Emotionally-Constipated-Men Appreciation Society

"Jesus Christ."

"Mm-hmm." She scribbled something in his chart as the man eyed her suspiciously.

"Can you fix it?"

Emily looked at him.

Then at the foot.

"Well. I can certainly help."

"Help?"

"I can't perform miracles. If you listen, and do your stretches, then you should see improvement."

The man frowned.

"I thought you just rubbed it."

"No. That would be a masseuse. I’m a physical therapist." Emily pointed at him. "It’s a distinction that matters."

The man looked unconvinced.

Emily ignored him. "Anyway. You also need new shoes."

He sighed.

Emily smiled pleasantly. Her smile never meant anything good. "Now. Since you're clearly committed to making terrible decisions, let's touch base on hydration-"

A knock interrupted her.

One of the nurses poked her head into the room apologetically. "Hey."

"What's up?"

"Abbot's looking for you."

That got her attention. "Jack? He alright?"

The nurse nodded.

"He said he texted, but wanted to make sure you saw it."

Emily blinked. That was unusual. Jack almost never came looking for her during work hours, and rarely needed her urgently enough to call the desk. Mostly because if Jack Abbot needed physical therapy it meant he'd ignored a problem for somewhere between six months and two geological eras, and by now he knew better.

She narrowed her eyes. "What did he do?"

The nurse laughed. "I don't know, but he sounded frazzled."

Emily sighed dramatically. "Well he’ll have to wait ten minutes."

The nurse grinned. "That's what I told him."

The construction worker watched as the nurse left, looking up at her as he put his boots back on. "Who's Jack?"

Emily finished her note. "My favorite idiot."

The maternity ward was quieter than the rest of the hospital.

Not silent, exactly; hospitals never were. But the chaos had been replaced by a softer rhythm of hushed voices, squeaking carts, and the occasional newborn announcing its opinions to the world.

Emily eased the door to the room shut behind her, still smiling as she stepped out into the hallway. The baby was healthy. Queenie was exhausted. Jack looked like a man who'd been hit in the head with fatherhood and hadn't quite recovered.

All things considered, everyone seemed to be doing remarkably well.

She turned toward the elevators just as someone rounded the corner.

The man was older than she was expecting, considering the floor. Mid fifties, maybe. Tall. Broad shouldered. Dark hair going silver at the temples. The sort of face that looked kind even when it wasn't smiling. His arms held a large paper shopping bag in one hand and an infant car seat in the other. His gait held enough tension for his hamstrings to be mistaken for guitar strings. Years of working in her field made it impossible not to notice, and Emily started cataloging compensations before catching herself.

He glanced at the room number, visibly relaxed when he found the correct door.

Then he noticed Emily in front of it.

"Sorry," he said. His voice was warm and a little rough around the edges. “Would you mind…?” 

Emily stepped aside automatically. "No worries."

He nodded his thanks and reached for the door. Before he could open it, a voice sounded from inside.

"Robby?"

The man's expression softened immediately. "Yeah," he called back. "It's me."

Emily heard Queenie's tired voice from somewhere inside as he stepped into the room. Then the door closed behind them.

And that was that.

She let him drift from her mind, heading for the elevator without another thought.

Three weeks later, Emily found herself in the emergency department for what was supposed to be a straightforward consultation. The consult itself was very straightforward, only fifteen or twenty minutes.

The rest of the afternoon became significantly more interesting when she started looking for the chief attending to inform them of her recommendation.

"That's not what I asked."

The voice carried across the nurses' station in a tone that made Emily glance up automatically from where she was jotting down her notes. The physician speaking was familiar. Mid-fifties. Broad shoulders. Silver at the temples. The man from the maternity ward.

Robby, apparently.

She watched him hand a chart back to a resident, who took it with the expression of a man accepting a live grenade.

Emily returned to her writing.

Three minutes later, that same tone drifted towards her.

"No, I said today."

It didn’t stop there. Five minutes after that he was griping again.

"If I wanted it next week, I would've said next week."

Ten minutes later he snapped at a nurse. Then a respiratory therapist. And, impressively, even a supply clerk. Emily looked up from her laptop.

Okay. Now she was curious.

Assholes were usually consistent. They had one or two people they targeted, or at least they chose a type of person to dress down. This wasn’t selective. And people were taking it on the chin with enough annoyed grace to tell her that this wasn’t how he normally behaved.

On top of that, the content of what he was saying - the actual words coming out of his mouth - wasn't unreasonable. It was the delivery that turned it condescending. Short. Sharp. Impatient. Like someone whose fuse had been cut down to half an inch and held too close to a fire.

Emily watched him cross the department.

His posture was wrong. His gait was tighter than she'd remembered. The circles under his eyes looked old enough to vote…

She discreetly pulled out her phone.

Click

The picture wasn't a great one, but you could see his face just fine. Quickly she opened her messages and sent it to Jack. She hated to interrupt his paternity leave, but figured he wouldn’t mind. Friend of yours?

The response came almost immediately. Best friend. Be nice.

Emily snorted, but still sent a thumbs up.

Across the department Robby was currently informing the charge nurse that he needed a patient moved upstairs.

The charge nurse informed him that she did not possess the power of teleportation.

The conversation deteriorated from there. Emily watched for another thirty seconds.

Then sighed.

It really would be so much easier if he was just an asshole. Or if she was worse at spotting how tight his jaw was.

Damn her eyes.

Emily shut her laptop with one smooth motion, tucking it under her arm as she strode confidently towards the man who currently looked like the human equivalent of a check-engine light. Robby huffed at the nurse and turned as if headed down the hall, but Emily stepped directly into his path.

"Doctor Robinavich?"

He stopped, clearly surprised someone had voluntarily intercepted him. "Can I help you?"

"No."

That got his attention. 

Emily shifted her laptop under one arm. "Your fall-risk in room eight isn't going upstairs."

His expression darkened immediately. "I'm sorry?"

"No safe discharge. No transfer recommendation."

"Based on whose assessment?"

"Mine."

"And you didn't think that warranted a conversation?"

"It does,” she nodded. “I had it with myself." 

Then she turned and started walking away. The bait hooked him instantly.

"Excuse me?"

Emily didn’t pause.

"Doctor Carter."

No response.

"Doctor Carter."

She heard his footsteps behind her. Good. The staff break room door came into view.

"Doctor Carter!"

She pushed through the door. The footsteps got faster until he was bursting into the room right on her heels. The door swung shut behind them.

Excellent.

Robby was already wound tight enough to vibrate when he locked eyes with her. "What exactly is your problem?" he demanded.

Emily set her laptop on the table. "Which one?"

His jaw clenched. "I don’t appreciate being spoken down to in my own ED."

"Oh," Emily nodded noncommittedly.

For a second he just stared at her.

Then the frustration finally boiled over. He didn’t scream or lose control and start throwing things. What followed was just a solid two minutes of accumulated irritation directed at the nearest available target; her. He went on a truly impressive tirade.

Administration.

The need for the consult.

General bed availability.

Administration.

The department.

The patient.

The fact that nobody seemed capable of doing anything quickly.

Administration.

Emily let him go. She didn’t argue or interrupt, or even attempt to defend herself when his ire eventually directed itself at her. Eventually he ran out of steam. Robby exhaled sharply.

The silence that followed felt abrupt.

“Ok. I hear you,” Emily nodded. “Those are all valid critiques, and you’re right; disrespecting our coworkers is hardly appropriate behavior from a doctor.”

She gave him a pointed look. He opened his mouth, but she cut him off before he could defend himself.

“I mean this with all due respect, but when was the last time you ate something?”

He balked at her. “...are you fucking kidding me?”

“You know what they say,” she shrugged. “If everyone hates you, you should sleep. If you hate everyone…”

Robby scrubbed both hands over his face. “I don’t have time for this,” he grumbled, reaching for the door. He got it open by maybe an inch or two before Emily reached past him to firmly push it closed again. 

“Yeah, no that’s on me,” she said pleasantly, holding the door shut. “I shouldn't have made it a question. Let me rephrase. You’re being a huge dick, so you’re not going back out there until you eat something.”

The silence that followed was spectacular. 

Robby stared down at her, not with anger but with pure offense. Like a big cartoon owl that had just been told it was no longer allowed in the library. 

“...or what?” he finally managed.

Emily looked up at him with a smile. “Do you really want to find out, or do you want to have a snack?”

For a second he just stared, searching for the correct response to make her back off. Unfortunately, Emily had years of experience dealing with stubborn men who mistook persistence for invincibility.

Construction workers.

Athletes.

Surgeons.

The species varied, but the behavior rarely did.

Robby folded his arms.

Emily folded hers right back.

“I didn’t bring a lunch,” he told her, clearly expecting that to be the end of it.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a Nature’s Bakery brownie bar, holding it out to him. "One hundred and seventy calories of chocolaty goodness, just for you.”

Robby looked at the brownie bar like it was a snake. "You carry emergency snacks?"

"Of course I do."

"Why?"

Emily shrugged. "Sometimes you need a little treat."

Robby stared at the brownie bar. She waited, her hand still outstretched.

The standoff lasted another five seconds.

Then, with all the enthusiasm of a man signing his own death warrant, Robby snatched it from her hand. "Fine."

He glared at the wrapper. The wrapper remained unmoved, and so with a long-suffering sigh, he tore it open. Robby took an offended bite. The brownie bar was, unfortunately, pretty good.

That only made him more annoyed.

He chewed in resentful silence while Emily leaned against the door, picked up her laptop, and opened it.

A few moments passed as he chewed and she clicked through screens. Eventually she spoke. "You're coming to see me Thursday."

Robby stopped chewing. "What?"

Emily didn't look up. "Thursday. A four-thirty."

That got a bark of laughter out of him. "No."

“Yes.”

Robby pointed the brownie bar at her. “And why exactly would I do that?”

“You can absolutely choose not to.”

"...Okay?"

"But if you aren't there, I'll be filing a professional complaint with HR."

Robby blinked. “You’re going to file a complaint that I won’t be your patient?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “The complaint will be documenting everything you said to me in the last fifteen minutes."

The offended look was back. "You can't be serious."

"Oh, I am."

She returned her attention to the laptop.

"I'll include the way you spoke to the charge nurse, the respiratory therapist, the supply clerk, and the resident. All of it."

Robby stared at her.

Emily continued typing.

"Not to mention the fact that you're currently attempting to run an emergency department while visibly exhausted, increasingly irritable, and apparently fueled by nothing but caffeine and spite."

"That's not an HR issue," he managed eventually.

"It becomes one if it starts affecting your staff." Emily looked up. "Again, though. Entirely your choice."

"...you're blackmailing me?"

"No."

"You are."

"I'm offering options."

"Those aren't options-"

"They absolutely are. It’s entirely your choice."

Robby stared.

Emily stared right back.

She shut her laptop with a soft click. "Thursday. Four-thirty."

Robby opened his mouth but couldn’t seem to find any words to make with it for a long moment. "You are unbelievable," he said weakly.

"I've been told."

Robby took another bite of the brownie. Mostly because he needed something to do with his mouth before he said something regrettable.

The worst part was that he had the sinking feeling she wasn't bluffing.

Across the room, Emily smiled like a woman scheduling a routine oil change.

Thursday arrives.

At 4:28 PM, precisely two minutes before his appointment, Michael Robinavich walks into Physical Therapy with all the enthusiasm of a man attending a court summons.

Emily glances up from her computer.

"Hey, Robby."

That's it. Hey Robby. Cool and calm and collected. Not a trace of smugness on her face. No acknowledgement whatsoever that she effectively extorted him into being there. Just Hey Robby, like he was an old friend. Like he was someone who saw her regularly.

Robby narrows his eyes.

Emily smiles. "Come on back and we’ll get started."

He follows her because dragging his feet makes him feel childish no matter how indigent he is to be here. The treatment room is exactly what he'd expected, and yet somehow also worse. There are resistance bands, foam rollers, suspicious straps, and various implements that look specifically designed to make grown adults question their life choices.

Or maybe cry.

Emily gestures toward the treatment table. "Have a seat."

Robby sits, still offended.

“So just some basic questions to start off,” Emily says amicably as she opens his chart. "Age?"

He stares. "Fifty-five."

She types. "Occupation?"

"Emergency physician," he says with a roll of his eyes.

Tap tap tap.

Robby watches her.

Emily keeps typing.

The silence stretches.

Finally:

"...are you going to tell me why I'm here?"

Emily looks up with some surprise. "You don't know?"

Robby immediately regrets speaking.

Emily nods. "Hm." She makes another note.

"What did you write?"

"'Patient lacks insight.'"

"I do not." The words come out more petulant than he intends.

"Mm."

"Don't ‘mm’ me."

Another note.

"What was that one?"

"'Patient became defensive when questioned.'"

"Doctor Carter-"

“Emily’s fine. It’s easier to scream.” She smiles.

Robby considers leaving. Unfortunately he's already committed to the bit. “I’m not going to scream anything, let alone your name.”

“Mm. That’s probably true; most people go with curse words.” Emily finally sets the laptop aside. "Alright. Stand up."

He does, with a fair amount of suspicion.

"Walk to the door and back."

Robby stares.

"Walk."

"I'm not ninety. I walk fine."

"The last marathon runner I evaluated wasn’t ninety either. Just a man who asked unreasonable things of his legs. Walk."

Robby sighs, but begins to walk. Halfway to the door he hears her hum dejectedly and freezes. "What?"

"Nothing."

"It wasn't nothing."

"Keep walking,” she orders, pointing towards the door.

Robby keeps walking until he gets to the door, turns, and walks back.

Emily is watching him with pained focus. More specifically, she's watching his hips. "How long has your left leg been bothering you?"

Robby freezes.

"...it isn't."

"Okay,” she agrees, typing again.

"What are you writing now?"

"'Patient lies.'"

Robby glares at her. "I am not lying."

She gives him a look; the kind you give children as they vehemently deny sneaking a cookie while their hand is actively in the jar. "Sure. Your glute medius spontaneously stopped firing for fun, and you just never noticed anything." 

He glares.

She remains emotionally unmoved, though she rises from her chair.

"Okay, go ahead and take your shoes off for me."

"No."

"Robby."

"No."

"Take your shoes off."

"I don't want to."

Emily stares.

Robby stares back.

“...don’t be a fucking baby.”

He huffs, but toes off his sneakers all the same.

“Great!” she says with a smile. “Now hop up on the table, sunshine.”

Robby reluctantly did, eying her suspiciously as she approached.

Emily ignored him. "Lie down on your back."

"You're very bossy."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

Robby muttered something under his breath as she grabbed his left ankle.

Immediately his eyes narrowed.

"What are you doing?"

She huffed out a laugh. "Exam. Don’t tense up, you’ll just make it take longer."

With careful movements she lifted his leg, bent it at the knee, then slowly rotated it out to check the hip. Emily moved him in small circles, just feeling for clicks and catches, not even looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on the far wall, all her attention on feeling how he moved.

"Hm."

Robby was beginning to dislike that sound. "What?"

Emily didn't answer. Instead she set his foot down and moved to the side of the table.

One hand settled against his knee, the other landing lightly against the outside of his hip.

Robby watched her.

Emily watched the anatomy beneath her fingers. Years of practice had taught her what healthy tissue felt like. What compensation felt like versus overuse. And what happened when someone ignored a problem for so long that their body started inventing workarounds.

"Have you ever had surgery on this side?"

"No."

"Major injury?"

"No."

"Fall?"

"No."

Emily hummed.

Robby looked offended. "Stop doing that."

She blinked down at him. "Doing what?"

"The humming."

"Oh. No."

Her thumb drifted slightly along the side of his hip. Searching. Palpating. Following a trail only she could see. Then she pressed down firmly.

Robby launched three inches off the table. "JESUS CHRIST."

The shout echoed down the hallway. Somewhere outside the room one of her nurses laughed.

For her part Emily just smiled. This was always her favorite part; the little treasure hunt she got to go on with every patient. Sure, getting their muscles to release wasn’t exactly a fun time for most of them, but she knew exactly what would happen when they got up off the table. The groan, the pause, and then? The look of surprise on their faces when they began to move and found they could do it without pain.

Robby dropped his head back onto the table. "Ohhhh, I hate you."

"No, you don't," she said with a chuckle.

"I absolutely do."

Emily moved her fingers slightly and pressed down again, applying the same steady pressure to the gummed up knot of muscle fiber buried in the dip of his hip.

