Emma

Jack grunted the words the second he finally got his prosthesis off, and there was so much genuine relief packed into those three syllables that you looked up from your book immediately. You had been curled sideways into the corner of the couch for the better part of an hour, knees tucked beneath the old knitted blanket Jack always claimed was too warm and then somehow ended up stealing every single night, your book open across your lap and a half-finished mug of tea cooling on the coffee table.

Across from you, Jack was perched on the very edge of the armchair, one hand braced hard against the cushion while the other carefully maneuvered his prosthesis free. He had been fiddling with it for the last few minutes, too stubborn to ask for help and too tired to do anything quickly, and the moment it finally came away from his residual limb, his entire body seemed to deflate. His shoulders dropped several inches. His jaw unclenched. The permanent little crease between his eyebrows disappeared. Even his stomach softened beneath his T-shirt as he stopped unconsciously holding himself rigid, and he let the prosthesis rest carefully against the side of the chair before collapsing backward with his head tipped toward the ceiling.

Another sigh left his lips, longer this time, the kind that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest. His eyes slid shut and his mouth fell slightly open, and for several seconds he simply sat there breathing as though someone had removed fifty pounds from his body instead of one prosthetic leg. You knew by now that there were evenings when taking it off was merely part of getting ready for bed, no more significant than kicking off your shoes at the door, and then there were evenings like this, when you could practically watch the relief travel through him muscle by muscle. Tonight, apparently, the thing had been driving him insane. You watched him for another second before the corner of your mouth pulled upward.

“You okay?” Jack gave a low, sleepy, “Mhm.” You lowered your book slightly.

“That was a very convincing mhm.”

“I’m great.” A laugh escaped through your nose before you could stop it, and Jack cracked one eye open to look at you.

“Wear one of these for fourteen hours and then make fun of me.”

“I wasn’t making fun of you. You know I never would, baby." You said.

His eye slid closed again. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

You laughed softly and let your book sink fully into your lap because reading had become impossible now anyway. It had been a long day. You could always tell, even when Jack insisted otherwise. He wasn't much of a complainer when it came to himself, which was almost funny considering how enthusiastically he complained about everything else. Bad coffee? You'd hear about it. Someone had parked crooked outside? Apparently a personal offense. The grocery store had moved the cereal aisle? Civilization was collapsing.

But pain was different. Exhaustion was different. Jack Abbot would rather chew through his own arm than casually admit that something hurt before it became bad enough that denying it would be ridiculous. So you had learned him instead. You knew the way he rolled one shoulder and then the other when his back had started aching. You knew the absent little press of his palm into his thigh when he'd been standing too long, the subtle adjustment of his weight when the socket started bothering him, the fractionally shorter steps he took toward the end of a particularly brutal shift.

You knew that when he came through the front door talking, even if he was complaining, he was usually okay. It was when he came home quiet that you watched him more closely. Tonight he'd walked in with rain darkening the shoulders of his jacket and that exhausted, faraway look still lingering behind his eyes. He'd smelled like cold evening air, hospital soap, stale coffee and that strangely specific sterile scent that clung to scrubs after too many hours beneath fluorescent lights. He'd kissed you hello almost on autopilot, one hand settling around your waist as he pressed his mouth to your forehead first and then your lips, and he'd stood there for an extra few seconds with his face tucked against your hair before finally letting you go.

You hadn't commented on it. You had simply reheated the pasta you'd saved for him and listened while he slowly came back to himself over dinner. By the second bite he had started talking. By the fifth he was complaining about something Mateo had done. By the tenth he was stealing from your plate despite the fact that the exact same pasta was sitting directly in front of him.

“Why are you eating mine?” you'd asked.

“Yours tastes better.” Then he'd announced that he was going to sit down “for five minutes” before showering. That had been forty minutes ago. His empty dinner plate was still sitting on the coffee table, his hospital ID was tossed beside it, and now his prosthesis was leaning against the armchair while Jack looked approximately ten years younger without it. You watched him sink farther into the cushion and closed your book with a soft thump.

“Come here.” His response came instantly. “No.” Your eyebrows lifted.

“No?”

“I just got comfortable. So no." You stared at him. He continued pretending his eyes were closed, except you knew perfectly well he was awake because the corner of his mouth had started twitching.

“Fine.” You reopened your book and made an exaggerated show of finding your page. Silence settled between you. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. You could practically feel him becoming irritated that you had actually listened to him.

“What?” You didn't look up.

“What?”

“You're doing something.”

“I'm reading.” You turned a page, perhaps with slightly more force than necessary.

