The thudding behind your temples was monumental, a heavy, sickening pulse that made you close your eyes again with a soft, miserable whimper. Almost immediately, a warm, calloused hand slipped into yours, squeezing gently. You didn’t even need to open your eyes to know who it was; Jack’s touch was instantly recognisable.

"Hey, easy now. Don't try to sit up just yet," Jack murmured, his voice incredibly quiet and gentle. He leaned closer to the bed, his free hand reaching up to carefully brush a stray lock of hair away from your damp forehead, mindful of the heavy, throbbing bruise forming near your hairline.

"Jack..." you whispered, your throat feeling dry and scratchy as you struggled to focus on his face. "What happened? Everything hurts."

"You took a really nasty hit, sweetheart," Jack explained softly, his thumb tracing soothing circles over the back of your hand. "A patient clipped you, and you hit your head on the crash cart. Javadi checked you over, and you've got a pretty significant concussion."

You groaned, trying to shift your weight, but a wave of nausea washed over you. "I need to get up. My shift—"

"Your shift is over, nurse," Jack interrupted with a warm, teasing smile, though his eyes remained deeply concerned. "Robby wants you to stay here for observation for at least twelve hours, just to be absolutely sure there's no delayed swelling. You're strictly off-duty."

The word observation hit you like a bucket of ice water, instantly slicing through the thick, pain-filled fog of your brain. Your heart rate spiked, the monitor beside the bed letting out a series of rapid, high-pitched beeps that made Jack's brow furrow in concern.

You tried to push yourself up on your elbows, panic rising in your chest. "No, no, I can't stay! Jack, I have to go. Juliet finishes at the after-school club in less than an hour. I need to pick her up. Jack, I can't just leave her there!"

"Hey, look at me. Breathe, sweetheart, just breathe," Jack coaxed, his hand moving to your shoulder, applying a firm but incredibly tender pressure to keep you still. "Don't work yourself up. You're going to make your head hurt worse."

"You don't understand, she'll be so scared if I'm not the one at the gates," you pleaded, tears of frustration and pain leaking from the corners of your eyes. "I don't have anyone else to call. Maybe the neighbour, but she works late, and—"

"Hey, stop. Take a breath for me," Jack cut in softly, squeezing your hand tight. He leaned in close, pressing a gentle kiss to your temple, avoiding the bruise. "Do you really think I'd let Jules sit there worrying? Or let you stress yourself into a migraine?"

You stared up at him, your vision slightly blurry. "What do you mean?"

"I'm going to go pick her up," Jack said, his voice steady, carrying an absolute certainty that immediately made the tight knot in your chest loosen. "I'll drive over right now, collect her from the club, and bring her back here."

"But... your shift tonight?" you whispered, looking at him in confusion. "You can't just leave, Jack. It's chaos out there."

"I've already spoken to the Chief, and I'm taking the night off. My leg's been giving me a bit of grief anyway, so they were happy to let me off," Jack lied smoothly, giving you a reassuring wink. "Besides, looking after my girl and our little Jules is much more important than this ER."

The words ‘our little Jules’ made your heart swell with a warmth that completely eclipsed the dull ache in your head. For the past few weeks, the two of you had been tentatively discussing the idea of trial sleepovers, taking the slow, careful steps toward moving in together and truly becoming a family.

"Are you sure?" you asked, your voice cracking with emotion. "She can be a bit of a handful when she's tired, Jack. And she might be confused seeing you instead of me."

"I'm absolutely sure," Jack promised, offering you a bright, confident smile. "Jules and I are best friends, remember? She loves my stories. I'll explain to her that you had a little bump at work and need to rest your eyes for a bit."

"You're too good to us," you murmured, letting your head sink back into the pillows as a wave of relief washed over you.

"Don’t be silly. I'm just looking after you," Jack whispered, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss to your lips. He lingered there for a moment, letting you feel his warmth and stability. "Now, I want you to close those eyes and try to get some sleep. No worrying. I've got everything covered."

