this frail, battered creature was not the albert that jeffrey knew.
the man before him was small and seated in a looming wheelchair, with shaking, bony hands, and a drawn face, eyes too sad to be albert’s. his hair was shot through with grey, a tatty old union-blue coat pulled defiantly over his shoulders. he looked defeated.
but there was a stubborn set to his jaw that jeffrey recognized, deep blue eyes that he would know anywhere. his nose was the same shape, mouth still set in that hard, habitual line, as if he were preparing for a fight. freckles were dusted across his cheeks, almost hidden in his sun-browned, weathered face. and even wheelchair-bound and slower with age, every movement was so achingly familiar.
when he saw jeff, his expression softened in some indescribable way, and jeff swore that something in him finally slotted into place.
oh, he knew that albert would always be one of his biggest regrets, that he’d forever be haunted with all the what-ifs and the could-have-beens. he had known albert for so short of a time, really, and their lives had taken them half a century apart, but jeff had known in some way from the second he’d seen him that he would love this man for the rest of his life.
there was so much that he wanted to say in that moment, words crowding behind his teeth, and had he been a younger man- the man that had known albert- they’d have all come tumbling out in an instant. but now jeff was an old man, too, and tempered and changed, and so he just adjusts his grip on his cane and says, “albert d.j. cashier.”
(the words still come out cracked, though.)
and albert smiles, something wide and bright that calls to mind late-night pickets and stories told over a fire, and says, “jeffrey n. davis,” and jeff feels like himself for the first time in fifty years.
she was intelligent and witty and stubborn. had she not wanted a husband, she wouldn’t have gotten one; a woman like her had the determination to make it in the world on her own. it wasn’t necessary to have a man in her life. she married, instead, for love.
but she knew that there was a part of jeff- some sad, tender part- that she would never know.
they had met in the aftermath of the war, those few dragging months through the summer and fall of ‘65 when those at home were choked with hope, when soldiers began straggling home. he had moved slowly, then, injured in both body and spirit, like someone who’d had his heart broken; but he watched her with some strange sort of warmth, some sort of affection, and betty had swallowed her pride and fallen in love with him anyway.
but jeff only ever talked about the war in bits and pieces. he’d talk about the places he’d been, describing vicksburg up upon that cliff in vivid detail, and in the dark nights when they curled around each other in bed he’d talk about the battles, the blood and death and terrible, breathless fear.
he never talked about the people, though. the places and the battles, but never the people. betty never pushed.
but she did wonder. sometimes she would catch him drifting, a vague look on his face as he strolled down paths in his mind that she couldn’t follow, replayed memories that she didn’t know.
they had been married for nearly a decade by the time he first speaks of it. it is late in the evening and she has just finished putting the girls to bed, and jeff sits staring into the fire, laurie fast asleep in his lap.
“betty,” he says, slow and hesitant, like it pains him. she freezes, feels something go cold down in her gut. “betty, i’ve been in love before i met you.”
and all at once she can breathe again, thaws out, says, “i know.”
“you know?” there is a furrow between his brows, confusion writ across his face as he looks at her.
“jeffrey, darlin’,” she tells him, “you wear your heart on your sleeve. it was always there, in everything you did.”
he blurts, “it was a man.”
betty thinks about that for a moment, lets it sink in as she gathers laurie up in her arms, holds him close. their little boy, who resembled her husband so much she often felt as if she were looking back in time. “alright.”
“i still love him, betty.”
and she smiles, then, something small and sad, and says, “i know that, too.”
rating: g
characters: albert cashier, jeffrey n. davis
word count: 1004
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As it happened, Albert wasn’t entirely sure where to start helping Jeff.
He spends a few days just using search engines, typing in Jeff Davis, and then Jeffrey Davis, Jeffrey Davis Civil War, Jeffrey Davis Belvidere, and half-heartedly combing through the first three pages of results for each search. But Albert had never been a good researcher- had never had the patience or the passion for it- and so he quickly burned out of ideas.
He wastes a few more days dithering around the idea of going to a library, of finding some archive to bury himself in, if only to feel useful.
He didn’t, though. He did have other things to do.
Albert felt almost guilty about it. He had promised Jeff that he would help him, help to find out what happened to his family, but he really was next to useless. He hems and haws over that, worries about it to the point that it stacked up on his classes and his work and left Walter watching him with a keen eye.
