The knock to the hotel door came twenty minutes prior to when you were due to walk the carpet. It was a distinct knock, five sharp, melodic raps against the wood that could be mistaken for something along the lines of morse code. It was protocol—of course. The debut premiere of a high profile movie adapted from the pages of millions of people’s most treasured story, the stakes could never be higher to ensure that the other person on the side of the door was not a human will ill-intent. 

It came with the profession. Media consumers, movie buffs, locals disrupted by the chaos that a bunch of actors and their entourage brought to their city, weren’t all going to be elated by the movie adaption. 

You were never going to win; women never got to win. 

So, the knocks were mandatory. 

One of the many assistants that were collaborating for the initial get ready to go as smoothly and as on time as possible, crept to the door, cracking it open just a slither before their shoulders drop in relief—because there was no use of brunt force or verbal abuse needed to the potential threat on the other side. 

You are closer to the opposite side of the room with a team of hair, makeup and your most trusted confidant; your stylist, when the door opens and shuts with urgency. From where you are stood, you can see the red carpet beneath the building you were residing in and it had been cause for a brilliant distraction amidst the tugging and turning you had to endure to look the part. 

Eventually, you turn your head to see your boyfriend approach you with—what you would call it—a shit-eating grin on his handsome features. Clark Kent is almost unrecognisable as he forgoes the frumpy, ill-fitting grey ensemble suit for his everyday work escapades at Daily Planet, and stands in all broad-shouldered excellence in a sleek suit that deliberately complimented the theme of your outfit. 

It was subtle. Completely intentional. (The world had yet to unearth the privacy of your relationship, but that didn’t mean Clark couldn’t tease a declaration of possession with a suit.) 

Your posture slumps with relief to see him. 

“Hey.” you breathe out, the team around you dispersing momentarily to allow you a moment with your remedial significant other. 

Clark bends to press a featherlight kiss to your lips—conscious enough to not ruin the perfected makeup look. “Hi, sweetheart. You okay?”

“Yeah, just—” you inhale and Clark copies, “—nervous. Sort of.” 

Nervous was an understatement to how you felt. To be morbidly graphic, what you felt was close to the comparison of, if you had ingested flesh-eating maggots that had a craving for eating away at your vital organs. Especially your stomach. 

Nervous was just a more eloquent way of expressing that. 

It was to be expected. The movie that you had been working on amongst some of the top-dogs of the theatre industry, was also your introductory film. It took close to two years of filming, hundreds of repetitive script-reads—with Clark has your practice partner—and endless but intermittent travelling to locations to capture the true essence of a backdrop for a scene. This movie, with a director that was renowned across the globe, would change the trajectory of your life within this business you were so passionate to be apart of. 

The premiere was another ominous entity entirely. 

In simpler terms: this is where the public scrutiny came into play. 

Clark’s face fills with empathy, “I know. It’s a big deal for you.” he rubs circles into the pulse point on your wrist, “You deserve the recognition. Everything else is just outside noise. Alright?” 

“Right.” you give a curt nod, “I do deserve this.” 

“I’ll be right there with you. Well—behind you, not in shot…just with your assistant. Away from the limelight.” Clark mulls the positioning of his standpoint on the red carpet, “Golly. You know what I mean.” 

You let out an airy laugh, “Thank you, baby. I really appreciate you being here.” 

Clark pecks your glossy lips again with a smile, before taking the opportunity to stand back on his heel to appreciate the work your team had put into the creation that moulds to the curves your body. It was a craft—the art form that spoke through the visuals of fabric against the human form. The team that remains devoted to you to this day have completely encapsulated the aesthetics on par with the movie; as if they shook the script and you fell out wearing a divine masterpiece. 

He could appreciate the concept pieced together on your body. He would appreciate that you brought it to life, even more. 

Clark’s hands smooth down your forearms, his face melding into that of a man on a ledge of delaying the entire premiere process. Brows in a pinch, a low hum rumbles from his chest as he drinks up your external beauty.

You tuck your chin to your shoulder because, even after a year and some change with the bumbling journalist—and true Kryptonian behind closed doors—Clark still manages to conjure up some shyness from the depths of your core. 

“You look…angelic.” Clark speaks in a barely audible tone. 

You look down at your frame, “That was the prompt. This dress was put on hold from the runway for two years—Can you believe that?” your eyes shine with excitement when you look back up. 

“They made the right decision, honey.” Clark muses, happy to keep your spirits up before the anxiety seeps in from the corners. 

“You look handsome.” you redirect, voice dripping in saccharine. You subject your team to the ooey-gooey tempo pouring from the bubble you found yourself in with Clark. You smooth your hands down his chest, “I like your suit. You suit this cream colour.”

“Yes—Well, I thought I could match in some way.” Clark mumbles, pink from praise. His fingers dip into the breast pocket, pulling out a pair of golden-frame sunglasses. “I made these.” 

You pluck the sunglasses to inspect the plexiglass. “The same as your others?” 

(It was an attempt to be as discreet as possible in a room full of listeners. For all they knew, your significant other had a passion project of making sunglasses.) 

Clark nods happily and you express your amazement through the subtlety of facial expressions—trying hard not to draw too much attention to raise questions from the others. He takes the glasses from you, angling his body away momentarily to exchange the signature frames for the newly designed ones. 

He turns back, dimples prominent with the shades now adorning his face. 

“Ooh.” you chirp, “Are you sure you don’t want to walk the carpet?”

“That’s all you, honey.” Clark ensures as he laps up your fawning over him. 

Your publicist finds a moment of reprieve in between the flirtations between you two, signalling that the final touch ups can be made in the short car ride to the venue. Clark breathes with you when the apprehension returns in shudders of air from your lips, his reassurance quiet as he gathers your skirts to ensure your walk to your assigned vehicle is as undisrupted as possible. 

The elevator ride from the tenth floor doesn’t last long enough for you, and suddenly you’re struggling into the backseat of the car with the tinted windows—Clark prompt to step up and help you into the seat with his hand at your hip. Once you’re awkwardly settled, the dress preventing as much fluid movement as usual, Clark ducks his head when you place a hand to his jaw to tug him in for one final kiss; before the relationship was placed behind a thin veil and away from prying eyes. 

Then it’s you, your stylist and your thoughts. 

Clark is in the car following behind yours. He has your publicist talking in his ear about the protocol to be strictly followed once on the carpet. She’s essentially the brains of the operations that happen under everyone’s starry-eyed infatuation with the stars of the movie. She talks of the interview triages assessed prior to this moment, where you need to be an opportunist with popular media outlets, the strict schedule to help you flow through the process with minimal overtime with interviewers. 

“It’ll be hard not to step in.” she says in regard to parasite that were the paparazzi, “That’s my job. I know the cues, the questions that aren’t to be asked. Just be there as background support. She’s nervous.” 

“Of course.” Clark agrees with zero protest.

This was beyond the cushioned comfort of Daily Planet, or in the skies as the protector of Metropolis—or wherever he’s needed. Clark was out of his depth with all the glamour, besides the handful of times he had attended the Metropolis Gala still in civilian clothing. 

Even taking all of this taken into consideration, the event was about you, and your co-stars no less; but you. That meant Clark had to chew on his feelings and relinquish his protective streak to allow the professionals to do the job they had been employed to do. 

Take care of you in the spotlight. 

And, for the most part, they do. 

As soon as you’re out of the car, your publicist doesn’t let you out of her sight. Even with the blinding flashes coming from the bulbs in the plethora of cameras, she never loses you in the swarm of desperate hands waving posters for signatures. When the time tiptoes on, she is the one to give your elbow a light tap and you move along. 

Clark watches you in awe from the sidelines. The fluidity in which you manage to maintain as you manoeuvre from interacting with fans to snappy interviews with various different media outlets, is genuinely admirable.

From an insider’s perspective, Clark couldn’t help but show his bias. You weren’t a hard person to fall in love with. He finds himself falling deeper everyday. So, it made complete sense the way strangers would practically fall to their knees in reverence the moment you turned your attention in their direction. 

(Clark was just privileged enough to be able to take you home. Whereas, these people didn’t.) 

Eventually—after the red carpet photos, interviews and fan interactions—you make it into a more communal, but still public, area with all the co-stars of the movie, and where the paparazzi also begin to spill into the edges of the carpet; without as much as a barrier to hold them back. 

Despite this, the photographers had been told on numerous occasions that this was an intermission to allow to actors to breathe for a minute. Therefore, photos were to be put on hold until the group photos of all the people starring in the movie were to take place. 

“You okay?” Clark checks in when you finally come to a stop. 

“Phew—Yeah. This is pretty intense. Do you think I’m doing okay?” you look up at him all twinkly-eyed, your pupils dilated from a mixture of strong affection and the adrenaline from the event. 

Clark, without much thought, rubs the nape of your neck, “You’re a natural, sweetheart.” 

You lean into his touch. (He refrains from pressing a to kiss your temple. Or anywhere on your face.) 

“How are you feeling?” you ask whilst you take Clark’s hand into yours to absentmindedly play with it. 

“I’m happy.” Clark chirps, “Happy to be part of this moment with you.” 

You tilt your chin, humming in content—Clark Kent was a man who knew how to love. “You’re sweet. We just have some group photos and then we’re inside to introduce the film. We aren’t obligated to stay after that.”

“You don’t want to watch it?” 

“I do! I just have this idea in my head on how I’ll watch it. You know, when it’s released to the public. You, me and our friends can go to the Metro to watch it.” you beam at the idea of sharing your moment with your close ones; and as an extension, Clark’s close friends too. 

Clark wants to kiss you. You can see it in the way his tongue pokes out to wet his lips. Behind the tinted shades, blue eyes are pinned to your lips as the end goal. He gives you a handsome smile, hungry for some public display of affection but is aware of the boundaries in place. 

This was your moment. He didn’t want any kiss to detract from that in the newspapers the next morning. 

The tension is palpable, because your relationship has always been pretty handsy. Anywhere you went together, there was always a hand placed on a hip, a kiss pressed to the back of a hand or a peck to the lips when you found the time. To have the restraint to not flaunt the love shared between you two, was a talent in its own. 