“You're turning the pages too hard.” That finally broke you. You looked over the top of your book and found Jack watching you now, both eyes open, looking entirely too pleased with himself for a man who had spent the last ten minutes groaning like he'd survived a battlefield. His grin appeared slowly, unbearably smug despite the exhaustion still hanging around the edges of it, and you reached for the little throw pillow beside you and hurled it at his chest. Jack caught it with a quiet oof, clutching it dramatically against himself.

“Violence against a disabled veteran,” he murmured.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Unbelievable.”

“You're a menace.”

“I'm vulnerable.” He said with a smile. You burst out laughing, head falling back against the couch, and Jack's grin widened until you got what you had secretly been trying to get since he'd walked through the door. There. That smile. Not the sarcastic little half-smile he gave patients when they were being difficult, not the tired twitch of his mouth when someone at work made a joke during hour ten of a twelve-hour shift, not the polite expression he put on when someone asked how he was doing and he had absolutely no intention of answering honestly.

His actual smile. The one that softened his entire face and deepened the little lines beside his eyes. The one that made him look younger and warmer and so unmistakably yours that it always did something stupid to your chest. It was the smile you got when you caught him dancing badly while cooking, or when you whispered something inappropriate in public, or when he woke up on a Sunday morning and realized neither of you had anywhere to be.

It belonged to this version of him, the one who existed behind your front door, where nobody needed him to be Doctor Abbot or the man who always knew what to do. You let yourself look at him for another second before pushing the blanket from your legs and standing. His eyes followed you immediately. “Where're you going?”

“Kitchen.”

“Why?” You stopped and turned around.

“Why are you interrogating me?”

“Because you abandoned me.” You looked at the distance between you. You had taken exactly three steps.

“Jack.”

“Yes?”

“I'm six feet away.”

“Feels farther.”

Something warm bloomed beneath your ribs, annoyingly immediate, and you turned toward the kitchen before he could see how easily he'd gotten you.

“You want tea?”

“No.”

“Hot chocolate?”

“No.”

“Coffee?” There was a suspiciously long pause. You glanced over your shoulder and found him genuinely considering it.

“No.” He said, knowing his aswer would be approved by you.

“Good choice.” You said.

You opened the cupboard. “Snack?” His eyes flicked toward the cabinet so quickly that you almost missed it. Almost.

“Aha! You want a snack, don't you?”

“No.” He said, not convincing you at all.

You opened it wider and started moving things around, hearing the rustle of packets and boxes beneath the soft patter of rain against the windows. The apartment was warm in that particular way it only seemed to become at night, when the curtains were drawn and the lamps were on instead of the harsh ceiling light. The dishwasher hummed from beneath the counter. The candle you'd lit after dinner had burned low enough that the wax was pooled around the wick, filling the apartment with vanilla and cedarwood beneath the lingering smell of garlic, tomatoes and basil from dinner.

“Do we have those little cookies?” Jack suddenly called from the living room. You leaned your forehead against the cupboard door and closed your eyes. “Chocolate chip?”

“Yes please.”

You returned with the package and immediately watched Jack's hand appear expectantly over the arm of the chair. You walked straight past it. His head turned slowly to follow you.

“Excuse me?” You sat back down on the couch and tucked your feet underneath yourself.

“These are mine.”

“I bought those.”

“I put them in the cart.”

“With my money.”

“Our money.” Jack stared at you. You stared back. His gaze dropped to the package.

“One.”

“No.”

“Half.”

“No.” His eyes narrowed while you deliberately opened the package, selected one, and took an exaggeratedly slow bite.

“You're enjoying this.”

“Very much.” There was half a second of silence before your gaze dropped very deliberately toward the prosthesis beside his chair. Then you looked back at him. Jack stared at you. You stared at Jack. His mouth twitched despite his best effort to stop it.

“Don't.” Your lips pressed together. “Don't you fucking dare.” That did it. You folded forward laughing so hard you nearly spilled the cookies into your lap. “Oh, you're awful,” he said, but now he was laughing too, shaking his head while reaching for the pillow you'd thrown at him earlier. You immediately saw what was happening. “No, no, no.”

“You have about three seconds.”

“Jack.”

“One.”

“You wouldn't.”

“Two.”

“You're a physician!”

“Three.”

The pillow came flying across the room. You shrieked and ducked, throwing both arms over your head while it bounced harmlessly off the back of the couch and landed behind you. “Missed!”

“Yeah, well, depth perception's going with age.”

“You're not that old.”

“Tell my joints that.” You retrieved the pillow and hugged it protectively against your chest, still giggling as you watched him settle back into the chair. His laughter faded first into a smile and then into another sigh, but this one sounded different from the others. Smaller. Softer. Content rather than exhausted. His head rested back and his eyes closed, the last traces of amusement still lingering around his mouth. For a little while you simply watched him. There were moments when his tiredness seemed almost boyish, when all the hard edges of him disappeared and he looked strangely defenseless in sleepiness. Your own smile gradually softened. Your eyes moved down to where his prosthesis sat beside him, then back to his face. “Does it hurt?” His eyes opened. He didn't need you to explain. “A little.”

