hyacinth

to say he’s worried is an understatement. his first assumption is that you’re angry with him, but he can’t think of a reason why. you went on a date with him just last week and seemed fine, infact you had a great time. so why now are you deciding to ignore him? are you tired of him?

his second assumption is that his brothers or smurf bothered you enough that you don’t want to come around anymore. which makes sense because, well, they can definitely be a lot. but it also doesn’t explain why you wouldn’t go on the date with him yesterday because that was meant to be just the two of you, a quiet, intimate dinner at an expensive restaurant in the city. it would just be the two of you.

he’s currently sitting on the couch, trying his hardest to figure out a reason for you ignoring him, when he gets a call from you. he furrows his eyebrows; you never really call him without asking first, and when you do it’s so you can rant to him about your day while you’re missing him. so why are you calling him now? are you about to break up with him over the phone? you wouldn’t do that, you’re not that cruel, you’re—

“andy,” you sniffle, “can i come over?”

that surprises him. he didn’t expect to pick up the call to hear that. he’s never heard you cry, and you sound so… sad. and tired. you don’t sound well at all. he immediately goes into worry mode, “yeah of course baby— what’s going on?”

you choke out another sob, “i’ll tell you when i get there. i’m sorry.” and hang up right after that.

andrew frowns. he doesn’t like how… sad you sound. he’s not used to it. he isn’t very good at talking to people, let alone comforting them when they’re crying. he’s worried you’ll come over and he won’t know how to handle whatever’s wrong. he’s worried he won’t be able to make you better.

after about ten minutes, there’s a knock at the door, and andrew goes to open it. he finds you standing at the door, still crying, looking extremely pale and unwell. his eyes widen, “oh, love…”

for a moment, he just stands there, his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides. he doesn’t know if he should hug you or leave you be or pull you in… he’s terrified. he doesn’t want to make it worse.

you sob, “i’m sorry, i got sick… i woke up yesterday morning and i felt so sick and i— i didn’t know what to do, i know you’re always so clean and everything and i was scared if we went on our date i’d infect you and…”

his entire face softens. “you’re… sick? that’s all?”

you sniffle, “i’m really sick, andy, it’s awful and everything hurts…”

“no, no, that’s not what i meant, i just thought that…” for a moment, he just thinks. hesitates. then he asks so gently, “do you want a hug?”

as soon as you nod, he’s pulling you into his strong arms and shutting the door behind you. he just holds you for a long while, letting you cry into his shoulder, until eventually you mumble, “aren’t you worried i’ll get you sick? i know you’re scared of germs and everything…”

he pulls back to look at you, frowning. “no, baby. i’m not worried about that. i’m worried about you. my girl is sick and i’m gonna be there for her.” he presses his lips to your hair, “i promise i want you here.”

you nod into his chest and ask softly, “can i just lay in your bed for a bit…?”

“of course, love. you always can. c’mere.” he carefully entwines his fingers with yours and leads you into his bedroom, letting you collapse into his bed. he sits on the edge of the bed next to you while you get comfortable under the blankets. “feel any better now?” he asks a bit shyly, hoping he made things at least a little better.

“mhmm…” you mumble into the pillow, completely exhausted. you reach for his hand to hold, and he takes it. “thank you, andy…”

he nods stiffly, still not really knowing how to handle you. “you, um… you wanna eat something? would that make it better?”

you shake your head, “no, just wanna sleep, maybe when i wake up…”

he squeezes your hand, “that’s fine. i’ll be here when you wake up, just rest.”

it doesn’t take long for you to drift off, finally comforted by him and the familiarity of his bed. you fall asleep with his hand in yours, finally feeling safe.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

when you wake up, it’s dark now, the sun must have set a while ago. you still feel the ache behind your eyes, the shivers wracking through your body. but it’s not as bad as before. you rub your eyes, noticing your boyfriend is gone, and you get out of bed on shaky legs to go find him.

andrew is in the kitchen, making you some soup. you walk up behind him and hug his waist, buring your face in his shoulder and closing your eyes. “hi…” you yawn.

he stiffens for a moment, then softens when he realizes it’s you. “oh, hi baby…” he turns around to kiss your forehead, checking your temperature, “hm, the rest must have helped. you don’t feel as warm.”

you just hum into his skin, still feeling sleepy and comfortable. “are you making soup for me…?”

he shrugs, “yeah, it’s supposed to help. make you feel a bit better.” he pours the soup into a bowl for you and places a hand on your back, leading you to the table to sit down. he watches you eat anxiously, then asks, “is it good?”

you smile up at him, “it’s really good, thank you. i feel so much better already.” you’re teasing him a bit, you’re still unwell, but you do really appreciate what he’s doing for you.

“good, that’s… yeah.” he stands awkwardly for a moment, not really knowing what else to do. “how else can i help? i want you to feel better, you know.”

for a moment, you think, then you shrug, “just… spend time with me. that’s all i want.”

the two of you spend the rest of the day just relaxing, him doing whatever you want and letting you lay your head on his lap. even though andrew isn’t great at comforting people, he made you feel better today, and that’s enough for him.

And now they were here.

Black SUVs blocked every exit from Smurf's street. Unmarked sedans lined the curbs. SWAT vans idled at both ends of the block, their engines rumbling like predators waiting to pounce. Agents in tactical gear moved into position with military precision, some crouched behind vehicles, others positioned on neighboring rooftops with sniper rifles, all of them focused on the house at the center of the web.

The house where Smurf had built her empire. The house where everything was about to end.

Inside, Pope stood at the window and watched the vehicles arrive. His stomach dropped. His hands went cold. He turned to look at Craig, who was standing in the kitchen doorway with a beer halfway to his lips, frozen mid-drink.

“What the fuck?” Craig whispered.

Deran came running from the back of the house. “We've got company out back too. At least six vehicles. Maybe more.”

Smurf appeared at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a white silk blouse and dark jeans, her hair perfectly styled, her face calm. But her eyes, her eyes were sharp and calculating, already running through contingency plans, already looking for the exit that didn't exist.

“How many?” she asked.

“Too many,” Pope said flatly.

The bullhorn crackled to life outside.

“THIS IS THE FBI. THE HOUSE IS SURROUNDED. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP. AFTER THAT, WE'RE COMING IN.”

The voice echoed through the neighborhood. Dogs started barking. Neighbors peered through windows. Someone screamed.

Smurf walked down the stairs slowly, her hand trailing along the banister. She looked almost serene. Almost. But Pope could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her jaw was clenched, the fury building behind her eyes.

“Someone talked,” she said quietly.

“No shit,” Craig muttered.

“Who?” Smurf's voice was ice.

Pope's mind was racing. Who would've given them everything? Who had access to all their locations, all their operations, all their-

J.

The realization hit him like a punch to the gut. J had done this. J had burned them all.

Smurf was staring at him. “You know who it was.”

Pope didn't answer.

“POPE.”

“It doesn't matter now,” he said. “We need to get out.”

“There is no out,” Deran said. He was pacing, running his hands through his hair. “They've got us boxed in. Every exit is covered. Every escape route is blocked. They knew exactly where to position themselves.”

Because J had told them. J had given them the blueprints. J had handed them the keys to the kingdom.

Smurf walked to the window and looked out at the agents. At the guns. At the end of everything she'd built. Her face was expressionless, but Pope could see her mind working, calculating, searching for the angle that would save her.

“We're not surrendering,” she said.

Craig stared at her. “What?”

“I said we're not surrendering.”

“Smurf, there's no way-“

“I SAID WE'RE NOT SURRENDERING.”

Her voice cracked through the room like a whip. Craig flinched. Deran stopped pacing. Pope just looked at her, and for the first time in his life, he saw her clearly.

She was going to get them all killed. She'd rather die than lose. She'd rather take them all down with her than admit defeat.

“YOU HAVE FOUR MINUTES.”

Smurf turned away from the window. “Get the guns.”

“Smurf-“

“GET THE FUCKING GUNS.”

Pope looked at Craig. At Deran. They were trapped. There was no talking her down. No reasoning with her. She'd made her choice. And they were going to pay for it.

Craig moved first. He went to the safe in the living room and pulled out an AR-15. Checked the magazine. Loaded it. His hands were shaking. Deran grabbed a shotgun. Pope took a Glock and shoved it into his waistband, then grabbed another rifle.

This was insane.

This was suicide.

But what choice did they have?

“YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES.”

Smurf was loading her own weapon now. A small pistol. Elegant. Deadly. She looked at her sons with something that might've been pride or might've been madness.

“We fight,” she said. “We don't go down without a fight.”

Pope wanted to scream at her. Wanted to tell her this was her fault. Wanted to tell her that she'd destroyed them all with her need for control, her paranoia, her refusal to let them have anything that wasn't hers.

But he didn't. Because there was no time.

“YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES.”

They took positions throughout the house. Pope at the front window. Craig at the side. Deran covering the back. Smurf in the center, orchestrating, commanding, still playing queen even as her kingdom burned.

The seconds ticked by.

Pope's heart was hammering. His palms were sweating. He thought about you. About Lena. About the life he'd walked away from to protect you. And now he was going to die here.

In this house. With his mother. Fighting a battle they couldn't win.

“YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE.”

Craig looked at Pope across the room. His face was pale. His eyes were wide. He mouthed something that might've been I'm sorry or might've been I love you or might've been nothing at all.

Pope nodded. I know. Me too.

“YOUR TIME IS UP. WE'RE COMING IN.”

The first flashbang came through the front window. The explosion was deafening. Blinding white light filled the room. Pope's ears rang. He couldn't see. Couldn't hear. Couldn't think. He stumbled backward, trying to orient himself, trying to-

Another flashbang. Then another.

Smoke grenades followed, filling the house with thick gray smoke that burned his lungs and made his eyes water. He was coughing, choking, trying to breathe through the chaos.

The front door exploded inward.

Wood splintered. The frame buckled. SWAT poured through the opening like a flood, black-clad figures with rifles and shields, moving with practiced precision, shouting commands that overlapped into a wall of noise.

“GET DOWN! GET DOWN! GET DOWN!”

“HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

“DROP YOUR WEAPONS!”

Pope raised his rifle. Fired. He wasn't aiming. Couldn't see through the smoke. Just pulled the trigger and hoped-

Gunfire erupted from every direction.

The sound was apocalyptic. Bullets tore through walls, shattered windows, ripped through furniture. Plaster exploded in white clouds. Picture frames fell and shattered. The TV screen spiderwebbed and went dark. Pope dove behind the couch.

Bullets chewed through the cushions above his head, sending stuffing flying like snow. He could hear Craig screaming something from the other room. Could hear Deran's shotgun booming. Could hear Smurf's voice cutting through the chaos, still giving orders, still trying to control the uncontrollable.

An agent appeared through the smoke. Pope fired. The agent went down. Pope didn't know if he'd killed him or just wounded him or missed entirely. Didn't have time to think about it. Another agent was already there, and another, and another-

They were everywhere. The house was full of them. There was no escape.

No exit. No way out. Pope fired until his magazine was empty. Ejected it. Reached for another. His hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped it. Loaded it. Raised the rifle again, A bullet grazed his shoulder.

Pain exploded through his arm. Hot. Sharp. Immediate. He gasped and stumbled, nearly dropping the rifle. Blood soaked through his shirt. Not a direct hit. Just a graze. But it hurt like hell and his arm wasn't working right.

He could hear Craig in the next room, still firing. Could hear the distinctive boom of Deran's shotgun. Could hear Smurf's pistol cracking like a whip.

They were still fighting. Still trying. Still refusing to surrender. And they were going to die here. All of them.

Craig was behind the kitchen island. He'd been firing through the doorway, trying to keep the agents from advancing through the side entrance. His gun was hot in his hands. His ears were ringing from the constant barrage of gunfire. Smoke burned his lungs with every breath.

He ducked down to reload. That's when he saw the red dot. It appeared on his chest like a tiny star. Laser sight. Sniper. He had maybe half a second to process what it meant before-

The shot came from somewhere outside.

Through the kitchen window. The bullet punched through the glass with a sharp crack and hit Craig square in the chest. The impact lifted him off his feet. He flew backward and hit the floor hard, his gun clattering away across the tile. For a moment, he didn't feel anything. Just confusion. Just the sense that something had gone very, very wrong.

Then the pain hit. It was like being stabbed with a white-hot poker. Like his chest was caving in. Like his lungs were collapsing. He tried to breathe and couldn't. Tried to move and couldn't. Tried to scream and only managed a wet, choking gasp.

Blood. So much blood.

It was spreading across his chest, soaking through his shirt, pooling beneath him on the kitchen floor. Dark. Thick. Unstoppable. He could feel it pumping out with every heartbeat, could feel his life draining away with every pulse.

He looked down.

The wound was just left of center. Right where his heart was. The bullet had gone clean through, he could see the exit wound in his back when he tried to move, could see the blood spreading beneath him in a widening circle.

Oh fuck.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

He was going to die. He was going to die right here on the kitchen floor while agents swarmed the house and his family fought and died around him.

He tried to call for help. Tried to say Pope's name. But all that came out was blood.

It bubbled up from his mouth, hot and metallic, choking him. He coughed and more blood came. His vision was starting to blur. The edges were going dark. The pain was fading into a strange numbness that was somehow worse than the agony.

No. Not like this. Please not like this.

He could hear Pope shouting something from the other room. Could hear Deran's voice, high and panicked. Could hear footsteps running toward him.

Then Pope was there. Kneeling beside him. Hands pressing against the wound.

“CRAIG! CRAIG, STAY WITH ME!”

Craig tried to answer. Couldn't. More blood.

Pope's face was white. His eyes were wild. His hands were covered in Craig's blood, pressing down hard, trying to stop the bleeding. But there was too much. It was everywhere. Soaking through Pope's fingers, pooling on the floor, spreading and spreading and spreading.

“You're okay,” Pope was saying. “You're okay, you're gonna be okay, just stay with me-“

But Craig could see the truth in his brother's eyes. He wasn't okay. He was dying.

Deran appeared beside Pope. His face went gray when he saw the wound. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck, Pope, we need to-“

“HELP ME GET HIM UP!”

They grabbed Craig under the arms. Tried to lift him. Craig screamed, or tried to. The sound came out as a wet gurgle. Pain exploded through his chest. His vision went white. He could feel his body shutting down, could feel his heart struggling to pump blood that was no longer there.

“We have to move,” Pope was saying. “We have to get him out of here. NOW.”

Gunfire was still erupting around them. Bullets punched through the walls. Glass shattered. Someone was screaming. Craig couldn't tell if it was him or someone else or everyone all at once.

They dragged him toward the back door.

His feet scraped across the floor, leaving a trail of blood. His head lolled. His vision kept fading in and out. He could see Pope's face above him, could see the terror and determination and love, could see his brother refusing to let him go.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I love you.

He tried to say it. Couldn't. The darkness was closing in.

Pope and Deran dragged Craig through the back door and into the yard. Bullets chewed up the ground around them. Agents were shouting. Flashlights swept through the smoke. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder and blood and burning wood.

Craig's body was dead weight between them. His head hung forward. Blood dripped from his mouth. His chest wasn't moving right, shallow, gasping breaths that sounded wet and wrong.

“Stay with me,” Pope kept saying. “Stay with me, Craig. Don't you fucking die on me.”

Deran was crying. Tears streaked through the dirt and ash on his face. “Where's the truck? Pope, where's the-“

“THERE!”

Pope's truck was parked at the end of the alley. Fifty yards away. Might as well have been fifty miles. They ran, half-carrying, half-dragging Craig between them. Pope's shoulder screamed where the bullet had grazed him. His hands were slick with his brother's blood. His lungs burned.

Behind them, the house was chaos. Gunfire. Explosions. Screaming.

And Smurf was still in there. Pope didn't look back. Couldn't look back. Because if he did, he'd stop. He'd go back for her. And Craig would die.

Choose.

That's what it came down to. His mother or his brother. The woman who'd raised him or the boy who he’d raised himself.

It wasn't a choice at all. They reached the truck.

Deran yanked open the back door. They shoved Craig inside as gently as they could, which wasn't gentle at all. Craig's head hit the seat. He didn't react. Didn't move. Didn't make a sound.

Pope climbed in beside him. Pressed his hands against the wound again. Blood pulsed between his fingers.

Too much. There's too much blood. He's dying.

“DRIVE!” Pope screamed ripping his shirt and stuffing it into craig’s wound.

Deran threw himself into the driver's seat. Started the engine. The truck roared to life. He slammed it into gear and floored it, tires screeching as they peeled out of the alley.

Agents shouted behind them. Someone fired. The back window exploded. Glass rained down on Pope and Craig.

Deran didn't slow down. He drove like a man possessed, weaving through side streets, running red lights, taking corners so fast the truck nearly flipped. Pope braced himself against the door with one hand and kept pressure on Craig's wound with the other.

“Stay with me,” he whispered. “Please, Craig. Please stay with me.”

Craig's eyes fluttered open. He looked at Pope. Tried to say something. Blood bubbled from his lips. His eyes closed again.

“NO!” Pope shook him. “Craig! CRAIG!”

“Is he-“ Deran's voice cracked. “Pope, is he-“

“Just drive. JUST FUCKING DRIVE.”

Deran drove. Away from the house. Away from the FBI. Away from Smurf. Away from everything.

And Pope sat in the back seat covered in his brother's blood, watching Craig's chest rise and fall in shallow, struggling breaths, and wondered if they'd just traded one death for another.

Smurf was in the living room when she realized they were gone. She'd been firing through the front window, taking calculated shots at the agents advancing on the house. Her pistol was almost empty. Her ears were ringing. Smoke burned her lungs. But she was still standing. Still fighting. Still refusing to surrender.

“Pope!” she called. “Craig! Deran!”

No answer. Just gunfire. Just chaos. Just the sound of her empire crumbling around her.

“POPE!”

Still nothing. She turned. The kitchen was empty. The hallway was empty. The back door was hanging open, swinging in the breeze. They were gone. They'd left her.

The realization hit her like a physical blow.

Her sons, her boys, the ones she'd raised and protected and controlled and loved, had abandoned her.

They'd chosen to save themselves. They'd chosen to save Craig. They'd chosen each other over her.

Rage exploded through her chest. White-hot. Blinding.

All-consuming.

“YOU FUCKING COWARDS!” she screamed.

An agent appeared in the doorway. Smurf fired. The agent went down. Another took his place. Smurf fired again.

Click. Empty.

She threw the gun at the agent and ran. Through the kitchen. Through the hallway. Toward the back door. Bullets chased her, punching through walls, shattering picture frames, destroying everything in their path.

She made it to the door. Stumbled outside.

The yard was full of smoke and chaos. Agents were everywhere. Flashlights swept through the darkness. Someone was shouting orders.

Smurf ran. She didn't know where she was going. Didn't care. Just ran. Through the yard. Over the fence. Into the alley. Her lungs burned. Her legs screamed. But she didn't stop.

Behind her, the house exploded. Not literally. But it might as well have. Flashbangs. Smoke grenades. The sound of wood splintering and glass shattering and her entire life being torn apart.

She kept running. Through alleys. Through yards. Through the dark spaces between houses where the FBI's lights couldn't reach.

She was bleeding. A bullet had grazed her side, she didn't even remember when it had happened. Blood soaked through her white silk blouse, turning it red. Her hair had come loose from its perfect style and hung in wild tangles around her face. Ash and dirt streaked her skin.

She looked like a ghost. Like a monster. Like a queen who'd lost her kingdom. But she was alive. And she was furious. Because her sons had left her.

They'd chosen to save Craig instead of coming back for her. They'd chosen each other instead of choosing her. They'd chosen you instead of choosing her.

Because that's what this was really about.

You.

The woman who'd poisoned her boys against her. The woman who'd shown them a different life. The woman who'd made them believe they could be something other than what Smurf had made them.

You had taken everything from her.

And now Smurf was going to take everything from you.

She stopped running. Leaned against a wall. Caught her breath. Her side was on fire. Her lungs burned. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might explode.

But her mind was clear. Crystal clear. She knew exactly where she was going. She knew exactly what she was going to do.

Your apartment was fifteen minutes away. Smurf started walking.

You weren’t watching the news when it started. You'd been trying to distract yourself. Trying to focus on anything other than the fact that Pope had been gone for days and hadn't called. Trying not to think about the way he'd looked at you before he left. Trying not to wonder if he was ever coming back.

The TV was on in the background. Some mindless reality show. You weren't really watching as you packed Lena’s whole life into boxes. Then the programming cut out.

“WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST FOR BREAKING NEWS.”

You looked up. The screen showed a house. Smurf's house. You recognized it immediately. Your stomach dropped.

“We're coming to you live from Oceanside where a massive FBI operation is currently underway. Multiple agencies have surrounded this residence in what appears to be a coordinated raid on an organized crime operation.”

The camera showed the street. Black SUVs. SWAT vans. Agents in tactical gear. Guns. So many guns.

“We're hearing reports of gunfire inside the residence. Authorities are urging residents to stay indoors and away from windows.”

Your hands started shaking. Pope was in there. Craig was in there. Deran was in there.

They were all in there. And the FBI was-

Gunfire erupted on the screen.

You could hear it through the TV. Sharp cracks. Rapid bursts. The sound of automatic weapons and explosions and chaos.

You grabbed your phone. Called Pope. It went straight to voicemail. You called again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail.

“No,” you whispered. “No no no no no.”

You called Deran. Voicemail. Craig. Voicemail. J. It rang. And rang. And rang. No answer.

You were standing now. Pacing. Your heart was hammering. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely hold the phone.

On the TV, the standoff continued.

“We're seeing movement inside the house. It appears-yes, there's definitely gunfire. Multiple shots. This is an active situation.”

The camera zoomed in. You could see muzzle flashes through the windows. Could see smoke pouring out. Could see agents taking cover behind vehicles.

Could see- An explosion.

The front door blew inward. SWAT poured inside. More gunfire. More chaos.

“Please,” you whispered. “Please be okay. Please be alive. Please-“

Your phone rang. You nearly dropped it. Looked at the screen. Unknown number. You answered. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello? Andrew? Is that you?”