"Okay," you breathed, already feeling the heavy pull of exhaustion now that the panic had subsided. "Be safe. Tell her I love her."

"I will, sweetheart. I'll be back before you know it," Jack said softly. He gave your hand one final, reassuring squeeze before quietly slipping out of the room, leaving you to finally let the darkness take you over.

By the time the heavy doors of the ER family room swung open, Juliet was perched high on Jack’s shoulders, her tiny hands gripped firmly in his thick, curly hair as she giggled. She was a bright, energetic five-year-old, and the moment Jack had picked her up from her after-school club, her initial confusion about seeing him instead of you had vanished into pure, unadulterated excitement. To her, Jack was the tall, gentle giant who told the best stories, and getting a piggyback ride through the hospital corridors was the ultimate adventure.

"Look, Robby! I'm taller than the ceiling! I'm taller than Jack!" Jules chirped, pointing a finger triumphantly toward the ceiling tiles as Jack carefully navigated the doorframe, lowering his head slightly to make sure she didn't actually bump into anything.

"Whoa, easy there, giant," Robby said, immediately abandoning a stack of charts on the table with a wide, welcoming grin. He knelt down on the linoleum floor so he was at eye level with her as Jack gently slid her down his front. "You might be taller than the ceiling, Jules, but are you talented enough to beat me in a colouring contest?”

Within minutes, the sterile family room was transformed into a chaotic, makeshift sanctuary of warmth and crayon wax. The Pitt staff, fiercely protective of you and incredibly fond of your little girl, took it in shifts to slip away from the bustling department just to keep her entertained and distracted from the medical equipment hums outside. Samira popped in between treating patients, carrying a plastic tray from the staff room containing a tiny cup of apple juice and a packet of chocolate biscuits she had raided from someone’s snack stash.

"She has her mother's eyes, Jack," Dana murmured softly, standing near the doorway and watching Jules furiously colour the tail of a dinosaur while Dennis dramatically pretended to struggle with his own drawing. She turned her gaze to Jack, her voice dropping to a quiet, professional register. "How is she doing? Our patient, I mean."

"She's resting. The head CT was completely clear, thank god, but the concussion is still making her groggy and nauseous," Jack replied, resting his hand on his hip. "I want to get her home the very second you clear her. Jules is going to want to be right by her side, and I need to make sure we handle that transition gently."

"We'll keep the little helper thoroughly occupied here until the final discharge papers are printed and signed," Dana promised, offering a warm, reassuring squeeze to his shoulder. "Go sit with her for a bit, Jack. Don't worry about Jules for a single second. We've got her covered."

True to her word, the Pitt crew kept Jules thoroughly entertained, turning the observation wing's quiet corner into a revolving door of affection. When Dennis had to run off to assist with a trauma incoming from the ambulance bay, Trinity slid seamlessly into his spot. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her usual sarcastic edge melting away entirely as she let Jules paint her fingernails with a washable, neon-pink felt-tip marker.

"You have to stay very still, or it goes outside the lines," Jules instructed with immense gravity, holding Trinity’s hand with her tiny fingers.

"My hands are like steel. They will not move," Trinity replied, her tone dry but her eyes sparkling with rare tenderness as she let the little girl scribble over her cuticles. "But if you get this on my scrubs, I'm telling your mom you did it."

Jack watched the scene from the doorway for a long moment, a quiet, profound sense of gratitude washing over him. This hospital could be a brutal, exhausting place, but the people in it were a family, and they were protecting his. When Dana finally walked down the corridor with the signed discharge papers in hand, Jack quietly thanked the staff, scooped up Jules in one strong arm, and went to retrieve you.

Supporting you was a delicate process. You were still incredibly drained, your balance thoroughly compromised by the vertigo. You leaned heavily against his side, your head tucked against his shoulder to shield your eyes from the corridor lights as he guided you out to his car. Jules walked right beside him, holding onto Jack's trousers with a sudden, quiet solemnity, sensing that something wasn't quite right with you.

