Ok yayyy could you write something about like him coming home after his 1st career shutout and you just showering him with love pls
(Also I love your ask name(?) Thingy )
— the shut out
╰┈⪼ loading proud gf of goalie bf
𖥻 jacob fowler x reader ౨ৎ mlist
𖥻 fluff
𖥻 wc: 300
december 20th, 2025 a day you or jacob would never forget. the bell centre was alive with the roars of fans. jacob was on fire tonight, making save after save. you watched from home, a small cold keeping you from being there. excitement overpowered your illness when the final buzzer sounded. they won 4-0 against the penguins.
jacob had just gotten his first nhl career shutout, making 31 saves. the announcers talked about his achievement as his teammates patted his head or shoulder in congratulations. it would be a few hours before he finally came home so you decided to start on your bedtime routine.
your skin care was done, your hair was brushed and you were making a cup of hot sleepy time tea when jacob finally came home. the front door opened and jacob stepped in, carrying his comically large bag. he looked tired but a smile took over his face when he spotted you.
“there’s my favorite goalie who just so happened to have got his first nhl shutout,” you made a fist into a pretend microphone. “tell me jacob how does it feel to have your first nhl shutout?” you pointed your pretend microphone at him. he laughed before getting serious, “yeah it feels great honestly, a big achievement in my career,” you both laughed at his response before your arms wrapped around his neck. “i am so proud of you,” he hugged you back.
“thank you, i couldn’t wait to come home to you,” he tightened his hold. “i was cheering with each save you made,” your eyes met his. “you watched the whole game?” he knew you did. he just liked to hear you say it. “i always do,” you answered. he leand down for a kiss, which you leaned back from. “i’m still sick,” jacob groaned loudly.
“baby i just got my first shutout, and i want to celebrate with you, i don’t care if you’re sick, i’m going to kiss you,” true to his word his lips captured yours. your arms tightened around him leaning into the kiss. “im proud of you,” you whispered. he smiled hugging you.
getting a shutout was great in his eyes, but coming home to you was his greatest achievement of all time.
i hope i did him justice im not familiar with him but he’s a cutie!! so i’ll forgive him for shutting the penguins out … also tyyy my ask box name took forever to come up with some im glad you like it <3
╰┈⪼ in which ben kindel falls for reader who runs the pens social media and he loves showing off for her camera
𖥻 ben kindel x fem!reader ౨ৎ mlist
𖥻 fluff
𖥻 wc 1.2k
getting hired by the pittsburgh penguins was a dream come true. they needed a new social media manager and they were impressed with your work. the higher ups seen your mini-vlogs and content filmed at the games you went to and they fell in love with it. a few emails and phone calls later you were filming content with the players and filming their games.
you weren’t the only new face around PPG, the penguins had just drafted rookie ben kindel. the videos and content of the draft were of course filmed by you. ben had met you briefly draft day, but it wasn’t until weeks later he actually met you. he was gliding across the ice pass the puck to other players when he heard the team greet you.
“hi tiny mic,” geno greeted skating up to the boards. ben watched the guys skate over to talk to you. he knew every team had media, but not every team had you. the rookie could barely keep his eyes off you. “hey kindy come meet y/n,” sid calls out. ben skated over to them and slid to a stop by them. you greeted him with a warm smile. “hi, i’m y/n media girl..we met briefly at the draft but not officially,” you stuck your hand out. ben smiled back shaking your hand, “ nice to meet you, i’m ben but you probably already knew that,” the two of you share a laugh.
that’s where it started for ben, your smile. the next thing was your laugh, he was thankful just to hear your laugh. without realizing he quickly kept trying to keep your eyes and your camera on him. he craved your attention, he looked forward to your questions, your tiktoks, anything to do with you really. his highlight reel quickly grew it almost rivaled sid’s, that’s when the team started to notice.
geno was the first to notice. it happened after he scored a goal with an assist from ben. your camera followed ben before switching to geno. after the game geno approached ben. “why you show off for tiny mic?,” he was blunt and straight to the point. it caught ben off guard. “i wasn’t showing off, just trying to win,” he answered. geno eyed him not fully believing him but let it go at that. ben took off his gear, was he showing off? he did always know where you and your camera was.
the teasing started once the others picked up on it. rakell and karlsson never failed to tease him. “she isn’t here yet,” rakell skated pass ben when he noticed the rookie looking around your normal spots. “what are you talking about?” ben asked but he knew. “your little media crush, she isn’t here yet,” karlsson added skating up to them. ben frowned, “ i don’t have a crush on her,” his words died when he spotted you entering the arena. you waved at everyone, before setting up your camera.
ben smiled waving at you happily, rakell and karlsson laughed skating away. ben tried to ignore their laugher and teasing but its all he could think about during practice, did he actually have a crush on you? he was never good with feelings, only focused on hockey.
you set up to catch the guys coming off the ice after practice. grinning tiny mic in hand, you wait for them. you question the players on which player is better at golf. they provide several funny answers. letang skates up behind ben as he approaches you. “hi kindy, the viewers wanna know..who’s the best at golf?” ben seems to freeze, a freeze only his teammates know. the media freeze.
letang pats ben’s shoulder, leaning towards your tiny mic. “everyone is probably expecting us to say sid, but i’m gonna say myself,” you smile behind the camera laughing. “i got a few answers saying sid,” ben still froze just watched you talk thankful your camera shifted towards letang. he finally spoke, “i mean he’s the goat so yeah probably sid,” he answered walking down the tunnel to the locker room.
you turn your camera off and look towards letang. “is he okay today?,” letang belly laughs, “he’s far from it, we’re pretty sure he has a crush on,” he was cut off by malkin skating up. “tiny mic,” he greets. you smile at him softly. who did ben have a crush on? why did it make you feel funny? questions run through your head as a deep pit settles in your stomach. “oh,” geno laughs “tiny mic likes the rookie,” his lips pucker as he makes kissy sounds.
with a roll of your eyes you head down the tunnel. kindel avoided you before you could even talk to him.
his distance didn’t stop him from showing off for you. when he knew your camera or eyes were on him, he skated faster, checked harder, took more shots on goal. the team noticed, more importantly the captain noticed. ben had just scored, your camera following him from the moment he took off on a breakaway.
after the breakaway and goal your camera didn’t leave ben. thats when crosby knew he had to speak to him. the game ended with a win for the penguins. you were waiting in the locker room to record the celebration. “congratulations guys that was a phenomenal game,” you spoke turning your camera off. “was we good or was rookie good,?” geno asked, teasing, causing your cheeks to heat.
ben looked up at the sound of your voice, he noticed how shy you got at geno’s teasing. he couldn’t tell if his heart was racing due to the game or you. the teasing continued, “tiny mic only care about rookie,” his hand went over his chest in mock hurt. “i record everyone equally,” you tried to defend yourself.
“see normally i’m on your side,” crosby spoke. “but i cant help but notice the increased media attention of our rookie,” he grinned. you groaned knowing you’ve been caught. you really tried not to play favorites but you also couldn’t keep your attention away from ben. across the locker room ben was in shock. everyone knew you liked him but him? he thought his feelings were one sided. your eyes caught ben’s and he looked shocked. your heart ached, “well thank you for ratting me out guys, now if you’ll excuse me,” your feet carried you out quickly.
ben’s feet carried him faster than his mind could comprehend he was following you. the hoots and hollers of his teammates fell on deaf ears as he left the locker room. “y/n,” his voice stopped you. slowly you turned to face him. “if you’re here to reject me its okay, i get it..i’ll record you less if its making you uncomfortable,” the words were falling from your mouth. all ben could do was laugh softly but cutting your words off with a kiss.
the two of you pulled away, you looked up at him with wide eyes. “i like you, like a lot,” he said. you kissed him again, “i like you too rookie,” ben grinned at you leaning down to kiss you again.
“great now tiny mic never film us again,” geno spoke revealing the team’s presence. the team started laughing at their rookie’s red cheeks, you hiding your face in his chest.
summary: good things happen to those who are found crying in the supply closet by their hot, older, maybe flirty boss-slash-mentor.
wc: 14.5k (i have no idea how that happened)
tags/tropes: age gap (duh), slow burn with an insane amount of tension, lowkey very emotionally rife, hurt/comfort, not-so-unrealistic amounts of crying, langdonmel in the background if you squint (you don’t have to squint very hard i love them so much guys im sorry) vaguely referenced but not subtlety implied bad childhood, gratuitous and frankly ridiculous medical inaccuracies because i took a lot of creative liberty, reader is an ode to Matilda by Harry Styles and You’re Gonna Go Far by Noah Kahan, Pitt Crew becomes reader’s family :)
a/n: this was supposed to be a sort-of drabble for @leeknowpegger. idk what happened. pegger i’m sorry i’ve been so dead recently (always) will you take this as an apology. If you’d like more cohesive tags, more context, extra details, and more in depth warnings, this fic has been cross-posted on ao3, and will be linked below :]
NOT-SO-FRIENDLY-PSA: Any comments asking me to write more, post another chapter, or anything of the sort will be deleted. Please do not send an ask into my inbox either. Screaming in my inbox (not about wanting more, general screaming) is totally fine though!
ao3
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۫ ꣑ৎ
You have been the perfect day shift intern for five months. Five freaking months of listening to mostly constructive criticism, five months of adapting and learning on the go with not a single complaint voiced, five months of diligent note-taking, studying, and practice. Five months of weaseling your way into the list of interns-slash-young-doctors that your residents actually respect. Five months of grueling shifts, hard losses, and never saying no when someone needs you to do something.
Five months of being the untouchable, “perfect” intern. Robby’s newest addition to his growing list of “work-wards.”
Five months of unflinching effort and dedication and it took four hours of your third night-shift to reduce you to a miserable, snotty mess on the supply closet floor. Tucked into the space between the two shelves, just the toes of your blood and snot and god knows what else covered shoes peeking out, the rest of you obscured.
Five months, four hours, and back to back fuck-ups that escalated into Dr. Jack Abbot, the man you may or may not have had the hugest crush on since beginning your intern year, removing you from a case. Five months, four hours, and two parents screaming at Dr. Abbot, telling him that you’re not fit to be a doctor.
Tonight isn’t the first night a patient has yelled at you. Tonight isn’t even the first time you’ve been removed from a case. It’s not the first time Dr. Abbot has had to correct you, and it’s certainly not the first time you’ve made a mistake.
You’re an intern. It’s your job to fuck up, learn from it, and keep going. That’s what Dr. Mohan said to one of the other interns awhile back. They’d ended up flunking out, but oh well. It was good advice. It wasn’t meant for you, but hell if you don’t say it to yourself every night like a prayer.
But right now, the usual calming mantra is doing absolutely nothing. You’re stifling ugly sobs into the tops of your knees, arms wrapped around and squeezing as tight as you can, your chest shaking and shuddering with the force of your complete and total freak-out.
The patient isn’t dead. Despite your mistakes, they didn’t die. There’s really nothing to cry about. Nothing to hide in the supply closet for.
And yet, here you are.
Your first mistake wasn’t terrible, but it was ridiculously stupid and incredibly embarrassing. Triage room, emergency measures being taken. And you, tired and off kilter from being so used to the day-shift, broke the sterile field. Like some dumb medical student, not a fairly seasoned intern who’s drilled sterile protocol into her head until it’s muscle memory.
For a scalpel. You dropped a scalpel. Arguably the worst thing to drop. And then, like an idiot, you picked it back up.
And, well. There’s no time to re-scrub, so there wasn’t a need for you in the triage room anymore.
Your second mistake was equally stupid and avoidable, if you’d focused more. Dr. Garcia was kind enough to let you scrub in on an emergency appendectomy.
It was a test. Not your first.
And you ripped the fucking purse strings.
Once again, you were unceremoniously booted from the room (being kicked out of an OR feels a hell of a lot worse than being kicked out of a triage room) and sent back to the pit. Dr. Abbot immediately caught wind of it and demoted you to scut work until “you get your head back in the game.”
And, well. You tried really hard to devote yourself to your new task, but you had to keep blinking tears out of your eyes every five seconds and you absolutely refuse to cry in front of literally any of your coworkers, lest they think you some weak-willed weak-stomached intern who can’t handle some criticism and correction. You’re a hard worker. You’re good at this. You have to be.
So yeah. Crying in the supply closet.
You’ve always been a frustrated cryer, which is annoying on a good day and downright awful on a bad one (case in point.)
You’re just so upset with yourself. You’re better than this. You know you are. You’ve proven that you are. You don’t drop scalpels. You don’t break the sterile field. You don’t rip purse strings.
But you did tonight. And maybe one day you’ll laugh, but today is not that day.
You just don’t get it. Day shift? Incredible. Manageable. You’re on top of things, put together, and worthy of Dr. Robby’s respect.
But tonight? Quite literally the exact opposite.
You can’t be burning out, right? That’s not how burn out works. There’s like, signs, and you start to feel terrible and awful and exhausted and sure you definitely feel all of those things, but that’s because you work in medicine. And you’re an intern. You’re supposed to feel terrible and awful and exhausted. But maybe you’re not? You do enjoy your work, and it’s exhilarating, especially when you try something for the first time and execute it well, because you always do, you always get things right on the first try, obviously, so that means that this can’t be burn out. You don’t burn out. That’s not you. Right? No. Of course not.
You gasp a particularly rough sob into your knees, air feeling like knives as you inhale, making you cough horrendously. You must be quite a sight.
Unfortunately, due to your alternating hacking coughs and dramatic crying, you don’t quite hear the door open.
You do, however, hear the quiet “Oh.” that’s mumbled a few moments later.
Of-fucking-course.
You scramble upright, aggressively wiping at your face and attempting to make it look like you weren’t just crying on the ground.
“Dr. Abbot! I’m so sorry, this is very unprofessional and I know you have me on scut work but I promise I’m still working on it—“
He holds up a hand, and you slam your jaw shut with an audible click.
“Just needed some four by fours, kid.”
Always one to be helpful (especially to the guy you have a crush on who also happens to be your boss, aka the same person who professionally told you to get your shit together about forty minutes ago) you reach beside yourself and hand him the package of gauze, an awkward smile fixed on your face.
“…Those are three by threes.”
Bitch. Motherfucker. Fuck your life.
“Right,” You mumble, dragging your hand down your face. “I’ll just get out of your way. Sorry.”
You turn to walk past him, attempting to go quick enough that he might not notice the new tears shining in your eyes before a hand lands on your shoulder.
“Look,” Dr. Abbot starts. “You’re one of Robby’s adopted interns, right? Robby-Junior?”
“That is one of the rumors Santos has been spreading, yes.”
His hand is on your shoulder. His hand is on your shoulder. (!!!)
You don’t know what to do. He’s looking at you. Your boss doesn’t fluster you. You’re chill. You’re normal. You’re cool as a cucumber, yep yep yep.
“Robby doesn’t adopt interns lightly. Don’t let one bad shift mess you up. It happens to everyone.”
You purse your lips. You should let it go. Take his advice. Thank him.
The all-consuming-guilt and ever-present-need to prove yourself itches too painfully to ignore.
Dr. Abbot seems to notice, and he catches your gaze again.
“What, it doesn’t happen to you?”
A jolt of panic stabs your chest. “No! Of course it happens to me, I didn’t mean to imply that I’m like, above making mistakes or having bad shifts at all—“
Genuinely what is wrong with you. Why the fuck does he do this you. You’re a smart, confident woman who apparently chucks her brain into the garbage bin whenever her boss is around.
Dr. Abbot, probably picking up on a pattern of behavior by now, levels you with another look that shuts you up fairly quickly. He’s got a sort of impish grin on his face, and it shouldn’t be hot, but he’s got his hand on your shoulder and you’re having a ridiculously shitty night. Does anything matter anymore?
“Usually, we try to mix up interns schedules so you don’t get into a rhythm on one specific shift so that when you inevitably switch, the change doesn’t mess up your flow. But I'm sure your knack for keeping your head down and doing good work let you fall through the cracks.”
He takes his hand off your shoulder and shoves it into his pocket, but you almost don’t notice because he said you do good work.
Abbot gives you another grin. “And I didn’t stick you on scut as a punishment. Mindless work tends to be calming, which in turn helps focus your mind.”
“But I ripped the purse strings,” You blurt like a Catholic school girl in a particularly rife confessional, “Like an idiot.”
“You ripped them like an intern doing something for the first time.”
“I practiced hundreds of times to make sure it didn’t happen!”
He tilts his head, almost cat-like. “Did you also practice on a live person in a higher stakes situation while your body is messed up from a sudden and huge sleep schedule change?”
“…No?”
He snorts. “Exactly. Dr. Garcia probably won’t hold it against you. She’ll give you shit for it, but it’s not like she’s never going to give you another chance.”
You wipe the last bit of wetness of your cheeks with the back of your hand, embarrassment heating your face. Despite the awfulness of being caught crying in the supply closet, the beginnings of pleasant warmth is spreading through your chest, Dr. Abbot’s reassurances echoing in your head.
“Thank you, Dr. Abbot. Um. Sorry about the crying. I promise I don’t usually do that.”
Dr. Abbot snorts as he saunters towards the door. “Wouldn’t judge you if you did, kid.”
—
Dr. Jack Abbot is bored.
He has his work, which is great. He became a doctor after being discharged because he’s always been the kind of man that needs something to do. Something to mind, something to watch, something to fix. Robby and him and much the same in this way.
Working at the ED was enough for a while. There was a certain challenge to it, an unpredictability that itch sated, kept him sane. And, well. Now he’s an attending. Night shift lead.
He started to get restless again.
He thought a pet might work. He was going to get a dog, but it didn’t sit right with him to get an animal built for companionship and then leave it at home for over twelve hours a day. Then he thought a cat might do the trick. He looked online first, saw beautiful, well bred felines that could probably compete and win for best in show for whatever the cat equivalent is for the Westminster Dog Show.
And then he made the mistake of going to the shelter and seeing an old, one eared tuxedo cat that stared at him with something in between fear and spite and its eyes. And well. The shelter attendants assured him that the cat in question prefers being left alone and having its own space, but might warm up eventually, and he brought him home that day.
And then it was just Jack, occasionally Robby, and now his asshole cat who might not love him back.
That also worked for a while. Having Charlie was fun. It was nice having another living creature in his house that wasn’t him. Even if he did have a habit of chewing on power cords when left unattended and eventually progressed into attempting to destroy Jack’s stethoscope if he left it anywhere he could find.
Minding the cat gave him something to do that wasn’t tedious, and it was a special sort of bonus to wake up every now and then and see the cat sprawled at the foot of the bed, snoring away. He didn’t actually know cats could snore like that.
Around the time that the itch came back and Jack was considering adopting a second cat from the shelter (well on his path to becoming a crazy cat lady, as Robby said in the park over beers) he met you for the first time.
Sometimes Jack slips quietly into the ED and watches the chaos of day shift’s conclusions. He’s picked up a very special language of gauging what he’s getting into based on the body language and behavior of the rest of the hospital staff. Robby had told him about the latest intern— a motivated, stubborn sort of girl that frequently went toe-to-toe with Santos but without any of the pushback when receiving correction or criticism. He’d heard that you were smart, capable, and well on your way of becoming a great doctor.
Robby failed to mention that you were pretty.
He’d watch you, comparing notes with Mohan with a certain intense focus on your face, worrying your lip between your teeth and repeatedly tucking a piece of hair behind your ear because it’d fallen out of your disheveled pony tail he thinks ‘Oh.’
And then, a few months later, he finds you crying in a closet, subtly confessing fears of failure and falling short of expectations, and then he thinks ‘Well, there’s something to do.’
Jack tries not to think about you, at first. You, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes, bottom lip jutted out just a bit, hugging your knees. He tries not to think about how you’d looked at him when he’d assured you that you did good work, the awkward thank you, and the way that for the rest of the shift, all the annoying menial tasks that get forgotten in the chaos were all mysteriously taken care of.
He tells himself that he’s just going to keep an eye on you. For Robby’s sake. He’d do the same for Whitaker.
The next time you have a night shift, you’re clearly more prepared for the exhaustion, and when he finally sees you in true, proper action, he understands immediately why Robby likes you and Mohan frequently attaches you to her cases. Skill, patience, and focus.
When he watches you trach a patient with a certain ease that only comes from practicing hundreds of times, Ellis shoots him a knowing look. Raised eyebrows and smirk. When she passes him in the hall a few hours later, she jabs her thumb behind her shoulder at where you’re diligently filling out a chart.
“That one yours, then?”
Jack shakes his head. “It’s not like that. You make me sound like a creep.”
Another raised eyebrow. “Sure it isn’t.”
“She’s Robby’s intern.”
“Mhm.”
“She’s way too young.”
Parker shrugs. “She’s good.”
“She is.”
The senior resident cuts a glance back to you. “Think she’ll burn out?”
“Maybe.”
Parker crosses his arms. “Are you gonna let it happen?”
“She’s not my intern.”
Up to three Parker Ellis looks and counting.
“It’s an HR nightmare.”
Parker shrugs. “You just said she’s not your intern.”
He narrows his eyes. “You know what I meant.”
“Do I? It’s been awhile, Jack. No one would really judge you for having some fun.”
“Parker.”
“Jack.”
He shakes his head, walks towards the boards. “You’re the worst.”
Parker just laughs. “Sure I am.”
To your credit, he doesn’t find you crying in a supply closet again to see evidence of you doing so for a solid few weeks. But, like most things in the ED, the peace doesn’t last.
You came into work soaking wet, which is odd, considering the fact that he knows you drive, and the walk to the parking lot isn’t far enough to account how you’re shivering in your freshly changed scrubs. He brushes it off, chalks it up to freakish Pittsburg weather.
Some night shifts are relatively slow and mild. Tonight is not one of those shifts. Patients are extra irritable at late hours, which is to be expected, but what he’s not expecting is to walk by South 15 and see a 50-something year old man slap you.
Jack blinks, and in the next second he’s in the room, standing in between you and the patient.
“Excuse me, what the fuck is going on here?”
Gloria will probably give him shit for his language later, but right now all he can think about is the startled look on your face and the echo that the contact made.
“I said I want a real doctor, not this fucking—“
“Get the fuck out of my hospital.”
Shen peaks his head in. “Security’s on their way.”
Jack reaches behind him to where you’re still standing, your hand covering your cheek, and gently pushes you towards Shen, towards the door. You stumble over your feet a bit, but truly, Jack’s never been more thankful for his residents because then Parker is right there, ushering you out the door with a hand on your shoulder. Jack resolutely ignores your mumbled “I’m fine, really, he just surprised me.”
Thankfully, security doesn’t take that long to get to the room, and the second Jack is finished explaining, he’s out the door and scanning the ED for your face. Nurse Young jerks her head towards the break room, and he thinks he manages to give her what he hopes is a thankful smile before he’s beelining for it.
When he opens the door, you’re sitting on the floor again, holding an ice pack to your cheek with one hand and dabbing at your lip with a paper towel. Like you’ve never heard of medical protocol in your entire life.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
You jerk your head up, a kid caught with its hand in the cookie jar.
“Dr. Abbot!”
Lowering himself to the ground is awkward, physically. Prosthetics don’t lend to much mobility and he’s too old to be doing this, but he just. There are little beads of blood collecting and then sliding down your chin, dripping onto the leg of your scrubs. At the same angle of the split in your lip, there’s a little cut he can see peaking out from under the ice pack.
He reaches forward, fingers itching towards the deep scarlet dripping steadily. He pauses, remembering things like words and questions and sees the wild look in your eyes.
“Can I…?” Jack’s voice trails off, the words clunky and useless in this bubble that’s seemed to form around the two of you, on the probably disgusting floor of the ED break room.
You slowly drop the napkin, let the ice pack lower to your lap and nod.
“He had a ring on. I guess it caught me. I didn’t really notice until I got here.”
“Parker and Shen didn’t notice?”
You look at your lap. “I told them I was fine… And covered it with my hand. There are other patients. It’s just a little cut.”
Jack’s fingers finally reach your face, and he almost takes them back when you flinch on the initial contact, shaking ever so slightly.
But then, with noticeable effort, you relax into his palm, his fingers curling around the side of your jaw. He should grab gloves. He should get up, take his hand off your face.
Anyone could walk in right now and call Gloria on his ass.
His thumb sweeps across your cheekbone, just below the cut, which does have some faint bruising around it. And truthfully, the split in your lip doesn’t look that bad either.
But there’s still little dots and trails of scarlet and he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to calm down until he fixes it. He needs to fix something.
“If I leave you here so I can get supplies,” He starts, voice a little rough, “Can I trust that you’ll stay here and not do anything stupid?”
“Uh, yes? Should I move to a real chair though?”
Jack huffs as he hauls himself to his feet. “That’d be preferable.”
Later, when he’s at home in his bed, he’ll assure himself that the night shift wasn’t truly that busy and he trusts his residents to handle things while he’s busy.
No one stops him on his way to the medical supply closet (the irony of the location is not lost on him) and he makes it back without interruption. Upon opening the door, you have in fact moved to a chair, and it seems the bleeding slowed in his absence.
What he should do is sit down in the chair opposite of you and handle this situation like a professional, like the Dr. Abbot, night shift attending, not Jack who’s got a thing for fixing.
He does try to remove his emotions and feelings from the situation, he really does. It’s something he’s generally very good at —which is where he and Robby differ; Robby would prefer to feel too much and Jack would prefer to feel nothing at all— but you’re looking up at him and there’s something really dangerous in the air and it must’ve gotten into your blood stream or something cause it’s swimming in your eyes and he realizes that removing his feelings is not going to be possible.
He decides he could at least tone it down. You’re an intern. Robby’s intern. So what if you’re bleeding all over the break room? Jack’s just doing his job as the attending to look after the doctors and nurses under his jurisdiction or whatever. That’s all.
“Tilt your head up.”
He sets to work cleaning up the cut and split as detached and clinically as possible, even puts on gloves so there’s no skin to skin contact, just protocol, but he can feel the warmth of your skin through the latex and you keep sucking in these tiny little breathes when something stings and he can’t get the sound of the slap out of his head and it’s all just kind of a lot.
He readjusts his hand on the side of your face, sort of holding your forehead now to have better access and control over the cut on your cheek and wow. Your skin is really warm. It kind of feels like you’re burning up.
Jack tosses the piece of gauze he was using and rests the back of his hand against your forehead. Shit, you are burning up.
He thinks back to you, walking in today, soaked to the bone.
“Did you walk to work today?”
You wince. “My car kind of died? On the way here? I was only a mile away. But I called a towing company, so I didn’t just leave my car in the middle of the road.”
He blinks.
“Your car died, so you had it towed and walked a mile to work, in the rain, late at night, and didn’t tell anybody?”
You just keep staring at him, brows furrowed.
“Yeah? I carry a knife and I’ve taken self defense classes, and my car was just towed back to my place, so. I had a shift to work.”
There’s… a lot to unpack in your answer.
“Kid,” He starts, wondering why Robby never thought to give him a heads up before you started working more night shifts, “What was your plan to get home?”
“Walk, probably. I was thinking about taking the bus. Dr. King knows the bus schedule, so I’m probably going to text her.”
Jack decides to just finish cleaning you up, before he does something stupid like shake you by your shoulders and ask why you didn’t think to let your boss know that your car broke down and you’d be walking home in the rain. Or that when a patient slapped you in the face, his ring cut your face and lip open.
God.
“It’s really fine though,” You say, gesticulating animatedly with your hands. “My place isn’t that far, and it’s not the first time my car’s died. The battery’s kind of shot, but I guess my car has a weird battery, and it’s like, crazy expensive to get a new one, so. Besides, I like walking. I’ve been meaning to catch up on my audiobooks.”
He wishes you’d stop talking so he’d stop hearing things that make him want to do things he can’t and shouldn’t do. Like find out what car you drive so he can buy you a new battery. Or buy you a new car all together.
Christ, you have him wrapped around your fucking finger.
“I’ll drive you home. If you’re fine with that.”
Jack has to fight a grin at how comically wide your eyes grow at his suggestion.
“Oh no, you really don’t have to. I promise I’m—“
“Please stop saying you're fine,” He begs, “You don’t have a working car, a patient slapped you in the face, and I think you’re coming down with something.”
The smile that’s seemed permanently fixed on your face since he came into the break room falters, for a bit.
“Well,” You grimace, hands fisting the hem of your scrub top, “Things certainly aren’t… great, but I’ll survive. I’m not like, incapable, or anything.”
Jacks quiet for a bit, not just mulling over your words but the way you said them; the cadence and tone.
He hums. “Is that what you think? That I or someone else here will think you’re not competent or that you’re weak if you take a break or ask for help?”
Your face falters again. “No, no, of course not I just… I don’t know. I’m an intern. It’s my job, supposedly, to mess up and have to be looked after in case I accidentally kill someone and stuff like that. I just don’t want to be someone that people think they have to worry about. I need— internships are competitive. They’re competitions, really. And I want to win.”
Jack Abbot knows what it’s like to want to win. That need to prove yourself, prove that you’re capable and strong and unfailing.
So Jack also knows how quickly that can all go south.
“You’re a smart kid,” He says, voice ever so slightly soft in the quiet tension of the break room, empty except for the two of you, “And you’re going to make a great resident, and one day, a damn good attending. But none of that means shit if you burn out or get run yourself into the ground before you get there.”
He avoids eye-contact while he carefully applies the bandage to your cheek. “This industry will chew you up and spit you back out if you don’t take care of yourself. I get it. We’re doctors. We make the worst patients. But you got slapped in the face during a shitty day. It’s okay to… not be okay for a minute.”
You huff a watery laugh. “Isn’t that what energy drinks are for?”
He shakes his head. “What, trying to die faster?”
“Anything to shake those student loans. Can’t be in debt if you’re dead.”
“Don’t they just pass it to your family? Next of kin or whatever?”
“I don’t think they can give student loans to a cactus. I mean, I consider her my daughter, but I hardly think it’ll hold up in court.”
Jack mentally files that information away for later. What later is, he isn’t sure.
He stands, pulls off his gloves and tosses all the used gauze and shit in the trash can.
“I gotta get back out there,” He jams his thumb towards the door, “But feel free to take five. No one’s judging you. Matter of fact, as your boss, I’m telling you to take a break.”
You roll your eyes. “Whatever you say, Dr. Abbot. But thank you. For the…”
You gesture to your bandaged cheek and lip. “…And for the advice.”
He shrugs, like taking care of you hasn’t become a persona fantasy he may or may not fall asleep imagining most nights. Like it doesn’t matter, like he’s just doing his job.
“Offer for the ride’s still open. Just let me know by the end of shift.”
And with that, he’s out the door.
It’s the end of shift, and you’re staring at the double doors that lead to the outside world, and beyond that, absolutely fucking miserable weather for walking, a dead car, and cold as shit apartment.
You’re not exactly rushing out the door.
You’re clutching at the strap of your bag, regular clothes on, still damp despite the fact that it’s been over thirteen hours since you originally took them off, begging the universe to strike you down where you stand. Spontaneous lightning bolts happen indoors too, right?
The doors just stare back at you, unchanging in their miserable-ness, and after a solid ten minutes of staring, you feel rather than see Jack sidle up next to you.
“Still raining out there?”
“Yep. Looks worse now.”
“Not great weather to walk in. Especially considering the low-grade fever.”
“Mhm.”
“Did you text Dr. King for the bus schedule?”
“No. I didn’t want to wake her up.”
Jack huffs a breath, then jerks his head towards the doors that lead to the employee parking lot.
“Come on, kid.”
The ride is quiet and awkward. Well. Dr. Abbot probably doesn’t think it’s awkward, because he seems like the kind of man not to be bothered by long stretches of silence. Or silence at all.
He’d been kind enough to turn the heat on full blast (you started shivering the moment you stepped outside) and the radio is softly playing, and it’s only thanks to Sabrina Carpenter’s voice that you don’t feel like completely freaking out.
You mouth along to the lyrics, quietly humming the chorus under your breath.
“—I get wet at the thought of you being a responsible guy—“
“—Treating me like you’re supposed to do, tears run down my thighs—“
By the time you’ve realized that perhaps this isn’t the best song choice to sing along to, considering the situation and who’s car you’re currently riding in, the words “I get wet” have already left your mouth so there’s no real point in stopping.
On a completely unrelated note, Dr. Abbot starts smiling a little bit when you hum.
Pittsburgh traffic is terrible, so the drive kind of drags on. The radio is playing Chappell Roan now. Casual specifically. You’re considering changing the radio station because god.
“So,” You start, just to say anything that drowns out “knee-deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out, is it casual now?”, “Did you… have a good shift?”
That was a terrible question. Jesus. What the hell is wrong with you? How did you get through medical school?
Dr. Abbot snorts. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”
Ah. Right. The Incident.
“I told you I’m—“
“Didn’t I tell you to stop saying that?”
Your lap has never looked more interesting. Wow, is that a loose thread on your sweats?
He continues. “Fine or not, a patient assaulted you. Even if he didn’t leave a mark, that’s still shitty.”
“Have you been hit by a patient before?”
He huffs. “Hell yeah. It happens to everyone eventually. It’ll happen again. You get better at keeping your cool.”
“Sorry you had to step in. I’ve been hit by a patient before and I was fine.”
“Oh yeah?”
You nod. “It was during my Pedes rotation, actually. I’ve always known working with kids probably wasn’t going to be for me, but, well. Kid came in for intussusception, and she was screaming and writhing in pain, and I failed to restrain her properly.”
“What, did she slap you too?”
“Nope. Kicked me in the chin. Ended up biting almost clean through my tongue.”
“Fucking hell, kid. What’d you do?”
You shrug. “Kept my blood in my mouth until we finished sedating the patient. Ended up with three stitches.”
Dr. Abbot lets out a low whistle. “Always the patients you least expect.”
“The importance of proper patient restraint was thoroughly impressed upon me, I assure you.”
The silence after your short conversation is slightly more comfortable, and thankfully the radio station has decided to play less pointed music.
Between the warmth of the car, the smell permeating the seats that smells distinctly like Dr. Abbot, and the drumming of rain outside, it doesn’t take long for drowsiness to begin to overtake you.
Your last thought before falling asleep is that you don’t remember if you gave Dr. Abbot your address or not.
Someone is gently shaking your shoulder, and you feel like shit.
“What?” You attempt to say, but the side of your mouth is pressed against the seatbelt and your shoulder so it comes out sounding like: “Whamfgh?”
Opening your eyes is a herculean task, like someone sewed miniature weights to your eyelids while you were asleep. You’re absolutely freezing, despite the steady hum of the car's heat, still on high, and you vaguely recognize the street the car is currently parked on.
Oh right, your apartment.
“Oh,” You yawn, hauling yourself semi-upright, aiming for woman who has it together, and less disheveled swooning woman in a Baroque painting.
Dr. Abbot is staring at you with equal parts humor and concern.
You rub at your eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Little over forty minutes. You looked like you needed it.”
“It doesn’t take that long to drive to my place, even with traffic.”
Your brain is moving like molasses, so it takes you a second to catch up with the implication of his statement.
“Did you just… park in front of my house? So I could keep sleeping?”
He just shrugs. “Like I said. You looked like you needed it.”
Embarrassment and a touch of something else floods through your body, hot and cold at the same time.
“Sorry. You didn’t have to wait.”
“If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t have.”
Still moving slowly, you gather up your bag from where it partially spilled on the floor all over your feet, shoving old receipts and pads and chapstick back in with the reckless abandon of a person who isn’t nearly aware enough of social cues to be in a car alone with their hot boss.
Whilst you're grabbing and shoving, Dr. Abbot reaches into his back seat, rifles around for a bit, and then drops something rather unceremoniously over your head and shoulders. After a quiet “hey” you pull it into your lap, and then that hot feeling is back in full force.
It’s a rain jacket. Clearly Dr. Abbot’s. You can see his name written on the inside pocket. It’s nice too. Definitely not the kind of rain jacket you could afford on an intern’s budget.
“For the next time your car dies,” He clarifies, as if the jacket’s purpose is the thing that’s stupefied you, not the fact that he’s the one giving it to you, “In case of rain.”
“You really don’t have to,” your words are rushed and clunky in your mouth, tumbling over each other in your haste to say something, anything, “I mean, I can just buy my own—“
“First of all,” He cuts you off, voice smooth and rough at the same time, “Do I seem to be the kind of guy in the habit of doing things I don’t want to? And second of all…”
He tilts his head, gaze sharp. “Are you really going to buy one for yourself?”
Your mouth goes dry.
“I was planning on looking online—“
Dr. Abbot interrupts you. “Now you don’t have to.”
Like it’s that easy. Does he want it to be?
“Dr. Abbot, I—“
“Jack.”
His grin goes from mild to shit-eating as you stare at him, obviously radiating confusion.
“Jack,” you start, testing out the name in your mouth, hearing how it sounds in the air. “I can take care of myself. You don’t need to give me your jacket. I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”
“Kid—“
The prickling of perceived weakness makes anger spark in your chest.
“Don’t call me kid like I’m stupid.”
Dr. Abb— Jack seems simultaneously impressed that you interrupted him for a change and vaguely put out.
He holds up a finger, effectively silencing anything else you were thinking of saying.
“I don’t call you kid because I think you’re stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid. You’d know if I thought you were stupid, because I would tell you. ‘Kid’ is a…” He trails off, free hand tapping thoughtful rhythms on the steering wheel, “…Nickname. Term of endearment. Whatever you want to call it, but it’s not derogatory.”