More silence. Then a click. They'd hung up. You stared at the phone. Tried to call back. The number didn't exist.

You threw the phone on the couch. Went back to watching the TV. The standoff was still happening. Agents were still surrounding the house. Gunfire was still erupting. And you had no idea if Pope was alive or dead. If any of them were alive or dead. If you'd just watched the man you loved die on live television. You sank onto the couch. Put your head in your hands. And tried not to scream.

The standoff lasted another twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of gunfire and explosions and chaos.

Twenty minutes of you sitting on the couch, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to do anything except watch and pray and hope.

Then it ended. The gunfire stopped. The smoke cleared. Agents moved into the house. The news anchor's voice was somber.

“It appears the standoff has concluded. We're seeing agents entering the residence now. No word yet on casualties or arrests. We'll continue to bring you updates as we receive them.”

You waited. And waited. And waited. Your phone didn't ring. No one called. No one texted. Nothing. Just silence.

Just the terrible, suffocating silence of not knowing. You tried calling Pope again.

Voicemail. Deran. Voicemail. Craig. Voicemail. They were dead.

They had to be dead. There was no other explanation. The FBI had killed them. All of them.

And you were alone. Again. Always alone.

You curled up on the couch. Pulled your knees to your chest. And let yourself break.

A knock came thirty minutes later.

You'd been sitting on the couch in the dark. The TV was still on, still showing footage of the house, still replaying the standoff over and over. But you weren't watching anymore. You were just staring at nothing. Feeling nothing. Thinking nothing. Numb.

Then the knock. Three sharp raps on the door. Your heart stopped. You stood up. Walked to the door. Your hands were shaking.

It's Pope.

It has to be Pope.

He got out. He's alive. He's here.

You didn't check the peephole. Didn't ask who it was. Just unlocked the door. Pulled it open. And froze.

It wasn't Pope. It was Smurf.

She stood in the hallway like something out of a nightmare. Her white silk blouse was soaked with blood, some of it hers, some of it probably not. Her jeans were torn and filthy. Ash and dirt streaked her face. Her hair hung in wild, tangled strands around her shoulders. A cut above her eyebrow bled freely, the blood running down the side of her face and dripping from her jaw.

But it was her eyes that made you freeze. They were absolutely unhinged.

Wild. Feral.

Burning with a rage so intense it was almost physical.

She was breathing heavily. Her chest heaved with each breath. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. She looked like an animal. Like something that had crawled out of hell specifically to destroy you.

You took a step back. “Smurf-“

She didn't let you finish. Smurf lunged.

She grabbed a fistful of your hair and yanked you forward with brutal force. You screamed. Pain exploded across your scalp. She dragged you into the apartment and slammed the door behind her with her foot.

Then she hit you. Her fist connected with your face with a sickening crack.

Your head snapped to the side. Pain burst through your cheek, your jaw, your eye. You tasted blood immediately, hot and metallic, flooding your mouth. Your vision blurred. Your ears rang.

You stumbled backward. Tried to catch yourself. Couldn't. Fell. Hit the floor hard.

Smurf was on you before you could move. She grabbed your hair again. Yanked your head back. Leaned down so her face was inches from yours. Her breath was hot and ragged. Her eyes were insane.

“You took everything from me,” she hissed.

Then she hit you again. And again. And again.

Smurf beat you with the methodical precision of someone who'd done this before. She knew where to hit to cause maximum pain.

Knew how to make it hurt. Knew how to break you. Her fist slammed into your ribs. You felt something crack. The pain was blinding. You tried to curl into a ball, tried to protect yourself, but she grabbed your arm and wrenched it back, forcing you flat.

She hit you in the stomach. The air left your lungs in a rush. You couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything except gasp and choke and try to survive.

Blood poured from your nose. You could feel it running down your face, hot and thick, dripping onto the floor. Your mouth was full of it. You tried to spit it out and only managed to choke.

Smurf grabbed you by the throat.

Her fingers dug into your windpipe. She lifted you, actually lifted you, and slammed you against the wall. Your head hit the plaster with a sickening thud. Stars exploded across your vision. The world tilted.

She leaned in close. “You think you can take my boys from me?” she snarled. “You think you can poison them against me? You think you can destroy my family?”

She kneed you in the stomach.

The pain was indescribable. You doubled over, or tried to. Her hand was still around your throat, holding you up, choking you. You clawed at her fingers. Tried to pry them away. Couldn't. She was too strong. Too angry. Too far gone.

“They're MINE,” she hissed. “They've always been mine. And you, you're NOTHING.”

She threw you. You hit the coffee table. It shattered beneath you. Glass and wood exploded. Shards cut into your back, your arms, your legs. You screamed. Tried to roll away. Tried to get up.

Smurf kicked you in the ribs. You heard the crack before you felt the pain. Then the pain hit and it was like being stabbed with a hot knife. You couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Couldn't do anything except lie there and bleed and hurt.

She kicked you again. And again.

Each impact sent fresh waves of agony through your body. You could feel bones breaking. Could feel blood pooling beneath you. Could feel yourself shutting down.

I'm going to die.

She's going to kill me.

Smurf grabbed your hair again. Dragged you across the floor. Glass cut into your skin. Blood smeared across the hardwood. You tried to fight back. Tried to grab her wrist. Tried to do anything.

She slammed your face into the floor.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Your nose broke. The sound was wet and crunching and horrible. Blood exploded across your face. Pain whited out your vision. You couldn't see. Couldn't hear. Couldn't think.

Just pain. Just blood. Just the terrible certainty that you were going to die.

Smurf flipped you onto your back. Straddled you. Pinned you down with her weight. Her hands wrapped around your throat again.

Squeezed. You couldn't breathe. Couldn't get air. Your lungs burned.

Your vision started to go dark around the edges. And Smurf leaned down and smiled.

“They're dead,” she whispered. Your eyes widened. “Pope. Craig. Deran. All of them. The FBI killed them. I watched them die.”

No.

No no no no no.

“Pope died first. Took a bullet to the chest. Bled out in seconds. He called your name. Did you know that? His last word was your name.”

You tried to shake your head. Tried to tell her she was lying. You couldn't. Her hands were too tight. You couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. Couldn't do anything except stare up at her and feel your heart shatter.

“Craig went next. Shot in the head. Didn't even see it coming. Just-“ She made a gun with her fingers. “-gone.”

Tears streamed down your face. Mixed with the blood. Dripped onto the floor.

“And Deran. Poor Deran. He tried to run. They shot him in the back. He crawled for a while. Begged them to stop. They didn't.”

She's lying. She has to be lying. Please let her be lying.

“They're all dead,” Smurf said. “And it's your fault. You did this. You took them from me. You poisoned them. You destroyed them. And now they're gone.” She leaned closer. Her face was inches from yours. Her eyes were wild. Insane. Triumphant.

“I'm the queen,” she whispered. “I've always been the queen. And you-you're nothing. You're nobody. You're just some little girl who thought she could take what was mine.”

She squeezed harder. Your vision was going black. Your lungs were screaming. Your heart was slowing. This is it. This is how I die. Lena will come home and find me and-

Lena.

The thought hit you like lightning.

Lena. Your daughter. Your baby. The little girl who'd already lost so much. Who'd already been abandoned and hurt and traumatized.

Who was counting on you. Who needed you. Who loved you. No. I'm not dying here. I'm not leaving her. I'm not letting this bitch win.

Something shifted inside you. Something primal. Something fierce. Something that had been sleeping woke up. And it was angry.

Your hand moved. You didn't think about it. Didn't plan it. Just moved. Your fingers found a shard of glass from the broken coffee table. Large. Sharp. Perfect. You grabbed it. Felt it cut into your palm. Didn't care. And you drove it into Smurf's side.

She screamed. Her hands released your throat. You gasped. Air flooded your lungs. Sweet. Precious. Life.

Smurf stumbled backward. Looked down at the glass protruding from her side. Looked back at you. Her face was shocked. Disbelieving. You didn't give her time to recover. You lunged. Tackled her.

Drove her backward. She hit the wall. You hit her.

Your fist connected with her face. Her head snapped back. Blood exploded from her nose. She tried to push you away. You hit her again. And again. And again. All the rage. All the pain. All the fear and grief and fury.

It poured out of you. You weren't thinking. Just fighting. Just surviving. Just refusing to die.

Smurf grabbed your hair. Yanked. You screamed. She threw you off. You hit the floor. Rolled. Came up on your knees.

Smurf was standing now. The glass was still in her side. Blood soaked through her blouse. Her face was a mask of rage and pain and disbelief.

“You little BITCH,” she snarled.

She came at you again. You scrambled backward. Your hand hit something. The lamp. You grabbed it. Swung. It connected with Smurf's head with a sickening crack.

She stumbled. Fell to one knee. You hit her again. The lamp shattered. Smurf collapsed.

You stood over her. Breathing hard. Bleeding. Broken. But alive.

Smurf tried to get up. You kicked her. She fell back down. Tried again. You kicked her again.

She looked up at you.

Blood ran from a cut on her forehead. Her nose was broken. Her eyes were still wild but now there was something else in them.

Fear. She was afraid. Of you.

“You can't-“ she gasped. “You can't do this. I'm—I'm the-“

“You're nothing,” you said. Your voice was hoarse. Raw. Barely recognizable. You looked around. Saw the kitchen. Saw the knife block on the counter. You walked over.

Pulled out the largest knife. Turned back to Smurf. She was trying to crawl away. Leaving a trail of blood across your floor. You followed her.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please don't-“

“So you can dish it but you can’t take it huh.” you said quietly.

You knelt beside her. Grabbed her hair. Yanked her head back. Pressed the knife to her throat.

“You took everything from me Janine. I’ve killed a man because of you, I lost Andrew because of YOU!”

Tears streamed down Smurf's face. “I'm sorry,” she gasped. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean-“

“Yes you did.” You pressed the knife harder. A thin line of blood appeared. “You meant every word. You want me to suffer. You want me to break. You want me to die believing I'd destroyed them.”

“Please-“

“But you were wrong.” You leaned closer. Your face was inches from hers. Blood dripped from your nose onto her face. “I didn't destroy them. You did. You destroyed everything you touched. You poisoned your own sons. You turned them into criminals. You made them afraid to love anyone but you.”

“That's not-“

“And now you're going to die knowing they chose me over you.” Smurf's eyes widened. “They hate you,” you whispered. “They hate what you’ve made them. I freed them from that, you mean nothing to them anymore.”

“No-“

“They don't love you anymore, Smurf. They're done with you. And you know what? I don't think they ever really loved you at all. They were just afraid of you.”

Smurf was sobbing now. Full, broken sobs. “Please,” she begged. “Please don't kill me. Please. I'll leave. I'll disappear. You'll never see me again. Just please-“

You looked at her. This woman who'd terrorized you. Who'd tried to destroy you. Who'd beaten you and choked you and told you the man you loved was dead.

This woman who'd controlled and manipulated and poisoned everyone she touched. This woman who'd rather die than lose control.

And you realized something. You didn't want to kill her. You weren't a killer. You weren't like her. But you also couldn't let her live. Because if you did, she'd come back. She'd hurt you again. She'd hurt Lena. She'd never stop.

Never.

So you had to stop her. You had to end this. For Lena. For yourself. For all of them.

“I'm sorry,” you whispered. And you meant it. You were sorry it had come to this. Sorry that she'd forced your hand. Sorry that this was the only way. But you weren't sorry enough to stop.

You drove the knife into her throat. Smurf's eyes went wide. She tried to scream. Couldn't.

Blood poured from the wound. Hot. Dark. Arterial. It sprayed across your face, your chest, your hands. You didn't let go. Didn't pull back. Just held the knife there and watched her die.

She clawed at your hands. Her nails raked across your skin. Drew blood. You didn't move.

She tried to push you away. Couldn't. Her strength was fading. Her movements were getting weaker. Slower.

Her eyes were still locked on yours. Still wild. Still furious. Still disbelieving. Blood bubbled from her mouth. Ran down her chin. Pooled beneath her head. Her hands fell away from yours. Dropped to the floor. Her chest heaved. Once. Twice. Then stopped.

Her eyes stared at nothing. Empty. Blank. Dead.

You held the knife for another moment. Making sure. Making absolutely sure.

Then you pulled it out. Blood gushed from the wound. Soaked into the floor. Spread in a dark pool around her head.

You dropped the knife. It clattered on the hardwood. You stood up. Looked down at her.

Smurf lay on your floor in a spreading pool of blood. Her white silk blouse was completely red now. Her hair was splayed out around her head like a broken crown, wild and tangled and soaked with blood. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing. Her mouth was open in a silent scream.

She looked small. Pathetic. Nothing like the terrifying matriarch who'd controlled an entire criminal empire. Nothing like the woman who'd beaten you half to death.

Just a corpse. Just a body. Just the end.

You stood over her. Breathing hard. Shaking.

Blood ran down your face from your broken nose. It dripped from your mouth where she'd split your lip. It soaked through your clothes from a dozen cuts and wounds. Your ribs screamed with every breath. Your head pounded. Your vision was blurred.

But you were alive. You'd survived. You'd won. You looked down at Smurf's body.

At the blood. At the broken crown of her hair.

And you felt something shift inside you. Not satisfaction. Not triumph. Just exhaustion.

Just the terrible weight of what you'd done. You'd killed someone. You'd taken another life.

You'd become the thing you'd always feared becoming. But you'd also saved yourself. Saved Lena. Saved whatever future you might still have.

You knelt beside Smurf's body. Leaned down. Your face was inches from hers. Blood dripped from your nose onto her cheek. You looked at her dead eyes. At the woman who'd called herself a queen. Who'd ruled through fear and violence and control. Who'd destroyed everyone she touched.

And you growled. Your voice was hoarse. Raw. Barely human.

“You're the queen of nothing now.”

The words hung in the air. Final. True. Absolute. Smurf didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Would never answer again. You stood up. Looked around your apartment. At the blood. At the broken furniture. At the shattered glass.

You were still standing over Smurf's body when you heard them. Footsteps. Heavy. Multiple. Running up the stairs.

Your heart stopped.

The door exploded inward. “FBI! HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

You raised your hands. They were covered in blood. Smurf's blood. Your blood. You couldn't tell anymore. Agents poured into the apartment. Black tactical gear. Rifles raised. Flashlights cutting through the dim light. They swept the room with military precision, clearing corners, checking for threats.

One of them saw Smurf's body. “We've got a body! Female, late fifties, multiple stab wounds, arterial bleeding-she's gone.”

Another agent approached you slowly. His rifle was lowered but ready. His eyes scanned you from head to toe. Taking in the blood. The injuries. The way you were swaying on your feet.

“Ma'am, I need you to put your hands down slowly. Are you injured?”

You tried to answer. Your voice was gone. Your throat was raw from screaming. From choking. From surviving. You nodded.

“Okay. I need you to sit down for me. Can you do that?”

You tried to move. Your legs gave out. You collapsed. The agent caught you before you hit the floor.

“I need a medic! NOW!”

Everything was spinning. The room tilted. Your vision blurred. You could hear voices but they sounded far away. Underwater. Distorted.

“-severe facial trauma-“

“-broken ribs, possible internal bleeding-“

“-defensive wounds on her hands and arms-“

“-the deceased has offensive wounds, looks like the victim fought back-“

Victim.

They called you a victim. Not a suspect. Not a murderer. A victim.

Someone was pressing gauze to your face. You flinched. Pain exploded through your broken nose.

“I know, I know. I'm sorry. Just hold still for me.”

You tried to focus. Tried to see who was talking. A paramedic. Young. Female. Kind eyes.

“What's your name, honey?”

“B-Bambi,” you whispered. Your voice was barely audible. Hoarse. Broken.

“Okay, Bambi. My name's Sasha. I'm going to take care of you, okay? Can you tell me what happened?”

You looked at Smurf's body. At the blood. At the knife on the floor.

“She-“ You coughed. Blood filled your mouth. You spit it out. “She tried to kill me.”

“Okay. Did you know her?” You nodded. “Who was she?”

“My boyfriend's mother.”

Sasha's eyes widened slightly. But she didn't stop working. Didn't stop checking your injuries. Didn't stop trying to save you.

“Alright. We're going to get you to the hospital. You're going to be okay.”

Another agent appeared. Older. Gray hair. Sharp eyes. He knelt beside you.

“Ms. Bambi, I'm Special Agent Morrison. I need to ask you a few questions. Is that alright?”

You nodded.

“Did Janine Cody break into your apartment tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Did she attack you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you fight back in self-defense?”

“Yes.”

Agent Morrison nodded. He looked at Sasha. At your injuries. At the blood soaking through your clothes.

“We've been tracking Janine Cody since she escaped FBI custody earlier tonight. We had reason to believe she was coming here. We just-“ He paused. “We didn't get here in time. I'm sorry.”

You stared at him. They knew. They knew she was coming. They could have stopped her.

But they didn't. And now Smurf was dead. And you were the one who'd killed her.

“Am I-“ You coughed again. More blood. “Am I under arrest?”

“No, ma'am. This is clearly self-defense. You're not being charged with anything.”

Relief flooded through you. Then guilt. Because you'd killed someone. You'd taken a life. And you felt relieved.

What did that make you?

Sasha was strapping you onto a gurney now.

“We need to move. She's losing too much blood.”

They lifted you. Carried you out of the apartment. Down the stairs. Into the night. The street was full of vehicles. FBI. Police. Ambulances. Neighbors stood on their porches, watching.

Whispering. Pointing. You closed your eyes. Couldn't look at them. Couldn't face their judgment. Couldn't-

Lena.

Your eyes flew open.

“Wait!” You tried to sit up. Pain exploded through your ribs. You gasped. “My daughter-Lena-she's at school-someone needs to-“

“We'll take care of it,” Agent Morrison said. He was walking beside the gurney. “We'll make sure she's safe. I promise.”

“Don't let her see-“ Your voice broke. “Don't let her see the apartment. Don't let her see the blood. Please.”

“We won't. I give you my word.”

They loaded you into the ambulance. Sasha climbed in beside you. Started an IV. Checked your vitals. The doors slammed shut. The siren wailed. And you were moving. Away from the apartment. Away from Smurf's body. Away from everything. You stared at the ceiling of the ambulance. At the bright lights. At the medical equipment. And you thought about Pope. About the standoff you'd watched on TV.

About the gunfire. About the blood.

Is he really dead?

You wanted to ask. Wanted to know. But you were afraid of the answer. So you said nothing. Just lay there. Bleeding. Broken. Alone.

The hospital was chaos. Doctors. Nurses. Bright lights. Machines beeping. People shouting orders. They cut your clothes off. Examined every inch of you. Took X-rays. CT scans. Blood tests.

You floated through it all in a haze of pain and shock. Someone gave you morphine. The pain dulled. But the fear didn't. The fear that Pope was dead. That Craig was dead. That Deran was dead. That you'd destroyed everything.

That Lena would grow up without any of them. That you were alone. Again. Always alone.

A doctor appeared beside your bed. Young. Tired eyes. “Ms. Bambi, I'm Dr. Patel. I've been overseeing your care. You have three broken ribs, a fractured cheekbone, a broken nose, severe bruising and lacerations across your face and body, and a mild concussion. You're going to be in a lot of pain for the next few weeks, but you're going to recover.”

You nodded. Tried to speak. Your throat was too raw. Dr. Patel poured you a cup of water. Helped you drink. The water burned going down. But it helped.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

“There's something else,” Dr. Patel said. Her voice was gentle. Careful. The kind of voice doctors used when they had news. Good or bad, you couldn't tell.

Your heart started racing. “What?”

“We always run precautionary tests incase of restrictions. Your blood work came back. You're pregnant.”

The world stopped. Everything went silent. Still. Frozen.

Pregnant. You were pregnant. With Pope's baby.

The man who'd left you. The man who might be dead. The man who'd walked away to protect you and now you were carrying his child.

“How-“ Your voice cracked. “How far along?”

“About six weeks. Very early. But-“ Dr. Patel paused. “Ms. Bambi, given the severity of your injuries, if you hadn't fought back tonight, if you hadn't survived-both you and the baby would have died.”

Both of us. We both would have died.

You looked down at your stomach. At the hospital gown covering it. At the place where a life was growing. Pope's baby. Your baby. A life you'd created together.

A life you'd saved tonight without even knowing it existed. Tears started falling. You couldn't stop them. Didn't try. Just lay there and cried. For everything you'd lost.

For everything you'd survived. For the tiny life inside you that deserved better than this.

Better than a mother covered in blood. Better than a father who might be dead. Better than a family torn apart by violence and fear.

“I'm sorry,” you sobbed. “I'm so sorry.”

Dr. Patel squeezed your hand. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You survived. You protected yourself. You protected your baby. That's what matters.”

But it didn't feel like enough. Nothing felt like enough. You'd killed someone. You'd taken a life while creating one.

What did that make you?

What kind of mother did that make you?

“Does anyone know?” you whispered. “About the baby?”

“Just the medical team. We haven't told anyone else. That's your decision.”

You nodded. Closed your eyes. Tried to process. Tried to understand. Tried to figure out what came next. But you couldn't.

Your mind was too fractured. Too broken. Too overwhelmed. All you could think about was Pope. About whether he was alive. About whether he'd ever know. About whether he'd care.

He left you. He walked away. He chose his mother over you. But he'd also loved you. He'd also held you. He'd also promised forever.

And now you were carrying his child. A child he might never meet. A child who might grow up without a father. Just like Lena had.

But what choice did you have? Pope was gone. Maybe dead. Maybe alive but never coming back. Either way, you were alone.

You and Lena. And now this baby. This tiny, fragile life that deserved so much more than you could give. You pressed your hand to your stomach. Felt nothing. Too early.

But you knew it was there. Growing. Waiting. Trusting you to keep it safe.

“I will,” you whispered. “I promise. I'll keep you safe.”

Even if it killed you. Even if you had to do it alone. Even if Pope never came back.

You'd keep this baby safe. You'd give it the life it deserved. You'd be enough. Somehow.

They moved you to a private room. Stitched your cuts. Set your broken nose. Wrapped your ribs. Gave you more morphine. You drifted in and out of consciousness.

