Kym

He’s been at it for a while. Rubbing soothing circles into your clit that doesn’t seem so soothing anymore when the bud is pulled taunt against your skin and every single touch feels like a wave of pleasure and pain going all the way down your legs. 

And every time Robby’s cock rocks back inside you it hits that spot where you can feel him in your throat. He’s just so big and rough, you’ve been considering that he likes torturing you. 

“Robby— please… please I can’t.” 

This has to be the tenth time Robby’s stopped all his ministrations and edged the life out of you. His hand moving from your clit and going lax against your stomach. His cock sliding all the way out. Going from so much pleasure to absolutely none, leaving your orgasm on the brink of disappearing. 

But then you feel a big hand on the side of your face. Brushing away the hair that sticks to your sweaty forehead. Eyes flickering up to Jack he has one of the most caring expressions you’ve ever seen. His legs spread wide in front of you and naked in all his glory.

He’s so pretty, you have to shove your face into the pillow he gave you (because unlike Robby, jack actually cares about the neighbors hearing) or else even just the sight of him might tip you over the edge. 

“m’cant.”

Your voice is muffled, hand grasping at the soft cotton of the pillow. Trying to scoot back into Robby because you need that release bad. And Jack notices. 

“You gonna give her the next one man?” 

Knowing Robby, he’s probably clicking his tongue at jack and shrugging. The universal sign for “will see.” 

Gasping there’s a small pressure back on your cunt and when Robby thrusts all the way in your breath hitches. It feels like an eternity with how big he is. Eyes shutting It feels so good but what’s the point of continuing if there’s not that exploding reaction at the end? 

“You better give it to her.” 

There’s a little bit of demanding in jacks voice, and when your head picks up he’s leaning back on the headboard getting comfortable again as if to watch a show. His dick is erect and flushed red but you’ve long given up on trying to take two at once when your brain can hardly comprehend one. 

“How about you sweeten the deal honey?” Jacks voice is so soft. It’s so easy to register between Robby’s grunts and your moans in between each other. “Beg for it. Come on. You know Robby likes to hear that pretty little voice.” 

“Please.”

You choke on a moan, words falling out sporadically, anything to sweeten your chances of that coil in your stomach to come back. 

“Wanna cum so bad. Please. Don’t… don’t be mean. I’ll do anything.” 

“Fuck.” 

You feel Robby’s hot breaths on your shoulder, breathing heavily against you. The more Robby’s hips snap against yours the more your body feels like it’s pushing for that release. All the fundamentals coming together to create that spill in your abdomen. 

“Robby— please, please, please.” 

The sloppy thumb back on your clit, his weight on your back. The warmth. The pleasure. It’s all so so much. You can’t see it but Robby’s eyes flicks to Jacks. As if for confirmation.

“Give it to her.” 

And it’s a command from jacks mouth. If it was up to Robby he’d stop now, he relishes in watching you squirm. But this time he picks up speed, biting a soft love mark on your shoulder when you moan. And fuck. 

Robby hates it when Jacks right. 

Your walls spasm around his dick when you cum. The sounds on your lips and the way your insides tighten around his sensitive cock. So wet and gummy. It makes Robby dizzy. You’ve never came this hard before. 

With a groan Robby’s not that far behind. Not when you’re so perfect like that for him. Begging and squeezing like your life depended on it. 

“Yes. Thank— thank you.” 

You chant and Jack watches in amusement as you both fall apart over each other. Tired and sleepy. Achieving possibly the best sex of your life.

What would you both do without him?

After his wife died, it got worse. Beds were suddenly too cold—cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. A vast expanse of isolation that chilled him to the bone. More often than not, Jack found himself wedged diagonally on his too-small sofa, sweat gluing his skin to the overheated pleather, or lying stiff on the ground with nothing but a pillow under his head to protect him against the hardwood floor.

Rest was always just out of reach, as elusive as the peace he naively once thought he could help secure. 

Then he met you.