The drive back to your apartment was blissfully quiet, the rhythmic, low hum of the engine and the gentle rain pattering against the windscreen soothing your pounding head. When Jack finally unlocked the front door, the familiar, comforting scent of lavender and clean laundry made you let out a long, shaky breath of relief.

Jack led you straight to the bedroom, his arm securely around your waist as he helped you sit on the edge of the mattress. He was incredibly gentle, kneeling down to slide your shoes off and pulling back the heavy duvet so you could finally rest.

"I want to stay with Mommy!" Jules's voice suddenly cut through the quiet room, trembling and fragile. She stood in the doorway, her little face crumpling as big, silent tears began to spill down her cheeks. "I want to look after her! I don't want to go to my room, Jack. Please, let me stay!"

"Oh, sweetheart, come here," you whispered weakly, your heart breaking at the sight of her tears. You reached out a trembling arm, though the sudden movement made your head spin.

Jules didn't hesitate as she scrambled onto the mattress, throwing her little arms around your neck and burying her face in your chest, crying quietly. You wrapped your arms around her, kissing the top of her soft hair, whispering quiet reassurances that you were okay, just a little tired. Jack stood by the bed, his chest tightening at the sheer vulnerability of the two people who had completely rewritten his universe.

"Tell you what, Jules," Jack said softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed so he was close to both of you. He reached out, his large hand gently stroking the back of Jules's head. "How about we have a sleepover tonight? Right here. We can all stay together, and we can keep a very close eye on mommy to make sure she gets better."

Jules sniffled, lifting her tear-streaked face from your shoulder to look at him. "A real sleepover? Like we talked about?"

"Exactly like we talked about," Jack murmured, his voice dripping with absolute affection. "But to do that, we need to make sure mommy has plenty of room to rest her head. If I tuck you in right on this side, will you promise to be very quiet and gentle?"

The little girl nodded eagerly, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her jumper. "I promise. I'll be quiet, Jack."

"That's my girl," Jack whispered.

With practiced, gentle care, Jack helped tuck the two of you in, ensuring you had enough pillows to keep your head slightly elevated to ease the throbbing pressure, and making sure Jules was nestled safely and snugly against your side. The bedroom was dark and quiet, the only light coming from the amber glow of the streetlamps filtering through the curtains.

Before climbing into the bed himself, Jack sat down on the small wooden chair in the corner of the room. He reached down, unlatching his prosthetic with a quiet, metallic click. He set it carefully against the wall, stretching with a faint sigh of relief as the pressure of the day was finally released.

Using the bedpost for balance, he hopped the short distance over to the empty side of the double bed, sliding beneath the heavy covers. The mattress shifted slightly under his weight, and almost instantly, you drifted closer to his warmth.

Jack reached out, his strong, protective arm draping over both of you, drawing you and Jules secure against his chest. Your head found the familiar, comfortable hollow of his collarbone, and Jules let out a soft, sleepy sigh, her little hand resting on Jack's forearm.

"I've got you both," Jack whispered into the quiet dark, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to your temple, and then another to the top of Jules’s head. "Robby and the day shift guys looked after us today, but I've got the night shift now. Go to sleep. I'm right here."

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You were no stranger to bad dreams. It was a given in your line of work. But they seemed to be visiting you more frequently. 

Like it wasn't just the stress and fatigue of your job infiltrating your subconscious; missions and warnings of danger and interdimensional threats.

More like somewhere, out in the vast universe, another version of you was losing everything she loved. A premonition of things to come.

You shut your eyes tightly, trying to ignore the sweat sticking to your skin, the feeling of the sheets clinging to your legs. The senses were overstimulating after such a horrible dream and you roll over, reaching over for the only thing that brought you comfort-

You pause, hand hitting the bare strip of mattress exposed by overturned sheets. Long turned cold. Absent of the man you were searching for. 

You blink in the dark of your shared bedroom, searching for any sign of him. 