Robby grabbed the edge of the table. "EMILY."

"Oh wow."

"What?" he hissed, knuckles going white.

"That's impressive."

"What does that mean?"

Emily's grin widened as she worked her thumb along the muscle.

Robby made a noise usually associated with wounded wildlife.

Emily laughed, the sound was entirely too cheerful for a woman making someone experience this much pain. "Your glute medius is a disaster."

Robby could barely concentrate on what she was saying. "My what?"

“Your glute med,” she said again, easing off as the knot began to relax. "The muscle that stabilizes your pelvis when you walk?"

"It's fine."

Emily stared down at him where he lay panting on her table. Then she very deliberately pressed into the exact same spot.

Robby swore.

She gave him a triumphant little smirk. "The jury has spoken."

He glared up at her. "Oh, you're enjoying this."

"Immensely."

"I am your patient."

"And?"

"Shouldn't you be sympathetic?"

Emily snorted. "No. Don’t be a wuss."

Robby stared at her.

"You are unbelievable."

"You did this to yourself. I’m just fixing it."

Then she pressed another point and his entire leg jerked.

"SON OF A-"

Emily actually gasped. Not in concern.

In delight.

"Ohhhhh, you've got a second one."

Robby looked ready to cry. "A second what?"

"A second compensatory knot. That’s actually a little unusual, most people only have one per muscle grouping." Emily patted his hip. The gesture somehow felt both condescending and threatening. "Good news!"

"There is absolutely no chance you're about to say good news."

"We found the problem."

"We?"

"We."

"There is no we in this."

Emily just smiled as she reached for her laptop.

"Wait, what are you writing?" he asked, suspiciously.

"'Patient displays severe denial regarding existence of own musculoskeletal system.'"

He huffed. "That's not a real note."

"It could be…"

"Emily."

"Mm?"

"I regret meeting you."

"That's normal. Most people do around this point." She finished typing with a shrug and a bemused grin. "Now let's see what happens when I check the other side."

Robby closed his eyes.

The thing was, she'd expected compensations.

Everyone who spent decades on their feet developed them. Knees stopped trusting hips. Backs picked up work shoulders should have been doing. Ankles quietly surrendered while calves took on jobs they'd never been designed for.

What she hadn't expected was...this.

The first knot sat buried deep in the left gluteus medius, hard as a walnut beneath years of overuse. It released only after nearly a minute of sustained pressure, softening beneath her thumb in reluctant stages rather than all at once. The involuntary yelp it drew from him echoed through the room.

Emily barely noted it.

She knew better than anyone that the body lied. It lied constantly.

Someone pointed to the front of their knee, but the problem lived in the hip. Someone complained about their back while their ankles quietly collapsed beneath them. Every shortcut a person took, every old injury they ignored, every hour spent compensating for something just a little bit sore was recorded faithfully in muscle until whole chains of tissue forgot what they were supposed to be doing.

Robby's muscles practically had dementia.

Once the gluteus medius finally began to soften beneath her thumb, the surrounding muscles immediately told on themselves. The tensor fasciae latae along the outside of his hip was tight enough to feel almost corded, pulling hard on structures that had spent months trying to keep his pelvis level despite having never been built for that. His piriformis wasn't much better, stubborn and irritable even beneath careful pressure, sending a sharp spike of protest down the back of his leg the moment she found its center.

The reaction was immediate. His entire body stiffened before he caught himself, one hand gripping the edge of the treatment table hard enough that the vinyl creaked beneath his fingers. A strangled yelp escaped him despite every obvious attempt to swallow it, quickly followed by a low hiss through clenched teeth.

Emily barely looked up. She stayed on the knot with steady, patient pressure, feeling the tissue resist before, almost imperceptibly, beginning to melt beneath her hand. Years of experience had taught her not to chase after things. The point wasn’t causing pain, although she knew how intense leg work could get for people. Muscles weren't conquered by force. They simply needed enough time to remember they were allowed to let go.

Eventually they always did.

What was growing concerning about Michael Robinovitch was that as soon as one knot released, another announced itself.

His quadratus lumborum along the left side of his lower back was carrying far more of the workload than it had any business attempting. She could feel it before she even reached it, the muscle standing out beneath her fingertips like a drawn cable. When she leaned into it, Robby made another sound, somewhere between a groan and a wounded bark.

Emily smiled to herself.

She wasn't surprised. Everyone always sounded like that when she found a real problem.

The knot slowly unraveled beneath careful pressure, only for his hip flexors to immediately betray him next. Tight. Overworked. Shortened from years of sitting, standing, rushing, twisting, and asking his body to absorb far more than it had ever been designed to carry. Every muscle she examined told the same story. None of them were injured in isolation. They were exhausted from covering for their neighbors.

By the time she worked her way toward the outside of his thigh, she almost felt bad for him.

Almost.

The vastus lateralis was a miserable strip of dense, overworked tissue running the length of his femur. The instant she sank into the first trigger point, his leg jerked so violently he nearly fell off the table. His breath left him in a startled, pained shout.

Emily simply adjusted her grip and continued.

One knot.

Then another.

Then another still.

Each one released a little more easily than the last as circulation returned and the surrounding tissue stopped bracing quite so desperately. Beneath her hands she could feel the gradual change, hard cords becoming pliable muscle, hot angry tissue cooling by degrees until it finally behaved the way anatomy textbooks insisted it should.

She worked methodically, following compensation after compensation the way another clinician might follow symptoms through to form a differential diagnosis. The weak hip had recruited the pelvis. The pelvis had recruited the low back. The low back had altered his gait. The altered gait had overloaded the thigh. The thigh had changed the mechanics of his knee.

It was all a mess.

By the time she reached the opposite side, the difference was almost comical. The right side wasn't perfect - years rushing around in emergency medicine saw to that - but given the minefield she'd just finished excavating, it was practically relaxed comparatively to the left.

She repeated the whole process on his other side, the knots just as drastic if in slightly different places. Eventually she managed to flip him onto his back to work down the front of his thighs as well. When she finally stepped back, Robby remained exactly where she'd left him, panting more than breathing, one forearm draped over his eyes as though he was recovering from some deeply personal betrayal.

She flexed her hands, attempting to ward off the stiffness that she could already tell was going to hit hard tomorrow. "Jeez," she mumbled, rocking back on her heels. "You're like a jigsaw somebody assembled wrong and then spent twenty years pretending looked fine."

Robby just moaned. 

“Ok well,” Emily said with a smirk. “I feel like this should go without saying, but you’re definitely going to feel that tomorrow. Take your time sitting up. Everything you’re experiencing is a completely normal physiological reaction.”

He moved his arm to look at her suspiciously, only to glance down and finally register how his body had responded to the relief of each muscle relaxing. Robby sprang upright, his knees coming up to his chest in a belated attempt to hide what he’d only just realized was a raging hard on. “Jesus Christ-!” he bit out, head spinning as he shot up.

“Woah, easy,” Emily said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re good. That just happens sometimes, you don’t need to be embarrassed. We’re both doctors.”

“I’m a doctor,” Robby bit out breathlessly as he took the bottle of water she handed him. “You’re a witch.”

Not at him. More like she'd been startled, and now that she knew that they were both fine the relief had bubbled out of her in a warm little laugh against his chest.

"You okay?" she asked, pushing herself up just enough to see his face.

"Fine," he managed through gritted teeth.

She looked at him for another second, clearly trying to hold back a smile. "...you're lying."

"I'm not."

"Sammy."

He sighed. "...Might've bruised my hip."

That earned him another little snort. He’d seen her hand reach back, but instead of moving for his crotch to work him back up, she reached for the spot he'd hit; rubbing gentle circles through his jeans over the forming bruise.

"You know," she murmured, "you could absolutely be milking this."

He looked up at her. "Oh yeah?"

She nodded thoughtfully.

"Definitely. For heroically throwing yourself between me and the floor?" She pretended to consider it. "I'd say you're entitled to...at least one kiss better."

"Just one?"

"Let's not get greedy.”

He laughs before he can stop himself.

She grins like that was exactly what she was after, cups his face, and kisses him. Slowly. Gently, With absolutely no urgency and far more affection than he expected.

She doesn’t move far when she pulls back. "...Better?"

It’s not sexy in the penthouse forums way, but weirdly it’s still attractive. No one he's slept with has ever stopped in the middle of taking their clothes off to make sure he was okay. It makes him more generous than he might otherwise have been.

That isn’t to say that he doesn’t take care of his partners in bed. Sammy prides himself on not being a selfish lover. No woman’s ever left his bed unsatisfied - even Tammy didn’t leave because the sex was bad. He just spends a little extra time in the lead up before taking his pants off that night. Lingers. Lavishes. And there’s so much of her to explore.

Most women in LA were carved. Beautiful by design, almost statuesque in the way they presented themselves. They performed desire the same way they performed beauty. And it had been working for him, obviously. He knew most men chased after that.

Erin wasn’t built that way.

There wasn't a sharp edge on her. She wasn't delicate. She wasn't sculpted into impossible angles. She was warm, solid, comfortably herself in a city famous for making you want to be someone else.

Beautiful in a way that invited touch instead of admiration from a distance.

She had softness in all the places his hands naturally settled. A faint curve beneath her navel. Thighs that met when she stood and were plush when she wrapped them around his ears. Arms strong enough to carry half a restaurant on her back and still soft when she threw them over his shoulders.

She looked less like someone assembled to be admired and more like someone meant to be held. And God, was he holding on tight. To those soft thighs. To her pretty hips. To her wrists when she begged him to go faster, to thrust harder. 

So no. It’s not that the sex is bad.

It’s that he finds out quickly that with Erin it’s never just sex.

He’s seen her a handful of times when she texts him: 

Come over?

Sammy has just enough time to raise his eyebrows and smirk to himself before she follows it up with more.

I made too much food

I might be good or it might be just ok

He stares at the phone. Is…is this still a hook up? The text is meant for him, not one of her coworkers right? Just to be sure he shoots over a Do you want me to bring anything?

Three dots appear almost immediately.

God no.

You’re sweet to ask. But I’ve made enough bad portion control decisions without you bringing something too

…he’s not entirely sure what's happening tonight, but at least there’ll be food. Still, he slips a condom into his back pocket before he grabs his keys. Just to cover all his bases.

The drive to Erin’s place wasn’t long, but it didn’t offer any further enlightenment. Still, he’d parked and knocked on her door-

Only to be met with the woman herself, hair pulled up into a messy bun, clad in a soft looking t-shirt and the skimpiest cotton shorts he’d ever seen.

“Hi,” she said, looking mildly apologetic. “Uh…just so we’re clear, this is still a booty call.”

“Ok,” he said with a laugh.

“Because I reread my texts a minute ago, and realized they were…kind of misleading?” she went on, rubbing the back of her neck. “I was still thinking about the food. But sex is still totally happening.”

He feels himself start to grin. “Good to know.”

Erin’s eyes softened at the sight before snapping back into sudden concentration. “Also you’re not allergic to shellfish are you?”

“No?”

“Oh thank god,” she said with more relief than he really thought that warranted before taking hold of his wrist and dragging him inside. “Come here.” 

She tugged him through the apartment with surprising determination, headed straight for the kitchen.

Sammy barely had time to glance around, but her place was somehow both exactly what he'd expected and nothing at all like he'd imagined. He'd pictured a kitchen straight out of a Williams-Sonoma catalog. Coordinated canisters. Matching cookware. Cute little appliances that got used twice a year. Maybe even one of those decorative teakettles shaped like vegetables or chickens or...whatever women bought.

Instead, it looked like she'd stolen half a restaurant and smuggled it home with her.

Red handled rubber spatulas spilled from a ceramic crock on the counter by her stove. Stainless steel mixing bowls sat nested in sizes that seemed excessive for someone who lived alone. A whole tower of square plastic containers sat perched on top of the refrigerator, all of them big enough to swallow a five pound bag of flour without complaint.

The appliances were even more absurd. There was no sweet little kitchen aide or bread machine. Erin instead had a food processor that looked like it could swallow an entire onion without slowing down, what he was pretty sure was a rice cooker, and a stand mixer so large it had its own table instead of sharing the counter. And that’s just what he could see on the counter.

The room was far from spotless. It was in use.

A dish towel hung from the oven handle. A plastic cutting board still scattered with sesame seeds. Three bowls were soaking in the sink and there was an entire pile of bits and bobs on a drying mat to the side of that. Every inch of counter space had clearly been used in the last hour.

“Ok so, here's the thing,” Erin began, letting go of his hand to scoop warm rice into a bowl. “Blue crabs are only in season for a few weeks every year. And I might have let my excitement get the better of me.”

He looked around slowly, but didn’t see where the crab could be. The oven looked like it was off, and there was no pot on the stove. Maybe still in the fridge? “How much are we talking here.”

Erin put the bowl down on the counter and slid it towards him with a pair of chopsticks. “...telling you the number will just embarrass us both. Let's just say they were on sale and choices were made.”

Sammy snorted. “Alright then. So where is all this irresponsible shellfish?”

"Oh!" Erin brightened. "Hang on."

She crossed to the refrigerator and pulled open the door.

Sammy expected a plate. Maybe a roasting pan. Apparently that was a layperson’s idea of ‘too much’.

Instead, what she wrestled out of the fridge was a square plastic container roughly the size of a small dog. She turned and set it on the counter with a heavy thunk, the expression on her face far too casual for the sheer effort it took to even lift the thing.

He stared at it.

"...Is that..."

Erin nodded, peeling the blue lid free with a pop and a pleased expression. "...the crab."

The smell hit him first. Soy. Garlic. Ginger. Sesame. It already smelled delicious before he leaned over to get a closer look. Inside, whole blue crabs lay just visible, stacked neatly beneath the dark marinade. Their shells gleamed beneath floating slices of chili and rounds of green onion like the world’s strangest apple dunking spin off.

Sammy blinked. "...Jesus."

"I know."

"Those are all for tonight?"

"Well..." She shifted her weight. "I was just gonna eat them myself but then I started to consider that there would also be rice and kimchi…and it started to seem like a lot."

He looked at her.

She looked back a little sheepishly. "...I got carried away."

"You think?"

"They were seasonal,” she reiterated, as if that should be enough to absolve her of her fishmongering sins.

Sammy slowly looked from her, to the container, and back again. He tried. Really he did. But there was no containing the laughter that rose from his chest.

Erin frowned. "What?"

He shook his head, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. "Nothing."

"You're laughing at me," she said with a little unconscious pout that made him want to kiss her silly right there in front of god and her bucket of crabs.

"Only a little."

She huffed, crossing her arms.

"I'm sorry, I just…" He gestured helplessly toward the Cambro. "I genuinely have no idea how you even eat this."

“Oh!” Her expression changed instantly, the indignation disappearing to give way to bright enthusiasm. "Okay, so-"

She turned to the counter behind her, plucking a pair of black nitrile gloves out of a box and tossing them to him. He caught them one handed. "...Gloves?"

"Soy sauce all over your hands is a bad time. Trust me." She pulled on a pair herself with two practiced snaps before reaching into the marinade and lifting out one of the crabs.

Sammy watched a few drops of soy-dark liquid drip back into the container. "...This looks like a science experiment."

"That's because you don't know what you're looking at yet."

She set the crab on a plate between them. "Okay." She pointed. "First rule."

"There's rules?"

"Only one,” she said, sliding his bowl of rice closer. "Never eat it without rice."

"Why?"

"Because the marinade's salty. If you ate it straight you’d get tired of it before you could really enjoy it."

She picked up a pair of kitchen shears.

Snip.

One leg came free, and she handed it to him without ceremony. "You can crack these with your hands if you like to play with your food, but this is easier."

"Now..." She pulled her own bowl of rice towards her, cutting off another leg to demonstrate. "You squeeze here..."

The shell gave with a satisfying crack.

"...and then just..."

She pushed all the meat free in one clean motion. Frankly, it looked like a bunch of goo on top of rice, but Sammy had eaten plenty of worse things made by less endearing women. He repeated her motions until he also had a little pile of goo.

She scooped up a bite, dipped it lightly back through the marinade, and waited for him to mirror her. Sammy did as instructed, closing his eyes and taking his bite and chewing slowly.

Erin waited.

Five seconds passed in silence.

Then ten.

"...Well?" she finally prompted.

He opened one eye to look at her. "...You made this?"

"Yes."

"All by yourself?"

"...Yes?"

He looked back down at the bowl.