Jack holds up a second finger.
“You have not been taking care of yourself. If you were, you wouldn’t have a low grade fever, and you would’ve called me as your boss or one of your friends to drive you instead of walking after your car died. You’ve been surviving. There’s a difference.”
Shame burns white hot through you— all your recent failings laid out by the person you want least to notice them. Clearly, he has.
Possibly out of pity in response to your no doubt miserable expression, Jack continues.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’d be an honest-to-god miracle if any intern managed to properly take care of themself. Hell, residents don’t do it either, and neither do attendings. Does Robby strike you as the kind of man who takes perfect care of himself?”
“That depends. Is my answer going to make it back to him?”
Jack huffs a quiet laugh. “Exactly. Doctors make the worst patients, in and out of a hospital setting. Knowing better doesn’t actually make us all that inclined to do better. Terrible misconception.”
He nudges the jacket on your lap. “So just take the jacket. One less thing to worry about.”
Emboldened by his recent streak of kindness towards you and the flush of fever running through your veins, you look over to him.
“You worry about me?”
Something dances in his eyes for a split second, gone before you can blink.
“I worry about all the interns and residents on my service, but especially the ones my best friend has taken a liking to.”
Right. Of course. He only cares because of Robby. And Robby only cares so he can add another doctor to the already short-staffed PTMC. It’s not like Jack actually likes you or anything.
You clutch the jacket to your stomach, finally finding the energy to get out of the car. Jack’s car.
“Well. Thanks for the ride, Dr. Abbot. And the jacket.”
“No problem, kid.”
And if later on that evening, in the safety of your tiny apartment, you take in the deep, fresh, almost spicy smell that makes up Jack, lingering on the jacket, that’s no one’s business but yours.
—
From that night on, it feels like Jack Abbot is everywhere.
Whether it’s something he’s doing on purpose or you’ve just developed a heightened sense to his whereabouts— it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s a whiff of his cologne (eerily similar to Dior Sauvage, which makes you shudder. Certainly he didn’t choose a cologne similar to the number one male manipulator scent on purpose?) or seeing his handwriting on a whiteboard or his notes in a chart, he’s there.
You’re being scheduled for night shifts fairly regularly now, in addition to the 24-hour shifts you have the pleasure of being put on as an intern.
Working a double isn’t horrific, really. Exhausting, sure, but Robby and Jack’s solid presence makes the shifts more bearable. Plus, you’re quickly becoming friends with the fresher residents, Whitaker and Santos, plus some of the older residents like Mohan and King. Even Dr. Langdon gives pretty solid advice and mentorship, despite the tension in the air whenever he happens to be working with or near Robby.
Normally, 24 hour shifts are grueling, but not impossible. Somewhere around the 15 or 16 hour mark, the sleep deprivation hits, and you can just coast on stress-induced inertia and a healthy does of energy drinks and mania.
Today, though, has been particularly fucking awful. Maybe it’s the fact that the fever never really went away, or the fact that you started your period the day before (being sick on your period should be illegal.) It’s probably both of those things.
But there isn’t really anything to do but grin and bear it. The day will pass, and you have the next two days off anyways. Just survive the next however-many hours of the shift and then you can go home, dress in exclusively fluffy clothes, and binge watch tv whilst eating heart-stopping junk food.
You’re distracted from your charting, propped up on the counter at the nurses station by a light tap on your shoulder and someone saying your name.
Dr. Langdon has sidled up next you, voice hushed.
“Hey, uh. I just wanted to let you know that you seem to have… bled through.”
If a spontaneous earthquake could open a chasm beneath your feet and swallow you whole, now would be the time.
“Fuck fuck-ity fuck fuck,” You mumble, wiping your hands down your face. “Right. Yeah. Of course. Thank you for letting me know.”
In a moment that is as mortifying as it is kind of sweet, Langdon passes you a hoodie that is clearly his.
“To tie around your waist,” He clarifies, holding the object out across the meager space between the two of you, voice a bit awkward and stilted, like you might decide to spit in his face or something.
You don’t actually know what it is that Dr. Langdon did before your arrival that makes the break room go quiet when he walks in (unless Dr. King is there) but you don’t particularly care. If it was truly something horrific that you should be worried about, he wouldn’t be working here. Robby wouldn’t let that kind of thing slide.
So you take the offered hoodie with a strained smile (can this shift just be over) and speed-walk to the break room, praying no one decides to snag you on the way there.
What you should do is go to your locker where your stash of pads, tampons, spare underwear, and extra scrubs are, and then probably the bathroom to get changed, so you can keep on going but you also just saw Dr. King go into the break room and you just really need a hit of her specific brand of optimism.
The woman in question perks up when she notices your arrival, hastily eating the same snack she always eats around this time— a tiny bag of pretzels.
She watches as you collapse into the chair across from her, letting your head thunk onto the table.
“Bad shift?”
“Bad life,” You grumble. “Dr. Langdon had to give me his hoodie to tie around my waist because I bled through onto my scrubs. Like a middle schooler who doesn’t know what pad sizes are for.”
Dr. King nods thoughtfully. “He asked me if it would be weird of him to let you know and offer his hoodie. To which I replied that periods are a normal bodily function and he’s a doctor.”
“Here here,” You half-heartedly cheer, any actual cheer or enthusiasm severely lacking in your voice. “How did you survive your intern year, Dr. King?”
“We’ve been working together for awhile, you can call me Mel,”
She pops another pretzel in her mouth before answering. “But to answer your question, I mostly just kept telling myself that failing wasn’t an option. Which. Probably isn’t helpful, or good advice, but it worked for me. Something that’s nice is if you have a fellow intern or doctor that you enjoy working with. I know the other two interns who matched into the PTMC dropped out of the course, so it’s just you, but you have Dr. Robby, right?”
You nod, picking absently at a spot on the table and ignoring the way that it wasn’t Robby who popped into your head, but Jack.
Your teeny, ignorable crush on him has become a full-blown thing, with semi-weekly dreams about him in various… situations, and casual daydreams at all hours of the day of what it would be like to just be with him, or hear him, in any capacity that couldn’t be qualified as work or a boss checking on his employee. Intern. Whatever.
Hormonal and fever-ish, you suddenly feel like you’re going to explode and die if you don’t have someone to confide in right this very second. You haven’t heard Mel really talk about anyone you work with outside of professional doctor-to-doctor conversation, not even about Dr. Langdon, who she seems almost suspiciously close with.
“Mel,” You start, voice a little too thick and watery to just be talking about your stupid, annoying, one-sided workplace crush, “Can I tell you a secret?”
She seems to consider the pros and cons first, and looks fairly caught off guard, but she answers. “Um. Sure?”
“Have you ever had a crush on a coworker before? Or like, a boss or mentor?”
Mel sets down her bag of pretzels. “Is this about Dr.—“
“I have the biggest crush on Dr. Abbot and I think it’s ruining my life.”
The words burst out of you all at once, and Mel’s expression goes from shocked, to confused, before finally settling in abject amusement.
“Ah,” She says, sliding the pretzels across to you. “Um. Well I personally don’t have a crush on Dr. Abbot, but I think I understand the sentiment.”
You bury your face into your hands and groan. “It’s awful. It’s so cliche. It’s so fucking Grey’s Anatomy.”
“I’ve never actually seen that show. Becca likes it though.”
Mel allows you a few moments of wallowing and pretzel eating before she speaks again.
“Have you… acted on it?”
“No!” You snap your head up. “I mean. No, I haven’t. I’m not naive enough to think that he would reciprocate. He’s an attending and I’m an intern.”
She leans in. “But…?”
“But sometimes… I wonder? I don’t know. I’m probably crazy. He drove me home the other day, cause my car died, and it was raining, and I got slapped by a patient, and that was when I first came down with this stupid fever, and like, that’s normal, right?”
Mel nods. “Fr— Langdon drives me to work when we share shifts, and sometimes when we don’t. I think Dr. Santos and Dr. Whitaker carpool too. So maybe?”
“Right. Yeah.”
She takes the pretzel bag back. “Is there more evidence that makes you feel crazy?”
Your skin flushes hot at the memory alone.
“He gave me his rain jacket. To keep.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Mel once again takes a few minutes, and the rest of her pretzels before responding.
“I’m honestly not the best person to ask for advice about this. I’ve been told I can be… dense when it comes to romantic endeavors.”
You shrug. “You’re a great listener, and you haven’t steered me wrong in the past.”
She brightens. “That’s good! I think my advice would be to talk to Dr. Mohan. She has experience with your… particular situation.”
Mel tosses the empty pretzel bag and heads toward the door. “I’ll let Robby know you’re taking ten, so don’t worry about someone looking for you while you’re changing.”
“You’re the best. I love you.”
The resident flushes at your gratitude, and then ducks out the door, leaving you alone to stew on her advice.
—
Talking to Dr. Mohan proves difficult, at first. How exactly do you start that conversation? “Hey, I heard you had advice on having a world-ending crush on your boss, got any tips?”
Additionally, she’s kind of hard to track down. You greatly respect Dr. Mohan’s work ethic and truly aspire to her unflinching devotion to patient care at the PTMC.
After a few days (which turns into a few weeks, because you are an emotional coward) of trying (and failing) to find a moment to talk, Dr. Mohan actually ends up finding you.
“Hey!” She jogs up to you as you’re walking to your car, a too-bright smile on her face for the fact that you both just got off a fourteen hour shift.
“Sorry to be that annoying coworker who talks to you in the parking lot, but I wanted to catch you before you left. Mel said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Right!” You stammer, slightly mortified. You admire Dr. Mohan so much and really want her to think you’re capable but you really need some advice on Jack Abbot as a whole, and it sounds like she’s the only expert around. “Yes. That. It’s a really normal question, you know.”
Dr. Mohan just nods, a smile still fixed on her face, like this is a totally normal conversation. “Uh, sure?”
There’s a beat of silence where you both stare at each other, and then she gasps.
“This is about Abbot, isn’t it?”
You groan, throwing your head back in defeat. “Am I that obvious?”
She laughs goodnaturedly. “No. Probably not. You’re just the only intern in the ED right now so I try to make it a habit to keep an eye on you. Plus, Mel is literally the only person in the world who knows about my now-dead crush on him, so. I just connected the dots.”
“He’s so hot, Dr. Mohan. I feel like I’m dying.”
She makes a noise of sympathy. “He is. It’s fucking annoying, at a certain point.”
“Thank you!” You shout, “Like it’s just so there. It should be illegal to just walk around and look like that. I should be focusing on like, studying and learning, but instead I’m just harboring this stupid crush on an attending.”
“Have you ever seen Grey’s—“
“Yes. I know. I can’t be Meredith. Meredith was like, always a mess. Am I a mess?”
Mohan purses her lips. “Well. You did just say you felt like you were dying.”
“I know,” You sigh. “It makes me feel… shallow. I like being a doctor. I was so excited to get matched into the PTMC, and this stupid crush is throwing me off my game.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“On my first night shift rotation I dropped a scalpel, picked it back up, and then ripped the purse strings on my first appendectomy.”
She winces. “Oh. That’s not… great.”
Your hand finds its way to your comfort necklace. “He found me crying in the supply closet like some medical student, and then he comforted me. It was terrible.”
Mohan starts ambling towards the direction you assume her car is in. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I’ve been caught crying in the supply closet several times. I think it’s a right of passage. And as for that second part…”
She shrugs. “Abbot gives credit where credit is due, but he won’t coddle you. If he actually offered real comfort or advice or whatever, then he meant it.”
“That’s what he said. It just didn’t really help the whole crush-on-him part. And then there was the slapping incident, and he drove me home, and now I have his rain jacket in my backseat in case my car dies again.”
Mohan actually looks taken back.
“Okay. It sounds to me like this is a situation that is in serious need of wine. Do you drink?”
“Whenever I have a spare twenty dollars.”
She grins. “I happen to have a couple bottles at home that might do the trick. Follow me back to my place?”
“Yes please.”
Wine and, eventually, takeout at Samira’s is much more enjoyable than you expected— considering the fact that you’re an intern and she’s a resident. She confides that she doesn’t have very many friends outside of the ED and was excited at the opportunity to have “real girl-time”.
She shares how she weathered her own seemingly life-ending crush on Jack, gasps and screams at the appropriate times when you tell her about the slapping, the events that occurred in the break room afterwards, the drive home, and the jacket.
You leave her apartment feeling lighter than ever. Like life might be worth living. Like you could survive your intern year.
Maybe everything will be okay.
—
Everything is not okay.
You’re now two full weeks into a never-ending fever, you keep getting stuck with shitty shifts (how many times a month can one person possibly be scheduled to work a double?) and top it all off, you’ve been pissed on not once, but twice in the same fucking shift.
Santos snorts when she sees you go by in your third set of scrubs for the day.
You shoot her a look. “Supportive as ever, Dr. Santos.”
“I try.”
You sink into the chair next to hers, taking a moment to press the heels of your hands into your eyes and maybe, like, take a thirty second nap.
It doesn’t help much.
There’s a particular misery in watching the day-shift rotation handoff with the night shift and not being able to join in the process. Because you’re still there. And will be, until you see them again for your handoff, in twelve fucking hours.
Patients tend to get bitchier the later it gets, and it’s one of those nights where every patient bleeds into the next in a never-ending sea of complaints, pain, and fixing.
The fixing is fine. You like the fixing.
You’re just… having a hard time keeping up with everything while the fever perpetually runs you down. It’s the kind of thing where no amount of sleep can help you. Unless it was for 48 hours straight and then you got another 48 hours off after that to relax while you’re awake, and then another 48 hours to be productive.
A vacation. A week off. You’re describing taking a week off work. It’s comical, actually. Imagine requesting a week off from work. Gloria or whoever it is would never grant that. Not as an intern.
You notice Jack lingering around your general vicinity, which is fairly normal on a night like tonight. Technically, as the only intern on shift, you’re the only liability he has to really worry about.
Somewhere around the eighteen hour mark, he slides into the chair next to you while you’re charting.
“You’re flagging.”
Your eyes burn as you tap information into the tablet, then check on the computer in front of you. “I’m fine. I just need a Redbull or something.”
He slides the tablet out of your hands. “Part of being a good doctor is knowing when to take a break. Can’t be a good doctor if you’re falling asleep during the exam, right?”
“I would never fall asleep during an exam.”
He shrugs. “I’ve seen it happen.”
Jack jerks his head towards the break room. “Take five. Get an energy drink or whatever. Then I want you on chairs for at least an hour.”
“Yes sir.”
He rolls his eyes. “Get going.”
Chairs don't prove to be as uneventful as you (and probably Jack) hoped it would be. You get vomited on by a teenage girl, who apologizes profusely when she finally manages to stop throwing up, narrowly avoid a swing from a patient that quickly becomes a behavioral case, and become an unwilling participant in another patient’s doctor fantasy.
Security had to get involved with that last one. It was. Something.
Your shift ends with little fanfare. It’s honestly a miracle you survived. You’re exhausted, achey, and still feverish. The only thing you can think about is crawling into your bed, indulging in a rare expense of turning your heat up, and sleeping until your next shift.
Walking into your apartment ends up being a slap in the face. First of all, it’s fucking freezing. As if you left every single window open while you were gone. Secondly, it’s dark. Like, not even the clock on the microwave is on.
“Fuck,” you mumble under your breath, tears beginning to burn with unshed tears digging through your bag and fumbling with your phone, about to text your landlord when you see that he’s already texted.
Eric (Landlord): Power and AC is down. Might take some time to fix. Power should be back on by tonight.
And that’s just the last straw, really.
You slam the door behind you, not even bothering to go inside your apartment at all, chest tight and face hot, you race down the stairs, trying to find Samira’s contact through blurry eyes. When you think you’ve found it you click call, collapsing on the curb with your body doubled over, crying like a crazy person into your knees, at something like nine in the morning.
The phone rings for a bit, and you’re about to give up when the line finally stops and somebody picks up.
“Hello?”
It’s not Samira who answers. It’s Jack.
You sniffle. “Why are you answering Samira’s phone?”
“I didn’t. I answered my phone. Because you called me. Are you okay?”
“Oh,” You decide to ignore his question, “I meant to call Samira. Sorry.”
“Wait,” Jack’s voice comes out all rough and tinny through the speaker, but even distorted through a phone, you could listen to it for hours, “Answer the question. Are you okay?”
Your bottom lip wobbles dangerously.
“The power’s out in my building. And the heating went out too. My landlord said the power won’t be on until tonight, and I just wanted to go to sleep, but it’s cold and I'm tired and this stupid fever won’t go away.”
“Do you have a place to stay?”
Always a man of action, Jack is.
You shrug, then make a non-committal noise when you remember he can’t see it. “I was supposed to call Samira and see if she’d let me sleep on her couch.”
“I have a guest bedroom.”
The statement hangs in the crisp morning air. You think of Jack’s encouraging advice, Jack’s steady presence, Jack’s warm car and his nice smelling rain- jacket. Jack, Jack, Jack.
“Jack?”
“Yes?”
“What’s your address?”
The drive over involves bawling your eyes out to Vienna by Billy Joel. It’s just that kind of day.
You have no problems finding parking (miraculously) and no one stops you as you head up to Jack’s apartment as directed.
It’s… fancy. Like, polished floor lobby, lounge area adjacent to the front desk fancy.
The actual building itself isn’t very tall, nothing like a skyscraper, so it’s not exactly surprising that Jack’s apartment is the penthouse. It’s just suddenly very awkward standing in front of the door, in the same sweatshirt you’ve had since high school, sweats that have seen better years, looking exactly like the kind of girl who sobbed on the ride over to Billy Joel.
Jack opens the door almost immediately after you knock, and.
If seeing him in scrubs was bad, it doesn’t hold a fucking candle to him in a tight, army green shirt and grey sweatpants. Grey sweatpants. That couldn’t have been intentional, right? Is he online enough to know these things? God.
His features soften when he takes in your tear-streaked face and disheveled appearance.
He makes a low noise in his throat.
“Oh, you poor thing. Come here,”
Jack had actually been gesturing to the apartment, saying ‘come inside’ but the dam breaks the moment he says “poor thing” and you don’t have the wherewithal to think anything more complex than “Jack=Comfort and Safety".
Your bag drops with a dull thud onto the ground and then you’re crashing into him, face pressed into his chest and arms wrapped around his middle. You can barely find it within yourself to be embarrassed.
Jack doesn’t react at first, going completely stiff in your hold, and you think maybe you’ve gone and fucked this up too, like everything good in your life, but right when you move to pull away a hand finds its way to the back of your head, and another rubs circles on your back.
“Poor girl,” he murmurs, voice a soothing rumble with your ear close to his chest, “They been running you ragged?”
You nod uselessly, feeling raw and cut open— like you’ve been smashed against a rock and everything you keep tucked inside is spilling out and you can’t stop it.
“I’m so tired.” You half-mumble-half-sob into him, a sentiment that feels too light to convey everything that’s happened since you became an intern at the PTMC, and everything else you don’t talk about that happened before.
“I know sweetheart, I know,” Jack is solid beneath your cheek and arms, a lifeboat in a storm. “How about we get you inside and get you warm, huh? That sound nice?”
At the promise of warmth you finally detach from him, shame burning through you when you eye the wet spot on his shirt.
“Sorry,” You say, voice barely above a whisper. “I think I got snot on your shirt.”
“Trust me kid, it’s seen worse.”
He grabs your bag before you can even make a move for it, and you trail behind him into his apartment, attempting to ground yourself by looking around his apartment.
It’s nice. Lived in, not sterile. It doesn’t, actually, look the inside of a dentist’s office, like you were half expecting. Most new apartments have that doctor’s office lobby feel. Not exactly comfortable when you’re a doctor and the goal of home is to not remind you of your job.
Jack hangs your bag on a hook by the door, right next to his own. Something twinges in your chest at the sight.
There’s a feeling under your skin you can’t place as you shuffle into his apartment, something warm and skittish that aches for this to not be a one time thing, to be able to compare the pale morning light you’re watching now to late afternoon sun. To know where he keeps his mugs, what drawer the silverware is in, if he’s got a junk drawer with random shit in it, and what the random shit is. What it feels like to be in his kitchen, shoulders brushing.
But that’s a lot of complicated things to name or voice just past the threshold of the foyer, so you wrap your arms around yourself and toe your shoes off, then pad quietly after him.
Jack is— inviting, or maybe enticing; all those words that beckon the skittish thing closer and it feels just on the tip of danger to obediently sit on the couch he ushers you to.
“By the way,” Jack says somewhere behind you, maybe in the kitchen? “I have a cat. His name is Charlie. He probably won’t come near you, but be warned, he’s an asshole when he wants to be.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I like cats. Especially the asshole ones.”
“That explains a lot of things.”
His statement is kind of loaded, chock full of subtext you don’t care to parse through at the moment.
“Um,” You start, feeling a bit unsteady, “Is— Do you mind if I shower? I kind of smell gross probably, and I feel… grimy. Your apartment seems clean and I’d hate to get my hospital grime on anything.”
Jack just chuckles. “One, I wouldn’t care if you got ‘hospital grime’ on anything because that would be a very hypocritical thing to care about, and two, of course you can shower. Do you have spare clothes?”
“I might’ve forgotten to grab those.”
Another huffy laugh. “That’s fine. You can borrow some of mine. I’ll leave them on the bed.”
That’s like. Wow. Yeah. You’re just gonna borrow some clothes from him. From Jack. You’re going to shower in Jack’s shower and use whatever bodywash he has (hopefully not 5-in-one) and then put on his clothes and you are totally capable of being Completely Normal about these things.
“I already started on dinner when you said you were coming over. Should be done by the time you get out of the shower. Chicken noodle okay?”
Damn Jack Abbot and damn your shitty emotional regulation and damn your life for putting you in these situations.
“Yeah,” You croak, thinking about things like soup and family and being cold and strong and alone, “Yeah that’s fine. Thank you.”
Jack politely does not comment on the fact that soup is reducing you to a tangled heap of emotions and tears, and instead directs you to where his shower is and says to use whatever you want and take however long you want. He says want, not need. You’re not sure if there’s an intention behind the word choice.
Once in the shower, you allow yourself time to cry, to feel awful and self-pitying and all those things that are terrible to go through in front of another person. His shower is expensive and the water is warm and he does not have 5-in-one. There’s a litter box nestled next to the toilet, and it’s not funny, but it kind of is, because Jack would be the kind of guy to look at a litter box and put it right next to the toilet. Everything in its place.
Maybe that’s your problem. You haven’t felt like anything is in the right place in years.
You want to stay in the shower, in the bubble of protection it provides, but the idea of running up Jack’s water bill is enough to guilt you into getting out. You shiver, dry, aggressively attempt to make yourself look less like a wreck at the sink, and then tip-toe into the attached bedroom and carefully pull on the clothes Jack left for you on the bed; a faded, oversized college shirt, and a comfy pair of sweatpants.
They smell like him. You smell like him, like his body wash. The house smells like him. Everything you take in is a pleasant assault of Jack, Jack, Jack.
Enough guilt to fuel an entire room of ex-Catholic’s is the only thing keeping you from snooping around his room. The idea of stumbling upon something private or hidden away makes you feel slimy and gross, so you exit the bedroom and pretend like you don’t feel like a foster dog on its first night home from the shelter.
(Do shelter dogs miss the shelter? Do they miss its familiarity? Do dogs miss anything at all?)
The apartment smells of more spices and good smelling food than you privately thought Jack capable of. You’d read him as the kind of guy to subsist on takeout and maybe like, protein bars. But he’s dutifully stirring a metal pot with all the diligence of the military man that he once was.
Quietly, as if he might throw the wooden spoon he’s stirring with if you make too much noise or take up too much space, you carefully pull out a barstool in front of his kitchen island, the one closest to the door, and haul yourself onto it.
He gives you an examining glance over his shoulder, turns a knob on the stove, then rests his forearms on the island counter across from you. His rather delicious looking forearms, you might add.
“Feeling better after your shower?”
You hum an affirmation, folding your arms and resting your chin on them.
“Isn’t it kind of weird to make soup for breakfast?”
He shrugs. “It’s dinner for us. Or, well, me. I’m not sure your body knows what meal it is.”
He taps a pointer finger rhythmically on the counter. “Any word from your landlord?”
“No. Sorry for… all of this. I know you’re tired.”
“I wish you’d stop apologizing for things I don’t mind doing for you.”
You don’t really know how to respond to that, or what to do with how it makes you feel, so you elect to save it for later. Good at compartmentalizing, ED doctors are.
You clear your throat. “I can call Samira whenever. She’d probably be excited to have girl time. So you know. Don’t feel like— I have other options. If or when you want me to leave.”
“Do you want to leave?”
You wish he’d stop asking questions you don’t want to answer.
You try to play it off, smother your fear and exhaustion with humor. Robby’s kid, through and through.
“Well, I can’t have you getting sick of me. You’re the only person I know who has a very rob-able house if this whole internship doesn’t pan out.”
Jack straightens, shoulders pulling and flexing. “Who said I’d get sick of you? Maybe I like the idea of you in my house.”
“Do you?”
You ask the question before you’re aware of how terrified you are of the answer. But you’ve already said it, and it feels nice to be the one asking the hard question instead.
Jack, likely experienced in this sort of thing, doesn’t look outwardly bothered by it, but he gets a sort-of-sad look on his face, almost like he’s disappointed that you had to ask.
“Have I given you any reason to think otherwise?”
“I don’t know,” You look down, picking at a hangnail to avoid his expression and his eyes and his everything, “I don’t want to assume anything.”
“You’ve already assumed quite a bit.”
You scrunch your face. “That’s different. Those are safe assumptions.”
“Are they?”
“Obviously, it’s safer to assume that you don’t want me to stay here, or at least not for very long, because if I assume that I do I’ll bother you and I want you to—“
You cut yourself off, jaw shutting with a firm click, but the end of the sentence hangs in the air unspoken anyways. It’s not hard to figure out what you were going to say.
I want you to like me.
Jack sighs, and alarm blares are going off in your head and your chest starts to feel tight and cold despite the warmth of his apartment, and then he’s rounding the island and you turn your body to follow him —never turn you back, never let your guard down— and then he’s standing in front of you, over you, and you’re not sure if you want to run or metaphorically curl up at his feet, tail tucked.
It’s pathetic. It’s embarrassing. It’s impossible to ignore.
(What does a shelter dog think, on that first night? Do they hope? Do dogs hope?)
He raises a hand, slowly, giving you a chance to lean away, and when you don’t, it comes to rest on the side of your face, his thumb swiping at the barely-there wetness from earlier tears.
It’s cleaning the cut from the slap, it’s a kindness you can curl into, and it might be a threat. Might be bad, might turn harsh and painful, might leave without a word.
Unlike that day in the break room, there’s no fluorescent lights to suck any heat out of the room and no gloves as a barrier; as a reminder of who he is, of what you are, of how things work.
It’s just you and Jack, in Jack’s apartment, wearing Jack’s clothes, and pretty soon you’re going to eat food that Jack made. Just for you.
And you think maybe, possibly, if he stops here you could kind of hold onto this moment for the rest of your life and it would get you through being alive and strong and alone, and you’d make it through this, whatever this is, if he stops here.
He doesn’t. He starts talking.
“I like knowing that you’re safe. That you’re taken care of. I like knowing with certainty that these things are true because I’m the one making sure of it.”
Your breath hitches in your chest.
“That’s kind of a lot of work, though.”
He hums. “It is. Luckily, I just so happen to be a pretty hard worker.”
Everything about the current situation is a lot and your nerves are over-taxed and dialed up to hundred, so it’s not surprising that you start crying again.
Jack brings up a second hand to the other side of your face and gently wipes away the tears as they come. It feels sort of like the physical version of everything he’s been doing for you since that day in the supply closet.
“You don’t have to do anything, or say anything, or make any kind of decision right now, okay? We can do whatever you want. I’ll do whatever you want.”
There’s the word choice again; want, not need. Is there a difference? What does the difference mean to him? What does he mean? Why is he doing any of this?
Jack's phone goes off in his pocket, and he steps back, drops his hands, and goes back to the stove.
Jack said you don’t have to make a decision right now, but you kind of feel like if you don’t do something you’re going to be sick with everything that’s swirling and clawing inside you, threatening to burst. Like the very essence of you is going to explode, and your soul will be painted on Jack’s perfectly decorated walls.
That would be something, wouldn’t it.
You stay seated at the island, turning to stare at Jack’s back while he adds the final touches to the soup. He doesn’t talk anymore, but he keeps looking back every few minutes, like he’s making sure you’re still there.
Eventually Jack turns the stove off, dishes up a bowl of soup for you, and sets it gently in front of you. He uses his pinky to cushion the placing of the bowl, so there’s no loud clinking noise when he sets the bowl down.
There’s a tiny sprig of parsley on top of the soup, right in the center. Like a Panera ad for soup in September.
You start crying again, in earnest.
“I’m sorry,” You gasp, pressing the heels of your hands into your eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m— I don’t know. I don’t know.”
You’re hoping the last sentence encompasses an entire lifetime of events, accidents, mistakes, and memories that have never been able to find a place in your head except dead center, at the forefront of your mind at all times, stamped on your forehead for anyone with eyes to see.
Your life hasn’t been wants or choices for a very long time. And here Jack is, giving you an array of both, and saying things like he wants you to want.
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Hey, hey hey hey, shhh,” Strong arms wrap around you, tucking your head into a warm chest, effectively shutting off all sensory input that isn’t Jack. “You’re okay, you’re safe, you’re okay, I got you.”
He rubs circles into your back, then switches to tracing shapes, and he lets you cry into him again and he doesn’t tell you to stop, or to calm down, or you’re being too much too fast.
“You’re okay, you’re gonna be okay sweetheart. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
—
You, embarrassingly, fall asleep right there, sitting at the kitchen island over a bowl of soup and twenty-something years of holding up your life with hands that never quite seemed big enough to do it.
You wake up in Jack’s bed, his comforter pulled up to your chin and the clock at the bedside table reading 8:17 p.m. There’s the muffled sound of several voices coming from beyond the door.
Holy shit. What the fuck.
Deciding to ignore the implication that Jack carried you to bed, you mentally take stock of what’s around you.
In front of the clock is your phone (plugged in to charge), a glass of water, and a note with Jack’s handwriting on it.
Kid-
I’ll probably be in the ED for the night shift by the time you wake up. I called Mohan (who called Mel, who was with Langdon, for reasons unknown) to go to your place and grab you some things. There may be people in the apartment when you wake up. You are in no way obligated to interact with them. They have to leave eventually.
Charlie is in the room with you because he hates strangers, but he probably won’t leave the bathroom. Probably. Drink water and eat something, if you can. Text me if you need anything.
The voices beyond the door are, more than likely, the aforementioned individuals who have now seen the glorified closet you call home. It’s not ideal, but you’re wrung out and don’t have the energy to really care. Besides, Samira and Mel are too nice to judge you that hard (you hope) and from what you’ve heard, Langdon isn’t really in a place to say anything.
On one hand, going out there requires socializing. Which, ew. On the other hand, Samira and Mel are the best. Langdon is maybe okay.
Before you can talk yourself out of it, you shuffle out of bed and then continue shuffling to the door, hoping that whatever you look like isn’t too terribly awful.
Samira, Mel, and Langdon are standing around the kitchen island, various takeout containers and bottles of alcohol littering the space. For some reason, Trinity, Dennis, and Robby are also present.
Samira and Langdon are engaged in what looks to be a rather animated discussion-slash-argument, and Mel is standing just a little closer to Langdon than what could be considered normal for friends. Trinity is very obviously ignoring Langdon’s general existence, bickering with Dennis on the couch, and Robby is seated in the armchair by the window, nursing a beer and watching both conversations unfold.
You sniff aggressively, and all heads snap to you.
“There are more of you here then there’s supposed to be,” You grumble, scrubbing at your face. “Why are you all here?”
Mel is the first to speak.
“It was Frank actually!” Trinity rolls her eyes, and part of you wants to share the sentiment, “He figured Trinity would be upset that something happened to you and he knew and didn’t tell her, so Trinity decided that me and Samira would get your stuff while everyone else stayed here in case you woke up before we came back!”
Wow, okay, that’s. A Lot.
You squint. “That doesn’t explain why you’re all here. I mean it does, but only like, why you’re here physically.”
Robby frowns. “We heard that you were going through a rough time and you had to stay with Jack, so we came.”
Trinity snorts on the couch and Dennis, next to her, looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm.
Robby shoots her a look, but continues. “We care about you. We— I don’t want you to feel like you have to do everything on your own. In or out of the ED.”
Trinity blows out a loud sigh and low whistle. “Jee-zus Robby, give the woman some time to wake up before trying to induce tears again.”
Robby does look a little apologetic, maybe a teensy bit chastised (and annoyed that Trinity was the one doing the chastising) and turns his deep brown eyes back to you.
"Sorry. Can't help these Dad tendencies, you know."
Your face gets hot, maybe a tiny, wet prickle behind your eyes forms while Robby smiles, and the tension leaves the room all in one go, and you start to think that maybe things are in the right place.
–
At the ED, Jack Abbot, who's been checking his phone whenever he gets a free moment like a highschooler with a crush, opens the first text that pops up on his screen after hours of waiting.
It's a picture from Robby. You, with your head thrown back in a cackle of a laugh, not a single bit of stress evident in any of the lines of your body. There's one text accompanying the picture:
Please don't make me give you a shovel talk. I think you already know what's at stake here.
Jack snorts and pockets his phone, because yeah, he does.
–
When Jack finally gets back to his apartment, he's half-expecting to see the kind of mess that a large grouping of obnoxious people leave behind. Trash, maybe a few red solo cups, empty takeout containers, someone asleep on his couch, someone passed out on the floor.
He's not expecting to see a clean space. The only evidence that people were there at all is some rearranged pillows, a half-empty bottle of wine on the counter, and some new takeout menus on his fridge.
And then there's you. You're lying on the couch, eyes glued to the TV, watching a show he doesn't really recognize. There's a well-loved backpack on the floor, just under the coffee table. The shocking bit is Charlie, his resident asshole, is 'loafing' right on your chest, purring away.
You lift your head when you hear the jingle of his keys, a smile immediately brightening your face. He mentally takes a picture, right there, so he can remember this exact moment forever.
"What'd you bribe him with?" Jack says instead of something much more neurotic, like 'You don't have to go back to your place when the power comes back on.'
You shrug, unaware of his emotional and romantic pain. "You were right. He came out from under the bed after everybody left. He kind of growled at me for a little bit, but once I settled down here he just kind of... came right up."
You plant a little kiss to the top of his head, right in between furry ears. Great, now Jack's jealous of a senior cat with one ear who licks his own butt. "How could I resist this face? I see why you brought him home."
Jack rounds the end of the couch, shuffling by, and Charlie opens his eyes just enough to shoot him a look that Jack takes to mean: If you make her get up and move me, I will kill you in your sleep.
Jack does not disturb his cat as he sits down on the couch. There's a moment when things almost get hairy- you pull your legs back when he goes to sit, slightly jostling The Asshole, who pins his only ear back in annoyance.
Jack solves this problem by taking your legs, clad in some soft flannel pajama pants and pink fuzzy socks, and lays them across his lap. There. Problem solved.
The warmth of your legs on his lap and the look on your face is reward enough for him. He can't think of a way he'd rather spend his time.
Jack, in a rare show of mercy, does not tease you, and decides that you've probably had enough excitement for one day.
"So," He says instead, looking up at the TV and grimacing at the mutilated corpse on the screen, "What are we watching?"
He watches you shrink into yourself. He hates it when you do that. He hates that you feel like you have to.
"Uh, Bones. I can turn it off, though. I'm sure you don't want to watch this."
He doesn't answer the question you've not-subtly voiced, instead choosing to redirect the conversation.
"Why did you put it on?"
You start chewing on your lower lip. Your signature 'I don't want to answer this question so I'm going to think really hard about it' move.
"It's kind of my comfort show? I don't know. I watched it a lot growing up. We didn't have cable, but the hotels I stayed at sometimes did. I'd wait until my dad fell asleep and then I'd turn on the TV and watch from the sci-fi or drama channels. Watched a lot of Bones. Supernatural too, and sometimes Doctor Who, if it was on. But Bones was my favorite."
The characters on the screen are involved in some sort of car chase now, police siren flashing on a black SUV. Jack isn't paying attention to that at all, because this is the first time since the day you walked into the PTMC and introduced yourself that he's ever heard you talk about your childhood.
"How come?"
"I don't know. I've always liked procedural shows. Had a huge House MD phase. Death and bones and corpses and stuff has never really grossed me out, which is part of the reason I became a doctor. But also..."
You point to the male character. "You see him? That's Booth. Seeley Booth. They all have kind of crazy names. He's an FBI agent, and his partner is that woman there. Temperance Brennan. Booth calls her Bones."
"She doesn't look like an FBI agent."
You smile. "She's not. She's a forensic anthropologist, but she consults on murder cases and stuff like that because she's kind of a genius. She's smart, strong, and capable. She and Booth don't always get along, because they both can be headstrong and stubborn. But he respects and trusts her, implicitly. No matter what. They love each other."
Your throat bobs, but your voice is steady when you speak.
"And when Brennan needs him, if she's in trouble or she needs him by her side, even if she doesn't know she does, he's always there. He always saves her."