As your eyes adjust, you can just make out the ajar door, cracked open just enough to let the glow of the tv from the living room spill through. You frown, tossing off the covers and creeping across the cold wooden floor slowly. Steps stilted as you shake off the tingling reminders of the dream. You shiver, the house cold in spite of the summer.

You find Bucky sitting in front of the couch on the floor. The line of his back is rigid, unnaturally straight and tight. His knees are tucked against his chest, cerulean eyes staring blankly at the news reel playing on the tv. 

You let out a quiet sigh, carefully reaching for his shoulder to avoid startling him. Not that you had to. Bucky had probably heard you the moment you woke up. But you did it out of habit; the small things to try and pretend the two of you lived normal lives. 

To pretend domesticity wasn't tucked between bloody missions overseas and conferences arguing over every decision he made. 

To pretend a moment, the two of you were husband and wife, and not members of the avengers trying to keep the world from collapsing. 

Bucky's chin turns toward you, blue eyes still glazed over, glued to the tv. It's only when you crouch beside him, cupping his stubbled jaw gently that he looks at you. 

"Hey," you murmur quietly. He blinks, right hand reaching out automatically to help you sit beside him. 

"What are you doing up?" He whispers, voice cracked from sleep. Like he'd been screaming- 

“Don’t let go!” 

You lean into his side and Bucky sighs tiredly as he wraps his arms around you. 

"I could ask you the same." He hums, squeezing your arm. 

"But I asked you first." You smile. Just a small one, still haunted by the dream. But you still don’t answer. At least, not wholly.

"Just missed you."

"You didn't even know I left." 

You look up at him. "I always know when you're not here." 

Bucky smiles at that. He tucks you closer to him, chin resting on the top of your head. 

"What was the dream about?" 

Of course he knew. 

It was the same reason he was here. Sitting in the living room like he was watching the world from inside a fish bowl. Catatonic. Remembering. 

Nightmares didn't go away just because you refused to sleep. 

You're quiet for a moment, grateful he couldn't see the pale look that crossed your face. The memory of the dream, blood and ash and destruction. Bucky allows you to hide against him, hand running through your hair comfortingly. 

"It's the same as it has been." 

"You okay?" You think for a moment. 

"No." He pulls away slightly, just to see your face. You don't meet his eye. Not even when he moves to look at your face, hand cupping your jaw. 

"Hey. Look at me, love."

"Bucky..."

"What is it?" You finally meet his eye. 

"I have a bad feeling. Like something awful is going to happen." 

The dreaded sense of doom that had been following you around with the dream. Bucky had felt it too. With the tensions rising in the tower, the ugly campaigns smeared against the team and blurring lines of what was right and wrong.

But it was more than that.

It was something bigger. Something that crept into the back of his mind like a shadow, foreboding and inevitable. 

The thing that had begun with the ship entering the atmosphere. The unknown. Heralding bad tidings.

Fate, maybe. 

Bucky presses a kiss to your forehead, holding you close.

“We’re going to be okay,” he chooses to say. 

“But what if we’re not? What if something's happening? Something we can’t stop.”

He just sighs into your hair. 

“Then we take it one step at a time. Do the next right thing until we can’t anymore.” You nod against him, fingers clinging against his bare torso. Your next words come out muffled, vibrating against his scar strewn skin.

“I miss when our problems weren’t so complicated.” Bucky huffs. Not quite a laugh but something close. He looks down at you.

“They’ve always been complicated. Just, not ours.”

“Maybe. But I don’t remember them being like this. Interdimensional people and world colliding threats.” Bucky thinks for a moment.

“I think they’ve always been there. We just didn’t have the burden of knowing.” You hum, looking up at Bucky. He looks tired. Worn down in an unusual way. 

He looked less like a soldier and team leader and more like a worried man trying to keep himself together. You reach up and brush a fallen strand of hair out of his face, the pads of your fingers soft as you caress his scruffy cheek.

Bucky sighs, eyes closing as he leans into your touch.

“We don’t have to do this alone, you know.”

“I know,” he swallows thickly. You let out a quiet breath.

