#I think it was more a nightmare than a dream

[mywritersmind]

fic idea: kimi x reader moments in his documentary... cute and .

.......maybe a lil steamy

CAUGHT ON CAMERA - KA12

listen up : some kissing. dry humping. steamy ish as requested! ty for the request!! super cutie

words : 1470

⋆｡‧˚⋆

The second Kimi told me over the phone, I ran out of my house. I was out of breath after the two minutes it took for me to run to his house. “You fucking did it!” I didn’t mean to swear in front of his family, something Maggie laughs loudly at as I wrap my arms around her brother.

“I did it.” He whispers into my ear, my body pressed against his as he holds me tighter. “Thank you.”

I have to laugh at my boyfriend. “Why are you thanking me?”

He smiles down at me, his hands still on me and his parents gone from the room. “You’re always there. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

I kiss him. Hard and excited with a smile still on my face.

“You deserve this so much, K.” I bring him closer to me again when he sniffles, I realize he’s crying. I cry too. He’s wanted this for longer than I've known him and I don’t think anyone deserves it more.

⋆༺

The camera zooms on Ollie as he laughs, “He knows practically every lap time he’s ever done.” I smile, leaning my head against Kimi’s bare shoulder.

“Barcelona Quali.” a man on his team says, smiling as Kimi scoffs as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.

“I did a 24.894.” Kimi says confidently as the man goes to search it. He doesn’t need to. Even I know he’s right.

“You have a photographic memory then?” The cameraman asks, panning to Kimi and I.

“Nah… If I did, I'd be out of school.” My boyfriend grins, “Some things just stick.”

“He remembers everything about me.” I say, not being able to hide my smile, “that’s how I know he loves me like he does racing.”

Kimi shakes his head but he’s still smiling, “I love you more than racing.”

⋆༺

I love watching Kimi race. I hate when his race ends before every lap is done.

This might be worse than watching him DNF in F2. He’s in the wall and i’m clutching the necklace he gave me as if it’s him. I know he’s okay, he’s out of the car, I know he’s okay.

I repeat those four words to myself as I watch him, his head down, his face hidden behind his helmet, exit the track.

I let him have his space. The trainer said he wanted to be alone and I let him be. A text came in and I snuck out of the garage, away from his crying mother, away from a sad Toto, away from everything and back to him.

I shut the cameraman out when I find him. He’s sitting on the floor of the trainors room, the light dim and his eyes shut. I realize he’s been crying when he speaks, his voice stuffy and race red, “On my debut.” He swallows, “In my future car.”

I don’t know what to say. I hate that I don’t know what to say. I sink down to my knees next to him, taking his head in my hands as he looks at me. His eyes are red, tired.

“It’s going to get better, Kimi. You have to know that. Next year is yours- and today sucked but when you’re in your car, not George's, it’ll be different.” He slides his legs out in front of him, a hand drifting to my waist as if he just wants to make sure I'm there.

“I’m sorry I scared you.” My hands are still shaking.

I shake my head, “I have a feeling that won’t stop anytime soon. You were flying, Kimi.” His face finally cracks into a smile.

“It felt like a dream.” His smile fades as I sit properly now, “then a nightmare.”

“It’s not either. It’s real life. It’s your life.” I run a hand through his hair, sweaty and messed up from his helmet.

“You're perfect.” he says, leaning in closer as his hand slides up and down my bare leg, “You know that?”

“For you.” I kiss him softly, but his hand meets the back of my neck and pulls me against him again.

“Just for me.” He whispers against my lips, kissing me again with more force.

When I realize he’s not thinking about stopping, I mumble, “Kimi-” but all he does is pull me onto his lap, straddling him.

“Please.” It’s practically a whine and one that I give into immediately. His body is warm, he changed back into a mercedes shirt and jeans that push against my thighs.

I instinctively grind into him, feeding that pressure between my legs as he breathes against me. His eyes are closed, his teeth tugging at my lip as I groan at the feeling of him under me.

“We shouldn’t.” I say, not fully lost to Kimi’s body yet and remembering that we’re on the floor of a medical room.

“I’ll stop if you tell me to.” He says, kissing me again. When I don’t say anything, he says, “Tell me to, Y/n.”

I don’t use my words to respond, instead moaning in his ear as I grow more turned on. He mumbles a curse and moves his hand to my ass, making me grind against him with more fuel to my fire.

Kimi’s fingers dig into my skin harder. When my head tilts back, his lips escape mine and find my jaw- my neck… my chest instead. I wouldn’t be caught dead with a hickey, but right now, nothing sounds hotter.

He’s hard against me, his jeans growing tighter as I roll my hips once again. I bite my lip and he makes a sort of strangled sound, saying my name.

He’s not smiling, it’s more of an open mouth smirk. His eyes are set on the thin fabric that’s rubbing against his pants, his hand tugs my skirt higher up.

When did he pull my skirt up? I don’t care.

His hand is on my bra now, under it. I can barely track the twin parts of his body that have such a hold on me. I’m too distracted by the overwhelming pleasure that brews beneath me.

Kimi is staring at me again, his eyes flickering to every part of me as if he doesn’t know where to look. His eyes are full of lust, a look I used to dream about.

“C’mon, love.” This almost takes me out, his voice is so gruff and it’s the hottest thing i’ve ever heard purely because I know i’m what’s making him like that. “So fucking good.”

“Kimi-” I force out, my legs starting to shake.

He’s just as breathless as I am when he says, “Say my name like that again. C’mon love, do it for me.”

⋆༺

Dinner is nice. It always is with Kimi’s family. His grandma made a cake to celebrate, his dad gave him a car keychain that had been passed down by his father.

I love seeing Kimi with his family, it reminds me of what our future could look like.

I stand next to him at the sink, a dish in hand as he splashes water onto me. I scoff and return the favor. “A formula one driver and you’re still slaving away over dishes.” I smile as he scrubs a plate, “So humble.”

He kisses my cheek quickly, “I’d do anything if it’s with you.” This makes me smile, rolling my eyes at the cheesiness but my cheeks going pink anyway.

“I’m really proud of you, Kimi. I know it’s a lot.” Everyone’s been so excited that I think it’s gone to Kimi’s head, making him a bit blind to what his life is about to look like.

He nods, “I know. But i’m excited- and really fucking happy. Especially since I have a wag.”

I laugh out loud, “A wag!?”

“Yeah, girlfriend.” He says to me sassily, making me laugh harder. He drys off his hands and pulls the bright yellow gloves off mine, kissing me on the lips this time.

I grin against him, my hands bracing myself on the sink edge as his find my waist. “I love calling you my girlfriend.” He whispers as he kisses me softly again. “Call me your boyfriend.”

I giggle as he presses a kiss against my jaw, “You’re all mine, K. My nerdy little boyfriend.”

He raises a brow at my words, his breath hot against me, “Nerdy? Little?”

I pat his head, winking. “Gotta fit in that car somehow.”

He laughs, his hands are on me again and he’s picking me up, “Netflix are you seeing this!?” I had forgotten about the camera in the doorframe, “My girlfriend is a bully!”

“At least i’m yours!” I laugh again, now over his shoulder and shaking my head at the lens.

[butyoudidthis4what]

No Man's Land Part 3

Jack Abbot x F!Reader

You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here!

25.1k || All my content is 18+ MDNI || CW: mentions of blood, mentions of guns/shootings/gunshot wounds, mentions of suicide/suicidal ideation, CPR, mentions of jack's injury and losing his foot, anxiety about partner's safety, angst (kind of), very emotional, probably incorrect description of medical events, potentially incorrect medical descriptions/knowledge, reader wears Jack’s clothes, self-hate, Robby has been to therapy, fighting/arguing (no raised voices), unprotected PIV sex (BC implied with their committed relationship), allusions to sex and oral sex, discussion of end of life wishes, descriptions of nightmares, discussion of someone dying in front of reader, panic attacks, vomiting (very brief, not reader), discussion of scars/wounds, grief, mention of UTI, myrna, reader likes candles, Jack is the best, I had this idea and started drafting before we knew Jack was a widow so in this world he has never been married, no use of y/n or related, not really proofread.

Summary: Healing is hard. Emotions abound. Somehow life goes on. [Author continues to suck at summaries.]

AN: I am so sorry this took so long 😅 The vignettes have a bit of a different feel here because the way we are moving through time is much different and on a larger scale. But each vignette 'happened' before the scene it precedes. Part 4 is already like 75% of the way done so it will not be as long of a wait, I promise 😭 I know some wanted it all at once and I'm sorry it isn't, but I can offer as an apology the fact that because we're getting another part we're getting more content both in Part 3 and in Part 4!! Also I promise Quiet Part 2 is next up after Part 4. Thank you all so much for your patience and support and for reading!! Your replies and likes and reblogs mean so so much to me and I know we're all busy so I really appreciate you taking the time to read whatever it is I do here ♥️

After the housewarming party, life is good. You and Jack are still home together while you recover, in love and soaking each other in and planning France and dreaming out loud about your wedding. And healing. Individually and together. 

Things get harder though.

You’re both in therapy, yes, but you’ve been through a lot in the last month and a bit, and an hour a week only does so much. You’re both struggling, struggling a little harder now that the kind of honeymoon period of you getting home from the hospital has passed. 

You and Jack talk about it sometimes, about how things feel harder in a way all of the sudden now that you’re not focusing on being home finally and getting your place painted and all moved into. You think it’s just because you have lost some of that distraction. The reality of what happened starts to sink in deeper. Especially because things are ostensibly returning to normal but not really. 

Because normal isn’t being at home together while you’re recovering. You’re back to that hospital feeling of waiting. Waiting for you to recover enough for the next step to get taken. Jack going back to work. You going back to work. The return of your true new normal. 

So things get a little harder, emotions more intense. Some days it feels like you guys are taking more steps backward than forward. But you’re taking those steps in whatever direction together and you have each other and are in love and that’s all either of you need at the end of the day. Each other and your love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s day four. 

Four days now you’ve been in a coma. Four days with no signs of waking up soon, even after they weaned you off the meds that had been keeping you under to help you heal. No twitch of your fingers or toes, no flutter of your eyelashes, no little grunt, no breathing over the vent. Nothing. Just you laying there in a hospital bed. Technically still alive and with him, but are you really?

Jack stretches out. He hasn’t left the hospital since you got shot. Literally has not set foot out of the building, hasn’t gone to the roof or out into the ambulance bay or gone through the main doors to stand on the street. 

Dana brought him in clothes and toiletries. She brought some for you too, telling Jack that you’d want them as soon as you were awake. Half of Jack wanted to scream at her for tempting fate like that, now that she brought them there would be no use for them because you’d never wake up. 

And half of him wanted to just sob into her because he knows that as much as she did bring them for you, she brought them for him. To give him the option of smelling like you, or just smelling your shampoo to smell you for a second. To give him a shirt of yours to keep near his head when he tries to get an hour of sleep. It helped once. He was actually able to grab a couple of hours. 

It’s not the same though, because those products haven’t mixed with your body chemistry to become the unique scent that is you. But it’s better than nothing. Because until Dana had brought it in for him he’d forgotten what you smelled like. 

He’d forgotten what you sounded like too. The sound of your voice, the way you say his name. The way you say you love him. Your laugh. He just couldn’t hear it in his head. He cracked on day three and listened to a voicemail you left him, watched a video of the two of you that you’d taken one day. It was comforting to be able to remember what you sound like and what you look like when you smile, to have those little pieces of you back in his mind. But it was also a devastating reminder of what he might lose. 

Your things, the voicemails you’ve left him and the videos and photos you’ve taken together might be all he really has left of you at the end of this. The realization had made him dry heave a little.

Robby walks in as Jack is stretching, hands him a coffee and a brown bag. Breakfast. “You have to eat if you want the coffee or else it’s just going to shoot up your heart rate and give you more anxiety.”

Jack looks at him almost blankly as he sits down in the chair on the other side of your bed across from Jack. “I’m still a doctor, you know?” The words hit Jack. “A fucking shitty one apparently. I can’t even fix her. This shit is what I do and I’ve saved so many people but the one fucking person who actually matters.” Jack shakes his head. “And nothing.” 

Robby cocks his head at him. “No doctor could fix this Jack. She’s in a coma. You’re making sure she gets the best care possible. That’s all anyone could do for her right now, doctor or not.” 

Jack waves Robby off, takes a sip of the coffee but makes no move for the bag. It earns him a look from Robby that he ignores. They sit in silence for a bit. It’s hard to come up with things to say. But Robby knows Jack needs to start thinking about it. It’s still very far down the line but it’ll be better for him to start thinking and coming to terms with it now, Robby thinks.  

“Jack.” Jack pulls his eyes off you and over to Robby. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

Deep down Jack knows exactly what Robby’s question means. But he doesn’t let himself go there. He can’t. Robby will have to spell it out for him. “What I’m going to do about what?”

“What you’re going to do if down the line she heals physically but doesn’t wake up?” Robby says quietly, as though saying it lower will make it somehow less painful, pull less of a reaction from Jack. 

“What the fuck is that? Why the fuck would you even bring that up?” Jack snaps at him. While you were awake after surgery you’d signed a healthcare proxy giving Jack the authority to make treatment and end of life decisions for you. It had been just in case. Better to have it because then you would never need it right? Wrong. “We’re so the fuck far away from that. She’s not even healed. You and Dana are the ones that keep saying ‘it’s only been four days Jack give her time’ and now you’re coming at me with this bullshit?”

“I’m not coming at you with anything. Just asking a question because maybe it’s better to start preparing now for something you’ll never have to do than to be unprepared.” Robby shrugs. 

Jack doesn’t say anything, just looks back at you. He scoots his chair closer so that he can hold your hand. You’re just so goddamn still. It’s unnatural. Even the way you breathe is, it’s mechanical. Chest rising and falling in time with the clicks of the vent. 

“I know that I don’t really know her, Jack, and certainly don’t know her well. But just from the little bit of time I have been able to get to know her I don’t think she’d want this Jack. Not indefinitely. I don’t think she’d want machines keeping her alive.” Robby watches Jack carefully as Jack takes in his words. Devastation is quickly covered by anger. 

“I don’t fucking care. She should wake the fuck up then and not leave this to me. Not make me fucking kill her.” Jack knows his anger at you is misplaced and a cover for how much this conversation is hurting him. Anger is just easier to deal with than heartbreak and grief right now. He sees Robby go to speak. “Just fucking don’t Robby. Don’t. You’re right. You don’t fucking know her. And I don’t care. I don’t fucking care if she wouldn’t want it because I need her. And having her here with me like this is better than not having her at all.” Jack knows how selfish he sounds, how selfish he’s being.

Robby doesn’t say anything, waits until Jack glances over at him, tilts his head and raises his eyebrows, asking him ‘really?’ without a word. 

Jack sighs and looks back over at you shaking his head. “No,” he whispers. “She would hate it. We fucking talked about it once, way before this when it was on some show or movie we were watching. It would be cowardly and selfish of me to keep her here like this forever, just so that I wouldn’t have to deal with completely losing her and could live in a perpetual delusion that she’ll wake up tomorrow.” Jack gives a short and hollow laugh through his nose. “Right before I left to go down to the ED and help, we… argued isn’t the right word, but I don’t know what is. She mentioned it, her dying. That if she had already died, in the OR or at the courthouse then I could be properly grieving, and I cut her off but she was going to say that I could be working towards moving on.”

Jack feels guilty for getting angry at you, for being selfish. He knows you’d understand and wouldn’t care and wouldn’t want him to feel guilty but it doesn’t help. He swallows thickly and then takes in a deep breath, squeezing your hand, praying you’ll squeeze it back, even just a little. 

“But there’s no moving on from her.” Jack shakes his head as he looks down at you. “The problem is that I don’t think I’ll be strong enough to do it. To sign the damn papers,” Jack admits, voice wet with the tears lining his eyes. 

Robby nods slowly. “You are now and you will be then, if that then does ever come. You will because it’s for her. And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen two humans love each other as much as you do, the way you do. She would do anything for you. And I know you’d do anything for her, no matter how much it killed you inside. So I know that if that day ever comes you’ll be strong enough to sign for her, to do that for her.”

Jack’s silent for a minute, trying not to give into the urge to grab your shoulders and shake you awake. “I don’t know Robby. I don’t know how to talk to her like this. I try, but I just never know what to say other than I love her and please come back to me and please don’t leave me alone. And I hate it. She deserves more. For it to not be about me,” he whispers, stands and runs the back of his bent index finger over your face like he’s trying to memorize you. As if he hasn’t already. He’s teary, voice small and raw from all the tears he’s already shed. “So how do I let her be taken from me? How do I give her up, give up on her, tell her it’s okay to let go? How do I stand there and fight all my training and every instinct and just watch her die and know it’s my fault?”

Robby has to take a minute to compose himself because his heart aches for Jack. It’s hard to see your best friend, your brother, contemplating losing the love of his life. Even though all of Jack’s questions are rhetorical he answers the last one. 

“You don’t,” he says simply. “You get in bed with her and you hold her and find it within you to talk to her. Tell her all of your favorite memories together. Tell her what she means to you. Tell her you love her. And you stay there in bed holding her until she’s gone.” 

Jack takes in a shuddering breath as he sits back down in his chair. “Hope seems so worthless and useless right now even though it’s all I feel like I have left.” Jack grabs your hand again, brushes his thumb over your knuckles. “I hope I never have to sign those papers.” 

Robby sniffles a little, not crying, just emotional. “That makes two of us, brother.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I think you should consider leaving your engagement ring here.” You and Jack are planning more for your trip to France, making packing lists. Well, you’re on the computer planning and making lists and Jack is chopping up ingredients for dinner. 

It’s been four days since the housewarming party. You feel like Jack has been more stressed lately, more on edge. Looking at you like he’s terrified of losing you again, like he did at times in the hospital and the first two days you were home.

“Why?” You pout at him from the stool you’re sitting on at the kitchen island. “I want to wear it and show it off and take photos with it on while we’re in France!”

“I know,” Jack hums lowly, his eyebrows raising a little as he focuses on chopping. “I worry about it getting stolen, you getting assaulted for it or something, especially in Paris.”

“But walking around with it on in Pittsburgh is okay?”

He sighs at you. He kind of hates that you said that because now it’s all he can think about. Whether he has put your life in danger for a third time by getting you a nice engagement ring. Because he’s already done it twice. When he didn’t check you over in the trauma room before letting you go and going to help Robby, and when he left to go down to the ED and wasn’t there to notice you going septic and throwing a PE. 

You’re the only one who would notice him stiffen the way he does, it’s so slight. You feel bad. You know he’s been struggling more the closer he gets to going back to work and having to leave you alone. Even starting with half shifts. And you know he’s struggling to talk about it with you because he doesn’t want to burden you with it or make you feel any guiltier. You’ve both fallen into that habit a little bit. 

“I really don’t think anyone is going to try to steal it off me or assault me to get it when I’m walking around with you.” You raise your eyebrows at him and give him a knowing smile, wait for him to lift his head to look at you once he’s finished chopping. He does. 

“Don’t look at me like that.” He points the knife at you teasingly and holds your gaze for a moment before grabbing something else to chop and getting back to it.

“But I don’t want to leave it here Peter!” you almost whine. It makes Jack chuckle to himself a little. “I don’t want to argue about it, but I really want to take it. I like showing it off, like everyone knowing I’m yours.” That makes him look up at you again and you smile at him and nod encouragingly. You can see the possessive look in his eyes, the way he breathes a little bit faster thinking about it. But he just clicks his tongue on the back of his teeth at you and shakes his head as he looks back down. “Okay, how about a compromise?”

“A compromise?” Jack echoes.

“Yes. A compromise.” 

There’s a beat where neither of you talk, only the sound of the knife hitting the cutting board. Jack pauses his cutting and looks up at you. “Are you gonna tell me what the compromise is?” 

“I’m thinking of one,” you grumble, knowing how satisfied he’s going to be. 

“Oh,” he draws the word out teasingly, “she suggests a compromise before she even has one!” 

“I’ll come up with one, just give me a minute,” you huff. Jack hums at you again, keeps chopping. “Okay, yes! I have one. What if while we’re in Paris or whatever bigger cities or places you’d prefer I wasn’t wearing it on my finger you wear the ring around a chain on your neck? Even on the same one as your dog tags if you’re bringing them. People are much less likely to try to snatch it from your neck and run, plus it’ll always be covered by your shirt unless you’re going to start wearing deep v-necks, which I doubt.” You smirk. 

You watch Jack’s eyes slide from you to the wall behind you and glaze over. It’s clear he’s going back somewhere, you just don’t know where or why or what happened. The smirk slides from your face as it twists into concern.

He goes to say something but stops as your words fully process. Wear the ring around a chain on his neck. Like he did at your funeral. 

Jack drops the knife, it falls out of his hand and clatters a bit as it hits the counter. “Jack?” you whisper, your heart rate picking up. 

The nightmare plays on fast forward in Jack’s head, every emotion he felt when having it slamming into him all at once and making his head spin. With the massive flood of epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol all those emotions cause his body to release, Jack’s turning and leaning over the sink to be sick. 

It’s all too much. 

“Jack!” You’re off the stool and over by him in a second, rubbing his back. “Hey,” you murmur, “it’s okay, you’re okay.” You have no idea what’s going on with him, but have a feeling.

Jack shakes his head at you as he dry heaves a few more times, trembling like nothing you’ve seen from him before. “I’ve got you.” Your hand keeps rubbing circles on his back soothingly and it’s simultaneously comforting him and burning him, because it’s all too much. There are too many emotions. 

You were dead. He was at your funeral. It was so real. 

Tears start to stream down his face silently as he rinses the sink and his mouth. “We can get you to bed, okay? I’ll make you some broth if you feel up to it.” 

He can hear the anxiety in your voice, the worry for him, your love for him. He loves it, he does, truly, but it almost makes it worse because you were dead. And if you were dead, if you had really died, he wouldn’t have this. He wouldn’t be in sweatpants and an old shirt at home chopping things to make dinner for the two of you while you sit in the kitchen to be with him and plan your trip. You wouldn’t be rubbing his back and so worried about him. You wouldn’t be taking care of him and offering to make him broth. 

You simply wouldn’t be. 

Jack shakes his head and sniffles. He turns to you and your eyes widen when you see him crying, pain and a heartbreaking and agonizing sorrow etched into his face that threatens to bring you to tears. You immediately know what this is about. He doesn’t need to say anything. He’s not ill. But you’re not sure how to support him, what to say, what exactly is wrong. “Jack what’s-”

You’re cut off by him crumbling in front of you, grabbing at your forearms to pull you closer as he slides down the base cabinets to the floor, bringing you down with him. “I,” he tries to choke out, “I, I…” He shakes his head again. 

He can’t speak right now, and you know it. “Okay, it’s okay,” you tell him as you reach for him and pull him close to you as you press your back against the cabinet, letting him almost lay on you. 

Jack buries his head in your chest, careful not to press into your still healing sternum too hard, and clings to you, both arms wrapped tightly around you, one diagonal up your back, hand clinging to your shoulder for just a second before it slides over to your neck, two fingers pushing down. 

He’s looking for your pulse. 

“Oh, Jack,” you whisper, your own voice thick with tears now. “I’m here. I’ve got you baby.” You hold him just as tight, let one hand find his hair and run your fingers through it, scratch at his scalp at times, kiss the top of his head and nuzzle your nose into him in hopes of soothing him. Sometimes you rock a little, but you’re not sure if that’s more to comfort him or yourself. 

And you whisper little words of reassurance and, you hope, comfort to him. “I’ve got you.” “I’m here.” “You’re okay.” “I love you.” You hold him and let him weep into you. Let him keep his fingers pressed into your pulse point. Let him cling to you like you’re the only thing left in the world, because to him you are. You’re his whole world. 