“You smell like alcohol,” says Jeff’s accusing voice behind him.
Albert sighs, rubs at the hair standing up on the back of his neck, and doesn’t turn to look. He sits in the library brightly-lit with white light, almost empty at this time of night. He was studying for a class- he had long forgotten which one, almost cross-eyed from exhaustion- and he was sure he looked a fright, but at least there was no one around to see him
No one alive, anyway.
“You can smell?” he asks idly.
Jeff scoffs and Albert can hear him move, the rustle of his clothing and the quiet clatter of his canteen against his haversack. He glances up when the toes of Jeff’s worn, dirty boots stop just on the edge of his vision, a stark contrast to the library’s waxed tile floor.
“I can smell,” Jeff says, and there’s a frown on his face, as if he were disappointed, “and you smell like alcohol. Thought you were s’posed to be helpin’ me, not havin’ a bit’ve a drink.”
“I work at a bar. Everything smells like alcohol.” Albert rolls his eyes; why should he have to explain himself to a man that’s been dead for a century and a half? “Did you know that you have a really common last name?”
Something twitches about Jeff’s mouth as he settles in the chair on the other side of the table, one left pulled out by its previous occupant, and he shucks off his rifle and his haversack before he really looks at Albert, and once again Albert is struck by just how horrifically young Jeff was, twenty-something forever.
He tries to think of what it was like, separated from everyone and everything you knew, moving through a world you couldn’t even interact with. He feels sick.
“Jeffrey,” Albert asks suddenly, and he doesn’t know if he’s ever actually used the ghost’s name before now. He pauses for a moment, rolling it around on his tongue. “Jeffrey, how old were you?”
“Huh?”
“When you died,” Albert says, “how old were you?”
“Well,” Jeff says, considering, leaning back in his chair. The wood doesn’t creak like it should have, had someone with a flesh and bone body been sitting in it. “I was born in 1842. I turned twenty-two in May of ’65. So I would’ve been thereabouts.”
And suddenly, all at once, Albert pities him terribly.
“Tell me about your family,” he says, changing tracks entirely, only in part to try to escape that sad, sinking feeling.
He really did want to know about Jeff’s family, know who they were outside of the people he had seen in dreams.
Jeff manages a smile, then, but it’s not like any smile he’s favored Albert with; it’s soft and warm, affectionate, a faint flash of teeth. “I’m the oldest’ve five,” he says, sounding almost bashful. “Well, six. There’s me, then there was Laurie- he died young, though, was a few years after me- and Charlie, Annie, Fanny, and Nate. My parents, too.”
He seemed happy, talking about them, and something in Albert’s gut tightens with mingled sympathy and jealousy. A happy home life, a family that loved him- these were things that Albert didn’t have. He’d never thought much about it, had never let himself think much about it; he’d gone home with Walter on holidays and had contented himself with that.
He says, “What were they like?”
“Oh, they’re a handful, every one’ve ‘em.” Jeff laughs a little here, indulgent, and he scratches vaguely at his cheek as he thinks. “Charlie was as bold as you please; she had her own way’ve things and she’d do what she liked no matter what our ma said. Annie was quieter, shy, but sweet as sugar; she liked her books, more’n anything. Fanny was the youngest girl, loud and bright and cheerful. Nate was barely more’n a babe in arms when I enlisted, he was so young.”
He pauses here, then repeats quietly, “They were all so young.”
Albert reaches across the table the lay his hand on Jeff’s arm in some effort at comfort, but his hand passes straight through with little more than a nip of cold. Jeff smiles at him, smaller and more tumultuous than before, but genuine regardless.
He didn’t know how to mourn people. He’d never had anyone to mourn; all of his losses had been his own choice. He wasn’t sad that Jeff was dead because he’d never known him when he was alive, not really, but Jeff’s grief was open and painful as a wound. He’d had a whole family that he’d left behind, a life of love that he’d promised to come back to,and then he just… hadn’t. Albert wasn’t even sure if his family ever learned what had happened to him, dying alone on that field, choking on his own blood.
“I’m sorry,” Albert says, and it feels like too little. And then, “You were young, too.”
albert receives a letter in 1886. he is forty-two years old, and he cannot read.
he recognizes his name on the front of the envelope, the shape of the letters written in a cramped hand, unsteady as if by shaking fingers. he drags his fingers over the dried ink, albert d.j. cashier, feels the indentations they make on the paper.