(That didn’t mean the ride back had to be cuffed to the self-control too.) 

Even so, you still found yourself fiddling with Clark’s hand, stepping into him as you waited around for the signal for the group photos. 

It’s only when a few bulb flashes spark in your peripheral, that you drop the gentle affection. 

Your publicist is first to step in. “There’s no photos to be taken here. If you make your way round to the podium, the group photos will be held there.” she announces it clear and concisely—so there shouldn’t be any confusion. 

“Yeah. Yeah.” a male with an expensive camera drawls. 

You turn back and pull a face at Clark, “There’s always one, huh?” 

Clark offers a smile reserved only for you. 

The flash goes off again. 

“Excuse me—” your publicist steps up to the same male, “—Did I not make it clear enough? This is a no photography zone. Go round to the podium, or I will call security.” 

The pap chuckles and lifts his lens to snap another candid photo of you. “Let me do my fuckin’ job, lady.” 

“Hey!” Clark moves toward your publicist to defend her. His face contorts into frustration, “Everyone has a job to do here. Let’s be respectful of that.” 

“Shut the fuck up, dude.”

Clark’s nostrils flare, “Don’t be such a jerk, buddy.” 

The man scoffs at Clark’s polite insult. 

“This your guy?” he snorts, thumbing in Clark’s direction whilst he stares at you. 

You also step into the space where the minor conflict was beginning to arise. Media trained down to the bone, you were aware of how to keep composure whilst trying to snuff out the growing tensions amongst ravenous paparazzi that will do anything for a front page image. 

Silence follows you, ignoring the provocation from the paparazzi. 

Your hand comes to rest on Clark’s forearm as he stares down the bald-headed man who was sneering back at him. He could feel the thrum of the pulse quickening in his neck but yields all the same. Your publicist gives him a grateful nod, all three of you turning your backs to weave through the rest of the people that congregated on the carpet. 

It’s the step to the side, and behind your publicist—to check in with her—that induces a blur of aggression. 

The belligerent paparazzi male makes himself an opportunist to the vulnerability in having your back turned. Unsatisfied with the limited images he has taken of you, his hand outstretches and he dictates your movement with a hand yanking at your bicep. 

It makes you yelp from the unexpectedness of it. His intentions are rough and you’re pulled from your publicist. 

You attempt to shake him off—his fingers curling deeper into your flesh. “Get off of me!” 

“Hell no. I need one good fucking photo—” his demands are cut short when Clark comes up from behind you, grabbing the camera in the paparazzi’s grasp and crushing it into smithereens beneath his foot. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

“She said get off of her.” Clark sizes the guy up, a couple of inches taller, “No one takes photos here. You heard the rules.” 

“Clark—” 

“No, fuck you!” The guy points a finger in Clark’s face, “And fuck this nobody bitch!”  

A shade of red blinds Clark’s vision as he takes the fabric of the man’s shirt into his fingers, his teeth bared as he sends him a couple of feet into the crowd of paparazzi standing idle—all observing the ordeal before they became part of it. Luckily for the bald-headed pap, Clark had only mustered up a slither of his strength to send him backwards; so it wasn’t as evident that he contained the power to have his body flung to the other end of the street.

You stop Clark from following the path in which he tossed the man like a rag-doll, seeing as his point had been well and truly proven. His eyes remain where a few people have bent at the knee to check for any injuries on the male.

A single flash goes off. 

“Come on.” you mumble, your fingers intertwine with Clark’s as you tug him behind you with your linked hands flush against your back. 

Clark feels the visceral anger water down to dread whilst he walks, the guilt rising like bile in his throat as you guide him away. “I’m sorry, honey. I’ve ruined this for you.” 

“These things happen.” you speak over your shoulder, straining a smile to onlookers, “You didn’t ruin anything. It was about time these paps get put in their place.” 

“Are you hurt?” he asks worriedly. 

You shake your head as you come to a stop, your publicist beside you already on the phone. “Peachy.” you fix the lapel of his suit, “You need to be careful what you’re showing off here. They are here to provoke us, to get a headline—negative or not.” 

“I know, I just—couldn’t stand back and let that happen.” Clark pouts, “You’ve worked so hard to get here. I feel terrible.” 

“Hey—” you coo, placing a hand to his cheek to raise his eyes back up to yours. You smile warmly, “—Nothing is ruined. We might get a hospital bill in the mail…but it’ll be okay. We just have to keep rolling with the punches.” 

Clark nods along as your publicist approaches. With security already on the way to escort the aggressive instigator out of the venue, she advises that the group photos will be next—however the time for it cut short as it seems that a few more of your co-stars have reached the same fate with the paparazzi. 

She ushers you away, and Clark stands with his hands clasped at his front as he watches you stand amongst the A-listers to get your photo taken. 

You’re a vision. Again, this could be Clark’s bias rearing its head, but he thought you stood out from the team. A different type of glow from stardom around you. 

“You’re a lucky guy.” your publicist muses quietly as she stands shoulder to shoulder with Clark. 

“I know.” Clark inhales to fill the air that has escaped his lungs from watching you. “She’s one of a kind.” 

“Hm.” she hums, “Anything we should be keeping under wraps from the tabloids?” she leans in to refrain from the conversation bleeding out into the eavesdroppers in surrounding areas. 

The tips of Clark’s ears tinge with pink at the thought of an upcoming proposal he had in the works. 

Clark chuckles, “Soon. I’ll let you know.” 

“Well—you have my email.” 

The group photos are wrapped up instantaneously, and you are back within Clark’s grasp. You introduce him to a few of the co-stars he had missed the day he visited you onset, and he spends most of his time talking about you rather than being complimentary to their extensive work in the industry. 

A few of them check on you after the altercation with the paparazzi and Clark keeps a firm hand on your back. (All previous notions of subtlety are gone with the wind.) 

The whole team filter into the venue, away from the cameras and reporters which invites a unified sigh of relief—postures less straight, shoulders rounded, genuine personalities beginning to peek through. 

There’s a fifteen minute wait before you are required to assist in introducing the film to the audience within the theatre. Your publicist finds you a room to sit in, with some refreshments on the table whilst you await to be called.

“I’ll give you a knock when you are needed”. she says before shutting the door, leaving you and Clark alone for the first time in, well, a few hours. 

His hands come to smooth across your hips, head nuzzling into your neck as he breathes in your scent; sending goosebumps up your spine. You bend slightly to allow him to apply minimal weight against your body with his, with your arms snaking around his neck to keep you balanced. 

Clark presses a few innocent kisses to your pulse-point. 

He lifts his head from your neck and gives you a lopsided smile before dipping to kiss you properly. There’s a sigh of content from both parties as you lean into the kiss, lapping up all the missed opportunities to display this kind of affection with him. 

You pull away first, “I really appreciate you being here today.” 

Clark is hungrily staring at your lips—his brows pinched with need. “Anything for you, sweetheart.” 

“I also appreciate how you stuck up for my publicist.” you kiss him again, “And for me.” you move your kisses from his lips, to his cheek and then onto his neck. “Let me show you how much gratitude I have.” 

“Honey—” Clark grips onto your hips as you suck at his neck, “—We don’t have time.” 

Your hand travels south, “Please?” 

“Gosh, sweetheart.” Clark whimpers when your hand palms at the outline of his cock. His shaft twitches from the pressure you’re applying. “Darn it.” 

You grin wickedly and in a blink of an eye, you’re on your knees in front of him. Fingers making light work of his trousers, Clark tucks his chin to watch you peel his boxers downward; allowing his already hard cock to spring free, slapping against his suit jacket. 

The slit is seeping and you waste little time by pressing your tongue against it. 

“Do you know how sexy it was? Watching you throw that man for me?” you whisper with your lips pressed to his shaft. You flatten your tongue against the hot skin, dragging it upward to lick at his pink head again. “I love it when you get protective.” 

“Uh-huh.” Clark whines as his head falls back. His fingers curl around the air in front of him; knowing he cannot touch you as it would ruin the look your team had spent hours perfecting for this premiere. 

“We have to be quick, okay?” 

Clark squeezes his eyes shut. “Honey, I won’t last long. I promise.” 

You hum before taking him into your mouth. One hand at the base of his cock, you begin to pump him into your mouth—the other hand balancing against his muscular thigh. Easing him inch by inch, you feel him twitch against your tongue until the tip of his head is close to the back of your throat. 

Clark bites down on a knuckle to muffle the guttural moan he lets out. He peels one eye open to see you begin to bob your head back and forth, saliva gathering around his shaft, making it as a substitute for lube as you jerk him off with your hand.

You take a second to look up at him, eyes gleaming with your mouth stuffed full. Clark feels his hips shift, and you whine with pleasure as he begins to gently thrust into your mouth. 

“Just like that, honey.” he grunts, “You are doing so well.” 

“Mhm.” you mumble, sending vibrations all the way to his tight balls. Your eyes shift to the clock on the wall behind Clark’s head. 

8 minutes.

You pick up the pace, gagging each time Clark’s tip hits the back of your throat. You let him use you, relaxing your mouth as he desperately ruts into you, chasing his climax. Both hands are now curled around his thighs to keep you in place, eyes watering, the room now filling with the ambient noises of Clark sloppily fucking your mouth. 

Clark is verbalising his pleasure in babbles, ensuring that you’re comfortable with the pace he’s thrusting into your mouth at. He can feel the coil tighten in his stomach as he attempts to push back the worry from being caught by your publicist—or anyone who takes a moment to take a peek into the room. 

“Honey, I’m—I’m close.” he whimpers pathetically. His cheeks are rosy, sweat clinging to his fallen curls. “Should I cum in my hand?” 

You shake your head. 

“In your mouth?” you nod and Clark feels the explicit word on the tip of his tongue, “Fuck. I love you.” 

His words go straight to your core. 

With his thrusts beginning to stutter and you brace yourself as he punches his cock into your throat. Clark’s whole body tenses up, his hands coming to clamp over his mouth as he releases hot ropes onto your tongue and down your throat. 