It kills you, seeing him like this, hurting this badly. This deeply. You know it has to do with what happened, know that it’s been building up in him for a long time. That he hasn’t said anything about it, not because he was trying to hide it but because he just couldn’t. And you understand that. A whole lot.

“Here baby,” you murmur at one point, try to move his head a little which just makes him sob harder and hold you closer. “Shh, I’m not going anywhere, just trust me, okay? I think this will help.” You try again and this time he lets you move his head, lets you turn it to the side and move it over and then pull him back to your chest, keep your hand on the side of his face, thumb brushing along his cheekbone. He’s confused until he hears it. 

The rhythmic beating of your heart in your chest. 

It makes him tremble against you harder, clutch at you tighter. But you don’t care. You wouldn’t care if he held you so hard it hurt. You’d take on all the physical pain out there without a second thought and genuinely smile about it if it would take away Jack’s pain.  

It starts to pass the longer Jack is in your arms, ear to your chest listening to your heart beating, fingers pressing into your skin feeling your heart beating. It calms him. He quiets, reduced to only sniffles and hiccuped in breaths and swollen eyes and an ache so deep in his chest he’s not sure it can be fixed. But you’re with him, still holding him on the kitchen floor and brushing at his cheekbone and scratching at the nape of his neck and kissing his curls and whispering soft words of reassurance to him.  

You’re here. You’re in your shared apartment. You’re alive. 

You have to be, right? The sound of your heart beating and the warmth of your chest and your voice whispering quiet words to him has to be real. It would make sense for you to come up with the idea of him wearing your engagement ring on a chain around his neck all on your own as a compromise. It doesn’t mean he’s still in that nightmare and just starting to realize it. It means the two of you just think alike. Right?

You aren’t sure how long you end up sitting there on the floor together, his head pressed against your chest. It doesn’t really matter. You know he’s really starting to come down when his fingers no longer press into your neck to feel for your pulse. “I’m here if and when you want to talk,” you whisper. You don’t expect anything back from him and aren’t hurt when he remains quiet.

Eventually Jack pulls his head from your chest and looks up at you. After a few seconds of eye contact he pushes himself up and sits with his back against the base cabinet next to you. He wipes off his face with his hands and once he’s done, one of your hands immediately finds one of his and squeezes. He needs it. Little things like a hand squeeze from you to remind him that you’re still here with him. Eventually he lets his head tilt and rest on your shoulder. You turn your head, give him a lingering kiss to the temple and then rest yours on top of his. 

And then you just sit like that. For as long as he needs. Even when your ass goes numb and back stiffens a bit. You stay just like that with him. 

Jack loves the way you don’t press him. You don’t ask if he’s okay, or if he wants to talk about it, or tell him gently to talk to you. You just let him be as he comes back to himself fully. And he knows it’s not because you don’t want to talk about it or don’t want him to talk to you about it but because you understand that sometimes there is simultaneously too much and nothing to be said. So you let him be. 

After a while Jack takes a big breath in and slowly lets it out. You feel him pull his head a little so you lift yours up and look over at him as he looks at you. 

He looks wrecked in a way you’ve never seen before. Eyes red and swollen, lips a bit swollen too. Mouth set and lips pulled just the slightest bit down, hair fluffier and more askew than normal because of how much you’ve run your hands through it. His shirt is wrinkled, part of the neckline darker than the rest of the shirt from his tears. He looks haunted. 

But mostly it’s the way he’s looking at you that really shows how wrecked he is. You’ve seen Jack look at you a lot of ways, with a lot of different expressions, especially recently with everything that has happened. Happy, sad, like he’s amazed and can’t believe you’re alive, like looking at you hurts him a little because it reminds him of what he almost lost and who he couldn’t protect.

But you’ve never seen Jack look at you like this. He’s looking at you like he can’t believe you’re alive, but not in an incredulous, happy sense. Jack’s looking at you like he truly cannot believe you’re alive, is scared to believe it even for a second. Like he doesn’t trust the world that you are in fact alive, doesn’t trust himself and his ability to know whether you’re alive. Like you’re a hallucination or a mirage, or a ghost who has been living with him and he’s just realizing it. Like you’re a dream he’s about to wake up from. 

“I…” Jack tries to start, voice raw, as unsure and questioning and wrecked as he looks. He just keeps looking at you like he’s about to come back to reality and you’re about to disappear right in front of his eyes, just cease to exist. 

He shifts and leans off the cabinet, gets closer to you and takes your face in his hands. Jack holds your gaze how he loves to do, lets his eyes burn into yours as though they’ll give him the answer to whatever question it is he can’t speak. 

You lean your head into one of his hands a little and then Jack’s kissing you, pressing against your lips hard at first like he was bracing to just move through air and never actually find your lips. It’s short, his head pulling back from yours for a second to look you in the eyes again before his eyes drop to your lips. 

Glassy eyes look back up at you, questioning. You nod slightly, because of course he can kiss you. And he does. 

Jack pulls your head back towards his as he leans in, both of your mouths opening just slightly. He takes the opportunity, licks into your mouth and starts devouring you, his head moving slightly with each kiss and slip of his tongue back into your mouth. 

It’s greedy the way he kisses you, nose smushing into your face as you both start to breathe hard, the sound almost lost in between the noises of pleasure you pull from each other and the pops of your lips with each pass. Jack kisses you like he doesn’t believe you’re real. Like each kiss might be the last one he’s ever able to give you, like it’ll never be enough, like he’ll never have enough of you. It’s not something you’ve ever felt from him before. You can tell he’s scared in a way but you aren’t sure about what exactly. 

He keeps kissing you but his hands drop from your face to grab at the hem of your shirt, start sliding it up your body, stopping to pop the clasp of your bra as he works the shirt up and eventually over your head, helps you shrug your bra off. You expect his lips to return to yours immediately but they don’t. 

Jack stands as he tosses your shirt and bra to the side, hands reaching down for you and helping to get you up on your feet. Before you can say anything his hands are on your hips and his lips are back on yours. He walks you backwards to the kitchen table until your ass bumps into the edge of it. Without breaking the kiss he moves his from your hips and blindly wipes off the table, sending some mail and books and whatever else happened to be there clattering to the floor.

He finally breaks the kiss to give you a chance to breathe and so he can check there’s nothing on the table. “Jack,” you breathe out with some surprise. He grabs your hips and helps you sit on the edge of the table before stooping to bring his face back close to yours. 

“Please,” he whispers against your lips, “please. Please, I need this.” He pushes his lips to yours once again, licking into your mouth once again. “I need to feel you.” He feels your hands at the hem of his shirt and moves apart just enough for him to get it off and throw it to the floor. “I need you.” It’s pleaded, desperate and needy, but not erotically so. 

“Of course, always.” You let him support you as he leans over you and guides you down until your back rests against the table. “You have me, you always have me.”

It’s quick then, the way he tears off your bottoms and then his. You wrap your legs around him as he leans back over you, chest to chest and kisses you again, like he can’t get enough, like each kiss is a surprise he wasn’t expecting to actually get. He grinds himself into you as he does and you respond in kind, tightening your legs around him and letting your hips buck as much as they can against him to search out more friction. His hands roam your body, pressing into you to feel as much as he can, groping at your breasts and squeezing your hips as his lips stay on yours.

“Fuck,” he groans into your mouth, hand sliding between the two of you to feel how wet you are for him. “Can you take me like this?”

“Yeah,” you pant softly, “yeah, please Jack.” You wrap your arms around his neck, hands tangling in salt and pepper curls you adore.

He shivers at the way you say his name, his lips leaving yours so he can look down at you as his fingers run through you and then over his cock to slick himself up as much as he can. “I need to know you’re real and still here. I need to be close to you.”

Jack notches himself in you and then moves to rest on his forearms with his hands holding your face, forehead resting against yours before he finally pushes himself into you slowly. His voice cracks with emotion part way through the needy and relieved groan he draws out as he pushes in. 

“Oh Jack,” you moan as you take a breath in and feel it catch in your throat. 

Once he bottoms out Jack stills, the two of you panting against each other’s lips until Jack’s are claiming yours once again. He stays still, lets himself relish in the way you taste and how you feel around him, so tight and warm and fluttering as you adjust to taking him with no real preparation. 

Jack finally draws his hips back slowly and steadily pushes himself back in with a grunt. “You okay?” Even with as out of his mind for you as he is, how desperate and needy and frantic he is to have you he’s still checking in on you. Would rather die than hurt you, especially like this. 

“Yes,” you breathe, “yes, Jack please. Need you.” Hearing that you need him has Jack pulling his hips back again, faster this time before snapping back in.

From there it’s all feral need and grunts and groans as Jack tries to be closer to you, to consume you, to be one with you. His strokes are hard as he tries to get as deep inside of you as he possibly can. His pace varies, keeps you on your toes, but it’s not deliberate this time. It’s Jack chasing what he needs from you however his body tells him, however feels right at that second. At some point one of his arms slides under your back, his hand wrapping over the opposite shoulder so that you tilt to the side just a little and he can pull you down onto him as he fucks you so hard your last clear thought is of concern he might break the table. 

Your hands tug at his hair, nails draw up his back when he starts mouthing at your neck, kissing and sucking, lips passing over the scar from your central line again and again. He rests his cheek against yours leaving his mouth near your ear allowing you to hear every little noise your body pulls from him. Jack is fucking you with pure need but it’s not an erotic need like it is sometimes when you tease him or he’s been thinking about you all day. It’s intimate. Jack needs you. He needs you. All of you.

Only you.

You’re so lost in the haze of pleasure that it takes you a moment to realize your cheek is wet where your and Jack’s touch. You realize he’s crying. “Jack?” You moan his name so sweetly for him, lace it with all the concern and worry and need you have for him. 

It makes him let out the smallest sob and breathe in hard through his teeth, shake his head a little against yours. He pulls his head from yours and looks down at you, hips slowing but not stopping. “Tell me you’re here,” a fresh wave of tears roll down his face and hit your cheeks. He’s unfairly beautiful when he cries. “Tell me this is real. That you’re real.” A few of your own tears slip out the corner of your eyes and roll down towards your ear. “Please,” his voice cracks, more of his tears joining your own on your face, “please be real. Please tell me you’re here and real and with me.”

You do. Over and over and over until his lips are back on yours and consuming you in a different way now. More confident, more convinced you’re real and here with him and letting him fuck you on your kitchen table to soothe himself and fix something inside of him he didn’t realize was broken. 

Letting him take solace from every part of you.

One hand slips between your bodies and with how well he knows you it’s not long before Jack has you soundless with pleasure for a moment as your orgasm crashes over you, voice coming back to moan out little whispers of his name, veiled pleas for him to take anything and everything he could ever need from you. 

And so Jack does. Lets himself give in and lose himself all the way in you, your name groaned with a relieved intensity you’ve never heard from him before, lower and more gravelly than usual right at your ear.

Jack works himself through it before stilling and resting his forehead back against yours, the two of you panting softly as you come down, bodies hot and sweat sheened and sticking together. “I love you,” Jack whispers, eyes opening and finding yours before kissing you, chaste but lingering. Just to feel you. 

“I love you too,” you murmur against his lips when you’re able, hand running through his hair and scratching at his scalp. Jack kisses your lips again and then your chin, down your neck and to your central line scar, lingering there before kissing down to the highest part of your thoracotomy scar. “Bed?”

Jack nods, lifts himself off of you and pulls out gently. He steps back and helps you up and off the table. “I should take care of all this.” He nods to the kitchen.

You shake your head and grab his hand. “The carrots and potatoes can live there overnight and it’ll be fine. We can order something from bed.” You squeeze his hand and pull him gently so he starts walking with you. 

Jack pulls back on your hand before you can get in bed, flicks his chin towards the bathroom. “Go,” it’s not an order, just a reminder. “We don’t want my… whatever that was to be the reason you get a UTI. You really don’t need that right now.” 

You smile at him gently and nod. Even after all the emotional turmoil he just went through, still is a little bit from what you can see in his eyes, he’s still thinking about you and your well being and keeping you healthy and safe. “You’ll get in bed?” 

He nods and drops your hand, sits on the edge and takes his prosthetic off as you go pee. He’s leaning against the headboard and staring into space when you get into bed. You slide up next to him so that your legs touch and lean back against the headboard, let your hand rest on his thigh and give it a little squeeze so he knows you’re here for whatever he might need.

“When you were in a coma,” Jack starts, voice strained and raw, “I started having nightmares.” He rests his hand on top of yours. You close your eyes and bow your head a little, heart sinking. “Some weren’t completely awful. But the one I got the most…” he trails off and shakes his head, grows quiet again. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” you remind him softly, lean your head over and kiss his bare shoulder. 

“I know, but I want to. At least enough to explain what that was.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation, Jack.”

“I know but I want to tell you.” He pauses for a second. “The worst, and of course most frequent, one was where you died in the OR. And I had to hold your lifeless body and somehow force myself to walk away from you. In the nightmare I’m thinking back on that while I’m sitting at your funeral.” You blink away tears because you can’t even imagine the level of pain that must have caused him. Multiple times. “The details, I… They don’t really matter, right now. In the nightmare I wore your engagement ring, the one that never got to go on your finger because I never go to ask, I wore it on a chain around my neck.”

“Oh fuck Jack,” you cringe, closing your eyes and squeezing his thigh tight and hating yourself. “I am so fucking sorry.”

Jack finally turns his head to look over at you. “Don’t be. Seriously. You had no way of knowing.” You appreciate him saying it but it doesn’t stop the guilt that builds inside of you. You were the reason he had the nightmare in the first place and now you’re the reason he had to go right back there. “So when you, when it got brought up, it just made it all hit me again, all the emotions from that nightmare and it made me panic almost. That this wasn’t real, that you weren’t. And I lost it a bit and so I did whatever that was and then needed to be as close to you as possible.” He shrugs a little. “I needed to know you were real.” 

Jack’s hand slides under yours and picks it up, laces your fingers together and squeezes. You feel vaguely lightheaded by his admission and then berate yourself and feel guiltier for thinking about yourself when this is about Jack and him still needing you. “I,” you try to find words to say, “I’m sorry,” Jack shakes his head but you continue, “I can’t even begin to imagine how painful that must have been.” You pause and have to look away from him for a moment, can feel his eyes remain on you. “Or maybe I can, to some extent at least, and that’s why I’m sorry and wish I could take it all away from you, make sure it never happens again.”

“That one has only happened once since you’ve been home. The first night.” You feel a little relief at that, are able to look back up at him. “They’ve kind of changed though, honestly. It’s not holding your dead body in an OR anymore, it’s walking in the door from work or the store or wherever and finding your dead body on the floor or in bed or wherever. Complications. Something else random. Freak home deaths I’ve seen roll through work before.” He lets go of your hand to bring his hand to your face again. “I wake up and have to convince myself you’re here. I’ve gotten quite good at the art of taking your pulse on your wrist without you waking up.” He gives a little laugh through his nose, trying to infuse a little lightness. It doesn’t work. If anything your lips pull down a bit. “Sometimes I just lay awake for a while watching you breathe. Sometimes I cuddle up to you a bit closer to feel your chest rise and fall against mine. Sometimes I fall asleep counting the beats of your heart while I feel your pulse.”

You take in a shuddery breath, trying so hard to focus on him and helping him and being here for him and not on the way this is all your fault. “Do you want to talk or for me to just listen?” You don’t want to force him to truly discuss this with you if he’s not in the headspace right now and it won’t surprise you if he’s not.

Jack thinks about it for a second. “Listen, please.”

“Okay.” You nod at him. “I’m not saying this to start a conversation when you just told me you wanted listening but I just need to make sure you know. You can do whatever you need to do Jack. When you wake up from one. Wake me up. We can talk, we can just sit together, whatever you need, okay?”

He nods, pulls his hand from your face to wipe away the couple of tears that have fallen down his own during this conversation. “Actually when you shifted us earlier, in the kitchen. Pulled my head to your chest so I could listen to your heart. It helped a lot. I just didn’t want to hurt you, before. With your chest healing.” He tries to laugh softly at himself. 

You give him the best smile you can manage with all the guilt and self-hate swirling inside you. “You can roll me into whatever position you want so you can listen anytime.” You know he’s trying to keep the conversation light because he knows how hard hearing it is for you. But that’s not fair. You should be the one trying to keep it light for him, should be taking care of him. “We could get you another stethoscope to keep on your nightstand,” you offer. “Then you could really listen whenever you wanted.”

He gives you a little more of a laugh at that and it makes your small smile become a little more genuine. “Could, yeah. But I like having my head on your chest, feeling you. I think it probably helps ground me in its own way.”

“Makes sense.” You rest your left hand on his chest, push down a little extra hard with your ring finger so he can feel the band that lives there now. “Thank you for telling me. I know it wasn’t easy and that you didn’t have to. And I want to do whatever I can to help you because I don’t want you to suffer.” You stop yourself from adding the because of me that you want to so badly. 

Jack picks up your hand, brings it to his lips palm first and kisses the band of your engagement ring before flipping your hand and kissing to the side of it the best he can with the setting. He brings your hand to the side of his face and covers it with his as he leans into it. “You always help. Even when you’re just laying there asleep and don’t know it.” 

You give him a little smile and laugh through your nose, try your best to take his words to heart because you know how much he means them. Jack knows you’re struggling, he can read you like a book. But he senses that you don’t want to acknowledge it so he doesn’t bring it up. 

His stomach growls then which makes you laugh a little more and he huffs. “Ruined our moment.” 

“Nah,” you shake your head and pull your hand away and rub his stomach, push off the headboard to sit up more. “What do you feel like? Can’t have my man going hungry.” The smile you give him is genuine, all the way to your eyes this time and it makes him mirror you, that smile of his you love so much pulling onto his face. 

He widens his eyes at you for a second and raises his eyebrows and you already know what he’s about to say. “You.”

“Yeah, I walked into that one,” you click your tongue at yourself. Jack gives you a smirk. “I don’t think I’m going to be filling enough for that-”

“I could go for seconds. Thirds, even.” 

“Mm, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but no.” You boop his nose and the way he scrunches his nose at it is so cute you could bite him. “Real food first. Me later, if you’re good.” He raises his eyebrows at you with a little smile. “What would you like? I’ll order.”

“Feisty. I’ll take it. Be so good for you so I can have dessert.” He nods all saccharine and put-on grin that makes you roll your eyes at him playfully. He thinks for a moment and then says the name of your favorite restaurant. 

You tsk at him and give him a really? look, but you’re smiling still, grinning, in fact. Like an idiot. It’s so sweet and so Jack, just one of those little casual ways he shows he loves you. 

“Whattt? I can’t want that?” 

“You can, but I don’t think it’s really your first choice, right now.” You shake your head a little as you speak. You start to slide out of bed and Jack whines, grabs at one of your arms. 

“Where are you going?” he pouts at you. 

“Gotta go get my phone so we can order, baby.” 

His pout lessens fractionally. “Alright, but hurry back.” 

“You’re very cute when you’re clingy,” you giggle at him as you get out of bed. He goes to make a smart comment back that he isn’t clingy but stops. He is right now and he doesn’t fucking care. He’s allowed to be. 

Jack has a favorite restaurant, just like you. Several, actually but you know the one that really tops the list. But you’ve also deduced that Jack has a favorite comfort restaurant that’s different from his favorite favorite. And you know what his favorite comfort meal from that restaurant is. So you add it, pick something for yourself and order it to be delivered before walking back into the bedroom with your phone. 

“Took you long enough,” he teases as you come into view. “What were you doing?”

“Ordering.” You toss your phone at him as you slide in and he unlocks it, reads it over. 

He swallows thickly and looks at you with glassy eyes. You make him feel more loved than he could ever possibly deserve, knowing him that well without him having ever said a word about it and doing it for him without asking. You give him a soft smile when you turn to look at him. “Okay?” 

“More than,” he whispers. “Thank you.” He pulls you closer to him so that you’re cuddling chest to chest, gives you the sweetest, simplest kiss. It’s everything. “You know,” he hums, starting to push you on your back. “I think you’re my appetizer and dessert.”  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“How about the day we met? We consider that our first date, it’s our anniversary,” Jack suggests. 

You and Jack are lounging on the couch together, half watching your show and half discussing wedding things. You’re not making any real plans, just thinking and dreaming out loud with each other. 

You can’t help but tease him. “Is that because you only want to have to remember one date?”

He shoots you a look. “No.” He wags his head at you as he says it. “I just thought it was kind of sweet. That’s our day, you know? And it falls on a Saturday that year.” He waves his phone that’s open to the calendar app at you. 

You grin at him. “You’re a romantic, Jack Abbot.” You’re crawling into his lap as you sing it, running your hands up his chest to hold his face so you can cover it in kisses.

“So you’ve said.” Jack moves his head and chases your lips with his trying to get a kiss on the lips. “Multiple times.”

“Because it’s true,” you mumble against his lips as he kisses you, running your hands through his curls.  

“Yeah, yeah.” He playfully waves you off as you settle on his lap perpendicular to him, one of his arms resting against your legs, hand spread over the thigh closest to him. His other hand rubs up and down your back absentmindedly. “You thought about where?”

“Mm,” you hum, look down at your engagement ring, “not so much. You?”

“Yeah,” he nods, squeezes your thigh. “I was thinking the bookstore.”

Your eyes come up from your ring and look at the wall in front of you for a second before looking at Jack. He can’t be serious. You open your mouth to say something, but close it as you struggle to find the words. 

“I didn’t expect speechless but I knew you’d love the idea.” Jack smiles. He uses the hand rubbing at your back to gently grab the back of your neck and bring your face close to his as if he’s going to kiss you. He drops his voice and lets a breath of hot air fan over your lips. “I’m fucking with you,” he murmurs before pulling his face away a bit and releasing you, letting his hand come down to your back again, a huge self-satisfied smirk on his face. 

“Jack!” He laughs at the shrill tone of your voice and the way you swat his chest playfully. 

“I really had you there for a minute,” he laughs as you fake pout at him. “But something I love about you is the way you were thinking so hard of a way to let me down without hurting me.”

“You did!” You huff at him. “I was sitting here thinking how am I going to explain to him that while I love our bookstore it doesn’t say wedding venue, nor do I want our wedding to be a near recreation of our first date with a bunch of extra people with us!”

Jack chuckles a little more. “I haven’t really thought about where either. Hard to think of where before you have a date to know the season.” You nod and hum, he makes a good point. “I only have one wedding requirement. And it’s not even really the wedding.” 

“Oh?” You raise an eyebrow at him in intrigue. “What’s that?”

“I plan the honeymoon.” Both of your eyebrows raise at that and you cock your head at him. You don’t know what you expected him to say, but it wasn’t planning the honeymoon apparently. “And you don’t get to know where we’re going until we’re at the gate about to board.”

“How will I pack?” You look slightly stricken. “Jack, I love you and I trust you with my life, truly, but packing-”

“I’m going to give you,” Jack cuts you off with an oddly reassuring smirk, “two packing lists. You’ll make two piles. Once you’ve left to go get ready I’ll put one of the piles into a suitcase. That way I get my surprise and you’ve packed for yourself.”

You blink at him for a moment. “Jack,” you whisper, swallow hard and will away the tears you can feel forming. “You have this all planned out just to surprise me?”

“I thought you might like the idea, but it’s okay if you don’t.” He nods to emphasize that part. “But if we do decide to do it this way we’ll still talk about places of course, it’s not like I don’t want any input from you. I’ll just be the final decision maker.” 

“No, I love it.” The laugh you give him is breathless. “It makes me feel so loved and taken care of. It’s hard to wrap my head around.” You lean into him to give him a deep kiss. “How long have you been thinking about this?”

“I think the general idea came to me a couple weeks after I knew I wanted to marry you.”