Dreaming. Nightmares. Pope's face. Smurf's dead eyes. Blood. So much blood. You woke to voices. Quiet. Careful. Someone was in the room.

You opened your eyes. Agent Morrison was standing by the door. Talking to a woman. Older. Professional. Carrying a clipboard.

“stable now. The doctors say she'll make a full recovery.”

“And the child? Lena?”

“She's with Child Protective Services. We picked her up from school. Told her there was an emergency. She doesn't know the details yet.”

“Does she know about her mother's condition?”

“Not yet. We wanted to wait until Ms. Bambi was conscious.”

The woman nodded. Wrote something on her clipboard. “I'll need to do an assessment. Make sure the home environment is safe before we can release Lena back into her care.”

You tried to sit up. Pain exploded through your body. You gasped. Both Agent Morrison and the woman turned.

“Ms. Bambi,” the woman said. She approached your bed. “I'm Margaret. I'm a social worker with Child Protective Services. I'm here to-“

“You can't take her,” you interrupted. Your voice was hoarse. Desperate. “Please. You can't take Lena. She's-she's all I have. Please.”

Margaret's expression softened. “I'm not here to take her away. I'm here to make sure she's safe. That's all.”

“She is safe. With me. I would never-I would die before I let anything happen to her.”

“I believe you. But given what happened tonight, I need to do my due diligence. I need to make sure you're capable of caring for her while you recover.”

You wanted to argue. Wanted to fight. But you were so tired. So broken. And she was right. How could you take care of Lena like this? You could barely move. Could barely breathe. Could barely function.

“Where is she?” you whispered.

“She's in the waiting room. With a foster care coordinator. She's safe. She's been asking about you.”

Fresh tears fell. “Can I see her?”

Margaret looked at Agent Morrison. He nodded. “I think that would be good for both of you,” Margaret said. “But I need to prepare you-she's scared. She knows something bad happened. She saw the police cars. The ambulances. She's been crying.”

Your heart shattered. Lena. My baby.

“Please,” you whispered. “Please let me see her.”

Margaret nodded. “I'll go get her.” She left.

Agent Morrison stayed. He pulled a chair up beside your bed. Sat down.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a truck.”

He smiled slightly. “That's about what it looks like.”

You tried to smile back. Couldn't. “Have you-“ You swallowed. “Have you heard anything? About the other people at the house?”

Agent Morrison's expression shifted. Became carefully neutral. “I can't discuss an ongoing investigation.”

“Please. I just need to know if they're alive.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he sighed. “Three men fled the scene, we’re not sure if they are alive.”

“What are you going to do when you find them?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“Please.”

“I'm sorry.”

You closed your eyes. You didn't know. Couldn't know. And the not knowing was worse than anything.

The door opened. You looked up. Margaret was there. And beside her Lena. Your baby. Your little girl.

She looked so small. So scared. Her eyes were red from crying. Her hair was messy.

She was wearing the same clothes she'd worn to school that morning, a pink dress with flowers, white tights, her favorite sneakers.

She looked like a child. Like the innocent, beautiful child she was. And you'd brought violence into her life. Again.

“Mama?” she whispered.

The word hit you like a physical blow. She'd never called you that before. Never.

It had always been Miss Bambi or Bambi or sometimes just you.

Never Mama.

Never anything that claimed you as hers. Until now.

“Hi, sweetheart,” you whispered. Your voice was shaking. Tears were falling. You couldn't stop them.

Lena took a tentative step forward. Then another. Then she was running. Margaret tried to stop her.

“Lena, careful-“

But Lena didn't listen. She ran to your bed. Climbed up. Threw her arms around you. Pain exploded through your broken ribs. You gasped. But you didn't push her away. Couldn't push her away. Just held her.

As tight as you could. As carefully as you could. And let her cry.

“I was so scared,” she sobbed into your shoulder. “The police came and they said there was an emergency and they took me to this place and there were other kids and I didn't know where you were and I thought-I thought-“

“Shh. It's okay. I'm here. I'm okay.”

“You're hurt.”

“I know. But I'm going to be fine.”

“What happened?”

You looked at Margaret. She was watching carefully. Assessing. Judging. Deciding if you were fit to be a mother.

You looked back at Lena. At her tear-streaked face. At her wide, terrified eyes. At the little girl who'd already lost so much.

“Someone tried to hurt me,” you said quietly. “But I'm okay now. The doctors are taking care of me.”

“Who tried to hurt you?”

You hesitated. “Someone bad,” you said. “But they can't hurt us anymore.”

Lena pulled back. Looked at your face. At the bruises. At the cuts. At the bandages. Her little hand reached up. Touched your cheek gently. “Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, baby.”

“I should have been there. I should have protected you like Uncle Pope would’ve.”

Your heart broke. “Lena, listen to me.” You took her face in your hands. Looked into her eyes. “This is not your fault. None of this is your fault. You are a child. It's my job to protect you. Not the other way around. Do you understand?”

She nodded. But you could see she didn't believe you. She'd been protecting herself for so long. Been surviving on her own. Been the adult when the adults around her failed.

And now she thought she'd failed you.

“I love you,” you whispered. “So much. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. And I am so, so grateful that you're safe.”

“I love you too.” She said it quietly. Almost shyly. Like she wasn't sure if she was allowed.

“Come here.” You pulled her close again. Ignored the pain. Ignored everything except the feeling of her in your arms. Safe. Alive. Yours.

Margaret cleared her throat. “I'm going to step outside for a moment. Give you two some privacy.”

She left. Agent Morrison followed. The door closed. And it was just you and Lena. You and your daughter. Because that's what she was. Your daughter. Not legally. Not yet. But in every way that mattered.

“Lena,” you said softly. “I need to tell you something.”

She pulled back. Looked at you. Waiting.

“I'm going to be in the hospital for a few days. While I heal. And you're going to have to stay with-“ You paused. “With someone else. Just for a little while.”

“No.” Her voice was sharp. Panicked. “No, I want to stay with you.”

“I know, baby. But I can't take care of you right now. I can barely move. And you need someone who can-“

“I don't care. I'll take care of myself. I'm good at it. I can cook and clean and I won't be any trouble. Please don't send me away.”

“I'm not sending you away.”

“Yes you are. Everyone always sends me away.”

“Lena-“

“My mom sent me away. My dad sent me away. And now you're sending me away too.”

“No.” You grabbed her hands. Held them tight. “I am not sending you away. I am never sending you away. Do you hear me? Never. You are mine. You are my daughter. And I am your-“

You stopped. Because you didn't know what you were. Guardian. Caretaker. Friend. But not mother. You'd never claimed that title. Never felt like you deserved it.

But Lena was looking at you with those big, scared eyes. And you realized she needed to hear it. Needed to know. Needed to understand that she wasn't alone.

“I'm your mama,” you whispered.

Lena's eyes widened. “What?”

“I'm your mama. If you want me to be. If you'll have me.”

Tears started falling down her cheeks. “Really?”

“Really.”

“You mean it?”

“I mean it. I love you, Lena. I love you so much. And I know I'm not perfect. I know I'm broken and scared and I don't always know what I'm doing. But I promise you-I will never abandon you. I will never send you away. I will fight for you. I will protect you. I will be here. Always.”

Lena threw her arms around you again. Buried her face in your neck. And sobbed.”Mama,” she whispered.

The word was muffled. Broken. Beautiful. “Mama, I was so scared.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

“I thought you were going to die.”

“I'm not going to die. I promise.”

“You can't promise that.”

She was right. You couldn't. But you said it anyway. Because she needed to hear it. Because you needed to believe it.

“I'm not going to die,” you repeated. “I'm going to get better. And then I'm going to come home. And we're going to be a family. You and me. And-“

You stopped. And the baby. You hadn't told her yet. Didn't know how. Didn't know if you should. But she deserved to know.

“And someone else,” you said quietly.

Lena pulled back. Looked at you. Confused.

“Who?”

You took a deep breath. Placed your hand on your stomach. “I'm pregnant, Lena. You're going to be a big sister.”

Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Really.”

“When?”

“In about seven months.”

“Is it-“ She hesitated. “Is it Uncle Pope's?”

Your heart clenched. Uncle Pope.

“Yes,” you whispered.

Lena was quiet for a long moment. Processing. Thinking. Then she looked up at you. “Does he know?”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“I don't know. I don't even know if he's-“

You couldn't finish. Couldn't say it. Lena seemed to understand. She placed her small hand on your stomach. Right where yours was.

“It's okay,” she said softly. “Even if Uncle Pope isn't here, the baby will have us. We'll take care of it. Right, Mama?”

Mama.

She said it again. So easily. So naturally. Like she'd been waiting her whole life to say it. And maybe she had.

“Right,” you whispered. “We'll take care of it.”

“And we'll be a family.”

“We'll be a family.”

Lena smiled. It was small. Fragile. But real.

“I love you, Mama.”

The word hit you again. Harder this time. Because it was real now. She'd claimed you. And you'd claimed her.

And nothing, not Smurf, not Pope, not the FBI, not anything, could take that away.

“I love you too, baby,” you whispered.

You pulled her close. Held her. And for the first time since Pope had left, you felt something other than grief.

You felt hope. Because you weren't alone. You had Lena. You had this baby growing inside you. You had a future. It wasn't the future you'd planned. It wasn't the future you'd wanted. But it was yours.

And you were going to fight for it. For them. For yourself. No matter what came next.

Lena settled against you carefully. Her head on your shoulder. Her hand still on your stomach. Protecting her sibling.

Already being the big sister. “Mama?” she whispered.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Are you scared?”

You thought about lying. About telling her everything was fine. About being strong. But she deserved the truth.

“Yeah,” you whispered back. “I'm scared.”

“Me too.”

“But we're going to be okay.”

“Promise?”

You kissed the top of her head. “Promise.”

And even though you didn't know if it was true, even though everything was broken and uncertain and terrifying, you meant it.

Because you had to. Because she needed you to. Because you were her mama now. And that meant being brave even when you weren't. That meant promising things you couldn't guarantee.

That meant fighting for a future you couldn't see. Lena's breathing slowed. Deepened. She was falling asleep. Exhausted from fear and tears and relief.

You held her. Watched her. This little girl who'd chosen you. Who'd called you Mama. Who'd given you a reason to keep going.

And you thought about Pope. About whether he was alive. About whether he'd ever know about this baby.

About whether he'd care. But then you looked at Lena. At her peaceful face. At the trust she'd placed in you. And you realized something. It didn't matter. Pope or no Pope.

Alive or dead. Here or gone. You had everything you needed right here.

You had Lena. You had this baby. You had yourself. And that was enough. It had to be enough.

“Mama,” Lena murmured in her sleep. The word was soft. Sleepy. Perfect.

You closed your eyes. Let yourself feel it. Let yourself believe it. You were a mother. Not just a guardian. Not just a caretaker.

A mother.

“I've got you, baby,” you whispered. “Mama's got you.”

And for the first time in days, you let yourself rest.

The hospital smelled like death and bleach. Pope stood in the doorway of the emergency room, Craig's blood still wet on his hands, and tried to remember how to breathe. The building was small. One story. Crumbling stucco walls painted a faded yellow that might have been cheerful once but now just looked diseased. The sign above the entrance was missing half its letters. HOSPITAL GENERAL SAN- something. Pope hadn't bothered to read the rest.

Deran was already inside, shouting in broken Spanish at a nurse who looked about sixteen years old.

“Mi hermano-my brother-he's been shot. Disparado. In the chest. El pecho. He needs a doctor. Un médico. NOW.”

The nurse's eyes were wide with fear. She kept looking at Craig. At the blood soaking through the towels Deran had pressed against his chest. At the way Craig's head lolled to the side, unconscious, his skin gray and waxy. At the way his breathing came in shallow, rattling gasps.

“Un momento,” she stammered. “Por favor, espere-“

“We don't have a fucking moment!” Deran roared. “He's dying! Do you understand? Muriendo!"

Pope moved forward. His legs felt like they belonged to someone else. He grabbed Deran's shoulder. “Let her do her job.”

Deran spun on him. “Her job? Look at this place, Pope! Look at it! This isn't a hospital. It's a fucking butcher shop. Craig's going to die here.”

“He's going to die if we keep standing here arguing.”

The nurse disappeared through a set of double doors. Thirty seconds later, two men in stained scrubs appeared with a gurney. They didn't ask questions. Just lifted Craig onto the gurney and wheeled him away.

Deran tried to follow.

One of the men held up a hand. “No. Espere aquí.”

“Like hell-“

Pope grabbed Deran's arm. “Let them work.”

“Pope-

“Let. Them. Work.”

Deran's jaw clenched. But he stayed. The double doors swung shut. And Craig was gone.

The waiting room was a nightmare. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, buzzing like dying insects. Half of them were out completely, leaving the room in a sickly yellow-green glow. The walls were the color of old teeth. Water stains bloomed across the ceiling like mold. The floor was cracked linoleum, sticky in places, stained in others.

There were six plastic chairs bolted to the wall. Three of them were broken. Pope sat in one of the intact ones.

Deran paced. Back and forth. Back and forth. His boots squeaking on the linoleum. His hands opening and closing into fists.

“He's going to be okay,” Deran said. “Right? He's going to be okay.”

Pope didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Because he didn't know. Craig had been shot in the chest. Upper left side. Close to the heart. Maybe through the lung.

Pope had seen the entry wound when they'd stripped Craig's shirt off in the truck. Bleeding steadily but not gushing. That was good, right? If it wasn't gushing, that meant it hadn't hit an artery. But Craig had been unconscious for the last hour.

His breathing had gotten worse. Shallower. Wetter. Like he was drowning from the inside. And this hospital-

Pope looked around. At the peeling paint. At the ancient equipment visible through the open door of an exam room.

At the rust stains on the sink. At the smell. God, the smell. Antiseptic trying to cover decay. Bleach trying to mask blood. Desperation trying to hide death. This wasn't a hospital.

Deran was right. This was a place people came to die.

“Pope.”

He looked up. Deran had stopped pacing. He was standing in front of Pope, his face pale, his eyes red.

“Say something. Please. Just-say something.”

Pope opened his mouth. Closed it. What was there to say? That Craig might die?

That they'd dragged him across the border with a bullet in his chest because they couldn't risk an American hospital?

That the FBI was probably looking for them right now?

That Smurf was-

Pope's hands clenched. Smurf. This was her fault. All of it.

“I need to call Bambi,” Pope said.

Deran blinked. “What?”

“I need to know if she's okay.” The words came out raw. Desperate. Deran stared at him.

“You think something happened to her?”

“I don't know. I haven't heard from her. Or J. Or anyone. Not since-“ Pope couldn't finish.

Since the raid. Since the FBI had surrounded the house. Since Craig had been shot. Since they'd dragged him out the back door and thrown him in Deran's truck and driven.

Just driven. South. Away. Toward the border. Toward Mexico. Toward this shithole hospital where Craig was maybe dying and Pope was sitting in a broken plastic chair covered in his brother's blood.

“She's fine,” Deran said. “She wasn't even there. She's in her apartment with Lena. She's safe.”

“You don't know that.”

“Pope-“

“You don't fucking know that!” Pope was on his feet now. He couldn't say it. Couldn't voice the fear that had been clawing at his chest since they'd crossed the border.

That Smurf had gone after you. That she'd finished what she'd started.

That while Pope was running, while he was saving Craig, while he was choosing his brother over everything else-you had been alone.

Unprotected. Vulnerable.

“Call her,” Deran said quietly.

Pope pulled out his phone. No service. Of course. They were in the middle of nowhere Mexico in a hospital that probably didn't have running water half the time.

“There's a payphone,” Deran said, pointing to a corner of the waiting room. Pope walked over.

The phone was ancient. Covered in grime. The receiver was cracked. But when he picked it up, he heard a dial tone. He dialed your number. It rang. And rang. And rang. Voicemail.

“Hi, you've reached Bambi. I can't come to the phone right now, but leave a message and I'll call you back!”

Your voice. Bright. Happy. Alive. The beep sounded.

Pope opened his mouth. Nothing came out. What was he supposed to say?

I'm in Mexico. Craig's been shot. I don't know if he's going to make it. I don't know if you're okay. I don't know if Smurf found you. I don't know anything except that I left you and now I can't reach you and I'm terrified that you're hurt or worse and it's my fault because I wasn't there to protect you.

He hung up. Tried J's number. Straight to voicemail. Tried you again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail.

“Pope.”

He turned. Deran was standing there, his expression careful. “She's probably just at work. Or with Lena. She's fine.”

“Then why isn't she answering?”

“Because she doesn't know what happened yet. She doesn't know we're-“ Deran gestured vaguely. “She thinks we're still in California. She thinks everything's fine.”

Pope wanted to believe him. Wanted to believe that you were safe.

That you were at work. That you were picking Lena up from school. That you were living her life, unaware that everything had gone to hell. But he couldn't. Because he knew Smurf. He knew what she was capable of.

And he knew that if Smurf had escaped, If she was still out there she would go after you.

She would finish it. She would take away the one thing Pope loved most. Just to prove she could. The double doors burst open.

One of the doctors appeared. Young. Maybe thirty. Exhausted. His scrubs were covered in blood. Craig's blood.

“Familia de Craig Cody?”

Pope and Deran rushed over.

“Is he alive?” Deran demanded. “Is my brother alive?”

The doctor's English was heavily accented but clear. “He is alive. But he is very critical. The bullet, it punctured his lung. There is much bleeding. We have stabilized him for now, but-“ He paused. “He needs surgery. Real surgery. In a real hospital. We do not have the equipment here. We do not have the blood. We are doing what we can, but-“

“But what?” Pope's voice was flat.

The doctor met his eyes. “But I do not know if he will survive the night.”

The words hit like a physical blow. Deran made a sound. Something between a sob and a growl.

“Can we see him?” Pope asked.

The doctor hesitated. Then nodded. “Sí. But only for a moment. He is unconscious. He cannot hear you.”

They followed him through the double doors. Into a hallway that smelled like copper and rot. Past exam rooms with open doors showing bloodstained gurneys and broken equipment. Past a supply closet with empty shelves. Past a bathroom with no door. Into a room at the end of the hall.

Craig was on a bed. Tubes everywhere. An oxygen mask over his face. An IV in his arm.

Bandages wrapped around his chest, already soaked through with blood. His skin was gray. His lips were blue. His chest rose and fell in shallow, labored breaths.

He looked dead. He looked like he was already gone.

Deran moved to his side. Grabbed his hand. “Craig. Hey. It's me. It's Deran. You're going to be okay, man. You hear me? You're going to be fine.”

Craig didn't respond. Didn't move. Didn't even twitch. Pope stood in the doorway. Watching. Feeling nothing. No. That wasn't true. He felt everything. Rage. Grief. Guilt. Terror. But it was all so big, so overwhelming, that it felt like nothing.

Like he was hollow. Like he'd been scooped out and filled with static.

“Pope,” Deran said. His voice was shaking. “Come here. Talk to him.”

Pope didn't move.

“Pope.”

“He can't hear me.”

“You don't know that.”

“The doctor said-“

“I don't give a fuck what the doctor said. Talk to him.” Pope forced himself to move.

One step. Then another. Until he was standing beside the bed. Looking down at his brother. At Craig.

Dying in a shithole hospital in Mexico because Pope hadn't been fast enough. Hadn't been smart enough. Hadn't been strong enough to protect him.

“I'm sorry,” Pope whispered.

Craig's chest rose. Fell. Rose. Fell. The heart monitor beeped.

Steady. Weak. But steady.

“I'm sorry,” Pope said again.

And then the monitor flatlined. The sound was piercing. Endless. A single, high-pitched tone that cut through everything.

Deran screamed. “CRAIG!”

The doctor shoved past Pope, yelling in Spanish. Two nurses appeared. They pushed Deran out of the way. Started compressions. Pope watched. Frozen. Numb. As they worked. As they tried to bring Craig back. As the monitor kept screaming.

“Cargando!”

The defibrillator. They pressed the paddles to Craig's chest. His body jerked. The monitor screamed.

“Otra vez!”

Again. Craig's body jerked. The monitor screamed.

“Otra vez!”

Again. And then a beep. Weak. Irregular.

But a beep. The monitor showed a heartbeat. Faint. Erratic. But there.

The doctor sagged. “Dios mío.”

The nurses kept working. Adjusting IVs. Checking vitals. Monitoring the machines.

Deran was on his knees. Sobbing. Pope just stood there. Watching Craig's chest rise and fall. Watching the monitor beep. Watching his brother cling to life by a thread.

And he thought about you. About whether you were okay. About whether you were hurt. About whether you were lying in a hospital somewhere just like this.

Or worse.

About whether you were-

No. He couldn't think it. Couldn't let himself go there. You were fine.

You had to be fine.

Because if you weren’t-If something had happened to you-If Smurf had-

Pope turned and walked out of the room. Down the hallway. Through the double doors. Into the waiting room.

He kept walking. Out the front entrance. Into the parking lot. The sun was setting. The sky was orange and purple and beautiful.

Pope leaned against his truck. Pulled out his phone. Still no service. He wanted to scream. Wanted to put his fist through something. Wanted to get in the truck and drive back to California and find you and make sure you were okay.

But he couldn't.

Because Craig was dying. Because Deran needed him. Because if he left now, if he abandoned his brother-He'd never forgive himself.

Deran appeared beside him. His face was red. His eyes were swollen. “He's stable,” Deran said. “For now.” Pope nodded. “The doctor says if he makes it through the night, he might have a chance.”

“Okay.”

“Pope-“

“I have to go back.”

Deran stared at him. “What?”

“To California. I have to go back. I have to see her.”

“Are you insane? The FBI is looking for us. If you go back-“

“I don't care.”

“You'll get arrested.”

“I don't care.”

“Pope-“

“I have to know if she's okay!” Pope's voice cracked. “I have to know if she's alive. I can't-I can't just sit here and wait and wonder. I can't do it, Deran. I can't.”

Deran was quiet for a long moment. Then he sighed. “When?”

“Tonight. As soon as it's dark.”

“And if Craig-“

“You'll be here. You'll take care of him.”

“Pope-“

“I'm going, Deran. With or without your permission. I'm going.”