Some of it spills out from the corners of your mouth, and you swallow as much of it as you can whilst Clark pulses against your tongue. 

You look up to see his chest heaving, teeth marks bitten into the skin of his hand. 

After thirty seconds of him slowly softening, you release him from your mouth with a quiet pop. Satisfied, you grin up at him, chin wet with a sheen of your own salvia. 

Clark wipes it with his thumb, bringing it to his mouth to taste. 

You stand from your knees and press a wet kiss against his pink lips. “Did I get the message across?” 

“Loud and clear.” 

You laugh softly as Clark bends to pull his trousers back up. “And with five minutes to spare. That’s a record.” 

“Yes—Well, considering the circumstances. We got lucky.” Clark grumbles, feeling hot with a newfound embarrassment. 

As you begin to retort a smart-mouthed comment, a handful of knocks in a recognisable sequence hit against the other side of the door. You both straighten as the door opens to reveal your publicist—neither of you acting any sort of casual. 

She speaks as you both shift on your feet, “They’re rounding up everyone now.” 

“Okay.” you smooth the front of your dress and let out a sigh whilst feigning innocence to the dressing room escapades you had just partaken in. 

She looks you up and down as you approach. “…We need to fix your makeup.” 

Clark barely manages to conceal the striking shade of red that covers the entirety of his face. 

You try not to make the comparison. You try so hard. But Better Bobby makes it impossible because he's everything real Bobby was on your best days. Distilled and concentrated, with all the carelessness burned off.

He touches you constantly. Not sexually, just contact. His hand on the back of your neck when you walk. His chin on your shoulder when you're sitting together. His fingers finding yours in the dark when the lights flicker, which they do sometimes. And in those brief, stuttering seconds of blackness you can hear things moving in the walls and Better Bobby's grip tightens. He says I'm here like it's a fact of physics. Like his presence beside you is as fundamental and non-negotiable as gravity.

It's a Thursday, you think, or what you've decided is Thursday—you've started naming the days by feeling, which probably means you're losing it—when everything goes wrong.

You're walking. Better Bobby's slightly ahead of you, one hand trailing the wall, talking about something. He talks to you the way real Bobby used to, a constant low-level narration.

Except Better Bobby's commentary is about the architecture of this place, which hallways are safe, which ones echo differently than they should. The way the carpet changes texture near certain thresholds you should know about. You're half-listening, comfortable in the drone of his familiar voice, when he stops abruptly.

You almost walk into his back.

"Bobby?"

He doesn't answer. His head tilts slightly, the way a dog would listen toa distant sound. His whole body goes rigid in a way you've never seen before. Better Bobby doesn't tense up. Better Bobby is languid and easy and always, always calm.

"Bobby, what—"

"Don't move."

His voice is different. Stripped of the warmth, the lazy drawl, all the honeyed softness he pours over you. What's left is flat and hard. Something in your hindbrain fires that hasn't fired since you got here because Better Bobby has kept you so safe that you forgot what fear tasted like.

You taste it now. Bright and metallic at the back of your throat.

The lights flicker abovehead. Not the usual gentle stutter or dimming it does at random intervals. This is violent, a seizure of light, and in the strobe of it you spot something at the end of the hallway.

You can't process it. Your brain tries and slides off the shape the way water slides off wax. It's too tall, and wrong. So wrong. It takes up too much space for its size, like it's pressing against the dimensions of the hallway from the inside, and it's looking at you with something that isn't a face.

Better Bobby shoves you behind him. Both hands this time. Hard.

"Go."

"I'm not leaving you—"

"Go. Left, left, straight, third door. I'll find you." He looks over his shoulder at you and his eyes are dark and flat. Ancient in a way that makes your stomach drop because for just a second—just a flicker, shorter than the lights—the thing looking out from behind Bobby's face isn't Bobby, either. "Baby. Run."

You run.

Left, left, straight, except there's no third door. There's no door at all.

The hallway stretches and bends and the carpet under your feet changes from rough to damp to something that feels horribly organic so abruptly you almost skid. You're running and the fluorescent yellow is shifting with you, deepening in increments, and the walls are getting narrower.

The ceiling goes lower suddenly and you realise, with a lurch of animal terror, that you're not on Level 0 anymore.

You don't know when it changed. There was no door, no threshold, no moment. The hallways just... became somewhere else. Like you walked through an edit. A jump cut in reality.

You stagger to a stop. Your breathing is so loud it fills the quiet corridor.

It's dark here. Not quite pitch black, mercifully. There's light, but it's coming from somewhere wrong. Faintly blue, sourceless, the colour of television static.

The walls aren't yellow anymore. They're concrete instead. Industrial. Stained with something you refuse to look at closely. The ceiling is a mess of exposed pipes and dead wiring, and water (you hope desperately it's water) drips in a strange pattern that sets your teeth on edge

It's cold here. You're shaking, you realise a moment too late.

You press your back against the concrete wall and slide down to the floor, pulling your knees to your chest and try to make yourself small. Try to make yourself invisible. Because Better Bobby isn't here and without him you're nothing in this place.

Just soft, warm, alive thing in a place that is none of those things.

That's when you see it. From the corner of your eye.

It assembles itself in pieces in the dark, the way a photograph develops, the way something reveals itself to you only once it's already too close.

Teeth first.

A grin. Too wide and white, wrong, hanging in the blue-black dark about thirty feet down the corridor. Human teeth in a human smile except there are too many of them and the smile is too wide. It's not attached to anything you can see, either. Just the grin, suspended, luminous. The way a Cheshire cat would look if the Cheshire cat wanted to kill you.

It doesn't move. You don't breathe.

Then it's twenty feet away.

You didn't see it move. You didn't blink. Not once. It was thirty feet and now it's twenty and the grin hasn't changed, not even slightly. The same frozen rictus of delight, and you understand with a sick, cold certainty that it's not walking toward you. It's just... closer. Like the distance between you is a thing it can edit. A number it can change at will.

Fifteen feet. The grin widens. You didn't think it could widen.

You can see more of it now, or rather you can see the shape of more of it. The suggestion of a body behind the smile, darker than the dark around it, a silhouette that doesn't quite hold its edges. And the sound. There's a sound now, low and wet, like someone trying to laugh through a mouthful of something thick. A gurgling, hitching, delighted sound.

It's happy to see you. Whatever this thing is, it's so, so happy that you're here.

Ten feet. You can feel the cold coming off it. Not temperature, exactly, something else. An absence. A pulling. Like it's drawing the warmth out of the air between you one degree at a time and feeding the grin with it.

You open your mouth to scream and nothing comes out.

"Close your eyes."

The voice comes from directly behind you.

You didn't hear him arrive. You didn't hear footsteps or breathing or the rustle of fabric. He's just there, the way he's always just there. His hand closes over your eyes from behind, firm, warm, his palm flush against your face, fingers curving over your brow.

"Close them. Keep them closed. Don't open them until I tell you to."

Better Bobby's voice is calm. Completely, impossibly calm. The same tone he uses when he's telling you to go back to sleep after the lights flicker. But underneath it—deep underneath, in a register you feel more than hear—there's something else now. An edge that doesn't sound like Bobby at all.

His hand lifts off your eyes. You keep them shut. You squeeze them so tight you see colours behind your lids. Bright, bursting phosphenes, and you press your face into your knees and you hear him move away from you. Toward it.

Then the sounds start.

You can't categorise them. You won't.

There's a tearing sound. Not fabric, or paper; something denser, wetter, something with resistance. A sound like a dog shaking water from its fur except heavier and it ends in a crack that reverberates through the concrete floor and up through your spine.

The gurgling laughter changes pitch. Goes higher. Then higher still. Then it's not laughter anymore, it's something between a shriek and a frequency. A sound that vibrates in the roots of your teeth, and underneath all of it is a low rumbling that you realise is coming from Better Bobby. A sound no human throat should make, a sound like tectonic plates grinding in the dark.

There's a splash. Something hisses, like water on a hot pan. The shrieking cuts out—not fades, cuts, abruptly, like someone hit a switch—and then there's a long, wet, dragging sound that moves away from you down the corridor and fades into the pipes and the dark.

Silence.

There's a ringing in your ears. Your fingers feel numb, heavy. You're biting the inside of your cheek so hard you can taste blood in your mouth.

Footsteps. Normal ones. The soft pad of sneakers on concrete.

"Okay, baby. You can open your eyes now."

You do. Better Bobby is standing in front of you, looking down at you with that soft, tilted expression. Same white tee. Same denim shorts. Trusty camera over his shoulder. Not a drop of anything on him. Not a wrinkle. His hair isn't even mussed any more than usual. His earring catches the faint blue light and throws a tiny star onto the concrete wall and he's smiling at you, gently, like you just had a bad dream and he's here to tell you it's morning.

There's nothing in the hallway behind him. Nothing on the floor. No sign that anything was ever there at all, except a faint smell. Ozone, copper and deeper beneath that, an almost rotten stench. You try to examine it but it's already fading.

You don't ask. You can't ask.

Your body moves before your brain does. You launch yourself off the floor and into him so hard he actually rocks back a step. Better Bobby, who's never been moved by anything in your presence, who stands in front of horrors like a wall moves this time. Your arms lock around his neck and you bury your face in his chest.

You're shaking. So violently that it's almost convulsive, these full-body tremors that you can't control, and the sound coming out of you isn't crying exactly. It's more animal than that, a high keening thing that you'd be embarrassed about if you had any room left for embarrassment but you don't, you used it all up being terrified.

Better Bobby catches you. He doesn't stumble again. His arms come around you and they're solid and warm. He holds you so tight that the shaking has nowhere to go, like he's absorbing it into himself, and one hand cradles the back of your head, pressing your ear against his chest. His heartbeat is steady, steady, so steady, and how is he so steady, how is he always so steady—

"Shhh. I got you. I'm here. It's gone."

You can't stop. You're gripping his shirt in both fists, knuckles blanching, and you're gasping against his collarbone and he just...