You beam up at him. “That long?” Jack nods. “Wow.” 

“Did you have a moment?” Jack asks you. You furrow your brows at him and shake your head slightly to ask him to explain. “A moment when you knew you wanted to marry me. That you knew you’d say yes if I asked. It’s okay if you don’t, honestly.”

“Of course I do!” You click your tongue at him. You let out a short laugh. “It actually wasn’t long after yours. Like two-ish weeks later, maybe? Things had been adding up, there were lots of things. This was just the first moment where I really consciously thought it.” You smile at him, wrap one arm around his neck so your fingers can scratch at the back of his scalp and nape of his neck how he likes. 

“You had just worked I think five nights in a row helping cover shifts. We hadn’t spoken on the phone that day, but exchanged some texts in the morning before you got home and went to sleep. And I could tell just from them that you were so beyond exhausted. My day, well. It was probably the worst and hardest day I had ever had at work and I felt so selfish but once I was able to leave I just went straight to your place. Without asking. So I knock and wait, get ready to leave because I know you’re asleep but then you open the door in your pajama pants, you’d clearly just woken up. And you give me this little ‘Hey Doll, come in’ as you open the door. I was frozen by that point. You took one look at me, grabbed my hand, pulled me inside and sat me on your couch and then disappeared. At some point you came back and gave me a tight hug, kissed my forehead and said ‘I’ve got you.’ And the next thing I know you’re stripping me and getting me into the bath you’d apparently drawn. You sat on the floor next to the tub with me. I still hadn’t said a single word to you at this point. Not even hi. And then you start talking to me. Just talking. I don’t remember about what. But you knew just from looking at me that I needed help getting out of my head. And as I listened I finally found my voice and was able to say I was sorry. You asked why and I said something along the lines of I was being selfish and knew you were exhausted and shouldn’t have come and made you do all this just because I had a bad day. And then you said, ‘Don’t apologize for needing me. Ever. For anything or for any reason. The day will never come where you need me and I am too tired for you.’ It wasn’t a big deal or a huge declaration. Just a casual fact you were stating. You knew what I needed just by looking at me. You didn’t care that I didn’t say a word to you while you did all this stuff for me. You didn’t ask what was wrong or for me to talk to you. You just met me where I was. And as you were helping me out of the bath and drying me off with a towel I just had the thought. I want to marry him.”

You wipe a few tears from your eyes. “Sorry, that was probably way more of a story than it needed to be to answer your question.” 

“Don’t apologize,” Jack murmurs. His eyes are glassy just like yours, a bit red. He gives a soft laugh. “I just feel kind of bad now that I didn’t give that much detail.” 

“Don’t.” You shake your head at him. “I promise, if I had been down on one knee on this floor that story would have been a whole lot fucking shorter.” 

That makes Jack laugh properly which makes you laugh properly. You turn a little and slide your arms around his neck to hug him, his arms sliding around you in return and holding you close. 

You nuzzle into his neck and then pull back for a kiss, let Jack deepen it as he begins moving to get you on your back on the couch, propping himself up on his elbows on top of you to keep too much weight off your chest and abdomen. You have to break apart for air but Jack goes straight to your neck, kissing and sucking and pulling all those pretty little sounds from you that he loves. 

“We have a date,” you whisper, hands tugging at his curls a little. 

Jack pulls back from your neck to look down at you, both of you grinning at each other. “We have a date.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You and Jack walk into the Pitt together. He needed to grab some stuff and sign a few things and was going to have Robby drop it all off so he didn’t have to leave you. You haven’t been outside much since the shooting. But you convinced him that you guys should go together, that it would be good for him to see people. As long as he would drive you guys, which he would of course. 

Jack was weary at the idea. You seemed to be struggling a bit harder lately and he worried something about being in the Pitt specifically might be too triggering for you. He knows that you have a lot of unresolved anxiety and guilt about what happened still. And that, while you’ve spoken generally about feeling guilty for putting him through all of this, you, like him, struggle to talk about it with him because you see it as burdening him or guilting him.

But you reassured him that it would be fine. You’d been back to the hospital since everything for follow up appointments. Not to the Pitt, but if the hospital didn’t completely trigger you why would the Pitt? 

You feel a little twinge of something as you walk through the ambulance bay doors, the ones you’d come through that day. Jack can tell and he squeezes your hand, stops and pulls to the side. “You sure about this? We can leave, right now.”

You shake your head. “No, no I’m sure. It’ll be good for me. I’m okay, really. It was just a little second of something.” 

He eyes you for a second but nods and starts walking you further in. It’s busy, nobody notices either of you as he leads you over to the break room. “You want to wait here? Shouldn’t take long. You can check the fridge. Anything with Robby’s name on it you can steal.” 

That makes you laugh, helps you relax. “I’ll wait here, yeah. Go do your thing, Dr. Abbot.” You wink at him. 

Jack lets out a little chuckle and shakes his head. “Don’t even start with me, Doll.” It makes you giggle as he leans down to kiss you. “I won’t be long, okay?” You nod at him, take a seat as he walks out. 

You scroll on your phone for a few minutes before your curiosity gets the better of you. You walk over and peek out the window of the door. It’s constant movement right now, people barely acknowledging each other as they rush to get somewhere else. You open the door and step out, just to look around. 

Before you’re even really aware of it you’re standing in front of one of the trauma rooms. That trauma room. The parts you can remember play in your head. Hugging Jack, Robby calling him over, you realizing what had happened and calling to Jack. And then nothing. Standing here you can only imagine what it must have been like for Jack, for him to have seen where you were shot and then watch you collapse. And then you made him live in the hospital with you for weeks. And now you’re making him stay home with you. Sometimes your guilt makes you feel like his jailer. 

Jack chats with Robby at the desk while he fills out one of the papers, gives whatever info it is HR so desperately needed to process all his leave correctly. Robby’s mid sentence when Jack spots you just in the corner of his eye, turns to see you standing in front of the trauma room. Jack leaves without a word to Robby and strides to you. 

“Hey,” he calls out as he gets close so that he won’t scare you when he steps in front of you and puts his hands on your arms. He sees that your eyes are a little glazed over when he gets a good look at you. “Why don’t you come over to the desk with me, yeah?” He’s not going to ask you why you were there like you’re a child who needs to explain yourself to him. He’s just going to redirect. “Yeah?” He asks again as he cups your face with one hand. 

“I just wanted to see. I, I got… curious. Just wanted to watch.” You explain anyway. “And then I was here.”

“That’s okay, Doll. You can sit at the desk with me, yeah?” 

You look around. There’s a chair against the wall a bit down, not facing the trauma room. “I’ll sit there. If that’s okay. Then I can watch.”

Jack glances over. “Yeah, that’s fine, that’s okay.” He walks you over to it, squeezes your hand. “I’m almost done, I promise.”

Being away from the room and back in Jack’s space snaps you back a little. “Okay, Peter.” You smile at him before he walks away. 

After a few minutes sitting there by yourself a woman rolls her wheelchair up to you. “And who are you that they’ve got sitting in time out?”

You glance around for a second to see if anyone’s coming after her and when nobody does you figure fuck it, and answer. “I’m Jack, um, Dr. Abbot’s fiancée.”

“Oh you lucky girl,” the woman smirks at you. “I’m Myrna.”

“Oh!” You smile widely at her. “Yes! I’ve heard a lot about you from Robby!”

“Have you now? Fruitcake’s talkin’ about me outside of this shithole. I knew I had that cocksucker wrapped around my finger.”

“Fruitcake?” You laugh. “That’s what you call Robby? Fruitcake?” 

“Yeah,” she nods. “He loves it.” Myrna gives you a conspiratorial wink. “He pretends it doesn’t, but I know it makes him feel things.” 

At the desk Robby looks up, sees you and Myrna talking and you laughing. “Oh that’s not good.” 

“Hm?” Jack raises his brows and then looks up. He smirks. “Not for you, but I think it’s going to be pretty funny for me.” Jack signs the last form and they both walk over to you. You and Myrna quiet as they get closer. 

“Myrna, are you harassing Jack’s fiancée?” Robby asks sternly, crossing his arms. 

“Not at all Fruitcake!” You answer for her. “We were just having a little chat.” 

Robby lets out a big sigh as Jack laughs. “See man, I told you. Not good for you, funny for me.” 

“Actually, we were talking and Myrna is free, Robby. She can be your plus one to the wedding! You said yesterday you were still looking!”

“That sounds perfect!” Jack smirks, clapping Robby on the shoulder. “I’ll let you see my vagina again for free Fruitcake,” Myrna offers, raising her eyebrows at Robby. 

Robby lets out another sigh and hangs his head. “The roof doth beckon.” 

You and Jack laugh while Myrna swats at him. “Ready Doll?”

“Yeah.” You look at Myrna. “It was lovely meeting you Myrna, I look forward to seeing you again.” You turn your attention to Robby, disguising your smirk with a warm smile quite well. “Bye Fruitcake!” You lean up and give Robby a quick kiss on the cheek as Jack snorts a laugh and holds his hand out for you. 

As the two of you walk away you hear Myrna giving Robby more shit.

“How come she’s allowed to kiss you on the cheek, cocksucker, but when I try you threaten to call the cops?” You and Jack laugh with each other as you walk out the ambulance bay doors to go back home. 

That night Jack thinks it’s a little strange, how long the shower has been running. And how it doesn’t sound like you’re in it. There’s no pause to the water raining down on the tiled shower floor, no slaps of water hitting against the floor suddenly when you step to rinse your hair or body, no muffled rain sound when you let yourself stand under the stream and soak. Only the uninterrupted sound of water raining from the shower head onto the tile. 

He glances at the alarm clock on his nightstand. You have to have been in there for at least thirty minutes. Jack looks back over at the bathroom door. It’s unnerving. Something is wrong. 

He gets off the bed, shirtless and just in his sweatpants. You guys had been winding down for the night before you decided to shower. He tries the handle. It’s unlocked. There’s an unspoken rule between the two of you that you can enter without asking if the door is unlocked. 

“Doll?” Jack calls to you softly as he opens the door. 

It’s like you don’t even hear him. Jack finds you in only your underwear staring in the mirror at your scars, one hand hovering over the bottom of the long laparotomy scar running up your stomach, another over your mouth, tears streaming down your face. Being at the Pitt today pushed you over some edge you didn’t realize you were so close to.

He knows now that you were using the sound of the shower to hide your muffled sobs. 

His eyes run over each of your scars, starting with the one up near your neck from your central line, that one fading quicker with how small it is, especially in comparison to the others. From there his eyes move down until he hits the scar from your thoracotomy. He traces the line with his eyes before he finds the laparotomy scar and lets his eyes drag along it. And then his eyes move over to the more circular scar. The bullet hole. 

“Doll, sweetheart,” Jack keeps his voice low as he walks into the bathroom. He steps over to the shower first and turns it off. Even that hardly seems to get through to you. He sees your eyes leave yourself in the mirror and flick to him for just a second. The tears start to fall harder. 

Jack walks up behind you so that his warm, bare chest presses against your back, his hands resting on your hips and lips kissing at your neck. Not teasing, just loving, soft and sweet and trying to soothe you when he knows words are only going to go so far. 

“What if you can never look at me the same way again?” You finally whisper, moving your hand from your mouth. 

You can see his brows furrow and a look of confusion fall over his face. “What do you mean?”

“I know you’ve kissed all of them, that you did the first time we had sex again after what happened. But I see you looking at them all, all the scars, whenever one is visible. And so what if you can never look at me the same way again, especially when they’re visible. What if my body is just always a reminder of one of the worst days of your life? A visual reminder that sends you right back there, that just, that just tortures you!” You let out a quiet sob. “What if that’s all you can ever see when you look at me?”

Jack takes in a deep breath and you can feel his chest press into you a little more as he does. He catches your eye contact in the mirror. “Doll,” he murmurs, “I think that you misunderstand why I look at your scars whenever one is visible.” Jack slides his hands from your hips around your front in a kind of backwards hug, pulls you back closer to him a bit. 

Your chin trembles a little. “Oh?”

He nods. “Will you turn for me? Sit on the counter?” Jack tilts his head a little so that it rests against yours. “You can say no and I’ll still tell you of course. You know I just like my eye contact.” He says it with just a hint of a smile and self-teasing tone to try and get you to smile. 

And it’s small, but it works. Your lips pull up just slightly for a second. You chew on the inside of your cheek for a second before you turn around and let him help you get you up to sit on the edge of the counter. 

“Thank you.” Jack steps between your legs and leans down to kiss your forehead. “You want me to grab your shirt?” He’s cognizant of the conversation you’re having and the fact that you’re topless, scars on display. You give him a little nod and he grabs it from the pile of your clothes you made to the side of the door. “I say your shirt, but I really mean my shirt, don’t I?” 

You’d been wearing one of his old shirts that’s a bit oversized on him, soft and worn in and smelling like him. You stay quiet and nod. Jack’s heart almost throbs in his chest at how much he hates seeing you like this, this upset. Your tears have stopped now though. Little victories. Once it’s on he rests his hands on the tops of your thighs, rubs his thumbs in what he hopes are soothing circles. 

“Your scars don’t remind me of one of the worst days of my life. Looking at them doesn’t send me back to the hospital or torture me. Pretty much the exact opposite.” This time it’s your brows that furrow. “They’re a reminder of what happened, sure. Of what I almost lost. But it’s that part that’s important. What I almost lost.” 

“You know what you didn’t have in any of my nightmares?” Your eyes widen a little because you know what he means, what he’s going to say. “Scars. You only had wounds, fresh, stitches still in them. No scars.” Jack squeezes at your hands. “When I was in that operating room holding your dead body, you didn’t have any scars. So your scars, looking at them, when I look at them, they don’t torture me or send me back to one of the worst days of my life. They tell me that you’re alive. They remind me how hard you fought to stay here with me. They remind me how strong you are. They remind me that you’re here with me, healing and living.” 

Jack moves his hands from your legs and sets them on the outside of each of your thighs on the counter, hunches over a bit and leans on them as he moves forward to kiss your forehead again. You bring your arms up and set them on either side of his neck, fingers playing in the curls at the nape of his neck. 

“Your scars are proof that you’re alive. And so your scars will never be anything less than one of the most beautiful and important and comforting things I could ever look at.” He says it so seriously, so firm and settled, looks you straight in the eye as he says it. It makes a few tears slide down your cheeks again. “Second only to your face and you in general, okay?” He nods as he says it. 

He brings a hand up to wipe away the tears that have fallen. “Can I give you a kiss?”

You nod as a couple more tears fall. Jack takes your chin between his thumb and index finger and tilts your head up so he can kiss you. It’s gentle, soft and sweet and lingering as he just holds you there. He pulls back but then goes back for another quick one. 

Both you and Jack are surprised you haven’t started fully bawling into him, but there’s something in your chest that stops it from coming out like it needs to. You couldn’t describe it if you tried. 

“Bed? Or you wanna shower?”

It takes you a moment to answer. Not to decide. Just to answer. “Just bed, please.”

“Of course, Doll.” Jack steps back from between your legs and helps you get off the counter safely before taking your hand and leading you back to your shared bed. You both slide in and Jack takes his prosthetic off and gets an arm around you, pulls you into him as he leans up against the headboard. 

You let him, let your head rest on his chest and let his arms wrap around you and let him hold you close as you think about everything he said. You believe him, you do. You know he would never lie to you and when you think about it all it makes sense. You just wish it were the same for you. Wish you could look at them and feel something, anything other than crushing guilt. 

Because for you they’re a reminder of a traumatic event but more than that they’re a reminder of what you put Jack through. What you continue to put him through now as you try to heal physically and mentally. 

Sometimes, maybe a lot of the time recently, you go back to that place. That place where you just wish it would stop, be over for the both of you. Wish you hadn’t made it out of the OR or the courthouse. That place where your brain tells you that Jack would be better off without you, that it’s unfair of you to ask him to do this all with you, that he’s only here with you still because he feels some sort of weird responsibility for what happened to you, that even if he doesn’t think he could, he would survive losing you and he would properly grieve and he would move on and find someone else. Someone who’s less work, less of a burden. Someone who’s better. That it wouldn’t even be that hard. 

The rational part of you knows that those thoughts aren’t true. That Jack is here because he loves you, more than anything, that he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. That he would not survive losing you or properly grieve or move on. That if he knew he would tell you that you’re not work at all, not a burden, that he could never do better. That he had an entire nightmare about having to bury you and it hurt so bad that even weeks later when he thought about it he was physically sick and broke down in the kitchen. 

Jack doesn’t push you, just like you never push him. He does get worried though. He hates to see you cry but this silence is somehow worse. 

“You wanna go to the bookstore tomorrow?” He asks it just to ask. Just to fill the silence and help distract you and maybe keep you out of your head. Or from getting further into it. 

You can feel the vibration of him speaking as your head rests on his chest. “Hm?”  

He kisses the top of your head. “Bookstore tomorrow?”

“Maybe, yeah.” It’s an odd answer from you. “I don’t know.” 

Jack nods slowly. “It’s okay to not know. And I’m here if you want to talk or have me listen. Whatever you need.”

You hum at his words. “I don’t know anything anymore Jack,” you admit. 

You feel his arms hold you a little tighter. He doesn’t understand and something about the way you say it scares him a little. “What do you mean?”

The something in your chest that was blocking everything from coming out starts to crack. “I don’t know,” you whisper, high pitched and cracking. “I don’t know how to do this.” You pull away from him and move so that you’re sitting next to him with your legs crossed so that you can face him. 

“I know I’m in therapy. And I know it helps. And I hate to think about what I’d be like without my therapist.” You shrug, chin trembling and tears lining your eyes as you look at him. You look so sad and it kills him. 

“But I still don’t know how to do this Jack. How to heal, how to grieve. I don’t know how to heal the tremendous guilt I feel. And everyone says to let myself grieve and what the fuck am I grieving? I don’t have anything to grieve. I didn’t lose anything! Not like you. It’s not the same as what you went through. You lost a piece of yourself. I happened to get shot and spent time in the hospital and yes I almost died but I didn’t lose a piece of me. And so I don’t know what I’m grieving and I don’t know how to grieve or what I’m grieving or how to heal from this… this amorphous concept. This thing, that just happened to me. This event. And I shouldn’t need to! I shouldn’t need to grieve or heal. There’s nothing there. I don’t have anything to grieve or heal from, and I shouldn’t be like this! And I’m not trying to throw what happened in your face Jack, I’m not, I promise, and I’m not for a second saying you somehow had it easier because there was a more tangible thing to grieve, if anything it’s the opposite, you lost a piece of yourself and I lost nothing. You had so much to grieve and heal from, you needing to grieve and heal and struggling that makes sense. I lost nothing. I don’t even know what I have to grieve. I don’t know.” 

All the tears in your eyes spill over at once. You bring your shoulders up to your ears in a held shrug. “I don’t know, Jack.” He’s never heard you sound so small. Not even that ‘okay’ you gave him in the hospital was like this. The guilt and shame and embarrassment all flood you, make it hard to look at him. “I didn’t say anything even though I’ve been struggling because-” 

You shake your head, try to wipe some of the tears off your face, look down at your hands in your lap. “I just don’t know how to do this, whatever this is. And it’s like recently I’ve lost all the words to even try and begin to explain how I feel or felt. I lost all the words.” You force yourself to look back up at him because when you admit this and apologize you need to be looking at him. “I lost all the words and my head got so fucked up that I didn’t know how to ask for help, from anyone.” 

Jack catches the change in tense. You had said you don’t know but now you’re saying you didn’t, like somewhere along the way in this conversation, this admission, this time with him, you found the words again. 

You shake your head a little as more tears slip down your cheeks. You whisper now, voice thicker than he’s ever heard with emotion. “Not even you. I didn’t know how to ask you for help Jack.” You try to hold back a small sob through your teeth. “And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I just didn’t know, I wanted to, I just couldn’t. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-” You’re cut off by the wracking sob that you’re finally able to let out as that something in your chest shatters.

“Okay, shh.” Jack shushes you softly as he reaches for you while you let yourself fall forward into his chest, rolling on your side slightly to get your legs stretched out as he pulls you on top of him and cradles you against his bare chest. He isn’t shushing you to get you to stop, only for the comfort of it.

Jack hates this. He hates seeing you suffer so thoroughly. He hates the way he can’t hug you and put you back together, the way he can’t fix this for you, can’t take away your pain. Can’t take on all of the pain for you. Jack believes you when you say you didn’t know how to ask, knows that you weren’t trying to hide it from him, just like he wasn’t trying to hide his shit from you. 

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, kissing the top of your head. “It’s okay. You have nothing to be sorry for.” He repeats it as he continues to hold you, rocks with you at times like you did with him. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” “I’ve got you.” “I’m here.” “You’re okay.” “I love you.” One arm keeps you close, his other hand rubbing your back in circles. He knows there’s very little he can do right now except hold you through it. 

With time, you run out of tears, exhaust yourself out of crying and just sniffle and hiccup into Jack. He keeps holding you, doesn’t push for more from you. 

“It’s just so hard.” Your whisper breaks the silence after a good five or so minutes. 

You can feel Jack nod. “Talk or listen?” he whispers. 

You try to think about it. You’re not really sure what you want. “I don’t know,” you admit, “I’m sorry, I don’t know.” You try to stop yourself from getting worked up again, the reality of one more thing you don’t know hitting you hard. 

“Shh,” Jack soothes you, “it’s okay, you don’t need to apologize and you don’t need to know. It’s okay. I promise.” His hands rub up and down your back and he kisses the top of your head. With how escalated you are right now he thinks eye contact will be too much so he just holds you tight as you are. “I’m going to talk. And if you want me to stop, just say so, okay?”

You nod. Jack takes a breath in as he tries to think of how to start and how he wants to say what he has to say. “You don’t ever need to apologize for struggling and not knowing how to ask for help.” There’s a pause as Jack realizes how guilty he feels about that. He knows he can’t focus on himself right now. You need him. “I think maybe we need to try and find something that you could do, that both of us could do honestly, that doesn’t require words but would let the other know we needed help. So then we don’t need words and can still get help.”

“Probably, would be good, yeah,” you mumble against him.

“Good. We’ll figure something out, promise.” He’s quiet for a moment to give you the chance to say you’ve talked enough for the night, but you don’t. “As for the other part, I know and understand and hear you when you say that you don’t know what you’re grieving and that you don’t have anything to grieve. But Doll, you do. You have so much to grieve, so much you are grieving even if it’s hard for you to see or understand right now. There doesn’t have to be some tangible loss like a foot or a person for you to have something to grieve. I hate it, and I wish that I could make it different and better for you, but you did lose a piece of yourself.” Jack feels new tears wet his chest but you don’t ask him to stop or make a noise so he continues. He knows he’s not what’s making you cry. That it’s just hard to hear and realize. “You lost a piece of yourself the moment that gun went off, and the moment you watched someone die in front of you,” he addresses the one thing you don’t talk a lot about because you’re not ready yet. It took a while for you to even be able to tell him. “And the moment,” he has to take a breath to steady himself because it’s still so hard to say, “the moment that bullet hit you, and when you almost died and over weeks in the hospital. All of those things take something from you, even if it’s not something tangible. You’ve lost a piece of yourself. And you’re grieving the person you were before you lost it. You’re grieving the you who didn’t know this type of violence, the you who didn’t know what it felt like to be shot, or what it felt like to be drowning in your own blood, or what it felt like to be septic or what it does to you to watch someone die in front of you or how it feels to see reminders of what you went through permanently on your skin. You’re grieving the person you were. And you’re grieving other things that I don’t know because I’m not in your brain. But those ones I said, those are ones I can see you grieving and struggling with and I hope it doesn’t feel like I’m being condescending or trying to define your grief for you, because I’m not. I’m just trying to tell you what I see in the hopes that it’ll help you be able to see, or give you a starting point.”