“Talk to him, Buck.”

“He won’t listen-”

“Bucky,” you give the man a look. Something soft and encouraging. “Sam will listen. Maybe not at first. But he will when he knows what’s on the line.” Bucky is quiet. Defeated, you think. 

“I don’t know...” 

You sigh, scooting impossibly closer and press a gentle kiss to his cheek.

“It’s late,” you whisper against him. “We should go back to bed.” Bucky shakes his head. “I can’t.” 

“You don’t have to sleep. Just hold me.” 

He looks at you, swallowing thickly. Bucky finally nods.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” You nod encouragingly.

“Yeah. Let’s go to bed.” 

Bucky slips beneath the covers, his broad body pressed close against yours.

It’s hard to tell where you begin and he ends. You settle against him, your eyes already drooping closed in the dark. Even with the sense of dread weighing heavy on you. With Bucky, your worries are pushed to the side. Hidden by the comfort of his heartbeat against you. 

“I love you Buck.”

“I love you too,” he whispers back, hands tightening ever so gently against you. Like he could protect you from the nightmares.

Bucky wishes he could. He wishes he could protect you from everything that was to come. 

------------------------------------------------------

The curse of premonition had been in your family for centuries, bestowed by a witch who had wanted your ancestors to suffer long after their own deaths. You would feel every tragedy creeping towards you and still remain powerless to name the hour, the place, or whose blood would be spilled.

Your grandmother had tasted saltwater for three days before her brother drowned. Your mother had heard bells ringing inside her skull before the hospital called about her father.

Before your childhood best friend died a brutal death, bruises appeared on your skin and you woke up with blood running from your nose.

Bucky kissed the back of your neck, then stopped when you flinched. 

His hand became still on your hip. “You’re awake.”

You nodded, although he couldn’t see it.

Bucky pushed himself up behind you. The mattress dipped as he leaned over, brushing your hair away from your face. You could feel him watching you before he gently rolled you towards him.

His hair was tangled from the pillows, and there was a crease across one cheek from your pillow and warmth lingering in his eyes that disappeared when he saw your face.

“What is it?”

You opened your mouth, but the taste of smoke became stronger. You tried to speak and had to swallow dust first, drowned in a coughing fit. When Bucky offered water, you refused and forced the taste down. 

Oh. 

Bucky caught your face between both hands, because he knew that look too well by now.

“What did you feel?”

“Ash.” Your voice came out raw. “I… I can smell smoke.”

Bucky inhaled through his nose, as though he might be able to smell it too.

There was nothing for him, just the warmth of your shared bedroom in the tower and lemony clean sheets. 

You reached for him, twisting your fingers into his shirt and pulling yourself against his chest.

Bucky wrapped himself around you immediately, metal arm across your back while his flesh hand cradled the base of your head. 

“I think something bad is going to happen,” you managed.

Bucky pressed his mouth to your temple. “How bad?”

“I don’t know.”

You never knew.

Bucky pulled back just enough to look at you. “I’m not letting anything happen to you.”

Bucky had survived so many things, from himself, to armies, alien invasions and the end of the world. He had spent his entire life teetering too close to the edge, but had never let you do the same.

You held him tighter and whispered, “I’m not worried about me.”

Bucky went still. His breathing stumbled, and the arm around your back tightened until you could feel every plate in his hand. “Oh,” he looked down. “Is it…”

“I—” You cut him off, before biting the inside of your cheeks so hard it almost bled. “I don’t know that it’s you.”

“But you think it is.”

You couldn’t answer.

Ash gathered beneath your tongue again, and you squeezed your eyes shut and buried your face against his bare chest before he could see what you were still feeling.

Bucky kissed your hair. “Whatever it is, you know we’ll handle it,” His hand moved along your back, trying to soothe you while his heartbeat raced beneath your ear. “I promise everything’s gonna be okay.”

Outside the bedroom, the New Avengers Tower began to wake up, an elevator door chiming below. Alexei laughed in the corridor, followed by the muffled slam of a door.