He holds you. Doesn't rush it. Or tell you you're okay or that it wasn't that bad or any of the things real Bobby would say in later months to make you feel silly for being scared. He just holds on and rocks you, the smallest movement, his cheek resting on top of your head.

"You're safe, baby. Nothing touches you. I promise. Nothing ever touches you."

Your voice comes out cracked and ruined. "What—what was that, what did you— how did you—"

He hums gently. "Don't worry about it."

"Bobby, that thing, it was—its face, it was smiling, it was—"

"I know." He pulls back just enough to look at you. Tips your chin up with his knuckle. That lazy smile, easy and warm and so perfectly Bobby it makes your chest splinter. "I know what it was. It's gone now. Don't worry about it."

"How did you get rid of it?" you rasp.

His thumb strokes your jawline. "Does it matter?"

"Yes."

He looks at you. For a moment something flickers behind his eyes. Something vast and patient and very, very old. Then it's gone, and he's just Bobby again, warm-eyed and soft-mouthed, tucking your hair behind your ear.

"I told you, baby. Nothing gets past me." He kisses your forehead. Slow. Gentle. His lips are warm and the concrete corridor is freezing around you. You lean into him like he's the last source of heat in the world. "Come on. Let's go home."

He takes your hand.

You let him lead you.

He leads you back through the concrete and the pipes and the blue-dark, his thumb rubbing circles on your knuckles, and you don't look behind you.

Not even once. Because whatever he did in that corridor is something you have decided you don't need to see the aftermath of, and also because some part of you—the part that still thinks clearly, the part that Better Bobby hasn't quite reached yet—understands that there is no aftermath.

That whatever Better Bobby does to the things in the dark, he does it completely. He doesn't leave evidence. He doesn't leave remains. He unmakes them, and he does it wearing Bobby's crooked smile, Bobby's silver earring and Bobby's cut-off shorts like a costume. Like a skin, like a love letter written in someone else's handwriting.

The concrete gives way to carpet. Just as abruptly. The blue darkens to yellow again. The cold lifts. The hum returns, and for the first time ever you're grateful for it. The way you'd be grateful for the sound of traffic outside your apartment window because it means you're back in the world, or at least, back in the only world you have left.

Your room. The warm patch. The blankets.

Better Bobby guides you down, wrapping the blankets snug around you. He tucks himself behind you and you press back into his chest, his arm winding around your waist. You're still shaking faintly, these little aftershock tremors, and he absorbs every single one.

"Sleep, baby. I'm right here."

And you close your eyes and you think about real Bobby.

You think about the apartment in Santa Clara. The kitchen counter where he used to roll joints with the window open because you didn't like the smell building up inside. The way his camera equipment colonised every flat surface, cables and lenses and that one light diffuser he was so particular about. You used to complain it and he used to say babe, genius needs room to breathe and you'd throw a dish towel at his head while smothering a grin.

You think about the night you fell in love with him. Not the day you realised it (you'd known for a while by then) but the night it actually happened.

You sitting on the hood of his car in a parking lot off El Camino Real, sharing a joint, and he'd turned to you with the camera for once not in his hands and said, so disarmingly, you're the most wonderful girl I've ever met, and his face looked stripped of its usual cockiness. Bare. Scared. Young.

He was so young. You both were.

You wonder if he's sitting in that apartment right now with the TV on and the lights off, not really watching, just existing in the space you used to fill.

You wonder if he's looked at your toothbrush in the holder next to his. If he's opened the fridge and seen the leftovers you made two nights before you vanished (was it two nights? you're losing track of the real timeline, it's blurring at the edges, and that scares you more than the grin in the dark) and whether he ate them or whether they're still sitting there. Slowly going bad, a small decomposition that mirrors something larger in your life.

You wonder if he's picked up his pager. Scrolled to your name. Stared at it.

You wonder if his thumb hovered over the button the way it used to hover over the shutter release—that perfect hesitation, that half-second of do I or don't I—and whether he pressed it or whether he set the pager down and rolled over. Told himself he'd deal with it tomorrow the way he's been telling himself he'd deal with you tomorrow for months now.

You wonder if somewhere under the indifference and the exhaustion and the slow-growing cruelty there is still a version of Bobby who filmed you sleeping because the light was good. Who cut a Metallica shirt into a crop top with kitchen scissors and held it up like a trophy. Who said hold still, the light's doing something crazy on you and meant I love you, you're beautiful and couldn't say it any other way.

You wonder if that Bobby still misses you.

You wonder if he'd ever come looking.

Better Bobby pulls you closer. His mouth finds the spot behind your ear. The one real Bobby discovered during your second date together. The one that makes everything go quiet inside your skull.

"You're thinking again," he murmurs.

"I know."

"About him."

You don't answer. You don't have to.

Better Bobby is quiet for a long time. His breathing is slow and even against your back. The lights hum their tuneless hymn in your ears. Somewhere deep in the walls, something moves again, and you tense at the scraping sound.

Better Bobby's arm tightens around you. A reflex, instant, protective, the one thing about him that never feels performed.

"He's not coming, baby," he says softly. He doesn't say it meanly this time, either. Not triumphant. More so sad. Almost like he wishes it weren't true, for your sake. Because even this thing that wears Bobby's face and unmakes grinning horrors in the dark doesn't want to watch you grieve. "You know that."

You close your eyes.

You do know. Maybe you've known for a while now.

He spends a lot of time on his phone these days. Scrolling through his camera roll and letting the corner of his lips twitch in amusement at the numerous photos he keeps of Tanner and Penny, flicking through social media and slowly feeling his brain rot away, whatever it takes to keep his mind busy and away from his situation.

Tonight, he lays on the couch, Petunia tucked into the crook between his outstretched legs despite how large she has gotten in the past year. The weight of her against his body is reassuring – a reminder that he’s still loved despite it all, even if it was mainly by his spur-of-the-moment dog. One hand drags a soothing line along the crease between her eyes while the other scrolls through social media, half-lidded in that weird liminal space between boredom and mildly entertained.

Just as he’s about to finally set the device down and let his brain wash away with Survivor re-runs, his phone buzzes with a singular text, peaking his interest again. The name on the message is what has him sitting up so fast that it startles the golden retriever on his lap.

If he looked back on any time in his past, Frank would find you. He had been great friends with your older brother, especially since your family had lived next door for as long as he could remember. He had spent a lot of time at your house or at social mixers that your parents tended to throw for the neighborhood, smiling at the side of your brother as you had bickered as siblings do.

It wasn’t like you had spent a lot of alone time together. A quick conversation in the kitchen as he came down for a snack, a playful taunt from his lips when you had tried a new outfit or hairstyle, splashing you with the hose when you were just watching them gallivant outside during the hot summers.

One of the last times Frank saw you, you were still a teenager. Wide-eyed and yet still believing that the entire world was against you, friendship bracelets littering your wrists and a streak of red in your hair from when your mother had finally allowed you to add just one color.

You had sat behind the shoulder of your brother, arms crossed over your chest as both of your families and numerous friends from the neighborhood crooned their sadness that he was leaving for college. The entire day of his going away party, you had stayed quiet and compliant, although you had never attempted to leave.

That night, as the crowd dwindled and everyone started cleaning up, you had curled one arm around his waist like you were afraid to touch him and murmured an “i’ll miss you” into his ribcage. He had simply pulled you closer until you were forced to add your other arm around him, squeezing you closer and whispering the secret right back into your hair. You’ve talked every now and then since he left. Your parents are still close to his own, which means he tends to see you every time he visits his family, although the two of you never mention the night he left. Sometimes, you’ll send him a quick text asking a medical question. 

How do you know if your sunburn is sun poisoning? 

What’s an emergency-room level fever? 

My finger is swollen but I can move it. Is it broken?

He always entertained the small bits of conversation he could grab from you, even when he had been with Abby. When she had asked about you, he had just called you his childhood friend’s younger sister, even if it made something churn in his stomach.

And now, after a few months of no medical inquiries hitting his inbox, there you are.

YOU: i have a question FRANK: you always do YOU: this isn’t about my health FRANK: didn’t know you could ask questions that weren’t about your health YOU: ha ha YOU: listen YOU: hold on. can i call you?

Frank sits up a little taller, passing an apologetic glance towards Petunia when she lets out an annoyed groan at how much he’s fidgeting. He looks around his apartment like you’re going to be able to see his cluttered living room through the phone before responding with the most nonchalant yes he can muster.

His phone rings only a few moments later, a young photo of you filling his screen from your contact. He answers after letting it vibrate once against his palm, clearing his throat before the microphone turns on. “Hello?”

“Frank!” His name comes out in a squeak. “Uh, hey. How are you?”

He can’t help the small smile that blooms, looking around his empty apartment. You weren’t filled in on his divorce yet, he assumed. “Peachy,” he lies easily. “What’s up?”

There’s rustling on your side of the line before a heavy sigh. “Hey, I need to ask you a favor. It’s big, and it’s okay if you don’t have an answer right now, but I just… I don’t know.” Your words are rushed, nervousness seeping through every word.

“Hey,” he coos calmly. “Stop freaking out or you’re gonna make me think you need help hiding a body.”

“Ha-ha.” A sarcastic response just like the one you had texted him. He grins again at the thought. “Okay. I’ll cut to it.”

Another heavy sigh seeps through the speaker, crackling in his ear. “Is there any way I can stay with you for a week? I know that you have Tanner and Penny, plus I don’t know how Abby will feel about it, but I’m waiting for my new place in Pittsburgh to open up, but my new job needs me to start this week and it won’t be available until Tuesday at the latest and I don’t really know how many nights at a hotel I can afford or mentally stand.”

Frank’s eyebrows raise so high on his forehead that he’s sure they’ve integrated themself into his hairline. His lips part, then close, then part again as he runs your rushed words through his head over and over. Then, he swallows, shaking his head. “You’re moving to Pittsburgh? I thought you were living with a boyfriend or something, a few minutes from home.”