Deran looked at him. Really looked at him. At the blood on his hands. At the desperation in his eyes. At the way he was barely holding it together.

“Okay,” Deran said quietly. “Okay. Go.”

Pope nodded. Turned toward the truck.

“Pope.” He looked back. “Be careful.”

Pope didn't answer. Just got in the truck. Started the engine. And drove.

Pope pulled onto your street at 7:23 AM. The sun was fully up now. Bright. Harsh. Unforgiving. He slowed the truck. Scanned the street. Looking for-His heart stopped.

FBI vehicles. Three of them. Black SUVs with government plates. Parked in front of your apartment complex.

Pope pulled over. Parked half a block away. Killed the engine. His hands were shaking.

It's fine. They're probably just-They're probably-

He couldn't finish the thought.

Couldn't make sense of it. Why would the FBI be at your apartment?

You weren’t involved. You didn't know anything. You were innocent.

Pope got out of the truck. Started walking. Slowly. Carefully. Trying to look casual. Just a guy out for a morning walk. Not a wanted fugitive.

Not a man whose brother was dying in Mexico. Not a man whose entire world was collapsing. He got closer. Saw the officers. Four of them. Standing near the entrance.

Talking. Radios crackling. One of them was on the phone.

Pope stopped. Ducked behind a parked car. Watched. The apartment complex door opened. Two more officers emerged.

And between them-Pope's vision tunneled.

A body bag. Black. Zipped. Being carried on a stretcher.

No. No no no no no.

Pope's legs gave out. He caught himself on the car. Forced himself to stay upright. To keep watching. To see.

The officers loaded the body bag into a coroner's van. Closed the doors. One of them made a note on a clipboard.

Another spoke into his radio. “-body recovered from apartment 2B. Female. Preliminary assessment suggests homicide. Multiple stab wounds. Victim has been identified as-“

The radio crackled. Pope couldn't hear the rest. Didn't need to.

Female. Apartment 2B. Homicide. Multiple stab wounds.

You were dead.

Smurf had killed you.

While Pope was running. While he was saving Craig. While he was choosing his family over her. Smurf had gone to the apartment. Had broken in. Had stabbed you. Had killed you.

And Pope hadn't been there. Hadn't protected you. Hadn't saved you.

He'd left you. And you’d died alone.

The coroner's van pulled away. Pope watched it go. Watched it carry your body.

Watched it take you away from him. Forever.

Something inside him broke. Not cracked. Not fractured. Broke. Completely. Irreparably. He'd spent his whole life trying to be good. Trying to protect people. Trying to do the right thing. And it had all been for nothing.

Baz was dead. Craig was dying. You were dead. Lena was-

Pope's head snapped up. Where's Lena?

If you were dead, If Smurf had killed you-

Where was Lena? Was she-Had Smurf-

Pope couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't process. He pulled out his phone.

Tried to call Deran. His hands were shaking so badly he dropped it. It clattered on the pavement. He picked it up. Tried again.

It rang.

lPope? Did you find her? Is she-“

“She's dead.”

Silence.

“What?”

“Bambi's dead. The FBI is at her apartment. They just-they just took her body away. She's dead, Deran. She's fucking dead.”

“Pope-“

“Smurf killed her. While we were running. While we were-she went to the apartment and she killed her and I wasn't there. I wasn't fucking there.”

“Pope, listen to me-“

“I have to find Lena. I have to-if Smurf hurt her-if she-“

“Pope, stop. Just stop. You need to get out of there. If the FBI sees you-“

“I don't care.”

“Pope-“

“I don't fucking care!” Pope was shouting now. “Don't you get it? She's dead! Bambi's dead! And it's my fault! I left her! I chose you and Craig over her and now she's dead!”

“That's not-“

“It is! It is my fault! I should have stayed! I should have protected her! I should have” His voice broke. He couldn't finish. Couldn't say anything else. Just stood there.

Phone pressed to his ear. Watching the FBI officers. Watching them secure the scene.

Watching them treat your apartment like a crime scene. Because that's what it was. A crime scene. A murder scene.

The place where the woman he loved had died.

“Pope,” Deran said quietly. “You need to leave. Right now. Before they see you.”

“I need to find J.”

“What?”

“J. I need to find him. This is his fault. His plan. His-“

“Pope, J didn't kill Bambi. Smurf did.”

“J's plan got Smurf out. J's plan put her on the street. J's plan-“ Pope stopped. Because he realized something. “I'm going to kill him,” Pope said.

His voice was flat. Empty. Dead.

“Pope-“

“I'm going to find him. And I'm going to kill him.”

“Pope, don't-“ Pope hung up. Turned off his phone. And started walking. Away from the apartment. Away from the FBI. Away from your body.

Toward He didn't know where. Didn't care. All he knew was that J had destroyed everything. And Pope was going to make him pay. He was going to find him. He was going to look him in the eye. And he was going to kill him. Slowly. Painfully. The way J deserved.

The way anyone who hurt you deserved. Pope kept walking. The sun was bright. The sky was blue. The world was beautiful. And Pope wanted to burn it all down. For you.

wip:

a local grocery store and a favourite florist - purple (month 1)

andrew bumps into you in the cereal aisle and against all odds, it ends up changing his life (the story of how he met you).

i'm an anchor in the ocean - begged (month 4)

andrew gets a palm reading from you, but while tracing his lines, your own secrets begin to spill out (tw: sh).

you're so so pretty boy - drop dead (month 6)

you and andrew have sex for the first time.

you're a spark in the dark - stupid song (month 12)

andrew starts carrying a ring around long before he works up the courage to ask the question.

You know, for what it's worth, your first day had started normal.

Chaotic, maybe— but normal.

You had no reason to think it wouldn't go by like any other.

Your attending, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, was scheduled at a new hospital today. Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center on the Fourth of July of all days. And at seven in the morning, you'd barely gotten down your iced coffee before you were being ushered into Trauma One for a left thoracotomy on a patient with a knife wound.

You followed them into the trauma bay, everyone getting prepared with surgical gowns, blue gloves snapping, masks pulled up over noses, the metal tray beside the bed already crowded with clamps and packs of gauze. In the middle of the room, the patient was being bagged through an airway, a nurse continuing chest compressions as his skin was slicked with sterile prep procedure, people moving around him like a choreographed dance. You watched from the edge, waiting for Dr. Al-Hashimi's command to join them.

You were grateful to see a few familiar faces. Dr. Samira Mohan, for one, who was calling for a chest tube while one of the nurses cut through the rest of the patient’s shirt. Dr. Mel King was there too, though she hadn't joined for the case. Both of them great doctors who had trained at the VA with you a few years ago. Different in their approaches, but just as good under pressure.

You'd known Baran for a long time now too. Before you'd even met Samira and Mel. You'd worked with her as a medical student doing your year abroad with Médecins Sans Frontières, knew her medical background with seizures—something that you kept secret through the years—even helped her for a few days at home after her laser ablation surgery.

You and Baran were tied at the hip. You knew her, and she knew you.

Which was partially why you were able to get the PD approval and would be spending the next three months following her around a very surly male attending's emergency department.

"Is the VA even a trauma center?"

You didn't like his tone.

You glanced over through your plastic surgical glasses. He was tall, older and bearded, his arms crossed over his chest, standing at the edge of the hospital bed trying not to take as much space as he did. Robby, you remembered. Dr. Robinavitch. One of the residents—a blond-haired doctor named Whitaker—had told you he would grow on you, that he really was a great attending.

You didn't doubt it. You'd known enough great doctors to also know they could still be complete assholes too. Even on their good days.

"We took walk-ins." you said curtly.

Baran tried to hide her smile. Robby’s eyes moved to you, held there for a second, then he nodded.

"We had falls, major MVCs, GSWs." she added with a much more polite tone than you had managed.

You listened to Dr. Whitaker on your left, asking the medical students questions about the procedure, differentials. Things you knew the answers to, the words sitting right there on the tip of your tongue, but you bit them back.

Teaching hospital, you reminded yourself. More specifically, someone else's teaching hospital.

"Javadi, Whitaker, glove up." Robby said to your left.

"You too." Baran said beside you. "Start on internal compressions."

Robby looked over. "I'd rather my—"

"—she is capable." Baran cut in gently. "And a good listener."

She nodded at you, jerking her chin up. "Go on."

You obeyed, grabbing your gloves from the boxes on the wall, the latex snapping at your wrists. A nurse slid the white surgical covering over your shoulders and tied it behind your back, the paper stiff against your neck. Everything smelled like betadine, blood, and plastic tubing.

The other residents began moving around, making room for the other two that crowded the table. You stepped in close, your toe brushing someone else's as you found a place near the open chest.

"Well hello to you too." one of them said, a woman to your left, her eyes narrowed, but even with the surgical goggles and mask, you could've sworn you saw a smile.

You only looked at her, squeezing yourself past, your shoulder sliding against her chest accidentally.

"Take me to dinner first, would ya?" she teased.

"Yolanda Garcia has trouble expressing her feelings," you heard Dr. Robby say to Baran across the room.

"I sure will miss you, rabbit-bitch," she called a little too loudly in your ear to him.

You saw him and Baran step closer, the two of them side by side at the foot of the bed. Not together, exactly. More like two people standing on the same square of floor and refusing to give any of it up, leaning in and almost hitting heads as they tried to look at what was going on.

There was a lot of talking around you. Samira's phone kept going off, Garcia was opening the chest cavity, her gloved fingers moving quickly through blood and tissue, clearly an OR fellow with many, many hours on the table. Whitaker was trying to explain to the medical students what was going on, his voice steady enough, though you could hear him working to keep it that way.

"No tamponade, pretty dry in here—" Garcia said quickly, looking in. "Heart's empty. Somebody start cardiac massage."

"On it, excuse me." you said, a little more forcefully as you stepped into the space between Garcia and a nurse. There was a half-second where the room narrowed to the patient’s open chest and your own hands. You placed them carefully, exactly where they needed to be, fingers closing around the heart. It was smaller than people thought. Slick, warm, a living muscle that didn't care how many times you had practiced this in simulation. A life.

You began compressions.

One squeeze. Release. One squeeze. Release.

"Okay team, I think—" Baran began, but Robby cut her off.

"Samira?" he called, "Next steps?"

Keep transfusing. Open the right chest. Find the source. Move before he runs out of time.

There would be a lot of blood.

The blood started pouring out, pouring and pouring. Thick and red under the lights, running off the drape, splashing down into the basin below and onto the floor. Your fingers kept moving around the heart. Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. Release. Your forearms began to burn beneath the gown.

"There's too much blood to suction—" Javadi said, panic rising in her voice.

Where was all of this blood coming from?

"Can't locate the source—" Garcia murmured, looking into the chest cavity.

"We need to convert to a clamshell." you said, looking up at Baran, then to Robby.

He nodded, "Exactly."

"Trauma sheers." you called at the same time as Garcia.

"Jinx, now you owe me a drink with dinner." she teased.

Someone handed them over before you could even think of a retort, not that you had one. Your brain had narrowed to the heart in your hands. The life you held there, retaining it, forcing it to continue. The metal flashed in the light before Garcia took them, cutting through the chest, opening it wider. The room shifted around the decision, everyone making space for the next problem.

More talking around you, more hands moving, more suction. Someone called for more units of blood, a second MTP. You kept your hands where they were, the heart softening and filling by turns beneath your palms, never enough to make you comfortable.

"Still bleeding like a stuck pig!" Garcia called after clamping.

You did have one idea—one thing you could do to stop this. Something that could buy the patient enough time to get upstairs. But you knew Baran wasn't exactly keen on risky procedures done because the room had gotten desperate. Better to rush to the OR in her mind. Better to control what could be controlled, to keep the steps precise, to not make a bad situation worse with a move that could tear the lung off its root if done wrong.

But Robby seemed to have the same thing in mind.

"Hilum flip. Rotate the lung one-eighty degrees."

"Like putting a kink in the garden hose." you whispered to yourself.

Everyone looked at him like he was insane, but you knew there was no time to waste.

"Gently. Very, very slow." he said, his eyes on you and nodding. "Whitaker, take over compressions."

Letting go of the heart when Whitaker's hand found yours, you reached for the lung, then looked up at Dr. Robby again.

You glanced at Baran too. Her eyes were wide behind her shield. "He could die if you rip his lung off the hilum." she said.

"I won't."

You sucked in a shaky breath, nodding, and then looked back at Robby.

You looked down and—

—slowly, slowly, you turned the lung.

There were so many bloody gloved hands tucking and moving around you, Whitaker's breath heavy beside you where he'd taken the heart from your hand a moment ago. Your fingers adjusted by tiny degrees, careful around the slick weight of the organ, your wrists stiff with restraint. The room felt close behind your mask. You held your breath for a moment, feeling Dr. Robby's eyes on you. Dr. Al-Hashimi's too.

Then Javadi called, "Blood loss slowing down!"

The words moved through the room like someone had opened a door. You let out a long breath of relief.

"Okay, we fixed the leak. Now we need to refill." Robby said, standing straighter, relief dropping his shoulders too.

You pulled away from the patient, letting Garcia take your place again, Whitaker standing tall and glancing at you with an impressed gaze. You didn't look at him for long, eyes back to the patient, to the monitor, to the line of numbers that suddenly mattered more than what anyone in the room thought of you.

Once normal sinus rhythm came back, you moved to stand back beside Baran. You hadn't realized how hard you'd been clenching your jaw until it loosened.

"Hell of a way to start the day." Robby said, disrobing the white sterile surgical covering. Baran followed suit, and you did the same, peeling the gown from your sleeves and dropping it into the bin. Your gloves were dark with blood, forearms aching.

"Unconventional. But a decent outcome." Baran agreed, every consonance perfectly crisp on her tongue.

All three of you left the bay, the noise of the monitor and raised voices disappearing with a swish of the doors closing behind you.

"Why don't we split up?" Robby said. "For efficiency."

"We can certainly discuss that." Baran answered with a smile. "I'll find you in a minute. I need to speak to my resident."

Robby made a face, but nodded. "Good job back there." he said shortly to you.

You gave him a polite smile, then threw your surgical glasses down into a bin.

Baran came in front of you, watching the attending walk away.

For a moment, neither of you said anything. The bay was still noisy behind you, people cleaning, counting, calling upstairs, stripping the room down so it could become useful again now that the patient was stable enough for surgery.

"I'm sorry… for… undermining your authority in the room." you said with a sigh. "I'd thought of it before he even said anything about the flip, I felt confident enough to—but I should've asked—"

"I have always said I admire your confidence, doctor." she said gently when she turned back to you. "Just remember, you have nothing to prove to them. Or to me. I know your work."

"But they don't."

"No," she said, and smiled, chin tipping up in pride. "But they will."

You looked down for a second, trying to breathe around the adrenaline still crawling under your skin.

"Go check your other patients," she said. "And I expect to hear some updates. And…excellent work. You saved the patient's life."

You nodded, sucking in a big breath before turning and going back to your charts.

A couple hours passed in much easier quiet—though you'd never say the Q word out loud. You hadn't worked in many emergency departments, but you knew better than that in any hospital setting.

Quiet wasn't really quiet anyway. There were still labs to chase, discharge papers to fix, scans to check, patients waiting to go upstairs and heart rate monitors beeping.

Your own patients were doing fine. A few waiting on labs, one getting ready for discharge, one still up at CT. Baran had sent you through triage for a while too, helping clear out the lower acuity cases before they stacked up. It was steady, easy work. It kept you out of the way, too.

You were just making your way across the emergency department when you saw the most peculiar thing. An entire SWAT team was rushing in beside a bed, one of their members holding a breathing bag up, cursing and calling out the trauma.

"intubated neck wound—stats not great. Is there a trauma room open?!"

You ran towards the voice, listening to the story.

Dr. Robby blocked your view as he ran toward the incoming trauma as well, already cutting toward the bay, calling out orders to his residents and students.

You heard something about a high-velocity gunshot wound, the bagging not working on him. Warehouse robbery gone sideways. That piqued your interest, a flicker of memory tugging at your brain, making you smile a little as you pushed the trauma doors open.

They were putting him on the table as you pulled on a surgical gown again, blue gloves and glasses going on quickly. Your heart rate was climbing, eyes wide as you took in the victim. His shirt had already been cut open, blood running out of his mouth, over his neck, soaking into the collar bunched beneath his shoulders. Someone was calling for suction, another trying to get a pressure. The other SWAT team members filed out of the room, making space. But still one of them stayed.

"Thought you left us for the open road—" the remaining team member said from the bed as the nurses got the patient hooked up to the heart rate machine.

You couldn't quite place why his voice sounded so familiar.

"And miss seeing you in uniform?" Robby shot back as he rushed beside the bed.

"Should've seen me as a flight attendant." the other man whispered.

You had half a mind to laugh as you pushed forward toward the patient, not looking up. You moved to the side of the bed instead, checking the tube, the blood around his mouth, the barely there rise of his chest beneath the bagging. Not enough movement on the left. The wound at his neck was still pooling blood and soaking the gauze someone had pressed there, bright blood slipping between gloved fingers and down into the sheet.

"You do this intubation?" Robby asked the man.

Why was this SWAT member still here?

You needed room to work, to get closer to the patient. You stood across from the uniformed man, not bothering to look up as you reached for the suction tubing and cleared blood from the corner of the patient’s mouth. You wished he'd leave so you could see clearer around all the nurses and students, wished his vest and elbows and radio weren't taking up so much of the narrow space by the head of the bed.

"Under active fire, yeah."

Your eyes flitted up to him.

Only for a second, or what you meant to only be a second, to see if he was serious.

But for that second, your brain did something very strange.

For the first time in 7 years, you were looking at Andrew Cody.

But… not Andrew.

Andrew wasn't here. Andrew was… he was…

He was dead.

As the man turned to glance over his shoulder, it was Andrew's hair you were looking at. Graying now, still curly. The freckles on the nape of his neck you used to trace like constellations.

Your hand stayed on the suction tubing, but the room had slipped somewhere far away from you. Voices kept moving around the bed, Santos, Robby, Garcia— all of them thinned out beneath the monitor and the hard thump of your pulse in your ears.

The SWAT member was still turned slightly, glancing back at the bullet graze across his left shoulder. The fabric there was torn, dark with a splotch of blood. He looked at it like it was nothing.

He was saying something, but it joined with the rest of the voices around you—muffled in your buzzing ears. You heard something about the SATs going down, about causes of respiratory failure in intubated patients. Things you'd have answers to if you weren't looking at your dead ex boyfriend.

And he looked back at you.

It felt like someone had taken you by the shoulders and plunged you underwater.

But this man was Andrew. Older, for sure. Older than time would've allowed in those 7 years anyway. There were marks of it around his eyes, in the set of his jaw, in the heavier shape of his shoulders beneath the tactical vest. But those were Andrew's eyes. Those were his lips—lips you knew, lips you'd kissed, lips that whispered secrets in the dark, lips that had curled back and bared at you the last time you spoke.

You heard the talking around you, but you were frozen. Completely frozen as he smiled at you—this SWAT member, this stranger who wasn't a stranger. Your brain was trying to catch up to the uncanny likeness.

You wanted to cry. You felt like you might faint.

You opened your mouth, lips dry, voice tight, and said:

"Pope?"

seven and a half years earlier

"I'm nervous."

It was dark—sometime around two or three, you thought. The only time Andrew could sneak in through your window without your parents hearing the latch of the gate, the scuff of his boots on the siding, the soft creak of your floorboards when he walked across the room to sit beside you on the bed. You hadn't turned on the light, maybe some part of you thought if you did it would all be too good to be true.

"Me too."

"What do you have to be nervous for?" you breathed a little laugh that felt stale in the darkness, your hands a little shaky around the envelope.

You felt the thick sleeve of his jacket rise and fall as he shrugged, "Dunno."

He was sitting very close, his right shoulder tucked behind your left, his palm flat on the bed behind you as he leaned into you until his chest pressed against your shoulder. His jacket was rough against your skin, still cold from outside, but underneath it he was warm, the heat of him coming through by degrees.

You sucked in a shaky breath, "Big envelope usually means good news, right? Right?"

"I have no idea."

"You're so helpful."

"M'here, aren't I?"

You nodded, and then realized he might not be able to see it. "Yeah."

Shifting the envelope in your lap, you turned it over, then back again. The seal caught a thin line of moonlight from the window, your name looking so neat on the front, printed by someone who had never met you. Someone who didn’t know about the hours spent at Smurf’s kitchen table filling out applications beside J, or Andrew grabbing cash from a rubber-banded stack in his glove compartment to pay for the application. You hadn’t asked where it came from, though you'd already had a good idea.

"Are you gonna open it?" he asked.

"I'm scared."

"Do you want me to open it for you?"

You shook your head, "No, no. It's okay."

"So…"

"It's just that… my whole world is in this envelope right now." you said quickly. Admitting it felt surreal, it gave weight to the paper in your hands. You let your fingers trace over the parchment, the white address sticker peeling up a little as you picked at it. It felt as if maybe it would come up, and someone else's name would be under it. Like it wasn't meant for you after all.

He stayed quiet, waiting for you to go on.

"If this letter says I didn't get in… I don't know what my life looks like. I mean, what would I do?"

"You can stay with me." he said softly, just breath against your jaw as he leaned into you. "We would figure something out."

You nodded. "I know. But… if it says I did get in…"

"It will."

You looked over at him. You could see the outline of his face, the barely there moonlight catching the pretty light in his eyes. You leaned in further, pressing your forehead to his temple, letting out a long sigh.

His skin was warm there. A little damp near his hairline from the hood of his jacket, from the climb, from the summer night still caught on him. Your grip shifted around the envelope, paper dragging against your cotton shorts. When you spoke again, it was hardly a whisper.

"How can you be so sure?"

He rolled his head against yours, gently, sucking in a breath with you before letting it out. The smell of pine soap and minty toothpaste moved over your face with it.

"Because this is what you're meant to do. I know it. I just do."

You licked your lips, smooth with your bedtime lotion and chapstick already applied, leaning into him a little more, pausing there. You felt close enough to feel his breath touch your mouth before either of you moved.