Took another bite. Then another.

Erin's shoulders slowly relaxed.

"...It's okay?"

He looked up.

"I’m trying to decide if I should be mad that you told me this might only be ‘alright’."

"I wasn’t sure if I got all the ratios balanced-."

"Honey, it was either the biggest lie you've ever told..." He reached for another leg. "...or you genuinely don't know how good you are."

Pink crept into her cheeks. "It's a new recipe."

"How many times have you made it?"

"None."

"So this was your first attempt."

"Mhm."

He stared at her.

"...You nailed it on the first try."

She ducked her head, suddenly fascinated by rearranging the sesame seeds on the platter. "Well there’s always room for improvement..."

"There absolutely is not."

She laughed. It wasn’t beautiful or cinematic - in fact he’s pretty sure she snorted a little. But it was perfectly Erin.

They ate in comfortable silence for a minute, interrupted only by the crack of shells and the occasional appreciative hum from Sammy.

Finally, he looked into the container. "So..."

"Mhm?"

"...How many of these am I allowed to eat?"

“Allowed or expected?” she teased.

“Ok,” he replied playfully. “How many am I expected to eat?”

Erin considered it with complete seriousness."Five."

He barked out another laugh. "Five?"

"They're not very big."

"Erin."

"What?"

"That's an insane amount of food."

“No it isn’t,” she said with a grin. "You'll see."

He looked from the mountain of crab to the woman earnestly insisting that five was a reasonable serving...and realized she actually believed that wholeheartedly.

God help him.

She gasps a little, and as barely there as the sound was it is still enough to alert him. There’s a soft shift of fabric from the foot of the bed, and when Bonnie turns her head? There he is. Still awake, still sitting in her vanity chair.

Still watching over her.

He’s not slouched, even though she knows exactly how comfy that chair is. He sits the way he always does, feet apart, back too straight, hands on his knees. Sometime during the night he must’ve loosened up enough to lean his head against the back rest, but that can't have helped all that much.

For one long quiet second neither of them speaks. Then Pope, voice rough from exhaustion, breaks the silence. “You threw up in the trash can twice.”

Bonnie closes her eyes immediately.

Pope watches her for another second. “You’re fine.” It’s a statement of fact, not an attempt to reassure her.

“No,” she says in a voice rough enough to sand wood. “No, I actually think this is the end for me.”

She drags both hands over her face and instantly regrets it because that makes everything about her face feel grosser.

Oh God.

Slowly, with the dawning horror of a woman realizing she has been perceived under unacceptable conditions, Bonnie curls sideways and hides her face under one of the pillows.

Pope’s brow furrows immediately. “Bonnie?”

Her voice comes muffled through the pillow. “You have to leave.”

Silence.

Not offended silence. Confused silence.

Pope sits up a little straighter in the chair. “Why?”

Bonnie makes a small mortified noise somewhere between a groan and an attempted homicide. “Because I look like I was drug backwards through a field.”

Pope glances at her. Then around the room. Then back at her hidden beneath the pillow like perhaps he missed something obvious. “You look fine.”

Bonnie peels the pillow down just enough to glare at him with one bloodshot eye. “Andrew. Sugar. Sweetheart. My mascara is glued to my face and I’m pretty sure my soul left my body around three this morning.”

Pope considers that very seriously. “…you did throw up a lot.”

“I know!” She hides again instantly. “I was there!”

A tiny huff of air leaves him. 

Which is unfortunate because now she wants to die twice. “You gotta go,” she says again, softer this time. Embarrassed instead of dismissive and unsure if she’d rather he know the difference or not. “I need to clean up enough to feel human before anybody sees me.”

Pope goes quiet.

And Bonnie - despite the pillow, despite the lingering fog in her skull, despite the catastrophic state of her dignity - can feel him looking at her.

Thinking.

Finally he stands, because he knows enough to recognise wounded pride. The vanity chair creaks softly as he moves. “Okay,” he agrees, easy as anything. “I’ll make coffee.”

Bonnie lowers the pillow slowly.

This ridiculous, impossible man. There he is, standing rumpled and exhausted in yesterday’s clothes, informing her that he’ll be off making coffee for her after she accidentally got drugged. Like that’s the most obvious thing in the world for him to do next. Like it’s his duty.

Something warm and helpless twists painfully beneath her ribs.

“You’re a really good man.”

Pope freezes halfway to the door. 

Bonnie hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Or, rather, she did, but in a more polished way. Something filed down, gentled, smoothed so that he could hold it easier. 

But the words slip free before she can stop them, and she’s not about to take them back. 

Slowly he looks back at her. Bonnie expects deflection. Confusion. Maybe even discomfort, painted in broad strokes behind his eyes. Instead she finds him staring at her with that same quiet devastating focus he always gets when she says something that matters to him more than she intended.

And God, he looks exhausted. Exhausted and rumpled and so painfully earnest standing there in the early morning light that Bonnie’s chest aches.

Finally, Pope speaks very carefully. “You switched the plates.”

As if that explains everything. As if it means of course I stayed. Of course I came back, and watched you, and made sure to chase away your fears.

You switched the plates.

Bonnie’s throat tightens unexpectedly. There it is again; that strange unbearable simplicity he has. Not pretending anything was more or less than it was, just the truth laid gently between them. Bonnie looks away first.

Otherwise, with so many feelings still jumbled up under her skin, she’s liable to cry.

He goes. And he takes the bag from the trash can with him when he leaves too, which is a whole nother level of above and beyond. He just reaches down and takes it with him to throw out as he strides off. On his way to pretend he didn’t spend the night in her room, like pretending he took the drugs his mom’s been sneaking into his food is ordinary.

The whole thing honestly makes Bonnie want to scream a little into her pillow. Instead she rolls herself out of bed and stumbles towards the bathroom. The water in the shower is almost painfully hot against her skin. She stands beneath it far longer than necessary, forehead pressed against the tile, while steam slowly peels the lingering fog from her body. Her head still feels cotton-heavy and strange around the edges, but by the time she finally manages to scrub the mascara from her face she at least resembles a person again.

A haggard person.

A spiritually humbled person.

But a person none the less.

She emerges from the bathroom wrapped in one of her softer robes, skin pink from the heat, damp curls hanging down her back. The room still smells faintly like Pope, something she’s a little distressed to realize because it means she knows what he smells like. 

Bonnie pointedly refuses to think about that.

Instead she sits at her vanity and starts the slow familiar process of reconstruction. First moisturizer, then hair oil while it absorbs. Lip balm before the long process of detangling, sectioning, diffusing. Routine that makes her feel like she’s put together and tidy, even if her life isn’t. By the time she’s rubbing lotion into her skin, she finally starts feeling fully tethered to her body again.

Bonnie catches sight of herself in the mirror and pauses slightly. The woman in the glass isn’t wearing makeup. There’s no sweet smile, or carefully presented femininity yet. She’s just Bonnie. And for one horrifying moment she considers that this is what Pope saw when he looked at her. This is the woman he took meticulous care of all night long while she shivered and flinched at shadows and threw up into her bathroom trashcan.

Just Bonnie.

The realization hits low and dangerous in her chest. “Oh, that is just deeply unfortunate,” she mutters softly to her reflection.

Because now she knows. The same way that she knows her hair frizzes when the weather turns humid, and that she wears a size seven shoe. Like it’s an unchangeable fact - the kind of thing that is neither good nor bad. The kind of thing that just is.

She is a little in love with Andrew Cody. And there’s nothing at all to be done about that.

Pope is on edge all day. Everyone can tell, but only she already knows why.

Smurf certainly suspects - especially when he doesn’t drink the juice she sets out for him at breakfast and goes storming off. But it isn’t until lunch that she confirms it. Bonnie watches him look at her when he pointedly swaps his meal with Deran at the table. There’s some back and forth over the swap, but Craig puts a stop to it before she can think of a way to smooth it over without dosing herself again or just ‘accidentally’ knocking the bowl of chili onto the floor. 

And then Smurf quietly takes the bowl Craig is holding - the one she filled and originally set down in front of Pope - and exchanges it for her own. 

There is a beat. One where Pope and Smurf look at each other. Her face holds all the frustration of being outplayed, the warriness of what will come next. His is cold. Angry. Like a wolf that senses challenge and already smells blood. Then he’s up like a lightning strike and storming away in the direction of the garage. 

Bonnie can’t go after him. Even if she thought it would do anything, even if she wasn’t already uncomfortably aware of how emotionally compromised she already is, there isn’t an opening that makes sense. Especially because a few moments later Smurf goes after him herself, shoulders low, two orange bottles carried in her hand like an olive branch. 

Smurf announces she’s going out of town over breakfast two days later, like a queen informing the court she’ll be absent from her throne. “I’ll be home Sunday,” she says lightly, stirring cream into her coffee. “Try not to burn the house down while I’m gone.”

Craig’s face lights up immediately with the kind of joy usually reserved for lottery winners and cult leaders. “Oh, we are absolutely burning the house down.”

“You say that every time,” Deran mutters, though Bonnie catches the tiny upward twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Smurf points her spoon at them lazily. “This house had better be spotless when I get home.”

Bonnie keeps her attention on her hands, slicing strawberries into her yogurt with a steady rhythm. She can feel Pope watching Smurf across the table with that same hard animal quiet he’s had since the chili incident. Smurf feels it too. She can tell, because Smurf hasn’t looked directly at him once.

Interesting.

Craig, blissfully unconcerned with the emotional cold war currently occurring across the breakfast table, barrels onward. “We should throw a party.”

“We are not throwing a party,” Deran says automatically.

Craig turns toward him immediately. “Counterpoint: yes we are.”

“You both throw parties every time she leaves,” Bonnie says with a roll of her eyes.

“Exactly,” Craig says, pointing towards her. “Tradition!”

Bonnie hides a smile behind her coffee cup.

Smurf rises smoothly from the table, setting her mug in the sink before leaning down to kiss the top of Craig’s head. “If I come home and find strangers naked in my pool again, I’ll start shooting.”

“Love you too, Smurf.”

Then she’s gone.

The second the front door shuts behind her, Craig slaps the table once in triumph.

“Party.”

Deran exhales through his nose. “You’re like a labrador with access to fireworks.”

Craig points at Bonnie. “You’re coming.”

Bonnie doesn’t look up from her strawberries. “Mm. Depends.”

“On what?”

She finally glances up, serene as a summer morning. “Whether or not y’all promise not to get my hair wet.”

Craig bursts out laughing immediately. Deran snorts into his coffee. Even J cracks a reluctant smile. Bonnie’s hair has quietly become a household staple at this point. Everyone has now witnessed the increasingly elaborate rituals involved in washing, oiling, diffusing, pinning, wrapping, and generally maintaining the Southern pageant queen situation occurring atop her head.

Craig huffs at her dramatically. “Absolutely impossible promise. Someone’s absolutely gonna throw you in the pool. You’re always so put together it’s basically guaranteed to happen.”

Bonnie narrows her eyes. “Craig, if you or your idiot friends dunk me when you know full well it takes me forty five minutes to diffuse my curls I will actually kill you.”

“That sounds fake.”

“Craig-”

“Nobody throws Bonnie in the pool,” Pope says quietly, without looking up from his plate.

The room stills for half a second. Not because the statement is aggressive, although everything about Pope has been prickly for days; because he says it with so much certainty that the threat beneath it is impossible to miss.

Craig’s grin falters just slightly as he glances between them.

And Bonnie, who can physically feel herself becoming more emotionally compromised by the hour, very deliberately keeps her expression neutral while something warm unfurls low in her chest anyway.

Bonnie appears an hour before sunset in a pale yellow two piece with a high waisted bottom and a structured top that makes her look more like a pinup than an influencer. She’s thrown a sheer white button down over it, oversized enough that it slips off one shoulder every time she reaches for her drink. Her curls are piled high on her head and stylishly wrapped in a scarf to protect them from humidity, enormous sunglasses perched on top of her head like a movie star trying unsuccessfully to pretend she isn’t pretty.

Alcohol flows as freely as ever at the Cody house, but she does her best to temper her drinking. She knows how these parties can get…

Which is why it’s super odd when she turns and sees not only Catherine, but Lena there. 

The sight stops Bonnie cold for half a heartbeat. Not because Catherine came - honestly, that part isn’t hard to understand. Cath’s relationship with the Codys may currently resemble a hostage negotiation, but she still gets pulled back into orbit every time the family gathers long enough, and she imagines that with Smurf out of town everything feels a little less dire for her. No, what catches Bonnie off guard is Catherine, who usually acts like Lena so much as standing too close to the rest of them will corrupt her, actually brought the little girl along.

This is not a child friendly environment.

Music rattles the patio speakers hard enough to vibrate the pool water. Half the guests are already drunk, the other half are high, and Craig’s idiot friends are actively attempting backflips off the roof with the confidence of men who’ve never once considered spinal injuries. Somebody is smoking something that definitely didn’t come from a cigarette carton. And one girl Bonnie’s never seen before is currently crying in a bikini top beside the hot tub while a shirtless man explains cryptocurrency to her with the conviction of a cult leader.

No one is naked yet at the very least, but this is still no place for a six year old.

Bonnie’s eyes flick over Catherine. It’s not hard to see exhaustion. Her body holds all the tension of a cornered animal, and behind her eyes? The impossible calculation of a mother who doesn’t trust her husband’s family, but cannot bear leaving her daughter alone.

Well that’s upsetting.

Lena, meanwhile, appears to be delighted to be here. She tears past Catherine’s legs in little light-up sandals shrieking Craig’s name at a volume capable of cracking glass. Craig immediately scoops her up one handed and swings her onto his shoulders like this is the greatest thing that’s happened to him all week.

Bonnie watches Catherine track the movement with visible anxiety, and finds herself scanning for Baz. 

Honestly, this entire situation feels like something he should be handling better. Not fixing necessarily - Bonnie’s beginning to suspect Catherine may not actually want things fixed so much as acknowledged. But that doesn’t excuse him. Baz should be managing this for both Catherine and for the family. Softening the edges. He’s good at that sort of thing, better at it than any of the rest of them by miles. He knows how to charm people into settling down, how to redirect tension before it becomes a problem. Half his value to the family comes from his ability to make bad ideas sound reasonable long enough for everybody else to get on board.

And yet Catherine still looks perpetually two seconds from grabbing Lena and fleeing into the sea.

Bonnie watches Baz drift over to his wife with a beer in hand and an easy smile already in place. Catherine accepts the drink, but not the smile. Her shoulders remain tight. Her eyes remain tired.

Interesting.

Then again…

Bonnie takes a slow sip from her vodka soda as she reconsiders. The thing about Baz’s charm is it works best in short bursts. Not just for her, though perhaps she can understand why the easiest. It’s not that he couldn’t choose to soothe his wife, it’s that he isn’t built to.

That’s the thing nobody really notices because most people only encounter him briefly. He’s deeply magnetic…in contained doses. Handsome, attentive, easygoing, emotionally intelligent enough to mirror back exactly what someone wants to see. He can smooth over almost anything for an evening.

But long-term?

Long-term requires consistency. Patience. Repetition. The willingness to keep tending the same emotional garden over and over even after it stops being interesting. Baz isn’t the type of man who can stomach being uninterested. He likes outcomes more than maintenance.

And poor, exhausted Catherine looks like a woman who has spent years begging to be maintained instead of managed.

It wouldn’t even be all that difficult to soothe the woman. A little petting, a little carefully constructed illusory distance, and…well. Bonnie isn’t foolish enough to think that Catherine would stop pushing at Smurf entirely, but she’d certainly lash out less frequently. The thing about Catherine is she doesn’t so much fear the Cody men as she does the way this family absorbs people. And Lena - bright, beloved little Lena - is already being absorbed. Worse, she wants to be. Because the quiet tragedy of the Cody’s is that they do genuinely love each other; fiercely, ruinously, enough to choke on it.

Bonnie glances away quickly, before the other woman can catch her looking. That’s when she notices Pope across the yard. He looks just as upset as he has for the past few days, and Bonnie feels her stomach drop as he cuts through the crowd towards Catherine. She already knows that whatever is about to happen is going to be a car crash; painful, and unnecessary. 

He looks at her with such desperation. Shows her the pill bottles with such hope. And Bonnie doesn’t have to see Catherine’s face to know that he's about to be devastated.

It's there in her posture. How she shrinks from him, tries to make herself smaller. The way she won’t look at his face. The way she shifts to stand between him and Lena like she thinks he’ll charge across the yard and snatch her up like a wild thing.