Your bed was great, sure. Amazing, even. Your comforter’s woven out of straight springtime sunbeams, and your mattress stuffed from clouds that angels slept on, probably. Best sleep of his life in that bed.

Beyond the composition, though, what he felt the most is what it meant. It was the one place where Jack could rest. Really rest. Where his body didn’t have to stay coiled beneath the surface, waiting for the next sound, the next shadow, the next inevitable loss. It was the only place no longer had to sleep like a soldier.

Under those covers, he finally understood why kids hide from monsters under their blankets—like a piece of cloth would save them from the horrors. Not because it was logical, but because that softness, that warmth, meant safety. The comforter was flimsy armor, but it was armor nonetheless. A quiet prayer stitched into fabric, whispering you’re okay.

Not every night was easy. Not every nightmare stayed away.

But the difference now was that he had somewhere to come back to.

And with you wrapped in his arms, face buried in his neck, he knows that he could die contentedly in this refuge beneath the covers. That he would kill to have this feeling etched into his very soul.

Most nights, that’s how it was.

Tonight, something’s off.

He doesn’t know what. Can’t quite name it. Just something needling at him.

Poking and prodding him at the edges of consciousness.

Teasingly dangling REM cycles behind closed eyes, only to yank them back, leaving him tangled in restless sharp awareness.

“Psst.”

Not metaphorically.

It comes again, hushed and more incessant. “Pssssst. Jack.”

Jack’s eyes groggily flutter open, eyes rolling as they adjust to the complete and utter darkness that welcomes him back to the land of the living.

A jab in the skin directly above his heart.

He looks down.

It’s your stupid-ass finger nudging his chest. Robbing him of peace.

His muscles unconsciously tighten, instinctively drawing you nearer to shield you from whatever shadow you woke him for.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Jack asks, fatigue pulling his tongue off tempo and lagging behind a brain already whirring to attention. Really, the words come out more of a was wrong? Reyoukay?

Slowly, the rest of his body starts to power on, returning his senses to their rightful place. Distantly, he can hear sirens shooting down far-away streets. The gentle patter of rain on the window. The warm vanilla of your shampoo washes over him.

“You never answered me,” your soft voice drifts up to him. “About the penguins.”

Jack’s eyebrows come together, forming a small crease between his slowly closing eyes.

A deep inhale inflates his lungs.

“When I called you the other day,” you unhelpfully remind him. Like his silence was from lack of memory, not from trying desperately to keep his composure upon understanding he’s been yanked from his beautiful, glorious sleep for something like this.

“When I had my entire arm in someone’s chest?” Jack’s tired voice cuts out like a spotty Bluetooth connection. He clears his throat.

Stronger now, “Is that what you’re referring to?”

You snuggle closer to his chest, attempting to completely ignore the laws of physics prohibiting fusion of bodies, and nod, hair tickling his skin with every pass.

His arms reflexively tighten around you, rough fingers slipping under your shirt to trace the ridges of your spine. A pleased hum rumbles in his chest at the small shiver that runs down your body in response. His head dips down, burrowing against yours so gently tucked into his neck.

“Honey, why do you only want to have this conversation at—” his wrist tilts up and he peels open a single eye, immediately sliding it shut again, “—three in the morning?”

Your shoulders rise in a small shrug as much as they can snuggled safely in your cocoon of Jack and comforter.

“Could have a different one. Just missed you when I was sleeping,” you sleepily whisper, words so tooth-achingly sweet that Jack absently thinks that you should be a poster child for the American Dental Association.

His heart clenches in his chest—slow and nearly unbearable—because of course you woke him up to tell him that. Of course that’s the reason. And you say it like it’s something so obvious, like missing him when you sleep is something you’re well acquainted with and just wanted to keep him updated on what’s going on.

How do you manage to inadvertently weaponize the most innocuous things?

Jack exhales slowly and shifts down, lips gently placing a kiss on the tangled hair near your temple.

He doesn’t even know if you understand the effect you have on him.

“Never gotta miss me, kid,” Jack mumbles against your skin, lips brushing your temple. “Always’ll be here.”

