yeah,but why?

"I know the rules say you have to be present for the hunt, sweet girl. But I want you to stay in here. Okay?" he tells you gently, stroking your hair.

You frown, "I want to stay with you..."

He kisses you sweetly, "I know, I know. But I don't want you to get hurt. So stay here. I won't be gone long."

He knew that the latest prey wouldn't last long out in the woods. He would be back within an hour, he bet. Titus was so focused on you, he didn't notice his cousin watching you. This cousin, Matthew, had watched you since the moment he first saw you on Titus' arm. He had hoped on your wedding night that you would pull a card...and he would have had some fun with you. But you simply pulled the Queen of Hearts and went about your merry way.

Completely oblivious to the Danforth family's secret.

So Matthew had to bide his time. He would get to you...he didn't understand why something so sweet as you would waste your time with his loser cousin.

He was giddy when he realised that Titus was going to leave you alone in the Lodge while he went out hunting. Always trying to protect your innocence.

You wonder how long it will be until your husband comes back. You don't understand what they could be hunting at midnight. Seems ridiculous but that's none of your business. You're tired and you want to go home. You sit, drinking some of Ursula's favourite wine with a wicked little smirk on your lips. If she's going to be an asshole, she deserves it!

Your head pops up as soon as you hear the door opening and you expect to see your ever-doting husband walk in. Instead, it's a man you vaguely recognise.

"Is the hunt over?" you ask him with a soft smile.

Matthew shakes his head, "No, no. I just got a bit cold."

You frown but stand up and offer him your place by the fire. But he doesn't move. His eyes follow your movements and suddenly you feel like the hunt has come closer to you than you'd like.

"I think I'll go check on my husband," you say, trying to excuse yourself from the room.

But the man lunges for you forcing you to stumble backwards. Titus told you to stay inside but there's no way you can get past him to the door. Your only option is out through the huge bay window. You rush, climbing up onto the window seat and pushing the window open. You stumble, falling onto your hands and knees as you get outside. But you start running.

You're not quick enough because suddenly Matthew is upon you. He throws his full body weight on top of you and you fall to the ground with a harsh thud. You let out a scream as you try to crawl away from the man. But he won't let you move. You scream again when he flips you over onto your back. You try to kick him but he's pinning you down.

"Shut the fuck up, you stupid bitch," he hisses. "I didn't want to do this outside but I suppose it'll have to do."

You snarl, all sweetness washed away as you shoot your head forward against his nose. You can't help the smile that curls up on your lips when you hear a crunch.

"Oh you fucking cunt!" he screams as he grips his nose.

His movements are enough to give you a chance to wriggle from underneath him and scramble to your feet. You take off towards the woods. The sound of your breathing fills your ears, so much so you don't hear the thud of footsteps behind you.

He's so much faster than you and this time he's not going to let you get away. You crumble to the ground on impact as Matthew smashes you over the head with the handle of his axe. It hurts so bad and you can't fight anymore.

Your body is trying hard to keep you alive after the impact on your skull. You can't scream...you just whimper as he gets on top of you again.

Will Titus still love you after this monster has ruined his sweet girl, you wonder?

But suddenly the weight is off you. You're not sure if you're dying or your brain is protecting you or what is happening...But it doesn't matter because everything goes black.

It's probably for the best you don't see your husband, heady with bloodlust pull his cousin off you. He has his warhammer in his hand but he drops it in favour of his fists. Titus may have been a disappointment to his father in many areas, but he could fight. As soon as Matthew was under him, Titus didn't stop his blows to his face and head until his hands were covered in blood and he could hear the crunch of bone over and over and over. Soon there was no face for him to punch.

Only when Titus was satifised that Matthew was no longer a threat did he stand up. He rushes to you, stroking your hair from your face. He can see the shallow rise and fall of your chest, but you're so pale.

He scoops you up in his arms and carries you back to the Lodge.

If Titus Danforth is good for one thing, it was doting on his wife. He never let you as much as chip a nail, and now you could very much be bleeding out. He brings you to his room in the Lodge, laying you down on the bed before getting a First Aid Kit. Those are in plentiful supply. He cleans the cut on your head, making sure it's not too deep and patches it up.

All he has to do now is wait for you to wake up. But he can't. So he carries you to the bathroom, undressing you and bathing you gently. Washing the blood and dirt from your perfect body.

He dresses you in a white nightgown and settles you into the plush bed. And he watches with his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees as your breathing finally deepens. Finally your eyes flutter open and you smile so brightly at him.

Your knight in shining armour.

"Oh Titus, I'm so sorry...he just...I don't know...He started chasing me and he hit me and he...." you try to explain.

But Titus just kisses you soundly.

"You don't have to worry about him ever again, my sweet girl," Titus tells you, cupping your face in his large hands.

You don't notice the blood crusted in his nails because you're too focused on his face.

"I'm sorry that he hurt you but I would never let him violate you like that," he says, dancing around the subject.

You just reach out, silently asking Titus to cuddle you. And he happily obliges, wrapping you in his thick arms.

"I'm sorry I ruined your hunt," you say simply, still oblivious to what is still going on outside.

He shakes his head, "Gave me something better to hunt, my sweet girl."

an: need to write more Titus...please give me more suggestions...but I kinda have an idea about maybe a little more...creepy Titus! all feedback is appreciated!

taglist: @sweetashhh @orangecheescakeleftover @elenamoncadaibarra

Jack knew he shouldn't have left you. He'd had a feeling. The looming dread that had been creeping up on him the past couple of weeks. 

You'd been feeling out of it for a while now. A lethargic and nauseating achiness you couldn't quite shake, no matter how much tylenol or herbal teas you’d tried. 

You had played it off as nothing. Just a headache that came and went. An upset stomach due to the day old chinese food you’d eaten. 

“It's fine, Jack. I’m just tired.”

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m okay. I’m here. You don't have to worry.”

But Jack worried. 

He was always worrying. 

He knew that little things sometimes added up to a bigger, meaner somethings. That if you missed the signs, you might catch it too late. 

What exactly? Jack wasn't sure. He didn’t particularly want to find out.

But he sure as hell wasn't gonna let you blow it off now. 

His heart pounds as the ambulance finally pulls into the bay, the emergency lights blaring an ugly red and orange. Jack bary registers the EMT saying hello to him, his eyes focused on your splayed out form, laying on the gurney. 

“Hey baby,” he says, voice cracking slightly. 

“Jack,” you look up at him blearily, your eyes hazy, a bandage already taped to your forehead. Jack is quick to come by your side as the EMT lowers the gurney, his hand running over the back of your hair.

“One of the bystanders said she hit her head going down. It's not too bad. Just needs some cleaning. Same for her legs,” the EMT says to Jack as she watches him carefully lift the bandage. 

Jack lets out a shaky breath, pressing a kiss to the top of your head and leading your gurney back into the Pitt. 

“What the hell Jack. You just ran off-” Robby calls out, watching Jack come back in. He stops once he sees you, your scraped up knees and bandaged head, the confused expression on your face. “What happened?” 

“She fainted. We’ll need to start her on an iv, get her fluids and run a couple of blood tests. Do you still feel dizzy?”

“I don’t… Jack, what’s going on?” You look up at Jack, confused, panic written across your face. Jack looks back at the EMT who shakes her head.

“She was having trouble remembering the fall. Only remembers her headache and feeling sick.” 

Jack remembers how you had looked this morning. The purple bruises around your eyes and the wince you'd tried to hide when he said goodbye. 

“I don't have to go in today. Shen can cover if Robby really needs him to.”

“Go Jack. They need you more than me.”

He should have known better. 

Robby comes beside the railing of the gurney, helping to pull it into a trauma room. You look around, your chest beginning to rise and fall quicker as your eyes begin to clear of the confused fog.

“What’s going on?” 

“Jack, stay with your wife.”

“I am with her,” he throws back at Robby, turning to grab the bag of fluids Princess was moving to hand him.

“No. Stay with her as Jack. Not Dr. Abbot,” Robby tosses back, gesturing to your wide and fearful eyes. Jack swallows thickly, torn. 

Especially when you groan, turning towards Robby and vomiting off the side of the gurney railing. 

Jack’s heart hurts, pounding heavily against his sternum. You were here. The one place he hated seeing you.

Jack knows he can help take care of you right now. Bandage you up and order labs. He can solve the mystery behind why you were suddenly so ill. Why you haven’t been feeling well lately. 

He can handle that. Dr. Jack Abbot, night attending and army vet, can handle bad news.

But just Jack. Mr. Jack Abbot, loving husband and worried widower, cannot. 

He can’t take another bad diagnosis.

Jack looks up at Robby who’s helping Princess clean up the vomit, and then back at you. And he makes a decision.

“Hey,” Jack says, pushing down the railing on his side of your gurney and sitting on the edge. “Hey, honey-” He takes your head in his hands, taking the damp cloth Robby hands him and helping to clean your face. 

Jack sits with you, his scrub top abandoned, his hand clasped tightly over yours. He watches as the color slowly comes back into your face, helps you take a sip of juice when your hand trembles too much to hold the cup. He stays silent for it all, Robby cleaning and bandaging your scrapes, Perlah coming in to draw your blood, the hospital gown Princess helps you into. He watches it all with a wariness. An awful churning in his gut.

A fear gnawing away at him. 

“Jack,” you whisper, squeezing his hand. He hums, glancing up at you from where he was sitting beside your gurney. “It’s going to be alright.” 

“I know,” he whispers back. You hadn’t said much to each other. Mostly hushed whispers and clinging to each other's hand. Like raising your voices was too much for the already overstimulating hospital room.

Jack’s knee is bouncing up and down anxiously. He couldn’t help it, his mind turning over the many diagnoses, the myriad of things that could be wrong with you. You gently wrangle your hand out of his iron grip, reaching over to rest it on his jostling knee. Jack stills at the feeling of your warm palm over the fabric of his scrub pants, swallowing. You smile.

“Whatever it is… we’ll be okay.” 

"I know," Jack repeats again. But it's hard to really believe it.

He's been here once before. A hospital room just like this. The woman he loves loved sitting by his side. Slowly wasting away. And he didn’t even know it. 

He sees the symptoms, too familiar and painful. The exhaustion and fatigue that wore you down. The migraines and brain fog, lethargicness and nausea that plagued you. He sees it and he knows. Whatever labs Robby is currently looking at holds a future he’s not sure he’s ready for. 

You sigh, your hand moving upwards to run through his salt and pepper curls. They had already been mussed and messed up from his own hand raking through them. Jack sighs at the feeling, closing his eyes and leaning his head against your side. You hum, holding him close.

“I didn’t even get to do any shopping. I just… passed out in the parking lot.” 

“Don’t worry about that,” Jack mumbles into your gown. “I’ll order some groceries for delivery later.”

“I really wanted to get that new cream cheese to try. The one with the jalapenos.” You sigh. “Gosh, I wish they could just inject that into my iv. Maybe I’d perk up faster.”

Jack can’t help but crack a smile. You hum happily, still petting his hair. 

“There he is.” Jack looks up at you, his mouth open to say something. To apologize for worrying. For being so scared.

But he doesn’t get a chance.

The door to your room opens, Robby’s familiar silhouette shadowing behind the curtain.

“Jack?”

Jack clears his throat. “Yeah?” 

Robby peeks his head through the fabric. 

“I’ve got the test results back.” He comes in and sits down on the stool by the foot of your bed with a grunt. You give Jack a nervous look, your hand finding his again. He takes it, squeezing gently. Grounding. Robby clears his throat. 

“Well, your blood panels came back fine. No signs of infection or disease.”

“So…what is it? What’s wrong with her?” Jack asks, swallowing thickly. Robby looks down at the lab work in his hands, peering over the frames of his glasses at the two of you.

“Nothing.” 

The word hits harder than Jack could have expected. Of all the things he had anticipated-

You frown, looking confused.

“Nothing,” you repeat, the question no louder than a breath of air. Robby smiles and nods.

“Well, nothing that won’t go away in nine months. Congratulations kids. You're gonna have a baby." 

Both of you go very still. Your mouth falls open, Jack’s eyes practically bug out of his head. Robby sits there smugly, folding the lab results over.

“A…” Jack starts, trailing off as he leans forward. Surely he’d heard Robby wrong.

“I- a baby?” You ask, dumbstruck. 

“Hmm.” Robby nods. “From what I can tell you’re roughly six weeks along. Of course, you’d need an ultrasound and larger blood panel to be able to tell more accurately.” 

“Pregnant,” Jack breathes. His eyes dart around the room, finally meeting Robby’s. “But how?”

Robby raises an eyebrow.

“It’s a simple process. I don’t think I have to explain the exact mechanics on conceiving to you Jack-”

"No, I know- I mean how... I can't even...

"We aren't exactly prime candidates for conceiving," you finish for Jack.

He can feel your fingers wrap tighter around his hand, your shoulder brushing against his.

Robby gives you a look, his features softening. “I know. I know, I don’t know why. It happens. Sometimes fertility problems resolve themselves. No on can pinpoint why exactly. Could be hormonal changes, medication changes, reduced stress-”

You and Jack finally glance over at each other. He looks at you, eyes raking over your face, the glimmer of hope you were trying to hide. And it hits him.

The sabbatical, he thinks. The long overdue vacation he'd finally gotten around to taking. 

Three months without either of you worrying about work or patients. Three months of just the two of you; long walks in the park, lazy mornings spent in bed. Decadent yet nutritious dinners and way too many trips to the ice cream shop down the street. 

Leaving behind the worries of your every day. 

The sabbatical he’d finally come back from not even a few weeks ago. Just before you had begun to get sick-

You're the first to smile. A small curve upwards, more nervous than anything. 

"I'm pregnant." 

Jack breathes heavily in his chair. 

“You are,” Robby smiles. You take a shaky breath, unsure of what to say. “There’s quite a few things we’ll have to go over. I’m sure Jack knows this speech like the back of his hand, but it’s still customary…”

Jack is half listening as Robby goes on about the usual procedure. The prenatal vitamins you’ll need, the appointments you’ll have to set up. The safety precautions and symptoms and internal changes. The risks considering Jack was older and you weren’t very young yourself.

Jack is so far zoned out he doesn’t even realize you’re calling his name.

“Jack. Honey," you shake his shoulder, frowning. “Are you okay?” 

Jack opens his mouth, looking between you and Robby. He glances once at your stomach. Hidden behind the hospital gown. Looking exactly like it had yesterday. 

But it was different. There wasn’t some disease growing inside you. Some foreign thing making you sick and slowly sucking the life out of you.

There was a baby growing there. You were sick because you were making another life. 

Jack is hit by the realization that for the next nine months, you were going to be going through all kinds of changes. All kinds of hurdles and milestones. 

A baby.

Jack suddenly feels sick.

“I have to go,” he blurts, shaking your hand off of his shoulder and beelining out of the hospital room.

“Jack!” You call out, your voice raising with surprise. 

“I just need some air!”

Jack doesn’t turn back. He can’t. He can’t let you see the utter terror written on his face. 

He marches down the hall, ignoring the looks the nurses give him, the confusion Trinity and Mel share as he storms out down the crowded hallway and to the stairwell.

------------------------------------------------------

You find Jack outside. Not on the roof like you’d panicked he’d be. 

Robby had come back, shaking his head, trying to calm your racing heart.

No. After finally convincing Robby to let you help him look, You find Jack sitting on one of the benches in the park across the way from PTMC. He’s sitting there, elbows braced against his knees, staring off into the distance.

You approach him carefully, blades of grass crunching beneath the slip on clogs the hospital provided. Your clothes feel cold against you, comforting and familiar after the scratchy hospital gown. You glance back at Robby who stands at the edge of the park. He nods, encouraging you to keep going. 

As you get closer, you realize Jack’s not just staring off at nothing. You catch sight of his eyes, focused and glistening beneath the late afternoon light. You follow his sight line, watching a little family on the other side of the park. A broad shouldered man tossing a foam ball to a toddler girl, her mother laughing as her girl toddles about. 

You watch Jack for a moment, staying out of his sight line. You don't have to try very hard to guess what he's thinking about. The sheer amount of worry and confusion he's feeling. 

You felt it yourself. The whiplash of expecting the worst outcome only to learn you were carrying something wonderful. There was still the nervousness of what the future would look like. 

The schedules that would need rearranging, the house child proofed, your office room cleared out in space for another little person. Doctors appointments and ultrasound photos taped to the fridge, onesies and books and diapers tucked away in a closet. 

In spite of the excitement you felt, the confused yet exhilarating feeling of knowing you were going to be a mother, you were scared. 

There was a whole person you'd have to take care of. You'd have to grow and birth. You weren't exactly a spry chicken. Neither was Jack. And there were more risks and complications that came with that.

On top of all the things that came with pregnancy. 

You might not be dying from some malady. But pregnancy was no small thing either. 

You finally take a step forward, placing your hand gently on Jack’s shoulder. He snaps out of his stupor, back straightening, a panic written in his eyes.

“You shouldn’t be up-”

“I’m okay.” He frowns. You point to the space beside him on the bench. “Can I sit?” 

Jack nods, scooting over a bit. You sit. Jack wipes his eyes with the palm of his hand; being closer now, you can see they’re red rimmed and glassy. He doesn’t look at you. Not at first.

But he’s the first to open his mouth again.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have run out of there. That was a dick move."

You swallow against the thick lump in your throat, trying to keep the well of anger rising at bay. It wasn’t hard to. The fear and anxiety laid bare in Jack’s voice. The thoughts he tried so hard to hide from you unveiled. 

You nod. “Yeah. It kinda was." 

He takes a breath, reaching out to hold your hand. You take it, his thumb brushing along the ridge of your knuckles.

"I just... this whole time I was worried I was going to lose you. I kept thinking about all the ways I’d have to watch you die. All the treatments or surgeries…” he chuckles dryly. “I was so worried about you. And now all I’m thinking about is how we’re going to have a kid walking down the aisle in a cap and gown when I’m 70.” 

You sigh, the breeze a gentle comfort as it blows against your cheeks.

“That's all you’re thinking about? College already?” You give his hand a small, loving squeeze. Teasing. A clearing amidst the stormy turmoil you both had been worrying over.

“Well,” he shrugs slowly. “You know, between wondering if the pregnancy will hold. Or birth. Or what elementary school drop offs will look like and dinners and the house and my crazy schedule-”

“I know. I know, it’s a lot.”

Jack nods. “It is… and I’m scared.”

You look at him. Your heart aches with the pure sincerity written on his face. Jack was never one to hide his feelings. But he rarely gave them away easily. Not like this.

Truth written in the glassy mist of his eyes, the worry carried in the tightness of his hand around yours.

“I know,” you nod. “I know it’s not going to be easy. Robby explained the risks.” 

The long list of complications and genetic disorders and risky side effects run through your mind. You hadn’t known just how fragile pregnancy became the older you got. It was just never something that had crossed your mind. To think or worry about. But now…

You continue.

“I know this wasn’t what we had planned, Jack. Us. Having kids… and I know you may not want- may not think we can do this. But I don’t think this is such a bad thing.”

Jack’s eyes widen, his frown deepening.

“What, woah. No I don’t want you thinking that. I don’t- I don’t think that.” 

“Really?” You take a deep breath, hopeful. Jack finally smiles. A small and gentle quirk of his mouth.

“Really. And I’m sorry if I made you feel that way. I just… I didn’t think that I could have one.” 

“A baby?” You clarify. He nods.

“I told you about what happened in the army. With my leg and, well, everything else. And you told me having kids wasn’t exactly going to be easy for you.” It’s your turn to nod.

Between Jack’s injury and age, your genetics and seemingly lackluster fertility, a baby had just never been a part of your plan. And you were fine with it. Life was crazy enough as it was.

“I know. But here we are.”

Jack nods, looking out into the park again. He’s watching the small family again, eyes glued to the man as he hoists his giggling daughter into his arms.

“Here we are,” he mumbles. 

“We don’t have to figure everything out right now Jack. There’s still time.” 

“Seven months and two weeks,” he huffs. You chuckle.

“Right. Plenty of time.”

------------------------------------------------------

Robby makes Jack leave the hospital early with you. 

Although Jack would use the term ‘make’ loosely, considering he had already decided he wasn’t staying the moment he saw you in the ambulance’s hull. You’re cleared to leave not long after Robby drags the both of you back into the ED, making sure to stop by the pharmacy to pick up your new prescriptions. 

The prenatal vitamins and nausea medication sit among Jack’s own clutter of meds on the kitchen counter. Jack told you not to worry about groceries or the car still at the store. He’d take care of all of it in the morning.

For now, he just wanted to clean away the sterile smell of the hospital lingering on both of your clothes and get to bed.

He’s grateful, for once, that you're exhausted enough to fall asleep the minute your head hits the pillow. You’re breathing softly beneath the sheets before Jack can even pull his prosthetic off, your hand lain out on his side, like you still wanted him to hold it unconsciously. 

But sleep doesn’t come for him. Jack lays awake for a long while. 

The moonlight casts wispy shadows along the wall and he watches them, thinking. He plays with his wedding ring, twirling it between his fingers with mesmerizing ease. 

Not the ring you'd slipped onto his left hand years ago, the dark amber band that still glistens on his ring finger. Jack plays with the wedding ring he wore a long time ago, still a young man figuring things out. From his first marriage. His first wife.

It wasn't often he pulled the ring out. Sometimes it hurt too much to even look at it; to think about and remember her. Jack fiddles with the ring now, holding it against his lips as if he could whisper all his worries into it.

The worries which still rested in the side of his ribs, changed but there all the same. Jack can’t help but think of all the things he never got to do with her. The future they’d planned cut short by an illness he couldn’t cure. Maybe it’s why he felt so scared now. 

This unplanned thing laid out before him. Far out of his control.

Jack tosses and turns, his mind reeling with memories and thoughts about the future. He quietly gets up, setting the ring on his nightstand and fitting his prosthetic back on. He slips out of your bedroom, making sure you were still settled before wandering down the hall.

He’d always wanted to be a father. That wasn’t the problem. Hearing that you were pregnant had resurfaced those feelings like they’d never been buried. The idea of having a mini him, with matching curls and crooked smile. Or a mini you, with your bright eyes and pretty nose.

The problem was that desire had been locked away for a very long time. After he got injured in the army. After he became a widow. Even after he met you. Jack had begun to accept that being someone’s parent was just not in the cards he’d been dealt. But now…

Jack stands in the living room, staring around the dark room. He moves quietly, picking up a random glass and setting it in the kitchen, moving the tossed couch pillows back into their designated places. He can’t sit still when he tries. The air suffocating inside in spite of the cooling system blowing gently.

Jack ends up sitting outside on the back porch, his head in his hands. 

What would she have thought? After all this time. 

A baby. 

Jack’s not even sure he should begin to want this. To let himself hope. There was so much uncertainty with a later in life pregnancy, of an older parent conceiving a child. The constant what ifs and complications. So much to worry about.

Jack sighs, running a hand through his mussed curls as he realizes how tired he is. Of feeling on edge. Of never feeling like he could settle. The worry of something bad happening again. Of being all alone-

A noise sounds from the bushes running along the fence.

Leaves rustle softly, twigs crunching beneath something weighty. Jack looks up, brows furrowing. He squints, standing and flipping on the porch light to illuminate the dark backyard. The rustling sounds again, and Jack inches closer.

He pauses. And then he lets out a disbelieving laugh, instantly quieting himself.

The rabbit which had ducked back into the foliage at the sound of his voice peeks it’s head out again in the new silence. Her nose twitching, beady black eyes staring straight into Jack. He lets out a breath, in awe of the rare sight. He knew there were plenty of rabbits that lived around the neighborhood. He often saw where they burrowed through your garden or ate certain plants. But actually seeing one was rarer.

Of all the nights…

He goes still when the rabbit moves. Inching slowly out of the bush. She turns back, snuffling softly and moving forward again. A baby in tow.

Now, Jack was not a very superstitious man. At least, not by nature. He laughed when Ellis chastised him for saying the “q” word in the ED, rolled his eyes when Joy and Nazely talked about karma.

But if life had taught Jack anything, it was to never ignore the signs. 

He watches the pair of rabbits hop through the backyard, eyes following their path until they squeeze through the cracked boards of the fence, disappearing into the night. Jack lets out a slow and much needed exhale, the cool air of the night finally feeling fresh.

New.

Second chances that don't always happen every day.

Baby rabbit. 

Baby Abbot.

He liked the sound of that. And maybe, this time, there wouldn’t be so much to worry about. Not with you by his side. 

------------------------------------------------------

Bonus:

"Jaack!" You call out from the kicthen, where you're putting the first few bags of groceries away.

"Yeah?" Jack's voice echoes down the hall, the sound of more paper bags rustling.

"Did you get- never mind!" You grin as you find the tub of cream cheese you'd been dying to get your hands on, practically tearing the package open and digging in. You let out a satisfied hum as you eat a spoonful of the spicy spread, nodding in satisfaction.

Jack enters the kitchen, arms full of groceries, an amused look on his face.

"As good as you'd hoped it'd be?" You hum again.

"Better. I think your child already has great taste in cuisine."

Jack stills for a fraction of a second, then smiles. He sets down the bags and moves over by your side, pressing a kiss to your forehead, carefully around the tender cut still hidden by a bandage.

"Yeah they do."

You both put away the food and various household items you'd needed to stock up on. Trash bags and pasta, that lavender creamer you loved and Jack's protein bars he always carried in his scrub pockets.

You munch on a bagel- properly toasted and spread with your cream cheese because Jack insisted on at least being civilized about your cravings- going through the last bag. The bag crinkles as you feel around inside; you frown as your hand comes into contact with something soft. Fluffy. You peer inside.

A little stuffed bunny peers back at you. You stare at it for a moment, and then you laugh.

"Jack?"

"What?" He asks, folding the towel he'd just used to wash his hands. You smile, holding up the bunny. His ears go pink and he gives you a bashful grin.

"I just thought... well I thought it might be cute for the baby. You know, rabbits are thought to be good luck charms or something."

You laugh, bright and hopeful and so in love.

"You're so sweet, you know that Jack Abbot?"

------------------------------------------------------

I am actually so obsessed with peter rabbit, it's not even funny. and I love the silly "jack rabbot" joke.

You jerked up, looking at him. 

Robby leant over the counter, sliding on his glasses and looked closer. 

He was too close to you to be studying you like a patient, but just close enough for his wife. 

“You eat anything today?” he asked. 

You squinted at him. “We literally got breakfast this morning.”

“Okay, okay.”

There were darkening circles under your eyes and your lips were chapped which was his first sign something was wrong: you treated moisturising your lips like some do religion. Other than that your body was slumped over a computer. You were far more active than this. 

“You sleep okay last night?” he asked.

You smirked. “Well no, not really, someone kept me up.”

Robby smirked right back, leaning back just enough to give you space. “Are you complaining?”

“No.”

Flashbacks of last night came to mind in searing heat. The sweat of your bodies, the grip he held on your hand as he fucked you into the mattress like he did most nights. 

They said your libido goes down the older you get but Robby was going through another one. His box of blue pills sat abandoned in his bedside draw- thank god. 

Robby nodded once. “Good.”

“But that saying,” you continued, swivelling in your chair to face him. Still, he didn't move. He could smell the shampoo you'd bathed yourself in this morning and his mouth salivated like a dog with his favourite treat. “Four rounds?”

Robby took a quick sweep of the area, making sure nobody was missing him and his wife as they flirted shamelessly. “You asked for it.”

You frowned. “Did I?”

“Hey!” called Dana. “Mr and Mrs Adams, we could use your help here!”

You playfully rolled your eyes and Robby backed away slowly, hands up in surrender. He watched Dana turn to at least give them a second to finish up their flirting before digging into his pocket. 

“Here- for your lips.”

A small, practically un-used tube of chap-stick fell from the palm of his hand to yours. He carried it for you, always. If you'd asked you'd know he carried an extra pack of nuts and hand cream too. 

He'd been doing so secretly since your first dates years ago. 

Of course the supplies were different but the sentiment the same.

You blushed, a bright smile coming to your face. “You are so adorable.”

Robby shook off the word like it was splash of cold water. “Yeah, don't let onto anyone, okay? Got a cold exterior to keep up.”

“Oh- of course.”

He could have stood there and watched you all day but he already felt Dana's gaze, un-wavering. He squeezed your shoulders and pressed a kiss on your forehead before slipping away with a quiet promise to himself that he'd get his hands on you later.

“You don't look so well, you know,” said Dana once the coast was clear of Robby. 

“Don't you start,” you said. “I've had enough of this the last couple days from Robby.”

“Oh yeah, you got something?” Dana's hand was gentle on your back. If you weren't careful she'd push you onto a bed, have you in a gown with a chart written up herself. She'd mother you; smother you in her care even if she wasn't a doctor. Even if you were the attending around the place. 

You shook your head and flashed her a un-convincing smile. 

You were sure it was a bug, or burn out.

You'd caught burn out like some do colds or flus. As the second attending it was your job- with Robby's- to make sure everyone was taught, that patients were satisfied (you found you were doing that part for your husband as well) and you were saving as many lives as you could. 

The careful art of delegation and avoidance was lost on you. You threw yourself into traumas like you were still a med student with something to prove.

“Okay, if you say so,” said Dana with a purse of her lips. 

“I do say so.”

“If you need anything.”

“Am I married to you or Robinavitch?” you teased, tugging on gloves and readying yourself for a room of hustle. 

Dana chuckled, backing away slowly to her station. “You should be so lucky, Robinavitch.”

Using the weight of your back you pushed into trauma two. 

“Okay, kids- what have we got?”