You shake your head against his chest. You know he’s not doing any of that, he didn’t even need to say it but you find it sweet that he did. “I know,” you sniffle. “I do. And it does help and somewhere deep down I know what I’m grieving, all of those things. Some things I probably can’t articulate. I just feel like I don’t know how to grieve. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to grieve obviously but I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s all the guilt making me feel like I don’t deserve to grieve or heal and should be stuck in this weird limbo forever or what. I just don’t know how.”

You both sit with your words for a minute. “I wish I had answers,” Jack finally murmurs. “But I’m not sure if anybody really knows how to grieve.” He tries to think of more to say that might be comforting or helpful. Before he can you speak.

“I got you all wet and snotty, I’m sorry.” You lean off his chest a little and put your hand under your shirt and bring it up to try and wipe him off. Jack understands you. You’ve talked enough for the night. 

“Don’t apologize, it’s okay,” Jack laughs softly, grabbing at your hand to get you to stop. “Two of the most benign bodily fluids I’ve had on me, and they’re yours. Plus, I think I’ve done the same to you recently.”

“That’s different.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” he shakes his head, gives you a little tap on the ass. 

“It’s true!” you protest. “I was wearing a shirt. You’re not. That’s different.”

“Still.” He knows you’re technically correct. “I did the same to you. And I’m pretty sure I cried tears onto your face while we were, you know… at the table.”

You burst out laughing. “While we were at the table? That’s what we’re calling it?”

“It’s not incorrect.” He shrugs, beaming just from hearing you laugh and being the one to pull it from you. 

“Well, actually, I think it was more you were at the table. I was on the table,” you point out. 

Jack shakes his head and smiles at you. “Prepositions are overrated.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You and Jack don’t argue often. But you’re humans. Humans who went through a major trauma together. And humans aren’t perfect. Individually or as a couple. 

Neither of you even remember how it started. And you’ve somehow moved far, far away from what you were initially discussing and starting to bicker about. But you’re here now and things are escalating into a kind of argument. Even with the escalation you never raise your voices at each other, never yell. Still. It’s neither your nor Jack’s finest moment. 

Jack has never pressured you into going outside. He knows it’s still hard for you, knows how much it scares you. But he also knows that you really need to and that it’s never going to get less scary. He knows that he needs to go outside but doesn’t want to leave you, feels like he can’t leave you or something will happen like when he left you that time in the hospital. And you know that you need to go outside. It’s just so scary. You were shot. You’ve put Jack through so much, and when you think about outside you think about what if something else happened, when will it be too much for him, you can’t keep asking him to do this.

Jack isn’t pressuring you to go outside but he does ask. Again. In the space of minutes.

“I don’t want to, Jack.” Your tone has a snappy edge to it. You’re getting frustrated. At yourself more than Jack. 

“You’re going to have to go outside eventually, Doll. For more than me driving you to a doctor or therapy or the bookstore.” Jack tries to keep his tone even. He’s getting frustrated too, also more at himself than you. Something about his words stings when you know he doesn’t mean them to, know it’s because you’re escalated and more sensitive in a way. The way he says it makes it seem like he’s not doing those things with you, just driving you somewhere. Chauffeuring you. Like he doesn’t want to be doing it. “Around the block, please. Nothing major. I’ll be with you the whole time, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you.”

You shake your head from where you’re sitting on the couch, knees coming up to your chest. “I don’t want to. Asking me eight more times isn’t going to change my answer.” 

“I’m worried about you!” Jack stands across the living from you in jeans and a shirt. Actually dressed compared to you in lounge clothes that are effectively pajamas. “I’m not trying to pressure you,” you can’t help the little face you make at that, “I’m really not, I promise. I’m just worried. You need to go outside. Get some fresh air. You’re holding yourself hostage here. You’re holding me-”

Jack stops as soon as he realizes what he was about to say. But he knows from the look on your face that it’s too late. And he’s right. It hits you like a slap to the face, far worse than he even realizes or could imagine. Because you’ve never really explicitly or in any detail told Jack about the guilt you have from effectively asking him to do all of this with and for you, about how guilty you feel that his entire life has been turned upside down and that he was confined to the hospital and is now confined to home because of you, because you’re scared to go outside. About the guilt of feeling like his jailer. Or hostage-keeper, apparently.

It’s a silent type of panic. One that pulls a band around your chest and stomach making it hard to breathe and sends adrenaline through your veins to chill your fingers and toes and has tears hitting your eyes. 

“Doll, I didn’t-”

“No, Jack, finish the goddamn sentence.” Your voice is eerily calm now. Jack takes in and lets out a breath, tilts his head and goes to speak. “No Jack. Finish the fucking sentence.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, and you know that. I wasn’t thinking when I said it, phrased it like that.” Jack sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“Phrased it like what? Like you resent me? Like you’re getting tired of me? Of having to take care of me?” You’re pushing some of his buttons now, a little more deliberately than he had initially pushed yours. 

Jack clenches his jaw and tries to breathe through his hurt and rising frustration. “I don’t resent you, nor am I getting tired of you or having to take care of you.”

“You just feel like I’m keeping you hostage in your own home?” It’s cold, the way you say it. Icy. The guilt eats away at you. You hate yourself for what you’ve put him through. 

“You won’t even try, Doll! I know you know I need out of this house and you won’t even try!” A push back at your buttons. Jack knows that it’s not a matter of trying. He knows it’s not that simple. Just like you know he isn’t growing tired of you or caring for you. 

“You won’t try leaving me alone,” you fire back. “I got fucking shot and I don’t want to go outside. So why don’t you try just leaving me here alone if you want to go outside that badly?” That one really hits a nerve, harder than you realize because Jack hasn’t directly expressed just how guilty he feels about what happened when he left to go down to the ED that time in the hospital. How fucking responsible he feels for what ended up happening, for you almost dying. How he thinks it’s completely his fault and could have been prevented, easily. 

“Because the last time I left you alone you ended up coding in front of me and coming a centimeter and a half away from dying!” Jack takes a quick breath. He hates himself for what he let happen to you. “You don’t even know what you don’t fucking know! I watched my best fucking friend intubate you and do CPR on you and shock you. I watched them crack your chest. I have seen your literal fucking heart.” That’s all new information to you and it makes you hate yourself a little bit more even though you know that wasn’t Jack’s intention. “I have sat by you while you were in a coma for five fucking days, all because I-” 

You cut him off before he can finish his sentence. All because I left you and so I wasn’t there to notice you getting sicker and to feel your fever before you went septic and threw a PE. 

“Oh well I am so sorry Jack, that I went to work and got shot and almost died-”

“Don’t.” The way he says it is almost dark, low and deadly serious, face set and eyes piercing the thick tension between you. That’s the line for him. The almost flippancy in your tone. 

Jack holds his hands up. “I need air.” You don’t say anything as he walks over to the entryway and puts on his shoes. “I love you.” He puts his hand on the door handle and pauses.

“I love you too.” The door opens, Jack walks out and it shuts, key turning the deadbolt to lock a few seconds later. 

The sudden quiet of your apartment is what seems to bring you back down. You take a gasping breath in as everything you said to him sinks in. You bring a hand to cover your mouth, tears wetting the back of it. You’re pretty sure you’ve never hated yourself more. 

You stay there on the couch, are stuck there really, unable to bring yourself to move. All you can do is cry and think about how to apologize to Jack. You start ruminating and edging toward panic thinking about whether he’ll be able to forgive you, whether you guys will be able to work through this. You know it’s panic and that you guys will be able to. That both of you said things you didn’t mean and that were designed as jabs at the other. But yours feel so much worse than anything he said to you. Even when Jack forgives you, you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to forgive yourself. 

Jack takes a couple of steps away from your apartment door but stops. He can’t. He can’t go any further. He knows he needed air and was right to step out and get some and help diffuse things between the two of you because that conversation was not going anywhere. But his fear is still there. So he walks back and slides down the wall right to the side of your door, convinces himself that this way he’ll hear you fall, if something happens. He’ll know. 

Sitting in the quiet brings Jack back down too, gives everything he said to you the chance to sink in. He runs his hands over his face and through his hair before bringing the heels of his palms to his eyes and pressing in. He’s pretty sure he’s never hated himself more. He gets panicky too, it gets hard for him to imagine how you could ever accept his apologies, how he could ever make this right. He knows that you’ll forgive him, and that you’ll work this out. He just doesn’t know how he’ll forgive himself.

Neither of you even cares what the other said to you. Not really. Both of you can hardly even remember what the other said to you now, in part because it doesn’t matter. It was said out of frustration and hurt and a deep grief, none of it was meant. Things just boiled over. And in part because all you can remember is the terrible things you said to the other. 

Jack doesn’t sit there long. It can’t be more than twenty minutes. You’re on your feet the second you hear the door start to unlock, walking closer to it and trying to wipe the tears from your face quickly. Jack pushes it open and looks at you, looks just as devastated as you feel and you hate it. He walks in and closes and locks the door. 

“I’m so sorry.” You both say it at the same time and it makes you smile a little at each other. You’re both moving then, walking towards one another until you meet and pull each other into the tightest hug. 

“I was so out of line Jack, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any of it.” Jack can feel your tears wet his neck and it makes him squeeze you a little tighter. 

“I was too. Way out of line. I didn’t mean it either. I’m so sorry, Doll.” Jack kisses the top of your head. 

The anxiety hits you a little harder being in Jack’s arms for some reason and you start to tremble. “I feel so awful, and I promise the tears aren’t manipulative or for guilt or to distract, I’m just so sorry and I hate myself for what I said and I don’t want to lose you.”

Jack frowns to himself. He’d like to have a strong word with whoever made you feel like you have to explain your tears. “I promise you that I never, for even a second, thought that. Now or any time in the past. I don’t want you to hate yourself, but I get it because I hate myself too right now. I don’t want to lose you either.” 

A few tears of Jack’s own slip down his face as he says it at the thought. “You’re not going to lose me,” you whisper.

“And you’re not going to lose me,” he whispers back. “Let’s go to bed.”

You pull away from him a little. “We can go out, if you just give me a couple of minutes to change-”

Jack shakes his head. “I don’t want to go out right now, I just want to be in bed with you, holding you close.” Jack brings a hand to your face and cups it, brushes some of the tears away. “I’m just as insecure as you are right now. Just as shaken. And not by anything you said. By myself, for what I said.”

You lean into his hand. “How do you always manage to do that?” Jack raises his eyebrows to seek clarification. “Read me so well. Know how I’m really feeling.”

He shrugs, like it’s simple and obvious. “You’re my favorite book. I’ve got you so well memorized you’re an easy read.” You give him a sad nod and look down at his chest. “Hey,” he guides your head back to look at him when you don’t resist. “That was so cheesy and deserved at least a pity laugh.” 

You give him the smallest one through your nose. You love this about him, it’s one of the ways he takes care of you when you’re upset, tries to make you laugh a little when appropriate to help distract your mind. Usually it works. You’re just a little too shaken yourself for it to right now. 

“I,” you try to find the words. “I’m not upset or shaken by anything you said either. I just want to make sure you know that.” 

“I do.” Jack nods. “Honestly Doll, I barely remember what you said to me. All I can hear in my head right now are the things I said to you.”

You give a slightly bigger laugh through your nose. “Same. I can only hear myself, only remember my words.” You know you’re preventing him from getting you in bed where he wants to be, but you have one last thing to say. “I don’t want that to ever happen again Jack, I don’t ever want to hurt you like that again, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, and I don’t want to hurt you or say things like that to you ever again. But right now, I think we hurt ourselves more than we hurt each other.” He leans down and you share a kiss, three actually, each one lingering, an apology, forgiveness given and declaration of love from both of you to the other. “We’re going to figure it out, okay? I promise.”

Jack’s promise is how the two of you found yourselves here. Couples therapy. 

It wasn’t one person’s suggestion. After the argument the two of you had been talking in bed, trying to work some of what you each said out. You both talked about your own therapy and it just kind of dawned on you both at the same time and you both agreed, easily, even laughing together when you said it at nearly the same time. 

You stand outside the office with Jack. You hate the term, feel like it implies something. But nothing is wrong between the two of you. Just the opposite. After your argument you both knew you needed guidance on navigating your guilt and healing as a couple, not just as individuals. Both of your therapists had recommended the same couples therapist when asked, one who specializes in helping couples who have gone through an acute traumatic experience together.  

Nothing changed after the argument. You were both clingy the rest of that day and for a few days after. If anything in some ways it made you guys feel stronger as a couple. But at the same time neither of you ever want it to happen again. 

So here you are. You know it won’t make you as individuals or partners or your relationship perfect because that’s impossible. And you both know you’ll hurt each other again as you heal from this and move through life together because you’re human. Neither of you expect perfection.

Jack squeezes your hand as you stand there. You squeeze back, hard as you let out a big breath.

“Preventive medicine,” Jack reminds you. You’d admitted to him one day how much the term couples therapy freaked you out and how you knew it was stupid and nothing was wrong with you guys or between you guys but it still freaked you out. Jack had suggested calling it preventive medicine, asked if that might help. You weren’t sure you were sold but knew you’d pick apart any potential name for it and preventive medicine was better than couple’s therapy to you for some reason.

“Nothing is wrong?” Sometimes you just need reassurance from him. He’s always happy to give it. 

“Absolutely nothing. I’m not mad or upset with you. I’m not hurt. I don’t resent you. I love you. More than I did yesterday, less than I will tomorrow, whatever the fucking saying is. We’re okay. I promise. And if we’re ever not, if we ever even get remotely near being on the same planet as not being okay I will tell you.” Jack kisses your forehead. “This is a good thing. It’s smart. They tell people to do this before they get married even when one of them hasn’t just been shot and almost died.”

You smile at him, soft and a touch somber, but a smile nonetheless. “I know. And thank you. I’m sorry, I know I’ve been so insecure and worried lately and asking for so much reassurance.”

“I’ve been the same,” Jack reminds you. You hum and shake your head as if to question him. “I have been, at least a little bit. And you give me reassurance. You don’t mind. You say you’ll give it to me as much as I need it, never take it personally because you understand. The same is true for me. I will give you however much and whatever type of reassurance you need as much as you need whenever you need and I will never take it personally. I understand too. I’d rather you ask than live with worry that could be soothed by asking, yeah?”

You nod. “Yeah.” You lean into Jack for a second and take in a deep breath. “Alright. I’m ready. I don’t know why I even had to stand here and become ready, but whatever.” Jack smiles to himself because he loves when you do that kind of self-commentary. “You ready?”

“I’m always ready for anything with you Doll.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jack is obviously the first of you to return to work. It’s not something either of you are looking forward to really. In a sense you both are because it checks off another box on the return to normalcy. But you’re not looking forward to being alone and Jack isn’t looking forward to leaving you.

The two of you talk and decide he’ll start with half shifts, give you both some time to adjust back into things. He had been working days but he thought maybe nights would be better until you were back to work, you’d be asleep when he was gone that way. You were fine with it and so that’s what he worked out with Robby. 

It’s strange sitting on the bed watching him pull on black scrubs that have been folded so long they’re a little creased. It’s been a long time since you last saw him in scrubs. It makes you smile because it reminds you of life before the shooting. And he still looks incredibly, incredibly fucking hot in them. 

“What?” He smirks as he looks at you after pulling his scrub top on over his undershirt. 

“I didn’t say anything!” You give him a look of mock offense. You really are doing your best to temper your anxiety about tonight. 

He narrows his eyes at you a little and walks to stand in front of where you’re sitting on the edge of the bed. “You didn’t have to say it. I could just feel it.”

You lean your head forward onto his tummy and rest your forehead there for a moment before looking up at him. “That so?” He gives you another smirk and nods. “I’m not allowed to appreciate how good you look in scrubs anymore, Dr. Abbot?”

Jack steps back and takes your hands to pull you off the bed. “Of course you are. Doesn’t mean I won’t tease you about it.” He uses one hand to hold your face before leaning in and kissing you, hard, a little bit of tongue. Just because he can. He pulls back just far enough so you can see each other and gives you another smirked smile before kissing your forehead and releasing you. 

The two of you walk back into the front room together, and you sit on the couch and fidget with your fingers while Jack looks through his backpack to make sure he has everything he needs. You grab your phone, try to distract yourself with it so he doesn’t feel you staring at him the entire time. You don’t want to make this any harder for him. Both of you know the other is just as anxious. 

Jack glances down at his watch. He needs to leave. The urge to pull out his phone and call Robby to say he can’t make it in is immense. But he, and you, know that this day has to come eventually. He walks over and sits next to you on the couch. “You gonna be okay?” He grabs one of your hands in his to help ground you, get you to focus on him. 

“Yeah, I’ll be alright.” You try to give him a brave smile but you’re not sure how well it lands. 

“I want you to call me or text me if you need anything, okay? I mean anything. If I have to leave early then I have to leave early.” His eyes flit around your face trying to make sure he’s reading every little bit of you. “And if for some reason I don’t answer the phone, call the hospital, yeah?”

“I know Peter,” you murmur, bring his hand up to your face and lean your cheek against the back of his hand. “I’ll be okay though. Really. It might be hard at first but I’ll probably just end up falling asleep and then you’ll slip into bed beside me before I even know it.”

“I really hope so, Doll.” Jack leans in and kisses your forehead, lingers for a moment before he pulls back and looks back down at you. His brows are creased, mouth just slightly pulled down, eyes a little wider than normal. He’s concerned, worried about you. You hate seeing him like this. You know part of it goes back to his nightmares about coming home and finding you dead.

“It’ll all be okay in the end. You’re coming home to me.” You manage to give him a real smile, as small as it is, and it visibly helps him relax. 

He’s able to return it. “Yes I am. Always.” He stands up and you follow, walk him over to the door. 

“Text me when you get there, yeah?”

“Course. And you text me during the night if you need, okay?” You nod at him, give him another little smile as he pulls his backpack over one shoulder. He pulls you close to him in a tight hug, kisses the top of your head before letting you pull back and kissing you. “I love you. So fucking much.”

“I love you more,” you murmur before stealing another kiss. Normally he’d argue with you, but tonight he lets you have it. 

Jack opens the door and steps out and you close it behind him. You both know that if he turned and looked at you he probably wouldn’t end up going in. He waits to hear the deadlock before he takes a few steps away. He has to stop though and just breathe for a minute before finally setting off. 

You lock the deadbolt and then rest your forehead against the door, one palm flat on it. Tears hit your eyes and you feel so fucking ridiculous about it. Like some clingy, codependent fiancée who can’t stand to be away from her man for more than ten minutes. You try and remind yourself that this is okay, you’re allowed to feel what you’re feeling and you being upset isn’t because you’re clingy or codependent. It’s because you went through a major trauma and are healing and it’s your first time truly being on your own since you were shot. You know this won’t last, that it won’t always be like this, but in this moment it feels like it will and it overwhelms you.

Your hand itches to undo the deadbolt and dart out after him, beg him not to leave you. But you can’t do that. This is something that has to happen. So you pull yourself from the door and head back to the couch for a second before getting back up to go do the dishes from dinner. You thought it might be a good distraction. Instead it just reminds you that he’s not here doing them with you. 

Your phone dings as you finish loading the dishwasher and washing the pan that can’t go in it. It’s Jack letting you know he got to work. He keeps typing, and you chew on your lip as you wait to see what he’s going to say. 

J - I just want to let you know that it’s slammed here tonight so I’ll probably be busy and not around a ton. But I’ll check my phone often even if I can’t always reply. So text me if you need to, or call me or the ED. I love you. 

Your heart falls at his words and some part of you feels selfish for it. It’s good. It’s good for him to be there and be busy and have that distraction and get back to normal. It just sucks you won’t have him to talk to much. You had tried to prepare yourself for this, tried to operate under the assumption that he wouldn’t be around much but a part of you, apparently a big part, still held onto the hope he would. 

There’s also the unspoken meaning of the Pitt being slammed. The chances he’ll get off on time are probably slim to none unless some miracle happens. You try to tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You’re going to be asleep anyway. But will you really?

Jack is anxious to get a text back from you, glancing at his phone nonstop while Robby goes over the board with him. This was exactly what he did not want to happen. He didn’t want it to be slammed. Busy, fine. He appreciates the distraction it brings. He’d still be able to respond to you more even if not as frequently as he’d like. And slammed means the chances of him getting off in six hours are a fraction above non-existent. He knows you know that too. 

He also knows that he’s the lucky one out of the two of you. He can’t afford to be distracted here. So he has to do some kind of compartmentalization. It doesn’t mean he won’t miss or worry about you constantly. He will. He just has to force himself to stay present where he’s at. His inability to be distracted here is itself a distraction from his anxiety and missing you. 

It feels selfish. He knows that you don’t have the same luxury at home, if anything it’s the opposite. You have to try and find things to distract yourself so that you don’t end up getting too into your head. He knows that sometimes you struggle to come up with ways to do that, or that you think of ways but can’t convince yourself to do them. He gets it. He’s been there himself. And up until now he’d been there to distract you when you couldn’t do it for yourself. But now he’s not. 

So he’s anxious as he waits for a response. He knows you’re just staring at your phone trying to think of what to say. He’s trying not to think about the likelihood of teardrops hitting the screen of your phone and magnifying whatever they fall on. He’s trying not to think about what you look like when you cry like that, completely silent with the tears slipping down your face. 

You’re looking down at your phone enough that the first tear to roll off your face hits the screen. You shake your head at yourself. You need to get a grip. It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Jack will be fine. 

You - I’m glad you made it there safely. Thanks for letting me know, I hope the night isn’t awful. Let me know when you’re on your way home. I love you

Jack feels better for about half a second when your name finally flashes on his screen. But then he reads your message. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back for a second before looking back down at his phone. He can feel your dejection through the phone. For his part Robby gives Jack space, doesn’t comment on it, intercepts a couple of people who want to welcome Jack back. It takes Jack a moment to decide on what to reply. He knows that it doesn’t matter what his reply is, it’s not going to make anything better. 

J - Of course. Don’t forget you have a couple new books on the kitchen table and all of wedding pinterest and the knot to explore. I love you more

His message does manage to pull a little laugh from you. He’s so sweet, your Jack. Reminding you of things you could do to keep yourself occupied and distracted. You look around the kitchen and take in a deep breath, try to hype yourself up. 

It’s going to be okay. You’re going to do this and be fine and Jack will be so proud of you. You can do this. You grab your laptop and settle on the couch, put a show you like on and start looking through pinterest like Jack said. It goes well at first. Until you see something you really like and go to turn your computer and look over at Jack to show him. The realization hits you then that you’ve only ever done this with him. 

Fine. That’s okay. You have books. You turn the TV off and go look through the stack, pick one out and curl back up on the couch. Reading also goes well at first until it finally hits you that you’ve been staring at the same page for quite a while now because it’s hard to see through your tears. You set the book down and feel so defeated. You want to be okay so badly, for Jack and for yourself. But it seems the more you try to be the more you aren’t. 

You check your phone. 7:47. Nothing from Jack, not that you expected anything, especially since effectively no time has passed since his last message. You don’t know why you can’t do this, why it’s so hard. And that just makes you more upset. 

You get up once you start sniffling from the tears and just take yourself to bed, curl up in a ball on it with a box of tissues and let yourself cry. You grab your phone several times, have to fight the urge to call him and plead for him to come home. You have to fight the urge to get up and grab an uber and show up at the ED. The only good thing about crying is that it’s exhausting, and the swelling of your eyes makes you feel even more tired. And so you slip under without even realizing it. 

When Jack finally gets a second to check in and look at his phone sometime around 10:00 he’s a little surprised to see nothing from you. It’s unlike you. Normally you’ll text him often throughout your day, even if he can’t reply. Just little things. What you’re doing. Something funny that happened or that you saw. A photo of something that made you think of him. A moment on a show he doesn’t watch but that you want him to see. But then he realizes the problem with his thinking. Normally. 