Jack can picture it, in his mind. You, small and alone, watching these characters on some shitty hotel TV and getting it into your head that this kind of thing only exists in TV shows. He pictures you dreaming of having a Booth, of having someone to be there for you, to pick you up when you fall. He thinks of you crying in the supply closet and how quietly you'd done it. Almost silent.
He thinks of what happens to a person to make them learn how to cry without making a sound.
He rests a hand on your ankle, fingers instinctively drifting towards the pulse point there- posterior tibial. He keeps two fingers on it, even though he can't feel it through your fuzzy socks. With his thumb he makes circles, because he's seen how you lean into Robby's shoulder grabs, how you preen at physical and verbal praise, how you'd slumped like a marionette with its strings cut into his arms just yesterday.
"Jack?" Your voice is tentative, unsure.
"Hmm?"
"Am I..." You start chewing your lip again, "Are you— I don't to assume anything. So if I fuck this up and make you uncomfortable—"
"I want to kiss you."
Jack has learned how to speak fluent you. He knows how to stop an incoming spiral, how to soothe old wounds rearing their heads.
He continues when you don't speak.
"I want you to wear my clothes. I want to take care of you. I want you, in whatever way you'll let me."
"Oh."
"I was laying it on pretty thick, kid."
You look away from him, and this is another moment he'd like to keep forever.
"I thought I was just reading into things!"
"Do you think I call every intern sweetheart?"
Jack is positive Charlie's presence on your stomach is the only thing keeping you from actively squirming in place.
"I thought maybe you were just one of those guys. Samira said it was possible!"
He rolls his eyes. "You can't ask Mohan for romantic advice. She's you in a different font."
"I'm going to take that as a compliment."
You turn back to your show, losing yourself in the plot for a while. When the murderer has been caught and the credits are playing, you look at him again.
"We don't. Um. Can we just keep doing this? For now?"
For the first time since meeting you, Jack gets to say exactly what he's thinking.
"We can do this forever. We can do whatever you want."
Summary: When you have a flashback to your sexual assault mid sex with Jack, he helps you through it. (Please note: Jack does not trigger the flashback and is not inside reader when the flashback truly happens. Nothing sexual happens during or after the flashback.)
AN: You don’t need to relate to anything about this piece or have been assaulted to read it, and honestly, I really truly hope that this will be a piece nobody relates to, or at least an incredibly niche piece that few relate to, but statistically and experientially, I know that’s probably not the case. I hope that if this is something you’re able relate to or that resonates with you, it helps make you feel a little seen or understood, or less alone and that it brings you some comfort. I realize this won’t necessarily be what everyone needs after something like this, or won’t be what’s needed each time, but if it helps one person then it was worth it. And I hope we can all try to listen to Jack and what he has to say because he’s right.
Given the subject matter and potential for even warnings to be triggering I’m putting the warnings under the cut too. I did a much more detailed warning write up given the content. It’s probably too much but I thought it was much better to over disclose than under disclose. If you don’t have any concerns and don’t need as thorough of warnings there’s a more typical summary of CWs towards the top. Please take care of yourself when deciding whether to read, and if you have any questions about content while deciding please don’t hesitate to reach out so I can try and help and provide more info if needed! Thank you so much for reading! ♥️
I tried to do as little description of the assault and perpetrator (criminal) as possible so that it could fit as many personal experiences as possible and so that it would at least have the potential to be less triggering since there would be no description or things described to think of, so there is deliberately very, very little description of any of that. Similarly there is very, very little detail, if any, about how reader feels during the assault, physically or emotionally/psychologically. The piece is closer to it just being said that reader relives their assault (but not completely).
CWs: Jack does not trigger the flashback; Jack is not inside reader when the flashback happens; reader relives their sexual assault (not really described); adrenaline crash; panic attack; sobbed screams; negative self-talk; self-hate; guilt; self-blaming; self-gaslighting; crying; feelings of being undeserving; Jack is annoyed with his disability for a second; showering together; snuggling in bed; kissing; PIV at the beginning (largely not described and brief and nothing sexual after the flashback); mention of nightmares; PTSD flashback; reader thinks of themselves as broken/dirty/tainted/trash; reader starts to blame themself; fluffy ending; no use of y/n.
Reader has PTSD. This is the first time reader has a flashback while in a relationship with Jack and first time having one is at least one and a half years. Reader has been to therapy. Jack calls reader Sweetheart and Baby.
Reader and Jack are having sex at the beginning and Jack is described as fucking them. There is very very little description of that sex, only really that Jack is making reader feel good, reader is breathless and has lost track of time, Jack is lost in reader and reader turns their neck so Jack can kiss and suck at it (but he never does), so it doesn’t start as full blown smut. Reader’s trigger is described (rain drops at an angle on a window). Jack does not do anything to trigger the flashback. Jack is not inside or touching reader when the flashback truly happens, he is sitting next to them in bed.
The feelings/emotions of feeling a flashback coming on and knowing that it’s going to happen and being helpless and unable to do anything to stop it are described. Reader has a total and complete flashback to their sexual assault where they’re completely not in the present and in the past. The feelings/emotions of a flashback are described. Mention that reader has had nightmares previously. Reader is described as being back where it happened with ‘him’ (the perpetrator), but nowhere is described nor is he described. Reader’s assault is not really described, there’s nothing specific about what did or did not happen, just that they were assaulted and it is contextually obvious that it was a sexual assault. Reader starts saying/mumbling the same things they said at the time of the assault (not to Jack, just into the air), but what they said and are repeating isn’t specified. Reader’s brain is described as reconstructing the night of the assault in perfect, vivid detail, but no details are described. While reader is flashing-back they’re re-living their assault and feeling and experiencing the same emotions, however, those emotions and feelings aren’t really described. Reader is described as feeling the way they felt right after the assault.
Reader is described as having laid in the room where their assault occurred after it was over and being cold. Reader thinks that Jack should be uncomfortable around them and their body briefly. Reader doesn’t want to be alone after the flashback. The perpetrator is described as looking and sounding completely different from Jack. Reader is described as feeling like they’re in a place kind of in between the past and present. Reader also thinks and talks about how they could ‘feel’ the perpetrators hands touching them but actually feeling it isn’t described. Reader is described as feeling like they have a kind of layer of dirt on them after the flashback is over. Reader struggles with negative self thoughts and self-hate about putting Jack through this and worries a lot that Jack will feel responsible when he wasn’t (he doesn’t and the focus doesn’t shift to him). Readers refers to/thinks of themself as irreparably broken and fucked up, tainted and dirty, and calls and thinks of themself as damaged goods. Reader starts to blame themself. Reader thinks of themself as something that should be thrown away and replaced.
Reader allows Jack to touch them and seeks out Jack’s touch immediately after the flashback (they come fully back to the present and immediately climb into Jack’s lap while they’re still naked), not at all sexual touch, there’s nothing sexual after the flashback, but they do shower together and Jack does wash reader for them (has his hands on them), there is some kissing (chaste, some lingering) but no making out, and they do snuggle and cuddle in bed naked. Reader kind of starts to self-harm a little-ish but not with the conscious objective of self-harming. Reader has the shower hot enough to cause some tingling, light pain that helps them clear their mind. Reader and Jack discuss their sex life because reader is worried that Jack will be afraid to ever have sex with them again and then is upset they’re even worried about that and feel hypocritical. Reader worries this will change their relationship. Fluffy ending. Jack is the best.
You don't remember when exactly your eyes closed.
You don't remember when you started feeling breathless despite breathing hard. You're not really sure how long Jack's been fucking you and making you feel this fucking good.
Jack, however, he knows exactly how long it’s been, exactly how long he’s been completely fucking lost in you. Because he is. Totally and completely lost in and to you.
You let your eyes flutter back open as you roll your head to the side to invite Jack to kiss and suck at your neck.
You wish you hadn't.
God you really fucking wish you hadn't.
Because the curtains are open and it's raining and rain drops hit the glass of the window at a bit of an angle from the wind. And that's all it takes.
Rain drops.
Rain drops at an angle on a window.
Something that should be innocuous. Mundane. Even beautiful in its own way perhaps.
But it’s not. It’s paralyzing. Terrifying. Panic and flashback inducing.
And that’s bullshit. Absolute fucking bullshit. And unfair. Completely un-fucking-fair.
Rain drops at an angle on a window.
That’s all it takes tonight.
Un-fucking-believable.
Reality starts to slip as the wrong groups of neurons start to reactivate in competition with those firing to keep you in the present. And you're aware of it. Aware of the memories flooding back. Aware of the fact that pretty soon the worst group of neurons is going to take over your mind and you're not going to be here in the present anymore. Aware of the fact that even though you know it's coming there's nothing you can do to stop it.
You turn your face back so that it's no longer on one side and you aren't looking out the window. Jack feels your body stiffen as you do and it throws him. You've never stiffened like this before. And Jack knows you, knows everything about you, your past, your present, your dreams for the future. Maybe it's overkill and unnecessary, and fuck is he praying it's both and he's about to be met with a huffed and confused 'what the fuck?' from you, but Jack stills and pushes himself up, pulls out of you and gently sets your legs on the bed, moves your hands off him and rests on his knees between your legs.
When you don't make a sound in response and Jack gets a good look at your face, when he's able to look you in the eyes, he knows he was right and he fucking hates it. "Sweetheart? Can I do anything?" As he's asking, Jack moves on his knees so that he's no longer between your legs but to your side sitting on his knees, not a single inch of him touching you, his movements slow to not startle you and make things worse.
You look up at him and track his face as he moves to the side of you, open and shut your mouth a few times trying to force out words, something to explain what you know is about to happen. But you can't, your mind at once so horrifically present but also so far away.
There's no need for words though. Your eyes reveal everything to Jack, reflect the terror and helplessness you're feeling. They tell him you know what's about to happen and are terrified of it and helpless to stop it.
And Jack can see it happen the way you can feel it happen. Your mind rebuilds that night and puts you right back there. Jack perches on his knees next to you, anxiety making him feel icy, a sense of dread consuming him further with every passing second as he watches your eyes glaze over more and more, get that far away look to them that tells him that even though you're looking at him still, you're not truly looking at him, not truly seeing him.
Your head turns back and your eyes find the ceiling, looking at it, but not seeing it. Because you're simply not in the present anymore, not to any degree. Brains are, unfortunately in this case, very powerful things.
Yours reconstructs that night in perfect, vivid detail. Has you back there with him. Back where it happened with that man.
Words finally fall from your lips, things you said that night repeated in the same exact tone with the same exact emotions flooding you, tears streaming down the sides of your face.
Jack knows you're not here with him in the present anymore, except for maybe the smallest shard of your mind that's aware enough to know what's happening and berate you about it, but not enough to do anything to help or stop it. He recognizes the way you're no longer in the present with him anymore on your face and in your eyes, he fucking watched it happen, he knows he did, your words just further confirmation.
Jack knows you're not here with him because he's been there. He's slipped into many flashbacks that are so deep and consuming that the present ceased to exist, that he truly relived what happened, saw it and felt it and smelled it and tasted it and heard it. And there are only a few things in the world that horrify Jack as much as just the thought of you reliving your assault, let alone it actually happening.
This has never happened before, you've never had a true flashback like this in the year and a half you've been together. You've had nightmares and there have been moments you've started to slip. You've talked about it with Jack, extensively, he knows most of the details. He's held you when you’ve sobbed, when you've come completely unglued, broken all the way down and in need of help to keep yourself above water. But this hasn’t happened before.
And while Jack trusts himself to handle most things, trusts his instincts, he is completely uncertain about how to help you right now, about what to do and how to do it and what to say. He knows how high the stakes are and the absolute last thing he wants is to make this worse for you. To re-traumatize you or cause new trauma.
He can't even really draw on experience because up until you got together he'd been alone for most of his flashbacks, and his are so much different than yours. He decides to start simple, calls your name just loudly enough to not be quiet, but not startlingly loud he hopes, keeps his voice firm, something for your mind to wrap around and hang onto, but still so very soft and loving.
Jack's call of your name doesn't reach you, your mind still lost in the flashback. He considers getting up to turn the overhead light on but hesitates because he doesn't know if the light will make it worse for you or if his sudden movement to turn it on will make it worse. Touching you to try and pull you back to the present is out of the question. He will not touch you without your express permission or you asking or instigating touch until you’re ready. "Sweetheart." He says it a little louder than before, follows it with your name again.
Your tears stop and you're quiet for a few seconds and Jack thinks it might be over, that you might be coming back to. But you aren't. He can tell by your mumbles and the look on your face. You're still there, still in the past.
"Hey, Sweetheart, you're here with me. With Jack. Your Jack." It's his name that does it, that breaks through just enough so that the memory at least stops and you're no longer reliving the actual assault, just laying in that room like you did after. Your head turns just slightly, just enough to bring Jack into view, and beneath the glaze of your eyes Jack sees the smallest flicker of recognition. He knows he looks much, much different from the man, thinks if he can get you to see him and focus on him it'll help. He stays sitting on his knees and doesn't move closer, doesn't want you to feel like he's looming over you or trying to invade your space or going to touch you. "Can you focus on me, Sweetheart? Just keep looking at me."
Your eyes dart around his face, the glazed look to them fading just slightly. You're not in the present all the way, but you're not back there all the way anymore either, feel like you're in some sort of liminal place where you're not reliving what happened but you're still feeling most of the emotions, still not able to fully come back to Jack, but are able to say his name. "Jack?" you whisper.
"Yeah, Baby, it's me. You're here at home in bed with me." Your eyes start to wander from his and he calls you back gently. "Hey, hey, hey. Look at me, okay? Look right at me. See me." Jack wants to fall apart for a whole host of reasons, his mind spinning a thousand miles a minute, but knows he can't, knows it isn't about him right now. It's about you and helping you and being your rock, helping you get through and process this flashback and its fallout, whatever that might end up being. "It's me. You're here in our home, in our bed with me. Nobody is hurting you right now. You're safe and you're loved here in our bed with me."
You swallow hard but do as he says and keep looking at him as rays of the present hit your consciousness. "I…" You're not sure what to say, how to explain what happened when you're still not fully with him. "I went… back there, I don't…"
"I know Sweetheart, you had a flashback. I know, I promise I know and understand and you don't need to try and explain." He nods at you, hopes his eyes read as reassuring. "And I know you're not completely out of it and back with me all the way yet. Is there anything I can do to help right now?"
"I…" you start.
But your brain is too fuzzy to come up with more. You're too confused as the past fades and reality comes back, as the familiar paint coating the walls of your and Jack's bedroom comes back into your peripheral, as you feel the perfectly comfortable mattress you and Jack had so much fun picking out together beneath you. Too confused by the sudden gentle silence punctuated by the sounds of you and Jack breathing and the rustle of soft sheets. Too confused by the scent from the diffusing reeds you and Jack keep on your dresser, the woody undercurrent of his cologne and laundry detergent and your body wash suddenly filling your nose again. Too confused by the feeling of being covered in a thick, suffocating, invisible layer of dirt left by that man. Too confused by the feeling of being irreparably broken and tainted.
The emotional and psychological pain start to intensify, still too subconscious for you to truly realize just how much so right now. The pain intensifies because you're not just going through this yourself anymore, not just putting yourself through this anymore. A dark, blighted piece of your brain whispers that you're putting Jack through this, making him deal with this and with you, making him feel responsible for this, like it's his fault, like he broke and tainted you, when really he just received damaged goods.
It won't be pretty when that hits your consciousness.
"I don't know?" you finally whisper. You don't know why you pose it as a question, that's just how it comes out, how you force the words out of your mouth.
"Okay," Jack nods, voice steady and reassuring, "that's okay. You know I'm not inside of you anymore, right? And that I’m not touching you?"
The question almost feels selfish, like he's trying to soothe himself somehow even when Jack knows that's not what he's doing, not why he's asking. He knows you can see him next to you, are present enough to talk to him. But he sees the way your eyes are still so glazed over even with the flickers of recognition that peak through, knows that while you can see him now and have an anchor back in the present your mind is, at best, in that space in between past and present.
And he knows how disorienting and confusing that space can be, how disorienting and confusing coming out of a flashback and back to the present can be in general. So before anything else he wants you to hear it, wants to make sure you really know that you're alone in your body right now, that you’re in control of it.
"Yeah." Your voice raises just slightly above a whisper. "I knew before." You don't need to say more, Jack understands. You knew he was before you slipped into the flashback, something that relieves him immensely, as selfish as that sounds and feels. He knows it probably didn't help anything at all, but he’s glad it didn't hurt anything either. He’s glad he is, hopefully, still a safe place for you.
“Okay, good, I’m glad. And I’m not going to touch you without your permission or you asking me to, okay?” He keeps his voice calm and light but with something that makes it clear he understands the gravity of the situation and he isn’t trying to be condescending, just reassuring and making sure you know you’re safe.
You feel stuck in limbo, not back there but not fully in the present. You're stuck floating in a kind of no man's land, feeling and thinking about everything and nothing at the same time. It's peaceful in a way, especially in comparison to where you just were and how you know you're going to feel once the present slams back into you. But it doesn't feel good. It's a state of constantly feeling confused and like you've forgotten something important while also knowing that you haven't.
"Yeah.” Your voice drops back to a whisper. “If you're uncomfortable…" There should be an end to that sentence and you know it. But you can't think of one so you hope it's enough for him to know he can leave if he wants. Because you think he should want to. You think he should be uncomfortable around you and your body.
"I'm comfortable where I'm at, Sweetheart," Jack murmurs. It dawns on him though. Maybe you need him to leave. Maybe you don't want to be around a man. That would break his heart only because he wants to comfort you but of course he would understand and never force you to be around him. "But at the same time, what's the most comfortable for me right now is what’s the most comfortable for you. So if you need me to go I can. I can leave the room and sleep in the spare for as long as you need me to. I can go to Robby's. I can call a friend for you, whatever you need, you've got it."
"No!" Panic sparks through you but it's dampened in the weirdest way because you're still not out of it, still not back. But the rush of hormones sent speeding through your system sure helps speed up your reconnection with the present in the worst way. "Please don't go," you whisper. A few tears slide down the sides of your face and you start to tremble just a little, the adrenaline crash finally slowly starting to build. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. Please don't leave me here alone. Please stay."
The drive to scoop you into his arms and hold you close and never let you go is visceral for Jack, is something he's actively fighting against because he knows he can't do that right now. He thought he'd felt pretty helpless and powerless before, but all of this tonight has been a new fucking level of the two, far above anything he’d felt previously. And he knows it's absolutely nothing in comparison to how you're feeling right now and how you felt that night.
"Sweetheart, it's okay, don't apologize." He rests his hands on his thighs and grips a little so that he doesn't instinctively reach out for you. "You have nothing to apologize for. I just want to do what's best for you and what you need."
You think about it. Or at least you try to. What you need.
But there's nothing there in your brain. You can't catch any thought long enough to hold onto it and do anything with it. You start breathing faster and trembling harder, your panic intensifying at your inability to fucking think. "I don't…know. I, I don't…"
Jack can see the panic you're feeling intensify even as your tears dry. Your breathing continues to get faster and both of you know panicking now is going to make it so much worse when you finally find footing in the present again. Jack's torn, doesn't know what to do, doesn't want to make anything worse. But Jack knows you. And beneath everything you are still in there. His you. So he's going to do what you wanted to beg a lot of people to do after it happened. He's going to treat you like you.
And, generally, you like his touch when you're panicking and not feeling well physically or mentally. He makes the slightest adjustment to what he would normally do with you and asks. "Can I touch you? Just your hand."
"Of course," you mumble. And you mean it. And you want it. Want his touch. Want the feeling of that man's touch replaced.
It feels too automatic for Jack's liking. Too perfunctory.
"It's not a given, ever. You don't owe me that, owe me the ability to touch you, anywhere in any way. I need your permission, Sweetheart, not your acquiescence." He lets his words linger for just a second. "Is it okay for me to touch your hand right now and bring it to touch my chest?"
You nod at him. "Yes."
"Okay, thank you." Jack grabs your hand that's closest to him and shifts forward on his knees a little, still keeps them from touching you. He brings your hand to his chest and flattens your palm against his warm skin before he rests his hand on top of yours. "This okay?" You nod and he can see some of the fog clear from your eyes, knows that you truly mean your silent yes. "Breathe with me, okay? You're safe. I'm not going anywhere unless or until you tell me to. What else can I do?"
"Talk." The thought finally hits you. You let out a shaky breath as your fingertips press into his chest gently. "Keep talking. Your voice is so different than, than… than his was. So just talk please, it doesn't matter about what."
Talk. Jack can do that. Easily. If there's one thing he can do, it's talk. He shifts so that he's sitting on his ass with his legs crossed, his hand still holding yours to his chest to help you coregulate. "I can do that. I love you. I hope you know that. I was thinking we should go on vacation again soon, maybe Italy or Greece. Maybe both. It could be a good mix of going and doing and seeing and then relaxing on the beach and taking it slower before we come back. Or maybe Spain or Portugal. Or both. You could get some new cute outfits, get your nails done and some new shoes before we went. But I'm also more than happy taking some time off and just having a staycation, or going somewhere close by. Even renting a nice hotel room here in the City so it feels different and gets us out of the house."
Your eyes become more and more present as Jack talks, the glaze to them fades. "I was also going to ask you tomorrow if you could make me those cookies," he drops his voice and gives you an almost sheepish look with big puppy dog eyes. "I've just been craving them and I know it's kind of silly but as much as I love having them to take to work when I'm on, there's something about having them here when I'm off. I can't explain it. I'm not even going to try because it doesn't really make sense," he chuckles.
Jack knows the present is seconds away from slamming back into you by the way you blink and shift a little on the bed before sitting up. He has no idea what it's going to look like for you, how you'll react and what you'll need from him. He loosens the press of his palm to the back of your chest so that if you need to pull your hand away quickly it's easier to. He has a feeling he knows how you might react based on the trauma you just relived and how it’s gone when the two of you have spoken about it before and extrapolating from how he reacts when he comes back to from a deep, consuming flashback like that.
He keeps talking like you asked. "Whatever happens next it's okay, Sweetheart. No matter what, I promise. We'll get you through it somehow, someway, even thought it might absolutely fucking suck and be awful and not feel worth going through just to get out of it. Nothing you feel, other than loved by me, will be permanent. The feelings will fade out and I'll be here with and for you through all of it unless you tell me to go."
Jack sees the moment it happens, your eyes moving to the left before moving side to side almost like you're reading. And even though you've been through this before nothing will ever quite prepare you for what it's like to have the present slam back into you. "Oh my god," you mumble, brain flooding with suddenly articulable and understandable thoughts that are flying a million miles a minute. They all drop out suddenly though as the memory of what you just went through, what you just relived hits you. As the memory of what you went through that night hits you again.
Nausea crashes into your stomach as your visceral horror at reliving it crashes into you, as all the emotions you felt after it happened that night do, as you realize you feel like you did after it happened that night and as the adrenaline crash finally hits you harder than you think one has ever hit you before.
You let out a shuddery and broken whimpered breath, your upper back arching and chest caving inward like you've been hit in the chest and had the breath knocked from your lungs. Your eyes find Jack’s again, your hand not on his chest slaps over your mouth as you look at him and shake your head a little, the horror and terror you feel coloring your eyes.
"Oh my god Jack." A single tear leaks from both of your eyes and you let out a muffled scream into your hand as it all settles into your brain and body.
And then you break, every piece of you shattering as you start to sob uncontrollably, your body shaking all the same while you're stuck in place for a moment, your hand against his chest almost clawing at it because you need him, need him closer and holding you and to feel his hands on you and to be in his arms, the safest place in the world for you.
The second your body allows it you're scrambling into Jack's lap, his hand coming off yours so that he can hold his arms open for you. You sit sideways, wrap your arms around him and bury your face into the side of his neck as you cling to him. He's caught off guard by the move, wasn't sure you'd want to be touched, but he also knows he has absolutely no fucking way to try and imagine or anticipate what you might want or need because he's never been in anything close to your position, has absolutely no frame of reference outside of your shared PTSD diagnoses.
Jack isn't sure whether to wrap his arms around you, he doesn't want to deny you any comfort or reassurance you might be seeking but he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he made you feel violated in some way, if he touched you when you didn’t want to be touched. "Sweetheart," he says just loud enough for you to hear through your sobs, "do you want me to…?"
It takes a second for you to find a break in between your fully sobs into his neck. "Please," you finally choke out. If you had more words, more brain capacity and more composure you'd try to explain why. Try to tell him that in his arms is where you feel the safest and reminds you that you're loved and replaces the feelings of the unwanted touch your mind just made you feel over again. Try to explain that you were so alone after it happened, so cold and alone and comfortless, that being comforted by his warmth while he protects you and keeps you safe and loves you reminds you that you aren't there when you start to slip back for a second.
"Always," Jack murmurs as he wraps his arms around you tightly, scoots on his ass until he's resting against a pillow and the headboard. He pulls the comforter up around the both of you, remembers you saying once that you were so cold after, once it was over. The sweetness of it almost emphasizes the cruelty of what happened to you, what you just relived and another sobbed scream rips from your throat, muffled this time by Jack's neck.
"Alright, shh, okay, okay, Sweetheart," Jack soothes you, one hand holding the back of your head and the other rubbing up and down your back as he starts to rock you side to side. "I've got you, I've got you. You're safe here, I promise."
You cling to Jack as he holds you like that, rocks you back and forth and whispers reassurances and kisses the top of your head while you sob and scream into him almost violently in some ways. He's steady through all of it, through every scream and choked out description of how awful it was and what happened to you and what that man did to you, through every intense shake as the adrenaline crash works with everything else going on to destroy your body and mind.
None of it is new information, you've talked about it, told him about it before while calm. But it still breaks Jack's heart all over again. And hearing it through your screamed sobs makes Jack hurt worse than he ever thought possible, tears stinging his eyes at many points, all of it exacerbated by his knowledge that his pain is at best a small fraction of yours.
It's not about him though and he knows it, isn't going to try and make it about him. There's not going to be a play to usurp what happened to you or to take your pain for his own or to make you comfort him. His heart breaks and he hurts simply because his partner, the love of his life, is hurting so deeply and that hurts him, especially when he can't really make it better.
"May-Maybe he wouldn't have done it if I, if, if I had just, just-"
Jack stops you before you can even finish forming your sentence, wishes he could've stopped you before you even formed the thought because he's sure it's one you've been ruminating on while in his arms. "Baby, I need you to look at me, please." He keeps his voice light even with as serious as it is, makes sure that his words don't come across as a command, that you know you don't have to if you don't want to. He won't pull your head from his neck to get you to look at him.
It takes you a few seconds but eventually you pull your face from your favorite hiding spot from the world and look up at Jack through your tears, stuttered breaths in as you try to maintain the slightest bit of control over your sobs while he talks to you. One of his hands finds your face, fingers delicately wiping away what they can of your tears. He makes sure he has strong eye contact with you before he starts talking. "What happened to you, what he did to you is not your fault. In any way. It is not your fault. You didn't cause it. You didn't contribute to it happening, not even the slightest bit. You didn't ask for it in any way. There is nothing you could have done to prevent it or to stop it. Absolutely nothing. It happened to you, not because of you."
"Your mind is wrong, all the thoughts and ideas it comes up with about how you could've prevented or stopped it, all the things it tells you that you could've done or said, or not done or said, it's wrong, I promise you. All the should’ves, could’ves, and would’ves are wrong. It doesn't matter how logical or realistic the thoughts seem, your brain is just wrong." He pauses to let his words linger between you, give you a chance to really take them in. "And I know me saying it is easy and you believing it and accepting it isn't, I know my words don't just make it better immediately, that you might not be able to believe them right now, to any degree. I don't expect them to make it better or fix things or calm you down and make everything you're feeling go away. I just wanted you to hear the words."
Jack's words are everything. Even though he's already told you them before, multiple times, they're still everything. Everything to you. Everything you needed to hear and then some, even though in a lot of ways it doesn't feel like they make any difference if you're honest. You're too escalated, too worked up and too convinced that it was, at least in part, your fault. That you did something or said something.
Deep down though, you know he's right. After a lot of therapy, most of the time you agree with him. This is just one of those times where you're struggling to. Because it's one of those times where the weight of it, of what happened to you sits so heavily on your mind and heart and body that all reason and logic are gone, your brain grasping for anyway to make sense of what happened or to explain it, even if that means blaming yourself. And you know Jack understands, that you don't need to explain.
You nod at him, it's all you can do. You hope that your eyes say it all for you, thank him and you needed to hear that and you believe him, it's just hard to accept but you're trying, and you love him.
You curl yourself back into him, face finding his neck again as you continue to sob. They trail off eventually though, replaced by sniffles and big racked breaths, hiccuped ones and ones that sound almost like sobs but aren't quite. You can feel the numbness that always seems to follow a big cry coming for you but it's like it can't quite get to you. In the minute or two of relative calm you get, the exhaustion sets in and you're pretty sure you're just out of tears and too exhausted to cry any more. You're glad really, your brain chastising you for how unfair this is to Jack.
But that makes the realization that Jack's here and saw you like that, truly in a flashback for the first time, slam into you. The realization that what happened to you has impacted your relationship with Jack hits you. The realization that you were having sex when you got triggered and started going back there and so Jack might think it's his fault or that he caused this hits you. And so your body finds it within you to start crying again, to sob as you choke out, "I'm sorry," over and over again to a slightly confused Jack.
"Shh, Sweetheart," Jack's arm shifts to hold you a little closer as his other hand keeps moving up and down your back. He has a feeling he knows what you're apologizing for. "You have nothing to be sorry for. You're allowed to need this and to do this, have this catharsis and cry it out. It's okay. I'm just glad I'm here for you and you don't have to do this alone."
"No, I, I, I do. I do Jack!" you sob. "I do, I do because, because you prob-probably feel like it's your, your fault and it's not, I sw-swear Jack." You pull your head from his neck, so you can look at him the best you can with tear blurry eyes. "Please, please don't think, think this was your fault, Jack. Or that I, I think you'd ever do something like that to me, because I know, know you wouldn't. I didn't think it was you. And I don't, I don't," you take in a big shuddery breath, unable to really get much oxygen in effectively, "I don't think you're like him, and you don't treat me like, like he did, or make me feel like that, I promise, so please, please don't think it's you." You're begging him through your tears, voice low and anxious. "It was the rain on the win- window," you force out, "not you. Not you. It wasn't you."
Wracking sobs take over your body again but you don't let yourself fall back into Jack's arms all the way because you don't deserve it. You don't deserve him. And he's not going to want you after this, after you made him feel like that, after seeing how broken and fucked up you apparently still are.
"Sweetheart, I know," Jack murmurs. He picks his voice up a little, calm and steady and grounding. Reassuring. "I didn't think any of that for a second. I know PTSD, I know what it's like, how it can feel like it hits out of absolutely nowhere. I know what those flashbacks are like and that you were truly back there and not in the present with me."
"I promise you that I don't think it was my fault, or that you thought it was me, or that you think I treat you like him, or make you feel like him, or think I'm like him or that I'd do that to you. I don't think any of those things, no matter what your mind is telling you, I promise. I promise." His voice is almost as pleading as yours. The last thing he wants you worrying about and feeling bad about right now is him and how he feels. "It's okay. It was a flashback. I'm not minimizing that at all but it was a flashback Sweetheart and I promise I understand, I really do. You know I do. I know what it feels like and what it means and how much it fucks up your brain and your body and I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I know none of it was about me. And I've got you, okay? I've got you."
You're not entirely convinced but your brain is at the stage where it's ping ponging around, finding every possible thing to worry about. So it jumps to something else now.
"I just couldn't," you sniffle hard, "I couldn't pull myself out of there and now, now…" You trail off as you start to choke on the big hiccuped breaths you're almost gulping down. "Now you're going to be scared to have sex with me ever again." Your voice is as high-pitched with sorrow and anxiety as Jack as ever heard it. "And I've ruin-ruined it all. I've ruined everything. I've ruined us." Your voice cracks on the last word as an intense sob leaves you because you're sad. You're so fucking sad at the thought and the realization.
"No, Sweetheart, you haven't," Jack is quick to start reassuring you. "Not at all, not even the smallest bit. We're okay, I promise you. Nothing has changed between us, nothing at all." You shake your head at him, unable to believe it, that this hasn't ruined everything, that you haven't ruined your relationship. "Nothing has changed. I'm not going to be scared to have sex with you ever again. We're okay. I know how consuming and real and believable the thoughts your mind is telling you are right now, but I promise you they're not true. You haven't ruined anything, least of all us."
You whimper as you keep shaking your head and shrug, your eyes still locked on his, tears getting more out of control in a way that tells Jack you're starting to truly exhaust out. "You haven't, Baby, I promise." One of your hands lays limp in your lap, fell from around him at some point when you stopped feeling like you deserved to have him or his comfort. Jack takes your hand slowly, watches your reaction carefully as he brings it up to his chest and takes some exaggerated breaths so you can really feel the movement of his chest under your palm. "Breathe for me, yeah? Breathe with me. Just keep looking at me."
You do, in large part because you've finally hit a place where your head is so fuzzy that you don't know what to do so you latch onto the instruction, let Jack talk you through calming down, focus on the feeling of his chest under your hand and his low gravely voice that you love.
"There you go," he murmurs as you quiet, only sniffles and the occasional stray tear left. Your eyes are incredibly swollen and bloodshot, and Jack knows you must be exhausted. "Here, let's get you cleaned up."
Jack reaches over to the nightstand and grabs the box of tissues off it, pulls one out and starts wiping at your tear soaked face. When he grabs a new tissue and you hold your hand out for it he gives it to you, lets you blow your nose and finish getting yourself cleaned up how you want. He gives the smallest smile to himself when you take a fresh tissue and wipe his neck where you'd sobbed into it. A couple of stray tears fall down your face as you do and he's quick to grab a tissue of his own and wipe them away before setting the box back on the nightstand and grabbing his water bottle.
"Will you have some water for me?" Jack asks as he takes the lid off his bottle with one hand and holds it up toward your mouth but not too close. "It'll make you feel a little better." He doesn't have to say that you cried enough to contribute to dehydration. You're pretty sure you’re feeling it already and he's gently told you enough times after you've cried now that you just know. And you know he's right. Even if it's not much, it will make you feel at least a little better especially because the water in his bottle is always ice cold.
You nod and bring your hands up to his, wrap one over the top of his where it holds the bottle and one around his wrist, let him help you drink because even though you feel like you don't deserve it, know you don't deserve it, it still feels nice to be taken care of how he takes care of you in all these little ways and tiny moments. When you've finally had enough you move your hands and nod, help him get the cap screwed back on.
"Thank you, Sweetheart," he murmurs to you as he reaches over and sets the water bottle back on the nightstand. He means it both for having some water and helping with the cap. You know, and you know you should thank him but you can't quite find the words.
You blink up at him owlishly when he looks back at you, purse your lips slightly and tilt your head just a little and he knows. Jack knows you're saying thank you and not just for the water. The edges of his lips quirk upward and his eyes soften more at the edges to tell you that you're welcome.
"Kiss?" The way he words the question is deliberate. He could have asked for a kiss, can I have a kiss? But he doesn't on purpose because if you're not ready for that he doesn't want you to feel like you're denying him, doesn't want to put any kind of pressure on you. So he poses it neutrally, more like he's asking if you'd like him to give you one.
You nod and the corners of Jack's lips pull upward a little further into a small smile. He leans in and kisses you, chaste and soft and quick but more than enough to silently say he loves you and the two of you are okay and everything is going to be okay no matter what it feels like right now. You chase his lips as he goes to pull back and Jack stills, gives you the handful of additional kisses you seek out. Once you're sated enough with kisses and go to pull away from him, Jack presses a lingering kiss to your forehead, squeezes you gently in his arms where you still sit in his lap.
Your eyes close at the feeling and you try to keep yourself calm and centered, even keel. But the guilt is setting in. The feeling bad and like he could do so much better. Like he should do so much better. You keep your eyes closed for a few seconds after Jack moves his lips, resist the urge to slump into him because, like so many times tonight, the least you can do is look him in the eyes for this.
When you do Jack swears you almost look sheepish in a way, sheepish with a deep sadness, almost a kind of resignation that pierces his heart with something sharp and icy. Your eyes are wet with tears again but Jack already knows these ones will never quite fall, will just linger at your lash line almost taunting you, making you feel like you could lose it again at any moment when in reality you can't in a way. Because you're out of those kinds of tears and the energy it takes for that kind of crying.
"I'm sorry," you whisper after a couple seconds of eye contact. You let out a soft, shaky breath. "I hate that I'm broken. That I'm broken for you Jack, that you're with someone who's broken. I don't get why you want to be with someone who's broken. Who's so fucking broken." Your voice cracks over the words.
Jack keeps the frown that could consume his whole face small. He knows what you mean by broken, that it's not you saying you need help or have fallen apart and need help piecing yourself back together. He knows it's you saying that you're something that can't be fixed, that you're a never ending reconstruction project, that you're difficult. That you're not worth it. That you're something that should be thrown away and replaced.
"Sweetheart," Jack starts just above a murmur, the tone of his voice tells you that Jack knows exactly how you mean the word, "you're not broken."
"You had a flashback but that doesn't make you broken." Jack's hand starts rubbing up and down your back again, his touch firm and warm and more soothing than you think you deserve. His other finds your hand in your lap and holds it, thumb brushing over the back of your hand. "Being depressed and sad and anxious and mad and hurt and upset about it doesn't make you broken. Not being able to have sex or continue to have sex because of it or needing space or not wanting to be near me because of it doesn't and wouldn't make you broken. Completely shutting down for a while and needing to block out the whole world wouldn't make you broken. That's all human."
