"where am i?" "earth."

Emergency Princess Dress - You and Jake make a dress for your daughter that she can wear for her friend’s birthday party (aka: Jake is a total girl dad).

The Bet - You and Jake have a childish bet of who can stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Drunk Confessions - Jake confesses his love for you. The problem? The two of you are already engaged.

Six Blocks - You and Jake have to park farther from The Hard Deck than usual. The weather gives Jake the chance to show he truly is a man of many talents.

Lima Charlie - You work in Navy Comms and Jake falls in love with your voice.

The Scarf - A forgotten jacket leads to Jake giving you his favorite scarf outside the Hard Deck, and you make it yours by never giving it back.

Quiet Morning - The quiet of a Saturday morning helps reveal what is truly important.

Chaotic and Free - He lied about pasta sauce, and she decided to see what happened.

Stolen Glances - Everyone sees it but them. The looks, the tension, the careful distance. The Daggers are invested. Someone has to break first.

15,000 ft. - Hangman and his fellow pilot prove that sometimes the best relationships are built on a foundation of trust forged at 15,000 feet.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

RTB - He’d been nervous for weeks. She’d been patient for longer.

Without Asking - He was bad at being sick. She knew him well enough.

As It Turns Out - They were both being very reasonable about it. Separately. Without telling each other.

Told You - A sunny afternoon. A garden hose. Jake being Jake. You wouldn’t have it any other way — not that you’d tell him that.

Low and Tuneless - Outside, the morning can’t decide whether to be foggy or clear. Inside, something is quietly, irrevocably making up its mind.

Against the Forecast - It barely accumulated. It barely lasted. It didn’t leave a single trace it had been there at all. That felt like enough.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

You’d turned around. He was looking at his mug with a small, careful smile, like he was pretending he hadn’t done it.

So you whistled it again, with two new notes added at the end.

He looked up. Added three more.

You went back and forth like that for an embarrassing amount of time, the phrase growing and changing and developing a little tail at the end that you both seemed to agree on simultaneously without discussing it, and by the time you’d finished your coffee you had something that was genuinely, structurally, a song.

A small one. Ridiculous, probably. Yours.

The rule — unspoken, never discussed, simply understood — was that the song meant I’m here and I’m glad you’re here too. That was all. It didn’t need to mean anything more complicated than that, and it never tried to.

You’d whistle the first half, and he’d answer with the second, and that was the whole of it. Call and response, like two birds who’d found each other in a large tree and decided to stay.

He started using it to find you.

Not the whole song — just the opening phrase, your half, sent out into the house like a friendly signal. And you’d answer with your half from wherever you were, and that was that, location established, no further communication required.

From the bedroom: the first half, soft and unhurried.

From the kitchen: the answer, back through the wall.

From the garage, loud enough to carry: the first half, a little impatient.

From the backyard: the second half, drawn out, making him wait.

A pause. Then the opening phrase again, with a note at the end that clearly meant I heard that.

You’d laughed into the garden.

What you liked about it — what you’d never said out loud but knew to be true — was that it was completely untranslatable. It didn’t mean dinner’s ready or come help me with this or have you seen my keys. It didn’t carry information. It was purely, simply, the sound of two people who were happy to be in the same house, saying so in the most unnecessary and elaborate way possible.

A whole song just to say hello, I’m here.

A whole song just to say hello, me too.

And then one Saturday afternoon it happened at your own cookout.

It had been Jake’s idea, which meant it had been planned with the same energy he applied to most things — thoroughly, and with strong opinions about the charcoal. The backyard was full — the whole Dagger Squad spread across the lawn and the patio with drinks in hand, conversation overlapping. Payback and Fanboy were locked in some debate near the drinks table. Coyote was laughing at both of them. Rooster had claimed the best chair on the patio with the efficiency of someone who knew how to secure a good position early. Phoenix and Bob were somewhere near the fence, talking the way they always did, unhurried and easy.