Normal at this point is synonymous with ‘before you were shot.’ Because nothing has been remotely normal since then. It’s all been temporary. The hospital was temporary. Him being at home with you was temporary. Even his half shifts are temporary. And you both want normal back. But it’s not. And even when it is you both know it’ll be different, and that’s okay. A new normal is okay. But you’re not there yet and so, Jack realizes, thinking about what you’d normally do is futile and deceptive. He is surprised he hasn’t gotten anything wedding related though. He thought you’d take him up on that suggestion, go on pinterest, send him things you find and like. 

J - Finally have a second. You doing okay?

Before he can even start to wait for your reply Parker is grabbing him for help with a patient and his phone is back in his pocket. He tells himself he’s just been moving a lot and so that’s why he hasn’t felt his phone vibrate with your message. But when he pulls his phone out at 12:23 and there’s nothing from you he can’t help the pit of dread that starts to form in his stomach. 

Flashbacks of nightmares play in his head. You dead on the kitchen floor. You dead in your bed. You dead on the couch. He stops himself. You must be asleep. You just fell asleep early. Hell, maybe you took some sleeping meds just to make it easier for yourself and were asleep before his last text. That has to be it. Even though he’s sure you won’t see it, because you’re sleeping, he sends another one with the news you both saw coming. 

J - Hope you’re sleeping well. I’m going to be stuck here past 1. I’m hoping for 3/3:30, at most 4. I promise as soon as I can get out I will. I’m sorry. Love you

You wake with a start, covered in cold sweat, heart racing, chest heaving. It takes you a minute to fully come to. You had a nightmare. You were back in that courtroom with gunshots deafening you as you tried to hide. And then that body collapsed in front of you just like it did that day but this time you do recognize the person when their face rolls towards you as they bleed out, eyes fluttering closed. 

Jack.

You think you woke up before you even got shot, though you’re not sure. You’ve never been able to remember exactly when it happened. All you know is you saw Jack’s face and Jack’s blood and then mercifully woke the fuck up. You take a second to try and come down, look over at your phone and see it’s just after 2:00 and Jack’s messages. Your heart is crushed a little by the disappointment of him being home late even though you expected it. If he had gotten off on time he’d have been here, might have woken you getting into bed, might have stopped you from having that nightmare and that image of him seared in your brain. You know it’s not fair to put that on him and you aren’t, you don’t blame him. You just can’t help but think it. 

It’s what makes you burst into tears, again. Your disgust at yourself for even coming close to thinking about blaming him. And then you’re crying about all of it. Tears of anger at yourself, tears of frustration with yourself, tears of despondency about getting better, tears of panic from seeing Jack in your nightmare, tears of sorrow that he’s not home, tears of disappointment with yourself that you couldn’t do this one night, tears of confliction about being alive. You wear yourself out again. 

But this time you don’t go back to sleep. Instead you get up and take a shower to rid yourself of the sticky cold sweat that covers you. You hold some ice to your face once you’re out, hope it’ll help with the swelling of your eyes and lips enough that Jack won’t notice, especially in the dark. You toss the copious tear soaked tissues in the bathroom garbage and put the tissue box back where it was so that Jack won't see anything amiss and crawl back into bed. The exhaustion of crying pulls you under again. 

Jack’s out at 3:13. He hates it. He’s still on edge because still nothing from you even though he didn’t expect anything. He lets you know he's on his way home anyway. He cannot be home and have eyes on you soon enough. The drive is at least short at this time of night. There’s no lights on when he opens the door. Part of him is relieved because that would make sense if you were sleeping. But part of him is just put more on edge by the darkness. He doesn’t let himself think about it much, drops his backpack and gets his shoes off quickly and then is heading for your room. 

As much as he wants to, he doesn’t turn the overhead light on. He can make out your form on the bed so he steps over to the bathroom and reaches in to flick the light on, leaves the door open to give him just enough light in the bedroom to look at you. Normally the sight would turn him on, immensely. It still does, he can feel it. But tonight that’s overshadowed by the way it breaks his heart because he knows what it means. 

You’re curled up on his side of the bed, head on his pillow, wearing one of his shirts and holding another close to you, clutching it to your chest really. He lets out a slow breath through his nose as he takes you in. His brows furrow a little. He’s not sure if it’s the lighting or if your eyes and lips are really a little swollen. He makes himself let go of the thought for the moment so that he can grab a pair of pajama pants and just get in bed with you. 

When he walks in the bathroom properly it hits him. It’s a bit warmer than your bedroom, a bit more humid. And the smell. It smells like he just showered. Which means you showered recently and used all of his products so that you’d smell like him. It’s so sweet but it hurts, that he wasn’t here when you so clearly needed him. He tries to set that aside and not feel guilty, think about and apply what you guys have learned in couple’s therapy but it’s hard. And it gets harder when the pile of white catches his eye and he sees all of the tissues in the trash can. It wasn’t the lighting. The swelling is real. You cried. A lot. 

You’re not sure what wakes you but when you force your eyes open you realize the bathroom light is on which means Jack is home. It’s the first time you’ve smiled since he left. “Peter?” you call softly as you get out of bed to walk to the bathroom. Jack’s out of his scrubs in just his pajama bottoms.

“Hey, I’m sorry Doll, I didn’t mean to wake you.” You shake your head at him, meeting him at the doorway to the bathroom. 

“I’m just glad you’re home.” You push your lips out for a kiss he happily gives you. “Missed you. Were you okay?” 

“I was yeah. Being slammed was good at keeping me distracted." He frowns for a second because he knows how not the case that was for you. He leans in for another kiss. "I missed you more,” he murmurs against your lips, hands finding your waist. 

You hum back against his lips as he kisses you again. “I’m going to let you have that only because I was passed out most of the night.” 

Jack nods at you. But you can tell from the speed of it that he knows. You just give him a little shrug to tell him you know he knows. 

“Why didn’t you call?” It’s soft. He’s not angry at you or upset with you in any way. Just curious. You look away from his eyes down at his bare chest and give another little shrug. “Did you need me?”

“I was okay… eventually,” you admit. One of his hands finds your chin, gently pushes it up to see if you’ll move your head up to look at him. You don’t resist so he tilts your chin up. 

Jack gives you a small smile and keeps his voice low and gentle and he hopes comforting. “That doesn’t answer my question.” The hand still on your waist gives it a small squeeze. “You can be okay and still need me, or trying to convince yourself you’re okay and still need me, or trying to be okay and still need me.” He raises his eyebrows a little at you. 

You look at him for a beat and then let out a big sigh, lean forward and into him a bit so that your forehead rests against his chest. “I hate it when you do that,” you grumble against him. 

“What’s that?” He leans down and kisses the top of your head. 

You move your forehead off his chest but plant a kiss there before looking back up at him. “See right through me,” you murmur through a watery smile. “I don’t know how you’re so damn good at it.”

“Well,” Jack nods slowly, “in your fourth year of med school they pull a couple of students aside, obviously the ones they think are the best since I was one of them, and they teach us x-ray vision.” 

You let out a huffed laugh but smile at him. “I really thought I was about to learn something about med school.”  

“Are you saying you don’t believe me?!” He gives you his best surprised face. 

You roll your eyes at him and laugh a little with him but it quickly turns into trembling lips and you shaking your head. 

“Okay baby, come here,” Jack whispers, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you close, one hand finding the back of your head and holding your face against his chest. 

“It was so bad Jack, it was so bad,” you choke out through a strangled sob. “And I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to cry into you tonight or this morning or whatever the fuck it is. I just want to get in bed and be with you.” You sniffle and try to pull yourself together. 

“I know.” He rocks you just a little, presses his lips to the top of your head and lets them linger. “But we can be in bed together and you can be crying if that’s what you need.” As he speaks he flicks the light off and settles one hand on your hip and slowly begins walking you backwards toward the bed. 

“I’m tired of it being what I need,” you mumble. At least you’ve managed to stop the tears. You turn once your knees hit the back of the bed so that you can slide in, Jack following you once he has his prosthetic off. “I just…I had a nightmare.”

Jack cringes as he settles and holds his arms open for you. “I’m so sorry.” He knows all too well how much they can rattle you and fuck you up for days. How long it can take to get them to a point of only happening a few times a year. How much therapy and EMDR he’s had to do to help with his over the years. “Do you want to talk about it?”

You sigh as you curl into his side and drape your top leg over his, rest your head against the crook of his shoulder. The hand of Jack’s arm that’s now behind you starts rubbing your back up and down. “I was back there. In that courtroom on that day. And it was all the same and as much as that sucked it was fine. But then I got to the part where that woman collapsed in front of me and died but,” you have to pause and try and get yourself closer to Jack. “But it wasn’t her. It was you.” Jack’s shifting onto his side a bit more at that and pulling you closer into him, pressing the front of his body against yours. He positions you so that you can rest your ear up against his chest. “And unlike her you rolled your head to look at me as you were bleeding out and then I woke up.” 

You hear the click of Jack’s jaw as he opens it to say something. But it never comes, instead you just feel his head shake a little. You let yourself focus on the beat of his heart underneath your ear, the warmth of his skin. “I’m so sorry,” he finally whispers. “I know it’s not my fault but I am so sorry that you had to experience that Doll.”

You shrug a little. Apparently you’re all out of tears for the night. You’re too tired for them. And here in Jack’s arms with his heart beating under your ear it’s not so scary. There’s an odd sense of calm that fills both of you. You feel kind of bad, like you've taken this for yourself, haven't talked about how he did at work. But you know there's time. “Don’t be,” you whisper, turn your face a bit to nuzzle into his chest. “At least I didn’t have to live through your funeral. I’ve got that goin’ for me. More than you can say.”

He can feel your lips turn up in a smile against his chest. And he has to let out a laugh at it too. Because you’ve hit a point where you can start to make small jokes about what’s happened, what you’ve both been through. Because it’s all so miserable and horrific that if you guys don’t laugh you’ll cry. After a second you pull your head from his chest and look up at him. He looks so amused with his wide closed lip smile, shaking his head at you slightly that you have to bite your lip to stop from laughing. But that makes him crack and start properly laughing and so you do too. 

You guys laugh until it hurts, until the smallest tears slide out the corners of your eyes. “I’m sorry, that was probably so insensitive of me-”

“No,” Jack keeps laughing, “no. No, Doll that was so fucking needed, fuck me. The laughing feels just as cathartic as crying right now.”

“I agree,” you giggle as you both start to wind down. You lean in to kiss him and Jack keeps you there, nipping at your bottom lip and tugging at it a little when you try to pull away. “Needy,” you murmur teasingly.

“For you? Always.” You lay there and kiss. Kiss and make out in bed pressed against each other simply because you want to feel close and because you can. It’s not leading anywhere as good as it feels and as wired as it makes both of you. You can feel him growing hard against you and yourself growing wetter for him but you’re both content to stay like you are. 

Eventually the kisses slow. You’re both sleepy, and between snuggling with each other and all the kissing it’s quick to catch up with you. Just as you both start to nod off you think of something. “Hey Jack? Maybe no more night shifts.” It’s all sleep slurred and in that drowsy tone you get that he finds particularly adorable.

He laughs a little through his nose. “No more night shifts,” he agrees, just as groggy.

When you wake up the next day Jack is able to get in touch with Robby and switch things back so that he’s on days again. Something about the daylight makes it a little easier for you, and you don’t seem to have any nightmares when you sleep snuggled into Jack. The next time he goes to work for half a day shift sucks still, but significantly less than that first half a night shift. Each time it gets a little bit easier, even when Jack is finally back to regular twelve hour shifts. 

And then eventually it’s your turn to go back to work. It’s not just going back to work, it’s going back to the place you were shot. Both of you are on edge. Jack hates the thought of you having to go back there, it sends his anxiety through the roof even though he knows logically it’s probably the safest courthouse in the entire country right now with all the heightened security. 

“You’re sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Jack asks you for probably the tenth time this morning alone. 

“I’m sure,” you call to him from the bathroom as you finish getting ready. Jack appears in the mirror behind you, stopping at the doorway of the bathroom. You look at him in the mirror. “It’s okay, I’m ready. I can do this.” 

You sound more like you’re trying to convince yourself than you are Jack. “You can call me. If you need anything.” 

“I know,” you nod, “I promise I know and that if I need you I’ll call.” You turn to look at Jack and start walking towards him. Half of you feels ready for this, is craving the normalcy that being at work will bring. The other half knows you’re probably not quite ready. You haven’t even been by the building to expose yourself to it.

You pick at the breakfast Jack made you, stomach churning too much to feel hungry and making it hard to swallow anything down. He doesn’t comment on it as he sits at the table across from you working on today’s crossword, isn’t going to pressure you into eating more or potentially make you feel bad by calling you out on it. He gets it. He didn’t eat much dinner the night he went back to work for that one half a night shift. 

It’s going to put your shoes on where you really start to let yourself realize how not ready you are for this. You stare down at them for what feels like ten or so seconds but is in reality close to a full minute. Jack knows because he glances at his watch after the first few seconds pass and you don’t move to put them on. 

Finally you force yourself to and grab your bag. You take in and let out a deep breath and ignore how shaky it is as Jack walks over to you. He doesn’t want to smother you in reassurance and reminders you can call him or end up letting an ask for you to stay home slip out. “Have a good day Doll. Call if you need and I’ll be here waiting for you when you get home. I love you.” 

Jack leans down and kisses you, one that lingers followed by a bunch of softer pecks. “I will,” you nod. “I’ll see you tonight.” You put your hand on the door handle and open it a little. “I love you more,” you smile up at him. He lets you have it this morning. 

As you walk out the door and close it you know immediately you’re not ready. Jack knows you aren’t ready. But you try anyway and he doesn’t try to stop you because this is something you need to do for yourself. 

It doesn’t take too long to get there, the commute is generally fairly easy even though it’s busy. You walk up to the courtyard of the courthouse and stare at the entrance. It feels like you can’t breathe and you’re aware of how badly your hands shake. Your heart races as you try and tell yourself you just need a minute and then you’ll go in. 

But everything just gets worse. All you can hear is screaming and gunshots, taste that metallic flavor of adrenaline, and smell sulphur and smoke. You can’t do this. You so cannot fucking do this.

You get yourself back enough so a trembling hand can get your phone out of your bag, unlock it and hit Jack’s name. He answers on the first ring. “I’m not ready Jack, I can’t do this, I, I, I’m stuck outside and I need you, please come, I’m sor-”

“Doll,” Jack interrupts you. “Turn around.”

You do and standing at the edge of the courtyard is Jack. 

He hangs up his phone as he starts moving to you, shoving past a couple people with a distracted excuse me because he just needs to get to you. He knows that you don’t want to fully lose it here, not with the potential for people you know or work with every day to see. And Jack doesn’t want it for you either. He knows you hate crying in front of people, that it took a while for you to be able to cry in front of him. 

“I’m here,” he’s saying as he gets to you, arms reaching out before he’s even all the way there to start pulling you into him. “I’m here, I’ve got you, you’re okay.” Your hands slide around his waist and clutch at the back of his shirt as you close your eyes and press the side of your head to his chest. 

You breathe him in, smell your laundry detergent and his body wash and him. You focus and let his heart beating become the only thing you can hear. The metallic taste in your mouth starts to fade.

“Ready to walk?” Jack whispers as he feels you start to calm down. You nod against him and so he lets go of you. A hand finds your lower back and starts directing you over to a bench outside of the courtyard facing away from the courthouse.

You both sit and he pulls you as close as possible, wraps the arm closest to you around your waist to keep you close as you rest a hand on his knee. Jack brings his other hand across his body and rests it on top of your hand, laces your fingers together from above. 

Jack doesn’t pressure you, doesn’t ask you for details or if you want to talk or what exactly happened. He just sits there with you holding you close. You tilt your head and let it fall onto his shoulder. He tilts his head and his lips press against you where they can reach before he lets his head rest on yours lightly. 

“I feel so ridiculous,” you murmur after a while. 

Jack squeezes your hand. “Why?”

“I knew the entire morning I wasn’t ready. I just wanted to be so bad so I didn’t listen to myself.” 

“I know. I knew,” he murmurs. “But that doesn’t make you ridiculous. Just human.”

“You knew?” you whisper, pull away to look at him. “How?”

“You told me as much with your eyes and the way you hesitated before you did anything related to getting ready this morning.” He squeezes your hand. “Before picking up your hairbrush and putting your bra on and picking up your mascara, that type of stuff. Your hand hesitated for just a second or two before you grabbed whatever it was. And then when it took you as long as it did to get your shoes on I just had an intuition or gut feeling or whatever you want to call it that I should be here.” 

“You didn’t try to stop me?” 

“No,” he shakes his head and gives you a small smile. “It was obvious that you needed to do this. Come here. Try. Get yourself back in front of this building. You needed to do it for yourself and I wasn’t going to interfere with that, no matter how badly I wanted to stop you so you wouldn’t hurt. You needed to do this. My role is to support you and help you with your healing. Not to dictate how you do it.”

You take in and hold a long breath before letting it out through your nose and shaking your head a little. “You’re way too fucking good for me.”

Jack gives you a look. “Not even gracing that bullshit with a reply,” he parrots the phrase you love to use back at you.

You give him a little eye roll and a smile. “I just should be better, Jack. I should be able to go back and get back to normal. But then I got here and it’s like it was yesterday.”

He nods slowly. “I think it was yesterday in a sense, Doll. This is your first time even being in front of the courthouse since it happened. That’s one. Two,” he pauses to take a breath and look down and away from you for a second. “A very, very smart woman,” he looks back up at you with a small smile, “once told me that should is a stupid word. Nothing should or shouldn’t be. Things just are. And it’s okay for them to be as they are. It’s okay for this to be as it is.” 

You’re quiet for a few seconds before you let out a huffed laugh through your nose. “I can’t believe you just used my own words against me twice in a row.” 

Jack clicks his tongue and shrugs. “I can be a real dick sometimes can’t I?”

You roll your eyes at him again and lean back into him. “Maybe. But you’re my dick, so it’s okay, I’ll allow it.” 

That makes him roll his eyes at you and chuckle. “Yeah, I’m your dick, alright. I’m glad to hear you’ll allow it,” he teases. 

“I’m actually quite impressed that you remember that entire little speech I gave you,” you admit after a few minutes. 

“Repeated it to myself a lot. Still do. Well, really in my head you’re saying it to me and I hear it in your voice. So I guess I have you repeating it to me a lot.” He pauses. “It’s important to remember.”

“I suppose it is.” You pull away again to look up at him. “Thank you. I love you.”

“Always, Doll.” The kiss he gives you is quick yet ardent. “I love you too.” 

There’s a lull as the two of you just sit on the bench and exist together, soak in the sun.

“You wanna go to bath and body works?” Jack breaks the silence. An amused smirk pulls on your face as you pull away to look up at him. “Candles are on sale. $12.95. And they just released a bunch of new scents.” 

You know he’s offering and that he keeps tabs on when they’re on sale and when new scents come out because he knows how much you enjoy candles and the fun of smelling them. You bite your lip and look up at him all dreamy. “You’re perfect, you know that?”

“Nah,” he shakes his head and stands up, offers you his hand and helps you off the bench so you can head to the store. “Just in love.”

You take a bit more time for yourself before you try going back again, go and sit outside the courthouse with Jack and alone. And the next time you go back to work Jack goes with you, holds your hand all the way up to the employee entrance. He gives you a kiss goodbye and holds the door open for you, watches you for a second before he lets the door close. He waits outside on a bench for a bit, just in case you decide you’re not ready again and need him. But you don’t. And so Jack smiles to himself as he gets up and heads back home. 

Normal. Things are finally starting to get back to normal.

But, as it turns out, normalcy is a fragile thing. And so things are finally starting to get back to normal.

Until they aren’t.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you so so much for reading, I hope it was okay!

Part 4 will be out soon!! This weekend for sure! And then we're straight into Quiet 2 which I am so fucking excited for! I have many many plans! How many exclamation points can I use in a row!!!!!

You can find my Masterlist here for more Jack!

And if you'd like to be added to my Jack tag list please interact with this post!

Tag list:

@loveyhoneydovey @love-affair-with-fandoms @mstrsgoodgrl0628 @equallyshaw @kmc1989 @artsymaddie @moonshooter @whiskeyhowlett-writes @smallcarbigwheels @hawkswildfireheart @blackwidownat2814 @yxtkiwiyxt @viridian-dagger @andabuttonnose @beebeechaos @pear-1206 @starkgaryan @travelingmypassion @marvelcasey05 @daydreamingallthetime-world @millenialcatlady @nursejuju86 @escapefromrealitysm @emilia527 @satanxklaus @frazie99 @kastleandmurdock @guardiancardigan @zoctopiii @4rosabellaa @adissapointmentlol @nowandajenn @dantemorenatalie @book-of-roses @redzscare @concentratedconcrete @freshbearbouquetblr @qardasngan @practicalghost @wolviehugh @athena1504 @a-stari-night @iamcryingonceagain @acn87 @moonpascal @lostfleurs @beltzboys2015-blog @pouges-world @tinyharrypotterkpopfriend @roseanddaggerlarry

[hellothisisangle]

I don’t have the stamina to comic all this dialogue so here it is:

[At some point between PLAYING FOR TIME and I WALK THE LINE]

J: Look at you, more bolts and chips and wires than meat. Not sure what the hell you even are at this point. Some kinda strutting identity crisis. Bet if someone shook you hard enough you’d rattle.

V: Yeah, well, you’re just a ghost of a walking hard on that played mediocre guitar. Guess we all got our own tragedies.

J: Ooh, hit a nerve. Change your face, change your junk, but it doesn’t actually change a thing. Another plug in another crack that keeps fracturing. Can’t patch a hollow core, V.

V: This, coming from the poster boy for ‘oh please, someone, pay attention to me’? Hey, Johnny- was it before or after the bombing that you decided terrorism made you a man?

J: Know what your problem is? Don’t ask questions. Just do your job. Get your reward. Say you hate authority, but you fit into the glove tailored for you just as much as everyone else. And like everyone else, ‘ya still can’t help havin’ dreams of respect, fear, adoration, love. Dreams only big enough to stay dreams, not enough for you to do jack shit about it. Aren’t you lucky you got me. Now you can wake the fuck up.

V: Ha! Never believed for a second you cared about the bigger picture. Nah, you’re just the guy who played hero to hear someone chant his name. Spoiler alert, no one’s chanting anymore. You think I should follow your lead? Screaming louder, hitting harder, waving your dick around like it’s a goddam flag?

J: Better’n nothing. Keep telling you we’re really not so different, you and I. But swapping parts like spare tires- I mean come on, don’t get all pissy when I call it what it is.

V: Replacing myself, piece by piece, finding a version of me that can stand existing is not the same, will never be the same, as your bullshit tantrums.

J: Keep tellin’ yourself that.

V: For fucks sake- the yapping, barking orders, flexing those fake muscles- wanna know what you remind me of?

J: Not really-

V: All the other assholes who told me I'd never be good enough unless I was just like them. Why I had to rip myself open just to breathe. You’re not a legend, Johnny. You’re a cautionary tale. A child who never learned there’s more than one way to be strong.

J: Pull that one outta a fortune cookie or just your trauma stash? Pft- A child calling a child a child. The shit I have to put up with.

V: Quiet the fuck down or I’ll do something that’ll decom both of us for a bit. I need some air.

J: Fine. See ya later. But would’ya smoke a stoge while you’re at it?

[At some point after I WALK THE LINE]

J: For a chrome-clad existential nightmare, ‘ya ain’t all bad, kid. Startin’ to remind me of me. Without the impressive cock.

