V

The reflections of shared bodies became blurry as the shower warmed up. Steam filling the bathroom further as the water smacked against the tile floor.  

Your forehead rested against Noah’s chest. You were feeling sick and didn’t want to shower, instead you wanted to straight to sleep. Your whole body felt heavy and uneasy. With discomfort expressed across your face, Noah leans down slightly, placing a small kiss against the crown of your head. Noah held you close in his arms, hands rubbing your back, trying to relieve your pain. His heartbeat pattering at a steady pace, providing a comforting beat to lull you to sleep.  

Noah’s hands slide down to your hips, slipping your tee shirt off. The shower was warm now and it was time to get cleaned up. Your skin was hot against Noah’s touch; he knew this shower would help relax your muscles and help your sleep better. Your eyes remained closed, barely awake, trying your best to help Noah undress you; you try lifting your leg only to get caught at your ankle. Chuckling at this lightly, Noah helps untangle your foot. Giving you a few encouraging pats once finished. You let out an annoyed sigh after. Taking his time, he slips off your jeans, setting them off to the side. 

Noah continued to undress your bodies, tossing your clothes into the hamper. Once he sees everything settled, he starts to make his way into the shower. Stepping inside, watching behind himself to make sure you got in okay.  

Pulling you closer to his body, Noah starts to run his hands across your stomach and breasts, soothing his hands against your skin, providing goosebumps to scatter across. 

The water starts to hit and run down your body, providing a soft massage against your joints. Noah’s hands start to work their way around your body, slowly massaging the soap into your skin, taking notes to massage in the process. Your body leaned against Noah’s chest; the water continues to hit your front. You continue to let out soft sighs of bliss. Having Noah’s hands touch you always relaxed you. The psychically relaxation you feel in your shoulders come when he wraps his arms around you, pulling you closer.  

Grabbing the shampoo and conditioner, making sure to use a generous amount of each. Noah made sure to check up on you, making sure you didn’t fall completely asleep and making sure he wasn’t using too much pressure and hurting you. So caring and delicate with you, he would only litter your body with love and admiration never anything less. Noah took any excuse to have right by his side, no matter how small or big the thing he was doing was.  

Cupping your breasts, Noah digs his fingertips slightly into your flesh, massaging the fat around his digits. Dropping his head down to yours, placing small kisses along your neckline. Making his was down, fingers spreading as his hands traveled further down. Noah took his time washing and caring for your body. Asking you if you were okay here and there. Once he was all washed up as well, he would reach out and grab a towel for you both.  

He would step out before you, making sure to hold his hands out for you to grasp, helping you step out as well.  

“Watch your step, princess.” Noah guided softly in your ear as your foot slipped a little.  

“Sorry…” you replied, tiredly.  

The quiet sleepiness came out slowly in a drowsy sense. Your eyes drift open and close again. Your hair is dripping wet behind your back. Noah smiled at you, admiring the beauty before him. He couldn’t be more grateful to someone like you in his life. Grabbing your towel, he slowly starts to dry your hair, gently rubbing and squeezing the water out. Occasionally glancing down to see if you would flinch from your hair being tugged. Patting your arms, chest, and the rest of your body dry, Noah takes the towels, wrapping you both up and making your way to your bedroom.  

Noah laid you down against the bed. Your back pressed against the mattress, feeling like you were on a cloud you started to feel yourself doze off. You hated falling asleep without Noah, so you try to shake your head. Rolling side to side, back and forth.  

Noah stood across the room, taking out two of his tee shirts and a pair of shorts for himself. It was going to be hot tonight and knowing his roommates the ac might be shut off. Turning his attention back to you, he sees you lying asleep. Your chest rising and falling slowly. Your eyes closed, lashes resting against your cheek bones. Chucking to himself, Noah made his way over to you.

Taking his time to change you and get you ready for bed. Wrapping his arms around, under your legs, he hoists you up, laying your head against your pillow. Noah knew this day took you out and exhausted you to the fullest. He appreciated the hard work you put in for him, and he would be sure to thank you gravely the next day. 

You rocked her gently, murmuring nonsense against her damp curls, the kind of soothing lies parents tell when there's nothing left to do but wait. "Almost our turn, baby. Just a little longer. The doctor's going to make you feel so much better, you'll see."

Your phone sat dark in your pocket like a stone. No new messages since that last frantic text from Noah and the silence gnawed at you, feeding the spiral you’d been trying to outrun since the call dropped somewhere over the Atlantic. 

What if this is it? What if the distance finally breaks us? What if she gets worse and he's still halfway across the world and I have to do this alone once again?

You'd already imagined every worst-case scenario: the hospital admission, the isolation, the slow drift of a man who loved you but couldn't bridge three thousand miles and a time zone difference that made phone calls feel like scheduled appointments rather than lifelines.