“Uh, yeah.” You laugh, although it sounds strained. He can imagine you now, twirling a strand of hair around your pointer finger as you paced. He saw it a lot during the teenage years, watching you try to convince your parents through the phone that you really wanted to go to a friend’s sleepover, even though you were actually trying to sneak out to some house party. “No boyfriend anymore. No boyfriend, no home. Bye-bye. To Pittsburgh, I go, seeking employment opportunities.”

He’s quiet again for another moment, mulling it over. His thoughts run so fast that he finally peels himself off of his couch, taking a page out of your book and pacing along the line of his rug. 

He must’ve been quiet for way too long, because you speak again. “You can take your time to give me an answer. I’ll drive down there at the end of this weekend, so there’s a few days to think it over. I just wanted to ask in advance rather than show up on your doorstep.”

And thank God you didn’t. You’d find your way to “his” house and be greeted by his ex-wife, who still says his name with a slice of distaste. You’d find out from her about everything that’s happened in the past two years of his life – drug addiction, rehab, divorce, custody agreements, consistent loneliness minus man’s best friend, Petunia.

“Uh,” he says stupidly.

Everything he could say turns into dust on his tongue, unable to get out a single word. How does he explain all of this? That the charming teenager you once knew, who was consistently surrounded by good friends that were always willing to celebrate him, had lost his college sweetheart in a messy divorce after throwing his back out, getting addicted to benzos and almost losing his job?

Lord knows Frank has lost all of his ego at this point in his life, other than his promise of being a good doctor, but he can almost ensure that you liked who he was as a teenager. His childhood and teenage years were filled with your wide eyes, asking him to open jars for you or to drive you to some friend’s house. When your first boyfriend had broken up with you, he had been the one who had picked you up from his house, ignoring the squeeze in his chest at the sight of your red eyes as he promised not to tell your brother.

“Can we talk about it? When you come in on Sunday?” He asks. 

Three days. Three days is all he has to figure out what exactly he’s going to tell you. Three days to come to terms with the fact that you may never see him the same ever again.

He isn’t sure why he cares so much. His parents knew of his divorce, of his ten-month stint in rehab. It’d been hard enough to tell them, and he had survived, but telling you feels like an entire weight sitting on his chest.

Your next words come out too hopeful. “Yeah! Okay!” Then, with a grin so wide he can hear it without seeing your face, you make a last minute addition. “At least I get to see you once, even if Abby ends up saying no to me staying.”

Abby, Abby, Abby. Why did you feel the incessant need to bring her up? Even if he was still married to her, he had known you way before she had even existed, had had numerous conversations about topics that didn’t include her.

Instead of being annoyed about it, he chooses to instead stick to the happy feelings that you being excited to see him gave him. “Yeah. It’ll be good to hang out again,” he responds. “Can update me on what Adrian did to have you runnin’ from him.”

“Adam,” you correct. He knew that, of course, but he feels warm at the laugh that shortly follows. “I’ll happily get into that. My brother doesn’t allow me to talk about him much anymore, so I have a lifetime worth of bad stories and ruined memories and icks to rant about.”

Now, it’s Frank’s turn to laugh. “Noted. I will happily listen.”

“I know you will. You always did.” Your voice gets softer as you trail off. 

Warning bells go off in his head at the first fluttering beat of his heart. Oh, this is wrong. So, so wrong. 

Before you can say anything else and mess with his head more, he lets out a heavy sigh. “Alrighty, sunshine, I have to get to bed so I can get to my shift in time tomorrow. Text me on Saturday and we can figure out a place to meet, okay?”

You let out a soft groan into the phone, probably evidence of a late-night stretch. “Okay, Frank. Talk to you Saturday.”

“See you Sunday,” he responds in a murmur.

He’s not the one that hangs up.

For all of Friday, your name does not grace his phone. He checks every free moment that he gets during his shift, but each time he is met with a blank notification screen.  If it wasn’t for the fact that you sat at the top of his messages and call log, he’d be able to convince himself that he made the whole situation up. You weren’t moving to Pittsburgh, you weren’t asking to stay at his apartment, he didn’t have to finally owe up to all of his transgressions.

Every time Frank reminds himself of the fact, an uncomfortable feeling crawls up his spine until it settles in his chest, pressing down on his lungs until he is aware of every heartbeat. He feels foolish for the way he digs the heel of his palm into his sternum, pressing his eyes closed and trying to will his body to stop punishing him for his brain’s doing.

He’s never been good at being vulnerable. As a child, he’d split his knee open falling off of his bike just to get up a moment later, laughing until he wheezed despite the dull ache in his leg and the blood trickling down his calf. As a teenager, he’d met heartbreak and hard times with a persistent need to show how well he was doing despite it all, even if he was just proving it to himself.

And now, as an adult, he goes the route of just ignoring it. Letting himself indulge in the things that he knows he shouldn’t, not allowing anyone to see past the mirage he has set up. He’s Frank Langdon, MD, an excellent emergency medicine resident with a confidence big enough to outweigh any Olympic athlete.

Unfortunately, with you, he cannot act like everything is okay. He knows that the second he looks into your wide eyes, staring into a memory of what he used to have and what he used to be, everything will fizzle up like the spark at the end of a detonating cord. You’ve always brought out his honesty, a personal truth serum in the form of billowy hair and flavored lipgloss.

Saturday morning, it rains in Pittsburgh. He doesn’t get to see it much due to being in the hospital all day, but the smell of petrichor seeps in the ambulance bay and water droplets cling to the hair of everyone who comes through the doors. Whenever he gets a free chance, he sits in the bay, listening to the rain hit the concrete and letting his mind dull for a moment.

It’s late, moonlight filtering through dark clouds to barely illuminate the flooded street. The thunderstorm that’s been threatening to arrive all week has finally decided to make its dramatic entrance, just in time to add upon Frank’s soured mood.

His mother would throw a fit if she saw what he was doing now. Clothes soaked and stuck to his skin, his hoodie doing absolutely nothing to keep the cold out, perched on his family’s roof. It’d been too easy to climb out of the window in his bedroom, especially with everything in his head screaming at him to just get out of the house.

Now, he sits in the rain, arms wrapped around his knees as he watches the raindrops glide down the shingles and into the gutter. All the collected water pours out into his yard, creating a larger and larger puddle as the night goes on.

He’s not sure how long he’s been out here, listening to the soft patter of the rain and the frequent booms of thunder. His mind has been more occupied by other things, such as the heavy scolding he had gotten from his coach after tonight’s game, or the passive-aggressive brush-off he had gotten from his girlfriend when he had tried to invite her out to the diner afterwards.

It was stupid, how much the sport controlled every aspect of his life. He had no intention of becoming a D1 athlete, and the only reason he had committed to the team in the first place was due to the need for a social life and perhaps the chance at a scholarship. Instead, it had affected everything else in his life. His classmates and teachers opinion of him, his father’s pride, his schedule, his own self-esteem.

“You’re gonna catch a cold! Or get struck by lightning!”

Frank barely hears the yell over the downpour, head turning and eyes squinting to try and look through the mist. Your bedroom light sticks out like a lighthouse on the shore, backlighting your silhouette from where you lean out your window.

His brow furrows. “It is way past your bedtime!” he calls back. It’s all an assumption. He has absolutely no idea what time it is.

Rather than respond, you disappear away from the window. He’s just about to turn around and pretend you had never been there when your outline appears again, now in a thick coat. Before he can even think about what you may be doing, your foot peeks out of your window, finding the thick branch of the tree that stretches between your houses.

“Hey! No!” He scolds. Either his voice is carried away by the storm or you choose to ignore him, because a few minutes later, your boot-covered feet are atop his roof.

As soon as you find solid footing, you unfurl an umbrella that he hadn’t been able to see before. You clutch something to your chest as you slide over to where he sits, thigh pressing against his as you settle.

“Here,” you say. “I brought you a new sweatshirt so you don’t turn into an ice cube. It’s one of my brother’s, I think.”

You hold the umbrella up and pass the hoodie over to him. He palms it for a moment, stealing the warmth before glancing at you in his peripheral. “How am I supposed to change into this?”

“I won’t look, if that’s what you’re worried about. But, just a fair warning, I’ve already seen your bare torso plenty of times in the last years we’ve known each other.” The remark is deadpan, but even in the dark, he can see the amusement in your eyes.

He rolls his eyes, reaching over to gently nudge you in the side. Without another word, he reaches down to pull off his drenched hoodie, setting it beside him. His chest is bare for just a moment before he tugs the new hoodie on, arranging his body so that he doesn’t accidentally stick his now-dry sleeve back into the rain.

After he has it situated, Frank turns back to you. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

You squirm to make sure the both of you fit comfortably beneath the umbrella, pressing closer to Frank. If you notice the way you’re practically tucked into his side, you don’t give any inclination, and he’s not exactly itching to bring it up. 

“Don’t mention it,” you reply sheepishly. “You look sad enough without the wet dog look.”

A cold wind breezes over the two of you, a shudder wracking your body. Without thinking about it too hard, he raises his arm to drape it over your shoulders, fingers pressing into your bicep as he rubs up and down to create friction. Rather than fight, you sink into the touch, relaxing beneath his touch.

This was fine. This is what friends did, he lies.

“Why are you choosing to torture yourself with this weather?” You ask, forehead leaning against his chest. “We could be cozy in bed right now.”

You pause, then quickly add, “Our own beds. In our separate houses.”

He laughs, giving you a soft squeeze. The sound fades out slowly as he thinks more about your question, eyes looking out upon the neighborhood again. “Had a hard day.”

A knowing hum is your answer, plucking at the ends of your sleeves to keep your hands busy. “Because of the game?” You guess.

Now that you’re not shivering anymore, he drops his arm, palm flattening on the roof behind your hips. He’s not exactly ready to uncurl himself from you, but there had to be a bit of distance, for his sake. “Something like that.”

Your lips twitch in dissatisfaction at the answer, brow furrowing as you look up at him. As soon as he finally catches your eye, your palm covers his knee, ignoring the way his jeans stick to his skin. “You can talk about it if you want, Frank. Or even if you don’t want to and it’s just that it’ll help.”