He closed the distance, gently pressing his mouth against yours, breathing you in through the kiss.

His hand found your face—rough palm, calloused fingers, the careful cup of his touch beneath your jaw. It always did something strange to you, how gentle he could be with hands that had evidence of so many split knuckles past. His thumb moved over your cheekbone, soothing.

When he pulled away, you almost followed.

His eyes moved over your face in the dark. Searching, maybe, or checking. He said he never had the right words for this sort of thing, not really, but you didn't need them. Because he looked at you like he was trying to make sure you were still there with him. And that was more than anyone else had ever offered.

His other hand came up, fingertips light as they cupped your skull, turning your face just enough for the moonlight to catch it. To one side, then the other. It should have made you laugh, the seriousness of it, the way he studied you so intensely.

Then he leaned in one more time, pressing a featherlight kiss to the tip of your nose.

"Open it." he whispered.

You pulled in one last breath before sitting up straight, crinkling the corners of the manila envelope before flipping it over. You took your time, carefully unfolding the wire clasp, gently slipping your finger between the closure before the sound of tear of paper filled the room.

Pope's hand lifted from the bed behind you to wrap around your body, squeezing you close.

Slowly, you pulled a stack of papers out.

Your eyes immediately dropped to the first line below the greeting of the first page:

On behalf of the Committee on Admissions, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Even in the dark, there was no second guessing it. The words were there, black and perfect on the page, and your whole body seemed to understand them before your mind could.

Your vision narrowed, your world opened up, a future you had no idea how to take part in but knew you'd be there anyway. Something changing in your own chemical makeup, the feeling of Andrew's arm around you, squeezing you tighter, whispering something.

When you turned towards him, he was already looking at you—so close in the dark, eyes bright and mouth pulling wide like he couldn’t help it.

You smiled back, big and toothy and disbelieving, your throat burning as tears began to gather. The papers slipped from your hands and scattered to the floor as you threw your arms around him, pushing him back into the bedspread with a burst of hushed laughter.

now

"Pope?"

The man who looked like Andrew's lips pulled into a little smile, his head tilting at you, inquisitive.

"You know," he said, voice touched with amusement, "I never pay attention to that stuff. Can't even remember the guy’s name. He's from Chicago, right? I grew up Catholic, so really I should know."

You blinked.

"Dr. Abbot is an attending here," Robby said as he came up beside you, peeling back the soiled gauze around the patient’s throat and revealing the displaced trachea beneath.

You looked down at the patient again, and the transected trachea snapped you almost back to the present. Almost. Your hands were still shaking, your brain still scrambling to separate the man across from you from the dead one in your memory, but you had to get yourself together. The patient could die if you didn't focus.

"Baby—I need a baby—"

The SWAT member—Dr. Abbot, if you remembered right, looked at you a little funny. You shook your head sharply as if to dislodge your running thoughts and organize them with a quick jostle just as another resident moved in beside him with an air bag. The breathing tube was out now, the open wound exposed, blood spluttering from it.

"I mean, a neonatal mask. I need a neonatal mask! He's not getting any air."

You looked around, everyone was still looking at you a little weird, but Robby only nodded his head, agreeing. "Santos—go!"

"Neonatal?" she asked.

"YES!" you barked, and you were surprised to hear Robby's voice overlapping yours.

She was only gone for a moment, but it felt longer than it should have. Too many seconds with the monitor complaining, too many hands hovering over a body that had no usable airway.

The moment the mask hit your palm, you pressed it over the open wound, sealing it against his neck while someone squeezed the bag.

The monitor began to settle down to a steadier beat.

"Neo-natal mask is working," Dr. Abbot said, his voice lighter than before, almost impressed. Dr. Santos continued the EFAST while the patient was stable enough, and Abbot injected lidocaine with epi to help with the bleeders. Things felt almost normal again, or at least close enough to pause and figure out the rest.

You kept looking up at him though.

Not on purpose, and not for very long. Your eyes would lift, catch on the curve of his mouth or the set of his brow, and then you’d force them back to the patient, to the wound, to the monitor, to anything with a number attached to it. Your brain kept trying and failing to separate memory from present.

He and Robby were talking, discussing next steps around you.

"I could do a Shiley?" you offered.

"I don't like the curve of a Shiley." Dr. Abbot teased.

"Didn't know you were so picky," Robby answered. You almost had the nerve to smile.

This was turning into a very weird day.

When you looked back over to Dr. Abbot, he was looking at you. Your skin lifted in goosebumps.

"You must be Gloria's new hire," he murmured.

"One of them." you answered.

He tilted his head to the side, his eyes skating over your features. You wondered what he saw when he looked at you. Your presence didn’t seem to have the same effect. He was calm, collected, nothing like you felt.

Robby answered before he could say anything, "We were lucky enough to get two." he introduced you by name, then explained, "R3. "

He didn't sound like he felt very lucky, but you ignored that.

"Pleasure to meet you." Dr. Abbot said. You could swear there was a certain tone to his voice. Cheeky, almost. Your skin felt tingly.

Just then, you heard Baran's voice enter the room, "What is going on here? You have a field medic assisting?"

"Dr. Abbot is an attending and also a SWAT physician." Robby explained again to her.

"Transected trachea, we're working on an airway." you explained.

Dr. Abbot was moving in with his tube, explaining it to Dr. Santos, but Baran had shouldered her way between you and the resident.

"We can do this." she said stiffly.

"No, no," he said easily. "I got it. You must be Gloria's second hire. I'd shake your hand, but my tube is ready."

You felt your lips twitch in what could've been a smile if you didn't feel like you'd lost your breath entirely.

"Keep an eye on the SATs," she told you over her shoulder.

You backed away, holding your hands up to keep them from touching anything or anyone.

"What, you're gonna take away the only helpful person in the room?" Abbot asked as he inserted the tube into the retracted trachea while Robby pulled it up with forceps, Santos taking over on the air mask.

"Hey," Robby protested. "I'm the one holding this open for you."

Dr. Abbot smiled, focusing back on the patient, "I'm gonna sew this in, 2-0 silk, please?"

"End tidal, good wave form." you called out, eyes flitting from the attending to the screen.

Robby let out an impressed whistle from in front of you. "Not bad, Abbot."

You moved away, feeling a little hazy, like you were walking through water as you began stripping off your sterile surgical gear. You took in a few deep breaths, focusing on the movement. Glove off. Gown untied. Mask flicked off. Glasses lifted from your face. One thing, then the next.

But you couldn't help the way you kept wanting to look back at him.

It felt almost like you'd been transported. You weren't sure if it was back in time or forward, or to some strange parallel universe that had split open in the middle of Trauma One. Andrew Cody was standing in the room. Graying hair, stubble grown out, blood on the back of his SWAT uniform, his hands busy at a patient's throat.

Not Andrew—Dr. Abbot.

Your brain offered the correction, but it didn’t settle right.

He looked up as if you'd called his name. Those eyes followed you across the room, curious, wondering. It was the same steadiness that would study you from across the kitchen counter, the one that would sneak glances at you from the driver's seat of a car, beside you in your bed. Your stomach dipped as you remembered the last time you'd seen them.

You turned away, unconsciously reaching up to grasp the necklace that adorned your throat between your fingers as you pushed the doors open.

The ED had gotten busier than before, and you inhaled the hospital air steadily into your lungs as you looked around. Your hands still felt like they were trembling, all that adrenaline and unease working its way through your bloodstream. Epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol. You recited it just to have something you knew. Something that was real. Adrenal medulla. Sympathetic nervous system. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.

Your body was doing exactly what it was built to do, flooding you with chemicals and tightening your muscles, preparing you for danger.

But instead of danger this time, it was a ghost.

Time passed strangely after that, in pieces easily measured. A CBC resulted. A urine sample collected. X-ray called to say they were ready for the wrist in triage. You'd gone back out there to let your thoughts collect, and maybe to avoid the main trauma center too.

Usually work helped. Even when you'd had bad days before, or days where you felt helpless and tired and worn out, the hours of helping other people could usually quiet whatever was wrong with you. There were orders to put in, pulses to check, nurses asking for discharge plans. There was always something that needed your hands more than your feelings did.

But now… this was different.

In every patient checked, every lab sent, you thought of Andrew Cody.

A broken wrist came in at some point, swollen at the joint and held tightly against the patient's chest, her fingers moving but stuff. Her skin was puffy where it began to swell by her apple watch she hadn't taken off. You touched two fingers to her radial pulse, asking her to wiggle her fingers, then pressed along the snuffbox until she hissed.

"Sorry," you'd murmured. You'd ordered the films and ordered a splint until ortho took a look at her, simple and easy enough.

Except as you were doing it, you felt twenty years old again in a sunken living room in Oceanside, Craig Cody's wrist tucked against his own lanky chest while Deran paced behind you, agitated and barefoot as he tried to call their doctor in Mexico.

Andrew had been standing stiffly behind your chair, one hand gripping the back of it so that when you sat up, his knuckles brushed the top of your spine.

You'd been googling how to make a splint for a broken bone while walking to the fridge for ice. You remembered Craig looking at you funny when you'd returned with one of Smurf's magazines from the bathroom and a roll of duct tape from the junk drawer, wrapping his arm with more confidence than you actually felt.

It had healed fine in the end.

Mostly.

There was a man with split knuckles from a bar fight. Typical day drinking incident for a city like this. But while you cleaned his wounds and bandaged his hand, you thought of Andrew's blood rinsing from his hands in your bathroom sink, quiet while you sat on the closed toilet seat with a towel in your lap. How he would never admit how badly it hurt. Or how badly he hadn't wanted to do it.

There was even a pair of twins, both with fevers. A boy and a girl, maybe four years old, sitting side by side while their mother tried to keep them from touching every surface in the room. They had the same flushed cheeks, the same damp hair at their temples, the same tired little lean toward each other whenever one of them started to cry.

You hadn't known Andrew that young. You hadn't even been alive. But seeing them staring up at you with those big fever-bright eyes made you think of him anyway. Andrew and Julia. Inseparable, but both destined for a tragic end.

You checked their ears, listened to their lungs, pressed gently under their jaws while they blinked up at you. Viral, probably. Nothing too bad. Tylenol, fluids, return precautions. A normal childhood illness on a normal terrible day.

On your way back into the trauma center, you sent a little prayer up that the story of Andrew and Julia would never happen to them.

By the time you made it back to your workstation that had you seated around the edges of the charge nurse area, you felt a little refreshed from your earlier encounter. You hadn't seen the SWAT member—or attending, or whatever his title really was—anywhere yet. That helped too.

You took your seat and pulled the keyboard closer, the plastic keys worn smooth under your fingertips as you brought up the charts that needed finishing. A coffee you'd grabbed on the way over sat beside the mouse, lid half off, the surface already cooling. You began finishing your charts, trying to keep your eyes on the screen and your thoughts inside the room you were in.

"You've been gone for a while."

You looked over your shoulder to see exactly who you'd expected: Baran, standing straight, looking over your shoulder, her perfume faint against the hospital smell.

"Just making myself useful in triage, I guess." you said, looking back at the screen, but you felt her eyes on you anyway.

She let the silence sit there for a moment, the way she always did when she thought you might fill it if she waited long enough. You didn't. You clicked into the next chart and pretended the cursor needed all your attention.

Finally, she sighed.

"Are you ever going to give my generative AI a chance? You could be seeing other patients right now. You could be enjoying a small break in the lounge."

You huffed a little laugh. "When I'm ready to wipe out all the wildlife for data centers, I'll let you know."

She shook her head, a little pressed smile catching at the corner of her mouth. And then, after a moment, she said: "You've been avoiding me."

You paused, fingers hovering over the keyboard.

Damn her for being so observant. It made her a great doctor. It also made her an annoyingly keen boss. And a wonderful friend.

You turned on the rolling stool.

"I"m sorry. It's…"

"Did you know him from somewhere?"

Your eyes widened, heart dropping. Feigning ignorance, you asked: "Who?"

"The patient," she said, watching your face. "The one with the transected trachea. He's in surgery right now. I can call for an update if you'd like."

You let out your breath quickly, almost too quickly. "Oh. No, no. I didn't."

Her eyes narrowed a little, that brown gaze searching your face with a steadiness you had watched study patients, consultants, nervous interns, men who thought they could talk over her.

"Okay." she said.

You could hear the tone of disbelief under it, the things she wanted to say but wouldn't.

Clicking your tongue softly against your teeth, you looked down at your lap, at your hands folded there, at the faint red mark across the back of one finger from where one of the twins had held onto you tightly as you took their blood.

"Well…" she continued. "I trust if it's something that needs discussing, you would—"

"—Yes, yes, I promise." You looked back up at her. "I just… I needed to clear my head. I'm good. I'm back."

Baran held your gaze.

It wasn't like a typical attending, not harsh or deciding whether you were fit for work. More like Baran the friend, the one who had once shared a bowl of popcorn and Raisinets on her couch with you as you watched Love Island after her surgery. She knew what you looked like when you were lying. She knew what you looked like when you were telling only half a truth too.

"Okay." she said at last, a smile twitching back to her lips. "You can help me with a middle-aged woman with sudden-onset blindness. Mel is heading up for her deposition soon, and I need someone in there to observe."

"Sure, yeah." You nodded, turning back toward your chart before she could keep looking at you. "Give me a few minutes to finish this, and I'll be over."

She tapped two fingers against the counter beside you, then walked away. "Room 15."

You watched her reflection move across the dark edge of your computer screen before you started typing again.

The words came slower than they should have, and eventually you gave into the notion that you'd probably be spending an hour after your shift catching up, just like the rest of the residents anyway.

You closed out of the charts, and headed over.

Only, halfway across the department, you realized Baran hadn't said where the patient was. Room 15, yeah. But there were 3 different fifteens in this god damn maze. North, South, Central…

You slowed near the charge board, coffee still in your hand, eyes scanning the names too quickly to make sense of them. Looking for anything resembling blindness or vision loss, neuro, consult pending. You found none of it fast enough. You felt the department going on around you, noisy and distracting.

You gave up and walked a few steps away, looking around the different doors, and just decided you'd try all three.

Central Fifteen was closest, and the curtain was pulled all the way across, so you approached, trying to plaster on your best bedside smile.

You pulled it open.

The sight inside hit you so fast you gasped, nearly dropping your coffee as your other hand tightened around the curtain, wrenching it closed again.

Your heart felt like it had catapulted into your throat, your stomach falling the opposite way onto the floor.

Not Andrew, not Andrew, not Andrew, you kept chanting it as you squeezed your eyes shut, forcing your breath in and out of your lungs.

"You… can come in." the voice said from the bed. It was low and careful and quiet, startled too. His hazel eyes had been wide, flickering up when you'd scared him too. Those broad shoulders bare, thick muscled chest plain as day with his shirt in his hands.

You sucked in another breath and opened it slowly this time to see Dr. Jack Abott sat on the exam bed before you.

seven and a half years earlier

You weren't sure what had gotten into Andrew that day.

It had been a sunny Friday afternoon, the place already loud with music and vices carrying throughout the house. Andrew had asked you to come, and he'd sounded so serious over the phone you hadn't even hesitated.

But now he'd locked you out of his room.

At first you weren't sure if it was just because he needed a minute, or he was messing with you. But Andrew didn't mess with you like Craig or Deran did. He didn't tease just to tease or make you chase him around for the fun of it. If Andrew was making something difficult, there was usually a reason.

You knocked on the door softly at first, a gentle little C'mon, Andy, open up, before you'd started really knocking, practically shouting for him to answer you. The house went on behind you, the day drinkers enjoying summer out by the pool, drinks being poured in the kitchen, a game of kings in the living room. Music carried all through the house. It was why you'd thought maybe he'd just been overwhelmed. Usually an hour or so into a party, the both of you would retreat to the company of only each other in a quiet room.

You leaned your head against the wooden door, and listened.

He was pacing. You could hear him mumbling to himself too, what it was he was saying, you had no clue.

What was his problem?

You were lifting your head from the door, about to go join the party outside when suddenly the bedroom opened up.

"What the hell, Andr—ah!"

You squealed as he grabbed your wrist, pulling you inside roughly. Then, just as abruptly, he stood away from you, breathing hard, eyes moving over the bed, the nightstand, the floor by his shoes, anywhere but directly at your face.

"Sit." he said simply, pointing to the bed.

"What the hell is going on with you?" you snapped, folding your arms over your chest.

He was doing that thing—the puppy dog eyes, rubbing of his palms together, the eye contact flitting around to anywhere but you. It would have been irritating if it didn't make your stomach twist. You knew him angry, you knew him quiet. And you knew this version too—nervous, child-like.

Andrew could scare other people with all his silences and hard staring, but you knew the difference. This wasn’t anger. This was him getting stuck somewhere in his head, turning a thought over and over until it wore a groove.

"Hey…" you said, and then again, softer: "Hey."

He looked up at you. His big hazel eyes were wide in the afternoon light that came through the bedroom window, softened and yellow by the drapes.

"What's going on?" you murmured, stepping closer and reaching out to take the sides of his hoodie in your hands, fisting the fabric so you could pull him closer.

The fabric was warm under your fingers, the pocket stretched out where he always hooked his thumb. You could feel his breath move through him, uneven under the cotton. He stared at your hands.

"Andy…" you said, quieter.

His eyes flicked to the bed.

"Sit."

You sighed, let go of him, and obliged.

You bounced a little as you landed on the mattress, his unease making you fidget. You could smell the detergent from the perfectly made bedspread, the old wood of the house, the smell of your sunscreen wafting around you.

"You're making me nervous." you murmured.

His eyes finally landed on you and stayed there, "M'sorry. I'm sorry."

He sounded so genuine as he sat beside you finally, the mattress dipping under his weight. His knee brushed yours before he pulled it back, and his hand flattened over the seam of his jeans. You watched his thumb press into the denim, rubbing at the same spot, the skin around his nail going pale.

"Just…tell me what's goin' on." you said, laying your hand gently over his.

He was fidgeting too, pursing his lips, his eyes down turned again. Then he leaned toward his bedside table, opened the drawer, and pulled out a leather pouch. There was a gold cord wrapped tightly around it, leather softened and expensive. He held it out while not even looking at you, taking in a long shaky breath.

You took it carefully, setting it in your lap with two hands. "What's this?"

He didn't answer.

"Andy—"

"It's nothin'." His eyes stayed on the floor. "Just—well, not nothing."

"If this is what I think, I can't accept."

"Yes, you can."

You rolled your eyes.

He leveled his gaze very seriously on you, his brow set, his hands suddenly still. "Will you just open it?"

You looked at him for a long moment, and then sighed. Fighting him was futile when he had something on his mind.

You looked back down at the leather pouch and untied the gold cord. The knot had been pulled tight, and it took you a second to work it loose with your nail before you unfolded the worn pieces of leather.

Something glittered beneath.

"Oh—" you gasped.

Inside was a diamond necklace.

A white-gold chain connecting to a bejeweled bail that held two small circles stacked above an oval stone, the whole pendant ringed in more diamonds, so bright that it threw little cuts of light across the inside of the pouch.

You were almost certain it was worth more than anything you had ever owned.

You looked up at him. "Andy…"

His jaw shifted, but he was looking at you differently now—those big hazel eyes stayed on you, waiting, nervous, still, but changed with a softness that often was reserved for only you.

"I wanted to get you something," he said, voice low, "for getting into the program. Do you like it?"

"Andy, I can't accept this—"

"Yes you can." he corrected. His tone was soft, hoarse like he was telling you a secret instead of trying to hand you what had to be a five-figure diamond necklace. You wondered if his brothers knew what you were given. If Smurf had any say.

"Wh—why are you even giving me this? Aren't the cops gonna be looking for it?"

He tilted his head at you and whispered, "Don't worry about that stuff. I'll handle it."

You shook your head in disbelief, fingers toying with the white gold chain in your lap. For a moment, you didn't know what to do about him. About his kindness, his generosity, the over-the-top gestures he often made without understanding they were over-the-top at all. To him, it was direct. You loved someone, so you gave. You celebrated.

You loved him for it, for him wanting to give so much. The way he made sure you understood how much you meant to him, never questioning or second guessing.

Still, you wondered if he'd taken it from under his family's noses when they weren't looking. You were almost certain you knew the job it came from, too. The mansion you'd visited under the guise of a decorating crew with a little black dress on, hair pinned and proper, clipboard to your chest while you smiled at a woman who had no idea you were memorizing the hallway behind her.

"We could've gone out for a drink to celebrate!" you said under your breath, though it wasn't mean.

He shook his head. "You worked hard to get in. You deserve more than a round of shots at Deran's shitty bar."

You stared at the necklace. He whispered your name, and you looked up.

He leaned in closer, making sure you heard every word as he said, "You deserve to be celebrated."

You pressed your lips together, your eyes moving over his face—the freckles across his nose, the little scars near his brow, the old nick at his cheek you still remembered touching the first week you knew him. You'd never seen someone flinch like that before. You thought of how he hasn't flinched from your touch in years now. It makes your chest warm as you look at his cheekbones. They were sharper than they had been a month ago, his eyes darker underneath, like he hadn’t been sleeping well.

"Do you like it?" he asked again, quieter this time, his voice losing some of its edge.

You let out a breath, smiling despite yourself. "Yes."

His shoulders eased, a small shift under his hoodie, but his eyes stayed fixed on you. Then, he smiled. Small, almost hidden at first, just the corner of his mouth lifting. And then his whole face split, his cute toothy grin, dispelling all the tension in his muscles. Your own smile grew before you could stop it.

"You do?" he asked.

"Of course I do."

He leaned in slowly, as if unsure if you'd pull away (you never, ever did) and kissed you gently. His mouth was warm against yours, chapped where he'd been most likely biting at it all day before you got to the house. You held the kiss, lips slotting together, and his hand came up to your cheek, thumb brushing along your jaw, keeping you close.

Your tongue dipped out to trace the underside of his top lip, and he opened for you, eager enough that your breath caught. His tongue slid against yours, and the kiss deepened, both of you breathing heavier as your hand moved up his chest and around his neck, fingers curling into the brown hair at his nape.