He squeezes your hand, eyes so soft and loving and caring it almost makes you feel a bit sick because your brain is still screaming at you that you don't deserve him, that he needs to leave you and go find something better. "Those are all natural reactions to the awful, heinous thing that happened to you. And I know you know that and that it's so easy for me to say all of this, and I promise you, I'm not trying to minimize anything, what you went through or what you felt or feel. I just want and need you to know that you're not broken. No matter how much it feels like it. You're not broken."
"You are so many things, but broken isn't one of them." Jack tilts his head at you just slightly. He doesn't have to think about it, about ways he'd describe you, the words he'd used. They fall off his tongue. "You're witty and intelligent and kind, loyal, to a fault sometimes, selfless, gracious and funny and formidable, tenacious, and spirited, beautiful in every sense, gorgeous. And you're mine. You're not broken." His eyes speak the rest for him. Especially not how you mean.
You shrug shallowly. "Damaged and tainted goods then."
"No," he says a little more firmly, but still so achingly soft and sweet. He hates how much he knows you believe your words are true. "Please don't talk about yourself like that. You're not damaged or tainted because of what happened. I don't see you like that or think about you like that, not at all."
You look away from him finally, not because you're upset or anything, because you're scared he'll realize you're right and you'll have to watch it happen. "That doesn't mean I'm not, Jack. It just means you don't see or think of me like that."
"You're not though," he shakes his head even though you're not looking at him to see it. Jack really, really hopes he isn't saying all the wrong things and fucking this all up. "I know… I know it's easy for me to say and so much harder for you to accept and believe, and I don't want to be saying the wrong things or frustrating you or making you feel unheard or ignored or like I'm being dismissive or minimizing, I just… I wish you could see yourself the way I see you. And again, like I said earlier, I just wanted you to hear the words."
"You're changed, of course you are. That kind of trauma changes you and that's okay. That change doesn't make you broken, or damaged or tainted goods. You have to understand you're the strongest person I know." Your eyes slowly return to his as he speaks and he gives you a soft, thankful smile.
"You've done more than just survive what happened, and surviving alone is an extraordinary feat. You've lived and you've thrived, even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes, or even a lot of the time. You've opened yourself up and trusted the world and people again despite so many valid reasons not to. You've looked a kind of evil nobody should know, a true, unadulterated evil in the eye and you live and you trust and you love and you go on. You trust me and give yourself to me, all of yourself. That all requires strength that few people have, even if to you it just feels like surviving or what you have to do because life and the world have to go on."
"And that's not something I think. That's something I know, even if you don't and you can't believe that, which is okay of course. I know that. And I will spend forever trying to show you that and get you to believe that." He pauses, eyes searching yours for a moment and reflecting the depth of his love for you and his intense honesty and belief in everything he just told you. "I love you."
"I love you too," you whisper.
You let yourself melt into Jack as his arms wrap around you fully again and pull you into him gently, give you permission to take the comfort you want and need from him. You rest your side against him, your head against his chest and your ear pressed against his warm skin so you can listen to his steady heartbeat. You wrap one arm around him and let the other rest on his chest next to your face, your index finger tracing random shapes on his freckled skin through a comfortable, safe, silence that helps you gather some of your thoughts and further regulate.
"It, it's never hit that hard before, I'm sorry." The impulse to explain more and try to somehow make everything better is strong, but your brain simply doesn't have anything left to even begin to try. Both you and Jack know that it's likely that part of the reason it hit harder is because it could. Because you needed it to. Because it could finally hit as hard as you needed it to because you knew that Jack was with you, that he would hold you and keep you safe and wouldn't let you get lost or stuck in your mind. That you wouldn’t have to worry about having to take care of yourself after.
"Please try not to apologize." He says it gently because he knows how hard it is, understands the impulse to. "You have nothing to apologize for or feel bad about, Sweetheart. I know that doesn't mean that you don't feel like you do or feel bad, but in my mind, you don't. I'm not holding any of this against you. I'm not upset or hurt or mad that it happened and you needed me. I'll never be upset by that."
You shrug in his arms, swollen lips pushing out in a pout. "I know," you whisper, "it's just hard."
"I know, Sweetheart," he murmurs back, gives you a little squeeze.
A few moments of silence pass. And it finally feels like a true silence, your brain mostly quiet.
"Hey Jack?" Your voice is quiet, but not whispered.
"Yeah?" He starts rubbing his hand up and down your back again, the perfect pressure in his fingertips to almost give it a massaging quality.
You pull your head from his chest and look up at him. "Thank you." For everything. Those two words go unspoken but both of you know that's what you mean.
"Always," Jack nods with a small smile. "Anytime, anywhere. Whenever you need."
You swallow thickly and nod. Your lips tremble a little as you form your next words but there are no tears in your eyes, just gratitude and devotion, love and thanks, gratefulness and trust, and something that tells him you're thinking about how lucky you are. "Thank you for stopping."
"I'll always stop." He tells you with a nod, holds your eye contact in that serious way he does sometimes because he needs you to hear this again even though he knows you already know it or you wouldn't be together. "I'll always listen to you. It doesn't matter that we've had sex before, or that we've done whatever it is we're doing before. Everything stops the second it's not an enthusiastic yes, the second you're acquiescing and not truly consenting or not able to truly consent, always. I’ll always stop."
You nod, not wanting him to think you doubted him or didn't know that. "I know, I know, I promise. I've known, I've always known. I just wanted to say thank you for that."
He tilts his head at you slightly. "It's not something you need to thank me for."
"No, but…" You let out a breath and shrug. "You know?"
"I do," he nods.
You shift a little, move one hand to play with the curls at the nape of his neck because it soothes you as much as it does him, your other hand resting with your fingertips at the base of his neck, your thumb brushing back and forth over his collarbone. "How did you even know? You, you stopped before I asked or said anything. Before it even, before I was back there, when I could just feel it coming on and knew it was going to happen and that I couldn't fight it off and keep myself here."
Jack takes in a deep breath as he thinks about how to try and explain it. "You stiffened in this way you never have before and your breathing seemed off." He shrugs shallowly, looks away for a second as he thinks about it. "I don't know. I just felt it. I was praying I was wrong and you were going to be like 'hey what the fuck' but I just felt it and knew. I knew there was no yes anymore. You told me with your body when you couldn't with your words."
You hold his gaze for a few seconds before your eyes drag down his face and neck to watch your thumb rub back and forth over his collarbone as you think about that and what it means. Jack had been deep into it when it started to happen, out of his mind and totally fucking lost in you.
And yet he still knew. He still felt it. He still heard you. Heard your body.
That's how safe you are with him, how protective he is, how much he cares about you, how well he knows you, how some little piece of his brain is always in tune with you and watching you to make sure you’re okay. That’s how much he loves you.
You lean up and into him and press your lips against his, the kiss chaste but saying so very much. You let the first kiss linger before giving him another and another, Jack letting you be in full control of how deep the kisses are and how long they last, clearly just happy to feel your lips against his with the contented sigh he breathes through his nose. You know you just said it to each other, but you want and need to tell him again.
"I love you," you whisper against his lips before kissing him again and then pulling away a little to look at him and make sure he knows just how much you mean it.
Jack smiles softly at you. "I love you too, always, no matter what." He rests his forehead against yours. "I mean it," he whispers. He needs you to hear him and to know this hasn't changed anything between the two of you, hasn't changed how he feels about you, how much he loves you and wants you and needs you. "I love you. No matter what."
You didn't realize how much you needed to hear it until Jack says it. "No matter what," you repeat to him, tilt your head up just slightly and give him another achingly sweet kiss.
"What do you need now?" Jack knows you need sleep, that you're exhausted from everything that just happened. But he also knows the chances of you being able to sleep right now are approximately zero. “Or want?”
You close your eyes and pull your forehead from his, let out a long breath. "To shower." Jack can tell there's more you want to say, that you're trying to piece words together in your mind. "I, um. I could feel his, his hands and…" You trail off and shrug shallowly to finish your sentence without finishing it. "I just, I, I need to shower it all off. Feel clean."
"Okay, Sweetheart," he murmurs. "You don't have to explain or justify it to me, you know? It's enough that you want it." Your eyes find his and you nod, lean in and kiss the corner of his jaw because it just feels right. You can feel the soft smile that pulls onto his face at the move and something about it helps you, reassures you that you can still make him smile and aren't just a dark cloud that does nothing but bring him down and torture him.
The thought of you potentially alone in the shower doesn't really thrill him. It makes him worry about you getting too far into your head, you flashing back again while alone, somewhere you could fall and seriously injure yourself. But this is what you're telling him you need and so of course he's going to make sure you get it and get it without any pressure to let him be there. "Want me to go get it started for you?"
Half of you wants to say no because that means he'll be getting up and you won't be safe in his arms anymore. But you really do need to shower and feel clean and let the water wash at least some of the fog from your mind before you try to sleep. And you want to feel Jack's wet, shower warmed skin against yours, want to feel his hands, hands you know, that you'd recognize anywhere, that are wanted, gliding along your skin.
Thinking about that makes you realize what he asked. Want me to get it started for you?
For you.
He never says that, because when he's starting the shower for the both of you it's unnecessary. He must not want to pressure you, must want you to have to say no, actually, you need to shower alone, you need your body to yourself, because he knows how hard of an ask that could potentially be. But you had time with your body to yourself. And after it happened all you had for a while in the cold was your body to yourself. So you just want him and his warmth and his protection and the safety of his arms and his love.
He can tell something is off when you don't answer right away, runs through what he said and how he said it and how he's holding you and where his hands are on you right now trying to identify something wrong.
"Jack?"
"Yeah Baby?"
It takes you a second to find the words, suddenly worried he might say no. That maybe he didn't specify for you because he doesn't want to shower with you for so many potential reasons. "Will you shower with me?" You force the question out, immediately start to qualify it. "It's okay if you don't want to, I, I understand, I'd just…" You don't want to tell him that's what you want, is part of what you need because then you're just forcing him, aren't you? Because how could he say no? You know he would never.
"Hey." The softness of the word cuts off all your thoughts. "Of course. I just wasn't sure if you'd want that and I didn't want you to feel pressured to let me in with you."
"I don't want to be alone," you admit. Or at least it feels like some kind of admission. "And I, I want to be with you. You make it better. You make me feel safe and like I'm okay or at least will be."
Jack feels a huge weight lift from his shoulders at your words, partial relief flooding his system at you saying he makes it better and you feel safe and like you’re okay or will be. "Good. Because you are safe with me and you're going to be okay. We'll get you through this," Jack whispers. "You ready? You can sit on the edge of the tub while I get it going, yeah?"
"Yeah," you nod. You move from his lap to the edge of the bed and stand, start walking in and do as Jack suggested and sit on the edge of the tub.
Jack slides to the edge of the bed after you and grabs his crutches, starts making his way behind you to the bathroom and it's one of those moments that frustrates Jack to no fucking end. He can't carry you into the bathroom. Not easily at least. Not without the entire production of him putting his prosthetic back on even if he doesn't do it completely properly. He can't even hold your hand and guide you to it, can't rest his hand on your lower back or your neck. Presuming you wanted any of that. He fights to keep the frustration off his face and out of his body and the way he crutches because he doesn't want you to think it has anything to do with you.
He turns the shower on a little hotter than the temperature you like and use all the time because he knows you'll want it hot and he's hoping if it's hotter than you expect you won't turn it up even more to borderline scalding. He just doesn't want you to hurt yourself.
Jack feels the water with his hand and turns to you. "It's ready whenever you are." He gets himself in and sits on the bench, gets wet enough to not be cold as he does, the more central waterfall head on for you to stand in. You guys had redone the master bath shortly after you'd moved in, the shower incredibly fancy with multiple shower heads and a nice bench that seats two and doesn't feel clinical at all. You like showering together. It had been more than worth it. As was the best water heater money could buy.
You follow him in and sit on the bench next to him, adjust the shower so that the water falls down over the bench. Jack opens his arms a little to see what you want to do and you move closer to him, press your side against his as his arm wraps around your back, hand resting on your hip. You grab his other hand from his lap and hold it, lay your head against his shoulder with your eyes closed and just breathe as the water rains down on you.
Jack senses that silence is what you need right now, that it's letting you clear your mind and reflect some. And it is and you are. As the fog clears from your mind you smile to yourself just a touch when you recall everything random that Jack said to you when you'd asked him to just keep talking. Jack makes sure the silence doesn't start to get charged, though. Pays even closer and more conscious attention than usual to make sure that you don't get stiff or tense or do anything else that tells him you're starting to slip too far into your mind.
After several long minutes you let out a deep sigh and pick your head up off his shoulder. "I'm going to exfoliate," you tell him as you stand and grab the sugar scrub you use every now and then.
Jack watches intently as you also put on the exfoliating hand mitten you have on and turn the temperature of the water up even further while adjusting the settings to have some falling on him and some where you're standing. Your eyes glance over at him, eyebrows raising slightly to ask if it's too hot. He shakes his head to tell you it's okay, watches you carefully while you start to exfoliate.
As you scrub it's like you can't do it enough, can't work it into your skin hard enough to truly get clean even with the hot water, though it doesn't truly feel hot enough even though the temperature has your skin tingling in a kind of low grade constant pain that's helping clear your mind further. And Jack lets you have it for a bit. Lets you scrub your skin hard under the just below scalding water despite knowing what it's doing to your skin.
But as you keep scrubbing yourself you continue to do it harder and harder, going over spots you've already scrubbed halfway to raw and he knows he needs to step in to protect you, to keep you from scrubbing until you're bleeding. "Sweetheart," he calls to you just loud enough to be heard over the water.
You don't hear him. Well, you do hear him, but it just doesn't hit your brain in the way it needs to so you continue scrubbing at yourself. Jack doesn't want to touch you out of nowhere or without your permission so he tries saying it a bit louder.
"Sweetheart." This time it breaks through and you stop, look over at him with raised and slightly furrowed eyebrows. Jack gives you a small smile, a silent thank you for looking at him and for stopping. "You're going to scrub your skin raw." You think about it for a second and then shrug. That would definitely make you feel clean enough. “I can’t have you hurting yourself, Baby,” he says gently.
No. You can’t put him through that on top of everything else. You can’t. But you don’t trust yourself. You think about it and realize the solution is the best of both worlds, each of you getting what you want, you feeling Jack’s hands on your body helping to replace the feeling of unwanted hands, and Jack getting to make sure you don’t get hurt.
You take the hand mitten off and offer it to him. “Will you?” you ask quietly, so quietly it aches. “Please.”
Jack’s eyes flick between yours searching for any sign that you’re feeling pressured or hesitating but finds neither. “You’re sure? You can say no, you can keep doing it and I’ll remind you not to be too harsh.”
“I’m sure,” you nod once.
And so Jack scrubs you down, doesn’t use the mitten so his hands replace the touch your mind recreated for you earlier and help you feel clean without destroying your skin. When he's finished scrubbing you offer him your shampoo and conditioner and he washes your hair, takes his time and gives you the most incredible scalp and neck and jaw massage as he shampoos you, kisses at your shoulders while your conditioner sits.
Jack looks at the bottle of body wash you're offering him and then back up at you, nodding slightly to make sure you're telling him to wash you with this and not just handing it to him for himself. You nod. You know that you'll be able to smell him when you're curled up into him in bed but you don't want the scent of your body wash competing. You want to be wrapped up in him and his scent because Jack smells like home and safety and protection and reminds you that nobody can touch you here, that the only way someone could ever touch you in the presence of Jack would be quite literally over his dead body.
The shower loosens you up some, helps your brain reset and you feel closer to yourself. It’s not perfect of course, it’s not like it erased what just happened. But it’s better. And you know that more than the water and the heat and the soap and the feeling clean, it’s because of Jack.
Once you're both out of the shower and dry you head to the sink to deal with your hair and skincare and brushing your teeth. Jack follows you, brushes his teeth and runs his hands through his curls a few times to make sure there's no knots. He watches you for a few seconds as you rub in some serum. "You okay if I step out to get bed ready?"
You balk at the question, unsure what he really needs to do to get the bed ready. Your heart rate ticks up at the thought of being alone even though you know it's not really being alone. He's going to be right in your bedroom getting your bed ready. You're warm and you can smell him. You'll hear the comforting familiar click of crutches as he moves around. If you need to you can run right to him or ask him to come back or to talk to you.
Just as Jack goes to retract the question and say he'll wait, you nod, give him a small smile. "Yeah. I'll be okay."
His eyes dart around your face looking for any sign that you're not sure and forcing this because you think you're being difficult or something like that. He nods slowly when he doesn't find anything. "Okay. Just shout if you need me and I'll be right back."
You step closer to him and push your lips out and Jack smiles, leans down and in and gives you a kiss before he crutches out into the bedroom. His first stop is to close the curtain obviously. He throws the used tissues away next and then strips the bed and starts changing the sheets. Jack has no idea if it's something you need or that will help you but he figures that clean sheets can't hurt.
He's putting the comforter back on the bed when you get to the doorframe and you lean against it to watch him, feel a lump in your throat forming and tears stinging at the back of your eyes because fuck this man loves you and you are so, so aware of it. He makes sure you know even when he's not trying to. And you know to Jack this is no big deal, this is just a little thing he's doing to take care of you. But for you it's one of those little things that's fucking everything.
You have to say it to him again. Have to make sure he knows. "I love you Jack."
Jack looks over at you as he finishes pulling the comforter up. "I love you too, Baby." He gives you a smile that steals your breath and makes you a little dizzy, clears any last bits of fog in your mind. He sits on the bed and sets his crutches to the side before he slides in, pats the spot next to him. "You ready?"
You nod and hit the bathroom light, almost scurry over, suddenly desperate to be close to him again. Jack doesn't have to ask how you want to lay because you're laying on your side next to him, tangling your legs together and pressing as much of yourself against him as you can, your head tucked under his chin, top hand splayed against his chest.
Jack chuckles at the little sigh of contentment you let out once you've wiggled around enough and found the perfect position. "Comfy?"
"Very," you hum.
You're still a little shaky. Both of you know it and neither of you are surprised by it. It'll linger for a bit the same way Jack's flashbacks do, but it'll pass as much as it feels like the almost intrusive presence and anxiety in your mind never will. Talking would help but you really don't want to put anything else on Jack.
Jack wraps his top arm over you and runs his hand up and down your back with the right pressure to make it feel like he's holding you close at the same time. From his own experiences he has a feeling that the shower probably cleared your head and left you wanting to talk a little more. "We genuinely don't have to Baby, but I just want you to know that if you need to talk more, that's okay and we can, I would want us to. Especially if you think it would help."
You shrug shallowly against him with your top shoulder. He always knows. "I don't know. I just…" You let out a long breath and then shift so that your head is up on the pillow next to his, the two of you looking each other in the eyes while still wrapped up together, Jack's hand still traveling up and down your back soothingly. "I need you to know that wasn't your fault. None of it. And I need you to know that I don't feel like you did anything or like you assaulted me and I, I, I'm sorry, Jack. I'm so sorry for this."
Your eyes are wild, so very obviously desperate and anxious for him to understand and believe you. You know you're repeating some of what you said earlier while you were panicking and distraught but you need him to know it's all still true now that you're out of that more extreme headspace. "I knew it wasn't you, I never thought it was you doing… anything. I saw you move before it fully hit me. I promise I never thought it was you and that you don't remind me of him or treat me like him. And I promise I know you never could or would do something like that to me or hurt me at all. I don't think of you-"
"Sweetheart," Jack interrupts gently after letting you have your moment of worry. He doesn't want you to get yourself worked up about this of all things, not when he already knows everything you're saying and you have nothing to worry about.
"Just promise me," you get out before he can say anything else to you. "Please just promise me you know Jack. Promise me you know you didn't cause it and I didn't think it was you and that I know you would never and that you don't remind me of him."
He nods, moves his hand from your back and grabs yours that's still pressed to his chest and holds it, brings it up to his lips and kisses the back of it while maintaining eye contact. There's something so oddly reassuring about the move, something so earnest in its subtle reassurance and expression of love. "I promise you that I know I didn't cause it and you didn't think it was me and that I know you know I would never and that I don't remind you of him."
"Okay," you whisper, nodding at him. "As long as you know. Because before you were even sure, the second something felt off you stopped, Jack. You, you… You stopped." And I'll never be able to tell you what that meant to me.
Jack squeezes your hand back. I know. "And I always will." He presses another kiss to the back of your hand. "I promise I know."
You lift your head up and stretch over to him, brush your lips over his and nuzzle his nose for a second before kissing him, pulling your hand from his so that you can hold the side of his face as the kiss lingers, Jack pouring all of his love and adoration and feelings for you into the simplest of kisses. You steal another and another every time one kiss ends because they're soft and loving and physical reassurance and Jack. These kinds of kisses are so very Jack.
"Can I say something else?" you whisper against his lips as you finish your last kiss and return your head to laying on the pillow. "And it's really dumb but I can't get it out of my head and I think just, just saying it again might help."
He nods. "Of course, and I doubt it's dumb."
"I know it's dumb. It's so dumb and you already reassured me about this but I'm still worried you'll never want to have sex with me again, or like you won't be able to because of this. I know it traumatized you too, Jack." You sigh deeply, close your eyes and frown to yourself. This is so wrong. "And I know I shouldn't be worried about it, that it's wrong, and I don't know why it's what my brain is fixated on right now and it feels hypocritical in a way almost, but I just… I am."
"That's not dumb, Sweetheart. It's valid to worry about that, it's normal and natural to worry about that." Jack waits the few seconds until you let your eyes flutter back open to continue speaking, wants to make sure you really hear him. "You're allowed to worry about that, about our sexual relationship. And you can like and love and enjoy and want sex. That doesn't make you a hypocrite, and it doesn't lessen what you went through, doesn't mean it wasn't really that bad, I promise you."
Jack nods at you slightly, his gaze intense but in the most loving and reassuring way. His hand finds yours and laces your fingers together, squeezing softly. "It doesn't lessen what you went through and it doesn't mean it wasn't really that bad," he repeats for emphasis.
He can see in your eyes that you want to believe him, that you want to believe him so badly. But right now you can't. Some wall you've built in your brain is blocking it. It's not something Jack is going to push any further for the night, because it won't help. It won't make you believe him. Not right now.
So he moves on to your other worry. "I also promise you that when you're ready I'm going to want to have sex with you and we're going to have sex."
"Like normal?" you whisper. "Like before this, before tonight."
"Like normal. We’ll have really, really good sex. The best sex." His voice is firm, hesitation free. Reassuring. He doesn't make you feel crazy for asking.
"And you'll still be okay with everything we did before?" You chew on the inside of your cheek.
"As long as you are, yeah," he nods. He brings your hand back up to his lips and kisses it again, was able to see how much the small move helped you earlier. "I will. I promise you. Our sex life will be the same, Baby. It's not going anywhere or changing because of this unless you want or need it to."
His words are reassuring and that's what you need, what you need to hear, that things will go back to normal. That he won't be afraid or unable to have sex with you. That this won't control your life. That it won't take something else away from you. That you won't lose that part of yourself or your relationship. "It'll be normal." It's ostensibly a sentence, a statement of fact, but there's a hint of intonation that tells Jack you need more reassurance.
"I promise," he tells you confidently, not a hint of uncertainty in his eyes or his lips or on his face.
"Okay," you breathe. "Okay, thank you."
There's more on your mind. The self-blame. You feel like you should acknowledge to Jack that you know this is on you, that a creation of your mind has brought the two of you here.
"Do you ever feel like… I guess…" You sigh and untangle your legs from Jack's, roll onto your back, not because you want or need to be away from him, you make sure your side is pressed against the front of him so that it's almost like he's on his side leaning over you. But because you feel like you need to be staring at the ceiling when you say this for whatever reason. Your hand finds his and brings it to your tummy so you can play with his fingers as you speak.
"There are moments where I'm almost not sure what's worse, that night when it actually happened or the flashbacks where I'm right back there on that night and can feel all of it, relive all of it because I'm not in the present except for this one tiny piece of my brain that hangs onto the present just enough to make sure I know I'm imagining it, that I'm making myself go through it again and that it's my fault I'm feeling how I am because I'm just… imagining it." The long breath you let out is far more shuddery than you want it to be. "And this time, this time it was worse because it wasn't just me I was putting through that and making deal with that. I was putting you through it too, making you deal with it too. Still am. All because I can't keep it together, and let my brain reconstruct it and imagine it."
Jack considers for a few seconds and you're struck by how much you appreciate it. His consideration of your words, the ones you're using to say how you feel. "I understand what you mean, yeah. I guess I've never really articulated it that way to myself, but yeah, I can see it, I understand what you mean."
"And I get that last part, you know I do." He leans his head forward and down slightly and presses a soft kiss to your shoulder, a simple expression of love. "But it's not you, it's not your fault. It's not a conscious decision you're making. You don't think it's my fault when I have a flashback, don't blame me. There's no difference, Baby. You didn't decide to have a flashback and make yourself go through that again. I saw it in your eyes as it started, I saw the terror. It's not about not being able to keep it together. It's something that happens to you. You weren't and aren't putting me or yourself through anything, Sweetheart."
"I know, but it's, it's Thursday fucking night, Jack. It's a random fucking Thursday night!" Your voice breaks on the last word and you huff at yourself and the pressure you can feel forming behind your eyes. "And then the curtains just happen to be open and rain hits the glass just right, just like it did on that night and so I fucking lose it? That's not fair. It's not fair to you and it's not fair to me. It's just not fair." Your voice breaks on the last word.
It's obvious to both you and Jack that you need to cry again. That you're right on the verge of doing so. But that would be just one more thing you put him through again tonight, a thought that makes you want to cry all the more.
"It's okay if you need to cry again, Baby," Jack tells you softly. I know it would be different, that these would be tears of a different kind. And even if they weren't, it doesn’t matter. It’s unspoken, but you hear it, read it on his face.
At the same time Jack finishes his sentence the first tear slides down your face. "God fucking damn it," you mutter as more follow. Jack reaches behind himself blindly until he finds the box of tissues and pulls a couple out, hands them to you.
You take them and blot at your eyes, wipe the tears from your cheeks to try and keep yourself a bit cleaner since you just showered. You roll off your back onto your side again, curl back into Jack and intertwine your legs again, rest your head under his chin and cry into one of the tissues. Thank you for letting me do this, for holding me through it again.
"This was never supposed to affect us, Jack," you sniffle, Jack's arms moving around you so that he's holding you tight to him. "You were never supposed to have to deal with this, with me like this or with this kind of flashback and the way it fucks me up, much less mid us having sex. I was supposed to be better. I was supposed to be better! I haven't had one since we got together and then a fucking random Thursday night and some stupid fucking rain destroys it all."
You're crying in earnest, the tears pouring from your eyes, but you're not sobbing. It's a controlled and quiet weeping, breaths sucked in through your teeth and occasionally shuddered out as you tremble in his arms. You’re crying like you're deep into mourning. And you are in a way. "This was never supposed to happen, you were never supposed to have to deal with this Jack, I was supposed to be better. I hate this and, and I was supposed to be better and I'm sorry for all of this. I'm so sorry."
Jack holds you as you cry again, whispers more of the same sweet reassurances that he did earlier, presses soft kisses to the top of your head as one hand rubs up and down your back. He knows this is a catharsis of a different kind because he's been there.
And this is a catharsis of a different kind, one that's harder to explain and articulate. Sobbing earlier, that was more about what happened to you. About experiencing it all over again. About not being able to stop it, then or now. About that man and what he took.
Weeping now, it's more about mourning the person you were. About everything that came after. About the way it changed you and your world. About everything that's been taken and the way it continues to take at times. About the way it continues to fuck with your head and your life. It's about the way you're so sure it's affecting your relationship with Jack, changing everything and fucking it all up, and how you can't seem to stop it from doing so. It's about the way you're not better, not fixed and fine and over it.
You're not sure how long Jack holds you while you cry, how long it takes for your tears to finally stop. It doesn't really matter, you suppose. You know the man, know he'd hold you forever if that's what you needed.
"It's okay, Sweetheart," Jack murmurs. "I've got you. And this isn't affecting us, I promise. Not the way you're worried about and thinking it is. It's not changing us or anything between us. I absolutely fucking hate that this happened and that you had a flashback because I hate you hurting and the thought of you having to go through that, but it's okay in a sense that it happened."
You pull your head from his neck so that you can look at him, know his words will have a better chance of actually piercing your brain if you're looking at him. And god you really fucking want them to. For you and for him.
He gives you a small smile and then continues. "You're allowed to have flashbacks. You're allowed to struggle with your trauma. It's okay if you're not better the way you thought you were or the way you want to be. None of this is going to make me go anywhere. It's not pushing me away and it's not too much. You're not too much. So please try not to beat yourself up too badly, Baby. I don't want that. I don't feel like I'm dealing with it or with you or like you're putting anything on me. I'm just taking care of you. The same way you take care of me when I have a flashback or get deep in my head, yeah?"
"Yeah," you mumble, shrugging. Your head isn't foggy or fuzzy courtesy of the tears this time. It's still. You're in one of those head-spaces where you're not slowly continuing to devolve but you're not sure you're necessarily improving. You're just steady where you are. Things are still. And with that stillness comes a feeling of calmness that helps you start to come back to yourself a little. "I guess. It feels different."
Jack gives you a small smile and laugh through his nose. "I know. And I know one day I'll probably say the same thing. Again."
You manage to give him a small, lopsided smile back and you swear the happiness that returns to the corners of his eyes at seeing you smile nearly makes it all magically better and you fine and completely unbothered. Almost. "Thank you Jack," you whisper. "For all of this, for everything."
Jack can tell from your words and body language that you're telling him you're mentally at a spot post second catharsis where you're at least relatively decent and don't want to keep going too much and fuck it up and lose it again. And Jack respects that and isn't going to force you to continue this conversation or start any others like it tonight. "You're welcome. I'm always right here whenever you need me Sweetheart."
You nod and let out a breath, close your eyes and take a minute or so to settle into your now still mind. "I think I'm going to tell work I'm sick and won't be in tomorrow. Take a long weekend with you." You slowly reopen your eyes.
Jack smiles at the thought of getting a long weekend together, getting you to himself all of Friday and Saturday and Sunday since he doesn't have work. He smiles at the thought of you resting too, of you taking the time you need to recover and heal and get back to your baseline because he knows that deep of a flashback lingers in some almost indescribable way, casts a kind of cloud that stays with you and takes time to clear all the way. "I think that's a very good idea. You need the rest."
You swallow hard and let out the softest laugh through your nose, shrug slightly. "I need the time with you."
His heart aches at how sweet that is, how sweet you are and how much you love him and need him. "You've got me. Whatever you need is what we'll do."
"I know, thank you." You sigh and move yourself out of his arms, start to roll over. "Let me text before I forget."
You grab your phone and shoot off a text to your boss to let her know you won't be in tomorrow. As you compose and send the text you can't help but ruminate a little on the fact that you're about to have a three day weekend with Jack, a somewhat rarity for the two of you, and you don't know if and when you'll be ready for sex again. It'll really depend on so many things, none of which are truly related to Jack. It's not that you're scared to have sex with him again, at all. He was perfect. He stopped before you asked. Before you even really fully realized you needed him to stop.
You roll back over and Jack's relaxed half-smile melts you for whatever reason. He loves you so much, does so much for you, is so patient with you. You're pretty sure you could never even begin to give him what he gives you but damn if you don't want to spend your life trying. "I love you Jack. I really do, I hope you know that and how thankful and grateful I am for you and your understanding and your care."
His smile pulls up wider again. "I know, I promise. There hasn't been a day since we first said it to each other that I haven't known. And I love you too, Sweetheart."
You both roll into each other naturally for the kiss you share. Neither of you are particularly surprised when it turns into more kisses than you can count, each so incredibly loving and full of emotion and feeling but still chaste in their own ways, tender and pressure free. You bring a hand up and hold Jack's jaw, thumb brushing back and forth over his stubble because it feels good for both of you.
He nuzzles his nose with yours when the two of you pull apart and chuckles to himself when you press your forehead to his chest and push to get him to lay on his back how you want. You curl into his side fully, one leg draped over the top of him, your head resting perfectly in the crook of his shoulder as your top hand rests on his chest, fingers running over his skin. Jack wraps his arm around your back and holds you close to him, his other hand up behind his head.
"So, thoughts on where you might like to vacation?" Jack asks once you're both settled in. He knows it's an abrupt change and he hopes it doesn't feel forced. He just knows that you need a lighter, more normal conversation before you guys try to sleep. "Greece? Italy? Both? Or Spain? Portugal? Both of them? I suppose we could try to do all four in one trip if you wanted."
"Any and all." You genuinely mean it. "Literally anywhere with you Jack."
Jack clicks his tongue behind his teeth and you can feel him nodding slowly. "That's very sweet and romantic and I feel the same way, don't get me wrong, but that's not particularly helpful in planning a vacation."
"Oh, I'm sure you have some ideas." He can hear the small smirk pull onto your face as you speak. "I could get my nails done?"
He loves that that comment didn't escape your notice even with it almost certainly being something you didn't consciously process at the moment he said it. "It was just an idea," he shrugs, feigning nonchalance. "I know you like getting them done before we go somewhere."
"Yeah, but you've never suggested it before." Your smirk grows wider. "It's like you want to make sure they look nice or like you know they might be prominently featured in photos."
"I think you're reading into a passing comment."
"I know I'm not." And you both know you're right. You're not reading into it at all. Jack said that to drop an engagement hint and tease you a little like he's done numerous times in the past month or so.
He shakes his head slowly, the smile he's wearing that you can't see but can hear completely giving him away. "You're ridiculous."
"That's half the reason you want to marry me," you say right on the heels of his words without missing a beat. Jack blurts out a laugh at your words, unable to stop it as they catch him by surprise. He doesn't know what he expected you to say but apparently that wasn't it. His reaction makes you giggle a little. "I match your level of ridiculousness and you love that."
"So true, Sweetheart. So, so true." Jack leans his head down and to the side and presses his lips against as much of your forehead and the top of your head as they can reach.
"We could start planning tomorrow," you suggest.
"We could." Jack runs his hand up and down your side absent-mindedly as he thinks about tomorrow and the weekend and if there's anything you guys need to do. There doesn't seem to be much. Laundry. Vacuum. A bunch of other little domestic things Jack can't believe he's lucky enough to share with you. But to Jack, it also doesn't really matter what you guys do as long as you're together. "We can just see what the day brings once we're up."
"We have to go to the store." Jack's brows furrow and he makes a little noise of confusion to ask you why. "For the right butter. And probably a couple of other things." Jack shifts the both of you so he can turn his head and see you better. He repeats a similar sound and his brows stay furrowed, still confused. You guys went to the grocery store last weekend and are still all good on stuff. He's pretty sure there's butter in the fridge. You giggle at his reaction and the way he hasn't put it together. It makes you yawn and Jack swears to god it's one of the cutest things he's ever seen. "For the cookies."
"Oh." Between telling him you're going to make the cookies for him and that yawn and your giggle, a wave of love and adoration that threatens to drown him crashes over Jack. You're the most important and precious thing in the world to him and he loves you more than he knows what to do with. "You don't have to make me the cookies."
You shrug. "I know I don't have to. I want to." You sigh happily. "You look very cute and hot eating them."
"I look very cute and hot eating them?" The amusement is clear in his voice. "The cookies?"
"Mhmmm," you hum at him.
Jack chuckles, shakes his head at you and brings the hand behind his head down so his arm can wrap over the top of him and let him hold you more. "Care to elaborate?"
You make a noise like you're pretending to think about it. "No," you finally say simply.
Jack laughs softly and that’s the last little bit you needed to realize and start to truly believe that everything is going to be okay, your anxiety starting to fade. He moves his head and presses as much of a kiss to your forehead as he can. "I love you so much, Baby."
I hope that this brought you at least a little comfort. ♥️ And if you relate, I'm truly sorry for whatever you've been through and am proud of you for surviving. Thank you so much for reading!! ♥️
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Jack x reader where Robby shows up at Jacks place to check on him after a rough shift and reader is there in his clothes bc she lives there secretly 😃😃😃😃😃❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
I LOVE YOU!
the visual of this is so amusing to me, i hope i can do it justice lmao. reader is implied to work at PTMC, but no job specified.
i do not give permission for any of my works to be reuploaded/reposted, copied, fed into AI, etc. minors dni, age in bio or blocked.
minors/ageless blogs will be blocked! i do check every blog that interacts with my fics!
you could tell it was a difficult shift the moment jack came home. he usually announced his presence, set his bag down and gave you a kiss before heading to the bathroom to shower the work germs off. some mornings were different, like this one.
there was no kiss, no greeting. just the sound of the door closing, his shoes and bag hitting the ground, and his footsteps entering the bedroom only to disappear into the en suite bathroom.
you were barely awake, still tangled in the sheets as the sun drifted in through the blinds. you scrubbed a hand over your eyes, already feeling the subtle change in the air. the tension jack had reluctantly dragged home hung heavy.
dragging yourself out of bed, you tugged on a pair of sweatpants, not bothering to change out of jack's old army shirt. sliding your feet into your slippers, you shuffle to the kitchen and put on a pot of decaf before pulling out the ingredients for an easy breakfast. jack never liked to eat much after a hard shift, but you always gently pestered him to eat something small.
he was still in the shower by the time you were done, sliding a plate of toast, eggs, and bacon into the microwave to stay warm until he got out. you were wiping down the counters and loading the dishes into the dishwasher when the doorbell rang.
you ignore it at first, assuming it was an early morning mail delivery. after closing up the dishwasher and hitting start, you make your way to the front door and unlock it, pulling it open to drag whatever packages were delivered inside.
you were surprised to be face to face with robby.
robby looked equally surprised to be face to face with you.
you both stood there, mouths open like you were each trying to find a way to break the awkward silence. his eyes drifted down to your shirt, the old faded grey fabric with ARMY in slightly reflective bold letters that had been peeling from so many years of use and washing. his eyes flicked back up to yours, his mouth opening again as he went to speak.
your first reaction was to slam the door closed.
you stood in the entryway with a racing heart and suddenly sweaty palms. you didn't hear any footsteps retreating, and a flood of embarrassment rushed over you at the fact that you just slammed the door in the face of one of your co-workers. not just co-worker, but also your partner's closest friend.