He feels you shift against his chest—a quiet rustle under the blankets—trying to make space for your hand to wiggle free. 

With a groggy blink, Jack’s eyes open, vision sluggishly pulling into focus.

Hovering in the corner of his periphery, he sees it.

Your hand wedged between the both of you. Pinkie looking back at him. Patiently extended. Waiting.

“Promise?” you ask, and your voice is so soft—so small. It’s not a question, really, but the thought that there could be a drop of doubt in your mind pains him. Not after the way he looks at you like you hung the moon, not after the way he builds a home out of every room you’re in.

It twists in him, slow and aching.

Jack’s throat tightens marginally. His curls his own pinkie around yours.

“Promise.”

You shift, nudging your nose up along his chest until your lips are just shy of his neck like the thought of any distance between the two of you is a federal offense, breath a quiet puff against his skin. The blankets shift with you, rustling like trees in the wind. Your voice comes out half-asleep, muffled by the blankets and your lungs smushed against his chest.

“Break that promise,” you murmur, “and I get to take your pinkie.”

Jack blinks down at you, eyes drowsy and soft. There’s a moment he doesn’t say anything. Just looks—memorizing the way the streetlights bleed through the window and highlight the soft curves of your profile, illuminate the way your hair sticks straight into the air. The way your lashes fan against your cheek, and the way your hand—so much smaller than his—rests gently over his ribs, like you’re making sure he stays put.

You’ve never looked more beautiful.

He leans down and captures your lips—quiet and careful, sealing an unspoken vow. When he pulls back, he presses his forehead to yours, his voice low and steady.

“Kid,” he whispers, “you have my whole life.”

The words drift into the space between you.

They’re unmet with any response.

In fact, you’re silent for so long, Jack figures you’ve fallen back asleep.

He lets his body begin to sink, tension softening, breath evening out with yours.

Almost gone.

The holy choir of REM harmonizes in the distance, beckoning him with open arms, ready to anoint him with a divine blessing he’s worked so devotedly to earn.

Your voice slices through the quiet like a celestial record scratch, violently yanking his soul straight back into the prison of his body.

“See, you say I can have your life,” you mumble exasperated. “But won’t answer my question.”

Jack groans.

Loud. From that ancient, grizzled part of his soul that pre-dates the Geneva Conventions. One that can only mean holy shit, I’m going to kill you. 

“Alright,” he relents, releasing you from your pinkie promise and rolling off of you with all the enthusiasm of a man summoned to war. “We’re doing this.”

“Nooo,” you whine. Your hands smooth around his middle and pull him back in place. He grumbles in your arms, melting back into you.

You reconnect your pinkies.

“What’s the fucking question?”

You snuggle into his chest, mumbling, “Stop being so bitchy.”

His eye twitches and he makes a half-hearted attempt to push you away, which you halt with the force of a barnacle, clinging to his chest and pulling him on top of you.

Up at three in the morning. Demanding a metaphysical inquiry into the emotional state of flightless Antarctic avians. Jack shoving you away.

And all you want is to do is be close to him. 

He curls himself around you once more.

You sigh, loud and dramatic, like you cannot believe he had the audacity to wake you up to talk about this.

“Something about penguins?” Jack prompts.

“Do you think penguins get sad because they can’t fly?” you morosely recount, voice muffled by his bare chest. 

A beat passes, Jack’s shoulder lifting in time with your inhale.

“They probably don’t even know they’re missing out,” you continue, somehow completely articulate despite waking up not ten minutes ago. “But they are. Like, they don’t know that they’re taxonomically classified as birds. So, like, they don’t know they’re a bird that can’t fly. And they’re the only ones that can’t fly. In the entire southern hemisphere.”

Every sentence is acknowledged by a gentle press of his lips.

Against your neck, God, you’re insufferable.

The freckle right behind your jaw, God, I’m obsessed with you.

The soft curve of your ear, God, never stop talking.