A smile unfurls on his lips before he can stop it, a fond look eclipsing over his face. He wraps his arm around your waist, pulling you in for a hug and letting out a relieved sigh when you prop your chin on his shoulder. “I don’t need to but thank you, sunshine. I‘m glad you came out here.”

Your nose presses into his skin, breath brushing against the side of his neck. “Of course. Couldn’t let you catch a cold all on your own, you’d get lonely.”

After a moment, you finally pull back, lips spreading into a grin. “Wanna come over? We can watch a movie if you’re still not able to sleep.”

“I am not climbing across a tree into your room,” he immediately responds. Your face falls and he scrambles to add, “but you can come over to mine?”

Immediately, that grin is back, making him laugh. He pats at your arm playfully before grabbing the umbrella from you, gesturing towards his window. “Go ahead. I’ll keep you dry.”

Frank’s interrupted from his reminiscing by a few buzzes in his pocket, pulling out his phone with a hefty sigh. Almost like he’s summoned you, his screen is littered with multiple texts from you.

YOU: it is saturday YOU: we need to plan a place to meet tomorrow YOU: and by we, i mean you. i don’t live there YOU: what do you suggest?

He responds quickly with the location of some diner he used to frequent when he just got out of rehab, his second text a simple thumb’s up emoji and a question mark. The less words he used, the better, especially with the way all of his emotions tend to go on overdrive talking to you.

You respond quickly. It’s simple, an agreement and a note about how you were excited to see him, but it still makes his chest tighten.

That night, alone in his apartment yet again, Frank sits down on his couch with a journal on his lap. It’s still wrapped in the plastic, purchased brand new on his way home from work alongside the pack of pens resting next to his thigh. He glances down at Petunia, who’s draped herself over his feet in the exhaustion lingering from her nap, chewing on the inside of his cheek in thought.

Finally, he presses his thumbnail into the plastic until it gives way, ripping the rest of it off soon after. He cracks open the pens next, curling his fingers around one and leaving the rest in the package.

He had journaled a lot during his time in rehab. His therapist had brought it up after he’d stonewalled her during his first few appointments, retreating into an invisible shell as he went through withdrawal and felt the dull pain in his back for the first time in what felt like ages. She’d ran the pad of her finger over the outside of the journal as she explained to him that it’d be good for him to get all of his feelings out, even if he continued to ignore her in person.

At first, he thought it was stupid. Writing until his hand cramped wouldn’t take back the fact that he was an addict, or that he craved these stupid pills that he thought he was only taking for a persistent pinched nerve, or that his wife had looked at him like some kind of criminal as she tucked a crying Tanner behind her back when he said goodbye. The cramps wouldn’t cover up the persistent ache in his chest that everything he had ever worked so hard to have and to keep had been wiped away by a stupid mistake, something that he could’ve controlled if he was even an ounce of a better man.

It started as letters to Abby. She never answered the ones that he actually sent, so he decided to stop embarrassing or restraining himself. He filled up page after page with his crimes and confessions, writing about their good memories in hopes of trying to push away the present. At the end of each letter, he’d tally up how many times he had written out an apology and try to push to add more the next time he wrote, as if any condolences would be enough to cover up what he had done.

Then, he branched out. He wrote to Dana and Robby and his parents, keeping all of the words hidden and safe and locked in his journal. Within the pages he could confirm that none of his words would be twisted by those who already thought negatively of him. He could just be the Frank Langdon he knew himself to be, even if his opinion got a bit shaky sometimes.

He wrote to you. After he had scrawled your name on the page in his doctor handwriting, he stared at it for a while, wondering what had possessed him to think of you in a time like this. Admittedly, he hadn’t remembered the last time you had crossed his mind and it wasn’t because you had shown up at a family event with a new boyfriend and a new hair color.

Rather than stop himself, he let himself write whatever came to mind. He wrote about all the times he had helped you out and you had said “I’m sorry,” until he pinky-promised you that he didn’t mind. A subconscious smile pulled at his lips when he wrote about the time his father had burnt the hot dogs on his grill for the fourth of July and you had still eaten the entire thing, even if he could see the grimace on your face with every bite. 

He talked about how it was now his turn to apologize to you. For not thinking of you as often now that he had moved away and gotten out of medical school. For all the times he had secretly judged you for all of your vices, such as your need for constant change or your inability to find your boyfriends interesting after a few months. For not being the perfect guy you always saw him as.

Frank’s newly eighteen. He sits on his roof, the same spot he’s gone to every single time he finds his mind to become a bit too much. It’s become a sanctuary without walls since that night you had crawled out here and sat with him, even if it ended in the both of you waking up with a cold when the morning light came in. Some nights, you still come out and join him, limbs pressed together as you both acted like they weren’t.

Like clockwork, you join him about ten minutes after he’s settled onto the shingles. You don’t even grace him with a greeting. You just sit down, pulling your knees to your chest and trying to find what his eyes have decided to focus on.

“The cardinal over there?” You guess.

He nods without looking at you. He doesn’t need to look at you, not when the wind brings your perfume to him like an offering and your body heat seeps through his clothes despite how cold your hands always tend to be. 

The both of you are quiet for a moment, listening to the sounds of the cars driving through the neighborhood or the planes flying overhead. Every once in a while, he catches you trying to find what he’s looking at, like a curious child.

You break the silence with a heavy sigh, head turning to look at him. He finally allows himself the grace to look at you, giving you a soft smile to show that he’s okay. 

“I’m going to miss you,” you confess. “While you’re away at school.”

Frank nods again, even though it’s not really a rebuttal to what you had said. Realizing his lack of response, he reaches out to wrap his fingers around your forearm, giving it a soft reassuring squeeze. “I’ll come back,” he promises. “I’m not gonna leave this place in the rearview mirror.”

Now it’s your turn to smile, eyes following his hand as he returns it back to his lap. “Good,” you reply. “Who else is gonna pick me up from bad dates and sneak me cigarettes?” That mischievous grin that you wear like a second skin, or like an armor depending on the conversation, pops up. 

“Some other sucker,” he retorts. 

That silence returns when your giggle ends, hanging over the both of you. Unable to sit in the silence, you break it with another confession.

“I always thought you were too cool for anything when I first met you.” Your thumb brushes over your kneecap, wrinkling and smoothening the fabric of your jeans. “Even as young as we were, you seemed like you didn’t want to hear anything from anyone. Always your way or the highway. And then you became friends with my brother and you were everywhere and you were such a nerd.”

You laugh at his eye roll, passing him a look that tells him to wait for your point and not say anything. “I realized you weren’t too cool very quickly. Your limbs were too lanky and you fumbled over your words and you overcompensated by holding onto that same oozing confidence I had seen the minute we had moved in.”

Your teeth dig into your bottom lip for a moment before you continue. “But even if you’re not as untouchable as I thought you once were, I still think you’re perfect, Frank.” Despite the raw way the words come out, you say them louder than your murmured confessions, sporting a wide grin. “I hope you remember that when you’re becoming a big hotshot doctor.”

Frank sighs as he runs his fingers over the fresh pages of his brand new notebook, listening to the sound of paper fluttering. He grips the pen in his hand tighter, finally cracking the spine of the journal as he peels it open on his lap.

For the first time since he left rehab, he writes.

On Sunday morning, Frank arrives at the diner half an hour early. As he settles into the booth, his fingers tighten around the bag he carries, glancing around like you’d pop up out of nowhere.

While he waits, regretting his decision to have come in early in order to avoid the awkwardness of an introduction, he finishes two glasses of water and asks for another refill. His body feels unbelievably hot and he feels fidgety, adjusting his position in his seat multiple times and squirming at the crack of leather that follows every time he moves.

Five minutes after the time the both of you had agreed upon, the bell above the door chimes. His head turns so fast that a tendon pops, eyes landing upon you.

He wasn’t expecting you to look the same. Every time he sees you, no matter how long or short your time apart has been, there’s something different about you. A new color added to your hair or a complete change, a new style of outfits, another decorative piercing. A new tattoo if you were feeling extra adventurous in some foreign country.

Even knowing that, his breath catches at the sight of you. His blue eyes are wide when you finally look at him, your face brightening while he looks like a deer in headlights. He tries to match your smile, but it’s very obviously shaky.

When you get closer, he finally stands up, hand propped on the back of the booth as he greets you. “Hey, stranger.”

He can not find a single trace of anxiety on your features as you grin, reaching out to jab your finger into his chest. “Says you,” you tease. You slip into the opposite side of the booth, palms flattening on the table. “You’re the one who’s too busy to come home these days. It’s been, what, two years or so?”

Frank’s chest tightens again. He sits down to hide the tremble in his knees, exhaling so hard that a napkin flutters. “It’s been, uh, a busy two years,” he responds. “Would’ve come out if I could.”

You grab a menu, already feeling at home in this diner you’ve never been to. “With what? Saving lives? Or is Abby keeping you busy?”

There’s her name again, falling off her lips as if you get a dollar for every time that she’s mentioned. He grabs his own menu to try and hide the shaking of his hands, holding it up to hide his face.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

“Abby and I aren’t together anymore,” he admits. He lets the words drop off of his tongue rather than trying to say them gently. He had tried the gentle approach with everyone else he has told and it had only ended up one of two ways – they either pitied him until he couldn’t take it anymore or felt disgusted by the fact that he let himself cave into his addiction.

He spares a glance at you again once there’s enough quiet to suffocate him. You stare at him, your menu now laying flat on the table, and he decides to just keep going while you’re stunned already to rip off the bandaid. “We divorced after I went to rehab.”

You physically recoil in surprise, blinking your eyes as you try to put together all of the information. “Okay.” You draw out the word, trying to fill the space as if you were afraid he’d suddenly drop another bomb. “That’s not what I was expecting out of this catch-up. I thought you were just going to tell me fun stories about working in an emergency room.”

To his surprise, you thread your fingers together, resting both of your elbows on the table and holding his eyes. “Do you want to explain, or leave it at that?”