Bonnie can feel her heart break for him. 

Because it can’t be her. She knows it can’t be her, has no expectations of him or of having some kind of whirlwind romance. But if it’s not going to be her then it should still be someone. He deserves to have someone.

Bonnie watches Catherine recoil by inches while Pope stands there holding those stupid orange bottles like proof of devotion.

And God, is he trying. That’s the awful thing - he’s trying so hard to give her the maintenance she craves. But the man can’t change his nature. Pope is intense all the time, and he really doesn't know how to be anything else. Catherine can’t handle intensity. She fundamentally doesn’t understand that it’s not the same thing as danger, and all she wants with her entire heart and soul is peace.

He’s trying to offer it to her. Offering, constantly, to hold her gently with his damaged, caring hands. Not gracefully. Not normally. Not in any way that softens the sharp edges of him into something easier to hold. But he is still trying with every tool he has, trying hard enough that Bonnie can practically feel the hope coming off him from thirty feet away.

Catherine says something Bonnie can’t hear over the music and whatever it is lands badly. Pope’s face changes immediately. It’s not a dramatic shift. Most people probably wouldn’t catch it. But Bonnie does. She watches the hope shutter itself away behind his eyes in real time, sees his shoulders lock into something harder. Something hurt. He looks smaller somehow, despite his size.

Then Catherine goes and grabs Lena from the pool, takes her hand, and walks away.

Pope doesn’t follow. He doesn’t even move. He just stands there in the middle of the party holding the pill bottles while people laugh and drink and cannonball into the pool behind him.

Something awful twists through Bonnie’s chest, lurching her stomach until she honestly thinks she might throw up.

Because Pope looks at Catherine the way he looks at Bonnie sometimes; like he’s handing someone a piece of himself and praying they won’t drop it. Like he knows they probably won't be able to hold it long, but he’d be grateful if they tried for even a few seconds.

And before she can stop herself or think better of it, Bonnie abandons her drink and starts walking toward him. “Hey,” she says softly, the mask falling away before she really thinks about putting it down. “Do people surf in the evenings?”

He blinks at her before answering. “...Sunset’s popular.”

“Neat,” She nods. “Go get in the truck.”

Pope stares at her for a long moment. Bonnie doesn’t flinch. She just stands there and stares right back.

It kills her a little bit that he turns without another word and heads for the driveway. There should probably be more argument from him, or at least a few questions. Instead he has the car cranked by the time she gets there with towels, board and suit in the back, ac already on because he knows her makeup cakes if the air isn’t going. Bonnie slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door quietly behind her. The truck smells like sunscreen, salt, and Pope.

The party still roars on; music thumping, people shouting, somebody laughing loud enough to echo down the block. Pope backs out of the driveway without looking at the house once. She watches the tension in his jaw, the rigid line of his shoulders, the way his hands sit too tight on the steering wheel. He is hurt, and raw, and still emotionally standing in the wreckage of another failed attempt to be understood. And despite everything - despite Catherine, despite the pills, despite the increasingly catastrophic state of her own emotional wellbeing - Bonnie feels relief settle through her.

Because he came with her like that was always the obvious choice for him to make.

By the time they get to the beach it’s the golden hour. The sky has started turning molten at the edges, gold bleeding slowly into pink across the horizon while the water darkens into blue-green glass. A few surfers still drift beyond the break like seals in the distance.

Pope kills the engine and for a second neither of them moves. Then Bonnie reaches over, plucks the keys from the ignition, and points at the ocean. “Go on, get.”

Pope studies her carefully. “You sure?”

Bonnie snorts softly. “Andrew, I did not drag you all the way out here to watch you brood in a parking lot.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. Then he climbs out, suits up, grabs his board from the truck bed, and heads for the water.

Bonnie watches him go.

He looks different out there; lighter somehow. Not happy exactly - Pope rarely looks happy, even when he is. More like some essential part of him that never unclenches all the way has nevertheless aligned. Like the ocean speaks a language his body understands better than it does other people.

She walks the beach for a while, half an eye on him and half on scanning for sea glass. Eventually she settles herself in the sand on one of the towels, her knees drawn up loosely beneath her chin while the tide creeps closer inch by inch.

Pope doesn’t look back toward shore once.

She doesn’t mind. Means he trusts she’s still there.

Out in the water, Pope cuts cleanly across the face of a wave, sharp and certain and completely unlike the man who stood stranded beside the pool holding pill bottles thirty minutes ago. Bonnie watches him surf until the sun dips low enough to set. And when Pope finally paddles back in, soaked through and breathing hard, he doesn’t look fixed.

But he does look steadier.

Which, Bonnie suspects, may be the closest thing to peace either of them really knows how to handle.

Smurf drops the news in the garage like she’s announcing bad weather instead of the possible collapse of a million dollar heist. 

“Paul wants another fifty.”

The entire room stills. Craig, halfway through a beer, squints. “Another fifty what?”

“Grand,” Smurf says shortly.

“Oh, fuck that,” Deran snaps immediately.

Pope says nothing, but Bonnie sees his shoulders go tight beside the workbench.

Craig looks confused first, then angry as the implications catch up with him. “Wait - he’s changing the deal now?”

Baz crosses his arms with a sigh. “Apparently.” He sounds irritated, but not surprised enough for Bonnie. And that, more than the money, is what finally lights the fuse under her temper.

Bonnie slowly turns to look at him. “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me.”

Baz glances at her. “Relax. We’ll handle it.”

“No,” Bonnie says flatly. “Y’all will pay him because he’s got leverage now.”

Craig leans back against the tool chest. “Well…yeah.”

Bonnie laughs, sharp and deeply unamused. “Oh, that is just embarrassin’.”

Baz’s eyes narrow immediately. “Excuse me?”

She turns toward him fully now, fury arriving cold instead of loud. Because honestly? The money barely matters. This was sloppy, and sloppy is what puts good operators in bracelets. “Paul should never have felt comfortable enough to renegotiate after the fact,” she says crisply. “That man oughta be thanking God every night that he got included at all.”

Baz folds his arms. “You don’t know him.”

“No,” Bonnie shoots back, “you know him. That should have been enough.”

Deran goes still.

Craig quietly mutters, “Oof,” into his beer.

Smurf’s eyes sharpen, but with attention rather than threat. She has no intention of stepping in, which means Bonnie hasn’t crossed a line. So she keeps going, because now that she’s started she genuinely can’t stop. “You treated him like a business partner instead of a mark.”

Baz scoffs. “He’s a mark.”

“Y’all ain’t acting like it!” Bonnie throws up her hands. “Baz, honey, you don’t cut in a mark. The trick is making them happy about bein’ used.”

His jaw tightens. Bonnie has never challenged him operationally before, and she’s close to bruising his ego. Well tough - the bruise will heal. She’s not about to let him being careless slide; once it’s a pattern it’ll just get worse. “He’s nervous,” Baz says. “This is bigger than what he thought and he’s worried about being left with the bag.”

“Yes,” Bonnie snaps. “Which means you should have soothed him before he ever got the chance to get anxious and grow a spine about it. You should know better.”

Pope’s eyes flick toward her immediately at the sharpness in her voice.

Bonnie barely notices.

“She’s right,” Deran says quietly from the corner.

Baz rounds on him. “Don’t start.”

But Bonnie’s already on a roll, hands firmly on her hips. “A hundred thousand dollars was already too much,” she says. “You know how you keep somebody like Paul manageable? You make him feel included. Smart. Necessary. You let him brag a little. You pet him every few days like an anxious show horse until he thinks loyalty was his own idea.”

Craig starts laughing into his hand. Bonnie points at him furiously without looking away from Baz. “You hush.

“And another thing - why in God’s name does he feel like he can pressure you?”

Baz’s expression hardens. “Careful.”

“No, you be careful,” Bonnie fires back immediately. “Because right now you’ve got a jittery middleman holdin’ the timeline hostage because you got impatient with his upkeep. Maintenance is the lifeblood of a long con, if you were gonna get bored you should have let me take point.”

Dead silence.

Baz stares at her for a long moment. “You done?”

“No, but I’m tryin’ to be,” Bonnie says honestly, throwing her arms up and turning away from him. 

Craig outright chokes on his drink.

Smurf finally exhales through her nose and sets down her coffee cup with a soft clink. “We’ll pay him,” she says calmly.

Baz turns toward her immediately. “Smurf-”

“No.” Her voice sharpens just enough to cut him off. “The last thing we need right now is a nervous man making unpredictable decisions over fifty thousand dollars.”

Bonnie folds her arms tightly across her chest but wisely says nothing further. She’s already aware she’s pushed this about as far as she safely can.

Since she does, Smurf’s gaze slides toward Baz instead of her. There’s no real anger there, but there is annoyance. “You should’ve handled him better,” she says plainly.

Baz’s jaw flexes. “I did handle him.”

“For a week,” Bonnie mutters before she can stop herself.

Smurf’s eyes flick briefly toward Bonnie. The look doesn’t reprimand. It’s almost…amused.

“She’s right,” Smurf says. “You let him start thinking transactionally.”

Baz scoffs. “It is transactional.”

“No,” Smurf says coldly. “Not to him. That’s the point.”

Dead silence settles across the garage.

Smurf leans back against the workbench, eyes still on Baz. “You got impatient,” she says finally. “And impatience gets expensive. You paid the tuition baby; learn the lesson.”

The Pendleton money smells like opportunity and fryer grease. 

Bonnie sits cross legged on the floor beside the coffee table while Smurf stacks banded bills into neat towers with the reverence of a priestess laying out ritual offerings. Around them the house hums low with the exhausted exhilaration that follows a successful score.

A freshly showered Craig is halfway sprawled across the couch grinning. Deran keeps recounting the moment they stuffed the truck driver into the back of his own truck with the increasingly animated energy of a man who’s just realized they actually pulled it off. Even Baz looks a little looser around the shoulders, despite being annoyed that Catherine had evidently chosen today of all days to run off to god knew where and leave him with Lena, who was currently sprawled in the den watching cartoons loud enough to rattle the hallway. The little girl seemed pretty absorbed in them, but Bonnie was keeping a look out for little eyes anyway.

And Pope…

Bonnie glances toward him automatically. He’s sitting slightly apart from the rest of them in the armchair nearest the patio doors, still and watchful in the way he sometimes gets. Like he’s turned all that intensity inward on himself. Like violence and precision create some kind of internal static in him and he has to look at it to sort through it.

Their eyes meet briefly.

Something warm flickers low in Bonnie’s stomach before she immediately ignores it on principle.

Smurf finishes another stack and nods once, satisfied. “Good work, boys.”

Craig beams openly at the praise while Deran tries to pretend it doesn’t mean just as much to him.

Meanwhile, J’s been silently leaning against the wall for the last twenty minutes. She’s admiring the tower of bills when he finally speaks up. “Is there somewhere you can hide this?”

The room stills. Smurf looks up slowly. “What?”

J’s face is unreadable. Calm in the way people get right before they jump off something tall. She doesn’t know it yet, but Bonnie will remember that look for a long time. “There are two cops waiting for me to text them,” he says evenly. “So they can raid the house.”

Silence crashes down across the room.

Bonnie feels her own heartbeat drop hard into her stomach as the entire shape of the room changes around her in an instant. The Cody’s are not a family anymore, they are a crew staring down a crisis.

And she’s not a Cody.

Smurf rises slowly from the couch. Every trace of warmth vanishes from her face so completely it almost startles Bonnie to witness it happen in real time. And she knows with cold certainty that how Smurf chooses to play this will either make or break her. The woman will either account for her…or decide she’s outlived her value.

“How long?” Smurf asks.

J swallows once. “Since before the job.”

Bonnie feels cold all over.

Smurf’s eyes move around the room once with sharp concentration. They don’t stop when they finally land on Bonnie, she’s simply the last person that Smurf needs to look at. “Baby,” she says calmly, “go put on coffee.”

The relief that crashes through Bonnie hits so hard it nearly buckles her knees. It’s almost embarrassing, but she’ll worry about feeling that later. For now she’s too busy keeping her composure over being included, at being given even the smallest task. Being sent away would have been a death sentence. Oh, maybe not literally, but she knows how Smurf operates. If she’d been sent back to her apartment then she may as well have tried for the border since Smurf would definitely have been setting her up to take whatever amount of fall would protect the boys. But being kept close meant that she still floated in the harbor of Smurf’s good opinion.

No tempest would toss her today.

Bonnie rises immediately without argument, already understanding the assignment beneath the assignment. Keep moving, don’t panic, make the house look lived in and normal. “Yes ma’am. Do ya want me to put the roast in too?”

Smurf gives her a small nod, a flash of approval in her eyes.

She’s already moved on to giving Craig and Deran directions on how to hide the money in the pool filter by the time Bonnie heads towards the kitchen. As she passes Pope’s chair, his fingers move just enough to graze briefly against the back of her knee.

A check-in.

She lets her hip brush against the side of his chair in response.

The raid hits all at once.

Smurf had told her it would. Bonnie’d been halfway through seasoning the roast when she’d stepped quietly into the kitchen behind her. She hadn’t been rushing, hadn’t had an edge of panic to her movements. Smurf had walked in the same way she always did, which somehow felt more frightening than if she’d been yelling. “You ever dealt with a raid before, baby?”

Bonnie glanced up from the cutting board. “No ma’am. Never had that kind of attention.”

Smurf nods once like that confirms something for her.

“They’re gonna come in loud,” she says matter-of-factly. “A lot of shouting. Rifles. Masks. They do it on purpose - overwhelm the room before anybody gets ideas.”

Bonnie feels her stomach tighten but keeps slicing carrots carefully. “Alright then.”

Smurf watches her for another second. Then she reaches out, grabs her softly by the chin, and turns her head until their eyes meet. “When they come through that door, you do not run. You do not reach for anything. You keep your hands where they can see them and you stay calm.”

Bonnie nods immediately. “Yes ma’am.”

“And baby?” Smurf waits a beat to make sure Bonnie is listening. “You’re not one of my boys. Don’t act like one.”

The statement sounds strange. It neither disparages the boys nor passes judgement on her. It is simply…instruction. Bonnie takes her meaning almost at once. The boys posture when threatened. They bristle, push back, bare their teeth. Smurf is not telling her to put on a mask, she’s telling her to peel one off.

“Stay soft,” Bonnie says quietly, understanding dawning.

Something almost approving flickers through Smurf’s eyes. “That’s right.”

Then, like discussing weather patterns instead of an armed police raid, Smurf reaches past her to steal a slice of carrot off the cutting board. “And keep Lena close when she gets scared,” she adds casually. “You’re better comfort than the boys are.”

And just like that she’s gone again, already moving back toward the living room to continue orchestrating the crisis.

Bonnie had stood alone in the kitchen for a long moment afterward, staring down at the knife in her hand.

Stay soft.

Lord have mercy.

One second the house smells like coffee and pot roast and fryer grease hidden in the walls. Then everything bursts into sound. The front door, already unlocked and left open to stop the officers from damaging it, slams inward hard enough to rattle the windows.

Bonnie startles so violently she drops the coffee mug in her hands. Men flood the house in black tactical gear and rifles, shouting over one another with the terrifying mechanical confidence of people fully prepared for violence.

For one blinding second Bonnie can’t breathe. There are too many guns, too many people all talking too loud. There's coffee and porcelain on the floor, and every instinct she possesses screams at her to run.

Then she hears Lena scream.

Bonnie goes to her without thinking, which is stupid because there are a lot of armed men who don’t want her to move. She goes anyway, crossing the den in three quick strides and dropping to her knees beside the couch where Lena has curled in on herself in terror.

“Hey, hey, baby, it’s okay-”

It isn’t. It’s absolutely not ok. But Bonnie says it anyway, because adults are supposed to lie to children during frightening things. 

Lena launches herself into Bonnie’s arms hard enough to nearly knock her backward. She gathers her close automatically, one hand over the back of Lena’s head while the other rubs firm steady circles between her shoulders.

“It’s alright,” she murmurs again, softer now. “I’ve got you sweet pea. This’ll all be over soon.”

Around them the house erupts into controlled chaos. Boots hammer across hardwood. Drawers slam open. Men shout commands. Bonnie flinches despite herself when one officer storms past the doorway with a rifle angled across his chest. There’s some shouting, and then Pope appears beside them so fast it almost feels like he was conjured. Not touching them, not crowding, just standing between Bonnie, Lena, and the door. The cops clearly aren't happy that he moved, but his hands are up and he’s not really doing anything except…

Guarding them.