“Fetal heart rate one-two-eight.”

Whitaker was at your side in an instant, handing you the chart. “Woman in her late twenties, came in complaining of cramping and migraines, twenty-nine weeks along.”

“BP is one-seventy, over one-nineteen.”

The woman was on her side, a whole score of nurses and doctors around her. It was always double the team for pregnant ladies. When there were two patients to care for in a package of one.

“Six grams of magnesium going in.”

You floated around the room, Whitaker following you like some guard dog. You took in everything going on, reading stats and taking in numbers everyone gave to you. “Okay, ma'am, I'm Doctor Robinavitch, everyone calls me Robin. It seems you have a medical condition called preeclamsia.”

The woman's eyes were teary and dark as they looked up to you in fear. “Wh-what?”

“Preeclampsia. Now that we know what it is we can help you.”

“But it was- it was just a headache,” she cried, hand cradling her stomach on instinct. “Is my baby going to be okay?”

“We are doing everything to make sure you and the baby do just fine,” you assured her, speaking a language you'd become fluent in. Diagnosis and comfort. Sometimes, when the job got tough, you wondered if you even really believed the words you were saying. They just floated from your tongue typically. 

“The thing is with your condition we have to take you up to OB and deliver this baby,” you told her. 

“OB's been paged,” Santos informed you. 

“But it's too early,” the woman sobbed, clutching at her rounded stomach like she could keep the baby there. 

“I know but the baby's pulse is strong which is good,” you told her. “And if we want to keep the ball rolling in the right direction we have to got to get to it now, okay?”

“Doctor Robin,” said Whitaker. “Labs are back in.”

“Read them to me.” You were still holding the lady's hand over her stomach, trying to comfort her. 

“Hemoglobin seven-point-five, platelets forty. LFT's are... woah-”

“Don't hold out on us Huckleberry, what's going on?” asked Santos. 

“They're high- real high-”

“Which can mean?” you ask out to the room, remembering the hundreds of times Gloria reminded you off your status as a 'teaching hospital,'. 

“HELLP syndrome,” said Denis. 

“Point to you.”

Under your hand the patient began to tremble. A quick glance at the monitor showed her blood pressure rising. Panic, most likely, something else it could have been entirely. 

“Hey, boy or a girl?” you asked, watching her eyes flicker. “Do you know what you're having?”

She blinked slow. “Boy.”

“Any name ideas?”

Her mouth had opened to say something but instead of a name vomit spewed, rolling down the gurney and splashing your scrubs- the one time you didn't put on a gown. 

“Oh shit- she's seizing!”

Everyone and you reacted quickly in holding her, trying to calm her shakes. 

It had never happened before, you'd never had so many senses tuning it an once but the smell of her breakfast wafted up to your nose. An un-familiar roll in your stomach curdled and you pursed your lips shut, turning away and burying your nose into the still fresh part of your scrubs. 

“Fifteen litres on by mask!” Whitaker yelled. “Intubation?”

He was looking to you. 

You shook your head, unable to speak with half your focus going on calming the insides of your stomach.

“With all the seizing we can't get a read on the baby's status,” said Santos. 

Fuck- you'd have to say something. You couldn't leave a fresh doctor and student into clampsia blind. “Ultrasound,” you breathed out, still unable to face where the sick started to soak into your scrubs. “Check on baby!” 

If Santos and Whitaker thought it was strange they said nothing, following you orders and relaying what they found. 

“Doctor Robin- do we intubate?”

Another set of hands came up to help steady her and you could back away. 

Even your shoes hadn't been spared the mercy of the vomit. 

“Not yet, push keppra, four grams.”

Grabbing clothes cutters you quickly sliced at your scrub top, thankful you were wearing something long sleeved and covering more of you then a simple vest. 

With the top in shreds you could finally breath but your stomach didn't get the memo.

“Pulse Ox eighty-eight!”

Groaning, you pulled the tray out for intubation, handing it to Santos. 

She glanced at you. “Hey, you look a bit-”

“- don't say sick or I'll throw up on you,” you warned, following her around like she was your new human shield. You wondered if she'd be flattered or pissed if you admitted she was. “Push probofal.”

“Pushing.”

Eventually the seizing stopped with everything you pushed to get her stable and you moved quick. It was like putting everything else on aeroplane mode, shutting off your own systems to get hers stable.

“Intubate, get an EEG to check her brain levels. She's paralysed now but her brain could still be seizing.”

You slipped in sick, grabbing yourself on the nearest doctor and thanking them. You stayed for the intubation only then knew you couldn't hack it anymore. 

You fled the room, bumping into Samira on your way out. 

Dana jolted up. “Hey, what're you-”

“-get Robby in trauma one.”

You found the nearest bathroom, locked it and threw up everything. You hugged the toilet like it was your anchor, your body curling into the movements. Time escaped you, it could have been minutes it could have been hours but finally you fell back and flushed, wiping away everything. 

You were young, you weren't as old as your husband. You'd had less experience in traumas all together, however you were a good doctor, capable enough to be a fellow attending. 

Several substances had been chucked over you in your time. Blood, vomit, piss- some you didn't even know the name off. 

Why had today been any different?

Clearing yourself up: re-tying your hair, washing out your mouth and applying Chapstick, cleaning your shoes and wiping tears from under your eyes, you blamed it on the bagels you'd had that morning. 

It was the only logical explanation.

Leaving the bathroom you felt momentary guilt and fleeing but spotted Robby already taking your place in the trauma. 

“Hey, hun,” Dana was at your side quick, gentle and peering at you closely. “What was that about? You doin alright?”

“Yeah,” you hummed. 

“You throw up? You sick?”

“No, I-” you thought of every other time you'd lied to Dana and how it never went well. “Yes but it's probably just food poisoning. Don't tell Robby.”

If Robby knew you were sick- after already having been worried this morning- you'd be driven home in twenty minutes flat. 

“Robby always finds out,” said Dana. 

You ignored her and pushed open the door to the lounge. She didn't follow and you were left with spare seconds to yourself. 

Your hands shook slightly as you fetched a glass to fill with water. To cool yourself down you ran your hands under, splashing the back of your neck with some. You gargled water and spit it back, ready to drain the glass and wet your sudden parched mouth when Langdon appeared in the door. 

“Hey, I've got a head lac I need you to take a look at.”

Because you were an attending. Because of the kind of person you are you put down the glass and followed him.

“She just ran out?”

There was the all too familiar buzz of the sanitiser dispenser as Robby helped himself to a generous blob before rubbing it into his hands. A beat behind, Denis did the same, following in his footsteps- literally. 

“Er-yeah,” he said, working fast to absorb every bit of hand sanitiser. “She ordered the EEG and bolted.”

Robby nodded, taking it all in clinically. “You said she looked pale?”

“Yeah but, she had just been thrown up on.” 

Being thrown up on wasn't a pleasant experience but he hadn't known you to run from bodily fluids. 

“Where is she now?” Robby asked, as if Denis was the soul person to look out for you. Well, Robby trusted Denis, a gift he didn't bestow on many so he did expect Denis to keep an eye on you at all times. 

“She went to the bathroom but I don't know now.”

Robby checked the bathrooms, finding you void of those spaces. He checked the lounge where nothing but a deserted glass of water sat.

He was almost panicking when he saw the back of you and Frank in a room. 

He paused. 

You were sat next to a young girl, holding her hand. Although he couldn't hear you he imagined the softness of your voice as it always became when dealing with a pedes case. You'd always joked that if the ED wasn't so in need of two attendings at a time you'd have left his ass for pedes upstairs at once. 

Robby didn't think so. For one, you'd miss his face, for the second thing- you liked bouncing from one emergency to another, switching off and relying only on your skills. 

You hadn't been bouncing around as quick as usual the last couple days. He realised it only in that moment.

Frank was standing with his arms folded over his chest, pitching in every now and then and also getting the girl to smile. 

He didn't want to go in, break the concentration and trust you'd formed with the small child. He'd find you later. 

Whatever was going on, the two of you clearly had it handled. 

Your dreams came to you in fades. 

There was first an annoyingly weird dream about a animal circus finding it's home in the Pitt. They said work followed you home, but it even followed you into dreams which seemed just un-fair. Then there was a stork on an elephants back. How would an elephant even get in to the place?

They turned to some much more enjoyable memories that had your body warming un-consciously. 

Robby's weight pressed down into yours on the couch in your living room. You'd begged him to put everything on you, to not hold himself up and with-hold his moans. 

And because you'd asked, he did. 

Robby wasn't a light guy and you liked him like that. The weight of him crushing you, his spit swapped with yours, sweat of his body being shared and the fingerprints you could feel at your hips. 

“Oh fuck sweetheart, oh fuck!” he'd groaned out loud. 

You felt parts of him deep in you you didn't know you could feel and still you wanted more. Your locked your ankles around his backside, keeping him into you in short and sweet thrusts. 

“Oh, you like that? Jesus Christ,” he grunted into your neck, unable to hold himself up even if he wanted to. “So greedy. Fuckin' so greedy!”

“Please, Robby, please!”

Steady hands were sudden at your shoulders and a body pressed up to yours, decidedly unlike how one did in the dream. 

“Go home,” said Robby. 

You picked yourself up from where you'd dozed off, your head in your arms folded over on the counter. In front of you, the computer was blank. “Hm?”

Robby's eyes bored into yours. “Go home, you're sick.”

“It's only twelve. I'm not sick- I'm fine,” you said, waving off his hand as it came up to test your temperature in the very medical practise of hand on forehead. 

Robby shook his head. “You were dozing this morning, you're asleep now, you threw up-”

“Dana, I told her not to say anything!” You cursed under your breath. 

“Not Dana, Whitaker,” said Robby, looking at you with brows draw in, somewhere between anger (or as angry as he could get at you) and concern. “Did you tell Dana not to tell me?”

“Because you worry.” You used your secret trick of overwhelming affection to try to starve off Robby. Your hands were clammy as they held his cheeks, fingertips grazing over his beard just how he liked. He was kneeling at your side, melting into your touch. “I'm fine.”

For extra measures you pressed a kiss to his forehead and walked away. 

There was a split second of head spinning blur. The sort that had you reaching out to balance yourself. It lasted maybe two seconds but enough to worry you. 

If you hadn't taken such care in tending to Robby's own distraction he'd have clocked it and dragged you home himself. 

You maybe weren't so fine. It wasn't every day you felt as tired as you did now, and however good the night before had been Robby had given you more. Plenty. You'd surpassed twenty-fours working in the ED with no sleep so nothing could phase you. 

But being phased you were. 

The lack of sleep.... the throwing up... maybe you were coming down with something. 

You'd thrown up last week too, so it couldn't be food poisoning like you were trying to convince yourself it was. 

Robby hurried after you, the jingle of his keys and ID card and such jangling. “I'm keeping my eyes on you.”

“Sexy.”

In trauma one the two of you worked together with a score of doctors and nurses. Mrs Albany- the pregnant lady with clampsia- demanded attention. Perhaps it was a waste of two attendings working on the same patient. 

The emergency c-section you had to perform made the one patient two and as Robby worked to keep the mother alive you worked on the child, stimulating the baby boy till he breathed, wiping off the fluids and bloods and sighing when he cried out. 

Under the gown and mask you could see Robby's own dimples at you as you both saved lives. 

But the tang of iron from the uterus and child filled your nostrils and upset you close enough to tears. You were glad Esme had cleaned up the sick from early and equally as glad you had the chance to throw up your breakfast so you couldn't do it again. 

“Holy shit!” Santos celebrated, yanking off her gown and gloves next to you as you did the same, “That was crazy!”

The baby was pushed by you, heading up to the NICU, the mother following, a pulse low but steady, heading up to the OR.

You ducked away from Robby as he followed the pair out. You took Santos with you, a pushing hand on her back. “Yeah, it was- listen I've got a patient that needs blood results quick, you think if I get it you can rush it up to labs, on an ASAP basis.”

Santos frowned. You knew what she was thinking before she even had to say it. It was a boring job, her skills were better off etc. 

“Please?” you asked. 

It took a roll of her eyes but she agreed to. 

Five minutes later you had a vial of your own blood handed to her. 

An hour later Santos found you, Ipad in hand. 

“Hey, got the results for your patient,” she said. “Where are they? What room? I couldn't see them on the board?”

Dana would have had something to say about taking your own blood and getting it to labs without telling anyone. Robby too. As attending you should have been chastising yourself but there was no time for that. No need, either. 

Doctors made the worst sort of patients, especially when they felt they didn't need to be one. 

“Er, she left, discharged herself,” you lied quickly, trying to get a gage on the results that were cradled in your arm.

“Bummer. I wanted to give her good news. Or bad.”

“What?”

“She's pregnant.”

You stopped in you tracks. 

It took Trinity at least four more paces before she realised you had. 

The blood works showed just that. High HCG levels, you red blood cell count was high. Along with the nausea, vomiting, dizzy spells it made sense. 

You were pregnant. 

Inside the stomach that had been churning all day sat a life fully depending on you to take care of it. Suddenly none of your med school training mattered. Nothing you'd ever down before mattered. Looking after patients was one thing. You didn't have to go home with them, check they drank enough or ate enough, didn't have to check in with their boss they were taking it easy. 

You struggled to look after yourself. 

Throw a baby in the mix and you were doomed. 

Chuck in Robby and you were-

Robby. 

Jesus Fuck. You'd never spoken about kids. You'd only been married a year and were still in what some considered the 'honeymoon' phase.

“Everything okay?” asked Santos. “Did I miss something in the results?”

You cleared your throat. “No. No, that all... looks good. I'm just gonna take a small break. Quick one. Thanks.” 

“Hey, Robby!” Denis called as he walked out from the ambulance bay. “Congratulations!” 

“Thanks, Whitaker.”

It took Robby seconds to pause and think. What was he being congratulated for? The fact he went outside for some air? It wasn't impressive. Was it the quick life saving procedures they'd made on mother and son that sent them both upstairs alive? That was over an hour ago and Denis had been in the room. 

Robby back tracked to Whitaker. “What am I being congratulated on, exactly?” he asked. 

Whitaker looked at him like he was crazy. “The good news.”

Good news? The last good news he had was marrying you a year ago, and Whitaker had been at the damn wedding crying more than his own grandmother. 

Robby shook his head. 

“The good news, you'll be a great dad.”

Robby chocked on his breath, leaning on the counter. “Wh-what?” he chuckled in a breath. 

“You're pregnant? I mean, not you, obviously, I-I know how it works. But you're having a baby, that's-that's what they say and I just wanted to say well done. Or not well done! No, that came out wrong, jus-”

Robby had let him stumble on his words as he tried to figure out what he was saying. The baby? What baby? “Denis, what are you talking about?”

He looked around quickly for you but couldn't see you. 

“Oh my god, you didn't know, you didn't know did you?” Whitaker's face paled, his entire body sinking. “Santos told me, she told me not to tell anyone but I-I figured I could tell you! I guessed- oh god, did I just tell you your wife is pregnant?”

His wife...

Pregnant...

And Robby was finding out from Huckleberry!

Robby took a step around the counter and Denis stumbled back into his chair. “Are you telling me she's...”

Whitaker nodded when the words failed him. 

Robby thought back to the sickness you thought he'd missed last week, the way you fell asleep at the computer earlier and the general exhaustion. He tried to think back to what night could have been 'the one' but somewhere along the line you'd both stopped being careful. Condoms were abandoned in draws and your pack of contraceptive pills were still full.

“Doctor- Doctor Robby? Do you need to sit down?” Denis asked. 

Robby waved him off and gave himself one minute to compose himself. He knew panic, it was an old friend he'd lost contact with over the years, yet it returned to him then. 

“Where is she now?” he asked. 

“Oh, I don't- I don't-”

“Huckleberry!” he tried not to expose his fondness of the nickname Santos had given him but it slipped out in the most desperate of times. 

Denis gulped, knowing this. “Exam room three.”

Robby nodded and made a be-line, Casey was asking him a question as he passed but he held up a hand, ignoring her. 

Santos stepped out the room, closing the door and stopping when Robby almost collided with her. “You can't go in there.”

Robby inhaled a deep breath. It was one thing having Whitaker be the one to tell him you were pregnant. It was another to have Santos blocking him from seeing you. “Doctor Santos if you don't let me through you will miss every trauma that comes through those doors.”

Luckily, he knew how to work Santos. 

Her arms budged over her chest. “For how long?”

Whatever you had promised her to keep him out must have been just as grand a prize. “Till I see fit now let me in.”

It was like a western stand off for longer than Robby would have liked. Every second he spent out of your room was longer you were spending alone. 

Eventually, Trinity sighed and gave up. “Okay, fine, whatever, but she promised me first dibs at a REBOA for doing this. I expect that to still stand.”

Robby pushed through the room and snapped back the curtains finding you at the edge of a bed, the wand of an ultrasound hidden under your top and the grey scale picture of a baby on the monitor. 

To your credit you didn't flinch or move as he stood there.

“Lets be real this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing.”

In five minutes Robby had wiped down your stomach of the gel, had helped pull your top down and sat with you on the edge of the patient bed, the curtain back to being pulled over and hiding the two of you from traumas and agitated patients and doctors alike. 

“How long have you known?” asked Robby. 

There was no anger, no mean undertones. It was frightening rather blank, the way he spoke. You'd always prided yourself on knowing how to tell when he was in a good mood or bad from the smallest of tics he had. 

He'd trained them out of himself apparently. 

Yet- he'd given you his hand and you'd pulled it into your lap, holding it and trailing your own fingers over his. 

“The time's now-” you peeked over him at the clock over the door. “- about an hour and thirteen minutes.”

He shook his head, scoffing out a smile that pronounced his wrinkles. “Why didn't you come to me?”

You sighed, shrugging your shoulders. “I thought I was just sick, you know? So I thought I'd get some bloods and see.”

“Did you do the bloods yourself?”

You looked at him and that was telling enough. With the hand that wasn't with yours he rubbed at his temple in aggravation. So far there'd been little to no talk about the baby growing in your stomach but more concern about how you'd gone to finding out. 

“You should've got me,” he said. 

“Well if I thought I was pregnant I probably would have.” You tried to joke but it fell flat. 

“Probably?” he repeated quietly. 

Silence went by with only the ticking of the clock as company. 

You held onto his hand, readying yourself for the question yet to be asked. “Are you mad at me?”

Robby shook his head but didn't look at you.

“Annnnd are you mad at...” you couldn't say baby yet. Didn't know if giving the clump of cells in your stomach a name would scare him off. 

With the hand in your lap his fingers entwined with yours and clutched tight. 

“I know we never talked about kids and this wasn't planned in the slightest,” you said even if you knew Robby had stopped pulling out months ago, favouring the way you felt when your walls swallowed him up. “You can be angry.”

“You keep asking if I'm angry, do you want me to be?” he asked, finally a touch of emotion in his voice as it rose an octave. “Are you mad?”

That was the question. It wasn't planned, but it wasn't unwanted. You couldn't say that seeing the way mothers caressed their stomachs when they came in with spotting or concerns didn't have you thinking of your own child one day. That talking to that little girl with the head lac earlier with Frank didn't cause a pang of longing in your heart. 

You'd never tried to pretend you didn't want everything with Robby. Even if you've never discussed what everything was to each other. 

“When I was in med school I thought I'd have it all worked out long before now,” said Robby. “Marriage and kids. Maybe on my second marriage by now.”

You dug your elbow into his ribs, rewarded with a quick, breathless laugh. 

His eyes creased as his face scrunched up. “Didn't work out. Guess I... gave up thinking it could.”

“Then you met me, right?”

Robby looked at you. His eyes were like glass as he looked you over, his lips titled, cheeks red under his beard. He looked- if you didn't mind saying so- like a man mesmerised. He nodded. 

“I thought you didn't want kids,” you said. 

“Do you?” he asked, eyes boring into yours. 

“Do you?” you threw back to him. 

He squeezed your hand and gave you a look. 

“I think I do,” you admitted, quietly, as if you could take it back if it displeased him. “I don't know if I'll be good at it. I hardly have time to look after myself, let alone a baby. And I don't want to be one of those people that gives up work for kids cause I love my job but... I think I could love a kid, too.”

Robby nodded along with what you were saying, a smile brightening everything you thought looked dark in him.

“Do you want kids?” you asked. 

“Oh, kids?” he teased. “You're so sure its twins already?”

You rolled your eyes as he nudged his shoulder with yours, rocking the both of your bodies. 

“I want everything with you, I said so much in my vows, didn't I? You thought I was lying, Doctor Robin?”

You couldn't help but smile at the nickname he gave you and was proud to call you. After all, calling out for two Robinavitch's in an emergency proved difficult quickly. “I don't believe your vows included, I want to fuck you so hard and deep you get pregnant within the first year of marriage.' ”

“Dirty mouth, cussing like that,” said Robby, his eyes drifting down your lips as he bit down on his own. “Have to sort that out before the baby gets here.”

“Lucky we have eight months to train it out of me.”

Robby's nose had just brushed yours before he was pulling back, studying you again. His gaze drifted to your stomach, wondering if the manifestation of your nights had started to show. “You're a month along, already?”

You clocked your head side to side. “Give or take a week or two.”

“Eight months it is.”

Robby kissed you, licking into your mouth and breathing you in with deep breaths. His large hands held your cheeks and kept you in, all but drowning you in lips and touch and love. He tilted his head aside, kissing you deeper. 

At once the doors banged open and arguing voices drifted in. 

Robby pulled back with his head lowered in disappointment while you licked the taste of him off your lips. “I swear to god, these kids-” he grumbled as Denis and Trinity stumbled in. 

“Seems like you got the dad thing down already,” you said, hand rubbing up and down in his back. 

The intruders had a hoard of things in arms. Denis was carrying a large bear in hand that almost drowned him as he struggled to hold him. The bear was holding a blue heart sewen into its paws while Trinity was struggling in pulling the pink balloons in. 

It seemed they'd already made bets on what baby they wanted you to have.

“We er, wanted to get you these,” said Denis. “Sorry for ruining the surprise.”

“I'm not sorry, I didn't do anything,” said Santos with a scoff. 

“You told me,” pointed out Whitaker. 

“Yeah and I told you not to tell anyone, fuckleberry then you tell the dad!”

“I thought he knew!”

“I told you in confidence!”

“You were laughing while you were telling me! That wasn't every confident!”

“Oh my god, it's a figure of speech!”

You laughed at the two of them, hiding your face in Robby's scrubs as he leant his head back toward you. 

you feel the distance between you and abbot close as he presses his chest against your shoulder, ducking down near your ear whispering. “seems like you don’t know your own body anymore than those boys do.” he leans forward to get a read on your expression, and you’re there standing still like an embarrassed pup that doesn’t know what to do which makes him smile.

“no need to feel embarrassed.” he reassures, throwing a hand on top of your head, “let me give you hand, help you learn the difference between incapability and never having learned.”

and that’s how you found yourself breaking your own code of ethics. splayed out on jack abbot’s mattress, hugging a pillow against your chest as his tongue worked at your pussy.

he’s on his stomach, his arms hooked underneath your thighs to pull you closer on his mouth. “j—jack …” a moan falls from your lips, the way his tongue glides through your folds. how he angles the tip of his tongue to flex the muscle just before he meets your clit to flick at it.

“focus on the feeling, you gotta relax.” he murmurs, pulling off for just a mili-second before latching back onto the sensitive nub. flattening his tongue as his rocks his mouth against you, he’s hallowing his cheeks causing you to grab at his the roots of his hair in attempt to tug him off.

though he’s swatting your hand away, digging his face deeper — in between your thighs with a low, drawn out groan as your toes curl at the anticipating increase of pleasure making your core tighten.

“oh m— i’m gonna cum, jack- i’m gonna—“

he’s pulling his lips away from your pussy with a wet pop, soaked and glistening by his saliva mixed with your slick — as the tightness in your tummy slowly loosens. “that was damn, close.” jack breathes, wiping his mouth off with the backside of his hand before propping himself up in a position comfortable for his right amputee.

he reaches out, hands wrapping around your hips to drag you towards him. you don’t even resist, not when your own pleasure was stripped from you — you needed anything that could bring back that euphoric feeling.

your hips grind upwards, grinding against nothing but atoms. “see, that’s it— now you know what your body’s wantin’.” his slides a hand from your hips to below your navel, before slowly dragging the pads of his rough fingers down near the mound of your pussy.

carefully grazing over swollen pearl as you whine to the almost there sensation. jack watches the way your body reacts to his touch — pressing his index and middle finger into your slick folds, soaking his fingers in your mess. “‘s a good sign. you’re fuckin’ drenched, sweetheart .” he groans, dragging his digits further down to meet your entrance.

you claw your nails into the pillow your clutching as the tips of his fingers prod at your hole. he’s teasing, intoxicated by the way your hips are still rolling against his hand while you let out little moans as he gently presses his thick fingers inside you.

“m—mngh fuck, jack…” you sighs, tilting your chin up to the ceiling, “yeah? that feels good doesn’t it, kid?” he cooed, flicking his eyes up to trace your expression only to be met with one of his pillows before he’s tugging it away from your chest. “there we goo.” he sings, glossing over sweets features with your bottom lip caught between your teeth, making him click his tongue.

“uh-uh, it feels better when you let it out.” he shakes his head, stuffing your hole with his fingers until he’s knuckles deep — angling his fingers in an upward direction that rips a moan from your throat as he curls his digits inside of you.

and the action shoots right through the nerves within your sensitive bud. “i can f—feel it in my clit.” you stammer, brows furrowed as indescribable pressure builds against your badder and swells your nub. “mhmm, that’s right.” he hums, pressing the pads of fingers deeper against that spongy wall inside of you, as your toes curl.

“the g-spot, you’re jackpot, baby.” he rasps with a lopsided grin — shifting his position to lie down on his side, right besides you as his nose presses into the side of your cheek. “the more pressure you add…” he murmurs as his breath warms your skin, pressing with cruel precision that makes the place between your legs run warm.

“j— jack.” you mewl, eyes shut tight with a hand reach at his. “the more you get that peeing feeling.” he demonstrates, feeling your soft walls close in around his fingers.

you can feel the way your bladder fills with each nudge of his movements — like he’s milking the sensation out of you. as if he’s adding fuel to the sensitive nerves bundle inside you as your clit twitches to the repetitive motion.

“and if i press my thumb righttt against this pretty fuckin’ clit.” he groans, darting his thumb upward before pressing the pad flush against your clit. “nnnnmg-my god!” you gasp, back arching off the mattress while squeezing your thighs around his hand.

his fingers and thumb stimulating both pleasurable points at once has your mind blanking. eyes rolling to the back of your skull as you’re choking on a plethora of moans.

“‘m gonna cum— m’gonna cum, i’m—” you can feel a surge of warmth flood your nerves as you slur your words. “theree you go, melt into that feeling for me.” he groans, as your walls choke around his digits stuffing your pussy full with his thumb working circles against your overstimulated clit.

you feel your tummy tighten, vision flash white as the sensation completely overrides your body. “cummmingg!” you inhale breathlessly, holding your breath as your clit throbs with a dangerous amount of pleasure before you’re gushing everywhere.

“atta girl.” jack whistles with satisfaction — and you can’t even respond, still too busy making a mess all over yourself and jack’s arm. you’re body’s tenses against his chest as he continues milking you dry, letting you ride the feeling out while pressing his mouth against your ear. “gotta few more things ‘m sure your body’s never done.” he murmurs.

She discovers her voice by the time Valentine’s Day rolls around, and what starts as mere babbling quickly turns into a language only the three of you can understand.

Jack especially can’t get enough of chatting to her. A firm hater of the baby-voice, he speaks to her like any other person - sometimes Gwen gets more levity than the likes of Robby. One of your favourite things to come home to is Jack running her bedtime routine on days where you have late classes.

Sometimes, you’ll hover in the hallway, listening to their little chats. Tonight, the topic appears to be the latest volume of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

He has her perched on his knee, one hand spreading the pages of the journal, the other at the wheel of his wheelchair, pushing them back and forth softly. She’s always loved the rhythm of the wheelchair - to the point where the rocking chair in her nursery has been replaced by one of Jack’s backups.

It’s a sure way to have her asleep within half an hour.

Jack loves that he’s the only one that can do it with her. Even if you try and sit in the chair, replicate his movements exactly, she’ll just start to fuss for her daddy.

“I see what you’re saying,” comes Jack’s voice, low and playful. “But it’s all about the politics, Gwenny. You can’t just decide on a uniform protocol for something like that - every doctor has their own preferences.”

Gwen responds in babbles, and you find yourself leaning against the wall to listen in, fighting a smile.

“Well, now you’re just being ridiculous. Sounding too much like your Uncle Robby for your own good, huh? We’ve got to think about the funding, Gwendoline. How are we going to pay for that?”

A small pause, before Jack pretends to gasp. “My credit card? And here I thought we had a few more years before you became a teenager.”

Only when Gwen erupts into a flurry of giggles do you finally enter, dropping your bag down in the doorway. “Are you trying to indoctrinate our daughter into medicine already?”

“Well, she clearly has the knack for it already, honey - even if her spending habits leave something to be desired.”

“Hm, I don’t know. I still think she’s got a novel or two in her. With the way she loves books and stories.”

“Why make her choose? She can be the world’s best doctor, and write books on the side to supplement. Make sure she can support us in our old age.”

The smile he shoots you is easy, and you find yourself leaning down to press a kiss to Gwen’s head. When you pull back from the wheelchair, Jack pouts. “Nothing for me?”

You roll your eyes dramatically, but there’s no heat behind the action, and you press a soft kiss to Jack’s cheek. “Happy now?”