Frank’s shoulders lower more and more as he spills it all. Now that the harsh facts are out there, it’s easier for him to let everything else spill out. The back injury, the benzos addiction, the fallout at work, the rehab and the divorce. He tries not to let the emotions of them seep through, tries to stick to just the facts, but there’s a few things that slip through the cracks.

It’s easy to spill his guts to you. His own personal truth serum.

When he finishes, he clears his throat, suddenly bashful. “And there’s one more thing.”

He finally reaches into the bag he brought along, fingers closing around the journals inside and pulling them out. Before he can second guess it, he slides them across the table, watching as your hands move to keep them from falling off. 

“Diaries?” you guess lightheartedly.

“Kind of.” Frank chuckles, reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck. “I wrote a lot in rehab. My therapist recommended it. There’s a, uh, letter in there. For you. It’s where the tab is.” 

His fingers flick at the sticky note that’s just peeking out from the pages, glancing up at you through his eyelashes. “I trust that you won’t dig through the entire thing, but it’s okay if you do. Just know you’ll probably know more about me than you want to.”

You beam up at him before rifling quickly through the pages, taking brief glances at the scrawlings on the pages before letting it shut again. “Are you sure, Frank? This seems really personal.” 

He shrugs, leaning back in the booth and crossing his arms over his chest. “Well, you’re about to stay with me, aren’t you? You’ll see enough of my bad moments this week, so we might as well start now.”

His flaws are completely forgotten as you lean forward, somehow brightening more. The glow of the sunlight through the window is nothing compared to the way you look right now. “Really? You’ll let me stay with you.”

A laugh bubbles out of him before he can stop it, shaking his head. “You’ve bugged me for most of my life, we can’t ruin the tradition now.”

With a huff, you grab the wadded up piece of paper from his straw before tossing it at his forehead, grinning like a madwoman. “Jerk.”

For the rest of the day, Frank helps you move whatever you need into the spare bedroom of his apartment. The both of you pick up where you left off the last time he saw you, bickering over who gets to pick up the larger items and bigger boxes – you because of Frank’s bad back or Frank because he wants to be a gentleman.

After a shared dinner of takeout and him watching you coo over Petunia for half an hour, he finally admits to you that he needs to sleep for work the next day and retreats to his bedroom. With a pep in his step from finally spending a night socializing instead of staring at meaningless social media posts, he showers and gets ready for bed, forcing his dog to roll over onto her side of the bed before settling beneath the duvet.

He’s halfway asleep when there’s a couple knocks at his door. Fatherly instincts have him immediately shooting up, startling Petunia awake. “Yeah?” He calls out tiredly as he runs his fingers through the dog’s fur, soothing her back to sleep.

The door opens to reveal you, donned in soft pajamas and hair pulled up out of your face. The sight of his journal in your hands has him leaning over to click on his bedside lamp, illuminating his room and you in a warm glow. “What’s wrong?”

You hover in the doorway for a moment, lips parted when no words come out. Your mouth closes as you step closer, sitting down on the edge of his bed near his legs. He doesn’t move.

“You didn’t need to apologize,” you finally say. “For all of it.”

Frank runs a hand through his hair, the other still petting Petunia to try and calm the heavy beating of his heart. “I felt… feel like I needed to,” he admits sheepishly.

You prop one knee up on the mattress, somehow getting even closer to him. He tries not to squirm at the familiarity of it all. “None of what you’ve gone through the last couple of years has been your fault, Frank,” you murmur. “Addiction is a disease, not something someone willingly puts themselves through. You did the work through rehab and therapy, which is an apology enough for me.”

Your fingers brush against his duvet, tracing shapes next to his covered knee. “Your letter was sweet.” You continue, watching your fingers. “I’d forgotten about a couple of those things. It was nice to be reminded. I’m surprised you remembered.”

“I’ve been known to have a freakishly good memory,” he muses awkwardly.

That makes you finally look at him, giving him a soft grin. Your hand moves to curve over his knee, a shiver moving down his spine at the contact. “Imagine my surprise when I get to the end, my eyes hurting from squinting at your doctor handwriting, and I find out that –”

“ – that I wanted to kiss you.” He finishes the sentence before you can say the words. “The night of my going away party, when you told me that you were going to miss me again. I wanted to kiss you, because most people hadn’t even told me once and you had told me three times. I wanted to kiss you that night because I had wanted to kiss you many nights before that and never had.”

Frank sits up, hand finally leaving Petunia to grab yours and pull it away from his knee. His other hand moves to cup your cheek, giving a small smile when you lean into his palm. Your cheeks are warm beneath his touch, like only your hands are destined to be cold. Maybe it’s because they’re meant to be held by him, he thinks.

He leans forward until his nose brushes against your cheek. “No boyfriend?” He whispers against your skin. Just checking.

“No boyfriend,” you breathe out.

As soon as the last syllable leaves your tongue, he kisses you, seizing the opportunity of your lips still being parted. He kisses you like he’s trying to steal the air from your lungs, hand curling around the back of your neck to pull your lips closer.

He only pulls away when Petunia nudges at his elbow, jealous of the attention not being on her anymore, laughing breathlessly. He presses his forehead against yours. “You’re wrong to say that I didn’t need to apologize. I have to apologize for not kissing you sooner.”

You copy his breathless laugh, leaning back to breathe some of your own air. “I’ll take that apology,” you respond. You press your lips together to try and hide your giddy smile, staring at him for just a moment.

This is everything he’s ever wanted, he thinks. You’re beautiful like this, freshly kissed by him and euphoric, bathed in the aureate light of his lamp. Being here with you won’t fix any problem that he’s created, but it is the first thing that’s felt right in a very long time.

Then, in the blink of an eye, you stand, still clutching his journal in your hand. “Okay. I’m going to bed.”

Frank scrambles at your sudden pull away, sitting up further, much to the chagrin of the dog laying her head on his thigh. “You’re going to bed? Your bed?”

You stop at the doorway, turning to grin at him. “I’ve bugged you all of your life. We can’t ruin the tradition now,” you mock. 

With that, you give him a small wave, closing his bedroom door behind you.

He lets out an amused scoff at the click of his door, staring at it for a few moments to make sure you were serious and not just pulling his leg. When he faintly hears the sound of your bedroom door shutting, he groans, falling back onto his pillow and letting Petunia drape herself back over his torso. Then, he laughs, raising his hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

Jack had finally found some respite. 

An unbroken hour of solitude after being surrounded by a pile of dog shit strapped to patriotism, one bullet graze to the shoulder and a cyber threat on the health network of Pittsburgh as a whole. If anybody asked, he’d meet it with a shrug and a simple: ‘It was a bog standard shift. For the Fourth of July.’ 

(You should see the PTMC on a full moon on Halloween weekend. Now that’s an explosive spectacle.)

He had found that thought enough incentive to shut his eyes after setting an alarm for an hour—and five minutes—time to haul himself and the tender muscles in his shoulder back to the PTMC to go old school with fax machines and white-boards. 

It took all of the three minutes out of the spare five he had added to his alarm, for his phone to light up and buzz against his chest. Thumb against the button on the side to preemptively end the call before it even started. Jack almost chose himself over whomever decided that 4PM was the sweet spot to catch a conversation with the physician. 

And then, in one sweep of realisation that thrashed its way to the forefront of his mind, Jack remembered that it might’ve been a perfect time for you to call. 

Shit. 

Without much deliberation, he flipped his phone over, eyes halfway to being peeled open, when he saw your Caller ID spread across the top of the screen with a photo of you and Jack smooshed together on your fourth date as the chosen background image. 

(You hated the photo. Which made Jack love it even more.) 

His thumb swiped to answer, phone pressed to his ear. “Hello?” 

“Jack-y Jack-y. Break my back-y.”

Wow. That was a crude—but not unwelcome—way of introductions over the phone. Jack could practically smell the Fourth of July bottomless brunch through the phone, not to mention that the slur of your words may have given away the level of intoxication you were experiencing from a couple of patriotic cocktail mixes of red, white, and blue and two stolen Mimosa’s from another table. 

That was yours and the empty Table 12’s little secret though.  Jack let a chuckle slip, “Hey, baby. What can I do you for?” 

“Just calling—” You hiccuped, “—To ask how your Fourth of July has been? Uneventful? Boring?” You teased, knowing fine well, a SWAT shift was far from those two adjectives. 

“Oh, you don’t even know half of it.” Jack pandered to your drunken taunt, his eyes fully shut now. “How are the girls?” 

“Well…” You took in your surroundings of a litter ridden street and a tired sun dropping below the horizon and let out a puff of air in response.

Jack opened his eyes at that. 

Suddenly, dosing off to the dulcet tones of your voice on the other end of a phone call seemed like a far fetched idea. Who needed sleep anyway? Especially when their—unlabelled—significant other blew out hot air in response to a simple question of how her impenetrable fortress of her friendship group made up of women from all walks of life were. 

Oh, Jack couldn’t wait to hear this one. 

He zeroed in on your hesitance. “You still with me?” When you hummed lazily, Jack narrowed his eyes at the wall across from him, “Is that a hard question to answer all of a sudden?” 

“Sheesh, Abbot.” You drawled, “Let me just…think for a minute.” 

(Absolutely not.) 

“Where are you right now?” Jack asked with the phone sandwiched between his ear and shoulder. Already tugging at his prosthetic leg. 

You frowned, “Why?” 

“Why—?” Jack let out an impatient laugh. Not at you. Never at you. But, at the conclusion you would eventually come to during the phone call. He stood to full height and added, “Because, I’m coming to get you. That’s why.” 

“Uh, correction. You’re not invited.” You held your forefinger up in the air to draw emphasis on the correction you were making. You spoke again with one eye closed, “Don’t style my cramp. Or, however that saying goes.” 

Jack fished his keys from the bowl at his front door, “Oh yeah? Let me talk to one of them.” 