Bonnie looks up at him from where she’s crouched on the floor with the girl in her arms. Pope’s expression is unreadable in that awful still way he gets when he’s furious enough to become calm. But his eyes flick over them, then the room, the exits, where the cops are standing.

Lena’s tiny fingers clutch tighter in Bonnie’s shirt.

Her heart is still trying to beat its way out of her chest, but even so Bonnie can already see with a strange distant clarity that years from now this is what Lena will remember. Not the guns. Not the shouting. Just that when the scary men came into the house, Bonnie was there to hold her, and Uncle Pope didn’t let anyone get close.

She shifts slightly to let her heel press against his.

It was Pope who’d taught you to shoot. When you’d started getting closer to the eldest Cody brother he’d been endlessly worried that you didn’t know how to defend yourself. That you just didn’t have that dog in you; the one who would bite when cornered. He’d taken you to the shooting range over and over again, despite your protests. You’d tried everything, even doing so far as to wear increasingly ridiculous shoes and complain about your arm aching. All that got you was a new pair of sneakers that lived in Pope’s truck, and him insisting you start exercising with him so he could help you build up better muscles in your arms and back. And while you have to admit that the shoes were comfortable and you looked and felt good about the lean muscles you’d started to develop, you still didn’t like shooting.

Still, you liked Pope. And all this meant was you got to spend even more one on one time together, away from his brother’s relentless partying and Smurf’s sharp gaze.

Smurf. God…

The woman hated you. Everyone knew it. Oh, she’d certainly act pleasant enough - had to really, since forcing Pope to choose between you and her would have made the man spiral past the point of usefulness. Would honestly have broken him. So she was civil with you, but never welcoming. Hated the idea of you working with the boys, even if there wasn’t much she could do about it now that they’d stopped letting her run their heists. 

You honestly barely factored into most jobs. You might have been a decent thief, but Pope hated the idea of you being part of what they did. Not crime, god knows you’d been in the life for ages before you met him. But the small time cons and romance schemes you’d done wasn’t exactly bank robbery. So the most he usually allowed was you driving the car or scouting the marks. He knew better than anyone that you were too gentle to do what needed to be done. 

At least, you had thought you were.

Your hands shake, the shot still ringing in your ears. You wish you could say that you don’t know what possessed you, but you do. Everyone, it turns out, has a limit. And yours is apparently Pope.

You love him. Desperately. Earnestly. With an intensity that would scare you if the man wasn’t exactly as devoted to you in return. You’d spoken sometimes about running away together, whispering back and forth in the dark. Had dreamed of different beaches, or even mountains. The Caribbean. The east coast. South America. Had quietly pictured a life together, less violent crimes, maybe a little house with a yard where tiny feet would run and small hands would reach for you both without fear.

And now your hands have blood on them.

This heist was supposed to be easy. When Smurf had suggested it you’d been surprised to be included, but she’d insisted you be there. An easy in and out, the most you’d have to do is carry a heavy box or two and drive the car while the boys did the rest. And it had all gone according to plan…until you’d all heard the gunfire ringing through the trees. Your heart had nearly stopped. Pope was still out there, doing god knew what, as bullets flew.

You’d thought that things would be alright when he came flying down the road in a stolen truck for all of five seconds, until Smurf had started screaming at you all. About how she had intended to die. About how she had intended Pope to die with her. And then she was waving her own gun around demanding Pope pick one up too, that he shoot her, that he take the shot that even after everything she'd done to him would absolutely ruin him-

Smurf fired over his shoulder when he couldn’t even bring himself to aim at her, and your brain shut off. 

You’d snatched the gun from J’s hand.

Raised it, just like Pope had taught you to.

And pulled the trigger.

Smurf hit the ground with a soft thud, like a pile of meat being dropped carelessly to lay where it fell. And you stood there, arm still raised, the recoil making your arm ache, as all of them turned to look at you with various amounts of shock.

Your eyes lock onto Pope. “...I’m not sorry,” you gasp out, already starting to shake. “I’m not…Andy, I’m not sorry-”. 

He bends at the waist with a strangled sound, one hand braced against his knee as he dry-heaves. Then he’s stumbling towards you, reaching out as you shrink away to pull you towards him. His hands cup your cheeks, thumbs brushing away the tears you hadn’t realized were streaming down your face as your mouth just runs.

I’m not sorry. I-I’m not. I’m not sorry-

Pope crushes you to him, rocking you both softly side to side. Cradling you, as you sob into his chest. Everything resolves for him with sickening clarity. 

Smurf had made sure you were part of this job. She'd insisted. She'd known exactly what she was planning. She'd meant for both of them to die; maybe even right in front of you. She would have shot him herself and made you watch. Made the sweetest person he'd ever known carry that image for the rest of your life.

Instead, you're clinging to him, shaking so hard he can barely keep you upright.

I'm not sorry.

The words keep spilling out between broken sobs.

You're the girl who apologizes to spiders before carrying them outside. He knows you. Knows this will haunt you for the rest of your life. You'll replay the recoil. The sound. The way she fell.

No. You’ll always be sorry that you took a life. That isn’t what you’re saying, what you’re begging him to understand. What you’re not sorry for, is that Smurf didn't get what she wanted.

And honestly...

On top of that, Catherine is nowhere to be seen, which is making Smurf furious. First it was that Lena was sick, then it was that Cath herself was under the weather. They’re stupid excuses, and Smurf is losing patience with what is, essentially the silent treatment. Tension in the house is high, and she almost considers retreating to her apartment for a few days before she thinks better of it. The last thing she needs is for Smurf to refocus her anger at Catherine onto her. Besides, she’d really rather be close to the action. If Paul does threaten to walk she’s not sure she could do much, but it would at least be more that she could do from her apartment.

Meanwhile, Smurf’s pacing around the edges of conversations with a smile too bright to mean anything good. Deran’s avoiding everyone. J vanished upstairs hours ago, clearly tense around Baz for reasons Bonnie doesn’t have the capacity to dig into right now. Baz himself keeps checking his phone in a way that makes her want to throw it in the pool. And every time Paul says anything or his name comes up, the whole house tightens another degree.

Bonnie handles it beautifully.

She laughs when she’s supposed to laugh. Smooths over tension before it spikes. Keeps the conversation moving when silence starts gathering teeth. She makes tea for Smurf without being asked. Redirects Craig twice before he says something genuinely inflammatory. Makes sure J actually eats dinner. Smiles. Smiles. Smiles.

And all the while Pope watches her from various corners of the house.

By the time she starts reorganizing the fridge for absolutely no reason besides needing her hands occupied, he’s visibly irritated. Bonnie’s halfway through lining up condiment bottles by height when Pope appears beside her.

“Come on,” he says, closing the fridge door before she can stop him.

She blinks at him, surprised that he has opinions on her mustard organization. “What - ”

He just shakes his head and herds her through the sliding glass doors. “Outside.”

Bonnie lets him, mostly because curiosity has long since overridden self preservation where Pope Cody is concerned. The late afternoon air feels thick outside, the concrete warm beneath her sandals. Pope walks her through the side gate and into the driveway. He heads straight toward the Scout, digs into the center console, and pulls out a folded stack of cash.

Which he promptly hands to her.

Bonnie blinks down at it. “Um…?”

“Go to the store.”

She looks up slowly. “Pope, I ask this with love - what the hell are you talking about?”

His face twists into something between pained and displeased. “Your smile’s wrong.” The words land so sharp she actually stills. Pope shifts his weight slightly, eyes fixed somewhere near her shoulder instead of directly at her face now. “It’s been wrong for days.”

Bonnie opens her mouth automatically, then closes it again. Because really, what is she supposed to say to that? ‘How dare you notice the difference between my working smile and the one I save for -’

She doesn’t let that thought finish. 

Pope nods towards the money in her hands. “You gotta get outta here for a while. So go to the store.”

“...I don’t think we need anything for supper.”

“So buy snacks,” he says with a shrug. “Or ice cream, or whatever booze you actually drink. Hell, go to lunch. I don’t care what you get as long as you take a few hours to get it.”

For a moment she just stands there. “I’m taking my car,” she finally declares.

Pope shrugs. “Theres gas in it.”

Then he turns and walks back inside. Baz looks over from where he stands by the pool when Bonnie doesn’t return with him. “You good?” he calls over.

She nods. “Yeah, just…gonna pick up some stuff. You want anything from Sprouts?”

Baz looks at her for a beat too long. “Nah. I’m good.”

Bonnie nods and heads for the car, not catching the thoughtful look on the man’s face. He puts his phone to his ear and before she closes her car door she can just hear him say “Hey, can you do me a favor?”

Sprouts is a place she always feels ever so slightly guilty about walking into. It’s a nice enough store, but the idea that anyone would pay so much for apples always appalls her a bit. Even when she’s the one buying them.

Bonnie’s halfway through evaluating a watermelon when Catherine finds her.

It’s not by chance, Bonnie can tell that without thinking. She realizes it immediately from the speed of Catherine’s cart and the expression on her face. This, unfortunately, smacks of Baz trying to massage something. Also, women who are simply grocery shopping do not corner other women in produce with this level of determination.

Bonnie knocks lightly against the melon again, listening. It’s heavy, but doesn’t sound hollow enough. “Huh,” she murmurs. “That won’t do...”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

Jesus. Straight to the point then.

Bonnie doesn’t look up immediately. Just sets the watermelon back down carefully into the pile before reaching for another one. It has some scratches from little claws - always promising. “Cathy, baby, if you’re gonna ambush me at Sprouts you could at least be polite about it.”

Catherine steps closer instead of laughing. “I’m serious.”

Bonnie finally glances over.

The thing about Catherine is that she always looks backed into a corner. Even when she’s angry, there’s hurt underneath it. Bonnie had spent years around Southern women trained to bury feelings so deeply beneath etiquette that you only recognized hostility by the temperature drop in the room. Catherine, by comparison, wears herself right on the surface. And right now?

She looks scared.

Interesting.

“No,” Bonnie says simply, tapping the new melon thoughtfully. “No offence, but while I have a lot of professional respect for your husband, there is no universe in which I’d want to sleep with him.”

“Not Baz - Pope.” Catherine searches her face hard enough to qualify as invasive. “Are you sleeping with Pope.”

Bonnie feels something ice over in her chest. Dangerous, and mean. Bless her heart. Now Catherine has her full attention.

“I don’t rightly think that’s any of your business,” she says with the kind of smile that could set an icebox pie. “But as it so happens, no. I don’t generally feel the need to secure my standing by lyin’ on my back.”

Catherine flinches. Bonnie’d feel bad about it if it was any other week, but honestly? All she feels is faint embarrassment that the barb wasn’t as elegant as it could have been. She came out to leave the stress from the Cody family and the current job behind for a little while. All she was trying to do was walk around, buy a god damned watermelon, and maybe go out for a milkshake after. But Catherine has been nipping at her for months because she’s easier to attack than Smurf, and Bonnie finds that this may just be her final straw. 

Catherine’s voice sharpens. “You think that’s what this is?”

Bonnie's smile doesn’t leave her face, but it certainly doesn’t reach her eyes. She sets the watermelon back into the pile with deliberate care. “I think you’re frustrated, and a little bit frightened - like a mouse who’s not particularly good at dodging the barn cat and knows it,” she says honestly. “I also happen to think you’re lookin’ for somewhere to put it, and can’t stand that I won’t carry it for you.”

“You can’t seriously tell me you’re not scared of him too,” Catherine scoffs. “Of all of them, and how quickly they’d throw you away the second you stopped doing what they say..”

There it is again. The fear. The one that’s been driving Catherine since long before Bonnie ever stepped foot in California. 

Bonnie studies her for a long moment, struck by the difference in which they walk through the world. She isn’t wrong, is the thing. If Bonnie didn’t pull her weight she knows she’d go from being classified as ‘useful’ to being classified as ‘a potential loose end’. There’s no mercy in Smurf Cody, no loyalty to anything but her immediate family - and Julia proved that even that has limits. Catherine knows that. Bonnie knows that. 

But unlike Catherine, Bonnie has chosen to make herself unquestionably useful rather than throw a tantrum about it.

And Catherine isn’t wrong about Pope either. He is intense. He does get attached strangely. He does watch Bonnie with an attention that occasionally makes her feel like she’s being carefully memorized.

But fear? No. Never fear. Not of him at least. 

“No,” Bonnie says quietly. “I’m not scared of him.”

Catherine laughs once under her breath, exhausted and disbelieving. “Then you don’t understand who he is.”

And maybe Bonnie should let it go. Maybe a dumber woman would. But the suspicion of something romantic happening between her and Pope, even if it’s only between Catherine and Baz, even if it might be more than a little bit true on her part? That puts her in danger. That threatens to turn the ground beneath her feet into sand. Because Bonnie is only on solid ground so long as Smurf allows her to stand there, and that allowance will thin dramatically the second she looks like she’s distracting one of the boys.

This will require maneuvering. 

“Maybe no one does,” Bonnie says with a casual shrug and dangerous eyes. “Either way, I don’t much appreciate being accosted with baseless accusations.”

“Bonnie,” Catherine intones desperately, leaning forward to make her point. “You can’t fix him.”

The absolute absurdity of that idea has a laugh escaping her before she can stop it. “Fix him? Oh honey. Ain’t nobody tryin’ to fix him. But not poking at the man hardly means I’m lettin’ him poke me.”

That clearly hits Catherine strangely. Like the idea that anyone could calmly accept Pope and receive nothing in exchange is simply beyond the pale. That's the bit that never seems to translate to these people, Bonnie muses. She isn’t nurturing by nature. She’s never looked at broken things with the need to repair them. The only thing she considers is whether or not she can live with the damage.

And unfortunately for her self preservation, she’s growing uncomfortably aware that she can.

Bonnie, already stressed, already compromised, already halfway emotionally ruined by a man who changes her brake pads before dawn, suddenly wants out of this conversation with the urgency of a cornered animal.

She smiles again immediately, bright and poisonous. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I came here for fruit and probiotics, not an interrogation.”

Then she turns and walks away before Catherine can say another word, clutching the watermelon against her chest like it personally offended her.

Bonnie takes her time getting back. Not enough to be suspicious about it, but enough to sand the edges off herself before she walks back into the Cody house. 

The watermelon gets cut first when she gets home, because it’s the messiest task and also the one that lets her use a knife. Then the other groceries get unpacked. Yogurt lined neatly in the fridge. Produce washed and dried. Granola decanted into a glass jar because Bonnie firmly believes cereal tastes better when it feels expensive.

After that comes the bath.

Not for luxury exactly. For recalibration. Bonnie sinks down into lilac scented water and lets herself entirely stop performing for forty uninterrupted minutes. No smiles. No smoothing tension. No careful conversational choreography. Just heat and silence and the distant realization that somewhere along the way Pope Cody learned the difference between her real smile and the one she wears professionally.

By the time she emerges she’s steadier. Still annoyed, and worried about the heist, and concerned that one wrong implication about her and the eldest Cody son will irreparably damage her standing with Smurf. But steadier.

So Bonnie does what Southern women have done since the dawn of civilization in moments of emotional crisis. She fixes her hair, freshens her lipstick, and goes downstairs to supper.

The atmosphere in the dining room feels wrong immediately.

It doesn’t take long to see why. Catherine is here, and stupidly didn’t bother to bring Lena with her. Smurf’s smiling too much, because while having Catherine back in her orbit is a win it’s cheapened somewhat by not also getting to further ingratiate herself with her granddaughter. Catherine’s posture is too straight. She knows what she’s done, she hasn’t so much as indicated she’s sorry for pulling away from the family - a sin worthy of excommunication - and worse, she clearly thinks Smurf should apologize to her.

Meanwhile, Baz is pretending not to monitor both of them like he expects them to start swinging over the meatloaf.  Deran looks like he’d rather chew glass than participate in whatever this is. Craig’s pupils are dilated, which tells her everything she needs to know about how he’s chosen to handle this. J’s eyes are firmly on his plate, and Pope-

Pope looks up the second Bonnie walks in. His expression loosens immediately at the sight of her, some of the near constant tightness leaving his shoulders so fast Bonnie almost misses the transition. Then his eyes narrow slightly.

Tracking.

Assessing.

Good Lord.