These were all ordinary morning sounds you had grown fond of over the last six months.

And to think it could be taken away, just like that….

Bucky pulled the blankets higher around both of you and held you, pretending nothing in the world could reach you there.

You knew better.

You knew promises had never stopped the curse before.

But Bucky sounded so certain, and he loved you so much, and there was no harm in letting him believe it for a little longer.

Right?

You reach over to smooth an impossibly stubborn piece of hair away from his forehead. "You know," you say, "most people get excited about their birthday."

Steve hums. "I know."

"You don't."

Another small shrug. "I've just never really been bothered."

He says it so casually that anyone else might have believed him.

But you've known him long enough to understand the difference between someone who doesn't care and someone who learned, very early on, not to expect much in the first place.

Steve never disliked birthdays. That wasn't it. He'd simply stopped allowing himself to build them into something worth looking forward to.

Growing up, they were... fine.

There'd usually be a couple of presents, carefully chosen by parents who knew roughly what an eight-year-old boy ought to like but never quite what their eight-year-old boy actually did. His mother insisted on the same dense, healthy carrot cake every year because she preferred it to chocolate, somehow never stopping to consider that perhaps the birthday boy himself might have had other opinions.

Sometimes his parents were away entirely, leaving him with grandparents or a childminder and promising they'd celebrate properly when they got back. Sometimes they were there, though never really present. A birthday dinner if everyone happened to be home. A quick "happy birthday" over breakfast before somebody rushed off to a meeting. There was never anything cruel about it.

Just... distance.

Nothing bad enough to complain about.

Nothing good enough to miss.

By the time you'd met him, birthdays had become something he accepted with the same quiet indifference he accepted rainy Tuesdays or running out of milk. Nice enough if somebody remembered. Easily forgotten if they didn't.

He catches you looking at him. "What?"

You realise you've been absent-mindedly tracing your thumb across the back of his hand. "Nothing."

"Your face tells me it isn't nothing."

You smile. "I was just thinking."

"Dangerous."

"Oh, absolutely."

He grins, the corners of his eyes creasing in that familiar way that still makes something inside your chest soften. Then, just as quickly, he stretches with another sleepy groan and reaches for his glasses on the bedside table.

"So..." He pushes them onto his nose. "...What's the plan today?"

The question is completely innocent.

There's no expectation behind it. No hopeful curiosity. No excitement. Just the quiet assumption that whatever happened would be perfectly nice, and perfectly ordinary.

You hold his gaze for a moment before leaning across to steal one more kiss.

"Oh," you murmur, smiling against his cheek. "I think you're going to have a very different birthday this year."

Robin is the first to arrive.

You hear her before you see her.

The front door flies open without so much as a knock, followed almost immediately by, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DINGUS."

Steve has barely managed to look up from the mug of coffee in his hands before something rectangular bounces unceremoniously off the side of his head.

"...Ow."

"You're welcome."

He picks the envelope up from the floor, turning it over suspiciously.

Across the front, written entirely in thick black marker, are the words:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DINGUS.

Beneath them, in much smaller handwriting:

Don't let this inflate your ego.

Steve laughs quietly through his nose. "I haven't even opened it yet."

"I know." Robin folds her arms with exaggerated satisfaction. "I just wanted to establish the tone."

You disappear into the kitchen under the pretence of making more coffee, partly because somebody has to rescue breakfast before it burns, and partly because you've known Robin long enough to recognise the expression she's trying very hard to hide.

She's nervous.

Steve, blissfully unaware, slides a finger beneath the flap and unfolds the card.

Silence.

Then another page unfolds.

And another.

Steve blinks. "...Robin."

"What?"

"It's..." He flips another page over. "...Really long."

She shrugs with studied indifference. "I got carried away."

"What did you write?"

"I don't know."

"You wrote it."

"I wasn't paying attention."

He gives her a look.

She refuses to meet it.

You watch him begin reading.