Before you could get as carried away as you wanted, he pulled back. Neither of you let go. His forehead nearly touched yours, his hand still at your face, your fingers still in his hair, both of you panting into the small space between your mouths.

"Let me put it on you." he said.

You smiled a little, leaning forward to push your forehead into his before giving in, "Fine, okay, yeah."

He straightened with the necklace in his hands, the chain flashing between his fingers before he stood and crossed to the dresser. You followed him, still breathless from the kiss, the leather pouch left open on the rumpled bed behind you.

The mirror leaned against the wall by the window, catching the softened sunlight through the curtains and spilling it warm across your face, your neck, the front of your shirt. Andrew came in behind you in the reflection, shoulders broad around yours, head bent as he lifted the necklace.

His fingers brushed your skin as he worked the clasp, so careful that you barely felt them. The chain settled cool against your neck, and the pendant rested heavy at the base of your throat, glittering in the mirror each time you breathed.

Andrew leaned into you from behind, his chin hooking over your shoulder. "There." he murmured.

It was beautiful, you had to admit. Glittering in the golden warm light.

"It's perfect, Andy." you murmured.

"You're perfect." he whispered, pressing a kiss to the side of your neck.

Heat rushed to your face, and you lifted a hand over your shoulder, pushing your fingers back through his hair as his arms wrapped around your middle. His mouth stayed at your neck, kisses soft at first, then heavier, his teeth catching lightly at the sensitive skin beneath your jaw.

"Want you to wear it," he said between little nips. "Nothing else."

"Oh, yeah?" you giggled.

"Mhm," he hummed.

He turned you around in his arms and kissed you harder, one hand going to your hair, the other low at your waist as he walked you backward toward the bed.

now

He even had the same freckles.

There was a mole on his right pec, and your eyes dropped to it before you could stop them. Andrew had one there too. You used to kiss it when he'd lead you to bed, when he'd let you kiss all his marks—scars, moles, freckles, the places violence had touched him and the places he’d simply been born with.

You blinked hard and made yourself look away.

This wasn't Pope. It wasn't Andrew.

It was strange, seeing a body you knew so well shaped by time and some other life. There was a time Andrew had started boxing because he thought it would help get out his worst thoughts, and for a while, it had. He’d built himself for muscle and strength, for something to do with his hands besides hurt people, or himself, or anyone who got too close on the wrong day. Even after he quit, he kept the shape of it, strong through the shoulders, leaner when he forgot to eat, his body always carrying whatever his mouth couldn't say.

Jack Abbot seemed similar, though broader now, thicker through the chest and middle, less carved by violence and more by age, work, routine. The same kind of body built to carry too much. The same kind of shoulders that looked like they were holding a door shut from the inside.

You wondered if he was trying to outrun scary thoughts too.

"I'm… sorry." you said, breath uneven as your eyes went back up to his face.

There, some of the freckles were different. Less sun maybe, no California sunshine out here in Pennsylvania, no Oceanside glare to leave burns on the skin year round. But still. There were too many similarities, the kind your brain kept trying to make sense of and failing. Your blood thrummed in your ears again, warm and rushing.

"I was just… looking for a patient."

Jack looked at you funny again, his eyes scanning you, trying to read the messy thoughts behind your eyes, you figured. You probably looked insane.

"It's okay."

"Are you okay?" you asked, jutting your chin up toward his shoulder. Focusing on something you could see, understand.

He glanced back at it as he opened the kit on the medical tray in front of him. "Yeah, bullet just grazed me."

"Jesus."

"S'nothin'." He picked through the supplies with one hand, tearing open a packet with his teeth before thinking better of it and using his fingers. "Geniuses thought it was a good day to rob a goods warehouse. Didn’t think about how much time it would take to load everything up."

You nodded, your throat beginning to burn. You wondered who the kids were, if they were another crew like the Codys had been, sitting around a kitchen table with beer bottles and a map, thinking through cameras, doors, exits, timing. Or if they were idiots with guns and no plan, chasing the rush before they’d learned how much a bad one could cost.

"Did… you catch them?"

"Yep."

You huffed a little laugh despite yourself. "Well… I should probably—"

But when you looked up, he was trying in vain to reach the wound, his shoulder rolling forward, arm lifted awkwardly behind his head. The graze sat high along the back of his right shoulder, too far around for him to clean well. He tried anyway, jaw set, antiseptic swab pinched between two fingers, his back arching a little to reach.

Your mouth was opening before your brain could stop you, "Give me that."

"I'm fine."

"I'll start your chart, then."

"No, no. Don't need the paperwork."

You held out your hand, "Our little secret then?"

He looked up at you, stalling, those hazel eyes searching your face again. So familiar, so steady. Your hand stayed out between you.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Goosebumps rose along your skin. You gave him your name.

"No, I mean…" his eyes narrowed, but he shook his head, sighing.

He handed over the Qtip with the antiseptic.

"Promise I won't tell." you said gently, stepping around him.

"Better not." he huffed with a half smirk.

You moved behind him and set the supplies in order on the exam bed: saline flushes, gauze, chlorhexidine swabs, a small packet of bacitracin, nonadherent dressing, tape. This would help. It had to. Simple stuff, cleaning a wound, knowing the steps. Just doing the work. The exam light above him hummed softly, casting a flat white square over his shoulder and the metal tray.

Both of you were quiet, but you saw his eyes slide around to you every once in a while.

You started with saline, flushing the graze from the cleanest edge outward, watching diluted blood run over his shoulder blade and into the gauze you had tucked beneath it. The wound was shallow, ugly more than dangerous, a raw red track through skin with darker bruising already starting around it. No embedded fragments that you could see. No active bleeding beyond the surface ooze. You wiped the skin around it with gauze, then cleaned wider with chlorhexidine, careful to keep most of it around the wound instead of scrubbing straight into the open line.

You hadn't realized you'd begun to cry until Jack turned his head over his shoulder, his brows drawing together.

"Hey," he said, quieter now. "What happened?"

You shook your head, trying to swallow the burn in your throat as the sting in your eyes flooded down your face with tears. "Sorry—I'm sorry."

You took the nonadherent pad from the tray, too quick, grateful for something to do. Your fingers pressed the dressing into place over the graze, then layered folded gauze over it for a little pressure. All you could think about was a familiar freckled shoulder. A familiarly thick neck with the same curls at the name. The man you loved turning his head in your bathroom to tell you a job had gone bad like he was telling you dinner ran late. Blood on the sink. Blood under your nails. His face pale, and you had felt scared enough for both of you.

"Who…" Jack Abbot began, but bit his lip, and you saw the infinitesimal shake of his head, before he was looking up at you, and trying again. "You lost someone."

Your eyes found his, and held your breath.

He nodded, "I know that look."

You wiped your cheek with the heel of your palm, then reached for the adhesive. Jack tore off two strips for you and handed them back without looking away.

"I'm fine." you said. "It's nothing."

He sighed, hands coming together in his lap, and you saw him twist the gunmetal wedding ring on his left hand.

"I lost my wife," he said after a moment. "A few years ago."

You stared at the side of his face. "I'm sorry." it's all you knew to say in that moment.

He nodded, eyes on his own hands. "Not a day goes by I don't think of her. But today…" He looked back at you, and you stood very still with the tape half-smoothed over his dressing. His eyes moved across your face, knowing and far away. "Today I saw you and it was like she was there. In the room."

You sucked in a little breath.

"I don't know why." His mouth pressed to one side. "I guess you—"

"— look like her?" you whispered.

He nodded.

You let out the breath you'd been holding in. You finished taping the dressing, smoothing the adhesive edges against clean skin because your hands still needed something to finish. The pad sat flat over the graze, the gauze beneath it catching what little blood was left.

"You… you look like my…" you weren't sure what to call him. An ex? Dead boyfriend? "Well. He… died, a long time ago." you went on anyway. "And when I saw you, it felt like…"

"… like you'd seen a ghost."

You looked back up at him with wet eyes, voice cracking, "Yeah."

For a second, neither of you moved, neither of you spole. The exam room felt small around the two of you, the curtain drawn tight, the overhead light buzzing, the metal tray with torn packets and pink-stained gauze piled on it. His shoulder was warm under your fingertips where you hadn't yet pulled away.

How could this be happening? You kept asking yourself over and over, but you couldn't understand the cosmic irony—the idea that somehow…somehow, Andrew had lived on. Maybe not in this timeline, but another. So that you would be here. Now. With Jack.

Out of all the lives you could have lived. Out of all the turns you could have missed and the ones you chose. Your parents and your childhood home. Andrew and all the ways he had been the sweetest soul you'd ever known and the most volatile man in any room. The acceptance letter. The way you'd wanted nothing more than to go but couldn't bear to leave and…the last time you saw him. And then, after years of hard work, of trying to forget, you met Baran overseas, half a world from Oceanside, pulling you into her orbit. Then to the city, to Pennsylvania. The VA. The PTMC on the Fourth of fucking July in the middle of humid Pittsburgh.

All of it. Every terrible, ordinary, impossible thing.

"You were so calm." you said quietly. "How were you so calm earlier? If you felt—"

He shrugged, and the dressing tugged a little at the movement. "I thrive under pressure, I guess."

"That explains the SWAT thing," you murmured.

"My therapist said I needed a hobby." he said dryly.

You stared at him for half a second before a smile caught your lips, as if a string was tied to the corner, pulling it up into your cheek.

"You were great today." he said softly, turning his face toward you so that even with his chin dipped, he could still look up at where you stood beside him.

"Thanks." you murmured.

"I can tell this is…" he paused, nodding a little, like he was feeling for the right words before they left him. "This is something you were meant to do."

You squeezed your eyes shut, your lungs hitching over what little breath you'd pulled in.

It was not only the words. It was the way he said them, low and careful with his eyes moving off yours right after, his top teeth catching his bottom lip, his hands rubbing together with the black shirt bunched between them. He looked so much like Andrew then that your chest went tight and your throat thickened.

You pressed your lips together, shutting your eyes against the threat of more tears, and nodded. You wanted to say something back, like thanks or you're not bad yourself!—but the words wouldn't come. They were stuck behind the lump in your throat, and you had to swallow them down before you choked on the grief.

You moved away from him to begin cleaning up the room, taking the trash from the metal tray, feeling his eyes follow you around in silence.

When all was done and cleaned up, he was standing back up with his shirt back on, his hands shoved in the tan camo cargos, shoulders straight.

"I should… go check on my patients." you said, reaching for the curtain. "Baran is probably waiting for me."

He nodded, fidgeting a little where he stood.

You pulled the curtain, but then heard him call your name.

His head was ducked again, eyes down at his boots, one thumb moving against the seam of his pocket. Then he stood straighter and looked at you.

"We should grab a drink sometime."

Your eyebrows shot up before threading together. "Like… swap war stories, or?"

"Or." he shrugged.

You licked your bottom lip haphazardly. You weren't sure what to say. It felt like a terrible idea. Giving in to whatever weird prank God was pulling on the two of you. A man who looked like Andrew asking you out in a curtained exam room with a bullet graze under his shirt. A man who had seen his dead wife in your face and still somehow looked at you like there might be something to do with that besides run.

"I don't know…"

"If it's too much, I understand." he said softly.

"It's just—" you paused, searching for the right words as you fisted the curtain beside you tighter, looking around like the answer was in the room, "s'kinda weird, right?"

"Very weird." he agreed. "But I see no reason why we shouldn't give in. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work."

You stared at him a long moment, before he was stepping forward, his voice low. You had to hold your breath.

"One drink." he murmured. "What're you doing after your shift?"

The three B's came to mind. Bath, Book, Bed, truthfully. Maybe crying in said bath if the day kept going the way it had been and falling asleep with wet hair and waking up with sore eyes tomorrow to whatever PTMC had waiting next.

"Nothing." you said instead.

His eyes moved between yours, then down to your mouth, to the necklace at your throat, then back up again. The diamonds sat heavy beneath your scrub collar, hidden from most people, except the chain had shifted at some point while you were dressing his wound. A little flash of white gold against hospital black scrubs.

"Aren't you just… a little curious?" he asked, barely above a whisper, "About what the fuck this all is?"

You couldn't help the little huff of laughter that escaped you. He smiled back, just a twitching of his lips.

"Okay." you said. "A little."

"Then meet me at Redbeard's." he said, tipping his head. Then, after a second, quieter, "Please."

You gnawed on your bottom lip, looking past the curtain into the ED. Dana was picking up the red landline again, her other hand already reaching for a pen. A tech pushed an empty stretcher toward the elevators, the wheels clicking over the seam in the floor. Across the hallway, Robby stood in front of Santos with a chart in his hand, listening with his head tipped down while she talked.

The whole department kept moving, loud and bright, as if nothing was amiss. As if your world wasn't folding over itself, different timelines coexisting together in this strange space where time and grief took no pity.

You let out a long sigh.

"Yeah," you said, bringing your hand up to clench around the diamonds of your necklace, "Yeah, okay. Fine."

He smiled a little wider, and looked out into the same sea of chaos as you. "Okay. Go. I'll see you tonight. Redbeard's."

You looked back at him and smiled a little. "See you."

Because when you looked at him, all you could see was Andrew’s face, open in that rare way he never let last long.

seven years earlier

The house already felt out of control when you arrived. The bass rattled through the open slider and the large floor to ceiling windows as you made your way through the sea of bodies in the kitchen, the floor wet under your bare feet where someone had spilled. Beer, maybe. Something sticky that pulled faintly at your skin with each step. You made your way to the fridge anyway, pulling out a beer, the cold neck of it relieving to the touch in your hand.

When you turned around, about to open it, you saw Andrew.

He was sitting on the couch in the living room, sitting up from his laid back position, his arm coming off the back of the couch to stand up. His attention had snapped to you too quickly, and you saw his face change. Confusion first, then relief, but then something much, much harder. Something that shut everything else down.

He was up and beside you in less than ten seconds. "Why are you here?"

You blinked, but turned to walk away. “Hi to you too.”

He reached out quickly, pulling you by the arm to turn towards him. You squeaked out a little hey!

“Why are you here?” The second time was lower, meaner, his head ducking as he said the words.

Your smile faltered a little, but you tried to pull it back. “It’s Craig’s birthday, isn’t it?”

“You’re supposed to be gone.”

You swallowed hard. Your bags were packed. Sitting in the trunk of your car. You'd meant to take the exit going east but… but you couldn't. So, you shrugged as averted your eyes from his, beer pressing coldly into your palm, condensation slicking against your fingers. “Yeah, well. I’m not.”

You could feel his piercing stare on you.

The party kept moving around you, but it felt farther away now, muffled under the rush of blood in your ears. People were shouting by the pool as usual, music blaring and scores being called as idiots jumped from the pool house roof into the water. You watched Deran do a backflip, the crashing of the water making you jump.

When you looked up at Andrew finally, you were surprised to see how uncertain he looked. You could see the thoughts moving through his brain, the cogs trying to make sense of why you were here, if he'd gotten something wrong. But you knew, and you knew he knew, that you should be crossing state lines by now. As if you'd said it out loud, face went hard and strange.

Blank, almost.

“So no med school.” he said darkly. It wasn't even a question.

You rolled your shoulders, trying to make it look easy. Trying to make any part of it feel easy. "No med school."

Andrew's eyes only narrowed more, his jaw tightening.

“I’ll call tomorrow,” you said. “I’ll tell them something came up. Or I’ll defer, maybe. People do that, right? They defer.”

His hands tightened into fists at his side, fingers curling in slow, controlled increments.

“It’s fine,” you said, talking faster now because he wasn’t saying anything, and the silence was getting worse the longer he held you under his stare, no matter how loud the house was around you. “I can work. I can help more. I already know half the shit you guys need before you even ask me. Have you talked to Deran about the mattress warehouse off the 23? Because I was thinking if you hit it before—”

And then he was reaching for you, a hand closed around your wrist, and he was moving.

You stumbled one step after him, your shoulders bumping into strangers. You didn't have time to apologize because he was pulling you so quickly, his broad back making a path ahead. You set your beer down to not add to the drinks already spilled on the floor, tugging at his strong hold.

"Andrew—"

He didn't answer, nor did he stop.

"Andrew, please—wait—" and then you saw he was bee lining for the back gate, and you dug your heels into the concrete of the pool deck, the rough edge of it catching under your flip flops as you tried to hold yourself in place.

He whirled around to glare at you, his grip tightening just enough to sear your skin. You had half a mind to be a little scared, but you just looked at him back with the same iciness, refusing to give him that.

"Stop, let's stay." you said, and then, a little softer, "Let's have a drink and go hide in your room."

His lip curled, and he was reaching out to grab you again, but you slipped free.

You ran back to slip into the house, to maybe weave through the crowd and lock yourself away, but he was on you when you met a road block of bodies, his arms going around your waist, locking in before you could twist away.

To anyone else, this probably looked normal. Playful roughhousing with one of the Cody boys and their girl. And besides, no one stopped Pope Cody when he was in the middle of something. No one even really questioned it.

He manhandled you into his arms, even as you squirmed, his hold already set, already decided.

"Andrew—get off!" you yelled, trying in vain to push him. "Get off!!"

But it was no use, he was breathing heavily, his eyes a mix of muddled color and pain, something too tight behind them, like he was making himself do this, no matter how badly he didn't want to be rough with you. His hands were so big, his muscles bigger, and in no time your gravity was being lurched off its axis, and you were being flung over his shoulder.

You slammed your fist into his lower back, his hand coming over the back of your thighs to stop your kicking.

“Put me down!” you shouted, hair falling into your face, blood rushing to your head. “Andrew Cody, put me down right now!”

“No.”

You shrieked in humiliation, in frustration, and he was walking out the back gate. He carried you across the driveway while you hit at him, furious, mortified, trying to twist enough to get a knee into his chest, his side, anything. Pavement blurred beneath you. The hood of your car flashed in the moonlight. He shifted you higher when you nearly slipped, palm pressing hard into the back of your thigh, his breathing heavy but controlled, like he had shut every other part of himself off except the part that knew how to move, how to get this done.

He came around to the front of the car, and opened the driver's side door.

Gravity whirled once again and the world tilted as he brought you back upright, only to push you off balance again and into the front seat.

"No!" you exclaimed, hands hooking at the door edge.

He didn't say anything, only was shoving your limbs into the seat, hands at your shoulders when you tried pushing back, firm, unyielding, not giving you an inch to work with.

"Andrew—stop!"

"No."

"Fuck—" you tried to push him away, "—off!"

You shoved at his chest and tried to duck under his arm, but he caught you again and again, both hands closing around the caps of your shoulders, pushing you down into the seat.

“You’re going.” he finally muttered.

“I’m not!” you spat back.

“You’re going.”

You wouldn't give in, twisting in the seat so your legs were half out the car door. Trying to stand again, he stepped between your knees, his body blocking the open space, boots planted in the ground, one hand catching both of your wrists when you swung at him.

“Andrew!”

“You’re going.”

The words came out of him like he had to force them through his teeth. Like it was all he could say.

“I want to be here!” you shouted. “Why is that so fucking hard for you to understand?”

His eyes burned into yours.

He didn't say anything else, the two of you a tangle of limbs until his hands snapped over the joints of your wrists, holding them tightly between you. You were heaving in breath, your muscles aching, the hair at your cheeks sticking to your face with what you realized then were tears.

“I love you.” you croaked.

He paused for a moment, looking down at you.

“I love you,” you said again, louder, like maybe if you said it hard enough he would stop looking at you like that. “I want to be with you. I want to live with you. I want to work with you. I want this.”

Your tears began to pour hot and fast, slipping down before you could do anything about them.

“Say it back,” you begged, trying in vain to push at his chest with the hands he held firmly in his grip.

He didn’t answer. But he'd had the worst frown on his face you'd ever seen. His eyes hard, brows drawn, as you begged—

“Say it, Andy.”

His mouth pressed into a line.

Your wrists twisted under his hand, but there was no real fight in it anymore. Your whole body had gone loose in pieces, anger draining out and leaving behind a panic so raw and ugly you felt almost humiliated.

“Tell me you love me,” you begged.

His face changed.

“Say it back.” you cried.

He looked down at his feet, his mouth twisting, his brows threading.

“No.” Your pleaded, hands trying to grip at him, but he held you too tightly. "No, look at me. Tell me you love me.”

He was breathing hard through his nose. His eyes were wet and mean with the effort of keeping it in, and that hurt worse than if he had screamed at you. You wished he'd just say something.

“Please,” you said again.

His hands dropped from your wrists as fast as if they'd been burned, and came to your face instead, both palms catching your cheeks, rough and too fast, his fingers curving harshly into your hair. He pulled your face up to look directly at him, his thumbs slipping through your tear tracks.

“Of course I love you,” he snapped, voice cracking. “Of course I do. What do you think this is?”

“Andy—”

“You have to go.” His voice split again, and he looked furious, whether it was at you or himself, you couldn't tell. But it was terrifying. The tears were beginning to blur your eyes. “You have to. You’re meant to do this. You’re meant to be a doctor. You’re not meant to be here with me and this—this shit.”

"I don't care—"

"You deserve a chance at a normal life." he said tightly, more a whisper than words. "I didn't. You have to go. You have to."

He stood there, shoulders rigid, mouth flat. It was his turn to beg.

“Please, sweetheart. You have to."

You threw him off of you, shoving him away, and he let go this time. You reached for the keys where he had thrown them into the cupholder at some point. You didn’t remember him doing it. You didn’t remember anything except his face, his hands, the sound of his voice telling you no.

You slammed the door and put the car in reverse with your whole body shaking, not looking at him. The tires screeched as he stayed where he was, his chest heaving as he watched you, his face crumbling entirely.

At the end of the driveway, you took one final look back in your rearview mirror.

You could just make out the tears falling down his face, his hands in his hair, elbows flared. Panic there, in his eyes. But relief too.

Relief in watching you leave.

now

Redbeard's was a dingy thing in downtown, thankfully close to your apartment, though you didn't even stop home. As badly as you wanted—hell, needed— to wash off the day, you knew once you made it through the door the fear would keep you from walking out again. And you hadn't gotten Jack's number. Picturing him waiting alone at the bar… on his only night off… you couldn't do it. To him, to you…to Andrew.