The past three weeks had been brutal in ways you hadn't anticipated. Not the big dramatic fights. Those would have been easier, somehow. It was the small erosions: the missed bedtimes, the video calls that dropped mid-story, the way Kara had stopped asking "When's Daddy coming home?" and started just... staring at his picture on the fridge with a quiet resignation that broke your heart. You'd watched her shrink into herself a little more each day, watched her appetite fade and her energy flag, and you'd told yourself it was just a cold. 

Just a virus. 

Just the natural ebb and flow of childhood illness.

But then the cough had started. First a tickle, then a bark, then a deep chest-rattling thing that made her eyes water. And suddenly you were alone at 2 AM, holding a feverish toddler, scrolling through WebMD like a prayer book while your boyfriend slept somewhere in a tour bus in Europe, unaware that his whole world was crumbling in a cramped apartment in Portland.

"Mommy," Kara rasped now, her voice scratchy and small, barely above a whisper. "Is Daddy coming?"

Your heart twisted so sharply you thought you might actually feel it break. "He's working, sweetheart, but he loves you so much. He's on a different country now, byt he's calling as fast as he can to check on you."

She nodded against you, too tired to argue, too worn out to cry anymore, and your eyes burned with unshed tears. You pressed a kiss to her hot forehead, too hot, the kind of heat that made your stomach drop; and checked the time again. Forty-three minutes since you'd checked in. The cough had worsened in the car, deep and barking, and her fever had climbed to 101.2 despite the children's Tylenol you'd administered like clockwork. The pediatrician's advice echoed uselessly in your head: monitor, hydrate, urgent care if it gets worse. 

It had gotten worse. 

Everything had gotten worse.

You thought about the last time you'd seen Noah in person; weeks ago, standing in the airport, Kara wrapped around his leg like a barnacle while he kissed you goodbye. "It's only a few weeks," he'd promised. "I'll be back before you know it." But time had stretched and warped into something unrecognizable, and somewhere between the missed calls and the postponed FaceTime dates and the fever that wouldn't break, you'd started to wonder if promises were just pretty words people used to make leaving feel less like abandonment.

When they finally called Kara's name, you carried her back on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else; rubbery and disconnected, like you were watching yourself from above. The nurse was kind, efficient, taking vitals while Kara hid her face in your neck, her little fingers digging into your collarbone. Ear infection. Possible early pneumonia. Antibiotics, fluids, breathing treatment. Nothing life-threatening, the doctor assured you, but serious enough to scare you down to your bones, serious enough to make you feel like the worst mother in the world for not bringing her in sooner, for not knowing, for letting it get this bad while you were too busy spiraling about a boy who was three thousand miles away.

You held her through the nebulizer mask, her little hands fisting your shirt as the medicine hissed and bubbled. She cried quietly for Daddy the whole time "I want Daddy, I want Daddy, please, Mommy, please" and you cried with her, silent tears slipping down your cheeks while the machine filled the tiny room with its mechanical rhythm. You whispered apologies she couldn't hear, promises you weren't sure you could keep, and tried not to think about how alone you felt in a room full of people.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket just as the nurse stepped out to process the prescription.

Noah [2:06 AM]: Landing in Portland in 9 hours. Tell me where you are. I'm coming straight there.

You stared at the screen, breath catching so sharply it hurt. For one terrible, hopeful moment, you didn’t know whether to laugh or sob. 

Your vision blurred with fresh tears as your thumb hovered over the message, heart pounding so hard you felt it in your throat. 

He was really doing it. Leaving the tour mid-run. Flying across the world because his daughter was sick and you were falling apart. The relief hit like a wave, crashing over the fear and exhaustion, leaving you dizzy and trembling. A choked sound, half laugh, half sob, escaped your lips as you clutched the phone tighter, pressing it to your chest like a lifeline. He was coming. For her. For you. After everything.

NOAH

The flight was endless.

That was the only word for it, endless, stretched thin across the Atlantic like a rubber band about to snap. Noah spent most of it pacing the cabin when the seatbelt sign was off, ignoring the concerned looks from the flight attendant and the way other passengers whispered behind their hands. He'd barely slept. Couldn't sleep, not with Kara's voice echoing in his head, that tiny "Daddy?" that had cracked through the phone speaker like a gunshot. He kept replaying every second of that last call: your exhausted voice, Kara's scared little one, the way everything had cracked open between you in a span of thirty seconds before the connection died.

He'd written and rewritten texts a dozen times, then deleted them. “I'm sorry. I should have been there. I'm coming. I love you. Please don't hate me.” Words weren't enough. Not anymore. They'd never been enough, really, just bandages on wounds that kept reopening every time he remembered they walking out the door without him.