“posted from belvidere,” joshua muses when albert hands the letter over to him, wanting to know what it said. “you must’ve left there, what, ten years ago, now? didn’t know you still had friends there.”
“eleven,” albert corrects, almost off-handedly, “and i don’t.”
“well, apparently you do.” joshua chesbro was only a decade or so albert’s elder but he squints hard at the envelope. “says its from a, uh, mister jeffrey davis.”
albert’s breath catches, his heart lodged in his throat. this had to have been some cruel joke; jeff wouldn’t have known how to find him, and even if he did, why? why now, after two decades apart, and why a letter? he’d known that albert couldn’t read, had pried that shameful secret from him same as he had done the rest.
“what.. what’s it say?”
joshua levels him a measuring look over the top of his reading glasses, seems to be looking for something, before he says, “it looks to be some sort of invitation.
so albert packs his things- a single bag, he doesn’t own much and doesn’t plan to be gone long- and asks joshua to watch his house, and boards a train for belvidere.
he asks around with the address that had been scrawled at the foot of the letter and finds himself on the step of a neat brick townhouse in the heart of downtown. he feels suddenly too shabby to be here, too wretched, and he desperately wants to run.
his heard thunders in his chest as he pounds the bronze knocker against the door.
footsteps creak from inside and he holds his breath until the door swings open. on the other side is a small blonde woman, perhaps about his age, pretty even with the grey in her hair and the lines around her eyes. she looks him over, dark gaze sharp and piercing.
“may i help you, sir?” her voice is pleasant, one small hand pressed against the door. they are of a height, but albert feels very, very small.
perhaps this was all a mistake.
“i, um,” and, lord, when was the last time he was at a loss for words. “i received a letter, telling me to come. here, that is. from jeff davis.”
understanding dawns at once over her features and she opens the door wider, allowing him inside. it was a modest home, but fine for what it was, and the woman fit in perfectly with her nice dress and neatly pinned hair. though her expression had flooded with comprehension, she was no warmer for it.
“you must be mister cashier, then,” she says, gesturing for him to follow as she walks down the hall. “jeff’s been lookin’ forward to your visit. it’s good that you didn’t let him down.”
the again goes unspoken, and albert’s stomach drops to his feet.
“my name is betty davis,” she continues, as she opens the doors to a sitting room, cozy with an unlit fireplace, the curtains drawn to allow light from the street to flood the room. “jeff is my husband. he’s in his study, now; i’ll fetch him in just a moment.”
her husband. betty turns, her skirts swirling about her ankles as she sweeps out of the room, and albert is left staring after her. she was a force of nature, that one; he wasn’t sure how to feel, elated that jeffrey had found someone to love or betrayed that it wasn’t him.
albert presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and breathes in deep. he wonders if there’s still time to slip out, unnoticed.
“not this time, al,” he mutters to himself. “you can’t run from him again.”
he could, though. he’s been running all his life- what would once more be? what could it hurt him?
“albert?”
a great deal, as it turned out.
he turns slowly and all he can hear is the blood rushing in his ears, the way his breaths whooshes in and out of his lungs. the scrape of his shoes across the floor sounds terribly loud.
jeff is standing in the doorway, unchanged by the years save for a few small details: the gray at his temples, the smile lines on his face, the glasses perched on his nose, the cane he leans on. albert feels sick with the riot of feelings inside of him, seeing jeff here for the first time in twenty years, whole and well and not lean with war.
“jeffrey,” albert breathes, and he hates how off-kilter he is, how shaken.he had made it a matter of fact to remain unshaken no matter what was thrown his way, but jeff had always had a way of brushing away his plans like dust to the wind.
albert could admit that he was scared. he’d known jeff in many ways- as a boyishly handsome enlistee, as a scared young soldier, as a desperate and lovelorn man- but not like this, a man who had made his way in the world, a man who had found his happiness and his family.
it made him ache, down to his bones.
“you’re really here.” jeff’s smile is slow in coming, almost hesitant, but as sweet and beautiful as albert had remembered and, oh, he didn’t deserve this, these thoughts or jeff’s kindness, not after the way he’d treated him. “i wasn’t sure you were gonna make it.”