“Very.”

*****

Now in April, Gwen is pulling herself up on every piece of furniture she can find. Her favourite target is the low coffee table, where Jack accidentally leaves his mug one evening. You catch her just as her stubby fingers wrap around the ceramic handle, her tongue sticking out in pure, concentrated determination.

"Gotcha," you breathe, lifting her away just in time.

"Good catch," Jack says, walking into the room with a stack of fresh diapers. His eyes drop to your mouth, just a flicker, before he blinks and looks down at the baby in your arms. "She’s getting too fast for us.”

“I’m sure we’ll blink and she’ll be twenty.”

“Don’t say that,” Jack groans. “She’s not allowed to ever get any older than she is right now.”

You laugh as Gwen immediately twists in your arms, reaching back toward the coffee table like she has unfinished business there.

“Oh, really? Because two months ago you were begging for her to sit up on her own.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“Because sitting up is cute.” He points at Gwen. “This?” He gestures as she lunges for absolutely nothing in particular. “This is the beginning of the end.”

“The end of what?”

“Our peace.” You snort, while Jack drops the stack of diapers onto the sofa before holding his hands out. “Come here, kiddo.”

Gwen practically throws herself toward him. The betrayal is immediate. “Wow,” you say. “Nice to know where her loyalties lie. Guess if she likes you so much, you can take bedtime duty tonight.”

Jack’s head immediately snaps to yours. “What? I did it last night!”

“Are you seriously turning your daughter down?” You ask. It’s cruel, really, playing him by using Gwen. But after a full day of classes, you’re not sure you can face three rounds of The Hungry Cateroillar.

You pass her over, and Gwen rests her head briefly against Jack's shoulder. The sight catches you off guard, even though you’ve seen it on a daily basis for the past however many months. It’s just a startling reminder that she is, in fact, growing up. Slowly but surely, and yet somehow all too fast. These little flashes where she seems less like a baby and more like a tiny person with preferences and routines and opinions.

A tiny person who absolutely prefers Jack's left shoulder over his right.

A tiny person who laughs whenever you sneeze.

A tiny person who somehow knows exactly where forbidden objects are located at all times.

“You look sentimental,” Jack comments, and you snap out of your daze, realising you were staring. “All weepy like you’re the one who doesn’t want her to grow up.”

“Sorry. Uh, just thinking.”

“Yeah? About what?”

Suddenly slightly concerned you’re about to cry, you decide to dodge the topic altogether. “About how you should do bath and bedtime tonight?”

“Hm, you’re lucky I love you both.”

*****

You lie awake, staring at the ceiling and trying to warm your toes under the heavy duvet, when you hear it.

A muffled, choked sound comes from the bedroom down the hall. Far too low to be Gwen. You check the baby monitor, just to be safe, and see her sound asleep in her crib. A few seconds later, it happens again - a low, fractured groan that twists into a sharp, desperate gasp for air. It isn't the sound of someone snoring.

It sounds like somebody in pain.

Kicking off the covers, you slip out of bed. The hardwood floor is ice-cold against your bare feet as you creep down the dark hallway, bypassing Gwen’s room, and stop outside Jack’s cracked door.

The pale moonlight cuts through his blinds, casting sharp shadows across the room. Jack is thrashing under his sheets, his large frame tangled in the blankets. His head turns violently from side to side, his jaw locked tight.

"No," he chokes out, his voice thin and entirely stripped of his usual assurances. "No, wait. Don't go.”

"Jack," you whisper, stepping into the room.

He doesn't wake. He lets out another ragged, breathless sob that makes your chest ache. You cross the room and sit on the edge of the mattress - reach ping out to place a firm, steady hand on his bare shoulder. He’s burning hot and slick with sweat.

"Jack, wake up. You're dreaming," You murmur a little louder, shaking him gently.

He bolts upright with a violent gasp, his eyes wide and blank, staring straight through you. His chest heaves as he fights for oxygen, his hands instantly clawing at the sheets. He is entirely unmoored, trapped somewhere between the nightmare and reality.

"Hey, look at me," you insist, shifting closer and placing both of your hands on the sides of his face, forcing his frantic gaze to anchor on yours. “You were just dreaming. You’re fine. It’s okay, Jack.”

It takes another second for his eyes to refocus, and only when you reach out to take a hand do his shoulders start to relax. “Shit. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” You murmur. “Want to talk about it?”

He nods, but there’s no words don’t come, and instead he leans into your touch.

Your fingers gently smooth the hair at the back of his neck. "Was it the army? Or your mom?"

He stays still for a long moment, his forehead pressed hard against your shoulder as his breathing slowly hitches. When he finally pulls back just enough to look at you, his face is wet, his expression completely raw.

"No," he whispers, his voice cracking. "It wasn't them. It was you."

You blink, caught entirely off guard. "Me?”

“I dreamt I was losing you. That I’d already lost you. A-and we didn’t even have Gwen, and it was so awful, and-“

He cuts off in the horrible realisation that you both lived that dream almost eighteen months ago. "Jack, I'm right here," you say softly, your voice steady against the howling wind outside. "I'm not going anywhere.”

A single tear leaks down his cheek, and you pull him into your arms, until you can wrap them round his entire body. “C-Can you stay the night? I-If you don’t want to, that’s fine-“

He’s never sounded more vulnerable, and it breaks your heart. “Of course I can stay, Jackie.”

“You and Gwen are the best things in my life - you know that right?”

“You prove it to us every day.”

Almost tentatively, you draw him down towards the pillows, slipping under the duvet beside him. Jack turns onto his side, facing you, and pulls you tightly against his chest. His arm tucks securely under your head, anchoring you to him, while his other hand rests flat against your waist. You wrap your arms around his torso, burying your face in the crook of his neck, letting your heartbeat match his.

You stay awake for a while, listening to his breathing smooth out into a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

*****

Jack knows he’s being unreasonable. Insane, even. You’re only thirty minutes late from when you said you’d be home, and he can feel himself spiralling.

By minute thirty, his hands are shaking so badly he can barely scoop the formula into Gwen’s bedtime bottle. He has paced the living room until his leg aches, Gwen tracking his frantic movements from his arms. Every time he looks at the clock, the knots in his stomach tighten. He calls your phone for the sixth time. Straight to voicemail. The flat, automated tone triggers a sharp spike of adrenaline in his chest. His mind immediately bypasses every logical explanation and constructs a worst-case scenario: a car accident on the slick March roads, a breakdown on a dark shoulder, something terrible.

He cannot fathom how you possibly did this alone.

He cannot fathom doing any of it on his own.

"Come on, sweet girl, let's get you down," Jack mutters, his voice thick with a panic he is desperately trying to hide from the baby. Gwen responds with a sleepy little noise and presses her face into his shoulder. His left shoulder.

At least one of them is calm.

Jack glances at the clock again. Thirty-two minutes late. He swallows heavily, and begins to get Gwen changed into her pyjamas with hands that won't stop trembling. She watches him with wide eyes while he fumbles with snaps he's fastened a hundred times before.

"Sorry," He murmurs when he misses one. As if his eight-month-old daughter cares.

Normally, bedtime is his favourite part of the day, but tonight he can hardly focus, and when the front door lock finally clicks at fifty-seven minutes past the hour, Jack is waiting right there in the shadows of the hall.

You walk in, balancing your bag and a stack of papers, looking tired but entirely fine. "I am so sorry," you start immediately, kicking off your shoes. "One of my students needed help with an essay rewrite, and then my phone died on the way out, and I couldn't-"

You stop because Jack has crossed the carpet in two strides. He doesn't wait for you to finish. He drops his forehead against your shoulder, his hands gripping the heavy fabric of your winter coat so tightly his knuckles turn white. He is trembling, as he pulls you into the tightest hug of your life.

"Jack?" you ask, the papers slipping slightly in your grip. "What's wrong? Is Gwen okay?"

"Gwen is fine. She's asleep," He croaks, his voice thick and rough against your neck. He pulls back just enough to look at you, his eyes bloodshot and frantic, searching your face as if verifying you are actually here. Here and okay. "Your phone was dead. You didn't text. I thought... I thought you were in a ditch somewhere. I thought someone hurt you."

"Jack, I'm less than an hour late," You say gently, shocked by the sheer terror radiating off him.

"I know that's not a long time. I know normal people don't immediately assume the worst because somebody's fifty minutes late."

"Jack-"

"I called you fourteen times."

You blink. "What?"

"Fourteen." His voice is flat with embarrassment now, and he runs a shaking hand over his face, his skin pale under the hallway light. "I started picturing the highway near the campus, thinking about how slick the roads get when the ice melts. Then I started thinking about someone cornering you in the parking lot after dark. I couldn't stop it. O-Or some kind of accident on the freeway-”

"Hey," you whisper gently, dropping your bag and the stack of papers onto the bench by the door. They slide and scatter slightly, but neither of you moves. You wrap your arms around his waist, pulling yourself tight against his solid frame. "Look at me. I'm right here. I'm safe. I'm completely okay. And I’m sorry. I should’ve charged it in the car.”

He’s shaking his head. “You don’t have to apologise.”

"Come on," You murmur, sliding your hands up his back, feeling the tense, knotted muscles of his shoulders begin to give way under your touch. "Let’s go sit down.”

Steering him gently, you guide him into the dimly lit living room, pulling him down beside you on the sofa

One hand slides into his hair, fingers threading through the soft strands at the back of his head, while the other settles firmly at his back.

For months, he's been trying to be everything for everyone. Strong for Gwen. Strong for you. You know him well enough to catch the signs. He still feels guilty for missing out, so he’ll run himself ragged in order to look after you both.

You haven’t seen a single bill in almost four months. Neither of you have ever had to want for anything. You can work whatever classes you want, because Jack will rearrange his own schedule to look after Gwen when needed.

Your fingers continue moving through his curls. Slow. Steady. The same way you soothe Gwen when she's upset - rubbing soft circles into her scalp.

Eventually, his shoulders begin to loosen, and he gently catches one of your hands, his thumb tracing over your knuckles - though he can't quite hold your gaze. "I'm so sorry for everything I did to you. I was just... I was so low after my mom died. I didn’t want to be here anymore. I was angry and exhausted and grieving, and somewhere along the way I convinced myself I didn't deserve to be happy."

“We don’t have to get into this again, Jackie.”

Finally, he looks up at you. “We do. I-I don’t feel like I’ll ever be able to apologise enough for leaving.”

“You’ve given both of us the best life - if I could go back and change the way I handled things, I would, but I really need you to stop feeling so guilty. And stop imagining a ditch.”

The corner of his mouth twitches despite himself. “Not just one ditch." You stare at him, and Jack sighs heavily. "There were several ditches."

A surprised laugh escapes you, and the tension breaks for half a second. “You’re insane-“

“I love you,” he bursts out, and you freeze.

“What?”

"I love you," he chokes out. "God, I love you so much, and the thought of losing you just destroyed me. I kept telling myself I didn't want to get married again. That I wasn't built for it anymore. That I'd already done it once and couldn't go through all of that a second time."

He lapses into a pause, and you wonder if you should speak. Before you can, he stumbles on, shaking his head again.

"But that wasn't the whole truth. The truth is I was scared." He looks away again, jaw tense. "After Marisol died, I felt guilty for everything. For laughing. For having good days. For even thinking about a future that didn't include her. Part of me got stuck there. In that hospital room. And every time things got serious with you, it felt like I was being forced to choose between holding on to her and moving forward. I thought if I let myself love someone else the way I loved her, it meant I was leaving her behind.”

“Marisol belonged to that specific time in my life. A-And I still love her, and miss her every day. But this? What I feel for you? It’s all-consuming. It’s this constant, heavy pull in my chest that I can't shake, no matter how hard I try. You’re just everywhere in my head now. And the thing is, I don't even want to fight it anymore.”

You have no idea how to sum up decades of history. Instead, you simply nudge his shoulder with your own, and mumble, "You had an entire collection of ditches."

"We’re still on that?” The words are murmured, and he finally leans sideways and lets his head fall against you.

"I'm sorry I scared you."

He lets out a long breath. "I wasn't scared."

You raise an eyebrow. "Jack."

"I was absolutely terrified." He swallows heavily, “I think I’ve always loved you a little bit. Since we were kids. But I’ve been the biggest fucking idiot on the planet, and I’d understand if you didn’t want anything to do with me like that. This house is as much yours as it is mine, and I-I don’t want you to feel like you can’t live here in peace.”

Unable to take it anymore, you shift angle, and press your lips to his.

Jack’s right. All-consuming is the only word for it. A desperation permeates into his every movement. One hand cups your face, so gently as if he’s terrified you’re about to disappear, while the other wraps around your waist, holding you as tightly to him as possible.

“Missed you so much, sweet girl,” He mumbles between kisses. “So fucking much.”

It’s teeth and tongue and gasping for breath, until you’re sitting in his lap and feeling like you might die if you don’t get to have him right now. “Bed?” You offer, knowing it’s what’s easiest on his leg.

“We don’t have to-“

You’re interrupting immediately. “But do you want to?”

“More than anything,” he breathes, and you’re back on each other. Your movements are clumsy as you navigate up the stairs, trying to keep quiet so you don’t accidentally wake Gwen - you’re pretty sure there are more apologies tumbling from Jack’s lips as he trails down your skin.

Clothes are discarded in heaps, and soon Jack is seeing your body for the first time since having Gwen. It’s a far different body to the one you used to have, and you’re still working on loving it. Jack Abbot seems to have no such problems. “God, you’re so beautiful, honey. Prettiest girl in the whole world. Prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

You’re sure that’s not true, but when Jack dips his head to wrap his lips around your nipple, all you can focus on is the feeling of his tongue against you. He’s always been big on foreplay - insisting you get off before he even takes his pants off. Tonight, you just want to be near him. “J-Jack, need you-“

Ever a pleaser, he complies immediately, hand moving to your hip so he can draw you closer to him. He’s hard already, leaking against your thigh, and you’re dizzied by how good it feels to be with him like this again.

“Promise you’re up for this?” He asks, forehead dropping to rest against yours.

You just nod, lip between your teeth. “Don’t leave me again,” You whisper, a few tears leaking from your eyes as he finally pushes in.

“Never,” His reply is instantaneous. “I promise, sweetheart. M’so sorry.”

The rhythm he sets is slow and torturous, nothing like the frenzied kissing as you made your way upstairs. He’s savouring this, moving like he knows this is forever. He knows you have the rest of your lives to relearn each other’s bodies, and make each other happy. The way he should have been this entire time.

Six months later.

The September sun warms the secluded little clearing in the botanical gardens, filtering through the trees in patches of gold.

There’s just a simple wooden altar, ten chairs arranged on the grass for your closest friends, Jack, and a walking, fourteen-month-old Gwen in a tiny linen dress. Normally, the bride and groom are supposed to remain separated until the ceremony.

Given you've done everything else out of order, you don’t pay much attention to tradition. Last night, you and Jack put Gwen to bed together, before falling asleep in each other's arms. There's nowhere you'd rather have spent your last night as a single woman.

You stand in front of the full-length mirror, smoothing down the front of your wedding dress. The fabric is cool against your skin, flattering in all the right places. The baby weight still isn't gone entirely, but it's been nice having your boobs back to yourself with Gwen stopping breastfeeding.

A soft, hesitant knock sounds at the door.

Before you can answer, the handle turns, and the door creaks open. Jack steps into the room, holding Gwen against his hip. "I told her we should wait a little, but Gwenny wanted to see Mommy in her pretty dress-"

His voice trails off as you turn, finally getting the full view of it. Keeping the wedding dress secret had been one of the few traditions you'd actually subscribed to.

Gwen, entirely oblivious to the weight of the moment, breaks the silence. She lets out a loud, cheerful babble and reaches her chubby arms out toward you, her fingers curling and uncurling as she recognises your face. "Mama!"

The sound breaks Jack out of his trance. He lets out a soft, breathless laugh, his eyes never leaving yours as he finally walks into the room. He closes the distance in a few slow strides, stopping just inches away from you. "Doesn't Mama look beautiful?"

"Boo-tifull!" Gwen echoes, giggling.

"God," He whispers, his voice low and incredibly thick with emotion. He shifts Gwen slightly on his hip so he can reach out, resting his palm against your waist. "You look... you look absolutely beautiful. I knew you would, but seeing you standing there like that… can't believe how lucky I am."

"You look pretty incredible yourself," you say softly, a tear threatening to spill over your eyelashes as you look up at him.

Jack leans down, pressing his forehead gently against yours. The scent of his cologne washes over you, warm and familiar, anchoring you instantly. He closes his eyes, just breathing you in for a long, quiet second, his grip on your waist tightening as he holds his girls close.

"I love you so much," he murmurs against your skin.

Gwen chimes in again, smacking her tiny hands against Jack’s shoulder and demanding to be part of the huddle. You both laugh, the remaining nerves melting away entirely. You reach out, letting your fingers intertwine with Jack’s free hand, while your other hand gently strokes Gwen’s hair. "What do you say, Gwenny? Want to help Mommy and Daddy get married?"

A/N - thank you so much for reading!! hope you enjoyed this lil family <3

It started raining after ten.

He was re-filling your coffee cup when lightning first stroke, a bright flash of white breaking through the peace that followed dinner. You were biting on a strawberry and your phone was connected to his speaker, with The Zombies’ Time of the Season swallowing the sound of the falling rain.

You had been in his apartment since early in the morning: a breakfast date had turned into eating breakfast and watching a movie. Eating breakfast, and watching a movie, and ordering take out for lunch. All of that, and resting your head on his lap as he solved a crossword on his phone. That, and sleeping on expensive velvet when he stepped out to take a call.

The very first times you'd stepped inside his apartment, he marveled at the way in which you had naturally belonged in it. You occupied the space in a way that made everything inside it bend into your shape, lean into your touch, gravitate towards your orbit.

It was easy, quiet, as if you had always been there, dealing with his stubborn moka pot and making the entire room smell like pomegranates. 

The easiness with which you came to exist in each other’s spaces became a breathing, living thing, and when he asked you to stay a little longer after your morning coffee was over, you could do nothing but nod quickly in agreement. 

And so a breakfast date turned into everything else: a whole day spent in his presence, savoring the sweetness that came with permanence.

He began to think of the future while rooting himself in the present, and looked at you, and listened to your voice, and found no place on earth more fitting for you than one he could provide.

He held your hand as you ate breakfast. He kissed your lips when they tasted like cherries and ran a hand down your back when it was covered in silk. He bent you over the armrest of his couch, with your shorts pooled around your ankles as he drove his cock inside your sopping hole over, and over, and over again. He spilled inside you and let you keep it, safe and warm inside your pussy, as he busied with dinner. 

And so when the rain first started to fall, just as you were biting on a strawberry, you could still feel his warmth nestled deep inside.

When he led you out of the kitchen and towards his bedroom, you could begin to feel it running down your thighs.

And when your back hit his mattress, eyes blown wide and locked into his, you could only feel your hole clenching, his warmth spilling out, as your cunt asked for more.

And you have always known he’ll give you anything you ask for, especially when it meant he could have you like this: bare and lying over his freshly-washed linen sheets, with your legs spread wide, and his cock plunging fast, hard, deep inside your pulsing cunt. 

“Takes me so well, doesn’t she? M’pretty girl just takes my cock so well,” he mutters, and he’s talking to himself more than he’s talking to you, but his words burn through you just the same. “You just—Oh, she always takes me so well.”

You’re completely stretched around his length, absolutely full of his girth, and it has you closing your eyes in pure, sweet bliss. He moves forward, his body called to yours as if by pulled by a magnet, and your clit grazes over the patch of graying hair at the bottom of his navel every time he thrusts inside of you.

“Baelor—”

“My pretty girl,” he repeats, his voice quiet, his words slurred. The tip of his tongue peaks out to slide through his top lip in a swift, quick lick, with the buds latching onto the sweat that had been building onto his skin. “Feels good?”

He’s looking for an answer, but just as he thrusts inside you again, he gets a moan instead. He pulls his top lip back between his teeth and sucks in a short, quick breath, as if he’s sucking the sound in, as if he’s feasting on every bit of pleasure he can make you feel. And it feels as if it’s nourished him, as if it’s fed him: and you become stuck on a loop, one where thrusts in deeper and you moan louder, and he thrusts in deeper and you moan louder.

Your head is resting against his pillow, your mouth parted in anticipation. And he leans forward, ever so slightly, bringing two of his fingers down on your lips. And then everything shifts.

“Look at me,” he says, and his movements halt for a second. He stays still, completely sheathed inside of you, feeling himself melt against your body. His digits move against your lips in a soft, tender motion, allowing for his breath to catch at the bottom of his throat before he pushes them inside. Harder. Heavier. “Look at me, pretty girl. Need your eyes on me as I make you feel good. As I make you—mhm—as I make you cum on my cock. Please?”

And you oblige. You oblige because there’s nothing you could deny this perfect, ethereal man—especially when he looks at you like this: with his pupils blown wide in hunger and his cheeks reddened from his efforts. His eyes shine with something akin to hunger, staring into yours the way a predator would at easy prey, but his touch feels like something that feels like desperation.

He’s taking you just as much as he’s asking for you to take him: just as much as he’s asking for you to hold him in the palm of your hand, for you to shape him to whatever you will. He’s a man made up of dichotomies, and it pulls you in, in, in, until you cannot think of anything that is not him.

You would not dare to. Not in this moment. Not ever.

And so you look at him. You set your eyes on his as he begins to move again, pulling his hips back until his tip leaves your whole with an obscene squelch. A rivulet of white drips down onto the sheets, and he presses his fingers down against your tongue, using his other hand to drag his cock down your slit in a slow, torturous motion. 

You try to answer, to jut your hips upwards, but he presses his digits down against your tongue a little harder, and then, as if reveling in his torture, as if feeding from your wait, repeats his motion.

“She’s just about sopping for me, isn’t she? Likes the way I stuff her full of my cock too much,” he hums, pulling the inside of his cheek in between his teeth. “Look at her. So, so needy. Looks so pretty—pretty enough to eat.”

Your hips move against him again, seeking his touch, and you moan against his fingers when he taps the thick, heavy tip of his throbbing cock against your clit. Your hips move against him, again, desperate for his touch, and you all but whine against his digits when he slaps it down once more, coating it in what has become a mixture of seed and slick. Yours and his.

You and him.

“She did such a good job for me, did she not? Kept me inside until she couldn’t anymore. Look. Such a good girl for me, all coated in my seed and already wanting more. That’s what you want, yeah? More of me? I’ll—I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you more. Just stay still like that, just like—yeah, just like that. Be a good girl for me, and I’ll give you everything you want.”

And he watches: almost as if reveling in the slowness, almost as if feeding from the wait. Almost as if trying to commit the look on your face to memory, almost as if trying to engrave the sight of you on his skin. 

And he decides he has had enough, pushing his tip against your clenching hole and entering you slowly again. 

He shifts forward in a careful, calculated pace, breathing out in relief once your mound is pressed tightly against him.

“Oh, fuck,” he pushes forward just an inch. His voice breaks and his breath falters. He looks  so, so beautiful like this. “Oh, that’s it. Right where it belongs.”

Your head sinks back against the pillow, hands gripping onto his forearms like a lifeline. He’s breathing heavy, ragged, lowering himself until his chest pushes down against yours, and your arms wrap around his torso when he does.

His fingers leave your mouth, damp with your spit, and move to hold your face upwards so that your gaze does not leave his. They feel cool against your skin, and Baelor’s breath, wild and unrestrained, feels warm against your lips.

And so he lowers himself further until his lips clash with yours, kissing and sucking on your skin as he quickens his pace. The scrape of his mustache against your skin tethers you to him like an anchor, and he is everything you can see, and everything you can feel. Your lips part and a moan slips past them when he does, your nails digging into his back as he moves, thrusting faster. Harder.

“Mhm, that’s—that’s it. Feels so perfect. So warm, so wet—so perfect. Like it was made for me. Just for me. And it’s so, so perfect when you let me have you like this. Like this, when it’s just us. Just you and me, yeah?”

Baelor keeps moving, keeps thrusting, the sound of his skin slapping against yours filling your ears until it all goes away for one blissful, perfect moment. Starts litter the back of your mind, and to you, there’s only pleasure, and there’s only him, and he’s holding you through it all. You’re boneless, a creature made up of want, consisting of bliss, and when his tongue enters your mouth and he drinks in your taste, you realize all is as it should be.

It’s a wonderful sight. It’s a wonderful feeling. And there’s this man: this perfect, ethereal man, succumbing to the depths of his pleasure, losing himself in your heat. Losing himself in you.

His brows furrow, nose scrunched up in beautiful agony, body locking in and drawing tight as he rides his peak. He moves, shaking slightly when his legs begin to burn, and he moans against your body before it breaks into a sharp, sudden silence as he spills another warm, thick load inside your spasming cunt.

And he wonders if he’s your boyfriend. He fixed the leak in your sink. You let him fuck your ass. He took you on a dinner date at least once a week. You sucked him dry in the backseat of his car. He helped you move in your new washing machine. You gave him a hand-job while he fucked you with his fingers. And he wonders if you’re his girlfriend.

Maybe he is moving too fast, thinking about it too much.

He feels himself growing heavier the more he thinks about it, as if his feelings were made of lead, pulling him down a spiral of dread that threatens to only go down, down, down. 

And, fuck, is he moving too fast? Is he thinking about it too much?

He wants to ask you, feels the question taking form over his tongue.

He wants to ask you—but you’re wet, and you’re warm, and he figures it will have to wait until his head is not light. Until you’re untangled, until he can breathe without feeling himself one with your skin.

He wants his ring on your finger. He has his cock in your cunt.

“Keep it,” he grunts, words slurred as he stills his hips, driving his cock deep, deep inside your cunt. It twitches and throbs in the aftershocks of his orgasm, and he lets you feel all of it. “Keep all of it, pretty girl. Every—mhm, fuck—every drop is yours.”

A noise that stands between a sob and a moan breaks past your lips when you try to reply, your nails raking across the expanse of his shoulder blades as you try to pull him closer. And closer. And closer. 

And then, when he bends lower, the cool of his golden chain kisses your hot, damp skin.

His words are quiet, and messy, and hot against your lips, and thunder strikes up above. Your hole clenches around his cock as it begins to soften, but he stills inside you, pulls you close, makes a home by your side.

He closes his eyes, and all he can smell, is the soft, sweet scent of pomegranates. 

“That’s it. That’s my girl. My pretty girl, yeah? No one else’s?”

His phone rings in the background, and, minutes later, the call goes straight to voicemail.

Visibility was high, the cold bearable, the roads truly in good condition, and you made it to Dreadfort with few issues. Leaving Dreadfort was where things had taken a turn for the worse. Now, two days later, you weren’t sure you’d even see the walls of Winterfell before freezing to death. 

The storm had truly come from out of nowhere. That morning, you’d risen from your camp with the reassuring knowledge that you were less than a day’s ride from the northern capital. By that evening, you would be in the comfort of your own bedroom, with a hot bath, a belly full of food, and the wall of warmth that was your lord husband to welcome you home. 

Now, the party was falling apart around you. It had become darker as the short winter day drew to a close. The wind had picked up, visibility had dropped with the same dreadfulness of a falling cup you knew would shatter upon impact. It was snowing sideways. 

“How far are we, ser?” You yelled to one of your guards, voice muffled against the yowling of the storm. You were squinting to keep your eyes as free from falling snow as possible, but it also meant seeing even less than what you could currently see. Your horses were quickly becoming panicked.

“I’d wager less than two hours, Lady Stark,” He answered, “But we must make haste.”

The group of you—consisting of you and about twenty bannermen—tried your damnedest to rally, to push forward. Home was so close, you could make it if you hurried. Everyone was rattled and on edge, men snapping at each other at the slightest provocation. The horses were jittering, put off by the cold. 

You, attempting to use your authority over them all to force them to just go faster. The cold made Winterfell feel even further than it currently was, turning the earth elastic. Pulling it far and taut. 

Cregan, we’re coming, you wanted to call, please, let us come home.

And then the tree fell. 

The wind, already blowing so hard, gave an even stronger gust. With a terrible crack, and a long, loud groan, a dead tree came down on you all. You gripped the reins of your horse with all your remaining strength, barely managing to pull it away as the trunk came crashing down. 

BOOM

The sound echoed across the forest, causing your heart to drop. Even more snow kicked up off of the ground as a result of the impact. You watched at least one man get crushed under the massive tree, his cries silenced by the roar of the wind and the angry crash. 

Startled horses scattered, unable to be calmed by their riders. Yours bucked, once, twice, and for the longest second you’ve ever experienced, you thought she would flip, and crush you beneath her. 

Instead, she squealed in terror, and turned to run. You watched as the party disappeared into the storm, wind biting at your cheeks and pulling the hood of your cloak back.

“No,” You demanded, yanking on the reins to no avail, “Go back, go back, go back—!”

❅ ❅ ❅

The papers on his desk had been abandoned about half an hour ago. Cregan Stark was pacing the length of the room. He hadn’t spoken since someone had answered his questions, and the advisors were growing anxious at the unreadable look on his face.

“Is the storm expected to stop?” Cregan asked from the desk.

“The clouds are dense, my lord,” The maester said, “I would expect this storm to last till the morrow, at least.”

His scowl deepened. “And no one has heard from my wife’s party. My wife’s party, who should have been spotted by now, per the raven they sent this morning.”

The maester looked down, unable to meet those intense gray eyes. “...No, my lord. There has been no word from the scouts.”