OK. Part of you took a mental note to be more consistent in recalling the fact that Jack Abbot was incredibly intuitive. Perceptive to a fault. Which meant, before you could even string a coherent excuse together from the jumble of words sloshing about in your brain, Jack had already been two steps ahead in deciphering the lack of female presence in the background of your phone call. 

Because, if it was a bottomless brunch that stretched far beyond the definition of ‘brunch’, that meant Jack would’ve been met with more than just one voice. How could he possibly know that? Perhaps, you had just stepped outside. Jack Abbot knew because of two things: 1) You never just called. It was always FaceTime, regardless of your location. And, 2) Your friends took every opportunity to interfere in your phone calls with Jack, because he had made a good, lasting impression on all of them. 

Put two and two together. The equation was…you had been ditched. 

Your fists clenched as you mouthed a profanity at Jack’s request. No, it hadn’t been entirely intentional that you were the last woman standing at the get together. The rest of the group—besides one who was married and left well before the lines got blurry on it being brunch drinks, and just, all day drinks—were single, and heavily active on all dating apps. Thus meaning, a holiday celebration statewide, and eight drinks thrown back; all your girlfriends were out for some metaphorical fireworks with someone they’d never cross paths with again. 

So, they all were picked off, one by one. Completely innocent. You’d never get in between a woman and her sexual prowess. 

With that, and a short-lived chastising from Jack after you held your phone further away from your mouth, your voice raised two octaves higher to imitate the bubblier friend; Jack had your location and was already on his way before the call had officially ended. 

He found you sat on the sidewalk of East Carson Street. Knees drawn up to your chest with your chin propped up on the palm of your hand, you were a vision of tranquil inebriation. (You know, considering you had been abandoned like a dog after the novelty of owning one wore off.) 

You visibly brightened when you saw Jack round his truck, shoulders squared as he scoped the surrounding areas.

You could take the man out of the military. 

“Hey, sweet cheeks.” You announced when he reached you, admiring the way that he did his best to crouch to meet your half-lidded eye level. You scratched lovingly at the stubble on his chin, “Fancy a drink? Some guy gave me, like, $150 for the night.” 

Jack mulled it over. “Tempting. I think I’ll pass.” His eyes dropped to your purse, because he couldn’t help himself, “You didn’t use the money I gave you?” 

You blinked, “Some guy gave me, like $150 and I have $20 of it left.”

That had Jack’s smile grow wider. Just as he had intended. 

“How about…we save it for later, and I’ll even throw in some Tylenol, if you get in the car.” Jack tilted his head. 

“You drive a hard bargain, Jack Abbot.” 

Without much resistance, you allowed Jack the triumphant win of getting you off of the sidewalk infested with gum and other substances, and into the passenger seat of his car. If you hadn’t had a hard time knowing which way was up, you would’ve noticed the small act of kindness in which Jack had ensured that the passenger side of his car was flush against the curb; so you weren’t reduced to playing with the traffic whilst trying to get inside the vehicle. 

That was his problem. And the zero sleep under his belt. 

He strapped you in with the seatbelt, and when the metal clicked inside the mechanism, Jack planted a kiss to your cheek, amused by the way you melted into the seat from his affection.

The drive to his house was comfortably silent. Jack had brought bottled water and two sachets of Liquid IV to ensure the electrolytes were pumped back into your body to ease the foreboding hangover you would experience in a day or so. His hand would occasionally come to rest on the meatiest part of your thigh, or lovingly rub against the nape of your neck and you would lap it all up under hazy vision. 

And then you sobered up a little when you pulled up to his apartment. 

“I’m staying here?” You asked, a little surprised. 

Jack pulled at the handbrake, his voice low, “Is that okay?” 

“Yeah.” You blinked and mustered up a smile that wasn’t the average expression for you, “That’s absolutely fine.” 

It was fine. Even if your face painfully didn’t translate that. 

The thing about it was…you had never officially stayed over at Jack’s apartment. The two of you had reached a consensus that whatever affectionate adjacent companionship that had blossomed through the cracks like pretty delicate flowers, there was no reason to hasten to the end result. Let the flowers grow at their own pace, without unintentionally yanking at their stems to forcefully encourage them out. 

This meaning, the whole staying over thing was a month ahead of schedule. 

You had been in Jack’s apartment before, because, he wasn’t a brick wall. The apartment itself was pretty clean, everything had a place and if it didn’t…it would be organised neatly for a later day. He had a little fern that he took care of, and then you bought him an another house plant under the guise of keeping the fern company.

(Really, you just enjoyed the limited times that you were able to spend money on Jack.)

“Don’t panic.” Jack mumbled, leaning in between the two front seats to grab a plastic bag of goodies from the backseat of his car. A place you both had come nakedly accustomed to. He gave you a lopsided smile when he pulled himself back to the drivers seat, “I can see those thoughts. I just want to make sure you’re taken care of.” 

“No thoughts here, Abbot.” You tapped a finger against your temple, “Just alcohol.” 

“Uh-huh.” Jack mocked before exiting the car, quick to shut the passenger door after you had cracked it open to get out yourself. You let out a laugh at his stern glare through the tempered glass of the window, and when he re-opened the door for you, he said, “We had a deal on who opens doors.” 

You slid down until your feet met the ground, “Put that patriarchal tone away.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

And then, you let Jack open the doors anyway. There were three doors to get through, and each time he’d gesture for you to step through the threshold, not missing an opportunity to let his hand come into swift contact with your backside. Jack wasn’t the type of guy to take advantage of your drunken state, however, he wasn’t opposed to letting you know—physically—that he liked the way your ass looked in that outfit you had chosen for your night out in Pittsburgh.

When you entered his apartment, Jack flicked the lights on and guided you with a hand on your hip, through the corridor and to the room on the left; his bedroom. 

But, you already knew that. 

Hands planted behind you, you sat on the edge of Jack’s bed and watched him bend at the waist in order to solve the mystical contraption that were your heels. The last time you had worn them, Jack had gotten thus far in his attempt to strip you naked in record breaking time, and then had forgone the idea of seductively taking your shoes off when he couldn’t figure out how they came off. 

Albeit, a good anchor for him to hold onto at the time, Jack Abbot would conquer the removal of the heel this time round. 

You nudged his chest gently with your foot, a smile growing on your face when he pressed a kiss to your inner ankle. He mumbled against your skin, “Why did the girls leave you at the bar?” 

“Alcohol induced libido.” You muttered nonchalantly, “They’re all single and well—”

Jack eyed you carefully as he gently wrangled your foot free of your heel, watching as your brow furrowed. You were truthfully stumped in the piloting of your own thoughts through the definition of whatever you and Jack were. Not that slapping the sticker of approval on the whole boyfriend thing would have Jack running in the opposite direction. But, it was the principle of it all. 

You were intransigent in not being the one to leap over that hurdle. 

Jack nodded slowly, “And you’re with me.” (Call a spade, a spade, you guess.) When the skin of your nose wrinkled in a scrunch, Jack lifted himself to press a chaste kiss to your lips. “We can talk about it later. For now, take a look in the bag. Got you some stuff for tonight.”

Grateful for the diversion, you peered into the plastic bag tossed onto the bed. The contents had your heart warm. A toothbrush—in your favourite colour—makeup wipes for sensitive skin, the pot of (rather) expensive moisturiser that Jack knew you worshipped the ground of, and a pyjama set that was made for the scorcher of a July you were already having. 

When you gave him an all-knowing glance matched with the smirk on your face, Jack deadpanned and smacked your backside for the fifth time that night, to get you and your smart mouth moving into the bathroom to de-shed the bottomless brunch attire off of you. 

He helped where he could, respected the part where you told him to turn around whilst you changed—despite seeing you naked several times—and even let you apply a dollop of moisturiser onto his face, because he wasn’t getting any younger. (That part earned a pinch to your hip.) 

You sauntered out of the bathroom, feeling less weighted down by the buzz of alcohol, and more lighter on the aspect of being loved correctly. Jack close by as if he were a dog on a lead.

Where you’d go, he’d follow.

It was just a bonus that he got to appreciate the view whilst doing so.

You flipped his duvet sheet back as you spoke, “I don’t know, Abbot. Seems like you’re going soft on me.”

Jack rounded the bed to approach you as you nestled into his bed, pillows propped up with all intentions of watching some re-run of Love Island. A show Jack swore against, but still somehow managed to catch up on it intermittently. One hand came to your hip as he leant down and kissed you like he meant it. And then two more times for good measure.

He spoke quietly against your lips, “Well, you make it pretty easy to fall in love.”

Oh.

You were really doing this.

Jack stood at full height, gratified by rendering you speechless.

“Alright, honey.” He continued with his voice laced with amusement, “I gotta go. The PTMC waits for no man.”

You slapped a palm to your forehead. “Oh my god. I completely forgot you had a shift at the Pitt today. Jack! I should’ve just gotten an Uber, holy shit.” 

“I am your Uber. Don’t forget it.” Jack reminded you on the agreement that was made that, it didn’t matter what time of day it was. If you needed help—no matter how small—you call him first. He was also feeling a bit playful as you reeled in guilt, “Plus, the SWAT shift wasn’t exciting enough. I only got shot at once.” 

“You got shot?!” 

“Shot at.” Jack corrected, “I’m fine. You should see my buddy. Not good.” 

“And you didn’t think to say anything.” You gawked, but deep down, you weren’t surprised. You let out a hefty sigh, “Did you even manage to sleep?” 

“Nope.” 

Looks like you owed him a couple of homemade dinners, and an abundance of leg massages. 

You dragged your hand down your face, “Why not?” 

Jack looked at you, amongst the sheets of his bed, now fresh-faced and sobering by the minute, and it left him confused as to how it wasn’t the most obvious thing in the world. Sleep, and everything in between, came second to you. 

You were like a goddamn Northern Star to someone like Jack Abbot. 

Yeah. You two were definitely having a conversation about labels and all that ooey-gooey relationship shit, when he got back from his shift in the morning. 

With his camo bag thrown over his good shoulder, the answer was readily available for you. 

He smiled softly, the flowers beginning to flourish between the cracks as he spoke the words that would come naturally for the rest of his life.