The smile appears immediately, tugging at one corner of his mouth as he reaches the first insult.

Happy Birthday to Hawkins' second-biggest idiot.

Congratulations on somehow surviving another year despite making some of the dumbest decisions I've ever witnessed.

He snorts.

Robin looks insufferably pleased with herself.

Then the smile begins to change.

It softens almost imperceptibly, his eyes moving more slowly across the page now.

You can't read the words from where you're standing, but you know Robin well enough to know exactly what she'll have hidden between the jokes.

She'll have thanked him for making Family Video bearable, for never making her feel like she had to be anyone other than herself, for listening when she came out without making it weird, without asking questions she didn't want to answer, without changing the way he looked at her afterwards. She'll have written about Starcourt. About Russian secret bases and demobats and everything in between. About the fact that, somehow, Steve Harrington had quietly become the safest place she'd ever known.

By the time he reaches the final page, the kitchen has gone strangely quiet. Robin is studying a loose thread on her sleeve with almost academic concentration.

Steve clears his throat before reading the last line aloud, his voice noticeably softer than before. "'Don't get emotional.'" He smiles to himself. "'I'm only saying this once.'"

Robin points at him immediately. "Exactly."

"You literally wrote three pages."

"I know."

"You called me your favourite person."

"I was clearly concussed."

"You said you'd trust me with your life."

"I mean..." She sighs dramatically. "I would."

His smile grows impossibly soft. "You know..." He glances down at the card again. "...Thank you."

Robin groans so loudly you almost laugh. "Ugh."

"What?"

"Stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're about to hug me."

Steve doesn't even pretend to think about it. He simply walks around the table and wraps his arms around her.

Robin lets out the most exaggerated sigh you've ever heard. "This is disgusting."

"You started it."

"I wrote a card."

"You wrote three pages."

"I regret everything."

"No, you don't."

"...No."

She hugs him back anyway. Only for a second. Only because nobody's looking.

Except you absolutely are.

When they finally pull apart, Robin immediately pokes him in the shoulder.

"If you tell anybody I have feelings, I'll deny the whole thing."

Steve laughs. "My lips are sealed."

"They'd better be." She narrows her eyes. "And if you cry..."

"I'm not going to cry."

"You looked dangerously close."

"I wasn't."

"You were."

"I definitely wasn't."

Robin glances towards you. "He was, wasn't he?"

You smile over the rim of your coffee mug. "A little."

"I wasn't."

"You've still got watery eyes."

"It's allergies."

"In February?"

"...Shut up."

The conversation drifts naturally onto something else after that.

Dustin is apparently running late. Robin immediately starts complaining about his inability to tell the time while Steve joins in as though nothing unusual has happened, the two of them slipping back into familiar bickering before Nancy wanders in from the hallway carrying an armful of paper plates, looking between them with a knowing smile. "He's late again?"

Robin throws her hands into the air. "When isn't he?"

The room fills with laughter, and before long the conversation has moved on entirely.

Later, while everyone else is distracted in the kitchen and Robin is attempting to convince Joyce that frozen chips absolutely count as a vegetable, you catch Steve standing alone in the hallway.

The card is open again.

He's reading the third page for a second time, his thumb lingering over the final paragraph before he quietly folds it closed with surprising care. The smile on his face is small, thoughtful, the sort that only ever appears when someone has managed to tell him something he didn't realise he'd needed to hear.

He slips the card carefully back into its envelope.

Not tossed onto the side. Not left amongst the wrapping paper.

Carefully. Like something he already knows he'll keep forever.

Dustin arrives nearly forty minutes late.

He bursts through the front door carrying three different bags, a box of doughnuts, and what appears to be a screwdriver for reasons known only to himself.

"Sorry!" he announces before anybody has the chance to say hello. "The bus was late, the car wouldn't start, and then I had to help my mum move a bookshelf because apparently I'm 'the man of the house now.'"

Robin raises an eyebrow. "...You brought a screwdriver."

"I know."

"Why?"