No one could hear it, but everyone in the room could see the heaving of his chest, the flaring of his nostrils, the occasional twitching of his fingers. His energy pushed outwards, pressing against everyone like a weight on their chests.

Cregan Stark did not get nervous. No, Cregan Stark inspired nervousness in others. And yet, now, at the concept of his wife disappearing into the snow, he seemed to be doing both. Even Bear, the Warden of the North’s large, frightening direwolf paused from licking at his black and brown coat to track his master’s movements.

He stopped, before turning to face the men in his study. The entire room held its breath. 

“We—”

“Lord Stark, my lord—!”

The door slammed open, and a guard entered the room, panting. He had clearly run from the courtyard, cheeks red, cloak dusted with snow. He was panting heavily, leaning against the doorframe for support. At the interruption, Cregan reared on the young man, angry gaze more wolf than man.

“Erik,” He grunted, “What is the meaning–”

“The party is not f-far,” Erik said quickly, breathless, “But something has gone wrong. One man is presumed dead, two men are missing, and L-Lady Stark—”

All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room as the man bent over, coughing with overexertion. Suddenly, with a stalking gait, Cregan was crossing the room, almost lunging for him. Some men stood at the sudden movement, but made no attempt to hold him back. Cregan’s arms shot out, gripping him by the shoulders and shaking. Gray eyes flashed with madness, and he paid no mind to the smaller man’s heaving in his face as he got in close.

“What about Lady Stark, boy? Where the fuck is my wife—”

“Her horse–her horse was startled. It ran further into the woods. They—” More coughing, “—they cannot find her.”

The guard fell to the floor as Cregan dropped him. His eyes were wide, his emotions now tangible: heavy, angered panting, matching with the rhythmic rising and falling of his hulking shoulders.

He looked back at his advisors. “Ready my horse and my wolf at once.”

“My lord, you will freeze–”

His tone left no room for discussion. “Prepare a search party at once. And bring me something from her chambers. Bear will need it to track her scent.”

❅ ❅ ❅

The truest darkness lives in the forests of the North. You were living it now, barely able to see anything except for the rough outlines of tree trunks, which went on for miles. Not that you could see them that far.

You couldn’t tell how long had passed. The snow had never let up. 

The panic didn’t set in immediately. First, you called for your bannermen. Shouted their names over and over until their names began to sound foreign. Don’t panic, you tried to tell yourself, conserve your energy.

It had gotten you nowhere, body beginning to shiver as you realized you were alone and couldn’t make out the path your horse had dragged you down. 

Winterfell is north. Just go north. Which way is north?

The shivering turned painful. Shoulder blades locked stiffly as you hunched into yourself. You could hardly feel your fingers gripping the reins of the horse, even under thick lined leather gloves. You tried to orient yourself, but it proved difficult. Dusk had passed. It was now night. You had no torch or means of making a flame to light your way, the falling snow blocking what little you could see. 

Surrounded by trees, with no discernible landmarks or visible light in the distance to guide you further, you wandered the woods with your horse, trying to follow your horse’s tracks back to your party. Even if they were gone, if you could find the fallen trunk, you would know which way to go. If any of them had followed your path, you would run into them, and you could return together. 

The minutes stretched into hours, a seemingly endless night suffocating you. The feeling in your nose disappeared first. Where once your cheeks burned from the cold, now the sensation bloomed into nothingness. Blowing hot air into your gloves—a constant shaky hah-hah-hah that might have helped this morning—now did next to nothing to relieve your trembling fingers.

You don’t know when your eyelashes froze, but you only noticed when you took note of the foggy white ring encroaching on your peripheral vision. When you blinked, you heard the softest crunch in the way you could hear yourself swallowing or breathing. You could only assume the same was happening with your eyebrows.

And when you realized your horse was taking you in circles, the poor creature also suffering from the cold, you realized you no longer knew what to do. 

The shouts turned to screams. You hadn’t screamed out of fear in years, perhaps not since you were a child. No reason to. This was primal, brewing at your sternum and building up, up, up with every desperate rise and fall of your breath. When the pressure could be held no longer, it escaped you.

Screaming for Cregan, which you knew made no sense. He was even further than your party, but it changed nothing. You screamed and screamed and screamed, until it turned to wailing.

Wailing for your mother, who had died years ago. Who would certainly be of less help than your bannermen or Cregan now, barring divine intervention.  

Mind slowly growing foggy and voice going hoarse, you finally admitted it to yourself. You were lost. Well and truly lost. 

❅ ❅ ❅

The search party assembled and departed with a quickness that would have made Cregan proud of his men under any other circumstances. Now, however, he could only feel anger, concern, determination.

I’m coming, love, he thought, I’ll not let you get away from me.

His men, armed with torches, extra pelts and blankets tucked in their packs, and flasks of hot mulled wine, set off in the direction your bannermen had said they’d last seen you. Your horse, spooked by a fallen tree, had run southwest in the commotion. Before they’d left, a servant had brought him one of your hairbrushes. He’d let Bear sniff some at the hair caught in the bristles, and knew that as long as they found the fallen tree, the shaggy black and brown direwolf would pick up on your scent. 

They rode south. The second they broke into the treeline, Bear sped up. The large creature, at top speed, was faster than the horses, but only in bursts of energy. He seemed to sense Cregan’s desperation. 

He ran so fast he disappeared from Cregan’s line of view. The men around him followed the direwolf, trusting the beast’s instinct. 

Moments later, a howl pierced the air. When they caught up to Bear, there it was: a long, dead tree trunk, pinning a horse and its rider to the now red forest floor.

“Check to see if he’s alive.” He commanded two men. He began to separate his men into small groups. “You lot are to search for the missing Manderly boy. All of you over here, call for Willas Snow. The rest of you, follow Bear! All of you pair up, spread out, call their names. We will find them. I refuse to leave without my wife.”

He felt as though he were watching someone else take command of his being. Someone who knew his men, commanded his men like he did. But Cregan was hardly inside of his own body. Though he cared for his men—present and missing alike—and knew he would grieve the man crushed by the tree, right now he could not bring himself to care about them. His only thoughts were of you, out in the cold, dark wood. 

Somewhere near him, but increasingly far away. There was a pressure growing in his chest, pushing back against the whipping wind, threatening to rise up past his throat and out of his mouth. 

You could be hurt. You could be dead. But he would not rest until he saw you with his own two eyes. 

Around him, the shouting began. Calling for Petyr Manderly. For Willas Snow. For Lady Stark. But Cregan did not call for either of the men, or for the Lady Stark. 

“Y/N! Y/N!”

In the middle of the wood, throat straining as his voice was carried away with the wind, Cregan called for you.

❅ ❅ ❅

When the whispers began, the cold had taken control of your body. The forest seemed to be spinning, the trees duplicating. Even in your delirium, you knew you should not have gotten off of the horse, but at the time you’d thought it was a good idea. You could no longer see her anymore, and you scatteredly wondered if she had gone towards the whispers or succumbed.

Now, you were stumbling through ankle-deep snow, hiking up your stupid gown to trudge through the forest. The cold had passed. 

It almost felt pleasant now. The sensation was similar to the night Queen Rhaenyra had sent a crate of Dornish red wine to Winterfell as a gift for your husband’s 24th name day. The great hall had been filled with more dancing than stumbling, and you spent the entire next day vowing to never drink again. That had been at the end of summer. Summer is kind. Autumn is forgiving. Spring with Cregan is so nice. Winter…

And yet, it was still snowing. Still black. But the whispers were getting louder. You couldn’t make sense of them at first, layered and urgent and pleading. 

Lady Willas Petys Stark Snow Manderly… Snow Lady Manderly Petyr Willas Stark…

That was not your name. Names. The names of your bannermen who were no longer around you. Petyr, Willas, Jon, Ethan, Brandon… Names names names names names think of names—think of lovely names.

In the distance, an orange beacon appeared. How pretty, you thought, pretty. Pret-ty. My husband is pretty. 

You felt drunk, body swaying back and forth as you began to move towards the light—lights? There were two now. Then three. Then a few more.

The whispers grew louder, more urgent. Who were they calling for? He had such a long name, but none of them seemed to know it exactly. Your neck began to sag downwards as you listened to them call for the man with the long name. Petyr Lady Petyr Snow Willas Stark Lady Manderly Snow Lady Lady Stark Lady Lady Lady—

Y/N.

Your neck snapped up, head turning frantically to search for who had whispered your name.

Y/N.

You froze. You knew that voice. The inflection of your name. 

It wasn’t a whisper.

“Y/N!”

“C—”

He was here he was here he was here he was here. And if he was here, then—

You watched, almost entranced, as a large black mass bolted out of the dark, barreling into you, tipping you over. You landed on your back in the snow. The snow, which was warm. Hot, even. 

Forcing yourself onto your elbows, your gaze landed on Bear. You tried your hardest to keep yourself focused on your husband’s direwolf, but the forest was running circles around you, and your body felt like it was on fire. 

When he tilted his snout up, letting loose a howl long and urgent, you barely heard it. This was a dream. This had to be a dream. Any moment now, you would wake, and be in your bed in Winterfell.

As you moved onto your knees, you pulled your gloves off. Your fingers were ablaze and you wanted to pet the beast. Stumbling onto your feet, you held up a hand, mouth gaping as you tried to ensure you weren’t melting from the heat. When you saw you weren’t, you reached for Bear. 

“Here! My lord, she’s over here!” 

Time slowed to a glacial pace. Your movements dragged as if you were underwater, all sounds muffled and scrambled. If you were underwater, they were above the surface.

You didn’t touch Bear. He moved to the side. A horse skidded to a stop in front of you, the movement lasting years. It took so long that it didn’t even frighten you. All you could do was look up at the angel mounted on the stallion, face lit by an army of torches suddenly surrounding you.

Him.

He unmounted the horse, barking unintelligible orders to the men around him. Something about a missing horse. 

Then his eyes landed on you, and you damn near fell over again. When he spoke, you understood what he said. How could you not? It was one of your favorite words, one of your favorite things he called you. 

Always with the gentlest tone, no matter the time or place. Against your hair early in the morning, in your ear at your side at supper, against your throat in the middle of the night. The first word to break through the noise, bring you back. To pull you out of the water and allow you to gasp for air.

“Wife.”

You would answer. Yes, of course you would answer. You would always answer when he called. Cregan. Husband. My love.

“C—“ 

The harsh sound punched out of you, a shaky, croaky kuhhh of a dead woman newly reawakened. His eyes, already alert at the state of you, grew even wider. Immediately, he engulfed you, having to bite back the shock at just how cold your body was. He smoothed a hand over your hair, chest deflating at the reassurance of having him in your arms.

“Y/N,” He rasped, “What happened?”

You couldn’t say. You were just happy he was here. Again, you tried to say his name. “Cuhhh—C-Cre—“

“Yes, yes, sweet girl, I’m here,” He insisted, grabbing you by the wrist and tugging, “We need to get you home now.”

He had never seen you like this. And by the grace of the Old Gods, he would never see you like this again. Slurring your speech, lips and fingers—where were your gloves?—a blueish gray, frost clinging to your brow, your hair, your lashes. 

You were manhandled onto the stallion. Quickly, you were growing agitated. A pelt was draped over your shoulders, much to your dismay. He mounted it behind you, before trying to hand you a flask.

“Drink,” He commanded, “‘S warm.”

Deliriously, you shook your head, weakly pushing it away. “S…”

His stern tone dropped lower, now a pleading undertone to it. “Please, love. You must drink this now.”

“Summer.”

He immediately knew what you meant. “No. No, it’s not summer. Byron! Sylas! Sean! On me! We’re returning to the castle. Now.”

His poor wife, delirium turning into distress. You shook your head, brow furrowing. As long as you were upset, you were awake. He swallowed the lump in his throat and uncapped the flask.

“Forgive me.”

A large hand gripped your jaw. The wine was forced down your throat in a manner that had you spluttering with tears running down your face. Cregan grimaced the entire time, mumbling soft apologies and stroking your jaw with his thumb. He tried his hardest to ignore the clench in his chest as your hand weakly trying to tug his own away from your mouth.

You needed warmth. You were already feeling so hot you had removed your gloves. He knew this was one of the final symptoms, had seen naked corpses emerge from melting snow that had gone through similar. That if Bear had found you minutes later, this conversation would not be happening. The hot wine would help. It had to, because he didn’t know what he would do if it didn’t.

In a way, it did help. Upon contact with actual heat, the false blaze in your body evaporated. The pain returned, more intense than ever. When you finished coughing, you felt again the aching in your jaw from your chattering teeth. Your shoulders and upper arms were cramping from how tightly you had drawn in on yourself.

“C-Cregan,” You finally managed, “Hurts.”

He breathed a small sigh of relief. “Good,” He bit out, “As long as it hurts, you’re alive. We’ll deal with the rest later.”

The breakaway party departed. You sagged against Cregan, who did his damnedest to hold you up. You weren’t speaking, but he could feel you shivering through the pelt. Shivering didn’t even feel the proper term. Your body was thrumming, vibrating in a manner he could only call disturbing.

As he watched his direwolf speed up, he wondered briefly if he should have allowed you to ride Bear instead of the horse. Bear would have likely been able to get you to Winterfell faster. 

Cregan had ridden Bear. You had ridden Bear. But never for very long. Direwolves were hardly pets, and Bear would let you both ride only for as long as he allowed it, which he wasn’t sure would be long enough to get you back home. And he wasn’t sure how well you’d be able to hold on. 

No, the horse was better, he realized as you broke through the treeline. He shook his head, forcing himself to focus. Your small group carried on, and he began to allow himself to feel calmer. You were here. You were alive. You would recover.

Until a few minutes later, when your head started to tilt back against him, lolling back and forth in sync with the horse’s gallop.

“Y/N,” He shouted over the wind, “Y/N!”

Your eyes, unfocused, searched for him. You could vaguely make him out, features dimly lit by the torches of two of the men riding at his side.

Your hand gripped his forearm weakly. “You...”

“Me, what about me,” He said, “You need to stay awake.”

Your face twisted, before sluggishly shaking your head. “Tired, Cregan.”

His heart sank. Any moment now, Winterfell would appear on the horizon. His voice dripped with a rough desperation that pierced through the howl of the wind. “You—Gods, woman, you need to fucking stay awake.”

“I can’t… Want…”

“What do you need? Tell me,” He pleaded, “Think about what you need. Tell me. I’ll get it. Think, Y/N, think! Do not fall asleep.”

He looked up from your face to check the path. In the distance, he could see lights. A sound fell from his mouth, an unintelligible groan of relief, of fear, of rare powerlessness. 

“My lord!” One of the men called, “I’ll ride ahead and notify the maester. We must do everything in our power to warm her back up.”

Cregan nodded furiously, nodding his head. “Go!”

The man sped up, and Cregan found himself tugging on the reins to beckon his horse to go faster as well. Full speed in this weather would not do the horses good, especially when they’d been riding in the cold for so long already. But he needed to push. Every second out here was a second too long.

“Almost there, pet,” He cooed, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head, “Home soon.”

“Home,” You murmured in agreement. Your voice sounded so quiet.

He could see the gates. They were opened, a small mass of people huddled together. Anxiously waiting for their lord and lady to come home.

You looked up at Cregan again, and your vision blurred, black spots dancing around you. You needed to tell him. Your eyes fluttered open and fluttered shut. 

“Need to tell you—“

His stomach twisted, half expecting he’d need to reject a weak goodbye. When your eyes rolled up in your head, his heart splintered, gray eyes wide as he watched your every fading movement. “Tell me! Tell me anything, everything, Y/N, please.”

As you crossed through the gate, your head lolled to the side, and Cregan’s screaming faded into nothing.

❅ ❅ ❅

How soft everything was.

How cold.

“…Now a matter of when, not if.”

“So she’ll live?”

“Yes, my lord. I consider it nothing short of a miracle that she survived and kept all of her limbs.”

“Gods be good.”

The disembodied voices sounded muffled and far away. Your body remained still as you woke. Your eyes remained closed, your limbs still curled into a ball. You were wearing one of your wool nightgowns. The fabric was lighter than what you’d been wearing earlier, yet your body felt so heavy. Like you were anchored to the bed.

Your muscles ached. Like you had been wound up so tight it would take centuries to unwind you.

The maester’s voice, somewhere in the room, turned worried, then quiet. “There is another matter I came upon during my examination, my lord…”

You couldn’t make out what was said after. You did, however, hear Cregan’s steady exhale. A sharp sound of unexpectedness, a reveal he had not seen coming. 

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, my lord. I did not realize until after I was sure she was warm enough, but I am positive.”

Your eyes cracked open. The pair was faced away from you, but you could make out Cregan running a hand down his face. The maester had a hand on your husband’s shoulder, squeezing in reassurance.

When Cregan finally spoke, he had hardened his tone again. “Thank you again, Maester Cromwell. You may go.”

“I suspect Lady Stark will be awake before the end of the day. Come find me when she stirs.”

“Aye,” Cregan agreed, “I will do everything in my power to ensure my wife’s recovery.”

He closed the door behind the old man, and turned back to the room. When he saw your eyes, cracked open, tracking his movements, he froze.

You said nothing—there was hardly any energy in you to do otherwise.

“Y/N,” He sighed. He crossed the room, removing his gloves and kneeling at your bedside. A large hand swept atop the crest of your head, before running down to your cheek. You whispered his name at his warmth, trying to press into his rough fingertips.

Here, close to you, you could make out his features. The circles under his eyes were dark, and put quite plainly, he looked as close to death as you were. His long hair was messy, and you could make out a gentle shadow across his jaw and chin. He always preferred to be clean shaven—he had skipped his morning shave.

“I thought you were going to die,” He murmured, pressing a kiss to your forehead, “What the fuck happened?”

You opened your mouth, trying to find your voice. After inhaling deeply and trying to clear your throat, it came to you. When you spoke, it hurt.

“Storm caught us off guard…” You winced. “Truly.”

He shook his head, before pressing his forehead to yours. He grabbed one of your hands and clasped it with both of his, grasped as if in prayer, utter devotion. “I have half a mind to lock you in this room and never let you outside again. We thought you were dead, Y/N. We brought you in and nothing we did was warming you up. It took hours.”

“I’m still cold,” You agreed weakly. 

Cregan frowned, noting the temperature of your fingers. “Maester Cromwell said that would happen. Your nerves are shot. You’ll feel cold for the next day or so. We’ll run you a hot bath, the servants will stoke the fire, and I’ll have some broth brought up.”

“Thank you,” You mumbled, “You saved me.”

For the first time in hours, maybe even days, he smiled. It was small, but it was for you, and it was all you needed. “I promised to keep you safe, did I not?”

“You did.” You managed to lift your head, pressing your lips to his. The kiss was gentle, reverent, and one of his hands cradled the back of your neck, the other moving down to your stomach.

“Why didn’t you write and tell me,” He urged when you broke apart. 

“Tell you…?”

His grip on your stomach tightened. Not enough to hurt—never to hurt. But his fingers splayed enough to reclaim, to show possession. “You’re pregnant.”

Your eyes snapped open, finally moving to place your hand over his. You sighed, the moment stolen away.

“I realized when I was at Karhold. My sister’s maester confirmed it as well. I wanted to tell you myself,” You explained, “See your face when I told you.”

He lowered his head, pressing a kiss to your stomach where his hand had just been, knowing that soon it would swell, that soon everyone would know he’d done his duty as your husband.

He pursed his lips. “I’m trying very hard not to be mad at you right now,” He confessed softly, “All of you should have known better. Should have turned around the second the wind picked up.”

“Turn around to where?” You asked gently, not angry at his sudden outburst. “We were closer to Winterfell than we were anywhere else. We had no choice, Cregan.”

He shook his head again, brow furrowed as he kissed you again. He moved his kisses from your lips, to your cheeks, nose, forehead, and ears. Finally, he buried his face in your neck. You shivered at his hot breath against your jugular.

When he spoke, his voice sounded harder than usual. He only got like this when he was holding back the full weight of his emotions. “Never scare me like that again.”

“I won’t,” You promised, “It’s over now. I’m here, with you.”

Now it was your turn to stroke his hair. “There were others that went missing,” You remembered, “What of them? My horse?”

He pulled away to look at you. His face had returned to the sternness you always expected of him. “She’s resting. Petyr Manderly and Willas Snow are safe. Ser Petyr has lost two fingers from the cold. Ser Willas is still asleep, as far as I’ve heard.”

You nodded. “Thank the Gods,” You whispered, “One death was too many.”

“He’ll be given a proper funeral tomorrow,” Cregan said.

You looked down, moving to rise. “I want to go—“

Cregan grabbed your shoulders gently, trying to press you back into the mattress. “Absolutely not. You are on strict orders to remain abed.”

You raised an eyebrow. “From the maester?”

“From me,” He insisted, “Your lord husband.”

Finally, you smiled. “Ah,” You managed, “ A good thing I never listen to him anyway.”

He was almost relieved at your defiance. You were the most stubborn woman he’d ever met, the spitting image of every southerner’s mental preconception of a bull-headed northern woman.

“You want to pay your respects, wife, I understand. But you are both recovering from near freezing to death and now in delicate condition, carrying our babe. I cannot have you overexerting yourself like this.”

You sat up. He let you, though it looked almost painful to not push you back.

“I will go, but not for long,” You told him. Not requesting, nor commanding. Informing. “The man died escorting me, in our service. I will not miss his funeral. He gave his life—the least I can do is spare a few moments of mine to give his widow my condolences.”

“Fucking hells, woman.” Cregan closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. You did not look away, hardening your gaze.

At last, he relented. “Very well. But you are to stay less than an hour. I will accompany you and carry you back to this room myself if I have to.”

You grabbed his face, cradling his jaw in your cold hands. “Thank you for understanding, Cregan.”

He hummed, kissing the pad of your thumb. “I’ll send for the maester.”

You smiled, glad to finally be home. “Send for some food, too, please. Your son is starving.”

“Or daughter,” Cregan suggested.

Your smile grew wide. “As stubborn as I?”

He gave you another kiss, hands cradling slowly warming fingers. “I would have it no other way.”

"I'm sorry I didn't let you know, but I thought it'd be a nice surprise."

"It was a nice surprise!" She exclaimed, throwing her arms in the air, "It is! I love when you're here! I love being around you!"

Silence settled in the room, the only sounds being her exasperated breathing.

"Then baby, what's wrong?" He asked, gently.

He takes a slow step forward, and then another, like he's approaching a frightened animal. And with the wild look in her eyes, that feels like a fair comparison.

Next thing you know, he's right in front of her, sliding his hands around her waist gently. Her chest is still rising and falling rapidly, but she seems more calm than before. Looks less like she's going to bite someone.

"Just talk to me." He murmurs, pressing a kiss to her temple.

A large exhale. Then he feels her hands twist themselves into his shirt, holding on tight like he would float away otherwise.

"It's just," the mumble comes from pressed into his chest. "It's just stupid, fucking Gina."

"Gina?" He questions, still cradling her. "From work?"

"Yes!" She huffs. "She and freaking Roger-"

"Her boyfriend?"

"Not anymore! They're engaged now!"

He can feel her tensing up in his arms again, and starts to rub her back in small circles.

"Is that a bad thing?" He questions. "Just last month you told me he was gonna pop the question any time."

"No it isn't a bad thing, I'm very happy for them!" She puffs indignantly.

He smiles into the top of her head. He doesn't know how she continues to be so endearing even when clearly quite upset about something.

"Then what's the issue, my love?"

This gets a reaction, but not quite the one he was hoping for. She pulls out of the hug and starts pacing the kitchen again, mumbling and pulling at her hair now.

"It's just that, now that they're engaged Gina won't stop talking to me about all their damn wedding prep." She pauses her footsteps and squeezes her eyes tight, pinching her nose. "And it's like, well duh! Of course she's talking to me about it because we," she gestures between the two of them. "-are also engaged! But we've been engaged for months and in a fucking week it feels like she's already so much more prepared than I am!"

She stomps over to the sink, grabbing a glass from the counter and filling it with water, then downing it all in one go. Then she continues.

"He booked everything for their honeymoon last weekend, the venue she wanted didn't even have a wait list, and get this," she throws her hands in the air again. "-she's already got her dress!"

"Don't you have an appointment to go try on dresses in a few weeks? I'm sure you'll find yours-"

"But it isn't about the dress." She sighs. He can slowly see the fight abandoning her, leaving whatever ugly feeling was truly the cause of all of this. "Her boobs are just perfect."

Silence.

He blinks once. Twice.

"Sweetheart, it doesn't matter to me how nice hers are, I'm quite attached to yours."

This gets a smile out of her. Brief and small, but the first smile he's seen since she got home.

"You don't get it." She murmurs. "Hers are so nice, and they sit pretty by themselves, and she could wear a bra that has no support whatsoever and she's still gonna look like a freaking Barbie. Do you know what she told me about her dress?"

He knows this is rhetorical, so he waits.

"She doesn't have to put on any shape wear. Not a single piece. She doesn't have to tape, or suck in, or squeeze. She just looks that way! I don't even have my dress and I just know I'm gonna look like a stupid walrus if I'm not squished into spandex."

"Now wait a second that's not-"

But the truth is starting to spew out now, she's already started and can't hear him.

"My boobs have never looked like that. They will never look like that. If I took my bra off right now they would damn near kiss my bellybutton, can you imagine if we have kids?" She violently blinking, refusing to make eye contact now.

"And then I started thinking about everything I need to fix before we get married, everything I'm trying to get dealt with before the ceremony so you don't have to see it." She squeezes her eyes tight.

Crickets can be heard for a moment, it's quiet enough you can hear the television from the next apartment over.

"It makes me wonder if we should even do this at all."

"Stop."

Her head snaps up.

His eyes are burning, his chest is tight and his fists are balled. He's enraged, but not at her. Never at her, but at the way she clearly sees herself.

"Don't do this, don't ever say those things about the woman I love ever again."

Tears are now streaming down her face, but there's a ball of indignation rising in her chest as well.

"How can you say that when you don't even know all the gross things about me?"

The kitchen is starting to feel suffocating, so she leaves into the living room. He's right behind her.

"Baby there is nothing you could tell me about yourself that would make me not love you-"

"Oh yeah?" She eyes him. She's too far now, everything that's been kept locked up for the last almost year is forcing itself through the open dam.

"I haven't worn my retainer in a year, and I can actively feel my teeth shifting back to the way they were in middle school. That isn't pretty."

She circles the couch, now keeping him on one side while she stands on the other.

"Not only are my tits saggy, but they're covered in stretch marks. And they get absolutely disgusting when it's hot outside. They get white heads and the worst rash from my bra chafing and that sure as hell isn't appealing."

"My stomach rubs the tops of my thighs and makes ingrowns there that I pick at until they bleed. The insides of my thighs chafe so bad that they look infected, and I can hardly stand to see them myself!"

That boy just stands there, his heart breaking as she lists everything she can think of that should make him not love her.

"I get ingrown hairs in my armpits, that get worse when I shave so I have to let them grow out and I hate it! I have zits on my butt that I am so ashamed of, no matter what I do they will never permanently go away, and my worst nightmare-" she's hysterical now, snot clogging her nose and tears tattooing themselves on her face. "- my worst nightmare is you seeing me on our wedding night and being absolutely revolted by everything I am. Resenting me for all of my flaws, for not being able to fix everything I have tried so hard to keep from you."

She slumps into the couch, hands finding her hair and pulling.

"I'm so scared that we're going to get married and you'll realize that it's a mistake. That you deserve someone better, someone prettier and quieter and more presentable than me." She whimpers. "And then you'll leave."

Her eyes are glued shut, so when she hears footsteps she can only assume that he's leaving. Going to grab his things and head out the door now that she's finally laid out what he would actually be getting into. Everything that he would actually have to deal with as her husband.

She was right, it was too much. She wasn't enough like Gina to make him stay, and now she needs to gather the strength to tell everyone that their engagement has been called off-

Then a warm, calloused hand is gently cradling her chin, lifting her head out of her hands.

"Open your eyes, pretty girl." He whispers from in front of her. "Let me see you."

It takes a moment, but he's patient, and when she finally opens her blurry eyes she can see him, the man she loves more than anything else in the world, on his knees with his eyes full of tears.

"Thank you," he murmurs as he presses a kiss to both of her cheeks. "Thank you for sharing this with me, I know that it wasn't an easy thing to do."

A watery laugh escapes her unintentionally. "That's your response?"

"Not entirely," he gives her a little smile, brushing away the baby hairs that are stuck to her forehead and the sides of her face.

"You are the most precious thing in my whole world, and nothing that you just said will ever be able to change that." He gazes at her lovingly. "Your body being totally normal and human is not something that I will ever hold against you, not something that will ever drive me away."

He takes his thumb and ever so carefully wipes the tears and smudged mascara out from under her eyes.

"You are my beautiful fiance, the woman that I am so blessed to be with. The woman that I cannot wait to marry, to live with. The person that I hope to give my children, the incredible lady that I dream of growing old with." He nuzzles his nose against her own, unbothered by her tears now mixing with his.

"It makes me feel so special to get to be the person that you share these things with. To be a safe place for you to rant and rave and cry and scream and just exist. And my sweet love, you are that for me as well. You hold me when I'm tired, piece me together when I'm broken, and love me when I cannot love myself."

He plants another kiss on her forehead, then stands from where he is knelt on her rug, carefully lowering himself next to her on the couch and pulling her close.

She easily clicks right into his side, right where she belongs, fingers once again tangled in his shirt like he'll disappear if she doesn't hold on.

"I can't wait to marry you." He murmurs, "I'm yours as long as you'll have me."

"I can't wait to marry you," she whispers into his neck, her breathing finally evening out for the first time this afternoon.