“Your leg?”

“Mostly where the socket sits.” You set the pillow aside.

“Can I see?”

Jack hesitated, but only for a heartbeat, before shifting himself slightly and giving you room. You slid from the couch onto the rug beside his chair, settling on your knees near him. There was something deeply intimate about these moments that had absolutely nothing to do with sex. You had thought about that before. There were obvious forms of intimacy, kissing him, sleeping together, knowing the shape of his body in the dark, but this felt different. This was being allowed near the places that hurt. It was knowing which touch meant stop and which meant keep going. It was knowing when he needed help without making him feel helpless. Jack had spent too much of his life learning how to endure discomfort and continue functioning through it. Soldier first, doctor after. Different uniforms, same instinct. Keep moving. Deal with it later. Don't make it anyone else's problem.

Loving him had meant learning that sometimes you couldn't force him to stop carrying things, but you could give him somewhere safe to put them down. Here, he didn't have to keep going. Not in this room. Not with you. You carefully inspected his residual limb, your fingers hovering rather than immediately touching. The skin where the socket had been sitting was flushed and irritated, angry pink in several places, and your eyebrows drew together before you could stop them. “Jack.”

“I know.baby.”

“That's really red.”

“Well, it was a long shift.”

“How long was it bothering you?” His eyes shifted away. That alone answered the question.

“Jack.”

“Couple hours.”

“A couple?”

“Maybe more.”

You gave him a look so severe that he actually raised both hands in surrender. He huffed a laugh as you carefully rested your palm against his thigh, avoiding the irritated skin. “Stay here.”

“Where am I gonna go?”

“Knowing you? Back to work.”

“Without my leg?”

“You'd find a way.” You disappeared down the hallway and came back carrying the little woven basket that had somehow become Jack's basket over time. Nobody had officially declared it as such. It had simply happened. First there had been moisturizer. Then wipes. Then an extra liner. Then a couple of things for maintaining the prosthesis. Eventually you'd added a small towel, some skin-care products he actually tolerated and the little massage ball he'd bought after someone recommended it and subsequently forgotten existed. Now it lived on the bottom shelf in the bathroom, wedged between your extra toilet paper and hair products, another ordinary piece of evidence that two lives had been folded into one. Jack spotted the massage ball the second you sat down.

“No.”

“Oh hush, You complain that it helps.”

“I don't complain that it helps.”

“You literally said, and I quote, ‘I hate that stupid little ball because it actually works.’”

He frowned. “Give me your leg.”

His eyebrows jumped. “Romantic.”

“I'm serious, Jack.”

“So am I.”

“Jack.” He was smiling again when he finally shifted closer and let you take care of him.

You worked slowly, never touching the irritated areas harder than necessary, checking his expression every now and then even though he insisted you didn't need to. The first time your fingers pressed into one of the tight muscles higher up his thigh, his entire face pinched. “Ow.” Your hands immediately stopped. “Too much?”

“No.”

You gave him a suspicious look before easing the pressure and continuing. Gradually, the tension began leaving him again. You could feel it beneath your hands, muscles that had spent the entire day compensating and adjusting finally beginning to loosen. Jack went quiet. Really quiet. Not withdrawn this time, just tired enough that words had become unnecessary. His hand eventually drifted down and settled against the back of your neck, fingers warm against your skin. His thumb began moving absentmindedly beneath your hairline, tracing the same tiny arc over and over while you worked. You glanced up and found his eyes closed, mouth relaxed, chin tipped toward his chest. “Better?” “Mhm.” You smiled. “Real mhm or fake mhm?” His thumb brushed your neck again.

“Real one.”

Another few minutes passed like that, and the entire apartment seemed to settle around you. Your candle flickered on the coffee table, throwing warm shadows across Jack's face whenever the flame moved. His fingers occasionally wandered farther into your hair, scratching lightly at your scalp before returning to your neck. Your knees had started aching from sitting on the rug, but you didn't particularly care. There was something almost hypnotic about the quiet of it, about caring for someone who spent his entire day caring for everybody else.

Eventually, so softly that you almost mistook it for another tired exhale, Jack said, “Thank you.” You looked up. “For what?” His eyes opened slowly. They looked different now, heavy with sleep and softer than they ever seemed beneath hospital lights. “This.” Your hands stilled.

“The massage?”

“No.”

“The cookies you're not getting?” His mouth twitched.

“Still pissed about that.”

“What, then?” Jack's hand lifted from your neck and made a vague motion around the room.

“This.”