Jesus Christ, it’s true, you are insufferable. But he would lay here and listen to you read a Wikipedia article about regional variations of the protected left turn signal if it meant you stayed this close, tucked in his arms, forever.

“I’m sure there are other birds in the southern hemisphere, sweetheart,” he murmurs in your ear, eyes drifting closed as your warmth consecrates his. On his next breath, his arm tightens around your waist.

“Albatross,” you agree.

Jack nods, already half-asleep again. “Sure.”

“Skua.”

He opens one eye. “Suka?”

Genuinely, Jack has never heard of that one before.

“What the fu—?” You twist in his arms, head coming up to glare. “Did you just call me a bitch?”

His eyebrows retreat to their exasperated place high on his head before his eyes have even finished opening fully. “How could you have possibly gotten there?”

You narrow your eyes, singular eyebrow ticking up in response, scrutinizing the sincerity of his confusion. Content with whatever the fuck he guesses you see, you slowly slide back under him.

Jack blinks into the dim, blue-tinted air of the room, the glow of the streetlights outside barely brushing the edges of your faces, his mouth coming together in half-formed, extremely confused words.

Your lips, warm and close, graze against his neck with every syllable, and he tenses, fighting back a shiver. “Crazy metathesis there, Abbot. Skua. S-k-u-a. A seabird.”

“There’s no way that’s real. You’re making that up.”

A laugh ripples out of you, soft and sharp, shaking your small frame. Your laughter seems to fill the quiet, swirling with the distant patter of rain. “You think I’d go through the trouble of inventing fake polar-adjacent birds just to gaslight you about penguins?”

“Sounds exactly like the kind of thing you’d do,” he replies, fingers tracing absent, looping patterns along your side. Blankets slide off his arm with a soft rustle as you squirm under his touch.

You’re silent for a second.

He knows he got you.

And he knows you know he got you.

Checkmate, your voice echoes in his head, tugging the corners of his mouth into a fond smile.

A small, displeased sniff twitches your nose.

“Yeah, well, shut up, so…” you sulk.

The rain hitting the window grows louder, the once soft patter growing to a sharp tapping on the glass. It’s like the storm wakes up as you do, deafening all the earlier sirens and yelling people. Wrapped in the warmth, and the darkness, and the percussive sound of water dripping down the windowpane in winding rivulets, it feels like the world has been narrowed to just this room.

And he guesses that he’s rubbing off on you, because you keep talking through it all.

“What, so, do you think that even if they don’t know they’re penguins, they probably see other things with wings and are like, must be nice?” you ask. “Was that your point?”

Jack didn’t even have a point with his follow-up question. It was just something to keep you occupied, in the same way he gives his nieces an anatomically correct model heart to play with when they come over.

He just wants to keep hearing your voice. So, he hums, faux contemplative. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, or whatever.

“Could also be an innate longing to fly,” he says.

You squint over at him like he’s a very confusing legal document. “What?”

“Like how humans want to live in the forest and hunt and gather.”

You blink. “Do they?”

He nods against your neck, self-assured, and rumbles, “Deep evolutionary memory.”

“Uh-huh,” you mutter, skeptical.

Then, after a moment, he says, “There’s definitely something innate, alright.”

He doesn’t specify what.

You don’t press.

Mostly because you know Jack Abbot well enough to know he probably means something like the innate desire to go back to sleep.

“So you do you think they’re sad?”

“I think,” he shifts, settling more of his weight on you, which you receive with a happy sigh, “they go so long without something, they forget what the weight of that loss even feels like.”

He pauses, almost lets it stop there. But then Jack says, “Penguins also mate for life. I think. I saw it on a documentary.”

“Oh!” you whisper, soft and full of sleepy delight. “That could be us, Jack.”

Your voice curls around those four letters identifying him as him, dripping with sleep and affection and something bordering reverence. You always say it like that, like it means something, but tonight, with his watch blinking 3:07AM and a storm crawling outside the window and you curled up in his arms, it hits different. Hits deep. Like gospel. Like divine direction spoken through the mouth of the world’s most annoying, sleepy prophet.