"..and I kind of feel bad about everything I said about Gina. She was just collateral because of how I felt."

An unexpected laugh bursts from his throat, and he squeezes her a little bit closer.

It had been nothing. That was the thing he could not explain, even to himself — it had been nothing, a moment of no particular significance, something that would not have registered to anyone observing it from outside.

You and Baelor in the solar. Evening light. You had fallen asleep over a book with your feet tucked beneath you and your head listing sideways, and Baelor had come in and found you like that and had done nothing more remarkable than sit beside you and draw the book from your hands without waking you and set it aside, and then stayed. Simply stayed. His shoulder against yours, his attention moving to his own correspondence, the two of you sharing the quiet of the room with the ease of people who had been doing exactly this for decades and needed nothing more from the evening.

Maekar had been in the doorway.

He had not announced himself. He had looked at the scene — the low gold light, the particular quality of your sleeping face, Baelor's hand resting near yours on the cushion without quite touching, the whole atmosphere of uncomplicated domesticity — and had felt something move through him that he did not examine and turned and walked away.

He came to your chambers two hours later.

You had been awake when he arrived — the book finished, the solar long vacated, the evening settled into its quieter hours. He came in without particular announcement, the way he always did, and you looked up from the window and read him the way you always did and found something slightly off in the quality of his stillness.

Not anger. Not the charged pre-argument tension that had its own recognisable signature. Something quieter than that, and less legible.

"Maekar," you said in a somewhat pleading tone, sensing that something was clearly amiss.

"Come to bed," he requested. You obliged.

He undressed you with his usual efficiency — not rough, not ceremony, the systematic approach of a man who has done this many times and knows the geography. His hands were certain. His mouth found your throat and your collarbone and the curve of your shoulder with the focused attention of someone who had mapped the places that worked and went directly to them, no preamble, no patience wasted on territory that didn't require it.

It worked. It always worked — that was the thing about Maekar, the directness of him, the complete absence of uncertainty in how he touched you. You arched into his hands and felt the familiar heat of him and the slightly unfamiliar texture underneath and filed the texture away for later.

He settled between your thighs and pushed into you without particular prelude and the sound you made was immediate and unguarded — the specific completeness of him, the stretch and heat of it, and his answering groan low against your neck.

He began to move.

Hard. Purposeful. The driving rhythm that you knew and wanted, each thrust full and deep and carrying the weight of him, his cock ramming into you with the relentless focused certainty that was his particular register. His hands on your hips. His mouth at your throat. The mechanics of it were exactly right — exactly the way you liked it, exactly the way he knew you liked it, calibrated with the accuracy of years.

And something was still off.

You felt it in him — not in the physical, which was precisely what it always was, but in the quality of his attention. Something slightly removed. Something doing the motions with the competence of a man whose body knew its work and whose mind was somewhere adjacent to it, not absent but not entirely present either. A texture you had felt in the yard when he was working through something difficult. The texture of a man fulfilling a function he has assigned himself.

His hips drove forward. Your breath left you. Your hands found his shoulders.

"Maekar," you caressed them through a moan.

"Mm." Not stopping.

"Stop."

He stopped. Lifted his head. Those violet eyes finding yours from close range — dark, pupils blown, his cock buried in your cunt and his breathing uneven and his expression doing the complicated thing it did when he was caught between the body and the mind and couldn't locate a clean resolution.

"Am I hurting you?" he asked somewhat worried.

You shook your head slightly, a frown appearing on your brow. "Tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing is—"

"My love."

His jaw tightened. He held himself very still, and you felt the specific effort of that — all of him suspended, the wanting and the discipline both present simultaneously. "I'm in the middle of—"

"I know where you are." You held his gaze. "Tell me."

A long pause. His weight over you, his cock still buried deep, the intimacy of the position making the conversation simultaneously more difficult and more necessary. You watched him locate and discard several responses.

"It's nothing," he said. "It's—"

"It's not nothing. You've been somewhere else since you walked in."

His eyes moved away from yours. The tell — Maekar, who held eye contact through everything, looking at the middle distance with the specific quality of a man who has been asked to account for something he has not prepared an accounting for.

"I saw you," he said finally. "Earlier. With Baelor."

You waited.

"In the solar." His voice carefully even. "It was — nothing. You were asleep. He was just—" The sentence didn't finish. His jaw worked. "It was nothing."

"It wasn't nothing to you."

Silence.

"Maekar." Your hand finding his face. He let you turn it back toward yours, which was itself information — Maekar permitting redirection. "Tell me."

The silence stretched long enough that you thought he wouldn't. Long enough that he began to move again, slightly, as though the motion might serve as substitution — his hips beginning their rhythm and his eyes finding the middle distance and the whole managed machinery of him reassembling.

"I want—" He stopped. His hips stilled again. The words seeming to cost him in some specific way that the physical had not. "I don't know how to—"

"Try."

Another long pause. His forehead dropped to yours. His cock still buried in you, motionless, and the specific quality of Maekar suspended between the body and something more frightening than the body.

"I want to make you feel—" Rough. Halting. Nothing like his usual speech. "The way he makes you feel. When he—" He stopped again. "I know what I am. To you. I know what this is. What I'm — useful for." The word arriving with a flatness that had something painful underneath it. "I know it isn't—"

"Stop." Your hands cradling his face. Both of them. Holding him where he was, close range, no looking away permitted. "Stop right there."

His eyes — violet and dark and stripped of their usual armour, the severity entirely absent, something younger and more uncertain looking out of them.

"You think," you said carefully, "that you are something practical. That Baelor gives me something and you give me something else and the something else is this." Your thumb across his jaw. "That you are useful in bed and he is useful everywhere else?"

He said nothing. Which was confirmation.

"Oh, my heart." The fondness in your voice was not something you tried to manage. "You absolute idiot."

Something shifted in his expression.

"You already make me feel cared for." Holding his gaze. "Every time you end the sparring session when my shoulder is hurting before I ask you to. Every time you put yourself between me and a door when we walk into a room with people you don't trust. Every time you wake up before I do and stay anyway because you know I sleep better with your weight there." Your thumbs against his cheekbones. "That is care. That is you, caring for me, in the language you have."

His throat worked.

"And this—" a slight movement of your hips, deliberate, feeling him twitch in response and a sigh coming from his mouth— "does not have to be only one thing. You do not have to ram into me like you're making a point every time." A pause in which you smiled teasingly. "Unless I want that. In which case, please continue."

The breath that left him was almost a laugh. Almost.

"You can be careful," you said. "You can be slow. It will not make you less — it will not make you anything less. Do you understand me?"

He looked at you for a long time. The violet eyes doing their reading, the assessing quality of them turned entirely inward, arriving somewhere that cost him to arrive at.

"Show me," he said quietly. Not a command. Something considerably less certain than a command. "How to — show me, please."

Your hands still cradling his face.

"Move," you said softly. "Slowly."

He moved.

The difference was immediate — not the driving rhythm but something else, his hips drawing back and returning in a long rolling motion, deep and full, his cock pressing into you in a way that was less about friction and more about presence, about the specific completeness of him seated in you and the slow deliberate drag of each stroke. A sound left you that was different from the sounds before — lower, less urgent, the sound of someone being thoroughly and unhurriedly filled.

He made a sound against your forehead that had nothing controlled in it.

"Again," you moaned, eyes already closing in pleasure.

He did it again. And again. The rolling depth of it building something that had no urgency to it, only accumulation — his cock moving in you with the slow certain weight of a man discovering a different kind of intention, his hands shifting from your hips to your waist, pulling you closer rather than holding you in place. His mouth finding your temple. Your cheek. The corner of your jaw. Small careful things, landed without announcement, the vocabulary of tenderness accessed clumsily and therefore more honestly than if he'd known what he was doing.

His thumb found your clit. Not with the urgent efficiency of earlier — slowly, tracing, learning it in this register the way he had learned everything else about you, with the thoroughness that was always his even when everything else changed.

"Maekar." His name in your mouth on an exhale.

The sound he made at the sound of his own name said was undone and immediate. His face pressed to your hair. His hips rolling deeper, finding the angle that made your breath catch and staying there, working it with patient repetition, the focused attention of Maekar directed entirely at this — not at the end of it but at the thing itself, the sustained specific fact of your bodies together, the warmth of it.

"I've got you," he said. Into your hair. Rough and quiet and sounding faintly surprised by the words, as though they had arrived without being summoned.

Something in your chest cracked open cleanly.

"I know," you said. "You always have."

His arms tightened around you.

The thing building in you had none of the sharp competitive urgency of other nights — it was slower than that, deeper, a tide rather than a wave, and when it finally broke it moved through you in long sustained pulses that had you gripping his shoulders and saying his name with your face against his neck and he held you through every second of it with both arms and his cock still moving in those slow rolling strokes, drawing it out, thorough even in this.

He followed you with his face buried in your hair — quieter than usual, his whole body shuddering once and then settling, the sound he made low and sustained and nothing like triumph. Nothing like a point won.

Something else entirely.

For a long time he didn't move. His weight against you, his arms still around you, his breathing slowing against your neck. The silence had a different quality than the silences that usually followed — not the satisfied stillness of a man who has won something but something more open than that. Something that had been set down.

His arms tightened once, briefly, before relaxing back to their usual looseness. The closest thing to thank you in his vocabulary. You received it as it was meant.

At your throat, the mark from earlier had darkened to something unmistakable — the specific evidence of Maekar, who had come to you tonight trying to be useful and had ended up, without entirely meaning to, being known.

You held him in the quiet and let him have it.

It had started, as these things sometimes did, with Maekar's mouth.

Not directly. Not in the room. But the evidence of it was there when Baelor found you — the mark at the join of your neck and shoulder, dark and unmistakable, the specific calling card of a man who did not think twice about leaving them because it had never once occurred to Maekar that thinking twice about this specific fact was ever required.

Baelor thought twice about everything. In fact, he had been thinking about that mark for days.

You came to find him in his study at the evening hour, when the castle had quieted and the correspondence had thinned to its final pages, and he looked up from his desk and took you in — the looseness of you, the specific quality of ease that you carried, the way you moved through the doorway with the unhurried certainty you possessed — and his eyes found the mark and stayed there for a moment before returning to his correspondence.

The quill continued its work.

You settled into the chair across from him and reached for the wine and watched him not react with the particular attention of someone who knew exactly what not-reacting cost him.

"You are quiet," you said.

"I am working."

"You are always working." You tilted your head. "You are also quiet in a specific way."

The quill paused. Resumed. "I do not know what you mean."

You looked at him. At the careful composed line of him behind the desk — the dark hair with its threads of white, the mismatched eyes tracking the correspondence with the focused attention of the Crown Prince who always had something requiring his focus, the set of his jaw which was slightly more deliberate than usual, the controlled quality of a man who has decided something is not worth his attention and is finding that the decision requires more maintenance than anticipated.

"Baelor."

He set the quill down. Aligned it with the inkwell. Looked up.

The mismatched eyes — one brown, one pale blue — found yours and then, with the slight deliberateness of a choice being made, moved to the mark on your neck.

He looked at it for a moment.

"That has been there for days," he said. Mild. Observational. The tone of a man noting weather.

"You know he does that."

"Yes." A pause in which something moved beneath the composure, briefly, before being managed back into order. "I am aware."

"Baelor—"

"I am fine." The words precise and immediate and carrying the specific quality of a statement that is technically accurate and entirely beside the point.

You looked at him across the desk. At the careful patient man who had been told since childhood that his gift was his composure, his diplomacy, his capacity for reason — the man who had built an entire identity around the architecture of thinking before acting, of attending carefully, of being the one in any room who kept his head. The man who was currently keeping his head with visible effort while looking at his brother's mark on your neck.

"Say it," you said.

"There is nothing—"

"Baelor." You held his gaze. "Say it."

The composure held for another moment. His hands flat on the desk. The mismatched eyes doing their reading — of your face, of the mark, of the specific distance between you that suddenly seemed to require addressing.

"I heard you," he said quietly. "With him."

The room went still.

"Through walls," he continued, with the even tone of a man delivering a report he has not enjoyed compiling. "On more than one occasion. The sounds you make." A pause. "The sounds I do not — that I have not—" He stopped. His jaw tightened. "I know what I am. I know what he is. I know that we give you different things and I have never — I am not a man who begrudges—"

"Baelor."

"The mark," the word arriving with more weight than the mild tone had prepared for. "He marks you and you come to me wearing it and I am supposed to — I am looking at it and I cannot—" Another stop. The composure making a final effort and failing quietly. "I want to know," he finally said, "what it sounds like. When he does that. I want you to tell me what he does that I don't."

The silence that followed had considerable texture.

You stood.

He tracked you with his eyes as you came around the desk — those mismatched eyes doing something that was not their usual quality of attention, something with more heat and less management in it — and you stopped in front of him and looked down at him where he sat and the expression on his face was the one he kept for private rooms and private hours, the one that had no diplomatic function whatsoever.

"Lock the door," you said.

He rose and walked to it. Locked it. Turned back.

You were already undoing the lacing of your gown. He watched you with those eyes and the composure was present but costing him now, visibly, the effort of it written in the slight tension of his shoulders and the deliberate quality of his stillness — a man holding himself in place through the application of will.

When the gown fell his breath left him audibly.

He crossed to you. His hands found your face — both of them, the grip of them more urgent than his usual careful touch — and he kissed you with none of his customary patience, none of the reverent architecture he usually brought to this. The kiss was searching and immediate and had the weight of carefully managed feeling behind it, the composure finally stepping aside, and you kissed him back and felt the shape of what had been sitting behind his eyes all evening.

When he drew back his breathing had changed.

"Tell me," he said. Close range. His hands still framing your face. "What does he do."

"Baelor—"

"Tell me." Not a plea. Not yet. The quiet command of a man who has decided he wants something and is done negotiating around the wanting. "I want to know. Everything he does that makes you—" his eyes moving to the mark, back to your face— "that makes that sound."

You held his gaze. "He doesn't ask."

Something moved through his expression. "He doesn't—"

"He does not ask what I want or how I want it. He reads me and takes what he finds and—" You watched Baelor's jaw tighten— "he doesn't stop to check."

"I check because—"

"I know why you check." Your hand at his chest. "I am not criticising it. I am answering your question."

His hands dropped from your face to your hips. The grip of them different from usual — more certain, less asking. "What else."

"He's rough."

A breath, his voice almost a growl. "How rough."

"Rougher than you've ever let yourself be."

The flush that moved through him was slow and complete, throat to jaw to the tips of his ears, and the mismatched eyes darkened in a way that had nothing diplomatic left in them. His hands tightened on your hips. "And that's what makes that sound."

"Part of it."

"What's the other part."

You looked at him. "That he doesn't think about whether he should."

The silence.

"Turn around," he said.

Your breath caught.

His voice had changed register entirely — not raised, Baelor never raised his voice, but stripped of every careful softness, carrying the quiet certainty of a man who has located something he has been looking for and intends to stop being tentative about it.

"Turn. Around," he insisted.

You did. His hands found your hips from behind and the grip of them was nothing like his usual touch — both hands, certain and possessive, pulling you back against him, and the evidence of how the conversation had been going for him was immediate and considerable against your back.

His mouth found the unmarked side of your neck.

Not gently. His teeth, deliberate, the scrape of them followed by his mouth working at the skin with a focused intent that was going to leave something — was already leaving something, you could feel it, the specific heat of it — and you made a sound that surprised you slightly and felt him exhale hard against your throat at the sound.

"He marks you," Baelor said. His voice against your neck, low and stripped of its usual considered quality. "So will I."

His hands moved — one spread flat across your stomach holding you against him, one sliding lower, finding you without preamble, and the sound he made when his fingers met slick heat was almost reverent before it became something else entirely.

"You're already—" He stopped. His fingers moving with a purpose that had abandoned his usual thoroughness for something more direct. "How long have you been—"

"Since you started talking," you said.

The groan that left him resonated through his chest and into yours.

"Tell me more." His fingers working, two of them now, curling in a way that found something immediately useful and stayed there. "Tell me what else he does."

"He—" The words unsteady. "He doesn't build up to it. He finds what works and he—"

Two of his long digits entered you without warning, the metal of his rings cool against your core. "Like this?"

"Harder."

The sharp intake of his breath. His fingers adjusting — harder, deeper, the heel of his hand grinding against your clit in a way that made your knees want to do something unhelpful — and the specific quality of Baelor asking and then executing the answer with perfect attention was its own devastating thing, different from Maekar's wordless reading but no less effective.

"And then," he said, his free hand working at his own laces with the focused efficiency of a man who has decided — "he doesn't wait."

"No," it came almost as a breath rather than a word.

"He just—"

He pushed into you in one deep, smooth thrust.

The sound you made echoed off the walls of the study and Baelor groaned against your shoulder — low and long and entirely stripped of composure — and for a moment neither of you moved, the fullness of it, the specific thickness of him seated in you completely, his hands gripping your hips and his mouth at your neck and the whole careful architecture of Baelor Targaryen temporarily and thoroughly dismantled.

Then he began to move and every remaining fragment of careful was gone.

He fucked you against his desk with a single-mindedness that had nothing diplomatic in it — deep driving thrusts that walked you forward against the wood, that made the inkwell migrate across the surface, that forced sounds from you with the mechanical certainty of someone who has identified the objective and intends to pursue it without deviation. His cock ramming into you hard and certain and relentless, each stroke full, nothing tentative about any of it, and you braced against the desk and gave him everything he was taking and felt the specific revelation of Baelor without his composure, Baelor wanting something badly enough to stop being careful about the wanting.

You moved a hand to your back to steady yourself by gripping him while the other one was set firmly against the opposite edge of the desk. Baelor, instead, caught your wrist and pressed it to your lower back, immobilizing it. The rough action drew a high-pitched moan from you.

His free hand found your clit.

Not tentatively. Directly, with the accuracy of a man who knew exactly where to go and had decided that patience was no longer a virtue he was interested in, his thumb working in a rough insistent rhythm while his cock drove into you from behind and the combination of it built something immediate and non-negotiable.

"Tell me—" His voice against your ear, wrecked, the careful diction entirely gone— "that he does this better."

The laugh that left you was genuine — and then his hips rammed against yours with sudden force, as if he almost wanted to reprimand you, and the laugh became a sound entirely unlike laughter.

"Tell me." Harder now, his hips snapping forward with an urgency that was new on him, that had none of the patience he usually rationed himself to. His cock buried in your cunt to the hilt and his thumb on your clit and his mouth at the mark he'd been leaving on your neck. "Tell me I am as good as him. I need to hear you say it."

"That is—" the sentence losing its shape entirely— "that sounds like competition—"

"I know how it sounds like." A thrust that punched the breath from your lungs. "Fuck what it sounds like." Another. "Tell me."

"You—" the words coming apart, reassembling, coming apart again— "Gods, Baelor, you are— you're—"

"Say it properly." His voice demolished and demanding and still, underneath it all, precisely him, the exactness of Baelor present even in this, even here, wanting the specific words and nothing approximate.

"You are as good as him!" You cried out. Each word punctuated by his cock driving into you, by your hand scrabbling at the desk's edge, by the thing building in you that had passed the point of no return some time ago and was now simply a matter of when. "T-too much— Baelor— please."

The sound he made when you said it resonated through his chest and into yours — not Maekar's triumphant certainty but something rawer than that, something that had needed the words badly enough to ask for them directly, the composed careful Crown Prince entirely absent and something more fundamental in his place, something that had been sitting beneath a decade of patience and management waiting for permission to exist.

His thumb moved faster. His cock drove into you harder. His mouth at your neck worked at the mark with an intent that had abandoned subtlety entirely, and the thing building in you crested and broke open completely — your nails against the wood, his name leaving your mouth in the specific register he had been working toward, and it was different from the sound he'd heard through walls, it was not that sound, it was its own thing entirely, Baelor's sound, the one he had earned specifically and no one else had — and you felt him understand that in real time, felt it move through him.

He followed you over with his face pressed to your neck and his hips losing their rhythm entirely, burying himself as deep as he would go and holding there while he spent himself in long shuddering pulses, a sound against your skin that was nothing like anything you had ever heard from him — cracked open, and human, and entirely specific to this room and you and this evening.

For a long moment neither of you moved.

His breathing slowed against your neck. His hands released you by degrees — the grip easing, the gentleness returning in increments, the composure beginning its quiet reconstruction.

He pressed his lips to the mark he'd left. Held them there for a moment. Then, with great deliberateness, he turned his head and pressed them to Maekar's mark as well.

Both. Acknowledged. Claimed.

You turned in his arms. Looked at his face — flushed and thoroughly undone, the mismatched eyes still dark but softening now, the whole of him coming back to himself by careful degrees.

"Well," you said, a faint smile creeping up your face.

A pause in which Baelor conducted a quiet internal search for his dignity and located it somewhat mislaid. "Well."

You looked at him. At the inkwell, which had reached the far edge of the desk. Back at him.

"You've been thinking about that," you said, "for considerably longer than this evening."

He redid the lace of his breeches in silence. Smoothed his doublet and ran a hand through his hair backwards. The gestures of a man restoring order to a room that had seen some weather. "I have absolutely no idea," he said, with the measured composure of the Hand of the King, "what you are referring to."

"Baelor."

A pause.

"Some time," he admitted.

You laughed — the unguarded kind, the easy kind — and watched something move through his expression at the sound of it, something warm and private and specifically responsive to that laugh in a way that had nothing to do with the last half hour and everything to do with the more than twenty years before it.

His hand found your face. His thumb at your jaw. Those mismatched eyes finding yours with the quality they kept for private hours — undivided and specific and entirely his.

"Both of them," he said quietly, looking at the marks on your neck. "Mine and his."

"Both of you," you said.

The expression that settled over his face was not triumph. It was something quieter and more lasting than triumph — the particular peace of a man who has, for once, stopped being careful about something, and found that the thing he was being careful around was never going anywhere.

He pressed his lips to your forehead. Slow. Deliberate. Entirely, specifically Baelor.

"Don't tell him," he said against your skin, "that I asked you for that."

You laughed again, knowing exactly what he was referring to.

"You know he will eventually find out," you teased.

"I know." A pause, and the warmth of him fully restored. "I will deny it comprehensively."

A.N.: I am obviously not well in the head and have a complete ted talk about the psychology of how and why these men are jealous while entirely sure about themselves (within this AU, of course). I will probably upload that too next to this work, because I need to get it out of my brain and put it into words.

Taglist: @qardasngan @nerdyinfluencertastemaker @princessphilly @shyravenns @loveslide @dulcebloodhnd @caitlynluna @mongrelcryptid @sacha1slytherin @faithfullyvigilantsliver @alternarabuda @jjubilee-fluff @a-sunflower-in-bloom @heieufh @karakatitsa-sonya @eleventhboi

You make it through two full months with nobody finding out about you and Brendon, everybody in on it keeping their lips zipped and everyone else happily oblivious, but that changes one random day when you wake up feeling like shit.

“You should just stay home, baby,” Brendon murmurs as he watches you slog through getting dressed, clearly exhausted and feeling off. “The ED can survive without you for one day.”

You shake your head and insist, “All I need is breakfast and a coffee and I’ll be all set. Just didn’t sleep well.”

“Alright, I trust you,” he sighs, dropping down so he can tie your shoes the way he has every morning for more than 3,000 days. “Take it easy though. For me. There’s that nasty bug going around and if this is the start of it-”

“I’m fine, Bren,” you assure as he stands up. “You worry too much.”

He kisses your forehead and murmurs, “I know. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sweet,” you reply, nudging up to kiss him softly. You know he only worries about your health so much because he had to watch you nearly lose your life a few years ago; you’re sure you’d be ten times as bad if the roles were reversed. “Let’s go get the kids up, yeah?”

He nods solemnly. “I’ll start pancake duty.”

You pat his ass and push him toward the bedroom door. “Good boy.”

Annoyingly, though, you really aren’t feeling better by the time you’ve had your coffee and breakfast and snuggles with your mama’s boy. Still, you take a deep breath, get the little ones in their car seats, and head to the hospital with a determination to get through the day since you have the next two off.

You don’t even make it to lunch.

Your breakfast decides to make a dramatic reappearance out of nowhere, sending you running to the staff bathroom at code speeds. After puking, your skin is about ten shades grayer than usual while you slide down the wall next to the bathroom trash, head spinning and forehead shining with sweat.

The next person to push inside the bathroom is Dana, having watched you hustle away with an expression every mom recognizes when there’s a bug going around. When she spots you, she immediately drops down and touches the back of your clammy forehead. “You don’t feel feverish, but, Jesus, you look terrible.”

“Thanks for that.” You grimace as she grabs one of the little paper cups and fills it with water for you to sip on.

“You’ve gotta go home; you look like you’re gonna pass out. Can I call someone for you?”

Shit, you left your phone in your locker this morning. You manage to mumble out as much to her and say, “If you have your phone, I can tell you my husband’s number.”

He picks up on the last ring after excusing himself from supervising a more-than-capable resident, knowing an unknown number could easily be the kids’ school or daycare. “Hello?”

Your voice creaks through. “Hi, hon, I left my phone in my locker. Borrowing Dana’s. I think I’ve got the bug that’s going around. I’ve been throwing up for like half an hour.”

“I’m so sorry you’re sick, sweetheart,” he soothes softly. “You need me to come down and take you home?”

Dana’s head cocks to one side. That’s a familiar voice, but she can’t quite place it because she’s never heard it sounding sympathetic before.

“Yeah, I think so,” you reply, feeling defeated and exhausted. “This thing’s really knocked me on my ass. Literally, actually. I’m on the bathroom floor.”

Brendon’s voice gains intensity as it lowers in volume. “Are you okay? How serious is this?”

“I’m alright,” you reassure him, “just needed to sit down somewhere cool and quiet. Dana’s here with me being amazing. You’ll come down soon?”

“Yeah, baby, of course,” he sighs tenderly. You hear him shuffling things around, already reorienting his day at the first sign of you needing him. “I’ve got one more quick post-op and then I’ll grab you, okay? Can you find somewhere to hang tight until then?”

“Mhm,” you offer queasily. “I’ll wait for you in Occupational Health, maybe? I can lay down and get some meds there at least.”

“That’s a good idea. Tell them I want blood and cultures. Don’t forget that you want trimethobenzamide, not Zofran, for the nausea. Zofran always makes you too fatigued.”

“Yes, doctor,” you reply with an eye roll. But when the eye roll makes the world spin which makes your stomach flip, you groan, “Thanks, Bren.”

As she puts all the baffling dots together, Dana steps in and tells him, “I’ll bring her up to OT. She looks like she could go down any second, so I’m gonna stick with her.”

Brendon sighs. You know he’s pinching the bridge of his nose to stop himself from getting too upset that he can’t fix everything right away. “Thanks, Dana, I’ll see you both soon.”

Dana manages to get you to Occupational Health without catching any stray questioning stares. After being briefed on your symptoms, the OT nurse gives you a sympathetic smile as she preps her kit. “It’s probably the flu, but we’re going to draw some blood and take a couple cultures just to be safe, alright?”

Dramatically presenting your arm for the poke, you murmur, “As if my husband would let me leave without a battery of tests for a seasonal virus half a Pittsburgh has.”

She smiles knowingly. “Park definitely seems like the protective type.”

“Park the fuckin’ Shark,” Dana sighs, still disbelieving, as she shakes her head. “So tell me: Was he nice when you first met or were you mean?”

Seeing Brendon’s broad form in the corner of your eye, you turn toward him and sigh romantically, “He’s always nice to me.”

The moment he catches your eye, Brendon’s expression softens. Dana’s never seen that before. He strides quickly to your side and takes your free hand as the nurse does your blood draw. With a quick squeeze to your palm, he asks gently, “How’s the patient feeling?”

You tilt your head back and pout. “Supremely crappy. Sorry, baby, I know you told me to stay home this morning.”

Brendon shakes his head and presses his lips to your hair. “Never apologize for needing my help; that’s the job. You’ve been nauseous half of your adult life and you’re used to pushing through it. Shit happens. Let’s just get you home, baby.”

Dana watches the exchange with  befuddled eyebrows. Suddenly the mountain of a frown she’s come to know is a gentle giant, his eyes concerned and his expression tender. He’s had baby blue eyes this whole time? Jesus. She never would’ve guessed after avoiding eye contact so long. She gestures broadly and half-laughs as she asks Brendon, “You’re telling me all those precious angels she’s got covering the inside of her locker belong to you? The meanest man in the hospital?”

“Guilty as charged,” Brendon confirms as he once again kisses the top of your head. He’s rubbing your back, too, unable to stop touching you as a way of grounding himself. “We’ve been together almost ten years now.”

She whistles, impressed. Turning to you while the nurse disappears with your tests, she asks, “Any reason you don’t talk about him at work besides the fact that he’s undeniably awful?”

“I talk plenty about my husband,” you laugh softly, not able to muster much energy to tease, “you all just don’t think my cute stories could be about him.”

Suddenly recontextualizing countless adorable accounts, Dana disbelievingly says, “Brendon Park takes his girls to their father-daughter dances every year in a tie that matches their dress. Brendon Park writes notes for his kids’ lunchboxes and takes them all on dad dates so they don’t miss out on quality time with him.” She shakes her head and laughs, “No wonder he keeps his family a secret; I think you might be the sweetest man in the world, Dr. Park. I’m never gonna look at you the same way again.”

“That’s all hearsay,” Brendon snaps back through a chuckle. Then he sighs and tells her, “Look, surgery may be my life, but those kids are my world. Family’s everything.”