“i almost didn’t,” albert says baldly, and his voice cracks halfway through. “i can’t read, jeff, y’know that. i almost stayed in saunemin, safe and snug.”
“but you didn’t,” jeff says, and the hope in his eyes and in his voice tears terribly at albert’s heart. his footsteps across the floor are uneven and limping, his cane thumping against the hardwood. “you came, al. you’re here.”
they are close, now, a scant foot or less between them, and albert’s breath stutters as jeff raises a hand, brushes his fingers tenderly over his cheek. he smells of some faint cologne, but under that the same simple lye soap, the same smell that had always been only his own.
“i’m here,” albert agrees, and lets his eyes flutter shut as jeff’s smile grows, something horribly tender swelling in his chest.
the thing was, albert was so good at hiding. he was an actor born, if jeff had ever known one. he walked and talked and acted like a man, smiled with his teeth and took up more room than he should have. he swallowed the irish lilt to his voice and tried to take on flat, midwestern syllables, but it was still there, an almost musical quality. he was brash and reckless in a fight, his eyes bright and wild under fire.
but albert was careful, too. he knew what he was doing. he tilted his chin down when he spoke, lowering his voice, and never, ever let anyone too close. he swathed himself in layers to conceal the slightness of his shoulders and the swell of his hips, curves that jeffrey only knew were there for having felt them. it had been subtle; he talked little and never bathed with the others and they’d all just thought him shy, at first, a little stand-offish and quiet. an outsider.
(jeff knew better, had seen the quick flash of his smile and the warmness of his laugh, the strange and tender feeling when albert pressed a hand to the small of his back or sat close enough that their knees brushed.)
he could see it now, though, his face to pretty and finely-boned to belong to a man of his age, his skin, though weathered, still smooth of stubble. his eyelashes were long, too, red-gold and kissing his cheeks when he blinked or closed his eyes, but there was something unfriendly that lurked about his mouth now, and he looked like a cornered animal.
jeff had thought him beautiful even when he still believed albert to be a man and he had loved him for it, had pushed his way through the fear and discomfort and embraced the joy of having been blessed to love at all. but he couldn’t help the relief that surged through him now, turning him giddy with it; he couldn’t even find it in himself to be upset with albert for lying to him all this time.
“come back to belvidere,” jeffrey blurts, and he feels the words bubble up his throat and across his tongue, light and joyful and crowding behind his teeth, “and be my wife.”
albert hated the way that jeff looked at him, sometimes, his eyes bright and full of awe for all the wrong reasons, so earnest that the force of it broke albert’s heart. jeff would grin and clap him on the shoulder with all the warmth and affection of a comrade and say, you’re the kinda boy i wish i could be, albert.
and albert would smile, thump his fist against the broad plane of jeff’s back, and bite the inside of his cheek almost hard enough to bleed.
there were a few reasons for this, chief among them the fact that if he ever knew, if he ever learned the truth, jeff would never look at him like that again- would likely never speak with him again. after everything he’d been through to come this far, that was a loss that albert wouldn’t be able to bear, and he knew is, felt it down to his bones.
and the thing was, albert didn’t even think himself all that special. in fact he envied jeff too, really, for his light-heartedness, the easy way that he laughed. albert, by contrast, have baggage; he was closed off and reticent, all sharp edges, reckless because he knew that he didn’t mean much to anyone. why would anyone want that, want to be like that?
“you’re brave, al,” jeff tells him one night as they huddle around the dying embers of a cooking fire, wrapped in their federal-issue wool blankets and pressed close to keep out the cold. his voice has the feeling of a secret. “you’re brave, and you don’t let anyone get t’ you, and you’re so smart, y’know? i can read and write and know my numbers, but you know how the world works, al. i’d give anythin’ to have that.”
sure, jeff missed things sometimes, slow on the uptake and took what people said about him too seriously. but more than anything he was kind, and sweet, and honest. he wasn’t stupid, not my any stretch of the imagination.
“don’t,” albert says, rough, and he pulls his blanket closer. “don’t say things like that, jeffrey.”
jeff makes a noise, soft and questioning, and when albert glances up jeff is looking back down at him, a crease between his brows. “i mean it, though. all’ve it.”