You found him outside, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his phone close to his face as he read something on the screen. It was like he sensed you coming, whatever strange sixth sense the two of you had for one another prickling up his spine to make him look.

You still had to stifle the gasp that threatened when his eyes found yours.

Jack Abbot, you told yourself again and again. Jack Abbot, not Andrew Cody.

For one brief, insane moment, you wondered if Andrew was with you there. If he was standing somewhere beside Jack on that gum spotted sidewalk, looking him over with that severe set to his mouth, suspicious of the warm little smile pulling at the man's face. Or maybe he would have been looking at you instead. Maybe he would have been smiling too, pleased in that way he got when you were brave.

You didn't even believe in ghosts, or spirits, or heaven or hell. Of any afterlife in which Andrew Cody's spirit would be there that night. You believed wholly in science. In blood and oxygen and a heart and a brain to keep a person alive… And you believed that when those things stopped, when there was no blood flowing to the brain, when the cells began to starve, there was no secret door opening somewhere else.

But that night, standing outside a bar in humid Pennsylvania while fireworks whistled and cracked and died somewhere distant over the water, you felt something too strange to dismiss.

Because… what if… what if there was something? What if there was some universe in which Andrew Cody and Jack Abbot's wife could see the two of you exactly as you were. Lonely, sad people who still carried their ghosts around. Maybe they knew. Maybe they had found each other out there, wherever it was, and maybe Jack’s wife had told Andrew about the man she left behind. How good he was, how he needed you and you needed him.

What other explanation was there?

When you approached Jack, there was an awfully familiar twinkle in his eye that had your lips pulling up into a real smile.

"Hey." you sighed.

“Hi,” he said, then cleared his throat a little. “Thank you for… coming out.”

You shrugged, shoving your hands into the pockets of your jeans to mirror him. “Guess I was curious about 'what the fuck this all is',”

Jack’s smile widened. His head tipped back for half a second before it ducked, his eyes dropping toward the sidewalk.

“Yeah,” he said finally with a nod. “Me too.”

You tilted your head at him. “Shall we?”

His eyes moved over you then, from the top of your head to the toes of your shoes, then back up to your face. It wasn’t the kind of look that undressed you. It was stranger than that. Softer. As if he was trying to make sense of the person standing in front of him, alive and still somehow carrying the woman he had lost.

How two lives could run so far apart and still end up here, on the same humid night, grief and curiosity braiding curiously through the two of you like some invisible red thread.

He nodded, then turned and opened the door.

“After you.”

When you bring Samira her forgotten badge, you clip it on for her and smooth your hands over her scrub top. Your fingers linger as you breathe out “there. Now you’re perfect.” 

Or especially when one of those weird overlaps where Samira and Jack are given a patient together. He’s showing her how to do an incision and drainage in a spot she’s never seen before. The embarrassment of admitting she doesn’t know how is quickly replaced by a flutter in her stomach where Jack stands close behind her. His big hand envelopes her as they begin to make the incision. 

Or when a patient lunges at you during night shift. There’s no injury but your back hit the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of you. Once the patient is taken care of, Jack takes you to an empty call room and insists he does a full check-up. 

Like stated, charged situations that were disrupting the harmony of it all. 

And something was bound to snap. 

A scheduled coworker outing mixed with copious amounts of alcohol was basically a recipe for a disaster. 

You pregamed with Samira and Santos. It was fun and flirty and once Santos pulled out the tequila for shots, you knew you were fucked. 

Samira was all dolled up, curly hair pooled around her shoulders, and dressed in a top that was flowy enough to expose the maroon lingerie underneath. 

It didn’t help that Samira kept checking in the whole time. She would rest her hand on top of yours and push out her bottom lip to ask “You okay?” 

Yeah. You were okay. Except you trying to hide the wetness pooling in your blue lacy panties that you picked specifically to wear out tonight. 

The bar is crowded when you arrive. Santos disappears almost immediately leaving you and Samira to battle the sea of people. You reach to lace your hands together, effectively gluing you together. And then you squeeze, just slightly to make sure she’s still with you. She squeezes back. 

Strike one.

The various members of PTMC were scattered across the bar. You already said hi to a couple unfamiliar faces before spotting your exact target. 

Jack has positioned himself in one of the booths while he nurses a beer. He has one of his plain black shirts on that you swear he buys in a size too small. 

Samira leans down close to your ear. “Mind if I split off? Wanna say hi to Clem from pedes.”

You nod. “Come back to us.”

“Always will.”

You cross the bar before sliding into the booth next to Jack, knees bumping against his but make no effort to move. 

“Hi Jack!” you giggle. 

“Woah sweetheart. You drink before this?”Jack places a hand on your knee to settle you. 

You nod. “Sami and Trin and I did shots. Didn’t know the vibe. You know you gotta drink sometimes to make it through these things.”

Fuck, you’re drunk rambling. 

“You want something else? I’m buying,” Jack offers. “For you and Samira.”

Oh. 

“Drinks on Dr. Abbot tonight?”

Jack leans down to whisper in your ear. “Only for my favorite girls.”

Strike two.

Warmth climbed up your neck and reached your face in one rush. Favorite girls. 

“What’re you gonna drink?” 

“Maybe a tequila and soda?” you offer sheepishly. 

Jack shakes his head with a smile, patting his hand on your knee twice before sliding away. 

“With lime!” you call out. 

Jack returns with your drink. His hand instinctively finds itself back on your leg. 

It’s a blur after that of people who stop by to say hello or chat for a bit. Dana brings you another drink and Whitaker and Santos sit to talk about the insanity of the earlier day shift. HIPAA approved, of course. 

A bit into the conversation, you made the move to interlock your fingers with Jack’s under the table. 

Innocent enough. 

You're giggly, flushed, and holding hands with Jack. What else could you want? Well, there is one thing. 

Samira floats through the room, somehow making the dive bar glow with her presence. Your silent prayers are answered when she makes a turn towards your table. 

“Was wondering when you’d show up Samira,” Jack huffs out. 

Samira rolls her eyes. “I’m being social, Dr. Abbot. Wasn’t that what we talked about?”

“I can maybe recall that information.”

“Besides,” Samira starts. “Heard drinks were on you tonight.”

You press your lips together to hide your smile. “Said he was only buying for his favorite girls.”

Busted. 

“Dr. Abbot,” Samira gasps. “I thought attendings weren’t supposed to have favorites?”

Jack leans forward. “Only on the clock.”

You feel Jack’s hand tighten in your grip, a tell-tale sign of the effect her words are having on him.

“Mind if I steal your girl?” Samira inquired. 

There it is again. A possessive little word. Hers.

Jack puts both his hands up as you blush. 

“You wanna dance?” Samira inquires. 

You nod eagerly. “Why not?”

Samira grins and reaches down to tug your hand away from Jack’s. “Sorry Dr. Abbot.” 

Once you get to the dance floor, Samira’s hands rest gently on your hips, fingers fully splayed against your ass. 

“This okay?” Samira murmurs. 

You press your body to hers. There’s a lot of places you want to touch her but unfortunately the resident got her first pick. You lace your hands around her neck. 

Your eyes haven’t left hers. She’s impossible to read. You hope you aren’t making a fool of yourself with how needy, how desperate you’re feeling. 

Thankfully the bar is crowded enough that the entirety of PTMC doesn’t have their eyes on you.  

Samira glances down at your lips. Your gloss has faded as the night went on. 

You twist your fingers around the curls at the nape of Samira’s neck. She was intoxicating. 

“You look so beautiful tonight,” Samira finally speaks. 

You blush, head falling to hide the flush in your cheeks. It doesn’t help that the alcohol already has casted a rosy hue over your skin. 

“Stop,” you giggle. “Making me wanna kiss ya.”

The confession spills out easily from your lips. 

Samira squeezes your hips almost instinctively. “Do it.”

Strike three. 

Jack still sits in one of the booths, now half listening to Santos argue with Whitaker and Robby about something unimportant. 

But his eyes remain locked in the center of the room where through the sea of people, he can spot Samira pressed up against you. 

To his shock, Jack watches as you surge forward to kiss Samira hard. 

Her heart is beating out of her chest. She’s finally kissing you, soft lips messily and hungrily slotting against hers.  

It couldn’t have been more than five seconds the two of you were kissing but the damage was done. His face heated the second the two of you touched. 

Samira leans down to whisper something in your ear before two heads promptly turn and meet the eyes of the already staring attending. 

Uh oh. Busted. 

Jack can’t remove his gaze. He feels like a pervert for getting half-hard from watching you two kiss. An otherwise private moment. 

Samira brings a finger up to wipe the corner of her mouth, her look as intense as when she takes lead on a trauma. 

And you? You wink at Jack. 

For a second, the tension stretches tight across the space between you, heavy with the weight of being caught in the act. But instead of pulling away, the thrill of his undivided attention only feeds the fire.

You break the heavy silence with a soft laugh, untangling yourself from the intimate hold to close the physical distance between the three of you before the spell can break.

Samira slides in the booth, hand tugging yours to follow in after. 

Jack greets you both right away. He clicks his tongue. “You ladies have fun?”

The resident beside you leans forward to fix something on Jack’s shirt, her fingers ghosting over the exposed skin of his chest. 

“We were actually thinking about heading out,” Samira murmurs. 

You loll your head off or hers to meet Jack with a look that is already driving him crazy. 

“You coming?” 

Jack’s jaw clenches. “You sure?”

You shoot him a coy smile. “Positive.”

An irish goodbye is silently decided. People have been slipping in and out of the bar all night. Besides, the three of you getting caught leaving together was bound to spark some questions. 

The second the first breeze blows outside, you’re suddenly reminded of the fact that you forgot a jacket. 

Your personal space is enveloped by the attending. His fingers run over the cold bumps on your arms. Jack drapes his big jacket over your shoulders. 

“Coulda told you it’d be cold,” he states. 

You purse your lips. 

“Jack,” you whine. “Jackie.”

Samira’s off to the side, holding Jack’s phone as she handles booking the ride home. 

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

You lean out to reach for his hand. “Will ya kiss me? Been thinking about it alllllllll night.”

“You seemed to have plenty of fun on the dance floor,” Jack chirps back. 

Your face flushes. “Just wanna kiss you.”

The older man takes his face in your hands, thumb swiping across the top of your cheek where some of your mascara has started to run. 

“Not here baby,” Jack starts. “Wanna kiss you properly at home.”

You deflate as you drunkenly pout. “Not even a little something to hold me over?” 

“Don’t be a brat,” Samira interjects. “Uber will be here in five minutes.”

It had been a mutual agreement to go to Jack’s place. No roommates, big space, big bed. All you needed. 

The uber might be Jack’s own personal hell. 

In a desperate attempt to reduce awkwardness, Jack opens the back door for you and Samira. He himself takes the passenger seat. 

As Jack makes small talk, you can’t help yourself. It’s dark, you're buzzed, and the mere thought about the situation you found yourself in was really getting you going.

Jack hears the shuffling in the backseat as you slide over to the middle seat. Naively, he thinks it might just be the fact that you classify yourself as a clingy drunk. 

That thought goes right out the window as he watches your nails ghost over Samira’s leg. 

“Sami,” you whisper. 

The resident grabs your hand before you can move it any closer to her danger zone. 

“You’re a problem, you know that?” 

You grin. “You gonna punish me?”

“Careful,” she clicks her tongue. 

As if sensing what you need, Samira’s lips attach to your neck. Your fingers interlock with hers as she works her away up your jawline until she finally finds the spot that makes your breath hitch. Bingo. 

She stays there the remainder of the ride, kissing and sucking and grinning as she watches you writhe. 

“Ladies,” Jack interjects. “We’re here.”

There’s a charged energy as you and Samira stumble into Jack’s place. He silently leads you both through the house until you finally reach the main bedroom. 

It’s silent for a moment. You had done all the foreplay and flirting to get here, now someone has to act. 

“Time for that kiss Jackie?”

“Told ya she’s greedy,” Samira hums.

Jack takes one big stride before grabbing your face between his big hands. He finally presses his lips to yours, setting a slow passionate rhythm. He was savoring this. 

Samira slinks up behind you, stomach pressed to your back as her hands roam your body.

It’s a mutual agreement that you’re all wearing too many clothes. 

Jack breaks the kiss to reach for the hem of your shirt. He pulls it off quickly, a groan leaving both his and Samira’s mouth at the sight of you. You want to flush with embarrassment at being undressed but then their hands are back on you grabbing and squeezing and kissing.

“So beautiful,” Jack muses, hand coming up to cup your breasts that are already spilling over your bra.

Jack’s thumb brushes over your nipple through the lace, his heat grounding you even as your mind starts to spin. Across from you, Samira catches your gaze, her breaths coming just as short, her eyes dark with a hunger that mirrors your own. The weight of both of them pressing into you is almost overwhelming, desperate desire takes over.

Leaning back from Jack’s touch with a breathless murmur, you slide off the edge of the cushions, dropping to the floor between them.

You're on your knees, slowly pulling Samira’s jeans down her hips to expose the most gorgeous set of panties you might have ever seen. It’s impossible to resist. 

You kiss her everywhere: thighs, stomach, hips.

“God Sami,” you groan. “So fucking beautiful, isn’t she Jack?”

“Never been so angry I can’t kneel,” he murmurs. 

You look up at him, offering a small, knowing smirk at the raw frustration in his voice. Samira lets out a soft, breathy laugh from above you, her hands resting gently on your shoulders as she looks between the two of you, clearly thrilled by the undivided attention.

“Go,” Jack commands. “I wanna watch.”

You don't need to be told twice. Slipping her panties down her long legs, you press your hands firmly against her inner thighs, pushing them wide to open her up completely for both you and Jack.

You lean in closer, the scent of her arousal hitting you instantly as you press a soft kiss to her sensitive inner thigh. She trembles under your touch, letting out a soft sigh that only makes you hungrier to taste her. You part her gently with your fingers, exposing her softest skin to the cool air of the room before finally leaning down to press your lips against her.

Your face is buried in Samira’s cunt soon after. Her thighs are a mess with the mix of your saliva and her arousal. She was sweet and you were absolutely taking your time swirling your tongue through her folds. 

Samira hips stuttered, her fingers tangling tightly into your hair as she arched off the surface beneath her. A sharp, breathless cry broke from her lips as her muscles suddenly clamped down, shaking violently with the intense wave of her orgasm. You stayed right there, drinking in every shuddering tremor of her release until her breath finally slowed to a ragged hum.

It’s a silent agreement between you and Samira that it’s Jack’s turn. 

You crawl up to him first, hand grabbing his chin to pull him in for a bruising kiss. He hums when he tastes Samira’s release on your lips.

Samira makes quick work of his belt. She tugs his jeans down, cock springing free against his stomach. The tip is already glistening with precum.

His breath hitches as the cool air hits his bare skin, his hips twitching slightly in anticipation. You slowly break the kiss, leaving his lips wet and flushed, your gaze dropping down to the length Samira has just freed. Jack lets out a ragged exhale, completely at your mercy. His eyes turn dark as he watches the two of you. Samira looks up, offering a quick, wicked smile that says everything you need to know

You slink back to kneel beside the resident. 

And then both your mouths are on his cock. 

Jack almost finishes right then and there when you grab the base and tap it on Samira’s waiting tongue.

Samira takes him first, eyes fluttering shut as she begins sucking. Her mouth is full of his cock, her head bobbing up and down in a desperate attempt to take all of him. You focus on what she can’t take, tongue sliding up and down the shaft.

“Fuck, god, fuck” Jack groans. 

Jack grabs a fistfull of your hair, pulling you away from his cock to bring you to him.

“Come on baby. Please ride me.”

You tilt your head just slightly. “You sure?”

“Positive.”

You position yourself so that your knees are slotted on both sides of Jack’s head. You’re facing Samira, arousal growing as she takes Jack’s cock deeper.

A gasp escapes you as he wraps his arms around your thighs, pulling your dripping pussy right down to his waiting mouth. He was relentless. His tongue was somehow everywhere.

Your fingers tangle in his damp hair, riding the intense waves of heat his tongue is driving through you. Every lap and swirl makes your knees tremble, forcing you to lean heavily over him just to stay upright. You arch into his mouth, completely undone by the friction, but your eyes remain wide, hopelessly locked onto Samira.

She meets your blown-out gaze, a low hum vibrating in her throat as she picks up the pace. Watching her take him while he worships you sends a sharp spike of adrenaline straight to your core. The sheer sensory overload pushes the tension in the room past the breaking point, and Jack's hands tighten their grip on your thighs like a vice, his muscles coiling dangerously tight beneath you.

The relentless friction of Jack’s tongue paired with the intoxicating sight of Samira finally snaps the last thread of your control. Your vision blurs as a fierce, blinding orgasm crashes over you, pulling a loud, shattered cry from your throat as your hips arch helplessly against his mouth. You clench your fists in his hair, riding the explosive waves of your own release just as Jack’s hips jerk upward, his choked grunt indicating that your undoing has nearly pushed him right over the edge alongside you.

Jack clenches his jaw, head thrown out as Samira takes his full length. There’s something so beautiful about seeing her plump lips take all of him. 

“M’ not ah!” Jack grunts. “Not gonna last much longer.”

Samira rests her lips on the tip with a smile. He’s absolutely wrapped around her finger right now. 

“You wanna cum?” She bats her eyelashes up at the older attending. Sickening. 

You’re still eating her out relentlessly. You lick up into her, collecting all of her wetness on your tongue. She feels you everywhere: her clit, her folds, her hole. 

“Maybe you should make him say please,” you murmur. The vibration on her cunt sends sparks throughout Samira. God she’s close too. 

Your tongue flattens against her as you circle her clit. Samira tightens around your head. 

Being suffocated between Samira’s thighs might be your ideal place to die. 

“I think-“ Samira starts. “Ah!”

You insert two fingers into her, curling up at the knuckle point. 

“Come on Dr. Mohan. Tell Dr. Abbot what he needs to do.”

You slow down to forgive her swollen clit. You keep your fingers inside of her, instead flattening your tongue against her pussy to drink her in. 

“I think,” Samira starts again. “Dr. Abbot needs to say please.”

You hum. “Good girl.”

Jack feels like he’s gonna explode. He’s been in war, lost his leg, and seen the horrors of the emergency room. But somehow, watching the dominance of you and Samira was absolutely killing him. 

And all he needed to do was say please. 

Jack reaches forward to pull Samira closer. She twists her body to allow you access while still making Jack finish. 

“So? You wanna cum?”

The attending’s hips buck. 

“God. Yes. Yes please.”

Samira pats his leg before taking the tip of his aching cock in her mouth, tongue swirling around the slit. 

It doesn’t take long after that for either of them to finish. Samira is already immensely overstimulated and cums all while sucking down Jack. 

Jack lets go with a bitten off moan. His eyes squeeze shuts as holds Samira’s hair with one hand and the bedsheets with the other. 

Samira takes every drop, continuing to work Jack through his orgasm with a mix of her mouth and hand. 

Finally, she sits back on the heels of the foot just as you slither in to kiss her. 

First her hips, then her stomach, and finally her boob. You wrap your lips around her nipple, a whimper leaving Samira at the sensation. 

You’re perfectly fine to stay latched where you are, swirling your tongue around the buds and grabbing at whatever you can. 

But when Samira grabs your chin and lifts your head up to face her, you’re putty in her hands. She presses her thumb down on your bottom lip. 

A silent ‘open up’.  

Your lips part. 

Samira spits Jack’s release, gravity taking it down right into your waiting mouth. 

You accept it eagerly, waiting until the lost drop for you to close your lips and swallow. 

Jack strokes his softening cock at somehow the freakiest but hottest thing he’s ever seen. 

Samira pats your cheek. “Good girl.”

The exhaustion begins to creep in. You were all spent. Multiple orgasms and a long night of drinking was taking a toll. 

You finally clamber up to the top of the bed. 

Jack’s arm loops around you as you duck down to kiss his bottom lip. 

The mattress shifts once more as Samira’s weight is added. You rest your head on Jack’s chest as the resident opts to curl around you. Samira kisses the back of your neck as she reaches over to hold Jack’s hand.  

The resident ducks down close enough she can whisper. “You know I own a strap.”

The confession mixes with the haze of the room. Jack’s head snaps over. He lets out a low whistle. 

The words send a delicious shiver straight down your spine. Your mind races with the mental image, already aching for how wild the next time will be.

But for now, clean-up can wait. 

pope didn’t have a thing for feet, considering anything broadly perceived as unsanitary didn’t pique his interest, but after eyeing your white pedicured toes in your wedged sandals? he could make an exception. crossing one leg over the other, pope knew he couldn’t help himself as soon as the imprint of your folds showed through the flimsy material of your bikini— his gaze darkening before clearing his throat and drawing your attention. embarrassingly, you had jumped in surprise when you heard pope in the kitchen, his shadowy figure making your heart race as he stalked towards you. “the party’s outside.” you watched as he leaned against the wall frame, a tight black t-shirt hugging his body to perfection.

straightening up, you smoothed your hair over your shoulder. “sorry, i hope i’m not intruding—!” you were just about to get up before pope stepped down into the den, a whiskey glass in his hand as he motioned for you to stay where you were sitting. taking a seat not too far away from you, you suddenly felt exposed as pope’s eyes ran down your oiled legs, his tongue wetting his bottom lip before he took the neatly rolled blunt from behind his ear and held it up in offering. “i won’t lecture you on the dangers of being a pretty girl and welcoming yourself inside a stranger’s house if you spark this with me.” your skin burned hot at his words, your acrylic nails digging nervously into your palms.