Four simple letters, his truth and his life.

Jack’s hand finds the nape of your neck again, thumb rubbing slow circles into your hairline. He breathes in—long and deep and steady.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice low and warm. “that’s us.” 

A beat passes.

“Could’ve been puffins, though,” he mutters as an afterthought.

The quiet stretches.

Jack tightens his grip, just a little. Doesn’t know how else to say what’s caught in his chest.

“If they are sad,” he concludes, “Maybe it gets lighter when they’re with the one they love.”

Jack doesn’t expand, but he’s pretty sure this time he isn’t talking about the penguins. Not even a little. He’s talking about the way he said that’s us instead of that could be us. He’s talking about how you slot against him like a divinely ordained puzzle piece. About how, with you, loss doesn’t press so hard against his ribs.

Maybe penguins can’t fly.

But Jack knows—a bone-deep truth—that if you were a penguin, he’d learn. Even if his body wasn’t anatomically built for such an action, he’d learn. Just to show you the sky.

Your arms tighten around him, your hand sliding up to scratch lightly at his scalp. The touch undoes something in him. 

“I love you, know that?” you whisper.

His palm splays wide across your hip and he swallows.

“I know, kid.”

Then, more softly, “You love me too?”

And even though he’s half asleep and mulling over your avian philosophy, there’s zero hesitation.

“I love you more than I ever thought I’d get to,” he confesses softly.

The comforter slips a little as you shift, tangling your legs with his and nestling yourself closer beneath him.

It hits him sometimes, how much he loves you—hard and sudden, like a blow. The kind he’s trained to roll with. But there’s no training for this, no drill that teaches you what to do when someone curls up in your arms in the middle of the night and trusts you so absolutely, so unconsciously, that it feels like a genuine extension of the self.

You're ridiculous.

And he would do this for the rest of his life.

He would let you poke him awake at 3:00AM for every stupid, nonsensical question in your brain. He would spend every hour learning the rhythm of your thoughts, memorizing the way your voice gets sleepy and small when you ask if he still loves you like you’re not already written into his genetic code.

“I love you,” he whispers again.

God, he does. He loves you so much it’s physically stupid.

“I know.” You trail the tip of your nose across his chest and gently press a kiss right over where his heart beats. “Just like hearing you say it.”

“I’ll say it as many times as you need,” he murmurs. “I’ll write it on every fucking thing you bring Robby to sign if that’s what it takes.”

“Those go to insurance,” you mumble against his skin. “You can’t just write in love declarations.”

“Says who?”

“Canon law.”

“Sounds made up.”

“You’re made up.”

Jack laughs, full this time, chest vibrating under your ear.

He presses a kiss into your hair again. “Go to sleep, sweetheart.”

“I’m tryiiiiiiiing,” you whine petulantly. “You keep talking, Abbot.”

He shifts just slightly, hand smoothing down your back. You sigh in response, one of those unconscious sleepy noises that makes him bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from absolutely melting into the mattress.

Soft lips brush the hollow of his throat as you murmur something half-asleep, unintelligible, and Jack exhales sharply, jaw flexing once. It’s not fair—the way even your unconscious affection feels deliberate. The way you can press your mouth to his skin like that, so casual, and not realize you’re rewiring every nerve in his body.

He shifts on top of you, just enough to turn his head, to press a slow kiss to your crown.

“Jesus,” he mutters into your hair. “You’re gonna kill me.”

“You’re a doctor,” you murmur. “Just resuscitate yourself.”

Jack huffs a laugh, low and warm. “That’s not how that works.”

“Sure it is,” you insist. “They let you keep the paddles in your car, right?”

His brows pinch together. “No—”

“Then what’s the point of medical school?”

He huffs a laugh. Beneath him, you wiggle, trying to escape the air tickling the sensitive skin of your neck, and he groans.

“Honey, please,” Jack mutters, mouth still pressed against your skin. “Stop moving.”