“you’re good.” albert says the words like he’s spitting them, bitter, but jeff just presses closer, touching from shoulder to knee. albert swallows down the warmth that blooms in the pit of his stomach. “you’re too damn good, jeff. you wanna believe the best in everyone, even if they ain’t anything but cold to you. and you care, y’know, you care in a way that i’ve never been able to.”
there’s a lull, then, a silence between them, and albert watches the red embers of the fire, the night just cold enough to turn their breath to clouds of vapor. he can’t bring himself to look at jeff, not after that, but he says, “sometimes, jeffrey, i think you see good in me that’s not there.”
and jeff doesn’t say anything for a moment but he does sling an arm around albert’s shoulders, pulling him in close. albert resists at first, stiffens at the touch, but then he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes and lets himself slump against jeff’s side.
“you just don’t see what i see, is all,” jeff replies, quiet. “there’s good in you, too, albert.”
rating: g
characters: albert cashier, jeffrey n. davis, walter suitor
word count: 1027
READ ON AO3
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“You,” Albert manages, and somehow there’s some type of menace in his tone, some type of anger.
“You!” the ghost yelps at the same time, leaping to his feet, his expression open with surprise.
And Albert was angry, he found, because for some reason he had been grieving this boy that he didn’t even know, that he didn’t even think was real, and here was, having the gall to wait on his bed in the dark at three in the morning. And he wanted to know why, why now of all times, after months of silence.
“What are you doing here?” he demands.
“Where’s here?” Jeff answers. “Who’re you?”
He looks confused and lost, and still bloodied, his eyes big in his thin face, and Albert softens a little. Perhaps Jeff, ghost as he was, didn’t know what was happening any more than Albert did. They were about he same age, he thinks, though Jeff was so expressive and so gangly that Albert sometimes felt that he was years younger. He looks it now, like a scared child, his shoulders rounded inward and a nervous look on his face.
“My apartment,” Albert says. “I’m Al.”
“Al,” Jeff repeats, as if rolling the name around on his tongue. “I’m Jeff. Jeffrey. Al short for anything?”
“Albert,” he says, and then, “I watched you die.”
There’s a long pause after that and Jeff looks away, sinking back down to sit on the bed and picking instead at the threadbare knee of his trousers. Albert watches him, takes in all the details. He looked solid enough, real enough, but ghosts had always looked that way to him. He could tell by the cold that seemed to radiate from him, from the way that he didn’t seem to truly touch things but instead over a few centimeters above them.
“I know,” Jeff says, quiet, and he glances up something twisted and uncomfortable in his expression. “I saw you, just before… Well. Y’know. I died.”
His voice cracks on the last word, sounding like it stuck in his throat.
“Yeah,” Albert says, just as quiet. He rubs his arms, chilled, but comes to sit next to Jeff on the bed anyway. Nearness was comfort of a sort. “Why are you here?”
“I dunno.” Jeff sniffles, rubs his sleeve across his nose like he was about to cry and trying to hide it. “I was just sorta… floatin’, you know? And I thought about my family. About my sisters, mostly, and how I never came home. I promised Charlie I would when I left for the courthouse that mornin’. Well, I was thinkin’ of them, of what could’ve happened to them, when things started gettin’ clearer and sharper, and then I was here, I think, in the dark.”
Albert lets that sit a minute, parses his way through all the babbled and fast, run-together words.
“Why didn’t you turn on the light?”
And Jeff snorts at that, scratching at his cheek, reminding Albert of just how filthy he was. There was nothing to be done for it really, except hope that he didn’t get the blankets dirty also. “Your lamps’re different. Not oil, no candles. Also, I don’t think I can touch stuff here.”
“You’re sitting on my bed,” Albert points out, dry.
“Yeah, but I’ve gotta think real hard about it.”
He hums in response, leaning back on his hands. There were goosebumps on his arms from the cold that Jeff gave off.
“So you were thinking about your family, and then you were here,” he says, as if for clarification.
“Yep,” Jeff agrees.
“You’ve been dead a hundred and fifty years,” Albert points out, “and I’m just a college student. I can’t help you with anything.”
“That long, huh?” Jeff says it as though he doesn’t mean for Albert to overhear, breathing in something like awe and disappointment. And then, “Well, you can try. I just wanna know what happened to them. To my family.”
“Jeffrey,” Albert says slowly, “Do you know where you are?”
A frown steals across his face, creasing his brow. “I didn’t think ‘bout that.”
“We’re in Atlanta,” Albert tells him. “Georgia. This is where you died. I don’t know where I’d even start to look for your family. I don’t even know your last name.”