"robby?" you called hesitantly, face scrunched up in embarrassment.
"...yes?"
you paused for a moment, before pulling the door back open. he was, unfortunately, still standing there, still looking surprised. you both stared at each other again. robby was the first to break the silence.
"so, uh... you and abbot, huh?" he asked, and you dropped your head into your hand.
"christ," you muttered, stepping aside to let him in. "he's in the shower, but he'll be out soon."
"...right." he nodded slowly, stepping inside after a moments hesitation.
you closed the door, moving to the kitchen and grabbing a mug. "coffee? it's decaf."
he shook his head, standing awkwardly in the kitchen doorway.
"no, no thank you, i, uh... was just coming to check on jack." he cleared his throat a little. "heard it was a pretty rough shift last night."
you nodded, pouring yourself a generous cup to give yourself something to do other than face robby. "oh, yeah. he went straight to the shower so... i haven't really heard about what happened. i'm sure he'll appreciate you stopping by though."
robby let out a partially amused chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. "can i ask how long this has been a thing?"
you reluctantly turned to face him, leaning against the counter as you sipped your coffee. "about... 2 years. a little over."
his eyebrows shot up. "2 years?" he repeated incredulously, "jesus, and he didn't tell me?"
you couldn't help but laugh a little. "you've met him, he's a private guy. stubborn as hell, too, i've learned."
robby snorted. "stubborn is a good word to use."
you both looked at each other again, before breaking into soft laughter, shaking your heads. you didn't imagine anyone from work finding out this way, and your feelings were slowly shifting from oh shit to amusement at the whole situation.
"well, shit." jack deadpanned, standing in the doorway. his hair was damp, and his prosthetic had been taken off, relying on his crutches instead.
you set your coffee down and pushed off of the counter, making your way over to him.
"he came over to check on you," you murmur, though you're fairly certain robby can still hear you. "i thought it was mail or something, so i..."
jack shook his head a little as you trailed off, reaching out to squeeze your waist. "you didn't do anything wrong, sweetheart, it's okay." he reassured you just as quietly.
"do you need me?" you asked, reaching out to tame his curls. "or do you want to talk to robby about everything first?"
he gave a small smile, pulling you closer to plant a kiss to the corner of your lips. "i'll talk to robby, it's all right. just... long shift, is all."
"okay." you squeezed his bicep lovingly. "i'll be in the bedroom. your breakfast is in the microwave, i want you to try and eat something. please?"
jack chuckled a little, shaking his head in amusement at your fussing. "i will, honey. thank you."
you only nodded, making it a few steps away before jack was pulling you back gently.
"hey. i love you." he told you, smoothing a hand over your hair and settling his hand on the back of your neck briefly.
you smiled, letting him kiss you one more time. "i love you too."
jack let you disappear down the hall and into the bedroom, finally turning back to robby. he had his arms crossed and an eyebrow raised.
"brother, you are telling me everything."
a/n; thanks for reading! reblogs and comments are highly encouraged and very supportive for writers!! requests are currently open for abbot, robby, dennis, samira, trinity, mel, and emery!
17.5k || All my content is 18+ MDNI || CW: angst; intense jealousy; self-hate; insecurities abound; self-consciousness; crying; quick thought about suicide; vaginal fingering; PIV sex; sappy; soft; fluff; light show spoilers; no use of y/n.
Summary: When you get back from a week away and watch Pope interact with Amy you can't seem to stop the jealousy that takes over.
AN: I genuinely have no idea how this became 17.5k. I feel particularly bad about this piece, but can't really describe why. It just feels meh at best, especially the smut. So we're just going to post and move along. 😂 I decided to use Andrew/Andy this time because it felt right. I can't elaborate, it just did. We see a different side of him here and one that I think shows how much he could flourish without the presence of his mother and in a healthy relationship. This was inspired by this ask with the prompt "just let it go, okay?" I hope it ends up being okay and enjoyable. Thank you so much for reading! ♥️
He's alone at the skate park when you get there.
That'll change soon enough, there's a kind of exhibition event for the kids today, lots of people in the park, lots of skating, some vendors. At times they'll clear the skating space and give anyone who wants it a chance to show off. The vendors will probably start showing up in ten minutes or so but for now it's just him. You stay hidden behind the fence and just watch him for a bit, watch the way he smiles and laughs to himself. He's happy here. Really, truly happy here. You love it. You love him.
He's done an amazing job with it, turned it into a whole real professional skate park down by the beach with concrete and a built-in bowl and ramps and bars. He turned it into a non-profit, a legitimate one, and cares about the kids more than he'd admit to himself, still brings breakfast in the morning and makes sure there's lunch and snacks and drinks. He runs the place himself, takes care of it himself, with your help. But mostly you're just there to support him and to make sure he knows how incredibly, incredibly proud of him you are.
You wait until he's stopped and is standing looking around the park and out at the ocean with his hands on his hips and one foot on the end of his board keeping it upright. You use the key you have to let yourself in the wrought iron fence surrounding the place. He hates that it has to be fenced, but it got half destroyed once when it wasn't.
"Hi Handsome," you call to him, your pace already picking up to get you to him faster as his head snaps to you.
He's frozen for a few seconds as a million emotions crash over him, love and longing and need and disbelief and surprise the most prominent. "You're back." A small laugh slips past his lips, a rare proper smile pulling all the way onto his face as he takes his foot off his board and forgets about it as he starts moving toward you.
It's not a total cliché movie moment, the two of you aren't fully running toward each other, he's not standing waiting to catch you while you run to him. But you're both walking fast and when you're close enough you do all but launch yourself into him, his strong, solid body easily absorbing the impact of you somewhat slamming into him.
Arms wrap around each other tightly, relief and happiness and contentedness flood the both of you as you reunite. You giggle as he holds you close, feel all the stress and weight start to melt away because you're back in his arms.
You've been away for a week on a work trip. It was hell for both of you. Just the quick look you got at your Andrew before hugging him tightly tells you that he hardly slept while you were gone. Maybe ten or twelve hours total over the week. And you're right. He's exhausted, his body isn't used to running on this little sleep anymore because he's able to sleep when he's next to you and you've been sharing a bed for a good while now. You slept but it was shitty, interrupted, light sleep at best. You've both been dreaming of falling into bed with each other and fucking and making love before knocking out for at least twelve hours tangled up together.
Both of you pull out of the hug a little so that you can kiss. They're sweet at first, firm and full of emotion, I love you and I missed you and I'm so glad you're back and here with me. And as he wraps one arm around your middle and brings his other hand to cup the back of your head to keep you close, he says thank you for coming back to me without a word. The more kisses you exchange, the hotter they get, you and Andrew standing in the middle of the skate park in the golden light of the just risen sun making out like eighteen year olds who can't get enough of each other, a rare extended display of public affection.
"I love you," you pant softly against his lips when you finally break apart for some air, your foreheads resting against each other's.
"I love you." He moves his hand from your head down your back so he can wrap that arm around you again, keep you as close to him as possible. You stand like that for a few minutes, forehead to forehead, holding each other as tightly as you can as you just exist in each other's space again, something you've both desperately needed.
Unlike normal, he's the one to break the comfortable silence. "You're early. You didn't say, I would've picked you up."
You smile at him and shrug, almost a little embarrassed about the idea now for some reason. "I was able to change my flight to a red eye to get the earlier flight to Carlsbad, ubered home and dropped my stuff and then walked down here. I thought I'd surprise you." You let out a breath and give him a lopsided smile that has him ready to sink to his knees and worship at your feet. "I just missed you. A lot."
He stares down at you with his usual intensity, but like always there's a softness at the corner of his eyes that appears only when he looks at you. You've been together for a couple years now, rent a house together, but he still can't wrap his head around the idea that somebody wants and loves and misses him when he's not around instead of being glad for the break.
"I missed you a lot too. A week was…" He's not sure how to describe it and he doesn't want to make you feel bad or guilty. It was a conference for work, it would have been hard for you to get out of and it’s good for your career, you needed to go. "Long."
"Yeah," you murmur, leaning back into the hug fully and resting your head on his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart. "I missed this."
Andrew nuzzles his nose into your hair and breathes through it, lets the scent of your shampoo wash over him and calm and relax him in a way he hasn't been since he dropped you off at the airport. He presses a lingering kiss to the top of your head, something you do to him when he's snuggled into you in bed or on the couch sometimes that he loves, and then rests his head on your shoulder. "I missed this too."
It's only a few minutes later that the first of the vendors shows up and the day really begins, the best day the both of you have had in a week purely because you're reunited with your other half. Skaters start to show up, Deran and Craig too, and time passes easily.
You and Andrew are nearly attached at the hip, standing next to each other and holding hands or your hand on his back or his hand on your back or the sides of your bodies pressed into each other, touching in some subtle way. Eventually though, you leave his side to run to the bathroom. You don't even want to really. You're clingy and needy right now and you know it. You were away from him for a week. You can't help it. You just want to be close to him, back in his space, smelling him and seeing him and touching him and hearing that gravelly voice you adore so much.
You start to walk back to him, already missing him again more than is rational, but you slow as you watch a woman approach him. He looks surprised to see her and then gives her a small smile, returns the hug she gives him. The hug she gives him that lasts way the fuck too long and is way the fuck too close. You can see him try to pull out of it and her not let him but it does little to quell the jealousy twisting your insides and your thoughts.
Suddenly every worry you had while you were gone that you were able to push aside is back in the front of your mind and they aren't going anywhere. He can and should do better. The time apart gave him a chance to realize that and how exhausting you are, to realize he doesn’t truly want you. You're not pretty enough for him. You're not enough in general for him. He deserves better than you. He deserves so much better than you. And now he's probably found that in someone new.
You swallow hard as you veer off your path a little to go stand next to Deran, now in ear-shot of the conversation between her and Andrew. She's introducing him to her son and you convince yourself that he looks so fucking happy for her, that he looks happier than he did when he was reunited with you this morning, something the barely audible rational part of your brain tries to tell you.
When her son runs off to skate he tells her that he's really happy for her and her son. You swear they share some little moment in the eye contact between them after she says thank you and gives him this demure but flirty smile. You wonder if that softness you thought was reserved only for you is there at the corners of his eyes.
She asks about Lena and you bristle. So there's history there. Exactly what kind you don't know, but you have a feeling. Andrew stiffens, explains what happened, that Lena was adopted and the woman looks so upset and heartbroken for him.
She touches his arm as she apologizes, says she knows how hard it is to lose them, that she knows he knows she understands because of what she went through before she got her son back. She tells him that if he needs anything, anything at all, to just call, that he should call regardless, a light blush hitting her cheeks and his.
A blush on his fucking cheeks. Andrew blushing. A piece of your heart chips away.
Of course she fucking understands. Of course she's fucking better for him than you, can relate more to him, could be there for him better than you can. And she's pretty. Prettier than you. You're so in your head you've actually tuned out their conversation.
"You're not seriously jealous." Deran's words interrupt your spiral for the moment. You look over at him. "You are," he scoffs. "Why? Pope's so fucking in love with you. Nobody has ever made him happier or been better for him. You guys are you know…" he gestures with his hand vaguely, "meant to be."
"'Sup?" Craig greets you both as he walks over.
"She's jealous." Deran nods in the direction of Andrew and the woman.
"Fuck you," you mutter at him.
Craig looks over at the two. "You can tell he's not into her, look how fucking rigid he is."
"Really?" you hum. "Cause she sure is touching him and he's not trying to stop it."
"She hugged him and touched his arm once." You can hear the eye roll in Deran's words.
He's right and you know it. "Well…" Your brain spins trying to come up with something else to say.
"She's from the church right? He's over her," Craig sighs. Over. You stiffen, are vaguely aware of Deran muttering a 'fuck.' "Just relax, man, Pope only wants you."
"He's over her?" you grit out. You know she was different for Andrew, knew there was history, assumed it was romantic. But you didn’t realize it was her, probably his second-most serious relationship behind yours. You know why it ended but she's probably found it in her to accept him and love him anyway and he is probably over the moon about that because she's the one he really wants. He's just settling for you.
Deep down you know this is all bullshit and your brain being a dick to you but you can't help it. Can't stop it.
"Fuck," Deran mutters again.
"You didn't know?" Craig asks.
"I knew he had exes of course, and I could tell they had a history when she asked about Lena, but I didn't realize she was the one from the church." You didn't know he was letting his ex touch him like that, you think to yourself, his ex from his best and most stable and healthy relationship. Didn't know he was looking happier with his ex than with you, didn't know he was sharing a moment with his ex, that his ex was flirting with him and basically telling him to call her and ask her out. Didn't know it was his ex who could understand and relate better. Didn’t know it was his ex who’s prettier than you.
It's so much worse now. So, so much worse for your brain and all those worries and your head is spinning enough that you're a little lightheaded for a second, exhausted from the shitty sleep all week and staying awake the entire red eye. "I have to go," you tell the two. If you stay here you know you'll spiral too far and push him away or do something you regret. "Just…"
Your brain is already almost too far gone. Now that he's seen her again he must've realized he wants her more than he wants you, loves her more, needs her more. She must be enough for him while you're once again not. Never enough, not for anybody. Not for the one person you really thought you were enough for.
You'll lose it and embarrass yourself, Andrew and the entire Cody family if you stay. "Just tell him… No. It's whatever."
Deran and Craig exchange a look you can feel but neither of them try to stop you when you turn and start to walk out. You're not even sure where you're going, certainly you're not walking home because that's the first place he'll look for you. If he comes looking.
"Hey!" You can hear the concern in Andrew's voice as he calls for you. It's unlike you to just walk off and leave without telling him and saying goodbye. Kissing him goodbye. It's unnerving, makes him anxious. What if you're sick or something? You were on an airplane and travel can fuck with your immune system. You probably wouldn't want to tell him because you know he'd leave and go home to take care of you and you don't want him to leave early.
Your next step hesitates, enough to let him know that you heard him, but you keep going. Putting one foot in front of the other and continuing to move forward is painful, walking away from him hurts but you are irrationally jealous right now. You're just irrational and you know it and you will fuck everything up and hurt him no matter what you do at this point. And maybe he wants this. Maybe you’ll say you’re leaving and offer no explanation and he’ll say okay with no emotion because he doesn’t care. Because he wants to end things with you anyway.
He catches up to you shortly before you reach the gate though, grabs your hand gently and gets you to stop. He's unprepared for the hurt on your face when you turn to look at him and his brows immediately furrow, lips pull down into a concerned frown and his level of anxiety jumps dramatically.
"She have to go?" you ask before he can say anything.
"What?" More confusion breaks across his face. "Who? Amy?"
"Your ex-girlfriend." The word is straight ice as it leaves your lips. "She sure likes to touch."
"What?" he whispers, shaking his head slightly and trying to think back and figure out what's going on. You seem… jealous. But that can't be right, can it? Why would you be jealous? He’s not worth jealousy. "She… gave me a hug and touched my arm once, and then gave me a hug when she walked away. She's an ex yeah, but she's just a friend now, at most. I haven't seen her in a long time. I have no interest in seeing her."
"She thinks you still have her number-"
"She's wrong." Andrew takes a step closer to you, squeezes your hand. "I only want-"
"You haven't seen her in a long time." You fight ripping your hand out of his and make a face of consideration. Maybe he told you one time and you're remembering it or maybe it's just intuition but you know what happened the last time he saw her after a long time. They, at the very least, went out. You make sure you're looking him straight in the eye. "And what's the first thing you did the last time you saw her for the first time in a while?"
Hurt breaks over his face and you hate yourself, think you should just save him the trouble of breaking up with you or settling for you or mistakenly thinking you’re the best and the one for him and go die. You pull your eyes from his, look over his shoulder. "I didn't know you let alone have you," he says as he shakes his head, his heart rate rising further. This is new. This has never happened before, whatever it is that's happening between you right now, whatever it is you're feeling and vocalizing, this jealousy. This insecurity.
You don't say anything and he doesn't know what to say or where to go from here but he tries to be reassuring like you are, start with truths that might suck and then offer reassurance.
"Listen, I… I can't do anything about her being here. I can't kick her kid out because you don't like her and her and I have a past. I don't want anything to do with her or to see her again in any meaningful way. I don't care if she comes around because her kid wants to skate. I'm not going to talk to her really, even if she tries to talk to me." He's exhausted, brain not firing on all cylinders right now especially with the anxiety he's feeling, especially because it's anxiety about you and your relationship and there’s little in this world that scares him more than the thought of losing you in any way.
Andrew doesn't mean for his next words to be dismissive, he's just trying to get the conversation back on track, to get you back next to his side, fuck, to get you back in his arms right now. He just wants everything to be okay and the day to end and the two of you to go home together. He's missed you more than he could ever hope to explain to you, loves you the same. He hates that this is even going on and he can't just be at home with you in bed right now, holding you close and smelling your hair and your neck and feeling your hand in his hair. "Just let it go, okay? Please. Everything is… is okay. We're okay." He hopes saying it will make it true.
The ‘let it go’ kills you. Kills you. It feels like the words have ripped what was a small tear into a gaping hole in your chest and are tearing your heart into shreds. The logical part of you knows he didn't mean anything by it, not truly, that it was just poor word choice and that he's exhausted and you're being unfair to him.
But the logical part of you isn't at the skate park, isn't in fucking Oceanside. It isn't in fucking California.
"I never asked you to kick her kid out, never even hinted at it. I didn't ask you to do anything. I didn't ask you not to do anything, Andy." You pull your hand from his and he lets you, doesn't try to hold onto it how some men might. "But you sure never mentioned your girlfriend while she was flirting with you and as good as asking you to call her so you could schedule a date."
"She wasn't flirting with me," he shakes his head. "Or if she was I didn't realize it and wasn't playing into it deliberately. I didn't think anything about her talking about calling her because I wasn't interested in doing it when she said it, and I'm still not. I don't want to call her. I’m not going to call her."
You ignore him, continue as though he hadn't said anything, tears lining your eyes. You hate it. You hate this. You hate crying in front of anyone for any reason, but especially over what you tell yourself is petty and unjustified jealousy. You hate that you're doing this to him, hate that you can't stop yourself because you're too worked up and irrational right now. You hate that you can't control yourself and that they all spill out, all the insecurities you've worked so hard to keep hidden or at least significantly tempered so that he doesn't have to deal with them.
“So maybe I should read you and the room and accept that you want her back.” A few hot tears spill over your lash line and you watch his eyes track one as it slides down your face. “And that she’s your first choice. That she’s better than me and that she's enough and I'm not. That she understands and relates to you in a way I never could and that she can be more there for you because of that. That she's prettier and more attractive than me. That I've never been enough no matter how hard I've tried, not for you or anyone. That you love me but you love her more. That a week's break from me was all you needed to see how exhausting I am and realize you don’t want me anymore and realize how not enough I am, how bad of a partner I am.”
"What?" he whispers, voice reflecting the confusion and anxiety and hurt and fear that's all taking over his mind. Because Andrew doesn’t understand why you're saying these things and suddenly thinking you're not the most beautiful thing in the world to him and that there’s someone else he wants and loves more and that you're not enough when you're enough and then some, so fucking far beyond enough and so much more than he deserves. And you're just wrong. He doesn't give a shit about her. He doesn't care that she's randomly reappeared. He doesn’t care about her. He doesn’t want her. You have to see that. You have to know that. Right?
This hasn’t happened between the two of you before. Andrew has never seen you jealous like this. He's the jealous one. He's the one who gets overwhelmed by his jealousy because it drags up all his insecurities, who usually needs space and walks away. You've shown and talked about your own insecurities before but never like this, you've never expressed them like this, so intensely. And you look like you truly believe everything you just said. “None of that is tr-”
You take a step backwards, hold your hands up to interrupt him and laugh softly to yourself and shake your head once as another wave of tears coat your face. “Don’t even worry about it, Andy. I’m letting it go,” you whisper just loud enough for him to hear. You turn and walk away, keep your hands in front of your chest so he can’t reach for them.
When you turn you nearly run into someone looking to talk to him. You mumble an apology to the guy as Andrew calls your name, can hear him telling whoever it is to move. Having to deal with the guy wastes enough seconds and you walk fast enough that you're able to slip away from him, able to get on the bus that appeared at its stop at the perfect time for you and the bus is able to pull away before he can get on it.
"Fuck," he mutters to himself as he watches the bus pull away. "Fuck!" He knows it'll ultimately be in vain but he runs after the bus anyway. The bus is too fast for him though, especially when combined with all the people he has to try and weave through, and once it takes a left while he's on its right side he has to give up and watch it drive away.
That's fine though, he tells himself. You both share your location with each other so he can just follow you, or even follow the bus route, though that won't tell him where you got off. He tries calling you as he starts to walk fast back to the skate park so he can get his keys and get in his Jeep and go get you. Your phone rings but you don't answer. He tries again and you still don't, tries again and gets sent to your voicemail after one ring. He can't stop himself from continuing to try though, sends you a couple of texts in between calls to see if you'll answer.
By the time he gets to his Jeep and tries to pull up your location you've already turned it off, something that makes him say god damn it to himself but doesn't surprise him. As he goes to pull up the bus route he realizes that won't work. You're smart. You'll know he'd think to use it so you'll get off after a couple of stops and walk or get on another bus. So he has no idea where you are and you're out there upset and jealous and thinking so many wrong things. And there's nothing he can do, really other than drive around looking for you.
You feel so beyond awful as you take a seat on the bus and wipe a few tears from your face. You can't believe you're fucking doing this to him. To yourself. To your relationship. You can't believe you're letting your insecurities win but also you can. You should've known you could only keep them down and nearly hidden for so long.
You hate yourself for it and it makes you feel even more awful somehow but you turn off location sharing on your phone. It's not to punish him, it's because you just need time to yourself. As you expected, he starts calling. You let it ring through to voicemail but then start sending it to voicemail, don't really read the texts he sends you.
But you do text him. You're not so far gone that you don't remember to or don't want to or don't think you need to tell him you're okay so he doesn't worry. Or at least doesn't as much because, despite the way you try to tell yourself this won't bother him because he wants Amy back for all those reasons you said and has realized you're awful and not worth anything, deep down you know that's bullshit and that he's going to be incredibly worried and freaking out, near panic perhaps.
You - I'm okay. If I'm not I'll let you know. I just need space right now to try and get my head around everything. I'll let you know if I don't plan on coming home tonight
While he appreciates your text and you letting him know you're okay, your text destroys him. It makes his heart break and hurt in a way it never has before, in a way he didn't know was possible. It knocks the breath from his lungs and makes him tear up immediately.
It's the last sentence, really.
He could probably handle you needing space, is worried by what you think you need to get your head around, but that's something he could probably handle too. That last sentence, though. The idea that you're even thinking about it, that there's even a possibility that you might not come home and sleep in your shared bed with him tonight shatters him.
It's made all the worse by the fact that you've been apart for a week. That he's had to be around the house and lay in bed without you for a week. His mind immediately goes to what he wanted the night to be once you got home, how it was supposed to go. Sex because you wouldn't be able to keep your hands off each other once you walked through the door, followed by dinner, something ordered so that you didn't have to separate to cook, then maybe more sex, maybe he'd eat you out on the couch or in bed, then a long, hot shower together and then cuddling in bed and holding each other and being close after a week apart, and then maybe more sex, but definitely falling asleep tangled in each other at the end of the night.
And now he might be laying in bed not sleeping and just staring at your empty side again.
A few of the tears fall and he's quick to wipe them away, frustrated with himself and the entire world. He doesn't know what to do. His instinct is to go find you, but another instinct is to shut down completely, to run away from everything and everyone, just disappear. The only reason he doesn't follow that second instinct is because even though it truly does feel hopeless, there still is some hope. When he gets jealous and needs space he always comes back, you guys always work it out. You're always patient and kind and understanding and reassuring and love him through it. You don't give up on him or your relationship. He can do that when you come back. He knows he can no matter how hard and uncomfortable and painful and awful it might be until you come back to him.
So Andrew gets out of his Jeep and walks back into the skate park. He's not truly present for the rest of the day, is stuck ruminating on you and trying to figure out how and why you think all the things you said, trying to think about how he's going to make it better and help you. Mostly he just stands and watches, looks out at the ocean more than anything. He responds to people who come up to talk to him, but barely. Nothing super substantive. Deran must realize something major has happened because he starts running interference and dealing with people who want to talk to his brother for whatever reason.
The exhibition ends and Andrew leaves immediately. He doesn't stay with everyone under the bright lights for a while like he usually does. He makes sure one of the kids he 'employs' to do stuff around the place and lock up some nights will do so tonight. And then he goes home and sits in the comfy chair you have in the living room and waits. He can't be on the couch, hasn't been able to all week because it felt wrong to not have you snuggled into him or touching him or to not have his head in your lap or be snuggled into you somehow like always when you guys sit there.
And then he waits. He doesn't turn on the TV, doesn't read a book, doesn't do anything on his phone, though he keeps it close just waiting for the text telling him you're not coming home. He sits in that chair and stares across the room at two of the photos of the two of you that you put up. In both you guys are on the beach, in one you have your arms wrapped around each other as you kiss and in the other you're both smiling for the camera in a selfie you took, Andrew's arms wrapped around your middle and his chin resting on your shoulder while he’s wearing one of those wide, genuine, pure smiles he only gets around you.
He wonders if he'll ever have either with you again.
You have no idea how you keep it together and don't completely fucking lose it on the bus, but you don't. You let yourself grow numb and decide to stay on until one of the stops feels like the right place to get off.
Once you do get off you walk around searching for somewhere private where you can finally lose it, let yourself sob and come totally unglued and then try to put yourself back together again enough to decide what you're doing next. And once you find a spot that you think will work, that's exactly what you do. Sob.
You sob because you believe everything you said to him, that he wants her and loves her more and you're not enough. You sob because at the same time you know that's a load of bullshit, that he loves you so fucking much and is so completely devoted and committed to you and you know he would never look at anyone else, but you can't get your mind completely on board. You sob because you're so sure you just lost him, you know you have, because how could you ever ask or expect him to forgive you. You sob because you don't know what you'll do because he's your world. You sob because you know he's going to realize everything you said was true once he has time to think about it. You sob because you know you ruined everything, ruined the skate park for him, took away the one place outside of your shared home that he loves and is truly happy at.
You sob because you can't believe you hurt him like this, can't believe you've treated him like his fucking mother did. You sob because you feel awful for doubting him when he's done nothing to make you doubt him, has done nothing to deserve all this bullshit and because you do trust him and don't doubt him and yet your brain is being like this. You sob because you don't deserve him, he deserves so much better than you. You sob because he loves you in a way you didn’t know existed and that you know you don't deserve.
And you sob because you love and adore and miss him and don't want to lose him. Don't want him to realize how awful you are, but at the same time don't want him to be with someone who's like his mother.
You don't know how long it takes but eventually you stop sobbing. You think you just ran out of tears and energy to cry. Your breathing eventually returns to normal and the exhaustion slams into you even harder. Time just seems to pass as you stare off into space, try to tell yourself you're numb when you're really feeling everything. You hardly notice it gets dark, it only really clicks when you get cold.
When you look at your phone you're shocked by how late it is, know Andrew will be worrying even more now. You know you implied you might not come home but of course you're going to. You order an uber and slink into it when it arrives, are silent the entire journey.
Andrew starts pacing when it hits 10 p.m. and you aren't home and haven't texted him at all. How could he have fucking ruined this? How did he ruin this? He's not even sure what exactly he did. He knows that your jealousy is similar to his, irrational, and that you know it but can't seem to stop from feeling it. But he truly was only being nice to Amy because she's a friend, if that even. They have a past, yeah, but when he told her the darkest parts of him, when she saw the worst of him she rejected him. It doesn't matter if she's come to be able to accept it now. You heard the darkest parts of him and saw the worst of him and held him as he fell apart about it, helped piece him back together. You saw all of him and accepted him. You’ve never asked or ask him to change. You always see the real him.
He doesn't want to lose that. He can't lose that.
When headlights flash through the window before a car pulls up at the curb of the house he holds his breath that it's you. Holds his breath that you guys can work through this.
He hears your key enter the deadbolt and can't decide whether he should stand or stay sitting, can't decide which you'd prefer. He stays seated as the door opens and you turn on the lights. You're not surprised to find them off, expected him to be sitting or standing somewhere in the living room in the dark.
Once you slip in the door, toe your shoes off and set them on the shoe rack and turn to face the living room, Andrew stands. "Are you okay?" He walks toward you but not too close. Just close enough that he can look you over and make sure you're not hurt or anything.
"Yeah," you whisper. "I'm fine." The way he looks you over makes your heart ache because it's so Andrew and so soft and sweet and devotedand loving and you just don't fucking deserve it.
His eyes trace up and down your form a few more times before he starts trying to catch your eye, something you continually dodge. He frowns to himself and you can see it even not looking at him and you just want to go grab the kitchen knife out of the block and end yourself for the both of you. "Are we okay?" he asks quietly.
That gets you to look at him. "I don't know Andy, are we?"
The relief of making eye contact with you is killed quickly with your question. He doesn't know how to answer. He's not good at this, at being on this side of jealousy, never has been before, not like this. "I… What's going on? I don't… I'm trying. I want to help. You're never like this, and everything you said earlier was wrong, I promise."
"No, Andy, I never show you that I'm like this," you whisper just loud enough for him to hear, your tone strained, full of tears that your eyes don't show yet. You return your volume to normal, a touch quieter than usual, maybe. "Normally I only get like this when you're not around, when I'm not with you. When I'm with you, I don't know. It's easier to calm myself and not let my mind spin. Even when I can only see you it's normally easier, but I don't know. Not today."
You swallow hard and shake your head, sigh deeply as tears hit your eyes, keep looking at him. "Not when I hadn't seen you in a week and knew you had a chance to realize how much better your life could be without me, and how exhausting and difficult I am, how little I actually have to offer. Not when I'd been gone for a week and you wanted to spend time talking with her instead of me."
Your chin wobbles and you look away from him and it kills him, it fucking hurts and he needs to stop it and make it better, never wants to see you crying or feeling this way. He knew you had insecurities, everyone does, you'd told him about some of yours and he'd reassured you. But he never realized you were just as insecure as him in some ways, that you have so many of the same insecurities as him. Because some of the things you just said and said earlier at the skate park are things he's said to you, are things he's felt before.
"I didn't. I didn't want to spend time talking to her, that's not what that was, not at all. I didn't even… that wasn't on my mind. I don't… I wasn't thinking about that or, or anything relating to her really other than she was there and I was happy for her because she got her kid back." He closes his eyes and shakes his head for a second. "That wasn't me wanting to talk to her and not you. She came up to me and you had walked away and I thought you were coming back. That you would come back to me."
You try to really take in what he's saying and believe it because you know it's true, you know he was just waiting for you to come back when she came up, know that it wasn't him wanting to spend time with her and not you. But it's just so fucking hard. You're still too unregulated and out of it and anxious and jealous.
Andrew starts to think about how he feels when he's jealous. He thinks about how irrational he always knows it is but how it doesn't matter and how infuriating that is. He thinks about how he doesn't really mean any of it in a sense, how he knows you'd never do anything and that he can trust you wholly, how he doesn't doubt you and does trust you even though it seems like he doesn't. He thinks about how it's never a reflection on you, never truly has anything to do with you, is just his insecurities playing up.
He starts to think about all the things you do and say when he's jealous to reassure him and bring him back down. How gentle and soft you are with him, holding him and hugging him and kissing him and talking it out with him, reassuring him you know that he trusts you and doesn't doubt you and that it's his insecurities playing up. You always approach him slowly, seem to know how to go at the right speed to give him time to put more distance between you if he really isn't ready yet but not so much that he backs away because he starts to wonder.
"I…" You trail off, have no idea what to say and are afraid if you try to speak you'll end up crying and you don't want to make him have to deal with that, he's already dealing with you too much already.
He takes a couple of slow steps toward you, studying you intently for your reaction. When you don't take a step away he takes another few steps, closes the distance between you. He doesn't touch you just yet, gives you a little more time.
"Hey," he finally says quietly, the word low and raspy from the back of his throat.
A wave of even heavier anxiety crashes over you and you have to bite the inside of your cheek a little harder to fight the tears. You're terrified of what you're going to find on his face when you look up, what he's going to say, even when you know you have no reason to be concerned. After a couple of seconds you do it though, make yourself look up at him.
"Thank you," he murmurs, the very slightest quirk to the corners of his lips. His face is soft, eyes searching, seeking understanding and insight into what to do, how to make you feel better, how to reassure you. There's no anger, no hurt, maybe a touch of sadness in the crinkles at the edges of his eyes but not because he's sad as such, because you're sad and he doesn't like seeing you sad, and some worry in the way he holds his lips and the rounding of his eyes because he's concerned about his ability to help you, to make this better.
He slowly brings his hands up to hold your face, some tension melting from his shoulders when you don't flinch or move or look away. He keeps his hold gentle, but firm enough to help ground you to him, or at least he hopes. That's what it does for him when you hold his face like this. "I love you. I only want you. Neither of those two things will ever change, I promise."
He leans down and in, tilts his head just enough and holds your gaze until he can't anymore and you both close your eyes as Andrew presses his lips to yours, the kiss slightly tentative until he feels you kissing him back. The kiss gets firmer then, a little deeper but no tongue, like he's trying to emphasize his words and make you understand how true they are because he is.
Andrew kisses you several more times and you happily accept all of them, all of the reassurance each kiss brings, all of the reassurance him initiating and him holding your face and him wanting to kiss you and have you close bring. Except there's still a too big part of you that wants to fight it because you don't deserve it and how could he still want you, still a too big part of you that says maybe this is a series of goodbye kisses. But that part of you shrinks with every kiss.
He pulls away from you and presses his lips to your forehead in a sweet, reassuring kiss and then looks at you. "I love you," he repeats. He seals his words with a few seconds of heavy eye contact before his hands move from your face and his arms wrap around your body, pull you against him and hold you close.
His body is so perfectly warm, solid and sturdy and muscular but still soft, comfortable to be pressed into and reassuring and grounding and familiar. His scent fills your nose, remnants of his body wash and the cologne you bought him mix with the salt of the ocean and the heat of the sun and something purely him. You let yourself settle into him, turn your head and rest one side on his chest looking forward to hearing one of your favorite sounds, his heartbeat, steady and strong under your ear, proof he's okay and alive and here.
You swallow hard as you wrap your arms around him tightly, pull yourself a little closer to him and appreciate where you are. Only now are you finally home, because walking in the door to your house was just that, walking in the door to your house. Being taken into or walking into Andrew's arms, that's getting home. Because Andrew is your home.
"I love you too and I hate that I'm putting you through this, making you deal with this, with me," you whisper. "I hate that I'm making you think I don't trust you or that I doubt you. Because I do trust you and I don't doubt you. I'm really sorry. I promise it's not you. It's me. It's all me and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"You're not putting me through anything and I'm not dealing with you. You're not something I ever have to deal with," he says softly, keeps his voice just a touch louder than yours. "And I don't think those things, I know that's not what this is, I promise."
You know you can trust his word more than just about anything in the world but it's so hard to believe him right now when your brain is so focused on how you think those are the only things he should be thinking. You shrug against him a little and he takes a breath.
"I…" He lets out the breath as he thinks about how to explain what he's thinking and feeling in a way that will help you. Because that's all he wants to do right now. Make things better. Make you feel better. He relaxes his arms around you and pulls back out of the hug a little so that you'll look up at him, and you do, almost sheepish and timid. "The way you feel when I'm jealous," he says slowly, "how you know it's not really about you but about me and my head, that's how I'm feeling now. I'm feeling like you do when I'm jealous."
"Oh," you murmur. You're quiet for a few seconds as you let that really sink in, that he doesn't think this is about him or a reflection of him, that he isn't mad or upset with you. "I love you and only want you too, Andy."
You look up at him with big eyes that seem a little glassy and he gets it, he gets that his words have caused that kind of break in your mind that yours do for him when he feels like you do now. He gets that while you can now start truly working through it and forgiving yourself, it's just that. A start. You're not out of your head by any means and things could still potentially get a little worse for you before they get a little better.
"I just, I don't understand," you shrug, stare at a spot on his shirt because you can't look at him, too afraid your words will make him realize he doesn't know either. "I don't understand why anyone would want me, would want to be with me or love me, much less you. And I don't deserve you, I so clearly don't."