V: And for a dead relic clutching his dick like it’s the only personality trait that survived, you’re almost tolerable. But don’t get clingy, I’m not a collector of antiques.

[live-love-be-unique]

P. R Nightmare

Series summary: A public relations job typically involves managing an individual or organisation’s reputation and building relationships with the public and media. It generally does not include superheros, terrorist organisations, middle-aged Russian super soldiers who breach media regulations and crushing on a client/ coworker.

This is a Robert (Bob) Reynolds x fem!reader series

Warnings: fem!reader, afab!reader, no specific details about reader appearance are given. Specific warnings will be provided at each chapter.

After battling the New York subway system — which you’re pretty sure had a vendetta against you — you’d made it to your office later than you’d liked. There had been no time to stop and grab a coffee and breakfast from your favourite little cafe near your office, so you’d have to contend with a stale granola bar that you were hoping was still buried in your desk behind some notebooks and a coffee from the communal kitchen.

“You’re late,” your assistant whispered as you walked in.

“I know, I know.”

“There’s someone in your office.”

“What? Who?” You were certain you didn’t have any meetings until at least 11am, you glanced towards your office where you could make out the shape of someone sitting in front of your desk.

“Congressman Barnes, he’s even more handsome since the last time he came by.”

“Aren’t you married, Dorris?” You smirked, she’d been nursing a crush on him since he’d last stopped by your office.

“Barry doesn’t need to know,” Dorris waved her hand dismissively, smirking as she answered her phone.

While it wasn’t uncommon to find someone waiting for you in your office most mornings, most visitors didn’t come bearing a steaming hot cup of coffee, “You join a new team and you’ve given up on the suits? You’ll break Giuseppe’s heart.”

“He’ll live, I’m sure you’ve referred other senators to his tailoring and I’m pretty sure you get a kick back on each suit he makes,” the man chuckled as he watched you walk around your desk and take a seat. “Hi kid.”

“What do you need Barnes?” You lean forward, resting your head on your hands, offering a wry smile, “I doubt you’re here to discuss the finer points of haberdashery?”

“I’m here to offer you a job,” Bucky says, placing your coffee in front of you.

“Last time you offered me a job, you wanted me to help you impeach Valentina de Fontaine,” you eyed Bucky as you took a sip of your coffee. Valentina had been a little too good at covering her tracks for anything solid to actually stick, the hunt for anything incriminating had dragged on for months. “Is this caramel?” you asked, savouring your first mouthful of good coffee.

“Of course,” Bucky sighed, running a hand through his hair. “This time it’s a little less…political. The team needs an assistant, someone to handle the public relations.”

“Really? You were all doing so well,” you smirked. “I saw the Wheaties boxes.”

“Alexei’s idea.”

“The Russian guy?”

“It was his dream,” Bucky shrugs. As he stands he places a file on your desk, “Think about it”

You watched him leave your office before picking up the file, it contained a dossier for every member of the Thunderbolts.

Bucky’s was first, heavily redacted as you’d expected. You knew a little of his past, or at least what he had shared with you while you had helped him with his campaign, but he had kept the details of what had happened while he was under control of Hydra to himself.

John Walker. Former decorated army ranger and Captain America for a short time before the murder of a civilian in a public setting led to his less than honourable discharge.

Yelena Belova. Former Red Room trained assassin with the Black Widow, working as a contract killer for Valentina before the Thunderbolts.

Alexei Shostakov. The Red Guardian, Captain America’s counterpart in Russia. The one behind the Wheaties box…and ‘encouraging’ people in supermarkets to buy them.

Ava Starr. S.H.I.E.L.D operative turned mercenary who could phase through objects due to a constant state of molecular disequilibrium. You made a mental note to look that up later.

And…Bob? You turned Bob’s, Robert Reynolds’s, part of the file over to find that the page in your hand, containing next to no information about the man, was it. There was a picture — he was cute in a boy next door kind of way — and a few sparse details about the man but nothing more.

You quickly closed the file as your office door slammed open, your 11am meeting had finally arrived. Some trust fund baby who wanted you to fix his public image to keep him out of prison. He was charged with several assault counts, all of which he argued were the other person's fault and daddy’s money had brought him two hours of your time.

After his time was up, he had offered you his number like it was some kind of reward. You declined and dialed a familiar contact.

“Barnes? When do you need me to start?”

[revelboo]

Freaking out because I think I’ll be at the same Jeep event as you this weekend!!! Not sure but if I spot soundwave I’ll be sure to wave!!! Have so much fun!!! 🎶☀️🏝️

Awesome! I’m here until Sunday staying close to the Pierk Park side. If you see a dork in a straw cowboy hat and a Soundwave ITA bag wandering around, that’s me. Soundwave’s across the road. I need to turn him around early tomorrow morning when there’s less traffic to face the road because I’ve already caught one guy bent over trying to remove my steel Decepticon tow hitch cover. He’s not getting it off without serious tools, it’s a locking hitch pin, but it still annoyed me that he was trying 🤣

Safe

Armada Starscream

• Head lifting as he comes online, he vents tiredly as you roll slightly, breath hitching. Nightmares again? Gently pulling you into his chassis, he catches your wrists and you shudder. Mumbling nonsense while tugging against his grip. “I’m here,” he murmurs, resting his chin on top of your head and humming. That old Seeker lullaby draining the tension away every time. Hears your little, shuddering sigh as you hide your face against him and his spark aches.

• Letting go of your wrists to pull you into his frame, he soaks in the warmth of you. Singing tiredly to you. Sometimes he does this his whole sleep cycle. Shielding you from your nightmares at the cost of his recharge. But he doesn’t mind if you feel safe. Feels your warm breath on his neck as his palm slides up your spine. Wishes he knew what you dream of that hurts you so much, but he’s almost certain he does know. Hates it. Hates that place he’d found you and the human who’d broken you.

• Drifting in and out of sleep, you hear his deep voice. That alien song you can’t understand in his gruff rumble sinks into you. Calms you. Chases away the past and the nightmares until you just feel safe. One of the mini-cons warbles softly, its own voice twining with Starscream’s and you smile. “Did I wake you up?” You ask and the song falters.

• “I was already awake,” he lies, feeling guilty even as he says it, but he doesn’t want you to worry over keeping him from recharging. Palm sliding against your spine, he vents to pull your scent deep into himself. “Were you dreaming of him?” That human who’d hurt you, left bruises on more than just your skin? And you tense against him. While you’ve told him some of it, he knows you’re holding back more.

• Eyes burning, you press your face against his neck. Because you’re safe. You know you’re safe and loved, but you can’t stop worrying. That Starscream will get tried of you, that he’ll abandon you for someone else. Another Cybertronian. And you’ll lose this fragile happiness, your home. Being with him making you realize that word’s never been something you’d really understood looking back. You’d lived places, but they’d never felt like this. Never been your home. It’s him. He’s your home and you’re terrified of losing him.

[buckyys-babydoll]

Hunting Shadows

Pairing: Robert “Bob” Reynolds x Fem!Reader

Summary: Darkness. Nothing but darkness. Hunted by his deepest thoughts he has to fight his way through the Void.

Warnings: THUNDERBOLTS SPOILERS! shy!Bob, Thunderbolt!Reader, Best Friends to lovers, insecurities, love confession, hurt/comfort, found family, fluff

Wordcount: 2.735 Words

Authors Note: Beta’d by @elixirfromthestars. Also thanks to @thevillainswhore for the support! Divider made by me.

Darkness.

Another room filled with nothing but darkness. He’s not sure what comes next. Darkness? Or another memory? Another thought that usually haunts him in the darkest nights? He doesn’t know, he can’t know.

The void. A place to face your fears. To face your past. With no escape unless you break through them. But how can you, when every room, every corner, rips open wounds that never really healed?

Faced by nothing but another room with shadows, he steps in. His eyes are trying to see through the dark. Shadows. Big. Scary. Looming over him, ready to grab and pull him further into the coldness.

A shaky breath leaves his lips. It doesn’t remind him of anything. But he knows that room. He knows it like he would live in it.

But he doesn’t. He never did. He never will.

Because that room only exists in his imagination — in his nightmares.

Another shaky breath, his eyes scan through the room. There's something missing; the window is wide open, but the monster, Void, isn’t there.

Of course, it isn’t. Not when it’s doing what it can do best. Hunt people, fill their dreams with fear.

Bob walks another step into the room, there has to be a way to break that room, too. But how? He needs to find the void — needs to find himself to break through this room.

“There you are,” a voice echoes through the room. Bob flinches, turning to find the source of the voice, but everything looks the same — dark. “You think you’re so strong. But you’re alone. Who’s gonna help you? No one!”

He shivers. He’s alone. He feels the cold creeping through his body, crawling up his back.

“I-I’m not alone…” he whispers, shaking his head. “I’m not alone anymore.”

“You’re not? Of course. You’re not,” the Void laughs. Dark. Cold. Just like the things he has to offer in these rooms of the past, and fear. “But where are they? Where is she when you need her?”

Bob shakes his head once more. His hands are clenched into fists, his knuckles turning white as he looks around once more.

Until his eyes finally settle on the small white sparkle in the orbs of the Void. In the corner of the room, able to see everything.

Bob swallows thickly. One punch and he’s in the next room. Does he want it? No. He doesn’t know if it’s worse or better.

The current room is dark and cold. The Void — his insecurities and fears — are there. But is it really better than his parents fighting? Is it better than hearing his dad lashing out, being violent because a mother tried to protect her child from a man who’s talking with his fists instead of words?

“You d-don’t…” Bob trails off as he takes a step closer. He has to. He has to break through the void. Even through the parts he hates, the parts that break him. “You don’t scare me anymore!”

The Void laughs, the white sparkle in his dark eyes focused on Bob as he sets the first punch into the shadow. A sound of something breaking is audible in the room before Bob is pushed into the next room.

And fuck. Maybe he prefers the darkness. Because the room he’s standing in now is worse. It’s everything he always tries to push away, though he doesn’t allow himself.

Buried so deep in his mind. And you’re in front of him, loud and clear.

“You think you’re worth anything?” Your voice, so harsh, echoes through the room. Your eyes are so cold, your expression filled with an amount of hatred Bob has never seen before.

He isn’t worth anything. He never was.

But hearing it from you. From the person who always believed in him. The only person who kept him up when he wanted to fall.

His heart shattered. Bob could almost hear it like glass breaking. It hurt, more than he wants to admit — it was just the Void, but it felt so real — just too real for Bob.

“N-no?” His other self answers the question you just asked. Though it wasn’t a question, not really. “B-But I-i thought you liked me?”

“Like you?” You laugh at him. Bob takes a step backward, his back colliding with the wall behind him as he watches himself and you interact with one another.

This situation, it never happened. You’re too sweet, too lovely to be like that.

But his mind? His mind is telling him all the dark things. He’s not enough. You only feel pity. And deep down, he believes it.

“How could someone like me like someone like you?” You ask, sounding angry and still somehow amused. His other self shrugs slightly, and almost not visible, but you catch it.

Of course, you do. You're always paying attention to everything. And why should it be any different in the Void?

Why should it, when it makes the situation even more painful for him?

“Try again. No one likes you. You’re not even a real man, you’re just a pathetic boy who wants to be more than he is,” you laugh.

“B-but I-i lo-ove you,” he mumbles, a tear falling down his cheek as he watches you intensely. Your expression so distant, so different to your usually soft and loving side.

“Y-you w-what?” You mock him while laughing loudly. It’s loud, too loud. That’s not you, that’s not even close to your sweet laugh to him. “Pathetic. No one’s going to love you!” You say with a cold grin before you walk away. And Bob — both of him — look after you, until the scene starts from the start.

He watches it. Over and over again. His heart is shattered into tiny little pieces. Every time he watches it, it feels worse. But Bob can’t break through it, he can’t move from the spot he’s standing — almost like his feet are glued to the ground.

“Bob! Finally!” Your voice comes from behind you. Your voice. Soft. Loving. Exactly what he’s used to when you talk to him.

And as he turns around to look at you, his eyes widen. What are you doing here – in the darkness of his nightmares?

“Love?” He asks softly, blinking as he looks you up and down. He takes in the soft smile on your lips, the soft swinging of your hips he loves so much when you walk closer to him. “W-what are you doing here?”

“We can only break through the void when we do it together, Bob,” you say. Your voice is so different to the one he heard for the past couple of minutes. He looks at you, up and down, taking in every little detail — so delicate, so you. The one he knows, not the one he sees in his nightmares because of his fear.

“B-But—“ Bob interrupts himself the moment the whole scene in front of you starts again. He notices your head turning to the two people — you and him.

Your eyes widen the moment you hear yourself saying these words. Words you would never think of, at least not around Bob. Not of Bob.

“W-What the—“

“T-That’s,” he points with his finger toward the scene. “I-is… it’s. That’s nothing.”

What was that? It wasn’t his past, because that situation never happened between you and him. The void doesn’t show the future either. So, the only thing it could show is something that’s buried deep down in his thoughts — fear.

“Do you think I-i would ever talk to you like that?” You whisper, your mouth dropping open the moment he confesses his love. Your head whips toward him, eyes widened and a shocked expression on your face. “You’re in love with me?”

“N-no!” He shouts, shaking his head violently before nodding. “Yes. But I-I would never. I don’t think you would ever talk to me like that. But… if I.. would I– I thought you could would I confess my love.”

You shake your head, taking a deep breath. You want to answer. You want to tell him what you feel. But you can’t do it in the void. Not in the rooms of darkness, of fear.

“We have to break through the room, Bob,” you say, taking his hand in yours. You interlace your fingers, noticing the redness growing on his cheeks as he watches your movements intensely. “Come on.”

He nods, following you. Not sure what you’re looking for, you walk back and forth through the room, eyes scanning all the little corners and places you could find a way out of the Void. Nothing.

“W-what about… you?” He asks, pointing at your figure.

You follow his view, noticing the change in your expression. The exact face that brought you from one room in the void to the other.

“So… you wanna punch me?” You laugh softly. Bob shakes his head with widened eyes.

How could you even suggest that? He could never lay his hands on you! Never!

“N-no– but maybe you can do it? I don’t want to hurt you,” he mumbles. “Not even when you’re so mean.”

You chuckle once more, pulling Bob with you toward the two figures who look like you before you finally reach yourself. You lift your arm, balling your hand into a fist before you set a punch directly against your chin.

The Void you’s head is thrown back by the force, a groan leaving its lips as the whole room shatters into small pieces and leads you into the next room – the last room of the void.

Bucky, Alexei, Yelena, Ava, and John are all standing there, looking at the two of you. Bob's hand is still tightly wrapped around yours, he’s standing slightly behind you with a soft smile on his lips as he waves at the others.

“Hi,” he whispers. Quiet, shy.

The others nod, Yelena is the first to raise an eyebrow, while the others are already busy trying to find a way to break through the room.

“Uhuuuu?” She smirks, hitting your shoulder with hers playfully. “Thought you would never—“

“Lena!” You growl softly, glaring at her.

Then you pull Bob with you toward the others. Bucky and Alexei punch and rip stuff, the whole room filled with shattered blankets and pillows. Broken wood. A half-destroyed, standing bed. And a door — still completely intact.

“There’s a door,” Bob mutters, getting everyone’s attention.

They all look up from whatever they are about to break and look at Bob, then toward the door.

“Guys! There’s a door!” Alexei shouts before he runs toward the door and pushes it open.

Behind it, there is the Void. A dark shadow with a glistening small white part in the dark of his eyes.

You can feel Bob shuddering behind you, his breath hitching as he faces himself. The dark side of him. Buried and hidden deep down in the soft man you know.

“Hey,” you mutter, turning around to face him. You bring your hand up to his cheek, your thumb tracing along his jaw softly.

Bob leans into your touch, inhaling deeply. His eyes close for a moment as he takes a shaky breath. Face your fear. Face it. Fight it. And you will be free.

“It doesn’t define you. The darkness can’t do anything,” you mumble as you feel his lips pressing softly against your palm. “You’re not alone anymore. You got —“

“THE THUNDERBOLTS!” Alexei shouts and holds the door open for the others.

“We can’t call us that,” Bucky mutters, shaking his head as he walks into the room where the Void is.

You chuckle softly, waiting for the others to get into a heated argument once again. But before they can, Bob lets go of your hand and walks into the room, passing the others before he stands in front of the Void.

Facing himself. The shadows of his past. The depth of his thoughts.

“There you are,” the Void laughs. He looks down at Bob, and even though he doesn’t have a face, he looks almost like he’s amused. “Bringing your friends. Friends. You mean nothing to them.”

Bob flinches, trying to stand his ground in front of the dark side. He shouldn’t listen to it. It’s not the truth, and he knows. He hopes, at least.

A loud yelp comes from Yelena when metal slings around her frame, pinning her next to Alexei to the wall. John is thrown against the wall, a piece of metal stuck to his shoulder, while Ava and Bucky get pinned to shelves as well.

Only you. From you, he didn’t hear a word.

Bob doesn’t take his eyes off the Void. He can’t. Not even if he tried.

“So, now it’s only your girl. Standing all brave there. But she doesn’t help you, does she?” The Void speaks, dark and low. He hums when Bob's expression gets more anxious before his eyes narrow in anger.

“You can’t break me. You can’t break me. YOU. CANT. BREAK. ME!” He repeats, over and over again.

“Oh. I already did. You have no one. You’re nothing. They don’t care about you. They never will,” the shadow whispers.

A coldness washes over Bob, followed by a shiver. His eyes fill with tears, but he blinks them away.

No more tears of hurt. No more pain. Only anger.

He’s filled with so much anger. The Void, the shadows took so much from him. Tried to make him believe he is nothing, but he knows he’s worth more than nothing. He knows he deserves better.

You showed him. You all — the Thunderbolts — showed him.

Bob lifts his hand, wrapping it around the Voids neck before he throws him down. Throwing himself on top of the shadow, he starts punching it. Over and over again.

His hand turns black, swallowed by the shadows. But he’s better. He’s not weak. Not anymore. Not ever again.

“I’m better than you!” Punch. “I’m not afraid anymore.” Punch.

In the background, he hears your voice. Hears you calling for him to stop, but he can’t. All the anger boils over, the feeling of relief washing over him with every punch he sets.

“Bob! Stop! That’s what he wants,” Yelena shouts. But he doesn’t. Not when he can prove that he’s strong — that he’s better!

Cracking sounds echo through the room as one after another tries to fight against the restraints. Yelena is the first to run to him, then you.

You both grab hold of him. Arms tightly wrapped around him as you pull him away. But he’s stronger. So much stronger.

“Please, bub. Please, let go,” you whisper, leaning your forehead against the side of his face. “I love you, too. Please.”

And suddenly, he does. He loosens his grip, his punches stop, and when the others gather around you two, you all pull him off the Void.

“I love you, too, Bob,” you whisper, kissing his cheek as you lie together on the ground.

All panting and groaning, but no one lets go of the group hug. It’s what everyone needs — after the past. After the Void. It’s what keeps you all grounded at the moment.

“Maybe we should think about a family name, though,” John jokes, causing you all to laugh softly.

Found family. Yes. That’s what the Thunderbolts are.

“Avengerzzzzz!” Alexei suggests, causing Bucky and John to groan in frustration.

Both of them might have a past, and maybe they hated one another. They still argue a lot, but when it comes to names Alexei suggests, they always have the same opinion. No!

Bob turns his head toward you, one of his arms curling around your waist as he leans his forehead against yours. He takes a shaky breath, his eyes closed.

“You do? You really do?”

“More than anything,” you mumble.

“Okay! Let’s get up. Here has to be an exit, I’m not ready to watch porn just yet!” John announces, pulling back.

You laugh, glaring playfully at him, while Yelena makes another joke about John and porn. But you don’t listen, your focus is on the man you love — on Bob.

“You’re not alone anymore. You got us,” you whisper before you break the distance between the two of you and press your lips softly against his.

Bob's breath hitches, but he immediately kisses you back. A bit clumsy. A bit shy. But full of love and adoration.

First time writing for Bob! If you have any ideas/requests, let me know!

@armystay89 @rogersbarber

[fairyhaos]

seventeen and horror movies

notes: this is from ages ago but apparently i never posted it lol so im doing it now

masterlist

seungcheol

thinks horror movies are really cool! they're not at the top of his list, though, and he definitely prefers action movies with less psychological tricks and less fussy plots of good guys beating up the bad guys, but the suspense in horror films is always great too. laughs when the bedraggled and emo villain first appears on the screen and says that the villain looks like [insert which ever member pissed him off recently]

jeonghan

the most calm. offers his hands as stress balls to any members who need it during the film. was probably not paying attention for the entire thing, his brain having logged out of the human world and logged in to the angel network or something. offers to make popcorn every time, and by some weird psychic ability of his he always gets up to do refills right as the popcorn is running out for everyone. records seungkwan kicking chan into tomorrow every time they finish a film

joshua

is basically the human shield for the other scaredy cat members. he doesn't particularly like horror movies, but he's pretty good at keeping in his flinches and doesn't get that many nightmares from them afterwards. often gets dragged out to make cookies for dk bc he cant handle the movies. the person that everyone goes to at night when they can't sleep. once had a total of five members in his room after they all watched 'the shining' together, and let them sleep in his bed with him for the rest of the week.

junhui

loves (!!!!) horror movies so much. thinks they're the pinnacle of film industry art. gets scared by the super horrifying ones, but loves that feeling of getting scared so much. doesn't get nightmares bc he basically forgos sleep for two days straight after they watch a film, so he bores the nightmare demons into not visiting him. at least, that's what he swears by. does need to hide behind some of the other members tho when it gets a lil too scary for him to handle

hoshi

the epitome of reckless cockiness. boasts every single time that he's Great at handling horror movies, despite having a track record of Definitely Not being great at handling horror movies well. unintentionally engaged in a screaming duet with mingyu this one time. refuses to leave the room even when the members try to force him out bc he's too loud. always wakes up wonwoo, either bc he digs his fingers into his thigh thinking that he's jihoon or bc he's just being way too noisy. doesn't remember a single thing about the plot, pretends he remembers everything and says they should totally watch it again sometime

wonwoo

agrees to watch it with the members, ends up falling asleep halfway through. while everyone is talking about the terrifying cinematography afterwards, he's just sitting there like o_o bc he doesn't remember anything about the movie. he doesn't even mean to fall asleep, it just accidentally sort of happens. is woken up by hoshi during every movie tho bc that man is basically a high-pitched whistle when he's terrified and he gets terrified by horror movies all the time

jihoon

gets scared, but is scared the moderate amount. flinches at the jump scares, lets out little yelps at the sudden screams, but always does that cute giggle afterwards to show that he's more embarrassed than anything. has soonyoung's hand around his thigh like a vice the entire movie, and he has yet to figure out if the man is doing it to try and keep jihoon in place or to keep himself in place. sometimes gets nightmares after, but he doesn't really sleep enough to even have dreams on a daily basis, so.

minghao

doesn't like them, sits through them bc if too many people leave then chan gets sad that people aren't watching the movie he picked. pretends he's chill with it but he sits in the armchair by himself all curled up like a shrimp, hugging a cushion and squeezing his eyes shut whenever he gets too scared. after the movie's finished, though, he doesn't think it was all that bad. does that mean he's willing to watch it again? not really. but at least he's not getting nightmares for a week like the others.

mingyu

cannot even Think of watching them (1). is too terrified. clings to joshua so hard that he leaves the man with bruises on his arm. screams the loudest at every unexpected noise on the screen, even if it's something as tiny as a floorboard creak. can never finish the full movie, either bc he gets yelled out by the other members for being too noisy or ends up too creeper out and runs away to hide in hansol's room and watch him sleep to make sure he's okay

dokyeom

cannot even Think of watching them (2). gets all three of the 95 line to baby him for the first part bc he insists that this time he Will get thru it. holds jeonghan's hand the entire time. and seungcheol's. also has joshua's hand (the one on the arm Not being held hostage by mingyu) hovering near his face, ready to cover his eyes when something scary pops up on the screen. never makes it past the 45 minute mark without getting teary-eyed and having to leave, asking joshua to bake him cookies with him or something to help him calm down

seungkwan

gets absolutely terrified if theres any gore. psychological horror? hell yeah, he's down. demon/exorcism horror? so long as no ones peeling off anyone's skin, he's fine. horror movies (especially the ones chan picks) often leave a bad taste in his mouth tho so theyre not really his favourite. vows to never ever watch another horror movie that chan's picked out again, always ends up sitting on the couch squashed between jun and chan during the next horror movie viewing. beats up the maknae after every movie for suggesting something so grotesque and horrible

hansol

doesn't watch. he's not a big fan of the mildly plotless, gory horror movies chan always picks and instead goes into his room. tries to read a book or do something productive, ends up just falling asleep on the floor. wakes up to mingyu's face inches from his in almost pitch black darkness, the elder trembling like a leaf in the wind while telling him that he was guarding him while he was asleep to make sure he was okay. he turns on the light in the room and spends the rest of the night reassuring mingyu that the sounds he's hearing outside are totally normal and no werewolf is trying to break through their windows

chan

was probably the one to suggest the horror movie. he's pretty chill with them, finding them interesting (if not sometimes rlly repetitive) to watch. the suspense is his most favourite thing ever. he thinks it's super cool. flinches sometimes, but always laughs after. is the only one grinning with excitement once the movie is finished. looks around at his hyungs and asks if anyone would be willing to watch it again with him sometime?

request guidelines

reactions tags: @weird-bookworm @minhui896 @slytherinshua @haowrld @belladaises @newgirlygirl @moonlitskiiies @mirxzii @wonranghaeee @yonabutnotyuna @crackedpumpkin @wqnwoos @kthstrawberryshortcake-main @kawennote09 @a-wandering-stay @icyminghao @valenhui @sweet-like-caramel @odxrilove @kyeomyun @chansburgah @pepperonijem @jeonride @kellesvt @kikohao @astrozuya @eightlightstar @onlyyjeonghan @aaniag @starshuas @all-american-fangirl @f1uffyjun @sea-moon-star @nonononranghaee @isabellah29 @mcu-incorrect @hrts4hanniehae @suraandsugar @pan-de-seungcheol @dokyeomkyeom @melodicrabbit @bananabubble @allieyaaa @aaa-sia

[imsogonesposts]

I've Never Seen Someone Lit From Within

|| ao3 || Finnick masterlist || requests are open!! || an: based on the song snow on the beach by taylor swift ||

summary: After the war, Finnick gets a moment of peace (wc: 792)

warnings: mentions of war + aftermaths of war, (implied) mentions of Finnick's forced prostitution, mentions of nightmares, and i think thats it!!