You go still for half a second, just long enough to make him think he’s won, before you shift again—less of a sleepy squirm and a little more intentional—and his hips respond before the rest of him catches up.

“God, you’re so annoying,” Jack groans, the sound muffled where his mouth is pressed against your neck.

His hips shift against you again. Your breath hitches, hands scrambling for purchase at his shoulder, fingers clutching fabric and muscle like your body’s trying to ground yourself in him.

“Yeah,” you breathe out, barely audible. “But I’m yours.”

Something flickers across Jack’s face, and his hand slides lower, under your shirt and over the curve of your waist—broad palm settling flat against your skin like he could hold you together with touch alone. His thumb moves in slow, hypnotic circles, brushing tenderly just beneath your ribs.

“I’m yours,” you say again, quieter this time.

And Jack stills for half a second—just enough for you to feel the tremble that runs through him, the sharp exhale that catches on something jagged in his chest.

His breath stutters, raw.

“Goddamn right you are,” he murmurs, his voice thick and hoarse and impossibly soft.

He raises on his elbow just enough to see you, drinking you in like he needs to memorize every inch before he dares move another step forward. Then, slowly, deliberately, his mouth drops to your collarbone—gentle and unhurried, lips warm and reverent.

Not so much kissing your skin, as reading it like a sacred text.

Every gasp and mumbled word you say is repeated in kind. His quiet prayer, said as a devout disciple.

Every sound from your lips something new to learn and to replicate—answering each quiet whimper with the same patience and care you might use when translating something holy.

Every press of his mouth, devout exegesis. 

His nose nudges your shirt higher, one kiss at a time, until his mouth is moving over your sternum, your ribs, following the rhythm of your heart.

You breathe his name, barely a sound.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers into your skin. “You don’t have to do anything. Just let me take care of you.”

You nod before your brain even catches up. Of course. You’d fucking let him do anything.

He eases your shirt up, slow and careful, ceremonial in the way he lifts it from your body. He doesn’t rush. Doesn’t tug or fumble. Every movement is tender, reverent, every inch uncovers a secret you’ve chosen to share with him, and he refuses to take it for granted.

And when he looks back up at you, his expression unravels. All the smartass quips and dry commentary gone. He looks at you like you’re the only thing in the world worth believing in.

“Jesus, sweetheart,” he breathes, voice cracking under the weight of sacrament. “You don’t even know.”

Fingertips dragging across your waist, featherlight, hesitant. His thumbs brush over the dip just beneath your ribs and his mouth follows, open and warm. He kisses your stomach like it means something. Like it’s sacred.

Your body arches under him, chasing the heat of his mouth, and he cradles your hips with both hands, trying to steady you—trying to steady himself.

You’re already trembling. You don’t even realize it until he whispers against your skin, “You’re shaking.”

You laugh soft, breathy, half-lost in the haze blooming behind your eyes. 

“Because you’re being so nice to me,” you murmur.

Jack lets out a shaky breath, chest tight. He presses his forehead to your bare stomach, arms tightening around your waist.

“God, you have no idea,” he says, muffled, “what I want to do to you.”

Then he’s slowly kissing up your chest, lips dragging languidly, following the dip between your ribs, the rise of your sternum, the hollow at the base of your throat—pausing, breathing, letting himself feel the shape of you with his mouth like you’re a language he’s only just starting to learn.

One hand drifts up to your face, fingers brushing tenderly through your hair, tucking it back with a care so gentle it makes your breath hitch. He tilts your chin slightly, and his mouth finds just below your jaw, warm and soft and deliberate. He lingers there, just for a moment, committing the cadence of your pulse to memory. Then your jaw. The corner of your mouth. The faintest brush of his lips, hesitant and full of awe—unsure whether kissing you is a right or a privilege.

And then he is kissing you. Fully. Deeply.

Like it’s the first time all over again.

Like he can’t quite believe you’re real, and even less that you’re his.

“I swear to God, I could die like this,” he breathes. “I could live like this. Please let me live like this.”