You followed the gesture even though there wasn't anything specific to look at. The apartment. The rain streaking the windows. The dinner plates still waiting beside the sink because neither of you had felt like dealing with them. Your book lying face-down on the couch despite the fact that Jack had told you approximately four hundred times that doing that ruined the spine. His hospital badge beside your mug. His prosthesis resting against the armchair. Your socks abandoned beneath the coffee table. His shoes in the hallway. The stupid candle you'd bought because you'd insisted it smelled like autumn even though Jack had argued for ten full minutes that autumn wasn't technically a smell. A grocery list was stuck crookedly to the refrigerator with his handwriting beneath yours because he'd added coffee three separate times.

There was a photo of the two of you tucked into the corner of the mirror. His phone charger had somehow migrated permanently to your side of the couch. Nothing matched perfectly. Nothing was particularly impressive. It was just lived in. Warm. Yours. His. Both. You looked back at Jack and understood so suddenly that your chest tightened. “Oh.” Jack looked almost embarrassed now, gaze dropping from yours as though admitting that this mattered to him was somehow more exposing than letting you tend to his leg. That tenderness hit you so hard you wanted to crawl directly inside his ribcage and stay there.

Instead, you leaned forward and rested your cheek against his thigh. His hand came down automatically, settling into your hair as though it had been waiting for you. “You don't have to thank me for home.”

His fingers stopped. Just for a second. You felt the stillness more than you saw it. Then they began moving again, slowly combing through your hair. “I know,” he murmured. You closed your eyes, cheek warm against him. You knew there were a hundred things underneath those two words that Jack would probably never say properly.

He didn't have to. You knew enough of his life to understand why ordinary peace could sometimes feel extraordinary to him. Nobody was calling his name. Nobody was bleeding. No alarms were sounding. Nothing needed to be fixed. There wasn't another decision waiting to be made the second he finished the last one. There was only you on the floor between his knees, the smell of dinner still lingering in the kitchen, rain on the windows and his prosthesis sitting several feet away because he didn't need it to go anywhere. You stayed like that until his fingers suddenly tapped twice against the top of your head. “Cookie.” Your eyes opened. You slowly looked up at him. “Absolutely not.”

“I just got emotionally vulnerable.”

“That doesn't earn you a cookie.”

“It should.”

“You cannot weaponize emotional vulnerability.” His face remained completely serious.

“Watch me.”

You laughed and pushed yourself up from the rug, your knees cracking loudly enough that Jack immediately pointed at you. “And you called me old.”

“Oh shut up.” You grabbed the package from the couch and handed him a cookie. Jack accepted it with the satisfaction of a man who had just won a lengthy legal battle. “Thank you.”

“You're spoiled.”

“I'm injured.”

“You've been an amputee for years. You cannot suddenly use it to get cookies.”

He took a bite to avoid answering you, chewing with an infuriating little smile. Then, after a second, he broke what remained in half and held one piece toward you. Your expression softened despite every effort to keep it stern. “You know those are my cookies, right?”

“Just take it.” Instead of using your hand, you leaned forward and took the piece directly from between his fingers. Jack's eyebrows rose. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You're looking at me weird.” “I'm looking at my girlfriend.”

“Weirdly.” His thumb brushed a crumb from the corner of your mouth.

“Lovingly.”

Eventually, after you had put everything back into the basket and ordered him not to put the prosthesis back on for the rest of the night, you convinced Jack to abandon the armchair. He moved carefully, practiced enough that he didn't need you hovering but familiar enough with you to know that you were going to hover anyway. “I've got it,” he murmured when your hand automatically reached for him. “I know.” You left your hand there. He glanced at it, then at you, and didn't argue. Once he was settled on the couch, you climbed in beside him and pulled the blanket over both of you. Jack immediately lifted his arm without being asked, and you tucked yourself into the familiar space beneath it, your cheek finding his chest while his body settled warm and heavy around yours. Your hand spread over his chest and felt the slow, steady beat of his heart beneath your palm.

“You comfortable?” you murmured.

“Mhm.”

Your lips curved against his shirt. “Real one?”

His arm tightened around you, pulling you half an inch closer even though there was practically no space left between you anyway. He pressed a lingering kiss into your hair. “Real one.”

You smiled and let your eyes close. Jack's thumb moved lazily over your shoulder beneath the blanket, slower each time it passed until eventually it stopped altogether. Tomorrow morning he'd put the prosthesis back on. He'd stand at the bathroom sink brushing his teeth while half-awake. He'd drink coffee too quickly and complain that you hadn't made enough even though there would be half a pot left. He'd kiss you goodbye at the door and return to polished hospital hallways beneath unforgiving fluorescent lights. He'd become Doctor Abbot again. People would call his name from three directions at once, and he'd answer all of them. He'd carry the weight because that was what Jack did, even when nobody noticed how heavy it became.

But that was tomorrow.