Finnick remembers what life was like before the rebellion. He remembers living in fear that with one wrong move, one wrong step, his entire world could come crumbling down. 

He remembers when the lives of those he cared for the most were constantly threatened in order to get him to do what the Capitol wanted. Yours, Mags, Annie, his family, you. 

He knew the rebellion wasn’t easy, it was a war after all, nothing about it was fair in the slightest. He knew many people lost those they cared for, he knew that you had almost lost him back in the sewers with the mutts. And despite all the hardships, all the trauma, he was thankful for the outcome it led to. No more Hunger Games, no more President Snow, no more doing what the Capitol wanted. No, now he gets to live a calm, peaceful life with you in your small little house near the beach, where the sound of the waves hitting the rocks put him to sleep as he held your body to his, never letting go, never wanting to let go. 

When Finnick had awoken that morning, it was cold, colder than usual for one of the sunnier districts, and as he sat up, slowly detaching himself from your sleeping figure, he noticed snow slowly falling just outside his window. 

He had made his way out, sitting on the front porch with a cup of coffee in his hand, bundled in jackets and blankets as he simply took in the sight. It was snowing on the beach in District 4. What a sight it was. 

He wasn’t sure how long he had been out there until he felt your arms hug him from behind. 

“Nightmare?” You quietly asked. It wasn’t uncommon for Finnick to sit out on the porch after a nightmare, letting the sounds of the ocean calm him, and for the first time in a long time, he shook his head no. 

“No,” he whispered, gently placing a hand to your arm to keep you there, keep you close to him. “No, no nightmare, just wanted to see the snow I guess,” he replied before gently taking your hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it as you moved to sit next to him, leaning against him. His arm had almost instinctively wrapped around your waist, pulling you closer to him, relishing in your warmth. 

“I can’t remember the last time I saw snow,” you quietly reply as Finnick kissed the side of your head. “It’s kinda weird seeing it here.”

Finnick only shrugged with a smile, “it’s pretty,” he replied before pressing another kiss the the side of your head, “And you’re gorgeous,” he mumbled against you, smiling a wide smile, one you easily replicated. 

“I love you,” you tell him simply. 

“I love you too,” he replied, moving his kiss from the side of your head to now, your lips. 

It had been almost a year since the war had ended, and Finnick still wasn’t completely at peace. He would still get nightmares some nights, he would still look over his shoulder, still be on guard when the smallest thing reminded him of the darker days, but you helped ease the pain. You with your smile, and touch, and laugh. You being around Finnick helped make the bad days a little bit better. 

But despite all that, sometimes he worried that things were too good. That his happy ending was another fabricated piece the Capitol fed to him, or another dream that would only lead to disappointment when he awoke. And so he asked, “This is real, right?”

“Course it is,” you softly, easily replied as you took his hand in yours, and placed it over your beating heart. 

“The wars over?” He asked. 

“Yes,” you answered, still holding his hand over your heart.

“We’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“Our friends are okay?”

“Yes.”

And with that, he smiled, your words finally settling over his aching heart. “I love you,” he whispered as he moved to give you another soft, sweet kiss, his hand never leaving its spot over your heart. Because, despite how impossible things seemed to be, how impossible him getting his happy ending seemed to be, your beating heart would always help calm him, help soothe him. 

Things couldn’t be so bad if you were still with him, heart beating against his palm. 

When he finally pulled away from the kiss for air, you whispered out a small “I love you too,” and his smile was so wide and boyish, you could have mistaken it for someone who had just won a contest, just won the lottery. 

And then, he leaned forward, kissing you again and again, smiling the entire way through. 

[hoonieyun]

the tree of knowledge of good & bad ₊ ⊹

pairing: park jongseong x reader genre: angst, romance, established relationship warnings: religious themes, kissing, profanity, skin ship, yn and jay are morally grey characters (honesting theyre bad ppl lol), borderline bonnie and clyde vibes, suggestive, jay is a bit possessive of yn, really bad codependence, yn and jay are runaways/criminals, it kind of jumps around a lot between like past and present and i didn't do a very good job differentiating it but i think you can tell, yn and jay love each other but there's like something sinister about jay, mentions of guns and violence, yn kills someone, not a lot of dialogue sorry my brain froze tbh, 18+ not proofread lol

synopsis: your boyfriend knew best when it came to good and bad. he was both sides of the same coin of good and bad, but it was up to you to decide on whether or not which side you felt more comfortable with.

wc: 5716

“yn! get down!” jay’s voice rings in your ears and you follow his orders, bullets ricochet past you as you duck down behind the random car on the street that was shielding you. “fuck– i’m out of bullets.” you huffed, jay looks at you with narrowed eyes. 

“baby, go grab the car; i’ll stall them.” 

“but– no, go!” you try to tell jay that you don’t want to leave him behind but you know better than to argue with jay, especially in an intense time like this. jay crouches down to give you a chaste kiss on the lips; one that you could feel in your heart. like he kissed you to let you know that you’ll be together soon and not to worry. 

“i’ll be right back, ok?” you say before running off down the alley, dodging and ducking to avoid the stray bullets while jay stayed behind to fend off the police officers that were there to detain you. there wasn’t anything on your mind aside from getting to the car, grabbing jay, and driving off into safety. 

thankfully you had parked the car only a few blocks away. you had ditched your gun in a dumpster and were running to your car, fiddling with the keys in your pocket so you could unlock the car. 

the moment you take a seat in the driver’s seat, everything slows down– your breathing is still heavy but each inhale and exhale felt like it lasted for minutes and the birds that flew overhead flapped their wings so slowly that they didn’t even appear like they were moving. 

it was all short lived. 

when the key turns in the ignition, you’re off– speeding down the street in hopes that when you get back to jay, he’d still be standing on his two feet, unscathed. you wouldn’t ever forgive yourself if jay wasn’t fine when you get back to him, blaming yourself if he was hurt because you left him behind. 

jay would never leave you behind. 

“baby.. baby– wake up!” you’re jolted awake with a gasp, jay hovering over you with a worried expression on his face. “are you ok? you were mumbling in your sleep.” 

you sit up, pulling the blanket up to your chest as jay takes a seat in front of you. the mattress dipping– you swallow the dryness in your throat as you try to come up with the words to explain your dream. it didn’t feel like a nightmare but it was the furthest from a sweet dream. you tell him that it was nothing but jay knew better than to believe you because he knows when something bothers you. the wrinkle in the middle of your brows, the constant swallowing, and incessant blinking– but he also knew to give you space when these things occur. 

jay gives you a hug, pulling you into his arms and your worries soon melt away as you feel the warmth of his arms around you. your shoulders relax at the familiar feeling. 

jay was everything to you, he was all that you had and you couldn’t ever think about losing jay. 

you first met jay in the 2nd grade, a little boy was teasing you during break time at the playground and jay came to your rescue like a little angel wearing a bright blue hoodie, denim jeans, and red light up sneakers. ever since that day, you had followed jay everywhere because he was the only person who showed you any semblance of care and was the first person to show you love. 

jay tried to ignore you at first, you followed behind him like a stray dog and for a 2nd grader– he had a grasp on reality that you couldn’t even process. he was able to make decisions and choices devoid of emotion and was built for survival. 

he eventually started to warm up to you because he realized that you needed a friend… and so did he. 

at the age of 15, the two of you had long been best friends and shared a lot of firsts with each other. the days leading up to your 15th birthday, you and jay planned to run away together. deciding that all you needed was each other and you understood that all you truly did need was jay. he knew what to do at all times and you put all of your trust in him, so when he proposed that you run away with him on your 15th birthday, you didn’t hesitate to say yes. 

when you were 10 you learned that jay was living with his aunt and uncle, you never truly learned the real reason why or where his parents are– but you knew that his aunt and uncle didn’t give a shit about him the same way your own parents didn’t. even until this day, you don’t know what jay’s relationship was with his parents and you don’t dare bring it up, not because you’re afraid of how he’d react, but because you didn’t want to put him through that. 

you didn’t want him to have to confront emotions and feelings that he may not have processed and in all honesty, it would only unearth something inside of you that you’ve yet to confront. 

from 15 to 18, you and jay hopped from city to city, sleeping on random people’s couches in their garage or spending endless nights on a train as you moved to a new place because jay always told you that you should never stay in one place for too long. 

it felt like jay was running away from something and he brought you along as a symbol of solace but you didn’t mind because you were content being that for him. he felt like you were someone he could rely on, keep him grounded, and someone he could spend the rest of his life with. 

jay was your savior, he was your guide, and he was your safety. 

it was hard to get by when you both had no education past 1 year of high school and barely any job experience but jay, resourceful and smart as ever, was able to get a job with a mechanic in one of the towns you were staying in for a few weeks. it was starting to look good for the two of you and with a bit of convincing, jay eventually came around to the idea of settling down in this small town. 

you were living in a small studio with jay above a family run corner store and the carshop he worked at was just a few blocks around the corner. life was finally starting to turn around for the both of you and all you could do was thank jay. 

he knew all of the right things to do and all of the wrong things to avoid so that he could give you the life he thought you deserved. jay wasn’t a man of many words but you felt his love and emotions stronger than any person you’ve ever met. 

jay didn’t say a lot of what he felt but he always showed you. working hard and late nights to make enough money to get you a nice gift, one that you told him you didn’t need, but he insisted instead because he said, “you deserve something pretty so that everyone knows you’ve got a man at home who loves you and would do anything for you.” you were 17 when he bought you a pearl necklace with a small jeweled cross in the center of it. 

you didn’t know if it was real but because jay got it for you, it was the most beautiful piece of jewelry that you’ve ever seen and owned. one that you still wear everyday even so many years after. 

it was a symbol of his love and you held it dearly. 

making an honest living as two young lovebirds with no experience was hard– but jay always found a way to make do. it was hard at first, still is sometimes, but lately life has been a lot easier. just being by jay’s side was enough but because he was determined to give you the life you deserve, he made an effort to work hard for you. 

you weren’t going to let jay do all of the work on his own though. 

at some point, working at the mechanic shop wasn’t enough as society itself only became harder and harder after the growth of the economy and eventual fall. jay was laid off, rent increased, and everything at the grocery store went up in price by at least 25%. you could tell it was taking a toll on jay’s mental and physical health as he spent all day working wherever they’d take him but even working 3 jobs, none of it was enough. 

you eventually found a job cleaning homes in the rich neighborhood in the next town over; you owed it to the necklace jay bought you because you always thought of it as your good luck charm. the beautiful woman who lived in the house with her husband and 3 kids even complimented it and soon after asked if you could be her housekeeper. 

it didn’t pay much, $9.35 an hour and you thought they’d pay more because the family was very well off, but it was enough so that jay only had to work two jobs instead of three. but even then, it was barely enough. you didn’t have any experience cleaning homes but your rapport with your now boss was enough to land you the job. 

it didn’t seem like she was looking for anyone specific anyways because all she had asked you about the job was your availability and when you could start– the rest of the conversation was about your interests and the pearl necklace around your neck that jay bought for you. 

“baby.. can i ask you something?” 

jay asks while the two of you ate stale bread and jam for dinner after a long day at work. you had several candles lit on your wooden dining table because you didn’t want to have any lights on to reduce your electric bill. 

you look up at jay and he’s got jam outlining his lips, you reach over with your thumb and wipe it off– sucking on your finger afterwards. “yes, baby?” you respond, suddenly the atmosphere changes and you can feel jay’s shift in demeanor as he places his bread on the table. 

“what i’m about to tell you requires a lot of trust and i know you trust me and i trust you with my whole life…” his words were beginning to worry you a bit and you tried your best not to show it. his words and body language felt unfamiliar and jay was quick to catch onto your worry. 

he grabs your hands and covers them with his own, a wave of calm washes over you instantly as jay looks you in your eyes, “baby.. just breathe, ok? i promise i’ll explain everything…” 

and when he’s seen your breathing has become steady and you are no longer shaking, he continues. “i know life has been hard and we’ve barely been scraping by and i know i promised you a happy life– i am happy..” you interrupt and jay smiles at you. 

“i know you are but you deserve so much more… and i think i’ve found out how we can start making a bit more money.” 

he swallows the saliva in his throat for a second before continuing. 

“your boss, the lady you’ve gotten pretty close to as a housekeeper– i found out her husband is the son of the biggest industrial supply company in the country. they’re insanely rich and maybe if you can–” 

“baby.. i don’t know… that’s illegal, what if i get caught and i end up in jail?” 

jay already knew you were going to ask that and had a solution ready. 

“i know.. i know but they’re going to be out of town this weekend. the whole family and you’ll be working while they’re gone. if you grab a few things of worth like jewelry she has multiples of or anything– i know a guy who will buy it off of us for a shit ton of money, baby. 

this is it.. we can make so much money and better our lives.” 

your eyes were constantly blinking and although you were afraid, you trusted jay enough to know that his plan would work. jay was intelligent and he didn’t go into anything without a full proof plan. he knew good from bad and he knew right from wrong and you followed him no matter what because he has never steered you wrong. 

that night, you spent hours going over the plan, talking about possible things you could take and what their priority would be to steal. jay specified that you couldn’t steal anything too often and make sure that it was something unnoticable. 

and when the day came, it all worked. 

you stole several necklaces and earrings, a watch that had collected dust, and even a vase that you were able to hide in your cleaning cart. 

and soon enough, you and jay were able to move out of your shabby studio apartment and into a single bedroom home. it had a front yard, not a big one but a front yard nonetheless, and even a white picket fence that surrounded your home. 

but that night never ended. 

as you and jay worked regular jobs, you, still a housekeeper for several rich families, and jay who worked at a new mechanic shop in town; you made just enough money but your little side jobs were able to provide more for the two of you than your regular jobs could. 

every sunday night you and jay would attend church in your town and scope out which families you wanted to target next. you’d approach the wife and make short conversation and eventually her husband would join to which you’d introduce jay. you’d talk about how you clean homes and miraculously, the wives would always say how they’re looking for a housekeeper. 

jay would then interject at some point and offer his help in mechanics, saying that they could get the family a good deal on car services if they reached out to him, he did it because he got commission if he brought in more customers but also because he had a plan of his own. 

while you secretly stole from the families your worked for, jay would drop you off at work and sneakily find a way to sabotage their cars and when the family noticed it, they would then ask you for jay’s help to which he’d bring their car into the shop for a prolonged amount of time, giving them random excuses why it’s not fixed yet when in reality– the solution was quick and easy but jay was able to rack up a bigger bill for them if the car stayed in the shop for longer. 

at some point, the two of you went from having stale bread for dinner in a shitty studio to have a roast dinner on sunday’s after church, the only thing that remained the same was the fact that you had each other and how there was still a candle lighting the dining room as you both ate. 

not because you were still trying to conserve energy and decrease your electricity bill, but because jay found it romantic to always have a candlelit dinner even at home. 

that was several years ago. 

you and jay were now in your early 20s and have since moved cities because jay said “we can’t stay here for too long.” and reasoning behind it was valid. he mentioned that if you guys stayed in oneplace for too long, they’d eventually start to notice the small things that have gone missing and it would trickle down into the scam jay was running at his job. 

so, after two years of doing that; jay chose a new place to live and as usual, you followed him. 

it was later in the day now, jay was at work while you stayed at home; the events of your dream occasionally crept into your mind– difficult to shake off. lately you’ve been having a lot of dreams about that day. 

the day where you and jay were in a shootout with the police. 

you never really knew how you and jay went from petty theft and scamming to make a living to robbing banks and rich folk in the city. you’re sitting on your couch in your living room, it was a small house on the outskirts of town– closer to the countryside. 

jay said that it was better to have a house outside of the city because it was more under the radar. with the work, if you could even call it that, that the two of you do; it was good to lay low. the shootout with the cops had traumatized you for a while and when you thought you were over it, the dreams began. 

the day of the shootout started off like any regular day for the two of you. you spent the weeks prior planning your bank heist and the morning of, jay would leave early and would monitor the bank from a vantage point; taking note of everything that goes on and would later return home to you to prepare for the heist. 

everything was going normal, jay had everyone threatened and fearing for their lives on the ground with his gun raised in the air while you had yours aimed at a bank teller, instructing her to put the money in the black duffel bag you shoved into her hands. 

it was all normal… until it wasn’t. 

a patron of the bank had the heroic idea to try and tackle jay to the ground– and indeed he does. he catches jay off guard and when their two bodies collide with the floor your attention switches from the bank teller to your boyfriend who was now wrestling with this man. the hostages at the bank have begun to think they have courage but you were quick to cut away at any of their bravery with your gun. 

you made sure that no one had any more brave ideas as you aimed your gun at them, making your way to jay who was now sitting on top of the hostage, throwing down punches. 

eventually the two of them made their way back onto their feet but at some point jay lost his gun and the hostage found it in his hands. before you could even think, you see the man aim the gun at jay who was staggered and a gunshot echoes throughout the bank. 

the man falls to his knees as a single hole in chest begins to leak red. 

you had shot him to save jay and with the loud popping noise that emitted from your gun came a ringing in your ears that was then followed by the sirens of several police cars outside waiting for the two of you. 

this isn’t how this heist was supposed to go. 

no one has ever gotten hurt during any of these heists and right now there was a dead body lying in a pool of his blood as jay snatches his gun back and drags you out through the back of the bank– which surprisingly had no cops waiting for the two of you. 

it wasn’t until the two of you rounded the corner and found yourselves at a standoff with cops, ducking behind a random car on the street for cover, initiating the shootout with the cops. it lasted for about 6 minutes until jay told you to get the car so you could both escape. 

but all you had on your mind was the fact that someone lost their life that day and it was by your hands. 

your hands would forever be tainted red. 

whenever times go hard for you, you always went to two places: jay’s arms or the large tree in your backyard. the tree wasn’t anything special, just a simple oak tree but when jay was gone or when you wanted to be alone; you went to the tree to do some thinking. 

like it could provide you the answers you were looking for. 

when you were a child and still lived at home; you seldom attended church. your parents only attended to show face but never really cared for the church or the bible, and quite frankly; god. they only showed up when it mattered so that they appeared to be god fearing people but you knew that to be untrue. 

the tree of knowledge of good and bad was something you never expected to follow you throughout your life. you had learned about it once and ever since then it’s felt like the words behind it became a constant in your life the same way jay has. 

the tree itself resembled the idea of following and obeying god or choosing a path of your own where you, yourself, determine good and evil. in a lot of ways, the tree and jay were very similar and you’re able to identify the parallels between the two. 

should you follow the path that god had set out for you, obey what the great lord has instilled in everyone else, or should you follow what’s in your heart and mind. create your own destiny and develop your own understanding of what good and bad is based on your own faith. 

the answer was clear. 

the answer came in the form of your boyfriend, jay. 

he showed you everything you knew now and your faith was based on your love for jay. the foundation of your faith was rooted in the seed that you planted in the soil and was watered by jay. he poured himself into you and in return, you grew and poured yourself back into him. together the two of you were merely the existence of undying love and dedication. 

something that god could never provide for either of you. 

jay had arrived home and found the house to be empty. a singular lamp lit in the corner of the living room as he walked through the house and when he doesn’t instantly find you– he knows exactly where you are. 

“yn? baby, you alright?” 

jay emerges from the door, peeking his head out to find you laying by the tree in the backyard. he never understood why you had such an affinity to the tree in the backyard but he found it cute how much you loved it. you hadn’t heard jay call for you as your focus was the tree, you were fidgeting with the bark of the tree, telling it your worries as if it could answer. 

“my love?”

you look up in a slight startle when you see that jay was now standing above you, his head blocking out the moonlight– creating a slight halo around him. “hi, when did you get home?” you ask as he offers his hand to you but you gesture for him to sit with you instead of moving back inside the house. 

jay takes the spot next to you in front of the tree, both of you sitting in the comfort of silence for a few moments, staring up at the moon. “what’s on your mind? i know you like to come out here when you’ve got a lot going on up here.” jay says, gently tapping your temple, giggling in response. 

you rest your head on his shoulder before dumping your worries on him. telling him about the recurring dreams, nightmares even, of the day you had shot and killed that man during your bank heist. it was just about a year ago when that happened and when you had thought you moved past it; it came back to haunt you in your sleep. 

jay rubs your shoulders in comfort, “baby, i know that day was hard for you. i’m sorry that you’ve been dealing with that but just know that it isn’t your fault. you did that to save my life and i couldn’t be more grateful that you made the decision to pull that trigger.” 

you swallow the lump in your throat as you continue to listen to jay speak so casually about committing murder. 

“it was survival, you know? it was either me or him, and i never doubted in my mind and heart that you would choose me because i know how much you love and trust me. the same way i love and trust you. 

right, baby?” 

you look up at jay to see that he was looking down at you now, waiting for your answer. you stretched your neck to give his lips a kiss, one that jay deepens. 