"That…" The word is tight as it comes out and he shakes his head. There is so much more he wants to say, that it's him who doesn't deserve you, that you deserve better than him, so much better. But he knows you and knows that if he gives those words a voice, you'll jump at the opportunity to shift the focus from yourself and how you're feeling and your needs to his. So he keeps it simple. "You're wrong." His voice is deep and airy how it can be, like his words are spoken more from his chest than his throat. "And I'll list my reasons why if you need me to."
You force yourself to look back up at him. "I hurt you," you whisper. "And you… you shouldn't forgive me Andrew," tears start streaming down your face as you hold his gaze, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for upsetting you and making you sad and anxious and disappearing on you. It was so unfair of me and it's okay if you, if you can't forgive me for any of it because you shouldn't."
"I was a bitch and then I was horrible and made you worry and I'm sorry. I just missed you so much and I love you and I don't want to lose you and I, I, I'm sorry for hurting you." You move your hands off him and bring them to your chest, suddenly convinced you don't deserve to be touching him, that you don't deserve him or his comfort. Because even if he feels how you feel when he's jealous it's different because this is him, this is you hurting him. "I hate myself for it." You sniffle and shake your head harder, wipe the tears off your face as best you can with your hand. "I hate myself so much for it, Andrew."
Your tears start to fall harder and he hates it, he hates seeing you cry because you should never cry and he hates hearing you say you hate yourself because to him there's nothing about you to hate, only things to love. He goes to grab your hands with his and gently pull you back into him but once his hands are off you and reaching out for yours you take a few steps back from him and it makes his blood start to go icy.
"I'm, I'm sorry." It comes out sobbed and you have to take a few seconds to get a modicum of control back. "I'm sorry for acting like her. For being as bad as, if not worse than your mom. I hate myself even more than I hate her." Your words, comparing yourself to her and especially saying you hate yourself more than you hate her and how sincere you look when you say it make him so nauseous he has to swallow down a dry heave. "I'm sorry for being her, for, for being" you take in a stuttered breath, "being another her in your life. I'm sorry and I'm, I'm," another stuttered breath as you try to keep the full sobs back, "I'm not crying now to try and manipulate you, I, I pr-promise, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
He makes the two steps to get to you and takes your face in his hands, thumbs gentle on your cheekbone below your eyes. He makes eye contact with you and holds it, his usual serious Andrew intensity he projects through his eyes and mouth even more intense, but with an edge of pleading at the corner of his eyes that's not usually there. "Never, never, say that. Never think that." He's quiet for a second as he lets his words sink in, eyes boring into yours. "You are nothing like her, even at your worst. You didn't and you don't act like her. You've never done or said anything that's made me think of her or think that you were being like her for even a single second."
Strong hands squeeze your face so gently to make sure you're really hearing him, your tears wetting his skin as you try and fail to stop them. "You told me you were okay. You needed space but you didn't just go silent on me. You came back and, and you, you didn't pretend like nothing happened or just not talk to me. You're not blaming me and you're not making me question myself and who I am. And I know you're not crying to manipulate me, I know you'd never manipulate me. I trust you."
He leans his head down toward yours and you think he's going to kiss you, something you feel so painfully unworthy of right now, but he doesn't. Because he knows you feel unworthy. You aren't. But he knows you feel it because he feels it too sometimes, especially in the aftermath of something where he thinks he's done wrong or hurt you. And you never force your affection on him. Never force him to take a kiss he doesn't think he deserves. You always let him find his way back to you.
He rests his forehead against yours for a moment before pulling away and placing a kiss there that's so sweet you whimper as another flood of tears rush down the sides of his thumbs. His words are perfect and everything you need to hear and you take them in and try to take them to heart but some piece of your brain stops you, the piece that says you don't deserve him and are awful and really are just like his mom regardless of what he says.
He looks at you again. "You're not her. You're not Smurf," he murmurs, deep and gravelly and so incredibly sure. "You love me. Not what I can do for you or what you can make me do or who you can make me be. You love me."
You take a wracking breath in. "I do, Andrew, I really do, I'm sorry," you sob the breath out. "I don't want to hurt you, and and I did, I was such a bitch, and I, I asked what happened when you saw her last, last time and I watched," you choke through a shuddered breath, "I watched it hurt you, my words hurt, hurt you and I'll never, ne-never forgive myself."
"Hey," he tries to interrupt you, brushes his thumbs along the wet skin of your cheeks hoping it'll ground you.
"N-No, Andy!” It’s high pitched and terrified. “What if I," you're devolving into uncontrollable sobs again, "what if I've ruin-, ruined everything? What if you don't love me anymore because I did this?"
"Have you ever stopped loving me? Have you ever stopped loving me just because I've walked away when I'm jealous? Or because I hurt you when I did?" He raises his brows at you just slightly with the questions. "Even people who love each other how we do still hurt each other sometimes."
"I, I, I…" You shake your head at him and he gets it, he knows what you're telling him, what you need.
You need to let this out, you need him to hold you while you let it all out for good and need him to be your rock, your tether to reality so that you can find your way back. "Okay," he whispers. He releases your face and pulls you back into him, stands there for a minute as you get some of the most violent sobs out of the way and let the adrenaline crash take over your body and mind. "Come on, Sweetheart."
Your hands cling to his shirt as he slowly starts to shuffle the two of you toward your bedroom, his arms tight around your back as you continue to sob into him, trusting him completely to get you wherever you're going safely. He knows he could take you to the shower. He knows that's probably where you expect he's taking you. But he's not. Because Andrew knows you and he knows that showering with him isn't what you need right now.
He knows you're way too unregulated for a shower right now. He knows that you need to feel him, need to feel as much of his skin as possible pressed against yours, need to feel his body weight on top of you, need to feel his lips pressing firm kisses against your neck, need him to help ground you so that you can start to regulate.
When he gets you to the side of the bed he lets go of you so that he can turn on your nightstand lamp and strip himself before he gets your clothes off and you in bed. Without the pressure of his arms around you you're shaking hard from the adrenaline crash. As he tosses the box of tissues onto the bed near the pillows and strips himself you stand there with your hands awkwardly at your sides as you continue to cry because in your addled mind you think he's just leaving you here alone and you know you deserve that as much as you don't want it.
But then you feel his hands at the waistband of your pants pulling them and your underwear down in one go. When he taps your calf you lift your leg so that he can get them off completely, cry a little harder for a second at how sweet he's being. He grabs the hem of your shirt next and pulls it up, helps you get your shirt all the way off and tossed to the floor and then uses one hand to unhook your bra, helps you shrug it off.
"Let's get in bed," he murmurs, stepping to the side of you and peeling back the covers so that you can slide in. One of his hands presses at your lower back to get you to step forward and climb in.
You shake your head at him, wipe at your face in a futile attempt to try and clear your tears. Your vision clears for just long enough that you realize he's naked now, that he's planning on getting in bed with you and holding you through this and you just don't fucking deserve it, your body trembling harder as the realization flows through you. "I, I don't de-deserve to get in bed with you. You should go Andrew, or, or I should go, you deserve better. You shouldn't have to deal with, with this, with me."
"I'm not dealing with anything. I'm helping the woman I love." He steps closer to you and presses a soft kiss to your salty cheek because it just feels like the right thing to do. It melts you. "I'm not going anywhere and I'm not letting you go anywhere. So please get in bed with me."
Even if you had the ability and mental capacity to push back right now, you wouldn't. Because you don't want to. Because you want so, so badly to be in bed with him and feel his skin against yours and the weight of him on top of you. Because you want to calm yourself down so you can apologize properly and the two of you can work through this.
And because even though it's not a conscious thought for you at the moment, deep down you know that you'll calm, that these feelings and the panic will pass and that you and Andrew will make it through this because you're truly devoted to one another, committed to each other and your love, and because you love each other in the most complete and pure way possible.
You nod at him through your tears and slide into bed. He's quick to follow you and wraps his arm around you so that you can't move too far away from him or roll on your side so that you're facing away from him. When you've settled on your back he pulls the covers up over the both of you and moves over you so that his knees are between yours.
He lowers himself on top of you slowly slipping his arms under your shoulders, pauses before he brings his head to your neck. You look so sad beneath him and it kills him. His girl isn't supposed to hurt like this. He's your protector, he's supposed to protect you, supposed to keep you safe and happy and he hasn't. Because he can't, in this case he can't, he can't protect you from your own mind and he knows it.
"I love you," he whispers. Before he lowers himself fully on top of and burrows his face into your neck Andrew kisses away as many of your tears as possible even though he knows they'll be replaced as he settles on you with his face against your neck. And they are.
Once he's settled he brings one hand up and cups the top of your head, his other arm stretching out to the side and finding the hand of your outstretched arm to hold. You squeeze his hand tightly as you continue to cry, bring your other hand to his curls and run your fingers through them because it soothes you just as much as it soothes him. He presses firm kisses to your neck, sucks at it lightly every now and then just to change the sensation for you.
After a minute or so of crying hard you're able to get enough of yourself back to force your mind to focus on Andrew and clear out everything else for right now. And with his weight on you and the warmth of his body seeping into you and his lips at your neck and a hand in his curls and the other in his hand you calm quickly. Your sobs start to trail off and you get your breathing back under control, get some rational parts of your mind back even through the crying induced fuzziness of your brain.
You stay quiet though, continue to focus on him and soothe yourself by playing with his curls and squeezing his hand. Andrew doesn't say anything. He doesn't try to force a conversation, force you to speak to him. He's patient just like you are with him, lays with you and lets you take everything you need from him just like this, waits until you're ready to talk.
Neither of you are sure how long passes, but eventually you let go of his hand so that you can grab some tissues from the box he set near the pillows and clean your face up as best you can, blow your nose and wipe off your cheeks, toss the tissues in the vicinity of the nightstand to deal with later. You bring your hand down and slip it under the covers again to rest against the broad expanse of his back.
"I'm sorry," you whisper, voice scratchy and raw from all the crying. You know you've already apologized multiple times but you need to again. You just need to.
"You have nothing to be sorry for." He shifts his head slightly and kisses just below your ear. "I love you."
"I love you too." The words are shakier than you'd like but you at least don't feel tears behind your eyes. You're not sure if you have any left. "And I have everything to be sorry for." He doesn't say anything. He knows you need to get it all out first, say everything that you need to say to him before he responds. "I want to see you, please," you murmur. You owe it to him to look him in the eye while you apologize again.
He nods against your neck and then pulls his head away. Before he moves off you he leans in and gives you a chaste but lingering kiss that puts another piece of your heart and mind back together. When you finally break apart it's easy and practiced the way the two of you move to get into a comfortable position on your sides, legs tangled together and abdomens and chests pressed together as much as they can be while you remain far enough apart to see each other. Your top arms wrap over each other's sides and move smoothly up and down each other's skin.
His eyes are unfairly beautiful in the low lighting of the lamp, his skin still so warm against yours. You take in a deep breath and let it out. "I'm sorry for all of the tears, and you having to deal with this on top of everything and be the one to soothe me when I'm the one who hurt you and I should be soothing and taking care of you. And I'm sorry for being mean and saying hurtful things and walking away instead of talking it out and listening to you."
You shrug slightly, frowning, your chin quivering just slightly even though there aren't any tears. "It's not an excuse but I was scared. I was just so scared. All I could think about was her coming back into your life after you'd been away from me for a week and probably realized that your life could be better without me, that you could find someone better, someone easier and with more to offer. And it felt so poetic, so perfectly right. You to have that realization while I'm away and her to show up to underscore it and be there and everything you need and deserve and want."
Your eyes, like the rest of you, are the most beautiful thing in the world to Andrew, but right now they're painful to look at because they show him just how much you believe he has or should have that realization, how much you believe that his life could be better without you, that he could find someone better and how much you believe she's everything he needs and deserves.
He supposes you might be right about deserving, perhaps. Because she didn't accept him like you do, didn't accept all of him and he's still not completely convinced he deserves to be accepted. That he deserves you and your love. So maybe she is what he deserves but only in the sense that you're so far beyond what he deserves.
"I forgive you." He uses the same tone you use with him, firm and allowing no room for questioning while still loving and soft, no anger or frustration or hurt or irritation present in it. "And I understand how you're feeling. But I promise you that I didn't realize any of that because none of that is true. I was miserable without you."
"I don't want her back," he shakes his head. He knows that he needs to hear you rebut his thoughts when he gets jealous, knows how important it is to him, how reassuring it is, how it's often what lets him work to let go of it. So he does the same for you in hopes it'll help you too and thinks back on everything you said today. He hasn't forgotten any of it. "She was never and still isn't and will never be my first choice. You are. She's not prettier or more attractive than you. She isn't better than you in any way, she's not what or who I need and she doesn't understand or relate to me better, she rejected me. Even after you saw all of me, heard everything I've done, you accepted all of me. You love all of me and you make sure I know. I don't love her. Never have, never will."
"A week without you was excruciating." He pauses to let you take in everything he's said so far before he continues. "You're not difficult and you offer me everything and then some. You're so much more than enough, without trying. You're the one I need. You're mine. You're mine and…" He shakes his head, trying to figure out where he wants to go with this, isn't convinced he's helping anything. "You're mine and I'm never letting you go."
You're quiet for a moment as you try to wrap your mind around everything Andrew has said, try to get yourself to believe. Because in the same way Andrew can see in your eyes how much you believe what you're saying, you can see in his how much he believes and means and needs you to know and understand in his.
"I don't want you to think I doubt you, or don't trust you. I'm sorry if it seems that way, and I'm sure it does, I just, my brain-"
"Hey," he cuts you off gently. "I know you trust me and don't doubt me."
You bite down on your bottom lip, try to get your head to still and accept his words. "I love you."
The corners of Andrew's lips twitch up, his smile more visible in his eyes than his lips in that distinctively Andrew way he has. "I love you too. I missed you." He emphasizes the word with a soft squeeze of your hip.
"I missed you, my love. I missed you so fucking much." You can't help but smile, as small as it is, when his lips pull up into a proper smile when you call him your love. It's been years and he'll never get used to it. You lean forward and steal another few kisses from him before snuggling into him even closer and pressing one side of your face against his chest to let yourself listen to the familiar, soothing beat of his heart. "You didn't sleep much this week," you murmur your observation.
"I'm okay." The vibration of his chest as he speaks is soothing, makes you feel so connected to him and helps you further regulate and come out of your state of total insecurity. "When's the last time you ate?"
You wince against him slightly and he feels it, knows the answer already. "I had dinner at the airport."
"Last night?"
"Yeah," you murmur, turn your head and try to hide it in his chest. "I know, I'm sorry."
"Hey," his voice is so low and all gravel and it has you equal parts hot for him and wanting to cry with how loving he sounds, "I'm not mad. What do you want?"
You shrug against him. "Whatever you want."
He purses his lips to himself, he should've seen that one coming if for no other reason than you're insecure and anxious right now and just want to make him happy. "Okay." He's not going to push you to decide tonight, knows it'll be counterproductive and that it's better for him to pick and order for you. "I have to let you go so I can roll over and grab my phone out of my jeans."
You tense against him. It's completely irrational and you know it, you know it, but you can't help it, can't stop the dread and the anxiety from racing through you and chilling your blood. You swallow hard. "You'll come back, right?" you whisper.
"Sweetheart," he whispers, letting out a breath. He curls his hand around the back of your neck lightly and pulls you away gently as he leans back so that you can see each other. He's not sure where to start, what to say to be the most reassuring. "I'll always come back to you."
You look at him for a few seconds and then nod, already feeling guilty about voicing your unjustified and unfair worry. Part of you wants to ask if you can keep some part of you touching him the entire time but you know that's ridiculous. He's literally just grabbing his jeans that are on the floor two steps from the bed.
Andrew's eyes sweep over your face before he gives you a kiss and then untangles his legs from yours and rolls so that he can sit up and get out of bed. Once he sits up though he offers you his hand that's closest to you. He knows how reassuring physical touch can be for him and he could read on your face that you wanted to ask him for something. "Come on." He tilts his head toward the edge of the bed.
Tears finally sting at the back of your eyes again as you look at him and find a reassuring smile in his eyes and the corner of his lips. "I love you," you whisper as you take his hand.
He squeezes your hand in his. "I love you too."
In the end you don't even have to move that far, Andrew's able to sit on the edge of the bed and reach for and grab his jeans. He's able to get his phone out of the pocket with one hand and then is back in bed with you, lays back against the pillows and lets you curl into his side and rest your head on his chest before he orders. Once the food arrives and you've both eaten you're quickly snuggled up together again in bed.
You're clingy right now and you both know it. You were this morning when you first reunited before anything happened so now you are even more so. And he gets it because he gets the same way after something like this, feels that same kind of anxiety that drives an intense neediness and clingy-ness so that you can reassure yourself everything is okay.
So he holds you like you hold him, like he was earlier before you ate, naked, on your sides, legs tangled together with one side of your head pressed against his chest and your arm reaching under his and bending at your elbow so that your hand can reach up and play with the curls at the nape of his neck. You chat about whatever comes to mind, really Andrew carries it for you and asks you questions about your week, remembers everything you told him each night when you recapped your day as the two of you facetimed and asks you more detailed follow up questions because he's interested and because he knows it'll help keep your mind busy and distracted and not spinning.
"I'm sorry for ruining today for you," you tell him a few seconds after you finish answering a question for him before he can ask you a new one. "The exhibition." You know it wasn't the first one and that there are already more planned, but still. It's always a good day for him and you ruined that.
"You didn't." He hears you click your tongue and feels your small shrug. "You didn't, I promise."
Though you're not convinced you don't push back. "I definitely ruined our reunion," you murmur. "This isn't how I wanted our first day and night back together to go."
He takes in and lets out a slightly deeper breath. "It's not how I did either," he admits, not one to sugar coat things and certainly not one to lie. "But it's the end of the day and I'm here in bed with you and that's really all I wanted." He bends his head and presses a soft kiss to the top of yours, lets himself take the little moment of extra comfort and nuzzles his nose there. "All I needed," he whispers so quietly you're not sure if you were meant to hear it.
"Same," you whisper back, rolling your head and pressing a kiss to his chest before settling again. Comfortable silence falls over the two of you for thirty or so seconds. "Hey Handsome?"
All these years you've been calling him that and he still isn't used to it, still isn't sure it's true but you certainly are, you've told him all about it and shown him multiple times. "Yeah?"
"Thank you." What for is unspoken because it's thank you for everything, for every little thing he's done for you since you got back and everything he's ever done for you and everything he will ever do for you. And you know that Andrew knows.
"Always." The words fall off his tongue before he even consciously realizes what he's saying, that he's repeating what you always say to him when he thanks you after something like this. "I've always got you."
You let out the softest laugh through your nose and he can feel your lips pull up in a small smile against his chest. You pull your head from his chest and tilt it back to look up at him. He understands, gives you one of those adorable pursed lip crooked smiles and then leans his head down and kisses you, chaste and almost teasing at first with how short he keeps them.
Andrew can tell from the way you respond that you're ready, out of your head enough now for even more physical reassurance, though he knows that, like him after he gets jealous and you have to hold him and reassure him and talk it out with him, you won't ask for it right now. He can tell that you need more physical reassurance, that you're craving the comfort and reassurance that comes from the physical act of loving each other. He knows how much it helps him when you so readily and willingly give yourself to him completely after something like this, how healing it is for him. And he wants to give you that, he wants to do everything he possibly can to make you feel better, to make you feel secure and wanted and needed and loved, because god are you.
He deepens the kisses that he gives you, swipes his tongue at the seam of your lips with just the right pressure to let you know that he wants this, wants you, but that there's no pressure if you're still not ready. When you open your mouth for him with the airiest moan he's quick to slip his tongue inside and start slowly rolling you onto your back as he licks into your mouth.
One hand is quick to tangle in his hair, your other slipping under his arm and curling over his shoulder. Andrew kisses you possessively, tries and succeeds in making you feel like you're his with each kiss. He pulls away so you can both get some air and so he can look down at you, rolls his hips slightly so he knows for certain that you feel how hard he is, wants to make sure you're okay with this and where you're headed. He hopes you are because he needs this, needs to show you how much he loves you with his body, how it's only you, only ever going to be you.
And you are. Of course you are. You've been dreaming about this, having him like this again for a week. You've needed it, needed him and to feel as close to him as possible and be physically intimate with him and love him and be loved by him with your bodies. Your neediness is only heightened by everything that happened earlier today, your mind and body craving this type of love and reassurance on top of all the love and reassurance he's already given you with his words and other actions. It's not that what he's already done isn't enough, it's just different.
Andrew's hand drags down your body, fingertips light against your skin as he moves his fingers closer and closer to where you both want them. He kisses you again as the pads of his fingers hit your clit, a low groan at how you're already so wet he can feel it there blending with the soft moan the contact pulls from you. He works your clit for a beat or two and then readjusts his hand and sinks a finger inside of you, swallows down the moan it pulls from you that's muffled against his lips.
A second finger slips inside of you with the first on his next pass and you keen into the kiss as your back tries to arch at the feeling, his weight on top of you keeping you pressed against the mattress. He brings his thumb to your clit and starts rubbing deliciously slow circles. Andrew takes his time kissing you and fucking you with his fingers, absolutely living for every little noise and moan of his name or how good he is that you make for him, that he pulls from you that tells him how good he's making you feel, pride blooming in his chest.
He works a third finger inside of you, crooks his fingers perfectly to rub that extra sensitive spot as you get wetter and wetter and tighter and tighter around him, groans at how you swell and clench around them. Your kisses become needier and sloppier the longer he fucks you with his fingers and teases your clit with his thumb. Each time you break your kisses for air his lips don't truly leave you, continue kissing at your jaw and your neck and your collarbones.
You tug harder on his curls than you have been and he pulls his lips from yours, flutters his eyes open to look down at you and see what you need. "I need you." The words are almost caught in your throat with how breathy they are, sound so overwhelmingly needy and desperate he shivers.
"Come for me," he murmurs, lips brushing over yours.
"On your cock, yeah," you pant against his lips. He kisses you again, lingering and still, but so beautifully loving it drives you insane. You can just tell he's thinking about whether to make you come on his fingers first or to give you what you want.
You let out the sweetest sigh that has just a hint of a whine to it as he makes his mind up and pulls his fingers from you. As much as he'd have loved to make you come on his fingers, would've loved to feel it and watch your face as you fell apart for him, more than anything he wants to make you happy and give you everything you want. And if you want the first orgasm he gives you after a week apart to be on his cock who is he to demand differently.
He leans up off of you more while he licks his fingers clean, groans deep and rumbly from his chest, almost a growled purr, as he tastes you. You feel his cock throb against you and whine, desperate to feel him inside you and kiss him again and be close.
Your heart starts to fall when he moves off of you completely. "What?" You sit up on your elbows to watch him, confused.
He settles himself against the headboard and crosses his legs, beckons you with a finger that was just inside you that you swear you can still feel. "Come here."
You sit up and look at him for a second, greedily run your eyes up and down his torso and over his cock, thick thighs and defined arms, all of him littered with freckles you've kissed a million times. "Yeah?" you whisper as you crawl over to him.
"Yeah," he nods, eyes almost gold in the lighting.
Andrew holds his hand out for you and you take it. It's a little awkward climbing onto his lap, but it's also not because you sit like this sometimes out on the beach. You wrap your legs around his lower back between him and the pillow that cushions your legs and his back from the headboard. You lean back a little then, rest your hands above the sides of his knees and push up so that he can line himself up with you.
You're breathing hard when he notches himself inside of you. His hands find your hips and squeeze, almost unfathomably gentle with the way he’s holding you up some. "I've got you," he murmurs, nodding and letting you know that you can start moving back into your regular position and he won't let you suddenly take all of him unless you want to.
While there are times you do love the stretch and the pleasurable burning pain of taking him all at once, tonight you want the slowness, to feel every inch and ridge and vein of him as you take him for the first time in a week. "Oh," you moan as Andrew groans steadily, both of you already breathing hard as you finally take him all the way, fully seated on him again, the lotus position and the incredible closeness it offers perfect and exactly what you both need, especially you after today. It almost makes you teary because you know he picked this position deliberately knowing you needed the extra closeness and intimacy.
You lean in and kiss him, both of you keeping your hips still and just basking in the feeling of each other like this. He wraps his arms around you in a tight hug and you thread yours around his neck, deepen the kiss and let him take over your every sense.
"I missed you," you breathe against his lips when you have to break away for air. "I missed you so much it hurt."
"Fuck, I missed you too," he rasps. And fuck, has he. In every sense. In this sense, it's been a week without you and he can't remember the last time he went that long without being inside you. He's missed how good you feel, how good you make him feel, missed the intimacy of this and getting to have you and see you like this. "Never stopped thinking about you."
You kiss again, stay like that for who knows how long, cockwarming him as you hug and make out and whisper soft words of love and adoration to each other and let your hands run up and down each other's backs. The emotional and physical connection is healing and reassuring, oxytocin flooding your systems and bonding you even closer somehow.
You're not even completely consciously aware of when you start to grind down and against him. The groans and soft sighs and moans you pull from each other blend into your kisses so seamlessly, are so normal and natural for the two of you that it doesn't make either of you realize.
It's not until you unknowingly find the perfect angle and movement of your hips that has his head rubbing insistently at your g-spot that you realize just how much you're grinding, the jolts of pleasure for both of you making you gasp into your kiss and have to pull away for air. "Oh Andy," you sigh his name through a moan, resting your hands on his shoulders and keening for him when his lips start teasing your neck how he knows you love.
His hands find your hips but stay light, he doesn't take control of how you grind against him. He starts thrusting as much as he can as you grind, small and shallow, but breathtaking with how full you already feel. He kisses down your neck to your collarbone, his breath heavy and hot against your skin as he nibbles on it and laves his tongue over it to soothe. His lips find their way back up the other side of your neck until they're right at your ear, the groans and grunts he makes for you, that you pull from him, making you grind harder as you chase the growing pleasure and promise of both of your orgasms.
"I've needed you," he breathes lowly. "Need you." His admission is vulnerable and desperate and pure and so freely and openly given because he wants you to know, needs you to know how much he needed and needs you.
"You always have me," you pant, turn your head into his slightly and kiss his cheek. "I'm always yours, doesn't matter where we are, together or apart."
His hands slide from your hips up to your waist and squeeze before they start to trail all over your body, the perfect balance of gentle reverence and greedy presses of his fingers into your skin. "Can't believe you're mine," he mumbles, an awe in his voice that you're not sure you deserve to have used in relation to you. He kisses you and it's chaste, lingering and firm and so incredibly fucking hot in it's own way. Andrew rests his forehead against yours once he breaks the kiss and then pulls back to look at you because he needs you to really hear him. "I love you," he whispers. "I love you because you understand me without me having to explain."
"And because you don't ask me to change, don't need or want me to be someone else." He isn't normally vocal like this. He's become more vocal over the years, certainly, but this is different, this isn't just groaning and dirty talk or whispers of love and other sweet nothings. These are reasons, reassuring explanations that you already know because he's told you and shown you a million times before, but never like this, never this explicit during sex.
There's something so soft about his eyes as blown as they are with pleasure while he holds your gaze, something about them that makes your heart ache beautifully, that makes you feel so fucking loved and adored and cherished. "Andrew…" You pray your eyes or your words or your whatever make him feel the same. You slide your hands up his neck and into his hair, look at him teary from his words and his touch and his love. "My love…"
"I told you I'd-" his voice catches in his throat when you grinding against him particularly hard hits perfectly with his small thrust up. "Told you I'd list my reasons."
You remember him saying that earlier of course, that he'd list his reasons why he wants you and loves you. It's not that you thought he wouldn't or couldn't, him listing them just hadn't been on your mind because he's shown you more than enough with less explicit words and with his body and his actions and his eyes and the way he treated you and how he held you while you sobbed. "You don't have to."
"I want to." He skims his hands along your skin up to your breasts, takes them in his hands and groans in this way that tells you he missed you, missed them and getting to hold them like this and use them to make you feel good.
You let your head fall back as you moan in pleasure, your eyes fluttering closed as you focus on the feeling of his large, warm hands kneading your breasts, thumbs brushing over your nipples so teasingly you shiver almost violently at how good it feels. "You do show me, you know, and tell me. That you love me and why you do, why you want me. I promise I know you love me, it's not that I don't or that you don't show it enough or well enough, I promise it's not that."
"Shh," he soothes you, an edge of a groan to it because you feel so good around him and grinding against him. "I know. I promise I know."
Your hands tug on his curls as you keep your pace, grind against him far too slowly but just fast enough. "It's just hard for me to understand why. Why me, why you want me, why you love me."
"I know," he nods, voice pure gravel and rasp, breathy with pleasure. "I know you don't understand the same way I don't when you say it sometimes. You're just going to have to trust me when I tell you that I'm lucky to get to love and be loved by you."
You hold his eye contact, clench around him even tighter and grind a bit faster at how good he sounds, how he's panting slightly now and how he looks so beautifully relaxed and like nothing could touch him in this moment, like he's complete again after a week without you. "I love you," you murmur, watch him relax even more at the words.
"I love you," he nods once, rolls your nipples between his thumb and forefinger as he kisses you. "Because you put me first, even over yourself. Nobody ever has before. But you always do."
"You love me for me. You make me feel like enough even when I can't understand why you think I am." His hands leave your breasts, move back to your hips. He still doesn't take control as such but he squeezes them a bit, helps use the leverage to fuck up into you a little harder, his mind, like yours, growing hazier and hazier with pleasure. "You… You're the only person in my life who's never made me feel like a bad person or like they'd be better off without me."
"You make me feel worthy. You're the only one." You let out a soft whine, his words and his hands and his cock overwhelming you. He grunts when you start to grind even harder and faster against him. "You make me feel seen." When you gently bring your forehead to rest against his he kisses you, long and slow and deep until he can't anymore. "You make me feel loved. You make me feel so goddamn loved," he pants softly against your lips.
A wordless moment passes, only the combination of your soft pants and noises of pleasure and the delicately obscene and slick sound of your pussy each time you take him one of his shallow thrusts filling the air. He can tell you're close with the way you drop and angle your hips to seek out more friction for your clit from the base of him and his lower abdomen and from the way you're clenching around him so erratically.
He gives you a lingering kiss and then rasps, something longing to it. "Look at me."
You pull your forehead from his and moan loudly when you let your eyes trail over his body greedily, his skin sweat slicked and flushed, abs and arms and chest all flexed, perfectly defined muscles prominent and clichéingly mouth-watering, neck strained with pleasure, veins popping under taut skin. You need more of him. You need all of him. You know you have all of him right now but you still need more. You love this, love this position and the closeness and intimacy and it was so much more than what you needed and was so good you can taste your orgasm. But with the way he looks and the way he sounds and feels and the words he's saying to you, you need him to fuck you.
Your eyes find his already looking at you, waiting for you and absolutely smoldering. He holds your gaze for a few seconds before speaking. "It's you. Only ever will be you. You're my first and only choice. You have been since the day we met, before we were together." Your breath catches in your throat at his words, hips slowing as his love overwhelms you and puts back together what you yourself broke of your heart earlier today. "You never have anything to worry about, Sweetheart. You're mine and I'm yours. Only yours…Forever."
Tears hit your eyes and you fight back the urge to apologize. The tears aren't bad, they're not of sadness or hurt or guilt or from feeling blamed. They're tears of love and being loved, of relief that he knows how much you love him, of healing and reassurance, and yes, some of pleasure.
You bring your hands to his face and gently run your thumbs over his cheekbones before holding his face. You click your tongue against the back of your teeth lightly. "You're my first and only choice too. I'm yours forever, Andrew." You lean in and kiss him, feel his strong jaw relax under your hand as he opens his mouth for you as you coax it open with your tongue.
It's too much for him. You're too much for him, make him feel too good, make him feel sure of himself, and confident and safe enough to want and to take what he wants, with your consent of course. And right now he wants you harder and faster and to make you feel so good you can't breathe for a minute, wants to make you moan his name loudly once you regain your breath, his real name that you helped him take back for himself years ago but that he still lets only you use.
One arm wraps around your back and holds you close to him as he shifts, carefully uncrosses his legs as he kisses you and gets his knees bent under him so that he can push up. He takes you with him as you cling to him, knows you want this and are more than okay with this by the way you moan into his mouth and adjust yourself and your legs to help him. He walks forward on his knees a few steps and then lays you back on the bed, following you so that he never slips out of you and you never have to stop kissing.
He starts fucking you hard, finally able to truly thrust and work himself in and out of you at a pace that has your kiss breaking as you both pant hard. Andrew pulls off you just enough to move his arms under your knees to shift you into more of a mating press when he leans back over you.
"Andy," you pant, high pitched and needy and begging, for what you're not entirely sure. You slide one hand into his curls, the other clawing at his back. "Oh fuck, you feel so good," your words slur together, "need to come, I've missed you, needed you. Make me feel so good, fucking good." You're babbling for him, fucked out and beyond reassured and he fucking loves it when you get like this. When he makes you feel like this. "Need to feel you come in me, please, Andy. Please, please, need it, need you."
That just about has him losing it, you begging to feel him come inside of you. He picks his pace up, rutting into you harder and faster, but so careful not to fall into too much of a rhythm, preferring to keep the way he drills his cock into you a little unpredictable for the edge he can always see and hear and feel it gives you.
"Come for me then Beautiful," he rasps, shifting his weight slightly and shoving his hand between the two of you until his fingers hit your clit and make your entire body jolt and you whine loudly. "Make me come."
"I'm gonna," you nod. His fingers on your clit and the way his cock is hitting perfectly and you can feel him everywhere and smell him and still taste him on your tongue make your brain short out as the pleasure only he can give you begins to completely overtake you. He hits a certain stroke and you almost thrash under him at how good it feels. "Fuck!"
He keeps that exact stroke now, feels you getting tighter and tighter for him as you hold your breath in longer and longer intervals as Andrew and pleasure take over your entire being, become all you know. "I'm gonna come, Andy, please don't stop," you whine, words almost all air. "Please… please."
Andrew loves watching you come, loves watching the immediate build up to it and he’ll never get enough of watching your orgasm break over you. "I love you," he pants, knows what it'll do to you.
And he's right. Those three words from his lips, in his own fucked out, gravelly voice are what finally push you over the edge and have you absolutely shattering around him. "Andrew!" you moan loudly, end up holding your breath after you get his name out because you forget how to take a breath in you're so overwhelmed by pleasure.
"Fuck!" he growls, pinches your clit a little sharply to get you to breathe again for him before returning to rub circles and draw out your orgasm as long as he possibly can. "Gonna come," he pants under his breath, his pace growing erratic as you squeeze him and grow slicker with each passing second. He hears your moans take on a sharper edge and pulls his hand off your clit, balances on both arms again and absolutely rails you as he chases his own orgasm. "I'm gonna come, gonna come for you…"
"Andrew, please!" you cry out for him, need to feel him come inside you, feel his warmth spread throughout your whole body. "Need it, need to feel it, feel you. Please come for me, come inside me, missed you so much, love you so much."
Your words are barely coherent with how cock drunk and pleasure foggy and floating you are. But your words and the feeling of your cunt squeezing him and quivering around him as you ride out the aftershocks of your orgasm as he continues fucking you are so much more than enough for him and he comes with a loud groan of your name, his face breaking in pleasure so handsomely and erotically you think for a second you might come again. Your name drips off his tongue like a groaned prayer as he fucks himself through it, fills you just like you asked him to.
"Thank you," you moan softly as you feel him spill inside of you and his warmth seep through your body just how you'd been craving for a week. "Thank you Handsome, thank you. Love you so much, always will, I'll always be yours."
"Fuck, I'll always be yours," he grunts as he slows his pace, drags himself in and out of you slowly, overstimulating himself but unable to stop despite knowing he can have you again whenever he wants because you feel too fucking good and he loves being this close to you too fucking much. "Fuck, Sweetheart, fuck."
Andrew finally stills and looks down at you, chest heaving and skin glistening with sweat. A few sweaty curls are plastered to his forehead, the rest of them askew and messy from your hands. He looks beautiful, handsome, and perfect. And yours. He looks like he's yours. The same way you're sure you look like you're his.
You bite your bottom lip and smile at him. He raises his eyebrows slightly, lips quirking at the sides and one corner pulling up in an amused, lopsided smile that somehow melts you even more for him. "This is how I wanted our first night back together to go," you giggle. "Sweaty, messy curls, and you inside me."
Andrew laughs softly, shaking his head at you. All he's wanted since you left the skate park is to see you smile and hear you laugh and he thinks it's funny how, in this moment combined with these circumstances, he doesn't think there's anything you could say or do that would reassure him as much as that sight and sound do. "I love you," he murmurs through his smile and laughter as he leans down to kiss you.
It's funny because you find yourself thinking the exact same thing about his smile and laugh, how in the moment nothing he could say or do could reassure you more. You can't help the way your smile widens as his lips get closer to yours. "I love you more, Andrew."
I love him so much I can barely stand it. He deserves everything!!!!! I hope it was okay enough and you were able to enjoy and thank you so much for reading! ♥️
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17.5k || All my content is 18+ MDNI || CW: angst; intense jealousy; self-hate; insecurities abound; self-consciousness; crying; quick thought about suicide; vaginal fingering; PIV sex; sappy; soft; fluff; light show spoilers; no use of y/n.
Summary: When you get back from a week away and watch Pope interact with Amy you can't seem to stop the jealousy that takes over.