The tour had been a disaster from the start. Not the shows, those were fine, great even, the crowds electric and the band tighter than ever. But something had shifted inside him after the last break, some fundamental piece of his heart that had decided to stay behind in Portland. He'd caught himself staring at his phone during soundchecks, waiting for photos of Kara, counting down the hours until he could call. Nick had noticed. Jolly had noticed. Even the venue guy had made a joke about him being "domesticated," and Noah had almost thrown a punch before catching himself.

He knew that behind him the guys, his second family, were dealing with hell because of the decision they’ve made.

There had been arguments. Threats. A lot of yelling from the label, from the promoter, from people who saw dollar signs where Noah saw his daughter's fever-flushed face. And if he'd learned anything in the past months, it was that no stage, no crowd, no standing ovation could fill the hole that opened up inside him every time he walked away from the two of you.

So now he was here, hurtling through the sky at six hundred miles an hour, still too slow, still not there, his knee bouncing uncontrollably as he stared at the flight map and watched the little plane icon crawl across the ocean. He'd texted you updates every hour, even when you didn't respond, even when the silence made him want to throw his phone against the wall. 

Still in the air. Still coming. Hold on.

When the wheels finally touched down in Portland, the relief that crashed through him was almost violent; a physical force that left him gripping the armrests, breath coming in shallow gasps. He grabbed his carry-on (Nick had packed it with ruthless efficiency) and was moving before the plane fully stopped, murmuring apologies as he squeezed past other passengers, ignoring the annoyed huffs and startled glances.

Nick had arranged a car while he was flying. Of course Nick had, the man was worth his weight in gold, handling logistics while Noah fell apart. Noah slid into the backseat, already pulling up the address you'd texted him for the urgent care clinic, his hands shaking as he typed it into the GPS. His knee bounced the entire drive. Rain streaked the windows, blurring the familiar Oregon landscape into gray streaks. He didn't care about any of it. He just needed to get to you.

The clinic's waiting room was half-empty when he burst through the doors, hood up, rain dripping from his jacket, heart hammering like he'd just run a marathon. A nurse looked up, eyes widening in recognition; he saw it happen in slow motion, the way her brain connected the rain-soaked stranger with the face on a million phone screens, but he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. He followed the sound of a familiar cough down the hallway, following the instructions you had sent, past closed doors and startled staff, until he found the right room.

And then he stopped.

You were sitting on the edge of the exam table, Kara in your lap, her face buried in your chest. The nebulizer mask had been set aside, but her breathing still sounded rough, wheezy, labored, the kind of sound that made his stomach clench with terror. He imagined how much he had lost; from her first bad illness, the one he'd missed because he'd been on tour, the one you'd handled alone while he played venues thousands of miles away, having no idea of how much you needed him. 

You looked exhausted, eyes red-rimmed and swollen, hair messy and escaping from its ponytail, shoulders slumped under the weight of everything you'd been carrying for the past three weeks. For the past years, really. For the past forever.

For a second, he just stood there in the doorway, drinking in the sight of both of you. 

His girls. 

His whole world. 

The two people who had somehow, impossibly, become more important than music, more important than fame, more important than every dream he'd ever chased.

Then Kara lifted her head, like she could sense him, like some invisible thread connected her heart to his across any distance.

"Daddy?"

The word cracked something wide open inside his chest; something he'd been holding together with duct tape and phone calls and desperate promises. Something that had been fracturing since the moment he'd walked out the door three weeks ago.

He crossed the room in three strides and dropped to his knees in front of you both, arms wrapping around Kara as she lunged for him with a broken sob that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her little body. "I'm here, bug. Daddy's here. I'm not leaving again. I'm never leaving again."

She clung to him like a lifeline, small body shaking with coughs and relief and three weeks of missing him, her fingers twisted in his hoodie so tightly her knuckles went white. He held her close, rocking her, pressing kisses to her fever-hot forehead, her damp curls, her temple, her cheeks, anywhere he could reach, anywhere he could leave a kiss like a promise. Tears burned his own eyes, hot and humiliating, but he didn't care. Let them see. Let everyone see. This was his daughter, and he'd almost missed another fever, another middle-of-the-night terror, another moment she needed him.

"I'm sorry," he whispered against her hair, voice breaking on the words. "I'm so sorry it took me this long. I'm so sorry I wasn't here. I'm sorry, bug. Daddy's so sorry."

You were crying too, silent and exhausted, one hand resting on his shoulder like you needed to feel he was real, like you were afraid he'd dissolve into pixels and bad reception if you let go. He reached up with his free arm and pulled you into the embrace, the three of you tangled together on the edge of that narrow exam table in a too-bright urgent care room that suddenly felt like the center of the universe.