“of course, jay. i love you with all my heart.” you say, placing your head back down onto his body, hearing the beating of his heart behind the sweater that he was wearing. jay did a lot to remind you that every decision the both of you have made was for the bettering of your lives. that none of it would ever be in vain because it was to make the both of you happy. 

jay was good at telling you what you needed to hear. 

he whispered all of the right things into your ear, soothing your worries and clearing your mind as you listened to his sweet and low voice. telling you that you shouldn’t feel guilty for taking the life of an innocent man because he threatened to take jay’s life. 

“you wouldn’t have let that happen right? you wouldn’t have let that man shoot me? and take the love of your life away, right? you wouldn’t let them happen..?” 

jay was asking you this but he already knew the answer, he just wanted to hear you say it. he had this ability to get what he wanted from you without telling you what it was that he wanted. now that he was asking you these questions, there was a certain aura surrounding jay that made you feel like there was only one answer. 

“of course. i’d never let anyone take you away from me..” 

jay smiles as he rests his head on yours. “good.. i know, baby. so i don’t want you to ever feel guilty before it was either me or him.” his voice was stern but not strict. it was like a father trying his hand at gentle parenting but you could tell that his patience was running thin under the guise of sounding calm. 

“come on, let’s go inside.” 

you tell him that he can go first, wanting to have a bit more time outside but jay instantly tells you that you need to come inside with him. that you didn’t need to dwell on these thoughts any further and that he wanted you inside with him so you should do that. you didn’t want to fight or push back, so you stood up when he did and followed him inside, just as you’ve done your whole life. 

you’re barely able to look back and glance at the tree before jay is gripping your wrist and pulling you inside. something about it was still gentle but you could tell something was off with jay from the conversation the two of you had. you couldn’t put your finger on what it was but it felt like jay was hiding how he truly felt about your lingering guilt building up inside of you. 

later that night when you laid in bed, jay’s arm around your waist and his snores filling the room, your eyes wide open and your mind running wild. the night was still, crickets chirped outside and the sound of the fan running in the corner of the room mixes with jay’s snores. you couldn’t quiet your mind and although jay did a good job of that earlier, your mind was only filled with other worries soon after. 

you had never once worried about jay, well you have; like when he had several guns pointed at him– but right now it was different. you worried about jay a lot, for his safety especially, but right now you were worried because you were starting to question whether or not you truly knew him. 

good and evil often found themselves on a very thin line. 

it was hard to differentiate good from bad when both have manifested into one person who has shown you that bad was justified when it was in the name of good. jay justified you committing murder because it was to save his life– but the situation only arose because the two of you were committing a crime; but you were only robbing a bank because you needed money to survive. 

a cycle. 

it was one thing that led to another that led to another. jay knew this, he knew that one action would only lead to another and he was banking on the fact that you’d stay by his side throughout all of it because he was all that you had. he convinced you that committing these crimes were all in good faith because it was to work towards the dreams the two of you have worked so hard to achieve. 

you sighed as you tried to do the mental gymnastics of why this was suddenly making you feel guilty. trying to convince yourself that all of the bad things that you’;ve done was all because you wanted a good life to live with jay. 

jay. 

he was all of the good this world had to offer you and you couldn’t imagine not having him by yourself. he dedicated his life to you, put his life on the line for you, bore his blood, sweat, and tears for you. 

and it was only fair that you did the same. 

who cares if a bit of blood was shed if it meant that it brought you and jay closer to the happiness you both strived for. jay showed you the faith that you followed now, he paved the path that you walked on, and he showed you the good and the bad. 

it was up to you to decide whether or not you would accept good and bad the way jay has. 

your foot was planted firmly on the gas pedal as you sped around the corners of the street, leaving skid marks on the concrete as you made your way to jay, hoping that he was still safe and hadn't met the same demise as the victim inside of the bank. 

jay could hear the car’s engine from a few blocks away and readied himself to jump in the car and make your getaway together. you stomp the break and the car does a 180 turn that causes all of the police officers to disperse in shock at the appearance of a car barreling towards them, you reach over to open the door and jay jumps inside before the cops could continue unloading their clips into your car. 

“hi, baby.” jay says, placing a wet kiss on your face as you sped off and away from the scene. safe and sound with neither of you hurt. “just in time– i was running out of bullets.” he laughed as if all of this was amusing to him. jay, honestly, found a thrill in all of this. 

what started off as you stealing jewelry turned into a life of crime as jay grew more and more enamored with the idea of this dreamland that he strived so hard for. he wanted you to have the life you deserved, even if it meant that you were the one pulling the trigger while jay encouraged you and justified taking someone else’s life. 

you had ditched the car when you were sure that no one was following you, abandoned it on the side of the road and hopped onto the back of jay’s motorcycle that he had hid in a random warehouse. the rest of the drive home was short as you felt the wind whipping past your face while you rested your body on jay’s back with your arms wrapped around his waist. 

when you got home, you dragged your body to the tree in your backyard, falling to the ground in exhaustion as you huffed and puffed. the events during the bank heist repeating in your head. the sound of your gun still echoing in your ears and the image of that man falling to his knees covered in blood burnt into your retinas. 

“you did so good today.” jay says, stepping into the backyard with you and wrapping his arms around you like a warm blanket. jay presses a kiss onto your hair and smiles, like he was proud of how everything played out. “i’m so happy you were there to save me.. you did what you needed to do and i’m so proud of you.” 

good and bad was something that everyone should be able to identify. 

god himself has created a moral grading level that all of his followers should obey. 

but not you and definitely not jay. 

jay showed you what good and bad was. 

there was a fine line between the two. 

good and bad are different sides of the same leaf. like when someone says, “i’ve turned a new leaf.” at the end of the day, it’s still the same leaf. 

good and bad coexisted together

and jay was both good and bad, and you accepted all of him even if it scared you sometimes. 

as jay holds you close to him, a single leaf from the tree above you slowly falls to the ground. signifying that fall has come and the tree in your backyard has begun to lose its leaves. much like how the events of today have led you to lose a part of yourself but because jay was by your side, you just had to believe that everything would be okay. 

the garden of eden

copyright 2025 - present © hoonieyun all rights reserved all writing here is fiction & not in any association with characters mentioned. if you enjoyed reading this please consider reblogging and following <3

ᡣ•.•𐭩♡ @pagemiah @jiiyen @jnysaln @xh01bri @rairaiblog @laurradoesloveu @manaah02 @zorange13 @firstclassjaylee @kristynaaah @17ericas @heeseung64 @leipforggy @enhastolemyheart @starcandybby @bussolares @lovelymelon

[project-sekai-facts]

what is your least favorite event in terms of story ?

sekai happy new year is the most filler event to ever filler but if we don't count the filler new year events then.... detective tenma? aside from that one conversation between daigo and tsukasa where the untrained is from it's abysmally written. like i get that that slot had to be a tsukasa event and there was no way around it, but it needed more time in the oven. like he's been shown to be pretty athletic and flexible and the fact they backtracked on that especially when he's still doing the splits and high kicks in every other 3dmv is just really lazy. the wall thing is also kinda stupid and Not That Hard but idk metaphor for him struggling to overcome walls in terms of skill, and he's the kind of character to obssess over those sorts of things. he's married to the grind it's fine.

the thing that probably frustrates me most though is that he doesn't actually learn anything. he learns how to climb a wall but that wasn't his real goal here. his goal was to be able to do stage combat in-character, and work on his core strength (actually consistent detail) and flexibility. only then this plot device thief shows up and now tsukasa's issue is that he can't run fast enough or jump walls to be able to catch them. and admittedly the parkour thing was something he needed for a role (also. he loses the audition for lead role. this is an important plot detail. it's shown in a card story) but it's just. comical that they couldn't even keep his goal consistent for more than like 2 chapters. and when he finally is able to catch the thief and do all the cool parkour, HE'S NOT ACTING. He just happens to see the thief and then chases them down. and the people in town think it's part of the show so he does some adlibbing, but that's after he did all his cool stunts and has caught the guy. so he literally doesn't learn how to do stage combat in-character but the story treats it like he did so. cool i guess.

also they immediately forget the thief and then in the last chapter they're like "oh i wonder who that guy was" which is the biggest tell this story is bad. literal writer's worst nightmare aside from it was all a dream. the best part was when tsukasa did the splits and injured his crotch because it was funny.

[gazstations]

Finally, we’re at Price. Gotta love random headcanons. I will probably do more on the future.

gaz nightmare headcanons

soap nightmare headcanons

ghost nightmare headcanons

I think Price holds a lotttt of trauma in his body. He has long given up on consistent sleep and stopped getting stressed when he is blinking up at the roof, body ridged with the last remnants of his nightmare. He doesn’t dream a lot, but when he does, his brain is cycling some bitter memory.

I think he deals with everything a lot more poorly than the other three. He never had healthy habits. He smokes like a chimney and is probably going to get throat or lung cancer because of it. His liver isn’t doing well either.

But you would never know.

As captain, he has to be on top of his game. And he still passes physicals and psyche evaluations (somehow). He’s very good at keeping his composure even when it’s obvious the man is a little more than tormented—physically and emotionally.

Holds the weight of carrying that dump tru—

Anyway.

When he wakes up, he smokes. Numb the thoughts, reap the consequences later.

He’s so good at keeping up his A-game, that by the time he slips out of his bed officially it’s just another day.

I think Price is always one step away from snapping. He already makes morally questionable decisions, it just takes that ONE thing that really just sends him over the edge (like Johnny dying, OOP, sorry).

He also never mentions any of his baggage to his men. He keeps it all inside. Though, Kate and her wife have gotten him to unload once or twice. Actually, maybe Nikolai knows the deep lore, which is why they’re so deep devoted to each other. They would do shit like ask to get buried together.

[howlsofbloodhounds]

if they were able to kill him, who would try delivering the final blow to nightmare? (in your opinion)

I suppose anyone who wanted to kill him or be rid of him and was willing to try. Either out of fear, desperation, hatred, justice, a sense of responsibility, etc.

Delta, with the influence of the bravery soul, definitely would try.

Color definitely would seriously consider it I feel, driven by bravery, justice, and just intense hatred and disgust for Nightmare. As well as a desire to stop him from hurting anyone else, especially Killer and his friends.

But we also see from the Something New comics that Color avoids fighting Killer when he’s in Stage 2 as much as possible whenever Nightmare is present, as he doesn’t want his emotions and negativity to strengthen Nightmare.

He gives me the vibes that, when it comes to handling Nightmare, he’d try to consider what Nightmare’s victims would want. Even though Color himself more than likely wants him dead and gone. In his eye, Nightmare deserves no mercy.

Dream, I’m 50/50, because he likely still struggles with viewing Corrupted as his brother—and Corrupted definitely is willing to pretend to be. There’s also the matter of the balance, which he understands better than the other characters.

He knows how the loss of negativity could potentially effect the multiverse, but also how the loss of his brother—for what likely feels like twice, maybe even three times depending on how their reunion went when Dream was freed from his stone—would effect him.

I do think Dust would likely be willing to try, even if he knows he won’t succeed. Perhaps as a desperate attempt to get away, he’d try to go for killing blows.

I doubt he’d get anywhere, though, unfortunately. I doubt that’s really a new experience with him, given his fights against the human, but unfortunately there is no Resetting this time and therefore no attempts to make Nightmare give up. Unless maybe he somehow convinced Killer to turn against Nightmare and support him?

I think that’d take a lot though. Potentially a chance that, if Killer were to ever agree to helping Dust with this, he may not actually have any actual hope in either of their escapes.

He may say it’s just a game, or something new, even if he may have a sliver of hope deep down. Either way, he’d probably expect to be punished for his betrayal regardless.

Killer may not even not be quite sure what to do if it were to succeed, may even trigger an intense dissociative (particularly derealization) or psychotic episode. And by psychotic, I mean hallucinations, delusions.

Potentially vivid flashbacks if something pushes a specific trauma trigger. Que the bouts of inappropriate uncontrollable laughter just like in the Something New comics.

Maybe viewing it all as some sort of game where he’s just unlocking new routes and paths is how he attempts to cope with it. Viewing his life as a Player would.

I don’t think Horror would try. I’m not an expert, but from what I’ve seen and heard, people seem to agree that he has the most..self preservation(?) out of the Murder Time Trio.

[dandylion240]

Squinting up into the dark sky watching the lightning illuminate the dark rolling clouds scuttling across the sky. The wind whipped the trees around, reminding him of a scene from a movie he watched as a kid that had given him nightmares for days afterwards. Swallowing he turned from the window “are you sure about this? Wouldn’t it be better if we went another day?”

“It’s a little rain,” Jayden said, grinning at him, “besides it’s not every night your dad agrees to babysit for us.”

“I know,” Evan rubbed his hands up and down his arms chilled from standing by the window. “What’s this house you want me to see? It’s got to be special for you to drag me out in a storm like this.” He’d asked before in various ways hoping Jayden would tell  him something. So far all he’d gotten out of him was the house was everything he’d dreamed of. Forcing a smile to his face wanting to give the appearance of being somewhat excited to see it. 

“What’s the matter babe?” Jayden asked, noticing the forced smile and the way it didn’t light up Evan’s pretty green eyes. “If you want me to, I’ll cancel.” As he talked he pulled his phone out “we can stay home, light a fire…”

“Tempting,” Evan laughed a little, feeling a little ashamed that he was so worried about a little storm. Although the look in Jayden’s eyes left no doubt where this evening would wind up, which wasn’t a half bad idea. “No it’s okay. I want to see this house.”

“You're sure?” Jayden asked his phone out and he was ready to dial the realtor. “We can see the house another day.” The more he thought about it the more he liked the idea of a night of cuddling.

Thunder rumbled outside rattling the pictures on the wall. Lightning cracked nearby making Evan jump as the house was plunged into darkness. “We should probably wait,” he said leaning into Jayden as he felt his arms slip around him. His breath caught as Jayden’s fingers slipped beneath his sweater making the storm and house hunting a dim memory. “Make the call” he murmured, pushing Jayden away before he lost all ability to think.

Moaning in protest Jayden stepped back “the one time I forget I have a phone is the one time you want me to use it.”

“I’ll start the fire while you call” he chuckled, turning to light the fireplace, wincing a little at the sudden brightness as the lights came back on. 

Focusing on his phone Jayden muttered “do you have any idea what you do to me?” From the look he caught on Evan’s face he knew he definitely knew what effect he had. “We’re in luck the realtor sent a text to reschedule for next Saturday at five.”

“But that’s Spooky day” Evan groaned “it’s Josie’s first time trick or treating. She looks so cute in her costume.”

“We can still take her trick or treating,” Jayden said “looking at the house won’t take all night.”

“I guess,” although he agreed, he sounded unconvinced.

“How about we do this,” Jayden suggested moving to sit beside him on the floor. “I’ll take a half day from work. That way we can take our lil dragon to all the relatives before we go.”

“Did you peak?” Evan asked, looking at him suspiciously.

“I didn’t have to,” he chuckled softly leaning in to give Evan a kiss. “What else was she going to be but a dragon?” He rolled Evan over on the floor “enough talking. We have the whole evening to ourselves. I don’t want to waste a single moment of it.”

A week later they were on their way to look at the house the realtor promised was everything Evan ever dreamed of in a house. “She said it has the white pillars and veranda around the front?” Evan asked with excitement in his voice.

“That’s what she said,” Jayden turned to look at him with a soft smile on his lips. They had gotten a later start than they had planned. Stopping at everyone’s house had taken longer than they thought with everyone wanting to take pictures and talk. They had hoped to arrive before the realtor did so they could see the house in the light. Leaning forward he tried to see through the thickening fog that even the headlights couldn’t penetrate. “Where did all this fog come from?” he muttered aloud.

“Maybe you should slow down,” Evan suggested with a nervous quiver as he squinted out the window. “There’s probably deer…”

“Horsie,” Josie giggled pointing excitedly out the window from her car seat in the back.

“Where?” Evan tried to see what his daughter was pointing at “I don’t see…” When he spotted the rearing horse his heart dropped to his stomach “Jayden” he cried pointing frantically at the horse.

“Oh shit,” Jayden gasped, slamming his foot on the brake. The car swerved spinning out of control. The car came to a sudden abrupt stop with a loud crunch and shattering glass. Moaning Jayden lifted his face up from the deployed airbag, blood smeared its white surface from his busted lip and throbbing nose. “Evan,” he croaked “hon, are you alright?”

“I think so,” his voice was thick like he had just woken up. “Josie,” he tried to twist around in his seat, crying out in pain when it pinned him to the back of his seat, choking him.

Releasing his seat belt with trembling fingers Jayden stretched across the seat to help Evan with his seat belt. “Stay still” he urged “I can’t get you loose with you struggling like that.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he brushed Jayden’s hands away. “Check on Josie. Is she alright?”

Leaning between the seats Jayden gasped as he took in the empty car seat and open back door. “Josie,” he called, eyes wide as he tried to see where she might have gone in the fog. 

“Don’t worry about me,” he brushed Jayden’s hands away. “Check on Josie. Is she alright?”

Leaning between the seats Jayden gasped as he took in the empty car seat and opened the back door. “Josie,” he screamed, eyes wide as he tried to see where she might have gone in the fog. 

Struggling in his seat Evan tried to pull the seat belt loose with his bare hands. “Is she hurt?” he asked, feeling sick to his stomach. What if she was hurt? What if she were…no no no she had to be alright. Please please please let her be alright, he begged to anyone who could hear his silent pleas.

Pushing himself away from his daughter’s empty car seat Jayden turned to his panicking husband. “Sit still. I’m going to cut you loose.”

“What about Josie?” he demanded yanking on the belt causing it to tighten even more. Panting from the strain it put on his ribs he looked into Jayden’s somber eyes “she’s dead isn’t she?”

Slamming the glove compartment door shut he took hold of Evan’s face between his hands. “Josie’s not dead.” He let his words sink in “you know how she’s been able to get out of her car seat for a while.” Evan nodded but the anxious look in his eyes never abated. “While we were knocked out she got out.”

“What?” Evan croaked, twisting around to look out the window. Fog was swirling around thick and impregnable. “My baby could be anywhere in that. How are we going to find her?”

“Listen to me,” Jayden held him “we’re going to find her. I promise we’re going to find her.”

“You’re going to have to climb out on this side,” Jayden said after watching Evan ty to force his door open. 

“Alright” he grunted as he crawled across the console in the middle. He tried to move carefully but the movement made his sore ribs hurt even more. His face went several shades paler by the time he reached the other side of the car. Stumbling through the open door he tried not to pass out as his world grew dim around him.

“I’ve got you,” Jayden said, putting an arm around Evan to help support him. “I think you might have broken a rib or two.” Reaching for his phone, frowning as he tried to make a call. Turning to Evan “are you getting a signal?”

Fumbling for his phone Evan stared at it in confusion “nothing.”

“Must be a dead zone,” Jayden shrugged, putting the useless device in his pocket.

Shivering Evan held his arms stiffly to his sides. “Don’t say things like that,” he muttered looking around the fog covered landscape. “Which way do you think she went?” Silence greeted him “Jayden?” He hadn’t realized he was alone until he received no response to calls. Holding onto the car he took a few unsteady steps. “Jayden” he called his voice coming out in a squeak that was swallowed by the thickening fog.

Squinting he thought something was moving towards him. “Jayden, is that you?” The silhouette stopped. Evan stepped in the direction of the shadowy figure “Jayden? This isn’t funny.” The words were no more than a whisper. Swallowing Evan looked from side to side, stepping backwards as the figure crept closer. His scream shattered the silence as a cold icey hand touched his shoulder sliding along his bare skin along his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Jayden apologized holding his hands to his ears “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Blinking he turned to find Jayden looking at him in concern. “You almost gave me a heart attack,” his scowl slowly fading to a frown “weren’t you just over there?” He pointed in the direction he’d last seen the silhouette. 

“No,” he squinted in the direction Evan was pointing “was someone over there?”

“I thought so,” Evan squinted in the direction he'd seen the silhouette but the swirling fog made it impossible to make out anything. “I thought it was you.”

“Maybe it was whoever was riding that damn horse down the road” Jayden suggested sounding as if he wanted to give the rider a piece of his mind.

“Then why didn’t they come over to see if we were alright?” Evan asked.

“I don’t know,” chuckling a little, Jayden grinned “maybe you scared him. Shit you scared me with that blood curdling scream of yours.”

“Maybe,” he said, sounding unconvinced. He gave the area one last look not sure if he really wanted to see anything there or not.

“I think I found where our little dragon went,” Jayden said, taking his hand “I found an open gate over here.”

Previous/Next

[malarkgirlypop]

Ok so I had the most bizarre dream about David Webster! And it was kinda fucking gruesome. So just be warned, don’t read on if you don’t want too.

Ok so here’s the dream:

I am at this water park, it has a big tank, kinda like the tank in Jurassic world that holds that big dino fish thing. Anyway I’m watching this water show I guess idk. The announcer says like we gonna have a performance from a diver and a fish. The person doesn’t specifically say it’s Webster but I know it’s him. Webster comes out like full scuba gear and gets in the tank. He swims a lap of the edge so around the circle. Then from the fucking depths of the tank comes this huge and I mean fucking huge hammer head shark. Like it is massive. And the hammerhead starts following Webster around the tank, everything is normal, i assume that you know this is all part of the act. Then out of nowhere the shark just bites him in half. Doesn’t eat him, just chomps him. And then there just the two halves of him floating in the water. And for some reason the dream just kept replaying that exact moment and I was freaking out like I didn’t want to watch it but I couldn’t look away. But everyone else around me in the stand didn’t do anything no one reacted. Idk weird weird dream.

[somegrumpynerd]

A little animation I made of Dream and Nightmare for fun, it's pretty short and simple but not bad for my second go at animation I think ^^

The music is from here, I highly recommend listening to the full thing cause it's so beautiful!

Quick explanation for the song and a gif version under the cut

So when I was first dipping my toes into utmv stuff like a year ago, I made a slideshow for my sister with a bunch of au Sanses, let her guess what kinda vibe she thought they had and then gave her a list of names/ aus to see if she could figure out who was who (she did surprisingly well and I'm proud of her).

Well, when I first showed her pictures of Dream her immediate reaction was "this guy looks like he's from zelda" and it's just always stuck with me. Somewhere along the way I started headcanoning Dream playing some kind of instrument when they were kids and when I heard the pan flute version of zelda's lullaby everything kind of fell into place.

So here they are, having a little moment of peace finally, brothers together again c:

[midnightfries]

Youre telling me Dream got that Apple White treatment where they did nothing wrong (in apple's case, actively went through really good character development) and are still seen as inherently wrongful, blaming a six year old and a teenager for all the bad events in their stories

Both of them were ACTIVELY manipulated and sheltered by adults in their lives and try their absolute best to help people out of pure selflessness.

Dream doesn't need to apologize, he did absolutely nothing wrong, he was naive and trusted his brother to tell the truth about his injuries and was busy all day helping people- such evil incarnate. Headcannoning differently or having an AU that differs is fully fine to me, it's just people who actively believe that Dream had any fault in the canon events that piss me off to no end

Would you look at that! This isn't to say Passive was at fault either, literally every action can be justified by 'he was six'- they weren't the most emotionally mature, because they were six. They weren't the most perceptive of each other's pain- because they were six. They wouldn't have been able to do anything about it if they knew, because theyre were six.

Apple ALREADY apologized- I'm sorry you think Dragons Games took that away but it absolutely didn't, she was being blackmailed and manipulated during her vulnerable moments by the literal most evil person imaginable, literally shut up sorry you cant forgive a teenager for making bad decisions when having her worldview shattered, i am not going to bother looking for screenshots of this because it would be every second of every movie and Apple centric episode go rewatch those if you'd like proof, maybe watch it with your eyes open this time around

[Insert obligatory apple tree and apple white link joke here]