“It’s Davis,” Jeff answers immediately. “Jeffrey N. Davis, that’s me. My family’s from Illinois, up ‘round Belvidere and Rockford, thereabouts.”
Albert makes an exasperated sound but Jeff watches him earnestly, something so eager and hopeful in his eyes that any protest Albert may have given shrivels and dies on his tongue. Instead, Albert heaves a sigh and flops backwards on the bed closing his eyes.
“I can’t make any promises,” he says, “but if I try, will you leave me alone?”
There’s no answer but suddenly there’s a rush of heat, leaving Albert’s skin tingling at the sudden change in temperature, and when he opens his eyes Jeff is gone.
He takes that as a yes.
“Did you have someone over last night?” Walter asks when Albert shuffles out of his room around noon, a smile lurking about his lips that he hides behind his mug of coffee.
“No.” Albert yawns, scratching at his stomach. He’d gotten home late, and then had been unable to fall asleep, replaying the whole strange interaction with Jeff over and over and over. He still wasn’t sure what he was going to do about it. “Why?”
“You were talking to someone.” Walter eyes him closely, looking him up and down, taking in the rumpled hair and the bags under his eyes. He softens suddenly, his expression melting from impish to compassionate. “Was it your mom?”
Albert doesn’t quite wince and shakes his head.
“Not even close,” he sighs, settling himself on the couch next to Walter and reaching for his coffee. Walter rolls his eyes and hands it over, and Albert makes a grateful noise as he lifts it to his mouth.
“A friend, then,” Walter compromises, watching him with raised eyebrows, and then looks away when Albert levels him with a glare. “Fine,” he says indulgently, “I’ll quit. But I’ll find out, Albert.”
the army was stingy, even when it came to the men fighting and dying for them.
it was easier in winter quarters, where they all ground to a halt and dug in, building huts out of wood and mud and anything they could get their hands on, and things were, at least for those few months, less cramped. but there were downsides too, the way the camps were dirty and stinking, the boredom that made them all restless, the way that men dropped like flies with sickness.
(albert remembers those few brief weeks after vicksburg were he was taken to hospital, his insides trying to be his outsides, and the persistent fear of being discovered. he didn’t envy these poor sick men at all.)
they pack themselves four to a hut and cover the floor with leaves a foot deep, spreading their blankets over top and pretending that it was a feather mattress. albert takes a space close to the wall despite the draft and jeff, quiet, sets his things down between albert and the other two men that shuffle in for sleep. he lays with his back to albert.
and a part of albert is pathetically grateful for him, for the fact that jeff still looks out for him in his own way even though he had broken his heart to pieces.
it is cramped in the hut but better than the open air, better than a thin sheet of canvas, and albert turns to face the wall and curls into himself, his back pressed to jeff’s. he can feel the way that the other man tenses, the way his breath stutters, and albert stills himself and feigns sleep, staring hard at the gaps in the wall lit by the dim, flickering light of campfires.
he listens to jeff shift, the rustle of his clothes and the crunch of leaves, knows when he sits up. he thinks he can feel his eyes upon him, knows that he feels a brief, fleeting touch on his shoulder, feather-light.
“sorry,” he can hear jeff whisper, and then he pauses and albert imagines him looking over, making sure that everyone else was truly asleep. “i mean it, al. i’m sorry, for all’ve it. wish i could’a just kept my mouth shut, but y’know me, can’t stand a bit’ve quiet. i love you, al, i really do, but if keepin’ quiet would’a saved us, i’d go back and do it in a heartbeat. you’re right here but i miss you, miss how we used to be, me and you and billy and walter.”
jeff goes quiet, then, and albert holds his breath and squeezes his eyes shut, feels the hot prickle of tears. he missed billy and walter and he missed jeff, too, missed their friendship and hated the scared, wary feeling he got all the time now.
he listens to jeff breathe, for a moment, and the quiet snores from the other boys, and then there’s that soft touch to his shoulder again and he can hear jeff moving around again, laying down so that they are pressed back-to-back. albert scrubs at his eyes, as quiet as he can be, and breathes very carefully through his mouth.
he waits until he knows that jeff is asleep, waits until his breathing goes soft and even and deep, before he whispers into the dark, “i miss you too, jeff. i’m sorry.”