You’d slipped inside to grab another tray and gotten distracted looking for the serving tongs, opening and closing drawers with the mild frustration of someone looking for something that was exactly where it always was. When you finally found them you stood at the counter for a moment, tray in hand, looking out the open kitchen window at the backyard full of people.

And then, without thinking — without meaning to — you whistled the first half of your song into the empty kitchen.

Your half. The hello, I’m here of it.

The moment it left you, you went completely still.

Outside, through the open window, the backyard had gone quiet in a way that was very different from the noise it had been a second ago.

You stood at the kitchen counter for several seconds.

Then you picked up the tray, straightened your spine, and walked outside.

Every head had turned.

You felt your face go warm.

You kept walking.

And Jake, standing at the grill with the tongs in his hand, had heard it through the window the same as everyone else. He looked across the yard at you. Took in your face. Took in every single person watching.

And whistled the second half back. Clear and unhurried and completely unashamed, the same as if it were only the two of you in the kitchen on a Sunday morning. Just finishing the song the way it was always meant to be finished.

“Burgers are ready,” Jake said pleasantly, and turned back to the grill.

You crossed the yard and came to stand beside him and he made room for you without looking, his hand finding yours for just a moment at your side — brief and warm and certain — before he let go and handed you a plate.

“You didn’t have to do that,” you said quietly, just for him.

He glanced at you sideways. “Do what.”

“Whistle back. In front of everyone.”

He looked at you for a moment with that steady, unhurried expression that meant the answer was obvious and he was giving you a second to arrive at it yourself.

“Yeah I did,” he said simply, and turned back to the grill.

Behind you the squad recovered at various speeds. Some grinned, others chuckled.

You didn’t ask what it was. You didn’t need to.

On a night in the middle of winter you were curled up on the couch with Jake, the house quiet and warm around you, outside the wind doing its thing against the windows. Neither of you were talking. Neither of you needed to. His arm was around you, your legs across his, the lamp making everything gold and close.

And then, soft and unhurried, he whistled the first half of your song.

Not for any reason. Not asking anything. Just — offering it into the quiet the way you might say someone’s name simply because they were there and you were glad of it.

You looked up at him.

He wasn’t looking back. Just relaxed, eyes forward, the smallest suggestion of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

You whistled the second half back.

He pressed his lips to your hair.

That was the whole exchange. No words. No explanation. Just the song, completed, sitting warm in the room like something that lived there.

Outside the wind moved through the trees and inside the lamp held everything gold and the song settled quietly between you the way it always did — small and private and entirely your own, the sound of two people who had, some time ago and without quite meaning to, learned each other’s frequency.

And liked what they heard.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The one that had ridden in the back seat on moving day with its shade slightly askew, the one that had been the first thing placed you brought in this house before a single box was unpacked. It sat on the side table now throwing its warm amber circle across the room, same as it always had.

Inside Jake was warm at your back, arms around you, the two of you tucked so thoroughly under the blanket that the gray sad world outside felt not just far away but entirely beside the point. His chin rested on top of your head. Your hands were folded over his. The rain whispered at the windows, barely audible, and the house was quiet and close and warm around both of you.

It was, objectively, the best place in the world to be.

You weren’t sure how it came up. One of those conversations that didn’t start so much as simply arrive, drifting in the way things did on slow quiet mornings with nowhere to be.

“Do you remember the day I moved in?” you asked.

His chest moved against your back — a low quiet laugh, brief and warm, that said everything without saying anything at all.

You smiled at the middle distance. “That many boxes.”

He pressed his lips to the top of your head, still saying nothing, still smiling, which was its own answer and a complete one.

“It was a normal amount,” you said.

“Fifteen,” he said, warm with it.

“You counted.”

“I carried. The counting happened naturally.” A pause, fond and unhurried. “You stood at the back of the truck and handed them to me one by one. Very ceremonially.”

“I was making sure nothing got dropped.”

“You inspected each one before you let it go,” he said. “Like you were seeing them off.”

“They had things in them.”

“Important things, clearly.”

“Fifteen boxes of important things.”

“And a lamp,” he said.