Bonnie slides smoothly into her chair like nothing in her life has become psychologically catastrophic recently. “Sorry I’m late. Sprouts was covered up with women drivin’ white SUVs and white knuckling spiritual dissatisfaction.”

Craig snorts into his drink.

Smurf laughs warmly, mostly to prove which woman she thinks deserves it from her. “Did you at least find your watermelon, baby?”

“I did,” Bonnie says. “Though I was nearly taken out in produce by an aggressively emotional woman.”

Catherine’s fork pauses. Baz closes his eyes briefly like a man watching a car accident happen in slow motion.

“I’m sure she meant well,” Catherine bites out.

Bonnie hums. “I’m sure she thought so. But you’re right; some people can’t help being ugly.”

Catherine takes a swig of her beer instead of replying. The meal continues. Still tense, still with an ongoing battle. Smurf keeps asking about Lena, talking about the girl coming over to swim or spending a few weeks at the house over the summer so she can do surf camp like the boy did when they were little. Baz helps Catherine demure, but with the put upon expression of a man who resents having to stand up for his wife. Eventually Cath feels unsupported enough to be unpleasant on purpose.

Bonnie isn’t sure if the point of this behavior is to get kicked out, uninvited entirely, or just to cause problems in general. Regardless, Cath does what she always does when the boys won’t give her the response she wants. She starts taking shots at Bonnie.

Which is a mistake.

Because Bonnie - already exhausted, already emotionally compromised, already having been one pointed remark away from committing a felony in a grocery store - is not willing to put up with it tonight. Not when Catherine is already millimeters away from implying something that could cut her reputation with Smurf off at the knees. She can feel something old, and Southern, and mean click into place.

Not Cody mean. Church lady mean.

The kind delivered with perfect posture in pearl earrings. The kind that can destroy someone’s self esteem over potato salad.

Catherine waits until Smurf gets up to refill her wine before she strikes. Bonnie watches it happen in real time: the quick glance around the table, the subtle tightening in Catherine’s posture, the decision to finally go for softer prey now that the apex predator has temporarily left the room and no one else wants to tussle with her.

“You know, it seems like you’re always here these days,” Catherine remarks, tone deceptively casual.

Bonnie finishes chewing before answering. “Smurf keeps inviting me. Be rude to say no. Kinda like I’d be spitting in her face, don’t’cha think?”

“Mm.” Catherine takes another sip of beer. “Yeah, I guess that makes you the favorite daughter in law. Except you’re not actually involved with any of the boys. Right?.”

Baz’s eyes close briefly.

Deran mutters, “Jesus Christ,” under his breath.

Craig, meanwhile, looks delighted. Not because he enjoys conflict exactly, but because he’s high enough that tension has looped back around into entertainment.

Bonnie lets the comment slide.

Then another one.

Then another.

Little digs dressed as observations. Bonnie always being around. Smurf trusting her so much. How “helpful” she is. How easy it must be leaching off of someone else’s family.

And Pope sits there slowly becoming aware that something is wrong. Predatory wrong. Because Bonnie’s posture keeps tightening by degrees. Her smile keeps sharpening. And for some reason Catherine keeps aiming directly at her. He may not have the social skills to tell exactly what the issue is, but he’d have to be deaf blind and dumb to not tell that there is one.

He’s never really seen this before. Not because Catherine hasn’t been hostile, but because Bonnie normally absorbs hostility sideways. She slips around the pressure like silk sliding through fingers.

Tonight she’s not sliding. And Pope, who tracks distress like a wolf tracks blood, starts staring harder and harder at Catherine every time she opens her mouth.

“You know,” Catherine says finally, voice sweet enough to rot teeth, “for somebody who acts so independent, you seem awfully comfortable making yourself at home in our house.”

Silence settles heavily over the table.

Bonnie sets down her fork with exquisite care.

Bonnie folds her hands lightly in her lap. “Your house, is it?” she asks softly. “I hadn’t realized you felt so strongly about it.”

Craig coughs violently into his drink to hide a laugh.

Catherine flushes, feeling the misstep and Smurf’s sharp gaze hit her at the same time. “That’s not what I meant.”

“No?” Bonnie tilts her head gently. “Then maybe you oughta say what you do mean instead of makin’ me guess around it.”

Pope goes very still. Because Bonnie sounds calm. The same way she sounded calm right before handing him her panties in front of the entire family. The same way, he’s starting to realize, she sounds calm when she’s actually furious.

Catherine’s voice sharpens. “I just think some people get real comfortable inserting themselves where they don’t belong.”

Bonnie finally hits her limit. She dabs delicately at the corner of her mouth with her napkin before looking up with devastating politeness.

“Oh honey,” she says. “On the scale of belonging I don’t think anyone would put me at the bottom.”

Dead silence.

Baz looks like he wants the earth to open and swallow him whole.

Deran physically turns away from the table.

Craig makes a strangled noise somewhere between a laugh and a near death experience.

J freezes with his fork halfway to his mouth.

And Pope stares at Bonnie with dawning alarm because suddenly all the strange tension he’s been tracking clicks together at once: Catherine has been hurting her on purpose.

Smurf, meanwhile, looks delighted. Because this…this is new.

Bonnie has never snapped back before. Never openly carried irritation into the room. Never allowed herself sharpness around the family. And Smurf, who values teeth far more than sweetness, immediately perks up at the sight of them.

“Easy, baby,” Smurf says, patting Bonnie lightly on the shoulder. “No need to get worked up. Some people just can’t help making scenes.”

The shot lands cleanly. Catherine stiffens instantly. “I wasn’t making a scene.”

“No?” Bonnie asks pleasantly as she reaches for the salad bowl. “Could’a fooled me.”

Bonnie’s halfway through rinsing dishes when Smurf drifts into the kitchen behind her.

The house has mostly settled. Baz shuffled Cath out the door as soon as dinner was over in a very strategic retreat. J is pretending to watch tv in the living room. Craig disappeared an hour ago. Deran left in a mood. Pope’s somewhere outside pacing off whatever strange internal circuitry tonight activated in him.

Smurf pours herself another glass of wine like a woman entirely at peace with conflict. “You finally snapped at her.”

Bonnie keeps her attention on the sink. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Smurf laughs softly. “Oh, please.” She leans against the island comfortably. “Cath’s been pecking at you for months.”

Bonnie dries her hands carefully. “She’s under a lot of stress.”

“Mhm.” Smurf swirls her wine. “And now you see why.”

There’s weight underneath that sentence. Bonnie feels it immediately. Suddenly this isn’t actually about Catherine anymore. This is Smurf quietly making sure she understands the rules of her affection. That it’s conditional, status is fragile, weakness gets punished, and women in this family rarely survive. Smurf studies her over the rim of her glass. “I was starting to wonder if you had any claws at all.”

Bonnie feels cold suddenly. That isn’t warning, it’s approval. And some traitorous part of her - the ambitious part, the survivalist, the little Georgia grifter who clawed her way upward through charm and observation - likes being recognized by dangerous people.

That’s the trap. That’s why she has always tried to stay temporary with both places and people. That's what’s been sitting like a splinter under her skin about the Cody’s.

They make her want to stay.

So Bonnie smiles lightly, like none of that occurred to her at all. “I generally don’t find them necessary.”

“No,” Smurf agrees. “Because usually you’re smarter than everybody else in the room.”

The compliment lands like a hand around Bonnie’s throat. Smurf does not hand those out casually. She realizes with dawning horror that Smurf thinks tonight proved that she belongs here. Not temporarily. Not professionally.

Just here. Just hers.

Quietly, the woman sets down her wine glass. “Y’know,” Smurf says casually, “most girls would’ve cried tonight.”

Bonnie leans lightly against the counter. “Most girls aren’t me.”

“No,” Smurf agrees warmly. “Thank God.”

Then she pulls something from her pocket. Gold catches the light first long and fine. A necklace. It’s old money elegant, the kind of piece that survives divorces and funerals and daughters fighting over estates. Bonnie recognizes it immediately because Catherine’s eyes always flick toward it whenever Smurf has it on.

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

“Yes, you can.” Smurf steps forward before Bonnie can finish protesting. “Come here, baby.”

Bonnie hesitates. This means something.

Then survival smooths her face over beautifully and she obeys.

Smurf fastens the necklace gently behind her neck, fingertips cool against Bonnie’s skin. “There,” she says softly. “Much prettier on you anyway.”

The compliment lands like a blade.

Because Bonnie suddenly understands exactly what just happened. Smurf is rewarding her publicly. Marking her not with generosity, but with positioning. The kind that Catherine is absolutely going to notice the next time she’s over, because Bonnie can tell she will be expected to wear this piece until she does.

Bonnie catches sight of herself in the reflection of the sliding glass doors. The necklace is stunning. Which is unfortunate, because now she has to admit to herself that she likes it. “You didn’t have to do this,” Bonnie says carefully.

Smurf smiles at her reflection. “I know.” She goes back to where she left her glass and takes another sip of wine. “Pope likes you.”

Bonnie’s spine locks instantly.

Smurf notices. Of course she notices. But she only smiles faintly. “Don’t panic, baby. Andrew can run a little wild, but I won’t let him hurt you.”

Bonnie suspects she’s meant to feel relieved, so that's what she puts on her face. But inside something sharp and ugly twists in her chest. Because she knows with terrifying certainty that whatever is happening between her and Pope stopped feeling like casual affection for her quite some time ago.

And now she also knows that Smurf hasn’t realized that yet.

Dinner later that week is deceptively normal. No shouting. No tension thick enough to chew. No Catherine circling the perimeter of the family like an injured animal. Just meatloaf, green beans, and Craig loudly explaining why jet skis are spiritually different from motorbikes while Deran tells him he’s a moron. Bonnie is almost relaxed for once.

Then she notices Pope.

He’s not really doing anything. That’s the problem. He’s just quieter than usual, looking down at his plate like it’s a betrayal he can’t bear to think about too long. His shoulders are tight as piano wire as he pushes his food around with his fork. Bonnie watches his eyes flick towards Smurf and then quickly look away.

Once.

Twice.

Then he stops eating entirely.

The table conversation rolls on around them, but Bonnie’s attention narrows instinctively. Because Pope Cody, human garbage disposal, man she has witnessed eating leftover brisket directly from the fridge at two in the morning with his hands, is staring at his supper like it’s fixin’ to attack him.

And worse, he looks wary.

The realization hits her hard. Bonnie grew up Southern enough that feeding people borders on religious doctrine. Food means comfort. It means safety, care, and trust. The idea of somebody sitting at a family table afraid of what’s on their plate twists painfully somewhere beneath her ribs.

She leans ever so slightly toward him and murmurs under the sound of Craig talking. “You don’t like meatloaf?”

Pope glances at her immediately, caught not startled. His eyes flick once more toward Smurf and Bonnie stills internally.

Interesting.

Now, Bonnie is not stupid. She knows families have weird dynamics. She knows Smurf controls this house like a queen controls a court. And she knows Pope’s behavior around his mother occasionally edges into something feral and deeply uncomfortable for her to look at head on. But the thought that someone at this table would poison his food - even mildly, even medicinally,even “for his own good” - does not occur to her.

Because that would be insane.

Instead she reaches the obvious conclusion. Pope is anxious, and that is making him think something’s wrong with his plate. And Bonnie, unfortunately for her own wellbeing, knows him well enough to know that because she has already eaten several bites of hers he will believe it is safe.

Simple fix.

Without fanfare she picks up her plate and swaps it cleanly with his in one smooth motion born from years of sleight of hand and practiced distraction. No flourish. No announcement. No desire to draw attention to it and embarrass him. Just a slide, a switch, and her voice as it continues talking.

“Darlin’,” she says lightly to Craig without missing a beat, “if you buy a jet ski in this economy I’m legally allowed to hit you with my car.”

Craig barks a laugh.

Conversation continues smoothly. Nobody notices the change of plates..

Nobody except Pope.

He’s gone completely still beside her.

Bonnie pointedly takes a bite of the meatloaf from his plate and smiles faintly at him over her wine glass like this is the most natural thing in the world. Eat, that smile says. You’re bein’ ridiculous, but I’ve got you.

Pope stares at her, and for one suspended moment Bonnie thinks he’s going to say something out loud. Instead his jaw tightens. Then slowly, carefully, he starts eating from her plate.

They make it through dinner. Bonnie feels pleasantly smug about him clearing his plate. The idea of him going hungry doesn’t sit right with her, and she’s glad he managed to finish his meal. 

That lasts for another ten minutes.

Long enough for Craig to wander off in search of dessert. For Deran to disappear toward the backyard with a beer while Smurf settles into the living room like a queen receiving courtiers, Baz to head home, and J to start surfing channels. The sharpest edges of the evening seem like they’ve finally dulled.

Pope stays close to her the entire time. Not obviously enough for anyone else to clock it, but Bonnie notices.

Bonnie always notices.

He tracks her movements around the kitchen while dishes get cleared. Watches her too carefully when she laughs lightly at something Craig says as he roots around in the refrigerator. Keeps glancing at her face with this lingering, strained concentration like he’s trying to solve an equation only he can see.

Honestly she finds it a little endearing. It was only a plate.

Eventually the noise in the house starts pressing against her temples hard enough that she slips quietly out the back door for some air, her wine glass in hand. The night is warm, frogs croaking lazily in the grass beyond the fence. Pool lights throw watery blue patterns across the house. Bonnie settles against the bar with a slow exhale, letting the cooler air touch her flushed skin.

The back door slides open behind her less than a minute later. Pope steps outside and comes up beside her without speaking.

Ridiculous man.

Bonnie smiles faintly into her wine. “Y’know, most people usually wait at least five minutes before following a woman outside.”

“You left.”

“Well yes.” She glances sideways at him. “That’s generally how going outside works.”

Pope doesn’t answer. He just stands there too close, shoulders still tight with lingering tension.

Bonnie studies him over the rim of her glass. He’s still upset. The realization softens something inside her despite herself. Now that they’re alone she can see it easier; Pope isn’t embarrassed. He’s shaken. Like some internal wire got crossed wrong when she switched their dinners.

Which honestly makes her want to laugh a little, or maybe hug him. Thirty minutes ago the man had looked at meatloaf like it was fixin’ to assassinate him and now he’s the one acting distressed? “It’s gonna be okay, Sugar,” she says gently. “See? Nobody died.”

Pope’s eyes move over her face slowly. Searching.

Bonnie smiles at him again, warm and teasing and reassuring all at once. And for one brief fragile second, Pope almost believes her. Almost believes that his suspicious were all in his head. Then Bonnie’s pupils blow wide.

Not gradually.

Not naturally.

One second normal, the next swallowing nearly all the color from her eyes despite the dim patio light.

Pope goes dead still.

Bonnie blinks once.

Twice.

The wine glass slips slightly in her fingers. “…oh,” she says faintly. And suddenly the entire world tilts sideways.

His hands are on her shoulders so fast you’d have thought they’d always been there, steadying her automatically, his grip just a little too tight.

Bonnie laughs softly at the look on his face. It’s not a nice look, but suddenly everything is extremely funny. “Oh,” she says again, blinking hard. “I don’t….”

The patio lights smear slightly at the edges. The blue from the pool ripples wrong across Pope’s face, turning his features strange and too sharp and oddly beautiful in a way that makes her stomach dip.

Pope’s expression, meanwhile, has gone terrifyingly blank. “Bonnie.”

That voice. Low and flat and dangerous. Like a bear trap. Like a trip wire. It snaps shut around her. She reaches up to pat his arm reassuringly and somehow misses entirely. Her hand drifts past his shoulder through empty air and for a moment she just blinks at it because she’s not sure how it got where it is.

Bonnie starts laughing harder. “Okay,” she says, words slipping oddly loose in her mouth now. “I thought you were just anxious, but maybe you were right to glare at the meatloaf.”

Pope’s jaw clenches so hard she hears his teeth grind.

Bonnie turns her head toward him and immediately regrets it because the entire yard lags half a second behind the motion. “Oh, wow,” she murmurs, genuinely impressed. “Everything’s moving.”

Bonnie watches Pope’s entire body go rigid. He isn’t explosive with movement. He’s controlled. The kind of control people only reach right before violence.

Interesting, interesting, God he's always so interesting…

And suddenly Bonnie, already drifting, already warm and dizzy and disconnected from gravity realizes that shes only still standing because he’s bracing her. She doesn’t know when her fingers found his shirt, be she can fell them tighten in it. “Andrew?”