Dana can’t help smiling. “God, now I’m gonna be sick.”

You make kissy lips at Brendon and say, “I tell you guys all the time: My husband’s a huge softie.”

Brendon shakes his head and jokingly covers your ears with his hands. “She’s delirious; don’t listen to a word she says.” Then, while you get cleared to leave, he nudges Dana on the arm and adds, “Hey, don’t tell anyone about us, alright? We’ve got a whole bet going.”

And she gives the only response heard in the Pitt: “Can I get in on the action?”

Just as you’re about to go home after your first shift back a few days later, feeling much better after resting and hydrating as with Brendon’s mom coming over to dote on the kids, Dana touches you on the shoulder. Her eyes are sharp and her voice is low. “Do you have a few minutes?”

You glance at your watch. Brendon’s grabbing the boys from daycare, so you can spare a few minutes. “Now?”

She nods and you can see something serious hiding behind her eyes. Immediately you worry about the particularly fragile patient she assisted you with a few hours ago. “No time like the present.”

“Um, yeah, alright.”

She leads you into a private room and closes the door behind her. Inside, she picks up a chart and a few packets of paper she had waiting.

Swallowing hard as your mind easily supplies all sorts of horrible news, you check, “Is this about a patient?”

“Ah, kind of,” she replies, gesturing for you to sit on the bed. You hop up and she steps closer. After a deep breath, she hands over the clipboard – your chart from your visit to OT last week – and says, “No point beating around the bush, I say. You’re pregnant.”

The floor falls out from under you.

Your ears start to ring. Staring down at the litany of blood tests, your eyes settle on that firm POSITIVE next to a sky-high hCG level.

While your heart thuds its way into your throat, Dana adds softly, “I’m guessing you’re already well into your first trimester based on those numbers. Maybe 10, 12 weeks.”

Not quite processing, you blink fast and ramble out, “I- I’m so good about my birth control pills. Same time every day. Never miss them. With five kids, you don’t miss your birth control.”

“I read over your chart, honey,” she explains, standing next to you now so she can place a hand on your upper back. “One of the medications you’re on – the modafinil, for your sleep issues – reduces the effectiveness of hormonal birth control.”

Tears sting at your eyes as you scoff, feeling stupid and confused and jarred, “How did I not know that? I’m a fucking doctor.”

“You’re not a psychiatrist. If they didn’t tell you that, you should sue as far as I’m concerned.” She hands you a couple stapled packets of paper and a pamphlet. Studies, you realize. “Look, take a day and talk about it with your husband, whatever you need to do, but if you decide to stay pregnant, you’ll need to stop taking it because first trimester exposure can cause some complications and malformations.”

If the floor fell out of you at the first news, it’s the ceiling flying off this time. Your hand goes over your mouth as you choke back a sob. “Oh, god.”

“Don’t go panicking yet,” she soothes, rubbing your back how your mother would when you were little. “The chance is still low and you know as well as I do there are things we can screen for and most of them are fixable, treatable, or manageable even if they’re present. All your numbers look fantastic and you’ve got a nice long history of healthy pregnancies, right?”

You wipe the tears from your cheeks and take a deep breath, steadying yourself as much as you can. “Right. Right, yeah. Okay. Everything’s okay.”

Dana gives you a sympathetic, understanding smile. “Do you want a minute alone? Or I can walk you out to your car?”

You sniffle and try to force your face into a grateful expression, genuinely thankful she’s being so kind and taking the time to be supportive. “That would be nice.”

With her voice low and her arm slung protectively around your shoulder, Dana guided you out of the back entrance and to your waiting car. She says goodbye with a tight hug that lingers, promising you everything will be okay.

Then, alone in your car, your mind finally settled enough to relax, you feel that tiny little spark.

Underneath the shock, underneath the panic, underneath the confusion, peeking out like a sprout growing through a crack in the concrete, there’s that familiar bloom of pure love. That soft, sacred, quiet thing that grows unrelentingly inside of you when everything else threatens to crumble.

Love without boundaries, without conditions, without a name. The same love that has you sewing custom Halloween costumes, baking preschool graduation cakes, and wiping sniffly noses all cold season long. A love made from you and the man who’s rerouted and dedicated his entire life to making sure you and your children are safe and adored.

As you turn over the engine, you touch your lower abdomen and murmur softly, “We’re doing this again, aren’t we?”

You hate to say it, but you’re grateful when Brendon is pulled into an emergency surgery at the end of the day, sending his mom to pick up the boys at daycare. It’s nice to have some time to think while you make dinner and help the older ones with homework.

While everyone settles into the evening, you catch yourself watching the kids playing with each other, leaning in the doorway with a soft, far away expression. You’d felt so finished having kids after Felix, but suddenly you can see another baby to bounce as you chase the others around. You can see it so clearly that your eyes sting with tears. Even when you imagine that baby with any myriad of complications, you love it. You want it.

Late that night, all the kids in bed save your littlest one, Felix is half-asleep on your chest, his thumb in his mouth while you watch the TV on low. You just can’t bear to stop moments like this when you know they’re so fleeting. Running your fingers through his hair, just like Brendon’s downy waves,  you murmur, “What do you think about becoming a big brother, little man?”

He stirs slightly and gives you a heavy-lidded smile. With a half-giggle that always melts you, he muses, “Baby sister?”

“Baby something,” you confirm gently. “I just have to tell daddy.”

He nods as if knowingly, nestling his forehead into your side. “Daddy happy.”

“I hope so.”

“Know so.”

You’ve convinced yourself that you’ll manage to wait to tell Brendon until after he’s had a solid night’s sleep. But then he comes home. And, in a matter of minutes, you remember it’s impossible for you to keep a secret from him, especially one this big. That’s the problem with being married to your best friend; he’s the one person you want to talk about everything with, even when it’s not the best time.

“I got my bloodwork back,” you tell him tentatively as you watch him go through his bedtime routine from the bed, “and I don’t have the flu.”

After he finishes flossing, he heads into the closet and asks, “Norovirus?”

Your hands start to sweat. This feels very, very different from your other pregnancies. The shadow of Felix’s birth clouds you both. You swallow hard and squeak out, “Not quite.”

Stepping out in nothing but his boxers, a few droplets of water still on his chest from his recent shower, Brendon sits next to you on the bed and cups your cheek. With a furrowed brow, he urges, “I can read you like a book, angel. Spit it out.”

Searching his blue eyes for any islands to rest away from your anxiety, you whisper, “I’m pregnant.”

Every time you’ve told him before, he’s scooped you up into his arms and spun you around and celebrated. This time, the blood drains from his face. His palms go clammy. The world stills.

After a minute, he asks in a voice that’s jumbled up with fear and grief and love and hope and desperation, “You want us to keep it?”

“I think so,” you reply quietly, “but not if you don’t want another-”

“I’d raise as many kids as you’d give me, baby, that’s not what I’m nervous about.” Brendon turns to you, clutches your hands in his, and shakes his head like he’s trying to clear an Etch-a-Sketch. Through tears that just won’t stop falling, he whispers, “After everything last time, after I almost- almost fucking lost you, I don’t know if I can- if I can handle it.”

You rush back, “That won’t happen again, Bren.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

Brushing his wet cheeks with your thumbs, you remind him, “I can know it to 99.99994 percent based on the latest research. We both know the odds are astronomical that that complication would happen more than once.”

Unable to speak, Brendon buries his face in your shoulder and takes a deep breath. His arms wrap around your waist and he pulls you effortlessly into his lap to hold you as tight to him as possible.

You massage his scalp with your fingertips and soothe, “I’m okay, Bren. I’m just pregnant.”

“I know, baby, I know.” He pulls back and kisses your hand over and over with his eyebrows pinched together. “But you’re older now, and-”

“Sweetheart, I’m not even thirty,” you chuckle and shake your head. “The average woman hasn’t even started having babies by my age.”

“You’re really on one with the statistics tonight,” he half-laughs, wiping his tears and taking a deep breath. After a minute of studying your features the way he always has when he wishes he could read your thoughts, he checks, “Are you sure?”

You nod and give him the first secretive smile. “Completely.”

Brendon hugs you close once again and sighs out all his fears with his next breath. “Then I’m sure with you.” Sliding his strong arms beneath your ass, he offers a mischievous smile and asks, “Feel secure?”

You roll your eyes and grin and nod – and he hoists you up into the air. Letting out a needed laugh, you lock your legs around him and kiss him hard as he spins you around. With your forehead pressed to his, you giggle out, “We’re gonna have a baby.”

“I love you so fucking much,” he says, kissing across your cheeks. Once he’s got you laughing and thrilled, he flops you back on the bed and kisses your stomach. Finally, propped on his elbows next to you, that boyish smile of his blooms in full force. He says seriously, “At least this means we have some wiggle room for our ultimate frisbee lineup. Margot’s not exactly shaping up to be an athlete with all her musical theater.”

You snort run your fingers through Brendon’s hair as he rests his head on your stomach, eyes closed reverently as he once again reimagines his future with another baby. “Hear that, kiddo? Daddy’s gonna teach you to throw as soon as you’re out of there. Work extra hard on building up that right hook.”

“Nah, we need a Southpaw,” he corrects with the most adorable smile you’ve ever seen. Then he just shakes his head happily and snuggles closer to you, the picture of domestic bliss. As he softly kisses anywhere he can, he muses, “We’re gonna have to go ring shopping again.”

You poke him in the pec and balk, “You want me to wear a six carat diamond? My hand will fall off, Bren. We could send one of the kids to college with that.”

He holds up his hand to stop you in your tracks. “One carat per baby; that’s been my rule for a decade and I’m not about to betray my values now.”

With a snicker, you reach back and turn off your bedside lamp, getting cozy under the covers together. “I can’t even wear my ring to work.”

He counters, “But I like when you wear it on dates.”

“Because you like to show me off like some trophy wife.”

Dramatically, he sighs out, “God forbid a man be madly, spectacularly in love with a gorgeous woman and want everyone in a ten-foot radius to know.”

“Fine,” you relent, unable to stop smiling even in the dark, “six carats it is.”

The hockey house was always, somehow, loud. Loud in that pre-party way on a Friday night that made your head spin and bring a giddy smile to your face. The warm-up stage, if you will. Everyone half-distracted and talking over each other while deciding what the night was actually going to become.

Which was exactly why Dean had decided it was the perfect time to ruin your life.

“No seriously,” your brother insisted from across the kitchen island, pointing his beer bottle at you like he was presenting a business proposal to investors instead of actively setting his sister up on a date, “this guy is perfect for you.”

You stared at him flatly and leaned on your elbows, the stool you were sat on tipped dangerously.

“Every time you say that, I suffer.”

“That’s because you keep picking emotionally unavailable weirdos.”

Everyone partially ignored Dean, he was always doing this- offering to set you up with the next eligible bachelor that he had scouted in his classes, or mutual friends, one time he set you up with one of his ex-hookup’s hookup. That one didn’t go as well as the majority of your brother’s matchmaking pursuits.

From the couch, Logan’s ears perked up and he choked slightly on his drink; he glanced around hoping nobody noticed, and it didn’t seem like they did.

Except Garrett.

Garrett glanced up from his phone, eyes moving from Logan to you and then back to Logan again with the expression of somebody who had just noticed a bomb underneath the dining table.

Your eyes flicked to Logan, a secret twinkle in them before you steeled and ignored him. Dean, fortunately for you didn’t even notice and continued talking.

“He’s pre-law,” he said proudly.

Logan rolled his eyes and scoffed before he could stop himself. He didn’t even recognise the noise that he made, but he stilled when he felt the group’s eyes on him.

Allie frowned from where she sat cross-legged on the floor. “Why did you react like that?”

Logan shrugged quickly, leaning further back into the couch cushions beside Tucker. “I didn’t.”

“You literally scoffed.”

“I breathed.”

“That was a judgmental breath.”

“It’s pre-law,” Logan muttered, finger running along the rim of his beer bottle.

Dean narrowed his eyes immediately, “What’s wrong with pre-law?”

Logan took another sip of his drink like he hadn’t just entered the conversation voluntarily. “Sounds evil.”

Tucker barked out a laugh from beside him. “Bro, weren't you considering law for a bit?”

“We don’t about that dark time of my life,” Logan muttered, he nodded silently as the yeasty alcohol slipped down his throat- his eyes flicked to you but he refocussed on the conversation at hand.

You bit the inside of your cheek hard enough to stop yourself smiling.

The two of you had agreed on the secrecy together.

Mostly because your friends were all deeply nosy and incapable of minding their own business for longer than six consecutive minutes, but also because you and Logan had somehow slipped into dating without fully meaning to and then panicked slightly once you realised how serious it had become.

Now here you were.

Four months deep into a relationship that you couldn’t reveal, unless you wanted to bring about the next Dean-meltdown. The last one almost ended with him moving to Australia and making a life with the kangaroos. 

Which meant that every time somebody tried setting one of you up with another person, you both had to sit there pretending it was completely normal.

You liked to think that you had been handling it significantly better than Logan.

“All I’m saying,” Dean continued, oblivious to the psychological warfare occurring three feet away from him, “is that he’s smart, he’s tall, he cooks-”

“That’s manipulative,” Logan interrupted.

The room went quiet.

You looked at him.

Dean looked at him.

Even Hannah slowly lowered her phone.

“What?” Dean said eventually.

Logan blinked once like he had only just realised he’d spoken aloud.

“What?” he repeated.

“You think cooking is manipulative?”

Logan shifted slightly in his seat. “Sometimes.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Neither does pre-law.”

Allie turned fully toward him now, deeply suspicious. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, “You seem weirdly invested.”

“I’m not invested.” He quickly replied. 

Garrett spoke without looking up from his phone.

“You wanna explain why you’re reacting like a divorced father who just found out his ex-wife is dating again?”

Tucker physically folded over laughing.

Logan pointed at Garrett immediately. “See? This is why nobody likes you.”

“People love me.”

“Your own girlfriend looks tired.”

Hannah snorted into her can of coke and ran her hand through her boyfriend’s hair, who was staring daggers at Logan until he melted into her touch.

You looked away before you snorted at Logan’s antics, which probably in hindsight wasn’t the best idea, because the second your attention drifted away- you could feel him boring holes into the side of your face, like he was trying to telepathically communicate his annoyance across the room.

Your phone buzzed against the counter and you grabbed it quickly before someone noticed the way you grinned to yourself, biting down on your lip you checked the notifications; even though you already knew who it was.

Hockey boy 💗 stop smiling at dean about another guy before i lose my mind

Across the room, Logan stared at his own phone with the deeply concentrated expression of someone trying not to commit homicide.

You typed back carefully, intentionally slower so as not to alert your brother- who was now chattering with his girlfriend across the room. 

You: you are being unbelievably dramatic rn

Hockey boy 💗 he said the guy cooks

You: so…do you?

Hockey boy 💗 yeah but i do it sexier

You physically had to cough to disguise the laugh that escaped you.

Hannah looked over instantly.

“What?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nothing.”

“You just giggled at your phone.”

“I did not.”

“You literally did.”

Dean pointed at you accusingly. “Wait. Is there already another guy?”

You jumped so hard that your knee hit the island and you hissed. Logan had sat up straighter, fast enough that it alarmed Tucker, who was sunken into the couch next to him.

“No,” he said immediately.

The entire room turned toward him.

A beat passed.

Logan slowly leaned back again, cringing and half hoping the universe would grant him reprise in the deepest black hole it could create.

“I mean,” he added poorly, “how would I know?”

Garrett finally looked up fully now, staring directly at Logan with open fascination, his eyes widening as he properly studied the both of you. His mouth popped open in an O shape.

Your heart launched into your throat as you met the captain’s eyes, half pleading that he was as slow as his stereotype allowed him to be. But before Garrett could elaborate further, Dean steamrolled right over the moment.

“Whatever,” he said dismissively, already pulling out his phone again, “look at this guy and tell me I’m wrong.”

He shoved the screen in your direction, you squinted and slumped forward, hitting your older brother with a dead look.

You hated how attractive the man was.

Tall. Dark hair. Nice smile.

One of those annoyingly clean-looking corporate boys that somehow always smelled expensive.

Before you could stop yourself, your eyes flicked instinctively toward Logan. If there was a bigger mistake you could've made, it would be murder. Because he was already looking at you, his eyes inquisitively blinking between you and Dean.

Waiting.

You raised one eyebrow slightly, teasing him and Logan narrowed his eyes immediately. Then, because apparently self-preservation had abandoned him entirely tonight, he muttered,

“He looks like he moisturizes too much.”

Dean stared at him, baffled that this was coming from the same man who probably owned 500 different types of skincare. What Dean didn’t know is that each time a new product would pop up on his sink, it was actually yours. 

“All humans should moisturize.”

“Not that much.”

“John,” Hannah said slowly, “you own more hair products than me.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

Logan opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“It just is.”

“You are such a fucking hater,” Tucker wheezed.

Logan looked genuinely offended, looking at the group, whipping around like a broken spinning top, “I’m not a hater.”

“You’re beefing with a man none of us have met.”

“I’m not beefing with him.”

“You called his face moisturized in a derogatory way.”

Logan rolled his eyes and slumped again, tapping at his phone. Yours buzzed against your thigh- it seems secrecy had flown out of the window tonight. Four months of perfect sneak-ins, disguised dates and unknown sleepovers flushed away.

Hockey boy 💗 if he touches you im transferring schools

You stared at the text for a full three seconds before looking up, Logan was already messing with his hair absently, jaw tight, eyes narrowed at absolutely nothing.

God.

He was unbelievable, you tried not to gape at him while tapping on your phone,

“He wants to meet tonight?” You ask Dean, feigning interest as you squinted at the phone over the lip of your cup. 

Dean perked up and texted this guy, Ethan, Evan? You didn’t care, “He says…” Dean held the room still with his hands outstretched, “He’ll be over in an hour!” Your brother jumped triumphantly into Beau, who had missed the entire debacle when he disappeared into the toilet.

That gave you the perfect window to meet Logan’s gaze, which had flared considerably. You shrugged and winked at him, biting your cheek when he blushed and huffed, turning away to down the rest of his drink. 

You managed to escape upstairs under the guise of getting ready for this date- far away from Tucker, who had gotten into the habit of critiquing your outfit choices like he was one planned ensemble away from Vogue.

You slipped into the bathroom, starting to wash your face with products that Logan had shamelessly claimed as his, just so you could keep more of your stuff over on his shelf. 

You towel dried your face when the door to the bathroom cracked open with a dull knock. You didn’t turn around immediately, mostly because you already knew who it was.

“Baby.”

There it was, you huffed, hands barely pausing their circular movements of rubbing moisturizer into your skin. You glanced over bemused with the puppy act that Logan was currently playing at the doorway. That tone is exactly the tone he used on you when he was not happy about what your secret relationship brought along with it- it was low, annoyed in a way that immediately made warmth crawl up your spine despite your best efforts

Adjusting one of your earrings in the mirror and pressing your lips together with a new layer of lipgloss, you watched him click the door behind him and lean against it- bashfully looking at you from below his eyelashes

“You know following me upstairs while I’m getting ready for another guy is objectively making this situation weirder.”

He crossed his arms over his chest as you adjusted your skirt.

“Another guy,” he repeated flatly.

You met his eyes through the mirror.

Your boyfriend looked deeply unimpressed by the entire concept of tonight, which was slightly ironic considering he’d spent the last few months allowing Allie to continuously set him up with girls under the assumption he was still hopelessly into Hannah.

“You’ve literally gone on three dates this month,” you reminded him.

“They barely count.”

You turned around fully then, eyebrows lifting. “One of them took you mini golfing.”

“She talked about her ex for forty minutes.”

“That’s still a date.”

“It was psychological warfare.”

You snorted and planted your hands on your hips, your resolve barely holding when his eyes softened slightly at the sound, that was part of the reason you both worked. No matter how irritated he got, no matter how jealous or grumpy or territorial he became, there was always this underlying tenderness to him around you that completely gave him away if you paid attention for long enough.

And you were always paying attention to him. 

His gaze dragged over you slowly now. Taking in the dress, your hair, the shimmer of your lipgloss that he interrupted the application of. Your eyes widened when his jaw tightened

“Oh my god,” you laughed quietly, shaking your head, “you’re actually jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“You compared his moisturizer usage to shooting puppies.”

“He looks slippery.”

“That is not a real critique.”

“It could be.”

You laughed again, properly this time- Logan’s expression immediately worsened, as if he couldn’t believe that you were going to look like that for a guy that wasn’t him.

“You look too pretty for this,” he muttered.

Your stomach flipped, your laugh settling to a soft smile. Logan always spoke like that, somehow injecting sincerity into everything he said even when he was irrationally possessive.

You tried very hard not to melt visibly.

“Well unfortunately,” you said lightly instead, stepping closer to him, “our friends are insane and think you’re still in love with Hannah.”

“I haven’t liked Hannah in like 6 months.” Your eyebrows lifted slightly with a grin

“6 months?”

Logan realised his mistake immediately.

“Don’t do that,” he warned.

You cheekily bit your tongue, “Do what?” 

“That thing where you look smug.”

“I’m not smug.”

“You’re literally smirking.”

You were doing the mental maths, because if Logan stopped liking Hannah almost 6 months ago.. Well. 

You’d started sleeping together six months ago and got together two months after that.

Interesting timeline.

Your boyfriend stepped closer before you could weaponize that information further, hands finding your waist automatically like muscle memory. Like he physically couldn’t stand within arm’s reach of you without touching you somehow.

“You better not actually like this guy,” he muttered.

You blinked once. Twice. Then brought your arms to his shoulders- comfortingly rubbing the soft flannel

“John Logan,” you said slowly, “are you trying to establish rules for a date I didn’t even want to go on?”

His hands tightened slightly against your waist.

“No.”

“Yes you are.”

“No I’m not.”

“You’re literally pouting.”

“I don’t pout.”

You reached up immediately and pressed your thumb against his lower lip, his eyes darkened. 

“There,” you whispered sweetly. “That. That’s pouting.”

Logan grabbed your wrist before you could pull away, dragging you flush against him in one smooth movement that made your breath catch embarrassingly fast.

“You think this is funny,” he said quietly.

“A little bit.”

“That’s concerning.”

“You’re being insane.”

“I’m being reasonable.”

“You called him slippery.”

“He is slippery.”

You dissolved into laughter again, forehead dropping briefly against his chest. Logan exhaled heavily above you, one hand sliding up your spine slowly - exposed from the cutout of your dress. His fingers curled at the back of your neck.

“Don’t let him kiss you,” he murmured.

You tilted your head back immediately and grinned at him- as if you would ever consider the ridiculous idea.

“Oh my god.”

“I’m serious.”

“You are unbelievable.”

“I mean it.”

Your amusement faded slightly then, into something gentler that settled underneath your expression, beneath all the jealousy and dramatics and weird comments about moisturizer, you knew what this actually was.

Logan wasn’t angry, he was scared. Not of you cheating- you’d threatened him enough that you’d need to be held at gun point for the thought to even breach your mind. He was worried that someone better would come along, someone more charming, someone who was a part of your world. The world that Dean and you shared along with the ultra elite trust-fund babies.

Your expression softened.

“You know I’m yours, right?” you asked quietly.

The change in Logan's face made your chest hurt ever so slightly- he sighed and dropped his forehead against yours,

“Yeah?” he asked softly.

You swallow away the knot in your throat and kiss his nose, “Yeah.”

Logan smiled at the feeling of your lips on his face, grinning at the triumphant look on your face. And for a second, neither of you moved, just basking in the feeling of each other's closeness. Then his hand slid properly into your hair and he kissed you, and just like every time this man kissed you, your knees felt weak and you leaned into him.

His mouth moved against yours slowly at first, careful and lingering and familiar enough to make your sigh slightly before he deepened it with the quiet sort of desperation that always seemed to sneak into him around you, you hum softly into his mouth, fingers curling into the front of his hoodie.

“John,” you whispered when he kissed down your jaw.

“Hm?”

“If you leave a mark on me before my date I’m actually going to kill you.”

Logan kissed your neck again deliberately then started nipping at the skin purposefully, you whacked his head, groaning when he soothed over the stinging skin with his tongue.

“You asshole.”

“You said no marks,” he murmured smugly against your skin, “these are just... friendly reminders.”

You were seconds away from shoving him when Dean’s voice suddenly echoed up the stairs.

“HEY!”

You gasped and jumped apart violently, his hands tightened on your waist and you could feel his heartbeat thumping wildly below your hand.

“IS MY SISTER READY YET OR IS SHE MAKING THIS GUY WAIT ON PURPOSE?”

Logan inhaled sharply, squeezing his eyes shut . You bit down on your smile and turned to fix your makeup, your lipgloss smudged to your chin and all over his mouth. You usher him towards the mirror to wipe it off.

Then Dean yelled again,

“AND LOGAN WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GO?”

The two of you stared at each other, a short moment of silence passed, then you both had to stifle laughs against the other, your mouth pressed into his shoulder as he cradled your head and pressed a hand to his lips. 

Logan dragged one hand down his face. “I hate everyone in this house.”

“You live here.”

“Don’t remind me.”

You grinned and reached up, gently fixing the collar of his shirt where you’d wrinkled it. His eyes softened again immediately and he smoothed out your hair,

“Go on your stupid date,” he muttered, rubbing away the last of the lipgloss from your chin.

“You’re adorable when you’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“You followed me upstairs.”

“I was stretching my legs.”

“Through my tonsils?”

Logan rolled his eyes and kissed your forehead

If you were to be objective about the situation your brother had put you in- you’d have to say that he did an annoyingly good job. You’d never tell him that of course, you’d prefer to use Logan’s pliers to rip your teeth out individually. 

But the guy sitting across from you was genuinely perfect on paper.

Ethan was funny in that easy, socially polished way corporate aspirants somehow always were, where every joke sounded rehearsed enough to land properly but natural enough that you couldn’t call him out on it. He opened doors without making a huge deal out of it, remembered details from previous conversations Dean had apparently told him about you, and somehow managed to make expensive restaurants feel casual instead of pretentious.

Worst of all. He was genuinely attractive. You could think of at least 5 of your girlfriends who would happily take the inconvenience out of your hands.

Dark hair slightly messy in that intentional way rich men cultivated, broad shoulders underneath a fitted black sweater, stupidly nice hands that looked like they belonged in a watch advertisement.

You hated how much Dean would enjoy being right about this.

“And then Di Laurentis told me,” Ethan laughed lightly, leaning back in his chair, “that if I hurt you he’d apparently feed my body to the hockey team.”

You snorted into your drink. “Yeah, that sounds like my brother.”

“He’s weirdly intimidating for a guy that owns that many tank tops.”

“He weaponizes confidence.”

Ethan grinned and held eye contact with you while he sipped from his whiskey glass. And you stumbled into the same feeling you had been experiencing the entire evening, everytime Evan smiled- your brain automatically compared it to Logan.

Ezra’s smile was clean, polished and pristine. You’d go as far as to say it was pretty under most lighting.

You couldn’t help the comparison. Logan’s smiles made your stomach flip and consciousness flutter in a way only he could manage. Split lips after hockey games- stretched into victorious laughter, crooked smirks when he was about to say something unbelievably annoying and your favourite, the devastatingly soft grin he got only around you, like his entire body was tuned to your reactions. 

Your throat dried and you worked hard to keep an uncomfortable grimace at bay.

“So,” Eli said, resting his chin against his hand slightly, “Dean says you practically live at the hockey house.”

You nearly choked on your drink.

The statement itself wasn’t inaccurate, you did spend a lot of time at the house. But if Elijah knew how much of that time you’d spent in John Logan’s bedroom, you’re pretty sure he would evaporate on the spot.  

“Yeah.. They’re my brother’s teammates, we all just ended up becoming friends,” you said carefully.

“You and Logan seem close.”

Your heart skipped once at the mention of his name and you fought against the natural instinct to bite back a smile, instead you kept your expression neutral with the kind of effort that deserved academic recognition.

“Logan?”

“Yeah.” Everett shrugged lightly. “He looked like he wanted to kill me earlier.”

You laughed too quickly, waving off the notion that Logan would be anything but jealous.

“He’s just weird.”

Eric nodded thoughtfully, studying your face in a way that made you send an impromptu prayer up to God that he wasn’t putting the badly veiled pieces together, then he grinned and shrugged.

“I figured.”

The waiter arrived then, setting down your desserts while Edward thanked him politely. You mentally facepalmed, again, this guy was objectively perfect. But you had to stop yourself from recoiling away when his hand brushed yours, gentle and hesitant across the table.

Your mind flashed back to the most recent date Logan took you on, a small, independent coffee shop outside of the Briar locality- away from prying, gossiping eyes. He had grimaced as he paid for your drink and stifled his love for it when you made him take a sip, your hands were intertwined the entire time, a carefree momentum settled in your conversation whilst he played with the rings on your fingers, openly, unabashedly. 

The memory hit you so suddenly you almost laughed. Dean had hit gold with this guy, you could read Erik like an open book, and the entire time he had been nothing but sweet, smart at points and attentive nearly the entire length of the date. Your friends would probably start planning a big, upper-east side wedding by next week.

But still your mind drifted back to the only man you could see yourself marrying, and how much he would absolutely hate this restaurant. The excess of cloth napkins would make him tense, the dim lighting irritating him enough to make his entire face scrunch up and the lack of fries would be considered diabolical. 

But you knew, with absolute certainty, that if you wanted to dine in a restaurant like this, he would suffer an eternity in these four walls if it meant he was with you.

Your phone buzzed against your lap, breaking your chain of thought. 

Hockey boy 💗: Are you home yet?