And you feel it, all of it. In his hands, in his voice, in the way his body fits against yours like it was made to be there.

You pull him in closer. There’s no space left between you, but it’s still not fucking enough. Not until his body is pressed to yours, bare and burning, skin to skin, and the sound he makes when he slides home is a choked-off groan that you feel in your ribs.

Your name slips from his lips like a prayer.

His movements are slow—agonizingly slow—like he’s not trying to fuck you, he’s just trying to stay inside this moment as long as he can.

His mouth finds yours again, and he kisses—soft and shaking and so full of love it leaves you breathless. He murmurs against your lips, praise and want and desperation all tangled together.

“So good,” he breathes. “So perfect for me. You’re mine. Say it again.”

Your eyes are damp, lips parted, breath catching with every push of his hips.

You cup his face, grounding him to you, and whisper, “I’m yours,” more certain this time.

Not a confession. A confirmation.

Jack groans softly, forehead dropping to press against yours like he’s trying to soak in the words, let them burn themselves into his bones. His hand cups your face, thumb brushing the corner of your mouth, eyes flicking down to your lips as if he's still trying to process that you said it. That you mean it. That he gets to have this. Have you.

He kisses you again, slower this time. Deeper, with a quiet desperation. The kind of kiss that makes your chest ache. Like he’s trying to tell you all the things he doesn’t know how to say. Like he’s memorizing you molecule by molecule. 

And still, he doesn’t rush.

He shifts, just enough to press further into you, his body cradling yours like he was built for it. Like there’s nowhere else on Earth he could possibly belong. His hands move over you with care—palms dragging down your sides, fingers tracing every dip and rise of your body as though mapping something sacred.

“You feel like home,” he whispers, more to himself than to you. His voice sounds broken around the edges, like it’s unraveling under the weight of how much he means it.

You tilt your chin up to kiss him again, gentler now, your fingertips skimming through his hair, down the strong line of his back. 

The roll of his hips is unhurried, worshipping rather than commanding, and your breath catches on a soft gasp that he kisses off your lips. Each motion drags sparks across your nerves, and every one of them is lit by the way he looks at you. 

Like you’re something miraculous.

“I’ve never—” he breathes against your cheek, like the words are betraying him by coming out at all. “—never wanted anything like I want you.”

He’s trembling a little now too. Not from nerves. Overwhelmed in the way only someone completely, irrevocably in love can be.

“I’m right here,” you whisper, threading your fingers through his, bringing one hand to rest against your chest. Right over your heartbeat. And then you echo his words from earlier back to him, “I’m not going anywhere.”

And you feel him break open just a little more.

His mouth dips lower again, dragging a trail of kisses down your neck, across your collarbone. He presses his lips to the space just above your heart like he’s trying to seal your promise inside of him. His hands, ever careful, move with intention—cradling your body, anchoring your breath to his, grounding you both in the kind of intimacy that’s so deep it feels like silence.

And when you come—quiet, breathless, your whole body curling toward him—Jack holds you like he’s cradling something holy. Like he’s never known anything more divine. He follows not long after, his body shaking with the force of it, breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a prayer.

Afterward, he doesn’t roll away. He doesn’t loosen his hold.

He just stays there. Wrapped around you. One hand pressed flat to your spine, the other curled protectively over your waist, lips brushing lazy kisses into your hair as your breaths slowly begin to sync again.

“Still mine?” he murmurs, voice warm and quiet and nearly drowsy.

You nuzzle into the curve of his neck. “Always.”

Jack hums, eyes fluttering closed. You feel the smile against your temple.

“Good,” he whispers. “That’s all I’ll ever need.”

You’ll fall asleep again soon, he knows. You always do. But Jack stays awake.

Just for a while.

Just to keep looking at you like this.

Because in another life, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten to have you. Maybe someone else would’ve held you like this. But he’s got you now. And no amount of battlefield trauma, or paperwork, or middle-of-the-night penguin debates is ever going to make him take that for granted.

He’s tired.