His eyes lock on hers, and Bonnie almost startles at the expression on his face.

Terror.

Real terror.

Because Bonnie is swaying slightly now despite his grip. Because her pupils are still blown impossibly wide. Because she is calling his name in her soft little voice, and whatever dosage Smurf gave him was calculated for a man built like a tank.

Bonnie Hale weighs maybe half as much.

Pope’s eyes flick toward the house with something so cold it makes her shiver a little. The world keeps tilting strangely around the edges. Her limbs feel warm and heavy and distant all at once.

But Pope…Pope is laser focused on her now. For a long moment he says nothing.

Then very carefully, with the terrifying precision of a man holding himself together bolt by bolt, Pope slips the wine glass from her unsteady fingers and sets it aside. Then he bends, one arm sliding behind Bonnie’s knees while the other wraps around her back.

Bonnie makes a startled little sound as the world lurches upward.

“Oh!” she says, then blinks at him slowly. “…you are very strong.”

Bonnie keeps her hands twisted in his shirt as he carries her toward the house, head falling instinctively against his shoulder. She’s laughing again, and Pope freezes. 

“You have to be quiet, Bon.”

“Oh!” she straightens with a gasp before curling into him. “Shhh.”

He doesn’t take her back in through the kitchen. He glances through the glass to make sure J is still watching tv, then strides off towards the teen’s room. His old room, she thinks, though thinking is very hard right now. Once they’re in, he shifts her just enough to swing the door to the hall open. 

He freezes still as a marble statue when she giggles again. A look is enough to make her remember they're supposed to be sneaking. “Oh,” she whispers. “Shhhhh.”

The head down the hallway until he reaches her room. He’s quick to step in, shutting the door behind them and placing her gently down on the edge of the bed. He goes to pull back but can’t -

Because her hands are still gripping his shirt.

She lets go to cover her mouth so that the giggles stay in this time.

Pope exhales once through his nose, steadying himself. Then he reaches for her sandals. Bonnie watches him while he unfastens the delicate buckle with surprising care, calloused fingers working gently against her ankle. It should not feel intimate. Nothing about taking somebody’s shoes off should feel intimate.

Unfortunately it does.

Especially because Pope handles her like he’s afraid she’ll bruise. The first sandal slips free. Then the second. He sets them neatly beside the bed because even now that’s the kind of man he is.

Bonnie’s head tips slightly as she watches him. “You’re very nice to me.”

Pope does the statue thing again and for one terrible second Bonnie thinks she’s said something wrong. Then he speaks quietly, like he can’t bear to look at her…or maybe like he thinks he’s not allowed to. “You switched the plates.”

The soft drifting warmth in Bonnie’s chest twists painfully sweeter. “‘Course,” she says gently. “You were upset.”

Pope finally looks up at her then.

And Bonnie, drugged and dizzy and emotionally wrecked by him on the best of days, gets hit full force by the expression on his face. Something deeper than confusion, sharper than suspicion. Something almost wounded.

“You thought it was safe,” he says.

Bonnie nods. “Yeah. ‘Cause it should have been.”

The words hang strangely in the room. Pope stares at her for a long moment. Then very carefully he reaches up and smooths one loose curl back from her face with two rough fingers.

The touch is so unexpectedly gentle Bonnie forgets how breathing works for a second.

“You’re shaky,” he murmurs.

“Well Sugar,” Bonnie says softly, eyelids already getting heavier, “I did accidentally take enough horse tranquilizers for six feet of muscle.”

A tiny sound escapes him. Not quite pain, not quite laughter.

Pope leans back only far enough to look at her properly.

Bonnie’s sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands braced beside her now, blinking slowly at the floor like gravity has become personally offensive.

“You tired?” he asks quietly.

Bonnie considers this very seriously. “I think my bones are floatin’.”

Pope watches her carefully for another second. “You ever been high before?”

Bonnie’s nose scrunches immediately in soft offended confusion. “No?” 

The word comes out like he just asked whether she stores soup in her shoes. Pope frowns slightly. “Never?”

Bonnie shakes her head once, then immediately regrets it because apparently her skull is full of marbles. “That would make my faces not fit right,” she explains seriously.

Pope stills.

Bonnie gestures vaguely around her own face. “I gotta keep track’a what expression belongs where and to who. I can’t be out here accidentally wearin’ the wrong face at people.”

Something about the confused sincerity of that hits Pope straight through the ribs. Bonnie’s masks have never bothered him. He notices them, sure. Tracks them. Learns them. But underneath all of them Bonnie has always still felt like Bonnie to him.

It’s only now that he realizes she experiences those masks less like manipulation and more like armor.

Bonnie squints at him suddenly. “Why are you lookin’ at me like that?”

Pope looks away instantly. “Like what?”

“Like I said somethin’ sad.” 

Her voice is soft now. Foggy around the edges.

Pope’s throat works once.

Then he reaches for the blanket folded at the foot of the bed instead of answering, tucking it tight around her shoulders. He disappears into her bathroom long enough to come back with a glass of water and one of her washcloths dampened with cold water. 

Bonnie watches him with heavy-lidded fascination from where she’s slowly tipping sideways. “You move so quiet for somebody built like a refrigerator.”

Pope ignores that. Instead he elects to shift her so she can lean back against the headboard and presses the cool washcloth briefly against the back of her neck. Bonnie shivers dramatically. “Ohhh, that’s awful.”

“You’re hot.”

“You’re bossy.”

Pope accepts that without comment.

Then he crosses the room and pushes her window open. Cool night air spills softly through the screen, carrying the smell of wet grass and chlorine and distant ocean salt.

Bonnie blinks at him slowly. “Whatcha doin’?” He doesn’t answer. Instead she watches him move back toward the door. “Where’re you goin’?”

Pope pauses with his hand on the knob. His eyes flick toward her automatically, checking her pupils, posture, breathing, coherence. Like she’s something fragile he’s afraid to stop monitoring for so much as thirty seconds. “I’m gonna be right back.”

Bonnie considers this very seriously.

Then points vaguely at him from the bed. “You better.”

Something strange flickers across his face at that before it shutters away again. “Bonnie. I’ll be right back.”

Then he’s gone.

Bonnie hears muted movement downstairs through the fog in her head. The television. Craig laughing too loudly.  Then Pope’s voice saying it’s goodbyes to everyone.

Bonnie frowns faintly at the ceiling.

A few moments later a car starts outside.

Well now she’s even more confused.

For one deeply upsetting moment Bonnie wonders if he really left. The thought lands in her chest with surprising heaviness. She rolls onto her side with a small unhappy noise, curls half fallen from their pins now and tugging uncomfortably. The room keeps breathing gently around the edges. Shadows stretch strangely long across the walls. She stares blearily into her vanity mirror and becomes briefly convinced her reflection is judging her.

Rude.

Then, maybe twenty minutes later, there’s a soft sound at the window.

Bonnie startles hard enough to nearly fall off the bed before she realizes it’s Pope carefully climbing back through the window.

Bonnie gasps softly. “You came back.”

Pope freezes halfway into the room, like the statement hit him somewhere unexpectedly vulnerable. Then he finishes climbing inside and shuts the window quietly behind him. “I said I would.”

Well.

That seems terribly obvious now that he says it.

Bonnie watches him move around the room with slow careful motions. He shifts her trashcan to the side of the bed. Pulls her curtains closed. Turns off the overhead light until only the warm glow from the lamp on her bedside table remains. “You gonna throw up?” he asks.

Bonnie thinks about it. “…maybe emotionally?”

That almost gets another one of those tiny broken-not-broken sounds out of him.

Pope kneels briefly in front of her again, close enough now that Bonnie can see how exhausted he looks beneath the sharpness. “Bon,” he says quietly.

The nickname lands soft and natural.

“You gotta try to sleep.”

Bonnie stares at him. The room tilts pleasantly around the edges. The lamp behind him turns his shoulders into shadow and gold. “You’re stayin’?”

Pope looks almost confused by the question. “Yes.”

Zero hesitation.

Zero discomfort.

Zero social awareness whatsoever about how intimate that answer actually is.

Just certainty.

Something warm unfurls painfully through Bonnie’s chest. She nods once like that explanation satisfies something deep and frightened inside her. Pope waits until she’s under the blankets before moving to her vanity chair and dragging it quietly closer to the bed.

Then he sits.

And stays.

All night long, at the foot of her bed, still as a guard dog.

Every time Bonnie stirs, he’s there. Every time she wakes confused, he answers immediately. When the room starts moving too much he talks her back down in that low steady voice. He doesn’t touch her unless she reaches first. Never crowds. Just…remains.

Trip sitting for her with the terrifying focus of a man holding vigil.

Queenie sat propped against the raised back, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, eyes huge and unfocused. The way people looked after surviving something enormous. She held herself tense and still, like someone who had been dropped into another person's life by mistake.

Dana stood beside her, one hand smoothing damp hair back from her face. "You did so well," she murmured softly. "You hear me? You did beautifully."

Queenie blinked at her. Then her head turned towards the tiny person in his arms with an expression that said she still wasn't entirely convinced the baby was real.

Fair enough. Robby wasn't entirely convinced either.

Across the room, Jack was finishing up with the placenta in a kind of mechanical silence Robby had never seen from him before. Jack was always controlled. Steady. The calm center of the storm. Right now he looked like a man operating on instinct alone because his brain had nothing left to hold onto except procedure.

Jack stripped off his gloves and washed his hands in silence, being particularly thorough in a way that caught his attention. Robby knew him. Knew the careful way Jack kept parts of himself boxed up and locked away. And there was something in his face right now that looked suspiciously like every lock had broken at once.

The baby fussed.

Robby stepped closer to the bed and transferred the little girl into Queenie's arms. She took her on instinct, cradling her against her chest. The baby settled almost immediately, and something in Queenie's expression changed. Not all at once like a lightning strike. Slower. It rose across her face, gentle and unstoppable as a sunrise.

"Oh," she whispered.

Robby felt his own throat tighten. Dana's hand never left Queenie's shoulder. Jack drifted closer as if pulled by gravity. The room had gone strangely quiet.

Eventually, Robby cleared his throat. He leaned back against the counter, already thinking of calling up to the maternity ward, of what he would say to their coworkers to make sure they didn’t crowd her when she was wheeled out of the room. 

Practical.

He could manage practical. 

"So. Need me to call Dad?"

Jack sank back down into the roller stool near the foot of the bed, looking up at Queenie with something on his face Robby hadn’t seen in all the years he’d known him: pure, naked wonder. “...nope.”

The implication hit his brain, sliding off for a long second before it fully sank in. Robby saw Dana go still as he shook himself. “I’m sorry,” he managed. “Come again?”

Jack swallowed, but didn’t walk it back. “She’s mine,” he said with the terrifying certainty of a man whose entire life had just rearranged itself. “You don’t need to call anyone. I’m dad.”

Dana's hand stopped in Queenie's hair, her expression cycling rapidly through confusion, realization, outrage, vindication, and something dangerously close to delight. "What?"

Robby's brain made a sound not unlike a dial-up modem dying.

No. No no no.

No.

He looked between Jack, Queenie, and the baby.

"...come again?"

Jack finally looked at him with the expression of a man who’d fallen off a cliff and realized halfway down he could fly. "We've been seeing each other. She’s my partner. That’s my baby."

Robby's jaw actually dropped. His best friend had- since when?! How long? How had he missed-

Oh.

Oh, that's why they looked at each other like that.

Mother-

Robby felt several years come off his life expectancy.

Queenie, meanwhile, had apparently reached the processing stage of events approximately three exits behind everyone else. She looked down at the baby, then up at Jack. Her brow furrowed faintly, her voice soft and full of shocked awe. “You’re dad.”

Jack broke.

Robby saw it happen. The last of the walls quietly giving way as he laughed helplessly. Small and disbelieving and so achingly happy that Robby suddenly needed to look at literally anything else.

"Yeah," Jack agreed.

Queenie looked down again, still studying the baby like she was a puzzle she'd somehow solved accidentally. "And I'm mom."

Jack's eyes immediately filled. "Yeah, sweetheart." His voice cracked. "You are."

And there it was.

Not the relationship reveal.

Not the baby.

Not even the fact that Jack Abbot had somehow managed to secretly fall catastrophically in love without a single person noticing.

No.

The thing that finally stole the breath from the room was simpler than that. It was the quiet certainty in his voice. The way Queenie leaned toward him without thinking and he came closer without realizing he'd moved.

As if this had always been the shape of them.

As if they had been reaching for one another long before either of them knew why.

The baby yawned, tiny and oblivious and entirely unaware that she'd just detonated approximately six separate emotional crises in Trauma Two.

Robby exhaled slowly.

The department was never gonna recover from this.

Robby made it approximately three minutes.

Three whole minutes of maintaining professionalism. Long enough to finish charting. Long enough for Dana to confirm transport to maternity. Long enough to smile at Queenie when she finally looked down at the baby and whispered she's so little in a tone of profound confusion. Long enough to watch Jack tuck the blanket more securely around both of them with hands that had gone strangely reverent.

And then he’d held the door open for Dana, muttered something about giving them a minute, and left both new parents alone. 

Jack didn't respond. Didn’t even look away from Queenie and the baby.

Which, honestly, fair.

Robby slipped into the hallway. The trauma doors slid shut behind him.

For exactly three seconds there was silence.

Then he turned and pressed both hands over his face. "What the fuck."

Dana laughed, already half way to the charge desk.

Robby lowered his hands and stared at the wall, trying to mentally review what exactly just happened.

His best friend had been dating Queenie. Secretly. Long enough to be using words like partner. Long enough to make a whole, full term baby. A baby no one, including her parents, was aware existed. And then, when the chips were down and Queenie was losing it, Jack had somehow managed to white knuckle his way through delivering his own daughter.

Robby's eyes widened. Oh god. He’d been the one to suggest it. Abbot, you’ve got mom. I’ll take baby.

Robby looked down the hallway as if answers might be written on the floor tiles.

They were not.

How had they hidden an entire relationship?

How had he missed it?

When had it started?

Oh, god, when had it started? 

Gloria was going to have so many questions he didn’t know how to even begin to answer.

Because that was the thing.

The relationship reveal? Shocking. The baby? Unprecedented and medically fascinating. But the fact that Jack Abbot was evidently a man so private he managed to secretly build an entire life in the spaces between shifts?

That was enough to make a man step into a hallway and briefly reconsider reality.

By the time he looked back towards Central, half the department was waiting.

Not all of them, thank goodness; most of night shift had gone home before Queenie collapsed, and day shift was still seeing patients while they waited for news.

Still, he was pretty sure there were enough people to constitute a fire hazard clustered near the charge desk.

Dr. Shen stood with his arms crossed directly in front of it. Santos lingered nearby under the transparent pretense of checking supplies. Whittaker had somehow materialized the second he’d walked out despite having no apparent reason to be there. A pair of nurses hovered just within earshot.

And leaning against the counter with the expression of a woman who had just witnessed history firsthand was Dana.

Every head turned when he approached.

Shen spoke first. "Hart okay?"

Robby exhaled. "She's fine. Baby too."

The relief in the hallway was immediate.

Robby rubbed a hand over his face. "Cryptic pregnancy," he said. "None of us knew. Including Hart."

The collective processing lag was almost visible.

Shen's brows rose.

Whittaker stared.

One of the nurses quietly whispered, "Holy shit."

Robby nodded. "Six pounds, one ounce. En caul presentation."

Santos went pale, then looked at him with all the offence of a cat in a bath. "I missed an en caul?!" The outrage in her voice was immediate and entirely sincere.

Robby pointed at her without looking. "Focus on the surprise baby."

"I can multitask!"

Whittaker frowned toward the closed trauma room doors. "If she's fine, why is Abbot still in there?"

Robby opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Because where did you even start?

With the relationship? The baby? The fact that his best friend had apparently been conducting an entire secret romance under everyone's noses?

Dana looked up from the desk, positively delighted. "Where else would he be?" she asked, like the answer should have been obvious. "His girlfriend just had his baby."

The silence that followed that announcement was the kind that came after catastrophic structural failures.

Shen blinked at them. Santos's mouth fell open. Whittaker stared. One of the nurses made a small choking sound.

Robby watched the realization hit them all in real time. It was almost therapeutic.

"His what?" Whittaker finally managed.

Dana folded her arms. "Girlfriend,” she reiterated. “Baby."

The words landed like a grenade.

“Fuck.” Shen closed his eyes briefly. "I owe Ellis so much money."