You stared at the carousel of messages prior to this, and the timestamps

9:14 PM. 9:26 PM. 9:41 PM. 9:57 PM.

Four separate messages.

Your lips twitched helplessly, all of them were as performatively nonchalant as the others.

Hockey boy 💗 If this Egbert guy touches you, I'm keying his daddy’s jeep. 

Hockey boy 💗 Don’t ask how i know this but his linkedin is not very impressive- not good enough to date my girl that’s for sure. 

Hockey boy 💗 I miss you.

Ethan noticed immediately, the way your eyes softened and a huff made your lips part in a ghost of a smile.

“Boyfriend?” he asked casually.

Your head snapped up.

“What?”

He smiled, cocking his head slightly, “You’ve checked your phone every five minutes since we got here.”

Heat crawled up your neck instantly and you furrowed your brows in apology,

“No,” The lie felt bitter on your tongue, but you silenced your phone and set it down face first on the table.  Eran hummed like he didn’t fully believe you, but thankfully let it go.

The rest of the date shifted slightly after that, not awkward since poor Edmund hadn’t let the clarifying moment put a dent in his enthusiasm. It just meant that his hand hadn’t touched yours since you replied to Logan.

You wanted to apologise to him, to say that it wasn’t working out for any reason that didn’t involve Logan. But you opted for polite, self-explanatory silence on the matter. Letting Edwin slip on your jacket for you and engaged in a cursory side hug that made you both cringe a little, but it was easier than explaining to him that instead of his simple affection, you wanted the idiot currently losing his mind back at the hockey house over a pre-law major named Elton.

Logan would honestly rather take a hundred slapshots straight to the ribs without pads than listen to Dean brag about what a 'good guy' he’d set his sister up with.

It started with a passing comment, then a phone lighting up on the coffee table which led to Dean half-paying attention to the loud conversation being had in the living room while scrolling. This cumulative, slow motion train crash in front of Logan’s eyes, meant he had gone suspiciously quiet in the midst of the heated debate between Allie and Tucker and was now focussing on his friend who was grinning like a Cheshire cat at his phone.

Dean eventually spoke, stretching back into the couch like he owns it, a triumphant look spread across his face. The group quietens when they notice the smug expression, which either meant he was about to announce something gross or he was going to be an ass about being right. 

“She just got dessert,” he casually reports, looking around the room, like a king would look at his subjects- pompous and on the highest horse possible.

Logan does not respond immediately. He just leans forward slightly, fiddling with the loose thread fraying from the cuff of his sleeve, when he does decide to grace Dean with an answer- it takes everything in him to keep his voice steady and flat in a way that should come across as disinterested. 

“That’s nice.” His tone was clipped, a stark difference from his usual charismatic demeanor. The rest of the group makes up for his lack of enthusiasm, the girls giggled and congratulated Dean on finding such a catch, the guys laugh and speculate that in the dating world- getting dessert is equivalent to a perfectly timed, public, flash-mob proposal. 

Logan prayed for it to end there. It normally would’ve, Dean hadn’t said anything that would invite continuation. You had ordered dessert and that meant Logan would need to become a world class pastry chef as soon as possible. Case closed. Goodnight. 

“And he says she’s laughing a lot.” 

A badly stifled suffering sigh escapes Logan’s lips, his body briefly pauses, as if it had forgotten how to act normal and instead decided to shut down.

He recalibrated, ignoring the ugly, curling sensation that lurched in his stomach and instead, rather stiffly, managed to say,

“Good for her,” he says. Perfect. His voice was still intensely calm, still controlled and his answer invited no follow-up.

Across the room, Tucker glances up from his seat with the vague expression of someone who is only half following the conversation but is starting to sense that the topic was sprinting full speed down an unexplored path . Hannah leans toward Allie, lowering her voice.

“Why is he talking like that?” she asks.

Allie glances between them. “Like what?”

Hannah thinks for a second, “Remember the time he walked in on you and Dean?”

Allie sighs dreamily at the memory, obviously not remembering the avoidant, distasteful tone that Logan had adopted for the rest of that night.

“Ohhhh,” Allie nodded slowly, the specifics hazy in her mind, but she could clearly remember Logan looking like he would let Garrett shave off the outer layer of his eyeballs with his skates.

Dean hears this and instead of doing the smart thing for everyone in the vicinity, he contributes to the analysis,

“That’s what it is!,” he snaps his fingers and points at Logan, who glanced at the perky blonde out of his periphery and slapped his outstretched fingers with his palm. 

Garrett in the middle of the exchange has stopped pretending entirely that he is not listening. He doesn’t dare react, but his attention splits between Logan and Dean regularly, as if he was the first to picture something that everyone else had not yet realised. 

Dean’s phone vibrates in his hand, “Oh,” he says after a moment, like he is remembering another detail. “He also says she’s really pretty when she’s concentrating.”

Logan exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, and finally looks down at his hands as if the table in front of him has suddenly become more interesting than anything else in the room, focussing more on the worn out grain and the used fibres of the carpet beneath it. When he speaks again, his tone is still even, but it takes slightly longer to form the sentence.

“That’s… nice.”

Hannah slowly sits up a little straighter, her brows knitting together in mild confusion rather than concern.

“Am I crazy,” she mutters, “or does this feel weird?”

“You are always slightly crazy,” Tucker replies automatically but he shares the same, puzzled look.

“That is not helpful.”

Allie is also watching Logan, like she is trying to decide whether this is something she is allowed to comment on or whether it falls into the category of things that will resolve themselves without intervention.

Garrett still says nothing, opting to sit with his discovery in unparalleled superiority. 

The room continues as if it is trying to behave normally around something that it does not fully understand yet. Dean scrolls again, far too unaware of the pressure building in the man beside him.

“Oh,” he adds, like he has found another harmless detail. “She keeps fixing her hair when she laughs.”

Logan stills, properly this time. A eerie calm settles over his body, because he was internally cursing himself for being in this situation, damn his friends and their nosey tendencies and damn you for being the sister of his teammate.

He ruminates on the choices that brought him here today, coming to the conclusion, that he'd rather be trapped in an endless, no-whistle bag skate at five AM than endure these idle, cheerful updates. A bag skate ended eventually. This felt like it never would.

But Tucker leans slightly toward Hannah and whispers, “Is he doing okay?”

Hannah whispers back, “I think we are all missing something.”

Allie does not take her eyes off Logan, morbidly fascinated at the fact that the world’s most suave person, had his lips pressed against his hands and had managed to end up with a raincloud over his head in the middle of July. “Something is definitely happening.”

Garrett shifts against Hannah, still choosing to be an idle spectator in Logan’s ruin, but even he could muster up a sympathetic grimace when Dean chose to continue the narration. 

Logan finally cuts in.

“Can you stop reading that out loud.”

Dean looks up, “Why?”

A pause.

“Just tired. Honestly, I’d rather coach put us through a three-hour gauntlet drill right now than hear any more details about your sister’s love life. It’s weird, man.”

Dean’s eyes widened by a fraction, “Woah, is everything alright?” He looks genuinely concerned and that just makes Logan want to run into a wall at full speed. Because the whole room was staring at him, blinking like a flock of owls that were studying their latest choice of prey.

He scratches the back of his neck, hoping that nobody notices the nervous tick, “Sorry..” Logan grabs his hoodie as he takes his leave, “My coursework has been killer lately, must not be getting enough sleep. My bad man.” He pats Dean’s shoulder once and moves towards the staircase.

The entire house seemed to be suspended in awkward confusion- and Logan was prepared to add homicidal undertones as he reached the top step and Dean’s voice fluttered after him,

“Allie-cat what kind of girls have you been setting him up with? Maybe I should take over his matchmaking”

Logan groans and flops into his bed the minute the door creaks shut behind him, too dejected to glance up when his comforter vibrates beneath him.

The window is not the traditional avenue to enter a room, you realised that throughout the entirety of your senior year of highschool. It always requires a small negotiation with physics, a bit of careful balance, and the kind of confidence that suggests you have done this before and will probably do it again.

Which you admittedly have, given that you had memorised the best notches in the brick to wedge your foot into and where not to grab unless you wanted to end up face to face with a view directly into your brother's window.

When you finally reach your destination and fiddle with the window enough to coax it open, a soft creak permeates in the summer breeze- which you immediately curse because you had dedicated a solid 20 minutes to convince yourself that you were being quiet and the window very clearly disagrees.

You pause with your knee digging into the frame, listening as your heartbeat hammers in your ears. The night answered you, a dainty chirp of a cricket paired with the whirring of traffic further away in the city made you relax, continuing your journey into the room.

Inside, the lighting is low in a way that makes everything feel softer than it probably is in reality.

A desk lamp glows in the corner, throwing warm light across the room, and Logan is sitting on the edge of his bed like he has been doing exactly that for a while without moving very much at all.

Logan looks up when he hears your pants replace the faint buzz of the house, he doesn’t startle- just rushes over as silently as possible to grab your waist before you nosedive into his bedside table.

“Woah.” He steps back whilst keeping his hands firmly planted on your waist, watching you topple slightly on your heels, “What are you doing here?”

You look up at him, your lips downturning in a confused smile, “Hello to you too,” a peck to his lips interrupts your answer, “You said you missed me, so I'm here.”

The dress you had on stretches in tandem with your movements, stepping out of his loose hold to flop onto his bed- which protested slightly with a pained squeak, “You could say the feeling was mutual” You grinned up at him, leaning back onto your hands in the process.

He purses his lips, trying to hide a smile- which he does worryingly well. The neutrality in his eyes makes your spine rigid.

“You used the window,” he says, glancing at his curtains that now flitter along the wall.

You blink at him. “Yeah… Like I’ve done since we started hooking up”

Logan exhales through his nose, but it doesn’t fully commit to being a sigh.

“You could’ve used the door,” he clarifies.

“I didn’t want to wake anyone,” you reply, finally swinging your leg onto the duvet leaving your heel to topple uselessly to the floor with a dull thud. 

Logan stays where he is for a second longer, watching you like he is trying to decide whether to stay where he is or act like a normal person and come closer. You match his gaze cheekily, shrugging off your bag while taking the room in, “God I love your room baby, it's so you.”

He stands up from where he was leaning against his desk, and crosses over to you in that slightly controlled way he gets when he is pretending he is not emotional, while very obviously being emotional in a quiet, annoyed-at-himself kind of way.

“You were gone longer than you said,” he mutters.

You pause mid-unzip of your dress.

“I said I’d be out for a bit.”

“That is not a time.”

You finally look at him properly.

There it is, a signature Logan pout. You’d gotten used to every version of them, since he knew how to use his artillery- but this one wasn’t one that sat well with you, it buried its way into your chest and blossomed into a pang of anxiety.

“Oh my god,” you say mainly to yourself, pushing up so you could stand chest to chest with him, inspecting his face.

Logan barely tilts his head to meet your scrutiny, “What?” he asks, like he already knows he is about to lose this conversation.

You shake your head, “You’re pouting.”

“I’m not pouting.”

“You are absolutely pouting.”

“I’m not-”

He stops mid-sentence, watching your hands come up to his face and gently squish his cheeks just enough that his expression breaks in a way that is immediately unfair to him.

“There,” you say softly. “That one.”

His brows knit together.

“This is not-”

You lean in and press a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth.

He pauses.

You do it again, slightly higher this time, like you are correcting the unhappy crease of his lips. His hands hover for a second like he is deciding whether to be annoyed or affectionate and then, predictably, choose neither and both at the same time as they settle lightly at your waist.

“I don’t like it,” he says finally.

You hum.

“What part?”

His eyes flick to yours properly now.

“The part where you go out with someone else and come back smiling like it’s normal.”

You blink once, then your expression softens in a way that is very deliberately not taking him seriously, even though you absolutely are.

“Logan,” you say, gently.

He looks at you like he is bracing for impact, the undeniable pain of defeat, of losing you to the suave guy who apparently was very focussed on your dessert choice. You lean your forehead against his chin. 

“I was thinking of you the whole time,” you say simply, biting the inside of your cheek when you feel his shoulder drop just a fraction. 

His voice, when he speaks again, is quieter.

“That’s not fair.”

You smile.

“Why?”

“Because I had to be normal about it in front of everyone,” he mutters.

You laugh softly at that, genuinely amused now, and he immediately looks offended by your amusement, which only makes it worse.

“You were not normal about it,” you say.

“I was.”

“You were sitting here brooding like a Victorian man in a tragic novel.”

“I was not brooding.”

“You were brooding.”

He opens his mouth to argue again, but you cut him off by pulling him closer by the front of his hoodie. His protests die unspoken on his lips, as they always do whenever you pull that move.

“There,” you say, softer now, kissing his cheek, then his jaw, deliberately unhurried. “Better?”

Logan exhales, arms coming up to wrap around your shoulders, pressing you tightly against him.

“You’re distracting,” he murmurs into your hair.

You snort against his neck, “That’s kind of the point.”

A short pause takes over the conversation, a lull in his displeasure as you dig your fingers into the plush material that stretched over his back.

Then, Logan sighs and very quietly, in the dark of his room admits, “I didn’t like imagining you laughing at someone else’s jokes.”

You pull back slightly just to look at him, hes looking down at nothing in particular, half of his face glowing a soft amber in the pool of light spilling out from his lamp, the other half hides in the shadows- he turns his head fully into the darkness when you cup his cheek and rub placating lines with your thumb against his stubble. 

“Oh,” you whisper. “You were jealous, jealous.”

“I was not-”

He stops, because you kiss him again a quick, gentle press of your lips against his- barely anything but enough to make him smile slightly and shake his head.

“You’re annoying,” he says again, but there is no heat in it.

You hum, watching how his caramel curls wrap around your fingers as you brush your hand through them. 

“You likeeeee me.” You tease, your voice barely a hushed whisper, “Baby, I don’t even have a way to contact that guy- he could tell I wasn’t into the date.”

Logan blinks at you, “Wait, what?”

“I mean- I made him swear not to tell Dean, but I think it was somewhere between me replying to you every five minutes and the fact I flinched when he tried to hold my hand” You bite your lip sheepishly, “Great guy though! I might have a friend for him.”

He finally smiles properly, small and unwilling, like it slipped out by accident, “Yeah? He can date all your friends,” His hands press against your spine, curving you into him at last. 

Logan ghosts his lips over yours, turning his head out of the shadows and back into the light. Your fingers hover over his jaw, studying the new look in his eye- a twinkle of affection that makes you melt completely into him as he whispers into your mouth, “as long as he doesn’t dare to look at you.”

𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

You woke up to the morning light personally burning your eyelids open, which probably serves you right for not bothering to shut the curtains last night. But you were slightly pre-occupied, which was evident at the string of clothes that littered the floor, you blinked sleepily whilst tracing the journey the different articles went on, leading up to the bed. 

Your bra and his shirt were intertwined by his desk while your dress lay pooled at the foot of the bed along with his sweatpants and boxers, the only thing you couldn’t account for were your underwear. 

Strange.

The birds chirped in a messy orchestra by the window, the sharp sound made you groan and stretch lazily, wincing at the delicious ache that licked down from your thighs to your toes and up through your arms. The perpetrator of these pains was still sound asleep, tucked into your shoulder with an arm flung over your bare middle, fingers twitching slightly as you rubbed your eyes and intertwined your legs with his beneath the covers. 

Logan mumbled into the pillow, or your hair, perhaps both since he was face first into the area that had been taken over by the thick fan of wispy strands, “g’morning baby,” His hands tightened on your waist, holding you still as you looped your arms around his neck. He pecked your shoulder, then the curve of your neck and ended up stifling a deep laugh against your jaw when you smacked his arm.

“I will literally snap in half if you start something mister.” You scolded softly, your words not matching your actions entirely, since your fingers had began to scratch his neck softly, grinning when he all but purred at your touch. 

“I didn’t hear you complaining last night.” He mumbled, play-biting your dewy skin. You had wiped up the obvious mess in a sleepy haze, but the dampness of sex still clung to your pores like a condensation on a can. 

You gasped theatrically and flipped the pair of you over, so you were now resting your face on his sternum, “I don’t think you would've heard much since you had me pressed into the pillow.” Your fingers traced the splattering of hair that tickled your face,

Logan smirked down at you, stroking your hair, “Once again I fail to hear a complaint.”

“You-”

“YO LOGAN!” The both of you jumped at the interruption.

“Shitshitshitshitshit” you began whispering hurriedly, your gaze whipping around the room for possible escape plans that involved leaving the premises immediately. 

It was not looking good to say the least, since Logan would probably prefer to get caught than for you to consider sneaking out of his window sans clothes. 

Dean pounded on the door, “HAVE YOU SEEN MY SISTER AROUND? I WANTED TO ASK HER ABOUT THE DATE.”

Logan groaned and was close to petulantly kicking his legs like a toddler reminded about their bedtime, “Dean I think I have more knowledge about bird sphincters than I have about your sister or her sex life.”

You gape incredulously at him and mouth, “Bird sphincters?”

Logan silently stutters and shrugs his shoulders, his hands settling on your bare hips,

You heard Dean thump his head against the door, jiggling the handle but the lock held well against his attempts, “WELL ADAM HASN’T SAID ANYTHING HAPPENED AFTER THE DATE, SO IT MUST'VE GONE BADLY.”

A beat passed where you and Logan stared at each other, “His name was Adam?”

Chapter Four: Owen Henry

YOUR POV:

Owen Henry Abbot arrived without concern for anyone’s emotional stability. 

By the time the room went quiet, you were exhausted down to the center of yourself. Not tired. Tired was too small a word. You were wrung out. Hollowed and remade. Every part of you felt distant and heavy, like your body had become something vast and impossible and only just remembered how to belong to you.

And still, somehow, you had never been happier. Owen was warm against your chest. Tiny. Real. Yours.

His cheek rested against you, one little hand tucked near his face, his mouth making soft, sleepy movements like he was already dreaming about all the trouble he planned to cause. The blanket around him was white with pale blue and pink stripes. His hat was slightly too big. His nose was smaller than you had imagined and somehow exactly what you had expected. You could not stop looking at him. You were afraid that if you blinked too long, the whole thing might change shape.

Jack sat on the edge of the bed beside you, one hand braced near your hip, the other resting carefully over Owen’s back. Over your hands. Like he was holding both of you at once. His palm was broad and warm, steady through the blanket. His fingers barely moved, except for the occasional careful stroke of his thumb against the place where Owen’s tiny back rose and fell with each breath.

He had been quiet for several minutes. Not absent. Not distant. Just quiet in the way people got when words became too small to be useful. You looked up at him. Jack was looking at you. Not Owen.

You.

His expression made your throat ache. Wonderstruck. There was no other word for it. Jack Abbot, who could walk into a trauma bay and take command with one look, who could move through alarms and blood and fear like steadiness had been built into his bones, was sitting beside you like he had witnessed something so impossible he did not know where to put the feeling.

“Jack,” you whispered.

His eyes moved over your face. Slowly. Carefully. Like he was trying to memorize you, too.

“You did that,” he said.

Your mouth trembled. “I had help.”

His jaw shifted. “No,” he said quietly. “You did that.”

That was the first thing that almost made you cry. Not Owen’s tiny fingers. Not the little sounds he made against your skin. Not the impossible weight of him finally here.

Jack’s voice. The awe in it. The way he looked at you like you had rearranged the world and handed him the proof. 

You swallowed hard. “If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to cry.”

Jack’s thumb moved once over Owen’s back. “You can cry.”

You sighed, “I’ve lost enough fluids today.”

A laugh caught in his chest. Small. Rough. Wrecked.

You smiled at him, exhausted and radiant and barely holding yourself together.

Jack finally looked down at Owen again. His whole face changed. Owen made a tiny sound against your chest. Not a cry. Not even close. Just a small, sleepy noise that made his brow pull together and his mouth press into a thoughtful little line.

Jack went still beside you.

You watched his face change as he looked down at your son. Your son. His son. Tiny nose. Thoughtful mouth. That serious little brow. The faintest curl at the corner of his mouth, barely there and already devastating.

Jack swallowed. “He has my face,” Jack said.

Your own face crumpled immediately. “Oh, no,” you whispered.

Jack’s eyes snapped to yours. “What?”

You tried to answer. You really did. But Owen made another tiny expression, one that looked so much like Jack considering a chart that a sob-laugh broke out of you before you could stop it.

Jack’s hand tightened gently over yours on Owen’s back. “Hey,” Jack said, already soft. “What is it?”

You looked up at him through tears. “Damn it, Jack,” you said, crying harder. “I grew him.”

Jack blinked. You looked down at Owen again, completely wrecked. “I grew him,” you repeated, voice wobbling, “and he looks like I had almost nothing to do with the process of making him.”

Jack stared at you for one beat. Then his mouth twitched. “That is not true.”

You pointed weakly at Owen. “He has your whole face.”

Jack looked down at your son. Owen’s mouth curled faintly at one corner. Jack went quiet. 

You sobbed. “The Abbot genes are too strong.”

Jack huffed a soft, broken laugh and leaned closer, his hand still warm over yours on Owen’s back. “I’m sorry,” Jack said.

You sniffed hard. “You are not.”

“No,” he admitted, his voice warm and wrecked. “I’m really not.”

You cried harder. 

Jack’s expression softened into something too tender to survive. “He has you,” Jack said.

You made a watery, disbelieving sound. “Where?”

Jack looked down at Owen, then back at you. “You’ll see,” he said.

Your throat tightened. “You keep saying dangerous things.”

His thumb moved carefully over Owen’s back. “You keep crying.”

“I had a baby,” you replied weakly.

Jack looked down at Owen. “That’s true.”

“I’m allowed to be unstable,” you added.

Jack’s mouth softened. “You’re not unstable.”

You looked down at Owen, then back at him. “I just sobbed over genetic betrayal.”

Jack nodded once. “Reasonable response.”

You huffed a wet laugh. Jack leaned closer and kissed your forehead. The kiss was warm and lingering, his mouth staying there for one extra second like he needed to feel you beneath it.

When he pulled back, his eyes moved over your face again. “You’re incredible,” Jack said.

Your eyes filled immediately. “See?” you whispered. “Dangerous.”

He did not smile this time. Not fully. His gaze dropped to Owen, then came back to you. “I mean it.”

You knew he did. That was the problem. Jack could tease. Jack could argue. Jack could look at your newborn son and pretend, for half a second, that he was not immensely pleased Owen had inherited his whole face. But he could not fake this. Not the awe. Not the gratitude. Not the quiet, careful way he kept looking at you like your body had done something sacred, and he did not know how to thank you without making the whole room too small for the feeling.

You shifted one hand beneath his, fingers brushing his palm. Jack turned his hand just enough to lace his fingers loosely with yours over Owen’s back. The three of you sat that way for a while. Owen slept between you, warm and impossibly real.

Jack’s hand stayed over yours.

Your body ached.

Your heart felt too big.

The hospital room was dim and quiet around you, the hallway moving softly beyond the door. Somewhere outside, PTMC was still PTMC. Monitors were still beeping. Phones were still ringing. Someone was probably arguing over coffee, charts, or whether Dr. Pickles had union representation. But in here, the world had narrowed to Owen’s breathing, Jack’s hand over yours, and the little face you had apparently had very little genetic influence over.

You sniffed again.

Jack looked down at you. “Again?”

You frowned. “I looked at his face.”

Jack’s mouth curved. “That was your mistake.”

“He’s so beautiful,” you replied.

Jack inhaled. “He is.”

“He looks just like you,” you added. 

Jack’s expression softened again. “Yeah.”

You closed your eyes. “I’m never going to survive that.”

Jack’s thumb brushed your knuckles. “You will.”

Your brow furrowed, “How do you know?”

His voice went quiet. “Because you survived me.”

You opened your eyes. Jack was already looking at you. Soft. Certain. Yours.

You gave him a watery smile. “Barely.”

His mouth curved at one corner. “There she is,” he said.

Owen shifted against your chest, one tiny hand flexing near his cheek. Both of you looked down. Instantly. Completely. Like the smallest movement from him had become the center of gravity in the room. Jack’s fingers tightened around yours. 

“He’s here,” you whispered.

Jack swallowed. “Yeah,” he said.

His voice broke just enough to make your chest ache. “He is.”

You looked at Jack. His eyes were wet again. Not falling. Not yet. Just there, bright around the edges, full of too much good.

Jack looked at Owen. Then at you. You shifted your fingers beneath his. Owen Henry Abbot slept between you, wearing Jack’s face and, somehow, the beginning of your whole heart. And the room stayed quiet around the three of you, like the world had finally learned how to be gentle.

The first visitors were Robby and Dana. Robby had been threatening to become a hospital hallway liability since the first text Jack sent after Owen was born, and Dana had the kind of quiet authority that could make even a freshly emotional Robby remember how doors worked.

Still, when the soft knock came, your chest tightened. Jack looked up from the chair beside your bed. Owen was in his arms. Finally. You had handed him over a few minutes earlier with strict instructions that Jack was not allowed to look smug about it, and Jack had ignored you by looking more devastated than smug, which somehow felt worse. Now he sat with Owen tucked carefully against his chest, one large hand spread across the baby’s blanket, his thumb moving in slow, careful passes along Owen’s back.

Your son slept through it. Tiny. Warm. Utterly unimpressed by the fact that Jack Abbot looked like someone had placed the entire world in his arms and trusted him not to drop it. You were sitting up against the pillows, trying to eat a cracker without crying about it. A cup of ice water rested in your hand, the straw bent toward you because Jack had adjusted it before you could ask. He had also opened the crackers. And moved the tray closer. And reminded you, quietly, that you had to drink. Twice. You had called him bossy. Jack had kissed Owen’s hat and said nothing, which was not a denial.

The knock came again. Softer this time. You glanced at Jack.

His eyes came to yours immediately. “Ready?” Jack asked.

You looked at Owen, then at the door, then at the half-eaten cracker in your hand. “No,” you said.

Jack’s mouth softened.

 You took a careful sip of water. “But yes.”

Jack looked toward the door. “Come in.”

The door opened a few inches first. Dana appeared in the gap, one hand on the handle, her eyes moving over the room in a single, efficient sweep. You. Jack. Owen sleeping in Jack’s arms. The dim lights. The mostly untouched tray. The water cup in your hand. The tissue that was balled near your pillow. 

Then Dana looked back at you. Not the baby. Not Jack. You.

Her expression shifted. It was small. It was Dana. It still hit you directly in the heart.

“Hi,” Dana said.

Your throat tightened immediately. “Hi.”

Dana stepped into the room with a quietness that felt intentional. Robby followed behind her. He stood just inside the doorway, one hand still near the frame, his eyes already fixed on the bundle in Jack’s arms. Dana came to the side of your bed first. She leaned down slowly, giving you time to shift if you needed to, then wrapped one careful arm around your shoulders. The hug was gentle. So gentle. Not too much pressure. Not too long. Just enough to hold you without asking your exhausted body for anything it could not give. Your face crumpled immediately.

Dana’s hand moved once against your upper back. “Hi,” Dana said again, softer this time.

You laughed into her shoulder, already crying. “That was rude.”

Dana pulled back enough to look at you. “What was?”

You frowned. “You hugged me first.”

Dana’s eyes softened. “Of course I did.”

That almost made it worse. You pressed the heel of your hand carefully beneath one eye. Dana’s gaze moved over your face, then to the water in your hand, then back to you.

“How are you?” Dana asked.

The question was gentle. Direct. Not casual. You blinked hard. 

Dana held your gaze. “Really,” she added.

Something in your chest pulled tight. Everyone had asked about the baby. Everyone should have asked about the baby. You wanted them to. You wanted the whole world to stop and look at him, because Owen was here, and real, and beautiful, and wearing Jack’s face like proof. But Dana looking at you first did something to you. It made you feel seen in the middle of all that wonder. Not as the place the baby had come from. Not as the person who had produced the miracle.

You. Exhausted. Sore. Happy. A little shaky. Still there.

You breathed out carefully. “I’m okay,” you said.

Dana’s eyebrows lifted.

You huffed a wet laugh. “I’m exhausted.”

Dana nodded once.

“And everything hurts,” you added.

Dana’s face stayed calm.

“And I’m so happy I feel insane,” you said.

Dana’s mouth softened. “That tracks.”

You laughed again. Jack’s expression softened from the chair. 

Dana reached for the water pitcher without asking and topped off your cup. “You eating?” Dana asked.

You lifted the cracker weakly. “Technically.”

Dana looked at the tray. “That is not a meal.”

Jack’s voice was quiet from the chair. “I told her.”

You looked at him. “Do not ally with Dana against me while holding my baby.”

“Our baby,” Jack said.

You pointed the cracker at him. “Your face. My baby.”

Jack glanced down at Owen. His mouth curved despite himself. Dana looked at the baby then. Fully. For the first time since she walked in. 

Her expression softened again. “There he is,” Dana said.

Two words. Somehow they made your eyes sting all over again.

Jack looked down at Owen. “Yeah,” Jack said softly. “There he is.”

Robby had not moved. You looked toward the doorway. He was staring at Owen like his body had forgotten every instruction except stay upright. His eyes were shiny already. His face had gone open in a way you had only seen a handful of times. At your wedding. At the dinner, when Jack slid the first ultrasound photo across the table. In the ED, when he said hi to Tiny Abbot and Jack did not tell him no.

Now.

“Robby,” you said softly.

Robby blinked. His eyes lifted to yours for half a second, then dropped back to Owen. 

“Yeah,” Robby said. His voice was rough.

You smiled. “You can come closer.”