“you think i’m pretty?” pope smiled, knowing he reeled you in right where he wanted you. he hoped you’d entertain him for a while, maybe even give him a little peck on his cheek if he asked nicely. “i do. you’re the prettiest thing that’s been in this house in a really long time.” you studied the man sitting in front of you, deciding that his lap looked rather empty as he manspreaded before you. holding his stare, you slowly uncrossed your legs, catching the way his eyes drifted down to the apex of your thighs. “you live here?” pope offered his hand, your palm finding his as you stood up and walked over to him. guiding you to sit on one side of his lap, your knees stayed tucked in between his legs— his rough palm resting on the soft curve of your ass.

taking the lighter out of his pocket, pope handed it over to you, motioning for you to light the end of the blunt that currently sat in between his fingers. you watched as the light illuminated his face in orange flickers, the scene being enough to get your stomach erupting in a fit of butterflies. he was even more handsome up close, the curly tufts of his hair more noticeable than before. blowing the smoke away from your face, he hummed deeply. “not really, i just stay here from time to time.” pope shrugged, his eyes zeroing in on your glossy lips. “that means craig and deran are your brothers?” you looked up, the clouds of smoke lingering heavily in the dark space. not taking his eyes off of your face, he nodded.

“..so that makes you???” realizing you were asking for his name, pope cleared his throat, snapping out of his trance. “andrew.” he replied curtly, his cock stirring in his pants at the sight of you bringing the blunt up to your lips. “andrew? aww, i like that.” pope loved the sound of his name rolling off of your tongue, his mind running wild with the possibilities of you saying his name in a different context. “how do you know deran and craig?” he couldn’t hold back the bite in his tone, jealousy suddenly coursing through his veins at the fact that he wasn’t the one to meet you first. “they came up to me and my friend on the beach yesterday, ‘invited us over,” you smiled sweetly, “parties aren’t really my thing, but my friend really wanted to come. she has a crush.”

pope nodded, his curiosity getting the best of him with his next question. “do you have a crush on one of them too?” you studied his face, shrugging. “they’re cute,” you whispered, feeling against the stubble on his cheek, “not my type though. i like men who are more.. mature.” pope felt his chest bloom with pride, the blunt now being passed back to him. just as he was going to take a drag, a small glimmer in the corner of his eye caught his attention. looking down at where your lips had just been, pope felt a carnal-like desire once he saw the leftover remnants of your lipgloss adorning the cigar wrap. it was your own personal mark, and something about it just drove him crazy.

“that’s cute.” he held the blunt up for you to see. “what lipgloss is that?” you couldn’t help but giggle, the sound like music to pope’s ears. “why? do you want some?” you teased, rubbing your thumb over his bottom lip. the action was more intimate than pope anticipated, his jaw clenching as you shifted your weight in his lap. the soft strokes against your skin turned more rough, his hands working your flesh as your smile dropped. “no,” he leaned in, “i just wonder what it would look like smudged against something else.” your breath hitched in your throat, a wave of both excitement and anxiety washing over you. as much as pope’s age intimidated you, the urge to be on your knees for him overpowered everything else.

others would think that after the accusations pope threw at you, the two of you would be at odds. but in reality, it was quite the opposite. you two were closer now than ever before. not that you took him back immediately. in fact, you made sure that he did some groveling. but he was willing and able to do anything that proved he wouldn't doubt you again. from flowers to home cooked meals. a completely new wardrobe, and new pairs of shoes. he was ready to give you whatever it is that you want. you had tried to tell him that he didn't need to buy all this stuff for you. but every time he remembered the sad look on your face when he yelled at you, he felt guilty all over again.

currently, pope had you bent over the tub, rinsing out the purple dye from your hair. he had insisted on doing it for you, despite the many times you've done it for yourself. not like you minded, though. his thick fingers are doing wonders as they massage the base of your skull. once done rinsing everything out, he grabs a nearby towel. wrapping it around your hair as he guides you to a standing position. one of his hands reaches out to your waist, stabilizing you as you sway from getting light-headed. he wrings out your hair with the towel before hanging it up to air dry. then, he begins brushing your hair, making sure to get all of the tangles out.

"you know, you don't have to do all this. i can do my own hair, andy," you say for what feels like the umpteenth time. but pope just shakes his head, continuing to brush every section of your hair. you stare at him through the mirror, a soft smile on your face as you watch him. he's so gentle with you. it reminds you of when you got your first barbie at seven and didn't wanna ruin her. she was the first toy that you ever got that wasn't second-hand. so every time you did her hair, you brushed it with soft and slow strokes.

craig later broke her right arm and head off after using her in some dumbass experiment. but you also remember pope attempting to fix her with some super glue. she wasn't quite the same after that, but you appreciated the gesture from him.

"do you like it?" you ask. "my hair, i mean." pope nods. "it's pretty. reminds of that pony from lena's show," he replies. a soft snort escapes you. you know exactly what show and pony he's talking about. recently, lena had been obsessed with 'my little pony.' it was all she watched these past couple of weeks. "you mean twilight sparkle? she's lena's favorite. i'm more of a rainbow dash girl myself," you say with a simple shrug. that cracks a small smile out of him. it's there and then it's gone, but at least it was there in the first place. he likes to hear anything that involve his two girls. even if it's something miniscule like a children's show.

knowing your routine by heart, once pope's finished detangling your hair, he squeezes out a small amount of heat protectant in the palm of hand, massaging it into your hair. he then begins to blow dry your hair on the lowest heat setting, careful not to dry it out. and once that's all done, he sprays some leave in conditioner in your hair, since you hate how frizzy it gets after blow drying it. only then does he look at you. he rests his chin on your shoulder, meeting your eyes through the mirror. "you look pretty," he murmurs.

"yeah? thank you, baby." the tips of his ears turn a soft pink at the pet name. you've been calling him that recently. ever since the small fight you two had about two months ago. "your hair is getting longer. it's growing out from the buzz cut." one of your hands reaches behind you to touch his curls. he leans in your touch like a dog wanting to be pet. "do you think it's getting too long?" he questions. you shake your head. "no, not at all. i like your curls."

you turn around to look at him face to face. the small of your back pressed up against the edge of your bathroom counter. his hands come down to rest at your waist while yours wraps around his shoulders. "i gotta head out soon. i promised craig that i would help him set up for the party tonight." pope lets out a groan of annoyance. "why can't he and deran do it themselves?"

"because i promised craig that i would help him out at the next party after he changed one of the tires on my car for free the other day," you explain. "but you don't have to come if you don't want to. i can drive myself."

"no, it's okay, i wanna take you. what time do we leave?"

"uh, i don't know. he didn't tell me a specific time. maybe in an hour? that way i can finish getting ready." pope nods. "okay, sounds good." but he doesn't pull away. he just continues to stare at you and hold you. "baby, that means i need you to let me go," you say with a smile. he blinks once. "oh, right, sorry," he murmurs sheepishly, stepping back so you can leave the bathroom. "don't apologize." you brush off his apology with a kiss on the cheek before side stepping away from him so you can sit at your vanity.

just like you said, an hour later, you and pope leave the house and head towards smurf's. thank god that she left town for the weekend for whatever reason. you've seen her a few times since the little 'lying about you drugging pope' incident, but other than that, she's surprisingly left you alone. when you arrive at the cody household, jay is sitting at the bar doing homework. you greet him by ruffling his hair. he attempts to slap your hand away, a look of fake annoyance on his face. out of everyone in his family, he likes you the most. appreciating the fact that you've never treated him like an outsider. probably because you're technically one too.

baz sits on one of the pool chairs while on the phone. probably talking to one of cath's coworkers at the bar. after her recent disappearance, the man has been on edge. more agitated than usual. he'll go from one to a hundred if you're not careful. you hate it. he's barely been there for lena, rather choosing to drop her off at a sitter's house instead of watching her himself. you know, like a real dad. and when she is around, he's unnecessarily mean to her despite this being a rough time for them both.

craig and nicky are by the pool, snorting away at whatever coke he's recently bought. you walk over to the two of them, shoving craig in the shoulder. "yo, you ready to set up or what?" you ask. he gives you a thumbs up, plugging his nose so he can ingest all the coke he just snorted. then he stands and gestures for you to follow him. "where's deran?" he just shrugs. "shit if i know. probably with adrian or something," he replies. before you follow him all the way to the garage, you reach out a hand to brush pope's. "i'll be back, okay?" he nods, leaving to head into the kitchen and wash the pile of dishes he noticed when coming in.

once he knows his older brother is gone, craig looks at you and asks, "you two like, official yet?" you shake your head. "no, not yet."

"what's taking you so long, huh? you guys have basically been dating for years."

you scoff, helping him put some beers in an ice bucket. "please, that's not true and you know that."

"are we forgetting when he beat up that guy for trying to come over to the house after standing you up? and then he proceeded to take you out to cheer you up?"

"that doesn't make us a couple-" you try to argue.

"it doesn't make you guys 'just friends', either," craid retorts. "i'm serious, dude. why aren't you guys dating? you've already hooked up, you live with him. shit, you might as well be married at this point."

"since when do you care about me and my love life, craig? besides, it's just... i don't wanna ruin it. i like the way things are now, and i'm afraid that if i tell him how i really feel, everything will change."

"that's bullshit, you know. pope, he... he fucking loves you. adores you, even. if you're personality hasn't scared him away, then you telling him that you've been in love with him for forever definitely won't," craig jokes.

you toss a couple of ice cubes towards him. he jumps at the cold sensation. "you asshole," you say. "but, uh, i'll think about it. telling him, i mean."

"good. now, c'mon, i'm not carrying all this shit by myself," he states, gesturing to the large amount of grocery bags sitting in the garage.

the party is a total hit. craig and deran practically invited all of oceanside it seems like. people are hooking up in every room available. and if there's not any rooms, they're doing it on any counterspace they can find. not to mention the tons of people piled up in the pool, or in the backyard. there's probably even some stragglers in the garage.

you've stuck by pope's side for most of it, knowing how much he hates these parties. but he loves watching you during them. he admires how you are during said parties. you're loud and confident, but not obnoxiously so, like craig. you whisk through the large crowds like it's nothing. not having to ask people to move because they do it for you. it's not like with pope, when they're moving out of his way in fear. when people move out of your way, they're doing it out of respect. because these people, people you've barely interacted with, think you're cool. with your dyed hair and baggy clothes, people like you.

you and pope sit by the pool, sharing a lounge chair. neither of you mind being pressed shoulder to shoulder. he likes it. keeps him grounded. baz occupies the chair beside you, flirting with some random chick. just this morning, he was worried about cath, but now, it's as if that never happened. you can't believe him. you wouldn't be surprised if he's forcing lena to stay the night at her sitters. again. "i'm gonna get a drink. do you want anything?" you ask, looking over at pope. he shakes his head. "nah, 'm okay. thanks, though." you leave him with a soft pat on his thigh.

there's a few people crowding the kitchen. you stare at the open fridge for a few seconds. you're not really feeling alcohol tonight, but that seems to be all that craig bought. when you dig a little deeper, you find a single can of diet coke. you don't even know how old it is, but it'll do. on your walk back outside, some guy stops you. he looks to be about your age. around six feet, brown hair that falls just above his shoulders, and bright green eyes. he's handsome, sure, but not your type.

"hey, i'm doug," he greets, putting his hand out for you to shake. you give him your name, shaking his hand. "so, uh, you new around here?"

"no, i'm not. i'm a friend of the cody's. are you?"

"same as you. i sell to craig every now and then," he replies. you nod awkwardly, knowing what he's doing. he's trying to make himself look cool to you right now. key word trying. secretly letting you know that he sells, so he can hook you up with some shit. well, too bad you don't do coke. "that's cool. i'll, uh, see you around," you say, attempting to walk around him to leave. and you almost make it out, until his hand snaps forward and grabs your wrist. "hey, baby, where you going?" he questions sleazily, leaning up against the wall. conveniently blocking your way out of this conversation. "i'm leaving," you state.

"c'mon, you ain't gotta leave-"

"no, but i want to. listen, i got someone waiting for me, so i'd appreciate it if you let me go." the stern look in your eyes and your tone of voice leaves no room for arguments. he drops your wrist before putting his hands up on surrender. "my bad, girl. didn't know you were accounted for," he says, moving to the side. you don't say anything as you walk past him and back outside.

unbeknownst to you, pope had been watching that interaction the whole time. based on the rigid set of your shoulders and how tightly you're clenching your jaw, he can tell that it left you on edge. "who was that?" he asks once you return to his side. "just some guy. one of craig's friends, i guess," you reply. "want me to take care of him for you?" he offers.

"no, it's okay. i can handle him if i need to. i just want you to stay here with me." so he does.

even with all this noise, you must fall asleep on pope's shoulder. when you wake, most of the crowd is gone, but there's still a few people here and there. you rub the sleep away from your eyes. groaning softly as you sit up. he looks down at you. "you feeling okay?" he asks quietly. "yeah, i'm sorry. i didn't mean to fall asleep on you," you apologize, yawning. he's about to say something about you not needing to apologize, when a little voice cuts in.

lena and alison, her babysitter, enter through the side gate. you get up first, with pope following. the poor woman looks drained. you can't imagine what she's going through taking care of someone else's kid, on top of having two sons of her own. "i'm sorry to just drop by like this. i was gonna keep lena for the night, but i just got called in for a shift at the bar. and baz wasn't answering his phone. he wasn't at his house, so i figured he would be here," she explains, letting a short breath.

"don't even worry about it. i can take care of her, it's no worries," you assure. lena grabs your outstretched hand while you take her backpack from alison with the other. you sling it over your shoulder so you can free one of your hands. then you fish out some money out of your pocket to slyly hand it over. alison tries to push the money away, but you insist. she gives you a small of gratitude, which you return. "i'll see you tomorrow, okay, lena?" she says to the young girl. lena waves goodbye, and then alison leaves.

you turn your attention to her at your side. "you sleepy?" she nods. "alright, let's get you to bed." just before you leave, you look over at pope. "can you find baz for me? i wanna talk to him after." pope mutters a soft 'yeah', before going off to find said man. you carry lena inside the house, forcing her to rest her head on your shoulder and close her eyes so she doesn't hear or see anything she shouldn't. walking past smurf's room, you can hear the familiar sounds of someone having sex. ew. you know that craig's room will obviously be occupied, and you're not gonna take jay's room from him, so you end up at deran's. he told you he was staying at his own place anyways so he shouldn't need it.

once inside, you shut the door behind you. you lay lena down onto the bed, tucking her in. "where's grandma smurf?" she asks. "i don't know, baby. she left for the weekend. some people are in her room, so you're gonna stay in uncle deran's for tonight, yeah?" she nods. god bless this girl, so understanding and mature for her age. "i like your new hair," she compliments, which you smile at. "thanks. hey, if your dad's cool with it, maybe i can dye a strand of your hair. pink, purple, whatever color you want."

that gets her excited. "really?"

"yeah, i promise. now you get some sleep," you command gently. "and i'll make you pancakes in the morning."

"banana chocolate chip?"

"banana chocolate chip," you confirm. you smooth some of her hair back, kissing her forehead, before standing up. just as you get to the door, lena calls your name. "goodnight, love you," she whispers.

"love you too, baby."

you hear yelling coming from outside. must be baz and pope, you think to yourself. and much to no one's surprise, you were right. they're talking over each other so loudly you can't tell what they're saying. but the second pope's eyes land on you, he silences. he knows what you had him get baz for.

"are you fucking serious, man? you forgot about your own daughter?!" you snap at baz. "alison said she called you a bunch and you never answered. i had to pay her, because i sure as shit know you're not-"

"oh my god, i don't need to hear it from you! i just heard it from pope. i don't need another lecture," baz cuts you off, rubbing his hands over his face.

"i don't give a shit how many lectures you get. i don't care if this whole party hears it. you're being a shitty father right now. you should be at home with your her. but instead, you're here. flirting with some random chick. lena just lost her mom, she should have her dad around."

"do not tell me how to raise my own kid, berry. don't even."

"but you're barely even raising her!" you retort. "i know what it's like to lose your mother. and i sure as shit know how it feels to watch your dad get preoccupied with other things instead of their own daughter. you're hurting lena, baz! she feels scared and alone! you need to be there for her-"

baz cuts you off yet again. but this time, with a sadistic laugh. "right, i know what this is. you may think that you're looking after lena, but you're not. you know what you're doing? projecting. forcing me to be a father isn't gonna bring yours back. maybe focus on your own daddy issues before worrying about lena's."

you can't even find the right words to say anything. what he says hurts. because deep down, you know it's probably true. baz smirks at you like he's won. and maybe he has. you let out a quiet sigh. "i'm, uh, i'm gonna go take a smoke," you whisper to pope. he tears his angered gaze away from baz, softening it when he looks at you. "want me to come with?" you shake your head. "no, i-i wanna be alone," you reply shakily.

barely looking at the two men, you push anybody in your way to walk out of the gate. you lean against the brick wall, taking a deep breath to calm yourself. tears prick in the corner of your eyes, and you blink them away. fuck. you hate how much baz's words affected you. there's a single joint in your jean pocket, which you pull out and light almost immediately. the second the weed hits your system, you feel calmer. less tense.

you're so stuck inside of your own head that you don't hear the other people out here with you.

"dude, i'm telling you. this chick is a fine piece of ass. like, she's sexy as fuck. i tried hinting that i sell, chicks dig that shit. but she wasn't biting. no worries, though, i'm gonna get her to fuck one way or another." you recognize the voice belonging to doug. the weird guy from earlier.

the voice who responds you don't recognize. "i don't think you can, man. apparently, she's with one of the cody's. the oldest. pope, i think."

doug laughs. "pope? he was in prison a couple years back. he wouldn't know what to do with a girl like her after all those years. besides, he's a fucking freak. a weirdo. no one would wanna be around a guy like him."

you've heard enough.

you step out from the shadows, spooking the two guys. "hey, doug," you say condescendingly. "you remember me?" he nods slowly. "well, good, because i heard you talking earlier. and, uh, i don't really appreciate the things you said. you see, i don't take too kindly to people who say stupid shit about those i care about."

doug doesn't respond. hell, he barely breathes while looking at you.

"what? got nothing to say now? you were talking such big shit to your homeboy here just a minute ago. but now that i'm here you're suddenly speechless?"

his friend looks between you and doug, nervousness evident all over him. you hold out the joint to him, before nodding your head towards the house. a silent command to take it as payment and leave. which he does with almost no hesitation.

leaving you and doug alone.

you're not sure who throws the first punch. it must be him because you get knocked off your game for just a second. but you quickly recover. you throw a punch. then another. and this goes on for who knows how long.

someone stumbles upon the two of you fighting, now on the ground, hurrying back inside to gather a crowd. the sound of a fight is intriguing so everyone follows him. craig and deran push their way to the front to get the best view, but also just in case they need to stop shit before it gets too serious. the last thing they need is someone dying in a stupid fight right in the middle of their driveway. but what they see stops them in their tracks.

it's you. hair a mess, shirt torn, blood dripping from your nose. all while you're sitting on top of this guys chest bashing his face in. deran mutters an expletive, hurrying off to find pope. craig, on the other hand, starts taking bets on who's gonna win. he puts money on you, of course.

it's like you have tunnel vision. all you can focus on is this asshole. blood rushes loudly in your ears that you don't hear the cheers of everyone around you. nor do you hear pope's voice calling out your name. he runs up to you, pulling you off of doug and holding your thrashing body against his chest. only then do you notice everyone around you.

pope drags you away into the house to the nearest bathroom. he then shuts and locks the door behind you both. he sits you down on the toilet seat, kneeling down to meet your eyes. "what happened?" he questions softly.

"nothing," you murmur, dropping your head. you feel ashamed. you let your anger get the better of you, making you act irrationally. you've never been a fighter, not really. rather choosing to fight with words than throw fists. yet here you are.

pope's mouth twitches. he wants to say something else. anything that'll get you to talk about what caused you to act the way you did. but he doesn't push. so he grabs the first aid kit from under the sink and sets it open on the counter. he grabs a clean, nearby rag and runs it under cold water. using it to wipe away any dried blood from off your face. he's sure to be gentle with you, just in case you might have a slight concussion.

your injuries aren't too severe, thankfully. just a cut on your lip and right above your eyebrow. your nose might be fractured, but not broken. your knuckles are probably the worst injury of them all. he grabs some gauze to wrap around them. all that's left is to check for a concussion. he asks you a series of questions, like what day it is, what the year is. then he has you stand with your feet together while your eyes are shut. no concussion either. that's good. when you open them, pope is looking at you. there's no anger in his eyes. just worry.

"that guy... he said some mean shit about you. usually i wouldn't react. maybe just say some snarky comment and leave. but after that talk with baz i was on edge. so when i heard him talking about you, i just... i snapped," you murmur.

"i don't want you getting hurt because of me," pope replies.

"what was i supposed to do, andy? just let him talk shit about you?"

he shrugs as if it's no big deal. "it's not the first time, berry. it won't be the last."

"yeah, well, i'm not just gonna stand around and let some asshole talk bad about a guy i love-" the words escape you before you even realize what you're saying. but the second they do, you regret them instantly. not because it's not true, it is, but because pope is just staring at you. "can you say something? please?" you beg softly.

"you love me?" he whispers. his voice is so quiet that if it weren't for you standing right in front of him, you wouldn't hear him. and there's that little furrow of his eyebrows that he always wears when he's confused. he doesn't believe you.

"of course i do, andy. why wouldn't i? you've always been there for me. you take care of me."

"deran has done all those things," he retorts.

"yeah, but that's different. i love deran too, sure, but not like i love you. you've always been nice to me. like the time i was eighteen and this guy i was hooking up with promised to take me to prom, but instead went with another girl. i cried almost the whole night," you recall that memory with a soft laugh, "but then you felt bad so you bought me flowers and took me out to some crappy fast food place that was open so late. to everyone else, i was just 'deran's weird little friend' or whatever baz liked to call me when i was younger. but to you i was just berry. you didn't have to do all that for me. but you did. i think i fell in love with you that night."

pope remembers that night. he hated the sad look that you had in your eyes when coming home. "you looked beautiful in that dress. it matched your eyes," he recalls. "i... i love you too, you know. i just don't want you to get scared of me or my family and run. you're the only good thing i have, berry."

that nearly breaks your heart. you pull him into a tight hug, hiding your face in his neck. "you could never scare me, baby. and i've been around too long for something to freak me out. you're stuck with me forever."

"good. i don't want you leaving. ever."

neither of you need to hear or say anything more. just the presence of the other is enough. tomorrow will be a new day, with probably the same bullshit that comes with living a life like yours. but you'll have him. he'll have you. and that's enough for now.