AN: I genuinely have no idea how this became 17.5k. I feel particularly bad about this piece, but can't really describe why. It just feels meh at best, especially the smut. So we're just going to post and move along. 😂 I decided to use Andrew/Andy this time because it felt right. I can't elaborate, it just did. We see a different side of him here and one that I think shows how much he could flourish without the presence of his mother and in a healthy relationship. This was inspired by this ask with the prompt "just let it go, okay?" I hope it ends up being okay and enjoyable. Thank you so much for reading! ♥️
He's alone at the skate park when you get there.
That'll change soon enough, there's a kind of exhibition event for the kids today, lots of people in the park, lots of skating, some vendors. At times they'll clear the skating space and give anyone who wants it a chance to show off. The vendors will probably start showing up in ten minutes or so but for now it's just him. You stay hidden behind the fence and just watch him for a bit, watch the way he smiles and laughs to himself. He's happy here. Really, truly happy here. You love it. You love him.
He's done an amazing job with it, turned it into a whole real professional skate park down by the beach with concrete and a built-in bowl and ramps and bars. He turned it into a non-profit, a legitimate one, and cares about the kids more than he'd admit to himself, still brings breakfast in the morning and makes sure there's lunch and snacks and drinks. He runs the place himself, takes care of it himself, with your help. But mostly you're just there to support him and to make sure he knows how incredibly, incredibly proud of him you are.
You wait until he's stopped and is standing looking around the park and out at the ocean with his hands on his hips and one foot on the end of his board keeping it upright. You use the key you have to let yourself in the wrought iron fence surrounding the place. He hates that it has to be fenced, but it got half destroyed once when it wasn't.
"Hi Handsome," you call to him, your pace already picking up to get you to him faster as his head snaps to you.
He's frozen for a few seconds as a million emotions crash over him, love and longing and need and disbelief and surprise the most prominent. "You're back." A small laugh slips past his lips, a rare proper smile pulling all the way onto his face as he takes his foot off his board and forgets about it as he starts moving toward you.
It's not a total cliché movie moment, the two of you aren't fully running toward each other, he's not standing waiting to catch you while you run to him. But you're both walking fast and when you're close enough you do all but launch yourself into him, his strong, solid body easily absorbing the impact of you somewhat slamming into him.
Arms wrap around each other tightly, relief and happiness and contentedness flood the both of you as you reunite. You giggle as he holds you close, feel all the stress and weight start to melt away because you're back in his arms.
You've been away for a week on a work trip. It was hell for both of you. Just the quick look you got at your Andrew before hugging him tightly tells you that he hardly slept while you were gone. Maybe ten or twelve hours total over the week. And you're right. He's exhausted, his body isn't used to running on this little sleep anymore because he's able to sleep when he's next to you and you've been sharing a bed for a good while now. You slept but it was shitty, interrupted, light sleep at best. You've both been dreaming of falling into bed with each other and fucking and making love before knocking out for at least twelve hours tangled up together.
Both of you pull out of the hug a little so that you can kiss. They're sweet at first, firm and full of emotion, I love you and I missed you and I'm so glad you're back and here with me. And as he wraps one arm around your middle and brings his other hand to cup the back of your head to keep you close, he says thank you for coming back to me without a word. The more kisses you exchange, the hotter they get, you and Andrew standing in the middle of the skate park in the golden light of the just risen sun making out like eighteen year olds who can't get enough of each other, a rare extended display of public affection.
"I love you," you pant softly against his lips when you finally break apart for some air, your foreheads resting against each other's.
"I love you." He moves his hand from your head down your back so he can wrap that arm around you again, keep you as close to him as possible. You stand like that for a few minutes, forehead to forehead, holding each other as tightly as you can as you just exist in each other's space again, something you've both desperately needed.
Unlike normal, he's the one to break the comfortable silence. "You're early. You didn't say, I would've picked you up."
You smile at him and shrug, almost a little embarrassed about the idea now for some reason. "I was able to change my flight to a red eye to get the earlier flight to Carlsbad, ubered home and dropped my stuff and then walked down here. I thought I'd surprise you." You let out a breath and give him a lopsided smile that has him ready to sink to his knees and worship at your feet. "I just missed you. A lot."
He stares down at you with his usual intensity, but like always there's a softness at the corner of his eyes that appears only when he looks at you. You've been together for a couple years now, rent a house together, but he still can't wrap his head around the idea that somebody wants and loves and misses him when he's not around instead of being glad for the break.
"I missed you a lot too. A week was…" He's not sure how to describe it and he doesn't want to make you feel bad or guilty. It was a conference for work, it would have been hard for you to get out of and it’s good for your career, you needed to go. "Long."
"Yeah," you murmur, leaning back into the hug fully and resting your head on his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart. "I missed this."
Andrew nuzzles his nose into your hair and breathes through it, lets the scent of your shampoo wash over him and calm and relax him in a way he hasn't been since he dropped you off at the airport. He presses a lingering kiss to the top of your head, something you do to him when he's snuggled into you in bed or on the couch sometimes that he loves, and then rests his head on your shoulder. "I missed this too."
It's only a few minutes later that the first of the vendors shows up and the day really begins, the best day the both of you have had in a week purely because you're reunited with your other half. Skaters start to show up, Deran and Craig too, and time passes easily.
You and Andrew are nearly attached at the hip, standing next to each other and holding hands or your hand on his back or his hand on your back or the sides of your bodies pressed into each other, touching in some subtle way. Eventually though, you leave his side to run to the bathroom. You don't even want to really. You're clingy and needy right now and you know it. You were away from him for a week. You can't help it. You just want to be close to him, back in his space, smelling him and seeing him and touching him and hearing that gravelly voice you adore so much.
You start to walk back to him, already missing him again more than is rational, but you slow as you watch a woman approach him. He looks surprised to see her and then gives her a small smile, returns the hug she gives him. The hug she gives him that lasts way the fuck too long and is way the fuck too close. You can see him try to pull out of it and her not let him but it does little to quell the jealousy twisting your insides and your thoughts.
Suddenly every worry you had while you were gone that you were able to push aside is back in the front of your mind and they aren't going anywhere. He can and should do better. The time apart gave him a chance to realize that and how exhausting you are, to realize he doesn’t truly want you. You're not pretty enough for him. You're not enough in general for him. He deserves better than you. He deserves so much better than you. And now he's probably found that in someone new.
You swallow hard as you veer off your path a little to go stand next to Deran, now in ear-shot of the conversation between her and Andrew. She's introducing him to her son and you convince yourself that he looks so fucking happy for her, that he looks happier than he did when he was reunited with you this morning, something the barely audible rational part of your brain tries to tell you.
When her son runs off to skate he tells her that he's really happy for her and her son. You swear they share some little moment in the eye contact between them after she says thank you and gives him this demure but flirty smile. You wonder if that softness you thought was reserved only for you is there at the corners of his eyes.
She asks about Lena and you bristle. So there's history there. Exactly what kind you don't know, but you have a feeling. Andrew stiffens, explains what happened, that Lena was adopted and the woman looks so upset and heartbroken for him.
She touches his arm as she apologizes, says she knows how hard it is to lose them, that she knows he knows she understands because of what she went through before she got her son back. She tells him that if he needs anything, anything at all, to just call, that he should call regardless, a light blush hitting her cheeks and his.
A blush on his fucking cheeks. Andrew blushing. A piece of your heart chips away.
Of course she fucking understands. Of course she's fucking better for him than you, can relate more to him, could be there for him better than you can. And she's pretty. Prettier than you. You're so in your head you've actually tuned out their conversation.
"You're not seriously jealous." Deran's words interrupt your spiral for the moment. You look over at him. "You are," he scoffs. "Why? Pope's so fucking in love with you. Nobody has ever made him happier or been better for him. You guys are you know…" he gestures with his hand vaguely, "meant to be."
"'Sup?" Craig greets you both as he walks over.
"She's jealous." Deran nods in the direction of Andrew and the woman.
"Fuck you," you mutter at him.
Craig looks over at the two. "You can tell he's not into her, look how fucking rigid he is."
"Really?" you hum. "Cause she sure is touching him and he's not trying to stop it."
"She hugged him and touched his arm once." You can hear the eye roll in Deran's words.
He's right and you know it. "Well…" Your brain spins trying to come up with something else to say.
"She's from the church right? He's over her," Craig sighs. Over. You stiffen, are vaguely aware of Deran muttering a 'fuck.' "Just relax, man, Pope only wants you."
"He's over her?" you grit out. You know she was different for Andrew, knew there was history, assumed it was romantic. But you didn’t realize it was her, probably his second-most serious relationship behind yours. You know why it ended but she's probably found it in her to accept him and love him anyway and he is probably over the moon about that because she's the one he really wants. He's just settling for you.
Deep down you know this is all bullshit and your brain being a dick to you but you can't help it. Can't stop it.
"Fuck," Deran mutters again.
"You didn't know?" Craig asks.
"I knew he had exes of course, and I could tell they had a history when she asked about Lena, but I didn't realize she was the one from the church." You didn't know he was letting his ex touch him like that, you think to yourself, his ex from his best and most stable and healthy relationship. Didn't know he was looking happier with his ex than with you, didn't know he was sharing a moment with his ex, that his ex was flirting with him and basically telling him to call her and ask her out. Didn't know it was his ex who could understand and relate better. Didn’t know it was his ex who’s prettier than you.
It's so much worse now. So, so much worse for your brain and all those worries and your head is spinning enough that you're a little lightheaded for a second, exhausted from the shitty sleep all week and staying awake the entire red eye. "I have to go," you tell the two. If you stay here you know you'll spiral too far and push him away or do something you regret. "Just…"
Your brain is already almost too far gone. Now that he's seen her again he must've realized he wants her more than he wants you, loves her more, needs her more. She must be enough for him while you're once again not. Never enough, not for anybody. Not for the one person you really thought you were enough for.
You'll lose it and embarrass yourself, Andrew and the entire Cody family if you stay. "Just tell him… No. It's whatever."
Deran and Craig exchange a look you can feel but neither of them try to stop you when you turn and start to walk out. You're not even sure where you're going, certainly you're not walking home because that's the first place he'll look for you. If he comes looking.
"Hey!" You can hear the concern in Andrew's voice as he calls for you. It's unlike you to just walk off and leave without telling him and saying goodbye. Kissing him goodbye. It's unnerving, makes him anxious. What if you're sick or something? You were on an airplane and travel can fuck with your immune system. You probably wouldn't want to tell him because you know he'd leave and go home to take care of you and you don't want him to leave early.
Your next step hesitates, enough to let him know that you heard him, but you keep going. Putting one foot in front of the other and continuing to move forward is painful, walking away from him hurts but you are irrationally jealous right now. You're just irrational and you know it and you will fuck everything up and hurt him no matter what you do at this point. And maybe he wants this. Maybe you’ll say you’re leaving and offer no explanation and he’ll say okay with no emotion because he doesn’t care. Because he wants to end things with you anyway.
He catches up to you shortly before you reach the gate though, grabs your hand gently and gets you to stop. He's unprepared for the hurt on your face when you turn to look at him and his brows immediately furrow, lips pull down into a concerned frown and his level of anxiety jumps dramatically.
"She have to go?" you ask before he can say anything.
"What?" More confusion breaks across his face. "Who? Amy?"
"Your ex-girlfriend." The word is straight ice as it leaves your lips. "She sure likes to touch."
"What?" he whispers, shaking his head slightly and trying to think back and figure out what's going on. You seem… jealous. But that can't be right, can it? Why would you be jealous? He’s not worth jealousy. "She… gave me a hug and touched my arm once, and then gave me a hug when she walked away. She's an ex yeah, but she's just a friend now, at most. I haven't seen her in a long time. I have no interest in seeing her."
"She thinks you still have her number-"
"She's wrong." Andrew takes a step closer to you, squeezes your hand. "I only want-"
"You haven't seen her in a long time." You fight ripping your hand out of his and make a face of consideration. Maybe he told you one time and you're remembering it or maybe it's just intuition but you know what happened the last time he saw her after a long time. They, at the very least, went out. You make sure you're looking him straight in the eye. "And what's the first thing you did the last time you saw her for the first time in a while?"
Hurt breaks over his face and you hate yourself, think you should just save him the trouble of breaking up with you or settling for you or mistakenly thinking you’re the best and the one for him and go die. You pull your eyes from his, look over his shoulder. "I didn't know you let alone have you," he says as he shakes his head, his heart rate rising further. This is new. This has never happened before, whatever it is that's happening between you right now, whatever it is you're feeling and vocalizing, this jealousy. This insecurity.
You don't say anything and he doesn't know what to say or where to go from here but he tries to be reassuring like you are, start with truths that might suck and then offer reassurance.
"Listen, I… I can't do anything about her being here. I can't kick her kid out because you don't like her and her and I have a past. I don't want anything to do with her or to see her again in any meaningful way. I don't care if she comes around because her kid wants to skate. I'm not going to talk to her really, even if she tries to talk to me." He's exhausted, brain not firing on all cylinders right now especially with the anxiety he's feeling, especially because it's anxiety about you and your relationship and there’s little in this world that scares him more than the thought of losing you in any way.
Andrew doesn't mean for his next words to be dismissive, he's just trying to get the conversation back on track, to get you back next to his side, fuck, to get you back in his arms right now. He just wants everything to be okay and the day to end and the two of you to go home together. He's missed you more than he could ever hope to explain to you, loves you the same. He hates that this is even going on and he can't just be at home with you in bed right now, holding you close and smelling your hair and your neck and feeling your hand in his hair. "Just let it go, okay? Please. Everything is… is okay. We're okay." He hopes saying it will make it true.
The ‘let it go’ kills you. Kills you. It feels like the words have ripped what was a small tear into a gaping hole in your chest and are tearing your heart into shreds. The logical part of you knows he didn't mean anything by it, not truly, that it was just poor word choice and that he's exhausted and you're being unfair to him.
But the logical part of you isn't at the skate park, isn't in fucking Oceanside. It isn't in fucking California.
"I never asked you to kick her kid out, never even hinted at it. I didn't ask you to do anything. I didn't ask you not to do anything, Andy." You pull your hand from his and he lets you, doesn't try to hold onto it how some men might. "But you sure never mentioned your girlfriend while she was flirting with you and as good as asking you to call her so you could schedule a date."
"She wasn't flirting with me," he shakes his head. "Or if she was I didn't realize it and wasn't playing into it deliberately. I didn't think anything about her talking about calling her because I wasn't interested in doing it when she said it, and I'm still not. I don't want to call her. I’m not going to call her."
You ignore him, continue as though he hadn't said anything, tears lining your eyes. You hate it. You hate this. You hate crying in front of anyone for any reason, but especially over what you tell yourself is petty and unjustified jealousy. You hate that you're doing this to him, hate that you can't stop yourself because you're too worked up and irrational right now. You hate that you can't control yourself and that they all spill out, all the insecurities you've worked so hard to keep hidden or at least significantly tempered so that he doesn't have to deal with them.
“So maybe I should read you and the room and accept that you want her back.” A few hot tears spill over your lash line and you watch his eyes track one as it slides down your face. “And that she’s your first choice. That she’s better than me and that she's enough and I'm not. That she understands and relates to you in a way I never could and that she can be more there for you because of that. That she's prettier and more attractive than me. That I've never been enough no matter how hard I've tried, not for you or anyone. That you love me but you love her more. That a week's break from me was all you needed to see how exhausting I am and realize you don’t want me anymore and realize how not enough I am, how bad of a partner I am.”
"What?" he whispers, voice reflecting the confusion and anxiety and hurt and fear that's all taking over his mind. Because Andrew doesn’t understand why you're saying these things and suddenly thinking you're not the most beautiful thing in the world to him and that there’s someone else he wants and loves more and that you're not enough when you're enough and then some, so fucking far beyond enough and so much more than he deserves. And you're just wrong. He doesn't give a shit about her. He doesn't care that she's randomly reappeared. He doesn’t care about her. He doesn’t want her. You have to see that. You have to know that. Right?
This hasn’t happened between the two of you before. Andrew has never seen you jealous like this. He's the jealous one. He's the one who gets overwhelmed by his jealousy because it drags up all his insecurities, who usually needs space and walks away. You've shown and talked about your own insecurities before but never like this, you've never expressed them like this, so intensely. And you look like you truly believe everything you just said. “None of that is tr-”
You take a step backwards, hold your hands up to interrupt him and laugh softly to yourself and shake your head once as another wave of tears coat your face. “Don’t even worry about it, Andy. I’m letting it go,” you whisper just loud enough for him to hear. You turn and walk away, keep your hands in front of your chest so he can’t reach for them.
When you turn you nearly run into someone looking to talk to him. You mumble an apology to the guy as Andrew calls your name, can hear him telling whoever it is to move. Having to deal with the guy wastes enough seconds and you walk fast enough that you're able to slip away from him, able to get on the bus that appeared at its stop at the perfect time for you and the bus is able to pull away before he can get on it.
"Fuck," he mutters to himself as he watches the bus pull away. "Fuck!" He knows it'll ultimately be in vain but he runs after the bus anyway. The bus is too fast for him though, especially when combined with all the people he has to try and weave through, and once it takes a left while he's on its right side he has to give up and watch it drive away.
That's fine though, he tells himself. You both share your location with each other so he can just follow you, or even follow the bus route, though that won't tell him where you got off. He tries calling you as he starts to walk fast back to the skate park so he can get his keys and get in his Jeep and go get you. Your phone rings but you don't answer. He tries again and you still don't, tries again and gets sent to your voicemail after one ring. He can't stop himself from continuing to try though, sends you a couple of texts in between calls to see if you'll answer.
By the time he gets to his Jeep and tries to pull up your location you've already turned it off, something that makes him say god damn it to himself but doesn't surprise him. As he goes to pull up the bus route he realizes that won't work. You're smart. You'll know he'd think to use it so you'll get off after a couple of stops and walk or get on another bus. So he has no idea where you are and you're out there upset and jealous and thinking so many wrong things. And there's nothing he can do, really other than drive around looking for you.
You feel so beyond awful as you take a seat on the bus and wipe a few tears from your face. You can't believe you're fucking doing this to him. To yourself. To your relationship. You can't believe you're letting your insecurities win but also you can. You should've known you could only keep them down and nearly hidden for so long.
You hate yourself for it and it makes you feel even more awful somehow but you turn off location sharing on your phone. It's not to punish him, it's because you just need time to yourself. As you expected, he starts calling. You let it ring through to voicemail but then start sending it to voicemail, don't really read the texts he sends you.
But you do text him. You're not so far gone that you don't remember to or don't want to or don't think you need to tell him you're okay so he doesn't worry. Or at least doesn't as much because, despite the way you try to tell yourself this won't bother him because he wants Amy back for all those reasons you said and has realized you're awful and not worth anything, deep down you know that's bullshit and that he's going to be incredibly worried and freaking out, near panic perhaps.
You - I'm okay. If I'm not I'll let you know. I just need space right now to try and get my head around everything. I'll let you know if I don't plan on coming home tonight
While he appreciates your text and you letting him know you're okay, your text destroys him. It makes his heart break and hurt in a way it never has before, in a way he didn't know was possible. It knocks the breath from his lungs and makes him tear up immediately.
It's the last sentence, really.
He could probably handle you needing space, is worried by what you think you need to get your head around, but that's something he could probably handle too. That last sentence, though. The idea that you're even thinking about it, that there's even a possibility that you might not come home and sleep in your shared bed with him tonight shatters him.
It's made all the worse by the fact that you've been apart for a week. That he's had to be around the house and lay in bed without you for a week. His mind immediately goes to what he wanted the night to be once you got home, how it was supposed to go. Sex because you wouldn't be able to keep your hands off each other once you walked through the door, followed by dinner, something ordered so that you didn't have to separate to cook, then maybe more sex, maybe he'd eat you out on the couch or in bed, then a long, hot shower together and then cuddling in bed and holding each other and being close after a week apart, and then maybe more sex, but definitely falling asleep tangled in each other at the end of the night.
And now he might be laying in bed not sleeping and just staring at your empty side again.
A few of the tears fall and he's quick to wipe them away, frustrated with himself and the entire world. He doesn't know what to do. His instinct is to go find you, but another instinct is to shut down completely, to run away from everything and everyone, just disappear. The only reason he doesn't follow that second instinct is because even though it truly does feel hopeless, there still is some hope. When he gets jealous and needs space he always comes back, you guys always work it out. You're always patient and kind and understanding and reassuring and love him through it. You don't give up on him or your relationship. He can do that when you come back. He knows he can no matter how hard and uncomfortable and painful and awful it might be until you come back to him.
So Andrew gets out of his Jeep and walks back into the skate park. He's not truly present for the rest of the day, is stuck ruminating on you and trying to figure out how and why you think all the things you said, trying to think about how he's going to make it better and help you. Mostly he just stands and watches, looks out at the ocean more than anything. He responds to people who come up to talk to him, but barely. Nothing super substantive. Deran must realize something major has happened because he starts running interference and dealing with people who want to talk to his brother for whatever reason.
The exhibition ends and Andrew leaves immediately. He doesn't stay with everyone under the bright lights for a while like he usually does. He makes sure one of the kids he 'employs' to do stuff around the place and lock up some nights will do so tonight. And then he goes home and sits in the comfy chair you have in the living room and waits. He can't be on the couch, hasn't been able to all week because it felt wrong to not have you snuggled into him or touching him or to not have his head in your lap or be snuggled into you somehow like always when you guys sit there.
And then he waits. He doesn't turn on the TV, doesn't read a book, doesn't do anything on his phone, though he keeps it close just waiting for the text telling him you're not coming home. He sits in that chair and stares across the room at two of the photos of the two of you that you put up. In both you guys are on the beach, in one you have your arms wrapped around each other as you kiss and in the other you're both smiling for the camera in a selfie you took, Andrew's arms wrapped around your middle and his chin resting on your shoulder while he’s wearing one of those wide, genuine, pure smiles he only gets around you.
He wonders if he'll ever have either with you again.
You have no idea how you keep it together and don't completely fucking lose it on the bus, but you don't. You let yourself grow numb and decide to stay on until one of the stops feels like the right place to get off.
Once you do get off you walk around searching for somewhere private where you can finally lose it, let yourself sob and come totally unglued and then try to put yourself back together again enough to decide what you're doing next. And once you find a spot that you think will work, that's exactly what you do. Sob.
You sob because you believe everything you said to him, that he wants her and loves her more and you're not enough. You sob because at the same time you know that's a load of bullshit, that he loves you so fucking much and is so completely devoted and committed to you and you know he would never look at anyone else, but you can't get your mind completely on board. You sob because you're so sure you just lost him, you know you have, because how could you ever ask or expect him to forgive you. You sob because you don't know what you'll do because he's your world. You sob because you know he's going to realize everything you said was true once he has time to think about it. You sob because you know you ruined everything, ruined the skate park for him, took away the one place outside of your shared home that he loves and is truly happy at.
You sob because you can't believe you hurt him like this, can't believe you've treated him like his fucking mother did. You sob because you feel awful for doubting him when he's done nothing to make you doubt him, has done nothing to deserve all this bullshit and because you do trust him and don't doubt him and yet your brain is being like this. You sob because you don't deserve him, he deserves so much better than you. You sob because he loves you in a way you didn’t know existed and that you know you don't deserve.
And you sob because you love and adore and miss him and don't want to lose him. Don't want him to realize how awful you are, but at the same time don't want him to be with someone who's like his mother.
You don't know how long it takes but eventually you stop sobbing. You think you just ran out of tears and energy to cry. Your breathing eventually returns to normal and the exhaustion slams into you even harder. Time just seems to pass as you stare off into space, try to tell yourself you're numb when you're really feeling everything. You hardly notice it gets dark, it only really clicks when you get cold.
When you look at your phone you're shocked by how late it is, know Andrew will be worrying even more now. You know you implied you might not come home but of course you're going to. You order an uber and slink into it when it arrives, are silent the entire journey.
Andrew starts pacing when it hits 10 p.m. and you aren't home and haven't texted him at all. How could he have fucking ruined this? How did he ruin this? He's not even sure what exactly he did. He knows that your jealousy is similar to his, irrational, and that you know it but can't seem to stop from feeling it. But he truly was only being nice to Amy because she's a friend, if that even. They have a past, yeah, but when he told her the darkest parts of him, when she saw the worst of him she rejected him. It doesn't matter if she's come to be able to accept it now. You heard the darkest parts of him and saw the worst of him and held him as he fell apart about it, helped piece him back together. You saw all of him and accepted him. You’ve never asked or ask him to change. You always see the real him.
He doesn't want to lose that. He can't lose that.
When headlights flash through the window before a car pulls up at the curb of the house he holds his breath that it's you. Holds his breath that you guys can work through this.
He hears your key enter the deadbolt and can't decide whether he should stand or stay sitting, can't decide which you'd prefer. He stays seated as the door opens and you turn on the lights. You're not surprised to find them off, expected him to be sitting or standing somewhere in the living room in the dark.
Once you slip in the door, toe your shoes off and set them on the shoe rack and turn to face the living room, Andrew stands. "Are you okay?" He walks toward you but not too close. Just close enough that he can look you over and make sure you're not hurt or anything.
"Yeah," you whisper. "I'm fine." The way he looks you over makes your heart ache because it's so Andrew and so soft and sweet and devotedand loving and you just don't fucking deserve it.
His eyes trace up and down your form a few more times before he starts trying to catch your eye, something you continually dodge. He frowns to himself and you can see it even not looking at him and you just want to go grab the kitchen knife out of the block and end yourself for the both of you. "Are we okay?" he asks quietly.
That gets you to look at him. "I don't know Andy, are we?"
The relief of making eye contact with you is killed quickly with your question. He doesn't know how to answer. He's not good at this, at being on this side of jealousy, never has been before, not like this. "I… What's going on? I don't… I'm trying. I want to help. You're never like this, and everything you said earlier was wrong, I promise."
"No, Andy, I never show you that I'm like this," you whisper just loud enough for him to hear, your tone strained, full of tears that your eyes don't show yet. You return your volume to normal, a touch quieter than usual, maybe. "Normally I only get like this when you're not around, when I'm not with you. When I'm with you, I don't know. It's easier to calm myself and not let my mind spin. Even when I can only see you it's normally easier, but I don't know. Not today."
You swallow hard and shake your head, sigh deeply as tears hit your eyes, keep looking at him. "Not when I hadn't seen you in a week and knew you had a chance to realize how much better your life could be without me, and how exhausting and difficult I am, how little I actually have to offer. Not when I'd been gone for a week and you wanted to spend time talking with her instead of me."
Your chin wobbles and you look away from him and it kills him, it fucking hurts and he needs to stop it and make it better, never wants to see you crying or feeling this way. He knew you had insecurities, everyone does, you'd told him about some of yours and he'd reassured you. But he never realized you were just as insecure as him in some ways, that you have so many of the same insecurities as him. Because some of the things you just said and said earlier at the skate park are things he's said to you, are things he's felt before.
"I didn't. I didn't want to spend time talking to her, that's not what that was, not at all. I didn't even… that wasn't on my mind. I don't… I wasn't thinking about that or, or anything relating to her really other than she was there and I was happy for her because she got her kid back." He closes his eyes and shakes his head for a second. "That wasn't me wanting to talk to her and not you. She came up to me and you had walked away and I thought you were coming back. That you would come back to me."
You try to really take in what he's saying and believe it because you know it's true, you know he was just waiting for you to come back when she came up, know that it wasn't him wanting to spend time with her and not you. But it's just so fucking hard. You're still too unregulated and out of it and anxious and jealous.
Andrew starts to think about how he feels when he's jealous. He thinks about how irrational he always knows it is but how it doesn't matter and how infuriating that is. He thinks about how he doesn't really mean any of it in a sense, how he knows you'd never do anything and that he can trust you wholly, how he doesn't doubt you and does trust you even though it seems like he doesn't. He thinks about how it's never a reflection on you, never truly has anything to do with you, is just his insecurities playing up.
He starts to think about all the things you do and say when he's jealous to reassure him and bring him back down. How gentle and soft you are with him, holding him and hugging him and kissing him and talking it out with him, reassuring him you know that he trusts you and doesn't doubt you and that it's his insecurities playing up. You always approach him slowly, seem to know how to go at the right speed to give him time to put more distance between you if he really isn't ready yet but not so much that he backs away because he starts to wonder.
"I…" You trail off, have no idea what to say and are afraid if you try to speak you'll end up crying and you don't want to make him have to deal with that, he's already dealing with you too much already.
He takes a couple of slow steps toward you, studying you intently for your reaction. When you don't take a step away he takes another few steps, closes the distance between you. He doesn't touch you just yet, gives you a little more time.
"Hey," he finally says quietly, the word low and raspy from the back of his throat.
A wave of even heavier anxiety crashes over you and you have to bite the inside of your cheek a little harder to fight the tears. You're terrified of what you're going to find on his face when you look up, what he's going to say, even when you know you have no reason to be concerned. After a couple of seconds you do it though, make yourself look up at him.
"Thank you," he murmurs, the very slightest quirk to the corners of his lips. His face is soft, eyes searching, seeking understanding and insight into what to do, how to make you feel better, how to reassure you. There's no anger, no hurt, maybe a touch of sadness in the crinkles at the edges of his eyes but not because he's sad as such, because you're sad and he doesn't like seeing you sad, and some worry in the way he holds his lips and the rounding of his eyes because he's concerned about his ability to help you, to make this better.
He slowly brings his hands up to hold your face, some tension melting from his shoulders when you don't flinch or move or look away. He keeps his hold gentle, but firm enough to help ground you to him, or at least he hopes. That's what it does for him when you hold his face like this. "I love you. I only want you. Neither of those two things will ever change, I promise."
He leans down and in, tilts his head just enough and holds your gaze until he can't anymore and you both close your eyes as Andrew presses his lips to yours, the kiss slightly tentative until he feels you kissing him back. The kiss gets firmer then, a little deeper but no tongue, like he's trying to emphasize his words and make you understand how true they are because he is.
Andrew kisses you several more times and you happily accept all of them, all of the reassurance each kiss brings, all of the reassurance him initiating and him holding your face and him wanting to kiss you and have you close bring. Except there's still a too big part of you that wants to fight it because you don't deserve it and how could he still want you, still a too big part of you that says maybe this is a series of goodbye kisses. But that part of you shrinks with every kiss.
He pulls away from you and presses his lips to your forehead in a sweet, reassuring kiss and then looks at you. "I love you," he repeats. He seals his words with a few seconds of heavy eye contact before his hands move from your face and his arms wrap around your body, pull you against him and hold you close.
His body is so perfectly warm, solid and sturdy and muscular but still soft, comfortable to be pressed into and reassuring and grounding and familiar. His scent fills your nose, remnants of his body wash and the cologne you bought him mix with the salt of the ocean and the heat of the sun and something purely him. You let yourself settle into him, turn your head and rest one side on his chest looking forward to hearing one of your favorite sounds, his heartbeat, steady and strong under your ear, proof he's okay and alive and here.
You swallow hard as you wrap your arms around him tightly, pull yourself a little closer to him and appreciate where you are. Only now are you finally home, because walking in the door to your house was just that, walking in the door to your house. Being taken into or walking into Andrew's arms, that's getting home. Because Andrew is your home.
"I love you too and I hate that I'm putting you through this, making you deal with this, with me," you whisper. "I hate that I'm making you think I don't trust you or that I doubt you. Because I do trust you and I don't doubt you. I'm really sorry. I promise it's not you. It's me. It's all me and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"You're not putting me through anything and I'm not dealing with you. You're not something I ever have to deal with," he says softly, keeps his voice just a touch louder than yours. "And I don't think those things, I know that's not what this is, I promise."
You know you can trust his word more than just about anything in the world but it's so hard to believe him right now when your brain is so focused on how you think those are the only things he should be thinking. You shrug against him a little and he takes a breath.
"I…" He lets out the breath as he thinks about how to explain what he's thinking and feeling in a way that will help you. Because that's all he wants to do right now. Make things better. Make you feel better. He relaxes his arms around you and pulls back out of the hug a little so that you'll look up at him, and you do, almost sheepish and timid. "The way you feel when I'm jealous," he says slowly, "how you know it's not really about you but about me and my head, that's how I'm feeling now. I'm feeling like you do when I'm jealous."
"Oh," you murmur. You're quiet for a few seconds as you let that really sink in, that he doesn't think this is about him or a reflection of him, that he isn't mad or upset with you. "I love you and only want you too, Andy."
You look up at him with big eyes that seem a little glassy and he gets it, he gets that his words have caused that kind of break in your mind that yours do for him when he feels like you do now. He gets that while you can now start truly working through it and forgiving yourself, it's just that. A start. You're not out of your head by any means and things could still potentially get a little worse for you before they get a little better.
"I just, I don't understand," you shrug, stare at a spot on his shirt because you can't look at him, too afraid your words will make him realize he doesn't know either. "I don't understand why anyone would want me, would want to be with me or love me, much less you. And I don't deserve you, I so clearly don't."
"That…" The word is tight as it comes out and he shakes his head. There is so much more he wants to say, that it's him who doesn't deserve you, that you deserve better than him, so much better. But he knows you and knows that if he gives those words a voice, you'll jump at the opportunity to shift the focus from yourself and how you're feeling and your needs to his. So he keeps it simple. "You're wrong." His voice is deep and airy how it can be, like his words are spoken more from his chest than his throat. "And I'll list my reasons why if you need me to."
You force yourself to look back up at him. "I hurt you," you whisper. "And you… you shouldn't forgive me Andrew," tears start streaming down your face as you hold his gaze, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for upsetting you and making you sad and anxious and disappearing on you. It was so unfair of me and it's okay if you, if you can't forgive me for any of it because you shouldn't."
"I was a bitch and then I was horrible and made you worry and I'm sorry. I just missed you so much and I love you and I don't want to lose you and I, I, I'm sorry for hurting you." You move your hands off him and bring them to your chest, suddenly convinced you don't deserve to be touching him, that you don't deserve him or his comfort. Because even if he feels how you feel when he's jealous it's different because this is him, this is you hurting him. "I hate myself for it." You sniffle and shake your head harder, wipe the tears off your face as best you can with your hand. "I hate myself so much for it, Andrew."
Your tears start to fall harder and he hates it, he hates seeing you cry because you should never cry and he hates hearing you say you hate yourself because to him there's nothing about you to hate, only things to love. He goes to grab your hands with his and gently pull you back into him but once his hands are off you and reaching out for yours you take a few steps back from him and it makes his blood start to go icy.
"I'm, I'm sorry." It comes out sobbed and you have to take a few seconds to get a modicum of control back. "I'm sorry for acting like her. For being as bad as, if not worse than your mom. I hate myself even more than I hate her." Your words, comparing yourself to her and especially saying you hate yourself more than you hate her and how sincere you look when you say it make him so nauseous he has to swallow down a dry heave. "I'm sorry for being her, for, for being" you take in a stuttered breath, "being another her in your life. I'm sorry and I'm, I'm," another stuttered breath as you try to keep the full sobs back, "I'm not crying now to try and manipulate you, I, I pr-promise, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
He makes the two steps to get to you and takes your face in his hands, thumbs gentle on your cheekbone below your eyes. He makes eye contact with you and holds it, his usual serious Andrew intensity he projects through his eyes and mouth even more intense, but with an edge of pleading at the corner of his eyes that's not usually there. "Never, never, say that. Never think that." He's quiet for a second as he lets his words sink in, eyes boring into yours. "You are nothing like her, even at your worst. You didn't and you don't act like her. You've never done or said anything that's made me think of her or think that you were being like her for even a single second."
Strong hands squeeze your face so gently to make sure you're really hearing him, your tears wetting his skin as you try and fail to stop them. "You told me you were okay. You needed space but you didn't just go silent on me. You came back and, and you, you didn't pretend like nothing happened or just not talk to me. You're not blaming me and you're not making me question myself and who I am. And I know you're not crying to manipulate me, I know you'd never manipulate me. I trust you."
He leans his head down toward yours and you think he's going to kiss you, something you feel so painfully unworthy of right now, but he doesn't. Because he knows you feel unworthy. You aren't. But he knows you feel it because he feels it too sometimes, especially in the aftermath of something where he thinks he's done wrong or hurt you. And you never force your affection on him. Never force him to take a kiss he doesn't think he deserves. You always let him find his way back to you.
He rests his forehead against yours for a moment before pulling away and placing a kiss there that's so sweet you whimper as another flood of tears rush down the sides of his thumbs. His words are perfect and everything you need to hear and you take them in and try to take them to heart but some piece of your brain stops you, the piece that says you don't deserve him and are awful and really are just like his mom regardless of what he says.
He looks at you again. "You're not her. You're not Smurf," he murmurs, deep and gravelly and so incredibly sure. "You love me. Not what I can do for you or what you can make me do or who you can make me be. You love me."
You take a wracking breath in. "I do, Andrew, I really do, I'm sorry," you sob the breath out. "I don't want to hurt you, and and I did, I was such a bitch, and I, I asked what happened when you saw her last, last time and I watched," you choke through a shuddered breath, "I watched it hurt you, my words hurt, hurt you and I'll never, ne-never forgive myself."
"Hey," he tries to interrupt you, brushes his thumbs along the wet skin of your cheeks hoping it'll ground you.
"N-No, Andy!” It’s high pitched and terrified. “What if I," you're devolving into uncontrollable sobs again, "what if I've ruin-, ruined everything? What if you don't love me anymore because I did this?"