Robby nodded. He still took a second to move. When he did, he moved carefully. Slowly. Almost reverently. He came to stand beside Dana, close enough to see Owen’s face where he slept against Jack’s chest. Jack did not speak. He only shifted the blanket a fraction, opening the view of Owen’s tiny face. Robby looked down. For several seconds, he said nothing. No joke. No deflection. No little performance to make the room easier. Just Robby, quiet and wrecked, staring at the baby who had once been a grainy little shape on a piece of paper at your kitchen table.

“Oh,” Robby whispered.

Your throat tightened. Jack looked up at him. Robby did not look away from Owen.

“Oh, kid,” Robby said. His voice cracked on the word.

You pressed one hand over your mouth. Dana’s gaze moved briefly to Robby, then back to Owen. Jack swallowed. Robby leaned a fraction closer. Not too much. Not crowding. Just enough to see.

“He’s so small,” Robby said.

Jack looked down at Owen. “Yeah.”

Robby’s jaw worked once. “He’s really here.”

Jack’s thumb moved over Owen’s blanket. “Yeah.”

Robby looked at Jack then. For a second, the two men just looked at each other. You knew they were seeing it too. The kitchen table. The old dinner plates. The ultrasound photo under Jack’s hand.

Jack’s voice saying, “Our first ultrasound.”

Robby went silent over a tiny bright shape that had not looked like a baby to anyone except the people already in love with him.

Robby looked back down at Owen. “I remember the first picture,” Robby said.

Jack went still. You set your water cup down slowly. “He looked like static,” you said.

Robby huffed a small laugh. Wet. Barely there. “He looked like a weather pattern.”

Jack’s mouth moved faintly. “You said that.”

Robby nodded. “I was scared.”

The honesty made the room go quiet. Jack looked at him.

Robby’s eyes stayed on Owen. “I mean,” Robby said, voice still rough, “happy. Really happy. But scared too.”

You looked at Jack. Jack’s face had softened. “Yeah,” Jack said quietly.

Robby swallowed. “I still have it,” he said.

You blinked. “The picture?”

Robby nodded. Jack stared at him. “You kept it?” Jack asked.

Robby looked up at him, eyes bright. “Of course I kept it.”

Jack did not answer. He looked down at Owen instead. His hand covered more of the blanket, careful and protective. You watched gratitude move across Jack’s face before he could hide it. Dana saw it too. She said nothing. That was the mercy of Dana. 

Owen shifted in Jack’s arms. Every adult in the room froze. Immediately. Robby stopped breathing. Dana tilted her head down. Jack’s attention snapped fully to Owen, his hand steadying the blanket as your son made a small, offended sound.

Owen’s brow pinched. His mouth moved. Then, slowly, his eyes opened.

The room went silent. You forgot the cracker. Jack forgot to breathe. Robby looked like the entire floor had dropped out from under him. 

Owen blinked once. Then again. His eyes moved slowly, unfocused but searching, taking in light and shadow and the blurred shapes of the people gathered around him. He did not cry. He only looked. Quiet. Watchful.

New.

Robby’s face changed. Not in the funny way. Not in the dramatic way. In the way something gentle finds a bruise and presses carefully.

“Oh,” Robby said again.

You looked from Owen to Robby. Robby’s eyes were wet now. Fully. 

He did not wipe them. “He has you,” Robby said.

Your chest stopped. Jack lifted his eyes. Dana looked at you. You stared at Robby. “What?”

Robby looked at Owen, then at you. “His eyes,” Robby said.

You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. 

Robby shook his head once, like he knew what you were about to say. “Not the color,” Robby said.

Your throat tightened.

 Robby nodded toward Owen. “The warmth,” he said. “The way he looks at everything.”

Jack’s eyes moved from Robby to you. Robby’s voice stayed soft. “Like he sees everything,” Robby paused, then said, “Like he’s taking the whole room in.”

You made a tiny sound. Robby finally looked at you. “That’s you,” Robby said.

Your face crumpled. Not a small cry. Not a pretty one. A full, exhausted, grateful break. “Oh, Robby,” you whispered.

Jack’s hand moved over Owen’s back. His eyes stayed on you. He knew what Robby had just given you. He knew exactly how badly you had needed someone else to see it. 

Jack looked at Robby. “Thank you,” Jack said.

Robby’s face tightened. He nodded once. He could not answer. Dana stepped closer to your bed and handed you a tissue without making a production of it.

You took it and laughed through the tears. “I’m sorry,” you said.

Dana looked at you. “For what?”

“I don’t know,” you admitted. “Existing like this.”

Dana’s mouth softened. “Reasonable, given the circumstances.”

You laughed harder. Owen blinked again in Jack’s arms. His tiny hand flexed against the blanket. Robby looked back down at him like he might never recover. “He’s perfect,” Robby said.

Jack looked at Owen. “He is.”

Robby swallowed. “Can I touch him?”

The question was so quiet it nearly undid you again. Jack looked at you first. Your call. 

You nodded. “Yeah,” you said softly.

Jack angled Owen slightly, careful and controlled, keeping him secure against his chest.

Robby reached out with one finger. He touched the edge of Owen’s blanket first. Just the blanket. Like even that was almost too much. Owen’s hand shifted, barely brushing Robby’s knuckle through the fabric. Robby inhaled sharply. Dana’s eyes softened. Jack watched him, quiet and still. Robby closed his eyes for half a second. Then he opened them and looked at Owen again.

“Hi, Owen,” Robby said.

Owen stared in the general direction of Robby’s voice.

Robby’s smile trembled. “Hi, kid.”

You pressed the tissue beneath your eye. Jack looked down at Owen, then at Robby. You saw the moment settle over him. The question had been there before Owen was born. Before the hospital room. Before the tiny eyes blinked open beneath the dim lights.

But now Owen was here. Robby was here. And Jack was looking at both of them like the answer had become obvious.

“Robby,” Jack said.

Robby looked up immediately. There was something about Jack using his name in that tone that changed the air.

Robby’s expression shifted. “What?” Robby asked.

Jack looked down at Owen. Then he looked back at Robby. “We want you to be his godfather,” Jack said.

The room went impossibly quiet. Robby did not move. Dana’s eyes went shiny. You looked at Robby and watched the words land. No joke. No deflection. No performance. Only Robby, standing beside Dana in the dim hospital room, looking like love had finally knocked him flat and decided to stay there.

Jack’s voice stayed low. “You were the first person we told.”

Robby’s eyes lifted to Jack’s.

“You were in from the beginning,” Jack said.

Your throat tightened. You looked at Robby. “We want you in the rest of it too,” you said.

Robby stared at you. Then at Jack. Then down at Owen. His mouth opened once. Nothing came out. Then, “Yeah,” Robby said. His voice broke on it.

You smiled through your tears. “Yeah?”

Robby nodded quickly. Then slower. Like he needed you to know he meant it.

“Yeah,” Robby said again. “Of course.”

Jack’s jaw shifted. Robby looked down at Owen. His face crumpled all over again. “I’ve got him,” Robby said.

The promise settled over the room. Quiet. Simple. Everything. Jack looked at Robby for one long second.

Then he nodded. “I know.”

That finished Robby. He lowered his head. Dana put one hand on his shoulder. Not a hug. Not quite. Just steady pressure. Robby covered her hand with his for one second. You leaned back against the pillows, exhausted and crying and smiling so hard your face hurt.

Owen blinked slowly in Jack’s arms. Jack’s thumb moved along his back. Dana stood beside Robby, quiet and supportive. Robby looked at his godson like he had been given something he would spend the rest of his life trying to deserve. And you realized, with your water cup sweating on the tray and crumbs on your blanket and your whole body aching beneath the weight of the happiest day of your life, that Owen Henry Abbot had not entered the world alone.

He had arrived into hands. Into promises. Into people who had loved him as a secret, as a scan, as a nickname, as a hope. 

Now as a son. Your son. Jack’s son. Robby’s godson. 

Dana’s eyes moved to you again. “You should eat,” Dana said.

You laughed through the tears.

Jack looked at the tray. “She should.”

Robby sniffed and lifted his head. “I’m his godfather now. I also vote food.”

You pointed weakly at all three of them. “This is already a hostile family structure.”

Dana handed you the cracker. “No,” Dana said. “It’s support.”

Jack’s mouth curved. Robby looked down at Owen. His voice went soft again. “Yeah,” Robby said. “It is.”

The first time you brought Owen Henry Abbot to PTMC, you almost turned around in the parking garage. Not because you did not want everyone to meet him. You did. You wanted it so badly that you changed his outfit three times that morning, which was ridiculous because he was a newborn and cared about exactly three things: milk, warmth, and being offended by air.

Still. This was PTMC. This was the place where everyone had found out about your marriage. Then about Owen. This was the place where your son had kicked hard enough beneath Jack’s hand to announce himself before you had a plan. The place where Santos had whispered Tiny Abbot like a prophecy, and Robby had said hello to your stomach with more sincerity than anyone had been prepared to survive.

You had walked through these doors for years with a badge clipped to your shirt, a bag full of bubbles, and a plan. Today, you walked in with your son tucked against your chest. That felt different. Owen slept in the carrier, warm and heavy against you, his little hat brushing beneath your chin with every careful step. One of his hands had escaped near your collarbone, fingers curled into a loose fist like he had arrived at the hospital prepared to make several quiet points.

You stopped near the elevator and looked down at him. “We can still leave,” you whispered.

Owen slept. Unhelpfully.

You sighed. “You are not contributing to this decision.”

Owen made one tiny sound. His hand shifted against your shirt.

You looked down at him. “That was not an argument.”

Owen made another small noise, softer this time, and his fingers opened once near your collarbone.

Your face softened before you could stop it. “Oh,” you whispered. “You’re talking back already.”

He settled at the sound of your voice. Not fully. Not dramatically. Just a tiny loosening of his body against yours, his cheek pressing closer like he knew exactly where he was.

Your throat tightened. You touched two fingers gently to his back.

“Fine,” you whispered. “We’ll be brave.”

The elevator doors opened. By the time you reached the Child Life office, your nerves had settled into something softer. Not gone. Just less sharp. 

This was the easy place. Your place.

The door was half-open, and you could hear Brie laughing before you stepped inside.

“I swear,” Sarah was saying, “if the bubble wand leaked in the supply closet again—”

Abby looked up first. Her sentence stopped before it started. Then her whole face changed.

“Oh my God,” Abby whispered.

Brie turned immediately. Sarah pushed back from the computer so fast her chair bumped the cabinet behind her. You stepped into the office with one hand on Owen’s back.

“Hi,” you said softly.

For one second, all three of them simply stared. Not at you, exactly. At the small, sleeping weight against your chest.

Then Brie’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh, look at him,” Brie whispered.

Sarah’s eyes went shiny almost instantly. “He’s here.”

Abby took one step closer, then stopped herself. “Can I?”

You nodded toward the sink before she finished the question. Abby smiled, already moving. “Hands. I know.”

Brie followed her immediately. “We are professionals.”

Sarah was already pumping soap into her palm. “Highly trained baby admirers.”

You laughed, and the sound came out looser than you expected. Owen shifted against your chest. All three of them froze. You looked down at him. “He does that.”

Brie dried her hands carefully. “Exist?”

You smiled. “Ruins people.”

Sarah came closer first, hands clean and held loosely at her sides like she was trying very hard to be normal about it. She was not succeeding. “Owen,” Sarah said softly. “Hi, sweetheart.”

Owen did not open his eyes. He did, however, make a tiny grunting sound that made his brow pull together. Abby’s face crumpled. “Oh, no.”

You looked at her. “What?”

Abby pointed helplessly. “That is Jack’s expression.”

You closed your eyes. “Please don’t start.”

Brie leaned closer, her smile soft and delighted. “He really does have his face.”

“I know,” you said, opening your eyes again. “I’m still processing it.”

Sarah tilted her head, studying Owen with the careful attention of someone who spent her whole career reading children before they had the words to explain themselves.

“He has your hands, though,” Sarah said.

Your breath caught. “He does?”

Sarah nodded toward Owen. “He moved them when he made that little sound.”

You looked down just as Owen’s fingers stretched once against your shirt, then curled back into a fist. Abby’s mouth softened. “Oh, that is very you.”

Brie nodded immediately. “Tiny commentary hands.”

Your throat tightened. “I’m going to be normal about that,” you said.

Sarah’s eyes softened. “No, you’re not.”

“No,” you admitted. “I’m really not.”

You touched Owen’s back through the carrier. He settled immediately beneath your hand. Sarah saw it. Her expression softened into something almost too much to survive. “He knows you,” Sarah said.

You swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

Abby smiled gently. “Of course he does.”

You looked down at Owen. He was still sleeping, but his face had eased, his little body warm and heavy against yours. “He knows my voice,” you said quietly.

Brie’s eyes softened. “And your touch.”

You nodded, but you did not speak. You did not trust yourself to.

Brie came closer, careful and quiet. “Can I hold him?”

You looked down at Owen. He was still sleeping against you, cheek tucked close, one tiny fist curled near your collarbone. You thought it might feel harder to hand him over. It did, a little.

But this was Brie. This was Child Life. This was the office that had held you through nausea and appointments and banana-marker breakdowns. The women who had covered your patients, stocked ginger chews, watched your cardigan strategy become less strategy and more wishful thinking, and loved your son when he was still just a secret beneath your ribs.

You smiled. “Yeah,” you said softly. “You can hold him.”

Brie’s face changed immediately. “Oh,” Brie whispered.

Sarah pressed a hand to her chest. “He’s so perfect.”

Abby blinked quickly. “I’m already crying.”

You laughed under your breath. “You’re all going to make me regret this.”

Brie stepped closer, careful and slow. “I washed.”

“I know,” you said.

Brie held up her hands. “And sanitized.”

“I know,” you said again.

Brie nodded once. “And I am emotionally stable.”

Sarah looked at her. “That feels generous.”

Brie ignored her. You loosened the carrier slowly, one hand supporting Owen’s head as you brought him out against your chest. The second his cheek left you, Owen stirred. His face pinched. A tiny, unhappy sound escaped him. You froze. Brie froze too. Sarah’s hand came to her mouth.

Abby whispered, “Oh.”

You brought Owen closer to your face. “Hey, bud,” you murmured. “I’m right here.”

Owen’s fingers opened once against the air. You kissed the top of his hat. “I know,” you whispered. “Very rude of me.”

At your voice, he quieted. Not instantly. Not perfectly. But enough. His little body loosened again. 

Brie looked at you like she might start crying harder. “He really knows you,” Brie said.

Your eyes filled. “Yeah,” you whispered.

You placed Owen into Brie’s arms. The office went quiet. Brie held him like something sacred. Her whole expression softened as she looked down at his sleeping face. “Hi, Owen,” Brie whispered.

Owen made one soft noise. Brie’s eyes filled immediately. “Oh, I’m done,” Brie said.

You laughed softly. “Already?”

“Immediately,” Brie said.

Sarah came closer, smiling through her own tears. “He’s perfect.”

Abby looked down at Owen. “He looks like Jack.”

You sighed. “I know.”

Brie smiled down at him. “Tiny Abbot.”

You looked at her. “Not you too.”

Brie’s eyes sparkled. “Especially me.”

Sarah leaned closer. “It’s kind of undeniable.”

“It is completely undeniable,” Abby said.

You closed your eyes. “I’m surrounded.”

Brie’s smile softened as Owen shifted faintly in her arms. “He’s beautiful,” Brie said.

Your throat tightened again. “Thank you.”

After a minute, Brie handed him to Sarah, who took him with the same careful reverence. Sarah rocked once on her heels, eyes fixed on Owen’s face. “Hi, baby,” Sarah whispered. “Your mom is one of our favorite people.”

Your face crumpled. “Sarah.”

Sarah looked up, eyes bright. “What? He should know.”

Abby wiped under one eye. “He should definitely know.”

When Sarah passed Owen to Abby, Abby held him against her chest and let out a tiny laugh that broke in the middle. “He’s so warm,” Abby said.

You wiped beneath your eye. “I know.”

Abby looked down at him. “Hi, little love.”

Owen shifted, mouth pressing into a thoughtful line. Abby froze. “Oh my God,” Abby said.

You looked at her. “What?”

Abby looked at you. “He just made Jack’s face.”

You groaned softly. “I know.”

Sarah touched your shoulder. “But he has your everything else.”

You looked at her. Sarah smiled. “You’ll see.” 

That almost took you out completely. By the time Abby handed him back, you were teary and smiling, and Owen was still sleepy, as if he had not just emotionally destroyed an entire office.

You tucked him back into the carrier and kissed the top of his hat. Owen shifted closer at your voice when you murmured to him. You felt it. The way he knew the sound of you. The way his tiny body settled when he was back against your chest. The way one little hand rested near your collarbone like he had every right to be there.

You smiled down at him. “Okay, bud,” you whispered. “Now we go downstairs and ruin your father.”

Brie laughed softly.

Sarah opened the office door for you. “Tell him we washed our hands.”

You looked back at her. “He will be relieved.”

Abby lifted both hands. “And sanitized.”

You smiled. “He’ll be thrilled.”

By the time you got downstairs, the ED was already moving through the strange overlap of shift change. Not chaos, exactly. Never just chaos. More like a hundred different rhythms trying to share the same hallway. Day shift finishing notes. Night shift getting reports. Monitors beeping. Phones ringing. Someone laughing near the medication room. Someone asking for discharge papers. You stood just outside the main nurses’ station and let yourself take one breath before stepping fully into view.

Owen slept through it. Of course he did. Tiny menace. You saw Jack before anyone saw you. He stood near the board in dark scrubs, one hand braced against the counter, listening to Crus give some update while Shen stood beside him with a chart in hand. Ellis was near the workstation. Cassie was handing something to Mel. Javadi was mid-conversation with Santos. Dana was at the desk, and Robby was leaning against the counter like he had been pretending not to watch the entrance for the last five minutes. Then Robby saw you. His whole face changed. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just enough. Jack noticed Robby notice.

 Then Jack turned. His eyes found you. Found Owen. Everything else left his face. For one second, he was not night shift. Not an attending. Not the steady center of the department. He was just Jack. Your husband. Owen’s father. A man looking at the two people he had spent most of his shift trying not to miss too visibly.

You smiled. “Hi,” you said.

Jack crossed the space toward you before anyone else moved. He stopped close enough to touch, but he did not reach for Owen first. He looked at you.

“How are you?” Jack asked quietly.

You smiled wider. “Hi to you too.”

His mouth moved faintly. “Hi.”

“I’m good,” you said.

Jack’s eyes searched yours. You softened your voice. “Really.”

Only then did his gaze drop to Owen. His expression changed again. Softer. Deeper. Like some part of him had been holding its breath since he left the house.

“Hey, bud,” Jack said.

Owen shifted at the sound of his voice. Not much. Just a small turn of his face against your chest.

Your throat tightened. “He still does that,” you whispered.

Jack looked at you. You smiled. “A mother knows.”

His mouth softened. Jack lifted one hand and touched his fingers lightly to Owen’s back through the carrier. Owen made a tiny sound. Then he settled. Jack’s eyes dropped to him. You watched the moment land. Owen knew him, too. 

Not the way he knew you. Not the constant warmth of your body or the rhythm of your heartbeat or the touch that had held him through every hour since he arrived.

But he knew Jack’s voice. Jack’s hand. The low, steady sound of him. The home in it.

Jack swallowed. You reached for his wrist. “He knows his dad,” you said softly.

Jack looked at you. His eyes were bright around the edges. “Yeah?” Jack asked.

You smiled. “Yeah,” you said. “He does.”

Before Jack could answer, Santos made a sound behind him. Not a word. A sound. The entire nurses’ station turned. 

Santos stared at the bundle against your chest. “Oh my God,” Santos whispered.

Jack did not look away from Owen. “Wash your hands.”

Santos blinked. “I was not even moving.”

Jack finally looked at her. Santos lifted both hands and backed toward the sanitizer dispenser. “Okay. Valid.”

Javadi stepped beside her, eyes wide and bright. “He’s so tiny.”

Jack’s gaze moved to Javadi’s hands. Javadi immediately reached for the sanitizer, too. “Already doing it.”

Cassie appeared beside Mel with one hand pressed to her chest. “Oh, sweetheart.”

Mel smiled softly. “Hi, Owen.”

Dana came around the desk, her eyes moving over you first. That did something to you.

Again.

“I’m okay,” you said softly.

Dana looked at Owen, then back at you. “You look happy.”

You nodded. “I am.”

Dana’s mouth softened. “Good.”

Jack’s hand settled lightly on your lower back. The touch was brief. Grounding. Then his attention moved back to the growing circle. He did not hover loudly. He did not bark orders. He only stood close, eyes tracking hands, coffee cups, badge reels, sleeves, the distance between Owen’s hat and the nearest person who looked tempted to lean too far in.

You watched him try to be subtle about it. He was not subtle. But he was gentle. That was the thing. He was protective, yes. Careful. A little tense around the edges. But beneath all of that, there was something else. Something softer every time someone whispered Owen’s name. Jack loved this. You could see that too. He loved that they wanted to meet him. Loved that Cassie looked like she might cry. Loved that Javadi had gone completely still with wonder. Loved that Santos was standing two careful steps back, hands freshly sanitized, and face wide open. Loved that Mel smiled at Owen like he had already made the department better just by existing. Loved that Dana checked on you first. Loved that Robby was quiet. Waiting. Hands at his sides. Eyes wet.

Jack was trying to hold two truths at once. No one gets too close. And look how loved he is. You leaned into his side. Jack looked down at you. 

“You want him?” you asked.

His face changed like you had offered him something essential. “Yeah,” Jack said.

You smiled. “Sanitize.”

Jack stared at you. You lifted your eyebrows. Jack looked at Owen, then back at you. “I held him this morning.”

“Hospital hands,” you said.

Dana nodded once. “She’s right.”

Jack looked toward Dana. Dana’s face did not change. Jack exhaled through his nose and reached for the sanitizer. Santos’s mouth opened. Jack looked at her. Santos closed it.

You smiled down at Owen. “Your father loves being medically correct until it is inconvenient for him,” you said.

Jack rubbed the sanitizer into his hands until they were dry. Then he stepped in close.

You loosened the carrier enough to transfer Owen, and the whole station seemed to quiet as Jack gathered him. One hand behind his head. One beneath his body. Careful. Certain. Practiced now, but still reverent.

The second Owen left your chest, he stirred again. His mouth opened. 

You murmured softly, “You’re okay, bud.”

Jack brought him against his chest. “Hey,” Jack said quietly. “I’ve got you.”

Owen made one more tiny noise. Then he settled. Almost immediately. Against Jack. Against his voice. Against the steady hand covering his back. Jack’s eyes closed for half a second. Just half.

But you saw it. So did Robby.

 Jack opened his eyes and looked down at his son. “There he is,” Jack said quietly.

The room softened around the words.

Santos pressed both hands to her chest. “I am handling this extremely well.”

Javadi looked at her. “Are you?”

Santos shook her head. “No, but I am remaining upright.”

Cassie laughed through tears. Mel stepped closer, careful with her freshly cleaned hands visible at her sides. “He’s beautiful,” she said.

You nodded, immediately emotional. “Thank you.”

Javadi leaned in just enough to see his face. Then she looked at Jack. “Oh,” Javadi said.

Jack narrowed his eyes. “No.”

Javadi smiled. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

Javadi softened. “He does look like you.”

Jack sighed. You pointed at her. “Thank you.”

Santos leaned closer by exactly one inch. Owen made a tiny face in his sleep. His brow furrowed. His mouth pressed into that thoughtful little line. Then one corner curled faintly.

Santos inhaled. “That baby is assessing us,” Santos said.

Robby’s voice was quiet. “He has concerns.”

Jack looked at him. “His name is Owen.”

Robby’s eyes stayed on the baby. “Tiny Abbot has concerns.”

Jack sighed, but his mouth softened. You looked up at him. “That one was your fault.”

Jack looked at you. “My fault?”

“You gave him the face.”

Santos nodded solemnly. “The face is strong.”

Jack glanced at Santos. “You’re standing very close for someone with opinions.”

Santos took one step back. “Respectfully admiring Tiny Abbot from a safe distance.”

Jack looked back down at Owen. He did not correct her. You noticed. So did Robby. Shen had been watching from beside the board, quiet and observant. Ellis stood beside him, smiling openly. Crus came closer last, hands already clean, expression softer than you had ever seen it at work. 

Ellis looked at Owen in Jack’s arms. “Oh, Abbot,” Ellis said quietly.

Jack glanced at her. “Don’t.”

Ellis shook her head, still smiling. “I’m not.”

Crus looked down at Owen. “He’s gotten bigger.”

You blinked. “You saw him as an ultrasound.”

Crus’s mouth curved. “Exactly.”

Shen stepped closer, gaze moving from Owen to Jack. “He looks well,” Shen said.

Jack nodded once. “He is.”

Shen’s eyes softened by a fraction. “Good.”

It was not dramatic. It did not need to be. Jack understood it anyway. You could see that he did. For a few minutes, Owen made his way around the circle without actually leaving Jack’s arms. Everyone admired him. No one crowded him. Cassie cried quietly. Javadi whispered his name. Mel asked how you were sleeping, then immediately apologized for asking a ridiculous question. Santos asked if Tiny Abbot had official department privileges yet. Dana told her no. Santos asked if she could file a petition. Dana told her also no. Robby remained quiet. That was how you knew he was feeling it the most. He stood beside the counter, hands at his sides, watching Jack hold Owen like he had been asked to witness something sacred and was trying not to get in the way of it.

Eventually, Jack turned toward him. Robby straightened. Before Jack could say anything, Robby lifted both hands. “Sanitized,” Robby said quietly.

Jack looked at him. Robby held his gaze. “Twice.”

For a second, Jack did not move. Then his expression softened. Not because it was funny. Because Robby had understood. Because Robby knew Owen was tiny and precious and worth being careful for. Because Robby loved him enough to be careful without being asked. Jack looked down at Owen. Then he looked back at Robby. 

“You want him?” Jack asked.

Robby’s face changed. You felt your throat tighten. Robby swallowed once. 

“Yeah,” Robby said. “I do.”

Jack stepped closer. The department went quiet again. Not because anyone told them to. Because everyone understood this was different. Robby was not just meeting Owen. Robby was Owen’s godfather. Jack transferred him carefully, guiding Robby’s hands without making a lesson of it. Robby took Owen as if he had been entrusted with something holy. One arm beneath him. One hand supporting his tiny back. His eyes never left Owen’s face.

“Hi, kid,” Robby whispered.

Owen made a small sound. One little hand shifted against his onesie. 

Robby’s mouth trembled. “Yeah,” Robby said softly. “I know.”

You looked at Jack. Jack was watching them. There was pride there. Love. Gratitude. And underneath it, tucked where most people would not know to look, a tight little ache. He was trying. You could see that. Trying to be normal about this. Trying to be generous. Trying to stand in the middle of the ED and act like he was not already counting the hours until he could go home to you both.

But Owen was so small in Robby’s arms. And Jack had to work. His son was here, warm and blinking and real, and Jack had to stay. You touched Jack’s wrist. His eyes came to yours immediately.

“You okay?” you asked softly.

Jack nodded once. “Yeah.”

You tilted your head. His jaw shifted. “Getting used to it,” Jack admitted.

Your chest softened. “To what?”

Jack’s eyes moved back to Owen. “Not being where he is,” Jack said.

Your throat tightened. You slipped your hand into his. “You’ll come home,” you said. Jack looked at you. “We’ll be there,” you said.

His fingers tightened around yours. “Yeah,” Jack said quietly.

Robby looked up. He saw it too. Whatever was sitting quietly in Jack’s face. Robby did not tease him. He only looked down at Owen and brushed one careful finger near the edge of Owen’s tiny sleeve. “Your dad needs you back,” Robby said softly.

Jack looked away. You almost cried. Robby shifted Owen carefully, and Jack took him with both hands like his body had been waiting for the weight. Owen settled against his chest. Jack exhaled. Barely. But you heard it. So did Robby. No one said anything about it.

That was love too.

Owen chose that moment to wake. 

His eyes opened slowly, blinking against the fluorescent light and the blurred circle of people around him. Jack looked down immediately. You leaned closer. Owen’s tiny mouth opened. Not a cry. A complaint. His little hand lifted from his onesie. Small. Unsteady. There and gone almost before anyone could name it.

Robby looked at Owen’s hand. Then he looked at you. His face softened. “There she is,” Robby said.

Your eyes filled instantly. Jack’s mouth softened. “Told you,” Jack said.

You looked at Owen. Jack’s face. Your tiny little hand-talker. Your son. 

“Oh,” you whispered.

Owen made another tiny sound. His hand flexed once against Jack’s chest.

Javadi smiled through watery eyes. “Okay, I see it.”

Cassie pressed both hands to her heart. “Me too.”

Mel nodded gently. “That’s you.”

Dana looked at Owen, then at you. “There you are.”

You covered your mouth with one hand. 

Jack shifted Owen carefully against his chest and turned slightly toward you. “He has you,” Jack said.

You stared at your son through tears. For weeks, everyone had told you he looked like Jack. They were right. He did. He had Jack’s profile. Jack’s thoughtful little mouth. Jack’s serious brow. The tiny curve at the corner of his lips that made your heart ache every time you saw it. But there, in the middle of PTMC, surrounded by all the people who had loved him before he was anything more than a secret and a scan, Owen Henry Abbot made one tiny sound and lifted one tiny hand like he had something to add.

Your face crumpled. Jack smiled at you. Soft. Certain. Home. And when Owen settled against his father’s chest, still wearing Jack’s face and somehow carrying you in the smallest movement, you finally believed it.

He looked like Jack.

But he was yours too.