Robby laughed.

Santos looked scandalized. "Dr. Hart and Dr. Abbot are together?"

Robby shrugged. "He called her his partner."

The hallway detonated.

"What?!"

"Since when?"

"How did nobody know?"

"I had lunch with her yesterday!"

Robby pressed his fingers to his temple.

His head hurt. His soul hurt. His understanding of reality had taken a measurable hit.

Shen looked at him carefully. "Did you know?"

Robby stared at him. "Do I look like I knew?"

"...fair."

He ran his fingers through his hair, still coming to terms with the last thirty minutes. “...he did the delivery.”

Dennis’ eyes widened. “Shut the fuck up-” He froze. “Er. Sorry, Doctor Robby.”

Robby pointed at him. “No, actually, I think that pretty much sums it up.”

Shen closed his eyes. "Of course he did."

Santos turned towards him. "What do you mean, of course he did?"

Shen opened his eyes slowly. "You clearly don’t work with him enough. That’s the most Jack Abbot thing I’ve ever heard."

The room had gone quiet, but gently. Softer than the stunned silence of earlier. 

Queenie sat propped up in bed with the baby asleep against her chest, staring down at her with the sort of concentration she usually reserved for unfamiliar procedures. As though she worried the baby might disappear if she looked away.

Jack sat beside the bed on the roller stool, one hand resting lightly against Queenie's arm. He wasn’t reaching for the baby. He got to bring her into the world, to be the very first person to ever touch her. It was only fair that Queenie got as long as she needed to hold her now.

A soft knock on the door to the room made him look away from them, though she remained focused entirely on the baby. Shen cautiously stepped inside, pushing a wheelchair.

His gaze swept the room in a single practiced pass.

Queenie. Pale and exhausted, but stable.

Baby. Pink and sleeping.

Jack. Still looking at the two of them like he'd been handed the moon and told not to drop it.

Shen paused.

He'd known Jack a long time. Long enough to know that Jack loved quietly. Steadily. The sort of love that built itself in a thousand unnoticed moments.

He hadn't known.

Apparently no one had.

But looking at them now…it was difficult to imagine ever having mistaken this for anything else.

"Maternity's ready for you," Shen said simply.

Queenie blinked, not even looking at him. "Maternity?" she asked, soft and dazed.

Shen's expression softened by a fraction. "Yeah." His voice gentled. "That's where they keep the babies."

For the first time since delivery, Queenie smiled.

Small.

Bewildered.

A little dazed.

She looked down at the tiny sleeping girl in her arms. "...I have a baby."

“Yeah, sweetheart.” Jack's face did something complicated. Something soft enough that Shen immediately looked away to give him the privacy of pretending not to notice. “You do.”

Shen brought the wheelchair beside the bed, anchoring it. Jack immediately stood, and together they helped move her into it before he took his place behind the chair. 

Of course he did.

As if there had ever been any possibility that he would let someone else push her.

Shen's mouth twitched, and he jerked his head toward the hallway. "Half the department's out there pretending they suddenly developed an interest in supply management."

That finally earned a startled laugh from Jack.

"I'll make sure no one bothers you on the way to the elevator," Shen continued, ducking out ahead of them.

“John?” Jack called. The emotion on his face came and went so quickly most people would have missed it.

Shen didn't.

"Thanks."

And because they had worked together long enough that whole conversations could fit inside a single word. Shen nodded.

No problem.

I've got this.

Go be with your family.

Queenie shifted cautiously, the baby making a tiny sleepy noise in her arms. Immediately, both she and Jack looked down at her.

At exactly the same time.

Shen felt something in his chest tighten.

Ah.

There it was.

Not the relationship. Not the secret. Not even the baby. 

Family.

New and sudden and impossible, but family all the same.

Outside, the department buzzed with shock and gossip and disbelief.

Inside Trauma Two, the world had narrowed to three people.

And upstairs, a room in maternity waited for them.

The ride upstairs passed in a blur.

The nurses on the maternity floor had clearly been warned. No one looked surprised when they arrived.

Curious? Absolutely.

Surprised? Not even a little.

Word traveled fast in hospitals. Word traveled even faster when one of the ED attendings delivered his own surprise baby in Trauma Two.

The admitting nurse smiled softly as they settled Queenie into the bed.

"Alright," she said gently. "Let's get everyone checked in."

Everyone.

The word hit Jack strangely.

Everyone.

The nurse wrapped a plastic band around Queenie's wrist. Then the baby's tiny ankle. Finally she turned to him. "Dad?"

Jack startled.

Dad.

Not Dr. Abbot. Not Jack.

Dad.

He held out his wrist before his brain caught up.

The bracelet clicked shut around it. A simple strip of plastic. His name. A matching number. Connected. Verified. Real.

Jack stared at it for a long moment.

He'd worn hospital bands before, but this one felt different. Permanent in ways a strip of plastic had no business being.

Beside him, Queenie was staring at her own bracelet with the same bewildered concentration she'd been giving the baby all evening. Then she looked down at the tiny band circling their daughter's ankle. Her eyes widened. "They match."

Her voice was soft. Wondering. As though she'd only just realized the universe had paperwork for this sort of thing.

The nurse smiled. "They do. And they have a little chip in them that's your key to get in and out of the ward. Plus a little alarm for baby so no one wanders off with her to the wrong room."

Queenie looked up at Jack. Then back at the baby. Then at her wrist.

"...we all match."

Jack's throat closed.

Yeah.

They did.

The nurse returned carrying a folder thick enough to qualify as a weapon. She handed it directly to him. "Here we are; birth certificate paperwork."

Jack took it automatically.

“There’s no rush,” the nurse continued. “We just need it before discharge, so you’ll have a day or two.”

Jack nodded. A day or two. Right. Plenty of time.

Queenie was still staring at the baby like she expected someone to come collect her at any moment. As though this had all been some extraordinary misunderstanding.

Jack flipped open the folder and was met with the birth certificate worksheet right on top. The questions were simple; mother's name, date of birth, time, length and weight. Easy enough to fill out. He pulled out a pen and started writing, half an eye on Queenie as the nurses got her assessed and tucked into the maternity bed.

Then…

Father's Name.

His breath caught.

Not because he didn't know the answer - because he did. Had, for less than an hour.

His thumb hovered over the line.

Father's Name.

He'd pronounced deaths. Signed trauma notes. Completed forms with blood on his shoes.

His hand had never shaken filling out paperwork before.

Across the room, Queenie looked up. She watched him for a long moment. "What's wrong?"

Jack looked at her.

At the baby.

At the form.

Nothing was wrong. That was the terrifying part.

He swallowed hard, voice coming out rough. "Nothing."

He looked back down at the page. Then, with the strange reverence of a man writing himself into a life he'd only just discovered he had-

He wrote: Jack Abbot.

The maternity nurses were, in Queenie's professional opinion, alarmingly kind.

Which, frankly, made her suspicious. The sort of suspicious that came from spending years in emergency medicine, where kindness usually arrived attached to very bad news.

One of them helped settle her into bed while another quietly checked her vitals.

Blood pressure.

Fundal checks.

Bleeding assessment.

All just routine, they hastened to reassure her. Normal, apparently.

The word still felt strange.

Normal. As if women simply woke up every day, had surprise babies, and then got wheeled upstairs for juice and paperwork.

A nurse tucked another blanket around her legs. "You did wonderfully."

Queenie blinked.

The baby was asleep in the bassinet beside her bed.

Asleep.

Just…there. Right there. Like she hadn't detonated reality with her very existence. "I don't think babies should be allowed to be this little," Queenie said with concern.

The nurse's smile softened. "She's a good size."

Good size? The baby was only six pounds. Queenie had held anatomy textbooks heavier than her.

The bassinet sat beside her bed, but it felt far. And unsafe. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at it. "...are you sure she won't fall out?"

The nurse blinked. "Out of the bassinet?"

Queenie nodded immediately. "She's very small."

"She's not going anywhere." The nurse patted Queenie’s arm with the patient expression of someone who had this conversation at least twice a week.

Queenie looked unconvinced.

The baby yawned.

Tiny.

Absurdly tiny.

Her fingers were the size of Queenie's little finger above the knuckle.

That couldn't possibly be legal.

Beside her, Jack quietly stood and moved the bassinet two inches closer to the bed.

Queenie immediately relaxed a little.

One of the nurses smoothed a hand over her hair. "You were very brave."

The words hit harder than they should have.

Queenie looked down at the baby.

At her baby.

Still difficult to process.

Her baby.

She swallowed. "I didn't know."

The room went quiet at how small her voice sounded. Gentle.

Not pity - never pity - just understanding.

"Most moms don't meet their babies like this," the nurse said, squeezing her hand. “But you’re doing a wonderful job.” 

Queenie's eyes blurred unexpectedly.

Across the room, Jack looked up. He dropped the folder in his hands onto the little table and crossed the room without another thought.

The nurse stepped aside without being asked.

Queenie looked at him.

At the man who had delivered their daughter.

At the father of her child.

At Jack.

Still Jack, even now.

Especially now.

The baby made a tiny squeaking sound in her sleep. Queenie's head whipped around instantly. "Is she okay?"

Three nurses and one emergency physician answered at once. "She's fine."

"Oh." Queenie breathed out. Then she looked down with a frown.

Her gaze dropped to the IV in her arm.

To the hospital bracelet on her wrist.

To the unfamiliar ache in her body.

Slowly, carefully, like she wasn't entirely certain she wanted the answer, she spoke again. "...am I okay?"

One of the nurses immediately took her hand. "You are."

"Really?" 

The nurse smiled. "Really. You gave us a scare, sweetheart, but you're okay. Baby's okay too."

Queenie stared at her for a long moment. As though she were testing the words for weaknesses, looking for the hidden catch. “And Jack’s ok?”

“I’m fine, Gwen,” he soothed, stroking her hair. His hand settled on the back of her neck. “Everybody’s just fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Queenie looked at him.

"I have a baby."

The words came out sounding surprised, as though she'd only just discovered the fact.

Jack's expression softened into something so helplessly tender it nearly hurt to look at. "Yeah, sweetheart." His thumb brushed across her knuckles. "You do."

She swallowed, looking back towards the bassinet and the tiny sleeping girl inside. Then she turned to him again. "...and we get to keep her?"

The nearest nurse abruptly became very interested in checking the IV pump.

Jack laughed, entirely wrecked. "Yeah." His eyes shone. "We get to keep her."

Eventually, the nurses drifted out in the slow, practiced way of people who had learned exactly when their presence was needed and when it wasn't.

One adjusted the blankets. Another dimmed the lights. A third promised to come back in a little while to check on them.

Then the room fell quiet.

Not the bright quiet of the emergency department, where there were always machines beeping and people moving.

Real quiet. Almost aggressive silence, the kind people kept in churches.

Jack sat in the chair beside Queenie's bed, one hand resting lightly on the edge of the bassinet. He'd checked on the baby three times in the last ten minutes; six pounds felt alarmingly easy to misplace.

Queenie hadn't looked away from their daughter once. Tired as she was her eyes kept drifting back to the bassinet, as if checking to make sure the baby hadn't evaporated.

Eventually, Jack couldn’t stand there and watch it anymore. "Do you want to hold her again?" he asked softly.

"Yes." The word came out before he’d even finished speaking.

Jack's chest tightened.

He rounded the bed and lifted their daughter carefully from the bassinet, settling her into Queenie's arms. The baby made a tiny sleepy mewl as she settled into her mother’s arms, both of them relaxing as they were reunited.

Minutes passed.

Or maybe hours? Time had stopped making much sense.

He sat nearby on the surprisingly uncomfortable pull out couch, too awake to bother with setting it up for sleep. The room had gone dim despite it being morning. It was just him, Queenie, and the baby.

His girls.

The thought arrived quietly. Without panic or fanfare.

His girls.

Queenie's head drooped. She blinked herself awake twice, but the third time she startled hard enough that Jack got up to step closer.

"Gwen?"

Her arms tightened instinctively around the baby. "I don't want to let go." Her voice was small. Embarrassed. Exhausted. “But I don’t want to drop her.”

Jack's chest ached. "You're not going to drop her."

She shook her head, stubborn even now. "I know…"

Which meant, of course, that she didn't know. Not after a twelve hour shift that had somehow included labor and an unexpected transition into motherhood. Her eyes burned with tiredness, but she still didn't loosen her grip.

Jack drew even closer. "What do you need?"

Queenie looked down at the baby.

Then up at him with uncertainty he hated to see. Like she was worried she was asking for something she wasn't sure she was allowed to have.

Which was insane because she’d just had his baby. He’d rip the heart from his chest if she asked for it.

"Could you..." She swallowed, then began again. "Could you sit behind me?"

Jack blinked, a little taken aback that she was hesitating over such a simple request. "What?"

Her cheeks pinked faintly. "I don't want to stop holding her."

"I know."

"But I don't want to drop her. So could you maybe...hold us both?"

Jack forgot how to breathe.

For a moment, he simply looked at her. At the baby. At the family he hadn't known existed this morning.

Then, without a word, he sat back down to unstrap his prosthetic.

He set the leg beside the bed where it’d be out of the nurses’ way, climbed carefully onto the mattress behind her, and gathered both of his girls into his arms.

One arm around Queenie, where she sat between his legs.

The other, helping support the baby against her chest.

Safe.

Secure.

Held.

Queenie sagged back against him immediately. Jack pressed his cheek against her hair, just feeling the rise and fall of her breathing as he helped support the tiny weight of his daughter.

At some point, Queenie's fingers found his hand.

At some point, both of them fell asleep.

Hours later, a nurse quietly cracked open the door for a routine check.

She stopped, a sharp spike of anger running through her at seeing dad lying there-

Before calming again as she realized what she was looking at.

There, in the dim hospital light, Jack Abbot lay in the maternity bed with his prosthetic resting beside him on the floor. Queenie slept against his chest. Their daughter tucked safely between them.

Held by both parents at once.

The nurse smiled, softly closed the door…

And decided the vitals could wait another fifteen minutes.

It happened sometime after sunset.

He’s relatively sure anyway. Time had stopped making much sense somewhere around the surprise childbirth. But Queenie had slept, and been fed, and gone through the first stumbling attempts to feed the baby. He stayed right by her side for all of it.

Now they were more or less right back where they started, Queenie resting against his chest, tucked under his chin with the baby asleep between them.

Jack had no intention of moving. Ever again, if he could help it.

Their daughter made a tiny snuffling sound in her sleep, rubbing her little face against his shirt but not waking up enough to root.

Queenie stroked a hand down her back. "...she probably needs a name."

"Probably.” Jack huffed a laugh against her hair. “We can’t call her ‘baby’ forever."

"Nothing trendy, though."

He blinked. "What?"

Queenie looked up at him with all the seriousness of someone discussing trauma protocols. "No weird modern names."

Jack considered this. "...Nothing that sounds like she was named after a social media influencer."

"Exactly," Queenie nodded solemnly.

He smiled despite himself. Their daughter slept through the discussion with the complete confidence of someone letting other people handle the paperwork of existence. Jack looked down at her.

Tiny.

Perfect.

Impossible.

"What about Eleanor?"

Queenie considered, but shook her head.

"Too regal."

"Charlotte?"

"Too popular."

"Margaret?"

She made a face.

He raised an eyebrow. "Any reason?"

Queenie thought about it, squinting down at the baby. "...she doesn't feel like a Margaret."

They went back and forth for a while, saying names into the room to see which one stuck. 

The baby sighed as their voices started to fade, trailing off into thought. A few minutes later Queenie's fingers tightened slightly around his hand.

"...Irene?"

Jack looked down at her. "What?"

She was staring at the baby like she was listening for something. Testing it. "Irene."

“Irene..” He considered. “I like it. 

"Irene Abbot,” Queenie said with a tired grin. “She sounds clever. Like she outsmarts kings and Victorian detectives.”

His world stopped. Irene Abbot. No hesitation. No should we hyphenate or well we aren’t married so…

Abbot.

Without a single question. As though she'd already decided they belonged to each other.

His throat closed as he tried very hard not to cry.

Beside him, entirely unaware she'd just altered the trajectory of his emotional stability forever, Queenie nodded to herself.

Instead he looked down at the tiny girl asleep in their arms.

His daughter.

Irene Abbot.

He had a daughter.

Jack pressed a kiss into her hair when he was sure his voice wouldn’t betray him. "I like Irene."