You smiled, your eyes drifting briefly to the side table. To the lamp, warm and steady in the gray morning. “And a lamp.”

“You carried it yourself,” he said, after a while. The fondness in it unhurried and easy.

“It was fragile.”

“You carried it up the stairs with both hands,” he continued, “very carefully, like it was something that might startle. While I had boxes stacked to my chin behind you.”

“You were fine.”

“I had genuine doubts about the stairs.”

“You knew where they were.”

“Theoretically,” he said, and you felt him smile against your hair. “I trusted the process.”

You laughed softly and he pulled you closer without being asked, arms shifting around you, the blanket resettling. Outside the thin rain continued its quiet sad business against the glass, everything still and gray beyond it.

“You brought it straight in here,” he said. “Before anything else.”

“First thing.”

“You didn’t deliberate about it,” he said. “You came through the door, looked around, and put it right there.” You could feel him glancing at the side table. At the lamp. “Plugged it in. Turned it on. Just stood there looking at it.”

You had almost forgotten that part. The memory came back gently — the living room bare and full of boxes, unfamiliar in the way new places were before they became yours, and you setting the lamp down and watching it fill the room with something warm and known in the middle of all that newness.

“It made it feel real,” you said quietly. “Like I actually lived here.”

“You did actually live here.”

“I know. But it didn’t feel like it yet.” You looked at the lamp now, warm and steady on the side table, throwing the same light it always had. “It made it feel like it.”

He was quiet for a moment, his thumb moving slowly across your knuckles.

“I was right behind you with a box,” he said. “Watching you. You turned it on and just — stood there. And the room looked different straight away.” A pause, warm and unhurried. “I remember thinking that you were going to make this place look completely different.”

“Was that okay?”

“More than okay,” he said simply, and the way he said it left no room for doubt.

Outside the rain whispered on. The trees patient in the thin wet quiet of it. The sky sat low and soft over everything, unbothered by its own melancholy.

“The mugs,” you said, after a while.

He made a soft sound of recognition. “The mugs.”

“I moved them a few times.”

“You found the right spot eventually.”

“Second cabinet,” you said. “Left of the sink.”

“Where they’ve been ever since. I remember you standing at the counter staring at the cabinets like they’d done something to you.”

“I was thinking.”

“You were very serious about it.”

“It was our kitchen,” you said. “I wanted to know where things went. Where my things went.” You paused. “It mattered.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Just held you a little more deliberately, his arms steady and warm around you.

“I know,” he said. “I could tell it mattered.”

A beat.

“I liked that it mattered to you.”

You looked at the window. At the thin gray rain tracking down the glass in quiet wandering lines, beyond it still and dark and soft with wet.

“It was a good day,” you said. Quiet and certain.

“Moving in day?”

“Moving in day.”

He considered it the way he considered things he wanted to answer properly.

“You cried a little,” he said. “When we’d finished. When everything was in.”

“I did not.”

“You did. Just a bit. Happy crying.”

You were quiet for a moment. You had, actually. Standing in the middle of the living room with the boxes all emptied and broken down and the lamp on on the side table and your mugs in the second cabinet left of the sink, and the whole place suddenly looking like somewhere two people lived instead of one.

“It was a lot,” you said finally.

“I know.” His lips pressed warm into your hair. “I didn’t say anything then either.”

“Why not?”

A pause. Simple and unhurried. “Same reason as when you turned the lamp on,” he said. “You looked happy. Didn’t want to interrupt it.”

You looked at the lamp now. Warm and steady and unchanged, throwing the same amber light it had thrown since the very first day it came through the door.

“I’m glad I moved in,” you said.

He was quiet for just a moment.

“Me too,” he said. Low and warm and certain, the way he said things he really meant. “Best fifteen boxes I ever carried.”

You smiled and pulled his arms tighter around you and he let you, and outside the rain whispered on, soft and gray and still, the sad sky sitting quiet and patient over everything, melancholy to its core.

Inside the lamp threw its warm circle across the room.

First thing in. Never moved since.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​