"I flew home," he said roughly, voice thick with tears and relief and something that felt like coming up for air after drowning. "The rest of the tour… they're rescheduling. I don't care how long it takes or how much it costs. I'm done until we're all together again. No more oceans. No more screens. No more missing birthdays and fevers and bedtime stories. Just us."

You let out a shaky breath that sounded like it had been trapped inside you for weeks, months, maybe, since the first time he'd walked out the door with a suitcase and a wave goodbye. "Noah…"

"I mean it." He pulled back just enough to look at you, eyes fierce and certain, red-rimmed but steady. "I choose you. Both of you. Every single time. The band understands. The label will deal. They can scream at me all they want, I don't care. You two are my priority. Forever. That's not just words, okay? That's not just something I say to make you feel better. That's the truth. You're my family and I'm done being away from my family."

Kara's cough interrupted, but it was weaker now, looser; the breathing treatment was working, finally. She nestled deeper into his chest, one hand fisting his hoodie, the other still holding Bee like a tiny shield against the world. "Ceiling pancakes?" she mumbled hopefully, her voice still scratchy but lighter somehow, like his presence alone had eased something in her little lungs.

He laughed, watery and relieved and so full of love it felt like it might burst out of his chest. "As many as you want, bug. Every morning. With extra chocolate chips and smiley faces and whatever else you want. Whipped cream. Sprinkles. The works."

She nodded against him, already half-asleep, and he held her tighter, pressing another kiss to her temple.

The doctor came back a few minutes later, blinking at the unexpected rockstar now holding the patient, but recovered quickly. People always did around Noah, there was something about him that made the world adjust, made reality bend slightly to accommodate his presence. Instructions were given, antibiotics every twelve hours, plenty of fluids, a follow-up in five days if the cough didn't improve. Noah listened like his life depended on it, asking questions, taking notes on his phone, nodding seriously at the discussion of pneumonia risks and breathing treatments.

When they were finally cleared to leave, he carried Kara out to the car, one arm around your shoulders, his chin resting on top of your head. The rain had softened to a drizzle, and the parking lot smelled like wet asphalt and something green, spring, maybe, or the promise of it.

The drive back to your apartment was quiet, but the good kind. 

Kara dozed against his chest in the backseat, her breathing steadier already, her little face slack with exhaustion and relief. You kept glancing at him through the rear view mirror like you still couldn't believe he was real, like you expected him to disappear the moment you looked away. He caught your eye and smiled, reassuring. 

Inside the apartment, he helped you get her settled in bed. Fresh pajamas, extra blankets, her favorite stuffies arranged like a protective circle around her small body. She fell asleep almost instantly, her hand still loosely holding his finger, her breathing finally quiet and even.

You both stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching her breathe. The room was dim, illuminated only by the soft glow of her nightlight. She looked so small in that big bed, so fragile, and Noah felt his heart crack all over again.

"I was scared," you admitted softly, the words barely above a whisper. "That this would be too much. That the distance would break us before we even got started. That you'd realize… I don't know, that we weren't worth the trouble."

He turned to you, pulling you into his arms so fast you stumbled against his chest. "Don't," he said, his voice rough. "Don't ever think that. You're worth. Every flight. Every canceled show. Every argument with every label executive in the world. You're worth everything, babe."

You buried your face in his chest, breathing him in, rain and airport coffee and something underneath that was just him, the smell you'd been missing in your bed for three weeks. "I love you," you said, the words muffled against his shirt.

"I love you more," he whispered, pressing his lips to your hair. "Both of you. Forever. That's not just a word to me anymore. It's a promise."

Later, after the antibiotics were administered and Kara was sleeping soundly, you curled together on the couch. His hand stroked slow circles on your back while rain pattered against the windows, soft and steady, like the world was finally settling into something manageable. The TV played some forgotten movie on low volume, but neither of you were watching.

"Tomorrow," he said quietly, his voice rumbling through his chest where your ear was pressed. "We start packing. No rush. Take your time. But when she's better… we go home. To the house with the pool. To the room we talked about painting for her. To our life. The real one, not the one we've been living in phone calls and airport goodbyes."

You nodded against him, the fear that had gripped you for weeks finally loosening its hold, slipping away like the rain outside. "Our life," you repeated, tasting the words, letting them settle somewhere deep in your chest.

He kissed the top of your head, then your temple, then tilted your chin up so he could reach your lips, slow, deep, full of every promise he'd been carrying across an ocean, every word he hadn't known how to say until now. "Our life," he agreed against your mouth. "Together. Where we belong."

Outside, the Oregon rain kept falling, soft and endless, washing the world clean. Inside, for the first time in years, everything felt like it was exactly where it was supposed to be.

Kara would wake up to ceiling pancakes in the morning.

And Daddy would be there to make them.