"Have you ever stopped loving me? Have you ever stopped loving me just because I've walked away when I'm jealous? Or because I hurt you when I did?" He raises his brows at you just slightly with the questions. "Even people who love each other how we do still hurt each other sometimes."
"I, I, I…" You shake your head at him and he gets it, he knows what you're telling him, what you need.
You need to let this out, you need him to hold you while you let it all out for good and need him to be your rock, your tether to reality so that you can find your way back. "Okay," he whispers. He releases your face and pulls you back into him, stands there for a minute as you get some of the most violent sobs out of the way and let the adrenaline crash take over your body and mind. "Come on, Sweetheart."
Your hands cling to his shirt as he slowly starts to shuffle the two of you toward your bedroom, his arms tight around your back as you continue to sob into him, trusting him completely to get you wherever you're going safely. He knows he could take you to the shower. He knows that's probably where you expect he's taking you. But he's not. Because Andrew knows you and he knows that showering with him isn't what you need right now.
He knows you're way too unregulated for a shower right now. He knows that you need to feel him, need to feel as much of his skin as possible pressed against yours, need to feel his body weight on top of you, need to feel his lips pressing firm kisses against your neck, need him to help ground you so that you can start to regulate.
When he gets you to the side of the bed he lets go of you so that he can turn on your nightstand lamp and strip himself before he gets your clothes off and you in bed. Without the pressure of his arms around you you're shaking hard from the adrenaline crash. As he tosses the box of tissues onto the bed near the pillows and strips himself you stand there with your hands awkwardly at your sides as you continue to cry because in your addled mind you think he's just leaving you here alone and you know you deserve that as much as you don't want it.
But then you feel his hands at the waistband of your pants pulling them and your underwear down in one go. When he taps your calf you lift your leg so that he can get them off completely, cry a little harder for a second at how sweet he's being. He grabs the hem of your shirt next and pulls it up, helps you get your shirt all the way off and tossed to the floor and then uses one hand to unhook your bra, helps you shrug it off.
"Let's get in bed," he murmurs, stepping to the side of you and peeling back the covers so that you can slide in. One of his hands presses at your lower back to get you to step forward and climb in.
You shake your head at him, wipe at your face in a futile attempt to try and clear your tears. Your vision clears for just long enough that you realize he's naked now, that he's planning on getting in bed with you and holding you through this and you just don't fucking deserve it, your body trembling harder as the realization flows through you. "I, I don't de-deserve to get in bed with you. You should go Andrew, or, or I should go, you deserve better. You shouldn't have to deal with, with this, with me."
"I'm not dealing with anything. I'm helping the woman I love." He steps closer to you and presses a soft kiss to your salty cheek because it just feels like the right thing to do. It melts you. "I'm not going anywhere and I'm not letting you go anywhere. So please get in bed with me."
Even if you had the ability and mental capacity to push back right now, you wouldn't. Because you don't want to. Because you want so, so badly to be in bed with him and feel his skin against yours and the weight of him on top of you. Because you want to calm yourself down so you can apologize properly and the two of you can work through this.
And because even though it's not a conscious thought for you at the moment, deep down you know that you'll calm, that these feelings and the panic will pass and that you and Andrew will make it through this because you're truly devoted to one another, committed to each other and your love, and because you love each other in the most complete and pure way possible.
You nod at him through your tears and slide into bed. He's quick to follow you and wraps his arm around you so that you can't move too far away from him or roll on your side so that you're facing away from him. When you've settled on your back he pulls the covers up over the both of you and moves over you so that his knees are between yours.
He lowers himself on top of you slowly slipping his arms under your shoulders, pauses before he brings his head to your neck. You look so sad beneath him and it kills him. His girl isn't supposed to hurt like this. He's your protector, he's supposed to protect you, supposed to keep you safe and happy and he hasn't. Because he can't, in this case he can't, he can't protect you from your own mind and he knows it.
"I love you," he whispers. Before he lowers himself fully on top of and burrows his face into your neck Andrew kisses away as many of your tears as possible even though he knows they'll be replaced as he settles on you with his face against your neck. And they are.
Once he's settled he brings one hand up and cups the top of your head, his other arm stretching out to the side and finding the hand of your outstretched arm to hold. You squeeze his hand tightly as you continue to cry, bring your other hand to his curls and run your fingers through them because it soothes you just as much as it soothes him. He presses firm kisses to your neck, sucks at it lightly every now and then just to change the sensation for you.
After a minute or so of crying hard you're able to get enough of yourself back to force your mind to focus on Andrew and clear out everything else for right now. And with his weight on you and the warmth of his body seeping into you and his lips at your neck and a hand in his curls and the other in his hand you calm quickly. Your sobs start to trail off and you get your breathing back under control, get some rational parts of your mind back even through the crying induced fuzziness of your brain.
You stay quiet though, continue to focus on him and soothe yourself by playing with his curls and squeezing his hand. Andrew doesn't say anything. He doesn't try to force a conversation, force you to speak to him. He's patient just like you are with him, lays with you and lets you take everything you need from him just like this, waits until you're ready to talk.
Neither of you are sure how long passes, but eventually you let go of his hand so that you can grab some tissues from the box he set near the pillows and clean your face up as best you can, blow your nose and wipe off your cheeks, toss the tissues in the vicinity of the nightstand to deal with later. You bring your hand down and slip it under the covers again to rest against the broad expanse of his back.
"I'm sorry," you whisper, voice scratchy and raw from all the crying. You know you've already apologized multiple times but you need to again. You just need to.
"You have nothing to be sorry for." He shifts his head slightly and kisses just below your ear. "I love you."
"I love you too." The words are shakier than you'd like but you at least don't feel tears behind your eyes. You're not sure if you have any left. "And I have everything to be sorry for." He doesn't say anything. He knows you need to get it all out first, say everything that you need to say to him before he responds. "I want to see you, please," you murmur. You owe it to him to look him in the eye while you apologize again.
He nods against your neck and then pulls his head away. Before he moves off you he leans in and gives you a chaste but lingering kiss that puts another piece of your heart and mind back together. When you finally break apart it's easy and practiced the way the two of you move to get into a comfortable position on your sides, legs tangled together and abdomens and chests pressed together as much as they can be while you remain far enough apart to see each other. Your top arms wrap over each other's sides and move smoothly up and down each other's skin.
His eyes are unfairly beautiful in the low lighting of the lamp, his skin still so warm against yours. You take in a deep breath and let it out. "I'm sorry for all of the tears, and you having to deal with this on top of everything and be the one to soothe me when I'm the one who hurt you and I should be soothing and taking care of you. And I'm sorry for being mean and saying hurtful things and walking away instead of talking it out and listening to you."
You shrug slightly, frowning, your chin quivering just slightly even though there aren't any tears. "It's not an excuse but I was scared. I was just so scared. All I could think about was her coming back into your life after you'd been away from me for a week and probably realized that your life could be better without me, that you could find someone better, someone easier and with more to offer. And it felt so poetic, so perfectly right. You to have that realization while I'm away and her to show up to underscore it and be there and everything you need and deserve and want."
Your eyes, like the rest of you, are the most beautiful thing in the world to Andrew, but right now they're painful to look at because they show him just how much you believe he has or should have that realization, how much you believe that his life could be better without you, that he could find someone better and how much you believe she's everything he needs and deserves.
He supposes you might be right about deserving, perhaps. Because she didn't accept him like you do, didn't accept all of him and he's still not completely convinced he deserves to be accepted. That he deserves you and your love. So maybe she is what he deserves but only in the sense that you're so far beyond what he deserves.
"I forgive you." He uses the same tone you use with him, firm and allowing no room for questioning while still loving and soft, no anger or frustration or hurt or irritation present in it. "And I understand how you're feeling. But I promise you that I didn't realize any of that because none of that is true. I was miserable without you."
"I don't want her back," he shakes his head. He knows that he needs to hear you rebut his thoughts when he gets jealous, knows how important it is to him, how reassuring it is, how it's often what lets him work to let go of it. So he does the same for you in hopes it'll help you too and thinks back on everything you said today. He hasn't forgotten any of it. "She was never and still isn't and will never be my first choice. You are. She's not prettier or more attractive than you. She isn't better than you in any way, she's not what or who I need and she doesn't understand or relate to me better, she rejected me. Even after you saw all of me, heard everything I've done, you accepted all of me. You love all of me and you make sure I know. I don't love her. Never have, never will."
"A week without you was excruciating." He pauses to let you take in everything he's said so far before he continues. "You're not difficult and you offer me everything and then some. You're so much more than enough, without trying. You're the one I need. You're mine. You're mine and…" He shakes his head, trying to figure out where he wants to go with this, isn't convinced he's helping anything. "You're mine and I'm never letting you go."
You're quiet for a moment as you try to wrap your mind around everything Andrew has said, try to get yourself to believe. Because in the same way Andrew can see in your eyes how much you believe what you're saying, you can see in his how much he believes and means and needs you to know and understand in his.
"I don't want you to think I doubt you, or don't trust you. I'm sorry if it seems that way, and I'm sure it does, I just, my brain-"
"Hey," he cuts you off gently. "I know you trust me and don't doubt me."
You bite down on your bottom lip, try to get your head to still and accept his words. "I love you."
The corners of Andrew's lips twitch up, his smile more visible in his eyes than his lips in that distinctively Andrew way he has. "I love you too. I missed you." He emphasizes the word with a soft squeeze of your hip.
"I missed you, my love. I missed you so fucking much." You can't help but smile, as small as it is, when his lips pull up into a proper smile when you call him your love. It's been years and he'll never get used to it. You lean forward and steal another few kisses from him before snuggling into him even closer and pressing one side of your face against his chest to let yourself listen to the familiar, soothing beat of his heart. "You didn't sleep much this week," you murmur your observation.
"I'm okay." The vibration of his chest as he speaks is soothing, makes you feel so connected to him and helps you further regulate and come out of your state of total insecurity. "When's the last time you ate?"
You wince against him slightly and he feels it, knows the answer already. "I had dinner at the airport."
"Last night?"
"Yeah," you murmur, turn your head and try to hide it in his chest. "I know, I'm sorry."
"Hey," his voice is so low and all gravel and it has you equal parts hot for him and wanting to cry with how loving he sounds, "I'm not mad. What do you want?"
You shrug against him. "Whatever you want."
He purses his lips to himself, he should've seen that one coming if for no other reason than you're insecure and anxious right now and just want to make him happy. "Okay." He's not going to push you to decide tonight, knows it'll be counterproductive and that it's better for him to pick and order for you. "I have to let you go so I can roll over and grab my phone out of my jeans."
You tense against him. It's completely irrational and you know it, you know it, but you can't help it, can't stop the dread and the anxiety from racing through you and chilling your blood. You swallow hard. "You'll come back, right?" you whisper.
"Sweetheart," he whispers, letting out a breath. He curls his hand around the back of your neck lightly and pulls you away gently as he leans back so that you can see each other. He's not sure where to start, what to say to be the most reassuring. "I'll always come back to you."
You look at him for a few seconds and then nod, already feeling guilty about voicing your unjustified and unfair worry. Part of you wants to ask if you can keep some part of you touching him the entire time but you know that's ridiculous. He's literally just grabbing his jeans that are on the floor two steps from the bed.
Andrew's eyes sweep over your face before he gives you a kiss and then untangles his legs from yours and rolls so that he can sit up and get out of bed. Once he sits up though he offers you his hand that's closest to you. He knows how reassuring physical touch can be for him and he could read on your face that you wanted to ask him for something. "Come on." He tilts his head toward the edge of the bed.
Tears finally sting at the back of your eyes again as you look at him and find a reassuring smile in his eyes and the corner of his lips. "I love you," you whisper as you take his hand.
He squeezes your hand in his. "I love you too."
In the end you don't even have to move that far, Andrew's able to sit on the edge of the bed and reach for and grab his jeans. He's able to get his phone out of the pocket with one hand and then is back in bed with you, lays back against the pillows and lets you curl into his side and rest your head on his chest before he orders. Once the food arrives and you've both eaten you're quickly snuggled up together again in bed.
You're clingy right now and you both know it. You were this morning when you first reunited before anything happened so now you are even more so. And he gets it because he gets the same way after something like this, feels that same kind of anxiety that drives an intense neediness and clingy-ness so that you can reassure yourself everything is okay.
So he holds you like you hold him, like he was earlier before you ate, naked, on your sides, legs tangled together with one side of your head pressed against his chest and your arm reaching under his and bending at your elbow so that your hand can reach up and play with the curls at the nape of his neck. You chat about whatever comes to mind, really Andrew carries it for you and asks you questions about your week, remembers everything you told him each night when you recapped your day as the two of you facetimed and asks you more detailed follow up questions because he's interested and because he knows it'll help keep your mind busy and distracted and not spinning.
"I'm sorry for ruining today for you," you tell him a few seconds after you finish answering a question for him before he can ask you a new one. "The exhibition." You know it wasn't the first one and that there are already more planned, but still. It's always a good day for him and you ruined that.
"You didn't." He hears you click your tongue and feels your small shrug. "You didn't, I promise."
Though you're not convinced you don't push back. "I definitely ruined our reunion," you murmur. "This isn't how I wanted our first day and night back together to go."
He takes in and lets out a slightly deeper breath. "It's not how I did either," he admits, not one to sugar coat things and certainly not one to lie. "But it's the end of the day and I'm here in bed with you and that's really all I wanted." He bends his head and presses a soft kiss to the top of yours, lets himself take the little moment of extra comfort and nuzzles his nose there. "All I needed," he whispers so quietly you're not sure if you were meant to hear it.
"Same," you whisper back, rolling your head and pressing a kiss to his chest before settling again. Comfortable silence falls over the two of you for thirty or so seconds. "Hey Handsome?"
All these years you've been calling him that and he still isn't used to it, still isn't sure it's true but you certainly are, you've told him all about it and shown him multiple times. "Yeah?"
"Thank you." What for is unspoken because it's thank you for everything, for every little thing he's done for you since you got back and everything he's ever done for you and everything he will ever do for you. And you know that Andrew knows.
"Always." The words fall off his tongue before he even consciously realizes what he's saying, that he's repeating what you always say to him when he thanks you after something like this. "I've always got you."
You let out the softest laugh through your nose and he can feel your lips pull up in a small smile against his chest. You pull your head from his chest and tilt it back to look up at him. He understands, gives you one of those adorable pursed lip crooked smiles and then leans his head down and kisses you, chaste and almost teasing at first with how short he keeps them.
Andrew can tell from the way you respond that you're ready, out of your head enough now for even more physical reassurance, though he knows that, like him after he gets jealous and you have to hold him and reassure him and talk it out with him, you won't ask for it right now. He can tell that you need more physical reassurance, that you're craving the comfort and reassurance that comes from the physical act of loving each other. He knows how much it helps him when you so readily and willingly give yourself to him completely after something like this, how healing it is for him. And he wants to give you that, he wants to do everything he possibly can to make you feel better, to make you feel secure and wanted and needed and loved, because god are you.
He deepens the kisses that he gives you, swipes his tongue at the seam of your lips with just the right pressure to let you know that he wants this, wants you, but that there's no pressure if you're still not ready. When you open your mouth for him with the airiest moan he's quick to slip his tongue inside and start slowly rolling you onto your back as he licks into your mouth.
One hand is quick to tangle in his hair, your other slipping under his arm and curling over his shoulder. Andrew kisses you possessively, tries and succeeds in making you feel like you're his with each kiss. He pulls away so you can both get some air and so he can look down at you, rolls his hips slightly so he knows for certain that you feel how hard he is, wants to make sure you're okay with this and where you're headed. He hopes you are because he needs this, needs to show you how much he loves you with his body, how it's only you, only ever going to be you.
And you are. Of course you are. You've been dreaming about this, having him like this again for a week. You've needed it, needed him and to feel as close to him as possible and be physically intimate with him and love him and be loved by him with your bodies. Your neediness is only heightened by everything that happened earlier today, your mind and body craving this type of love and reassurance on top of all the love and reassurance he's already given you with his words and other actions. It's not that what he's already done isn't enough, it's just different.
Andrew's hand drags down your body, fingertips light against your skin as he moves his fingers closer and closer to where you both want them. He kisses you again as the pads of his fingers hit your clit, a low groan at how you're already so wet he can feel it there blending with the soft moan the contact pulls from you. He works your clit for a beat or two and then readjusts his hand and sinks a finger inside of you, swallows down the moan it pulls from you that's muffled against his lips.
A second finger slips inside of you with the first on his next pass and you keen into the kiss as your back tries to arch at the feeling, his weight on top of you keeping you pressed against the mattress. He brings his thumb to your clit and starts rubbing deliciously slow circles. Andrew takes his time kissing you and fucking you with his fingers, absolutely living for every little noise and moan of his name or how good he is that you make for him, that he pulls from you that tells him how good he's making you feel, pride blooming in his chest.
He works a third finger inside of you, crooks his fingers perfectly to rub that extra sensitive spot as you get wetter and wetter and tighter and tighter around him, groans at how you swell and clench around them. Your kisses become needier and sloppier the longer he fucks you with his fingers and teases your clit with his thumb. Each time you break your kisses for air his lips don't truly leave you, continue kissing at your jaw and your neck and your collarbones.
You tug harder on his curls than you have been and he pulls his lips from yours, flutters his eyes open to look down at you and see what you need. "I need you." The words are almost caught in your throat with how breathy they are, sound so overwhelmingly needy and desperate he shivers.
"Come for me," he murmurs, lips brushing over yours.
"On your cock, yeah," you pant against his lips. He kisses you again, lingering and still, but so beautifully loving it drives you insane. You can just tell he's thinking about whether to make you come on his fingers first or to give you what you want.
You let out the sweetest sigh that has just a hint of a whine to it as he makes his mind up and pulls his fingers from you. As much as he'd have loved to make you come on his fingers, would've loved to feel it and watch your face as you fell apart for him, more than anything he wants to make you happy and give you everything you want. And if you want the first orgasm he gives you after a week apart to be on his cock who is he to demand differently.
He leans up off of you more while he licks his fingers clean, groans deep and rumbly from his chest, almost a growled purr, as he tastes you. You feel his cock throb against you and whine, desperate to feel him inside you and kiss him again and be close.
Your heart starts to fall when he moves off of you completely. "What?" You sit up on your elbows to watch him, confused.
He settles himself against the headboard and crosses his legs, beckons you with a finger that was just inside you that you swear you can still feel. "Come here."
You sit up and look at him for a second, greedily run your eyes up and down his torso and over his cock, thick thighs and defined arms, all of him littered with freckles you've kissed a million times. "Yeah?" you whisper as you crawl over to him.
"Yeah," he nods, eyes almost gold in the lighting.
Andrew holds his hand out for you and you take it. It's a little awkward climbing onto his lap, but it's also not because you sit like this sometimes out on the beach. You wrap your legs around his lower back between him and the pillow that cushions your legs and his back from the headboard. You lean back a little then, rest your hands above the sides of his knees and push up so that he can line himself up with you.
You're breathing hard when he notches himself inside of you. His hands find your hips and squeeze, almost unfathomably gentle with the way he’s holding you up some. "I've got you," he murmurs, nodding and letting you know that you can start moving back into your regular position and he won't let you suddenly take all of him unless you want to.
While there are times you do love the stretch and the pleasurable burning pain of taking him all at once, tonight you want the slowness, to feel every inch and ridge and vein of him as you take him for the first time in a week. "Oh," you moan as Andrew groans steadily, both of you already breathing hard as you finally take him all the way, fully seated on him again, the lotus position and the incredible closeness it offers perfect and exactly what you both need, especially you after today. It almost makes you teary because you know he picked this position deliberately knowing you needed the extra closeness and intimacy.
You lean in and kiss him, both of you keeping your hips still and just basking in the feeling of each other like this. He wraps his arms around you in a tight hug and you thread yours around his neck, deepen the kiss and let him take over your every sense.
"I missed you," you breathe against his lips when you have to break away for air. "I missed you so much it hurt."
"Fuck, I missed you too," he rasps. And fuck, has he. In every sense. In this sense, it's been a week without you and he can't remember the last time he went that long without being inside you. He's missed how good you feel, how good you make him feel, missed the intimacy of this and getting to have you and see you like this. "Never stopped thinking about you."
You kiss again, stay like that for who knows how long, cockwarming him as you hug and make out and whisper soft words of love and adoration to each other and let your hands run up and down each other's backs. The emotional and physical connection is healing and reassuring, oxytocin flooding your systems and bonding you even closer somehow.
You're not even completely consciously aware of when you start to grind down and against him. The groans and soft sighs and moans you pull from each other blend into your kisses so seamlessly, are so normal and natural for the two of you that it doesn't make either of you realize.
It's not until you unknowingly find the perfect angle and movement of your hips that has his head rubbing insistently at your g-spot that you realize just how much you're grinding, the jolts of pleasure for both of you making you gasp into your kiss and have to pull away for air. "Oh Andy," you sigh his name through a moan, resting your hands on his shoulders and keening for him when his lips start teasing your neck how he knows you love.
His hands find your hips but stay light, he doesn't take control of how you grind against him. He starts thrusting as much as he can as you grind, small and shallow, but breathtaking with how full you already feel. He kisses down your neck to your collarbone, his breath heavy and hot against your skin as he nibbles on it and laves his tongue over it to soothe. His lips find their way back up the other side of your neck until they're right at your ear, the groans and grunts he makes for you, that you pull from him, making you grind harder as you chase the growing pleasure and promise of both of your orgasms.
"I've needed you," he breathes lowly. "Need you." His admission is vulnerable and desperate and pure and so freely and openly given because he wants you to know, needs you to know how much he needed and needs you.
"You always have me," you pant, turn your head into his slightly and kiss his cheek. "I'm always yours, doesn't matter where we are, together or apart."
His hands slide from your hips up to your waist and squeeze before they start to trail all over your body, the perfect balance of gentle reverence and greedy presses of his fingers into your skin. "Can't believe you're mine," he mumbles, an awe in his voice that you're not sure you deserve to have used in relation to you. He kisses you and it's chaste, lingering and firm and so incredibly fucking hot in it's own way. Andrew rests his forehead against yours once he breaks the kiss and then pulls back to look at you because he needs you to really hear him. "I love you," he whispers. "I love you because you understand me without me having to explain."
"And because you don't ask me to change, don't need or want me to be someone else." He isn't normally vocal like this. He's become more vocal over the years, certainly, but this is different, this isn't just groaning and dirty talk or whispers of love and other sweet nothings. These are reasons, reassuring explanations that you already know because he's told you and shown you a million times before, but never like this, never this explicit during sex.
There's something so soft about his eyes as blown as they are with pleasure while he holds your gaze, something about them that makes your heart ache beautifully, that makes you feel so fucking loved and adored and cherished. "Andrew…" You pray your eyes or your words or your whatever make him feel the same. You slide your hands up his neck and into his hair, look at him teary from his words and his touch and his love. "My love…"
"I told you I'd-" his voice catches in his throat when you grinding against him particularly hard hits perfectly with his small thrust up. "Told you I'd list my reasons."
You remember him saying that earlier of course, that he'd list his reasons why he wants you and loves you. It's not that you thought he wouldn't or couldn't, him listing them just hadn't been on your mind because he's shown you more than enough with less explicit words and with his body and his actions and his eyes and the way he treated you and how he held you while you sobbed. "You don't have to."
"I want to." He skims his hands along your skin up to your breasts, takes them in his hands and groans in this way that tells you he missed you, missed them and getting to hold them like this and use them to make you feel good.
You let your head fall back as you moan in pleasure, your eyes fluttering closed as you focus on the feeling of his large, warm hands kneading your breasts, thumbs brushing over your nipples so teasingly you shiver almost violently at how good it feels. "You do show me, you know, and tell me. That you love me and why you do, why you want me. I promise I know you love me, it's not that I don't or that you don't show it enough or well enough, I promise it's not that."
"Shh," he soothes you, an edge of a groan to it because you feel so good around him and grinding against him. "I know. I promise I know."
Your hands tug on his curls as you keep your pace, grind against him far too slowly but just fast enough. "It's just hard for me to understand why. Why me, why you want me, why you love me."
"I know," he nods, voice pure gravel and rasp, breathy with pleasure. "I know you don't understand the same way I don't when you say it sometimes. You're just going to have to trust me when I tell you that I'm lucky to get to love and be loved by you."
You hold his eye contact, clench around him even tighter and grind a bit faster at how good he sounds, how he's panting slightly now and how he looks so beautifully relaxed and like nothing could touch him in this moment, like he's complete again after a week without you. "I love you," you murmur, watch him relax even more at the words.
"I love you," he nods once, rolls your nipples between his thumb and forefinger as he kisses you. "Because you put me first, even over yourself. Nobody ever has before. But you always do."
"You love me for me. You make me feel like enough even when I can't understand why you think I am." His hands leave your breasts, move back to your hips. He still doesn't take control as such but he squeezes them a bit, helps use the leverage to fuck up into you a little harder, his mind, like yours, growing hazier and hazier with pleasure. "You… You're the only person in my life who's never made me feel like a bad person or like they'd be better off without me."
"You make me feel worthy. You're the only one." You let out a soft whine, his words and his hands and his cock overwhelming you. He grunts when you start to grind even harder and faster against him. "You make me feel seen." When you gently bring your forehead to rest against his he kisses you, long and slow and deep until he can't anymore. "You make me feel loved. You make me feel so goddamn loved," he pants softly against your lips.
A wordless moment passes, only the combination of your soft pants and noises of pleasure and the delicately obscene and slick sound of your pussy each time you take him one of his shallow thrusts filling the air. He can tell you're close with the way you drop and angle your hips to seek out more friction for your clit from the base of him and his lower abdomen and from the way you're clenching around him so erratically.
He gives you a lingering kiss and then rasps, something longing to it. "Look at me."
You pull your forehead from his and moan loudly when you let your eyes trail over his body greedily, his skin sweat slicked and flushed, abs and arms and chest all flexed, perfectly defined muscles prominent and clichéingly mouth-watering, neck strained with pleasure, veins popping under taut skin. You need more of him. You need all of him. You know you have all of him right now but you still need more. You love this, love this position and the closeness and intimacy and it was so much more than what you needed and was so good you can taste your orgasm. But with the way he looks and the way he sounds and feels and the words he's saying to you, you need him to fuck you.
Your eyes find his already looking at you, waiting for you and absolutely smoldering. He holds your gaze for a few seconds before speaking. "It's you. Only ever will be you. You're my first and only choice. You have been since the day we met, before we were together." Your breath catches in your throat at his words, hips slowing as his love overwhelms you and puts back together what you yourself broke of your heart earlier today. "You never have anything to worry about, Sweetheart. You're mine and I'm yours. Only yours…Forever."
Tears hit your eyes and you fight back the urge to apologize. The tears aren't bad, they're not of sadness or hurt or guilt or from feeling blamed. They're tears of love and being loved, of relief that he knows how much you love him, of healing and reassurance, and yes, some of pleasure.
You bring your hands to his face and gently run your thumbs over his cheekbones before holding his face. You click your tongue against the back of your teeth lightly. "You're my first and only choice too. I'm yours forever, Andrew." You lean in and kiss him, feel his strong jaw relax under your hand as he opens his mouth for you as you coax it open with your tongue.
It's too much for him. You're too much for him, make him feel too good, make him feel sure of himself, and confident and safe enough to want and to take what he wants, with your consent of course. And right now he wants you harder and faster and to make you feel so good you can't breathe for a minute, wants to make you moan his name loudly once you regain your breath, his real name that you helped him take back for himself years ago but that he still lets only you use.
One arm wraps around your back and holds you close to him as he shifts, carefully uncrosses his legs as he kisses you and gets his knees bent under him so that he can push up. He takes you with him as you cling to him, knows you want this and are more than okay with this by the way you moan into his mouth and adjust yourself and your legs to help him. He walks forward on his knees a few steps and then lays you back on the bed, following you so that he never slips out of you and you never have to stop kissing.
He starts fucking you hard, finally able to truly thrust and work himself in and out of you at a pace that has your kiss breaking as you both pant hard. Andrew pulls off you just enough to move his arms under your knees to shift you into more of a mating press when he leans back over you.
"Andy," you pant, high pitched and needy and begging, for what you're not entirely sure. You slide one hand into his curls, the other clawing at his back. "Oh fuck, you feel so good," your words slur together, "need to come, I've missed you, needed you. Make me feel so good, fucking good." You're babbling for him, fucked out and beyond reassured and he fucking loves it when you get like this. When he makes you feel like this. "Need to feel you come in me, please, Andy. Please, please, need it, need you."
That just about has him losing it, you begging to feel him come inside of you. He picks his pace up, rutting into you harder and faster, but so careful not to fall into too much of a rhythm, preferring to keep the way he drills his cock into you a little unpredictable for the edge he can always see and hear and feel it gives you.
"Come for me then Beautiful," he rasps, shifting his weight slightly and shoving his hand between the two of you until his fingers hit your clit and make your entire body jolt and you whine loudly. "Make me come."
"I'm gonna," you nod. His fingers on your clit and the way his cock is hitting perfectly and you can feel him everywhere and smell him and still taste him on your tongue make your brain short out as the pleasure only he can give you begins to completely overtake you. He hits a certain stroke and you almost thrash under him at how good it feels. "Fuck!"
He keeps that exact stroke now, feels you getting tighter and tighter for him as you hold your breath in longer and longer intervals as Andrew and pleasure take over your entire being, become all you know. "I'm gonna come, Andy, please don't stop," you whine, words almost all air. "Please… please."
Andrew loves watching you come, loves watching the immediate build up to it and he’ll never get enough of watching your orgasm break over you. "I love you," he pants, knows what it'll do to you.
And he's right. Those three words from his lips, in his own fucked out, gravelly voice are what finally push you over the edge and have you absolutely shattering around him. "Andrew!" you moan loudly, end up holding your breath after you get his name out because you forget how to take a breath in you're so overwhelmed by pleasure.
"Fuck!" he growls, pinches your clit a little sharply to get you to breathe again for him before returning to rub circles and draw out your orgasm as long as he possibly can. "Gonna come," he pants under his breath, his pace growing erratic as you squeeze him and grow slicker with each passing second. He hears your moans take on a sharper edge and pulls his hand off your clit, balances on both arms again and absolutely rails you as he chases his own orgasm. "I'm gonna come, gonna come for you…"
"Andrew, please!" you cry out for him, need to feel him come inside you, feel his warmth spread throughout your whole body. "Need it, need to feel it, feel you. Please come for me, come inside me, missed you so much, love you so much."
Your words are barely coherent with how cock drunk and pleasure foggy and floating you are. But your words and the feeling of your cunt squeezing him and quivering around him as you ride out the aftershocks of your orgasm as he continues fucking you are so much more than enough for him and he comes with a loud groan of your name, his face breaking in pleasure so handsomely and erotically you think for a second you might come again. Your name drips off his tongue like a groaned prayer as he fucks himself through it, fills you just like you asked him to.
"Thank you," you moan softly as you feel him spill inside of you and his warmth seep through your body just how you'd been craving for a week. "Thank you Handsome, thank you. Love you so much, always will, I'll always be yours."
"Fuck, I'll always be yours," he grunts as he slows his pace, drags himself in and out of you slowly, overstimulating himself but unable to stop despite knowing he can have you again whenever he wants because you feel too fucking good and he loves being this close to you too fucking much. "Fuck, Sweetheart, fuck."
Andrew finally stills and looks down at you, chest heaving and skin glistening with sweat. A few sweaty curls are plastered to his forehead, the rest of them askew and messy from your hands. He looks beautiful, handsome, and perfect. And yours. He looks like he's yours. The same way you're sure you look like you're his.
You bite your bottom lip and smile at him. He raises his eyebrows slightly, lips quirking at the sides and one corner pulling up in an amused, lopsided smile that somehow melts you even more for him. "This is how I wanted our first night back together to go," you giggle. "Sweaty, messy curls, and you inside me."
Andrew laughs softly, shaking his head at you. All he's wanted since you left the skate park is to see you smile and hear you laugh and he thinks it's funny how, in this moment combined with these circumstances, he doesn't think there's anything you could say or do that would reassure him as much as that sight and sound do. "I love you," he murmurs through his smile and laughter as he leans down to kiss you.
It's funny because you find yourself thinking the exact same thing about his smile and laugh, how in the moment nothing he could say or do could reassure you more. You can't help the way your smile widens as his lips get closer to yours. "I love you more, Andrew."
I love him so much I can barely stand it. He deserves everything!!!!! I hope it was okay enough and you were able to enjoy and thank you so much for reading! ♥️
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The airport is almost empty at one in the morning.
Everything feels muted,lights dimmed, announcements rare, footsteps echoing too loudly against polished floors. You stand near the arrival gate in fuzzy pajama pants, an oversized coat thrown over your hoodie, hair pulled into a messy bun that gave up hours ago.
You look ridiculous.
You don’t care.
Your phone buzzes in your hand.
Landed. Taxiing.
Your heart jumps painfully in your chest.
Finally.
You lean against the railing, blinking sleep from your eyes. It’s been weeks of time zones, missed calls, games you watched alone on the couch, falling asleep to his voice through a screen instead of his arms.
Two days.
That’s all you get this time.
You hear the sound of rolling suitcases before you see him.
Tall. Broad shoulders. Familiar stride even after all this time.
And then he’s there.
Evgeni steps through the sliding doors, travel-worn and exhausted, duffel bag slung over his shoulder, hoodie pulled up. His eyes scan the small crowd lazily,
Until they land on you.
He freezes.
Just for a second.
Then the bag drops to the floor.
He crosses the distance in long strides, hands already reaching for you, like his body decided before his brain could catch up.
You don’t say anything when he pulls you into him. You just bury your face into his chest, breathing him in like oxygen.
“Hey,” you whisper, voice thick.
“Hey,” he murmurs back, arms wrapping around you tight,tight enough to ground you, tight enough to remind you he’s real.
You feel his chin rest on top of your head.
“You came,” he says softly, like he still can’t quite believe it.
“You landed,” you reply. “Of course I came.”
He laughs quietly, the sound rumbling through his chest. “You’re in pajamas.”
“Don’t start.”
“I like,” he says. “You look… real.”
You pull back just enough to look at him. Dark circles under his eyes. Tired smile. Still devastatingly familiar.
“You look exhausted.”
“I am,” he admits. “But I see you, so… is okay.”
He leans down and presses his forehead to yours, breathing you in.
“I am home,” he whispers. “Even if only for two days.”
Your chest tightens.
“Come on,” you say, nudging him gently. “Let’s get you out of here.”
The drive is quiet in that comfortable, fragile way that only happens after long separations.
Streetlights pass rhythmically. The radio hums low. Evgeni’s hand finds yours automatically on the center console, fingers lacing with practiced ease.
You glance over at him.
He’s watching you.
“What?” you ask.
“I miss this,” he says simply.
“Me too.”
He squeezes your hand. “You tired?”
“I waited up for you,” you admit. “I can sleep later.”
He hums. “You always do that.”
“Someone has to.”
He chuckles, then grows quieter. “You should rest when I’m gone.”
“I try.”
He doesn’t push. He knows what distance does to you,how nights stretch too long, how empty the bed feels without him.
When you pull into the driveway, he exhales deeply, like the tension he’s been holding onto since boarding the plane finally loosens.
Home.
Inside, the house is dark and still. You flick on a small lamp in the living room, soft light filling the space.
Evgeni drops his shoes by the door and immediately pulls you back into him.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
You melt into his chest, arms wrapping around his waist. He smells like travel and cold air and something undeniably him.
“I missed you,” you whisper.
“I know,” he says quietly. “I miss you every day.”
He presses a kiss to your hair, then your temple, then your cheek.
“You eat?” he asks.
“Barely.”
He sighs. “We order food tomorrow. Tonight, we sleep.”
You smile faintly. “Deal.”
In bed, the world feels right again.
Evgeni lies on his back, one arm tucked beneath your head, the other resting on your back, fingers tracing slow, absent-minded patterns through your hoodie.
You curl into him, nose pressed against his collarbone.
“You feel warmer than my pillow,” you murmur.
“I hope so,” he says dryly. “I am human.”
You laugh softly, then grow quiet.
“Two days,” you whisper.
“I know.”
Your voice wobbles despite your effort. “It’s never enough.”
He shifts slightly, pulling you closer, lips brushing your forehead.
“I wish I could stay longer,” he says. “I hate leaving you like this.”
“I know,” you whisper. “I don’t want you to feel guilty.”
“I still do,” he admits. “Every time.”
You lift your head to look at him. “You don’t have to choose. I know what your career means to you.”
“And you mean more,” he says instantly.
Your breath catches.
He continues, softer now. “Hockey is big part of my life. But you are my life.”
You swallow, emotions threatening.
“Zhenya…”
He cups your cheek gently. “We are building something. Distance doesn’t break it.”
You nod, resting your forehead against his.
“Promise me something,” you say.
“What?”
“Next time you leave… don’t act like it’s goodbye forever.”
He smiles faintly. “Okay.”
“And promise you’ll come back.”
He presses a kiss to your lips,slow, tender.
“I always come back to you.”
You relax against him, eyes finally drifting closed, exhaustion catching up now that he’s here.
Evgeni watches you fall asleep, thumb brushing gently across your jaw.
He whispers softly, not caring if you hear this time.
“Sleep, moya lyubov’. I’ve got you.”
And for two days,however brief,they belong to each other again.
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