arm.

“They said she coded again and they couldn’t get her back and I wasn’t there—”

“You listened to medical staff,” you say firmly, throat burning already. “You were injured too.”

“I should’ve stayed with her.”

Guilt. Pure, ugly survivor’s guilt already setting in. You know the shape of it intimately.

Jake starts crying harder. Full body shaking with it now. Young and heartbroken and completely lost. Something inside your chest caves painfully inward at the sound.

“She was scared,” he whispers.

You think suddenly about Leah lying on the concrete with blood soaking through your jacket. Her tiny voice saying how cold she felt. Jake holding pressure with shaking hands because you told him to.

Jack rests one hand briefly against the back of your neck. Grounding. Steady. You lean into it automatically while keeping your other hand wrapped around Jake’s wrist.

“You stayed with her,” you tell him softly. “You hear me? You stayed.”

His face twists apart completely. “I loved her.”

The room goes painfully quiet. Jack looks away briefly. You know why. Leah’s death hits him too. Every loss does, no matter how hard he tries to bury it beneath protocol and movement and work.

The hooks of the curtain scrape against the pole as Robby pulls it to step inside. Exhaustion hangs off him in visible waves. Blood on his scrub top. Eyes hollowed out by the night.

He takes one look at Jake. “Come on, kid.”

Jake looks up at him with a completely shattered expression. Robby crosses the space quickly and grips the back of his neck firmly. “C’mon.”

Jake doesn’t move. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can.” Robby says it quietly. Certainly. Like fact.

Jake wipes violently at his face. “I left her.”

Robby’s expression tightens for one brief second.

“No,” he says firmly. “You got shot trying to save her.”

Jake starts crying again anyway. Robby pulls him gently upright after a second, keeping one steady hand between his shoulder blades.

“Come sit with me for a minute.”

Jake looks back at you once before leaving. Lost. Apologetic somehow. You squeeze his hand weakly.

“This isn’t your fault.”

His face crumples again at that before Robby finally guides him back out into the chaos beyond the curtain. The second they disappear the room feels heavier somehow. Jack turns back towards you slowly. You realise suddenly your cheeks are wet too.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

He moves immediately, stepping between your knees and pulling you carefully against his chest despite the IV line and bandaging. You go willingly, forehead pressed hard against him while everything finally catches up at once.

The gunshots. Leah. Jake crying. Jack hearing you bleed over the phone unable to reach you.

Your body starts shaking properly. “I couldn’t save her,” you whisper brokenly.

Jack’s arms tighten instantly. “That wasn’t on you.”

“I knew she was dying.”

His hand cradles the back of your head carefully.

“I knew.” Your voice cracks painfully. “I still kept lying to him.”

Jack pulls back just enough to look at you properly. “You gave him hope while she was alive.”

Your throat burns. You start crying harder at that. Quiet, ugly crying pressed into the front of Jack’s scrub top while he holds you through it without hesitation. Nobody ever talks about this part properly. The aftermath. The helplessness. The guilt medics carry around in their pockets like spare change.

Jack knows though. Of course he does.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs against your hair.

The words nearly finish you off entirely. Eventually, your breathing evens out again enough that he can guide you gently back onto the stretcher. His hand never fully leaves you.

“You need scans before I take you home,” he says quietly.

Home. The word lands soft. You look up at him tiredly. Really look. Exhaustion carved deep into his face now that the crisis is slowing. Tiny flecks of blood still near his jaw. Eyes red-rimmed from stress and lack of sleep and fear.

“You need rest too.”

Jack huffs quietly. “Yeah, well. You first.”

Your mouth twitches weakly. You love him so much it feels unbearable sometimes.

Later, after scans and stitches and far too much arguing over whether you can walk unassisted, Jack finally gets you home sometime near dawn.

The house is dark and still, as safe as you need it to be. Jack helps you out of your ruined clothes with unbearable gentleness before settling you carefully into bed. Clean shirt pulled over your head. Pain medication pressed into your palm. Water forced into you until he looks vaguely satisfied.

Then finally, after stripping off his bloodstained scrub top and unfastening his prosthetic with the exhausted familiarity of routine, Jack gets carefully into bed beside you.

The second the mattress dips, you move towards him automatically. Your face tucked against his throat. One arm curled carefully around his waist while he wraps himself around you just as instinctively.

For a long time neither of you speak. Jack’s fingers move slowly against your spine.

“You awake?” you murmur eventually.

“Yeah.”

Your eyes sting again suddenly. “Jake’s gonna blame himself forever.”

Jack goes quiet for a moment. “Probably.”

Honest. Always honest with you.

“He shouldn’t.”

“No.” His arm tightens slightly. “Neither should you.”

The emotion lodged in your chest aches horribly.

Outside, somewhere beyond your windows, the city keeps moving.

Inside, wrapped tightly around each other in the dark, the two of you finally stop trying to.

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