Dustin looks down at it as though only just noticing it in his own hand. "...Huh."

Steve laughs. "There he is."

Dustin grins, dropping everything onto the kitchen table with considerably more force than necessary. "Happy birthday, old man."

"Thanks."

"You look ancient."

"I'm twenty-three."

"Exactly."

Steve rolls his eyes. "You'll understand one day."

"I'll never be twenty-three."

"You literally will."

"I refuse."

The conversation dissolves into laughter almost immediately.

Nancy is still trying to work out where everyone's coats are supposed to go. Joyce keeps disappearing back to the kitchen because she insists she's forgotten something. Holly trails after Steve, carrying a balloon almost as big as she is, asking if she can help despite clearly having no idea how. Derek is outside trying to light the barbecue with considerably less success than he'd predicted.

After everything that's happened over the last few years, days like this have become strangely precious. Nothing extraordinary. Nobody saving the world. Just everyone existing in the same place at the same time, talking over one another, stealing chips from each other's plates, and interrupting conversations with terrible jokes as though they haven't spent the better part of adolescence fighting monsters together.

More than once, you catch Steve quietly looking around the room.

Not at anything in particular.

Just... everyone.

It makes something warm settle gently inside your chest.

Eventually, as plates begin disappearing into the kitchen, Dustin freezes mid-conversation. "...Oh."

Steve glances up. "What?"

Dustin slaps a hand dramatically against his forehead. "...I forgot your present."

Robin doesn't even look up from her drink. "No, you didn't."

"I did."

"You absolutely didn't."

"I absolutely-" He stops, sighing with theatrical defeat. "...Fine."

Steve laughs. "I knew it."

"You were supposed to believe me."

"I've known you too long."

Dustin disappears into the hallway before returning a moment later, carrying something wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper. It's awkwardly shaped, too large to be a book and too flat to be anything else. Without meeting Steve's eyes, he thrusts it into his hands. "There."

Steve turns it over carefully. "...What's this?"

"I said don't ask questions."

"You literally handed it to me."

"I know."

"Can I open it?"

Dustin rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck. "...Yeah."

The room gradually quietens. Even Mike abandons the card game long enough to look over.

Steve peels the paper back with surprising care, trying not to tear it.

Inside is a thick scrapbook.

The cover is slightly crooked, one corner clearly glued back into place after an unfortunate accident, and across the front, in unmistakably Dustin Henderson handwriting, is written a single word.

STEVE.

Nothing else. Just... Steve.

His smile falters almost immediately.

Slowly, he opens it.

The first page is covered in old cinema tickets from Family Video movie nights.

The second is photographs.

Robin asleep against his shoulder. Lucas laughing so hard at something Steve had said that he's almost falling over. Max pulling a face behind Steve's back while he remains blissfully oblivious. A much younger Dustin wearing Steve's sunglasses, the frames so oversized they practically swallow his face.

Then come the things Steve doesn't even remember keeping.

Campaign maps from old Dungeons & Dragons sessions. Drawings Holly had made years ago that somehow ended up forgotten in his glove compartment. Polaroids. County fair wristbands. Birthday invitations. Receipts. Little scraps of paper everyone else would have thrown away.

One page is filled entirely with handwriting.

Robin's. Nancy's. Lucas's. Mike's. Will's.

Even Erica's, squeezed into one corner with the words:

"Don't let it go to your head, Harrington."

Beneath each name is a tiny memory.

"Steve bought me fries because I forgot my wallet."

"He waited outside my maths exam because he knew I'd panic afterwards."

"Drove us home in a thunderstorm even though he hates driving in the rain."

"He always says yes."

"Best babysitter ever."

Steve turns the next page much more slowly.

His fingertips linger against the edges as though he's frightened of damaging something.

"...Dude." His voice is barely above a whisper.

Dustin shrugs without looking up. "I know."

"You..." Steve lets out one quiet, disbelieving laugh. "...You made this?"

"...Shut up."

"No, seriously."

"It wasn't a big deal."

Robin snorts immediately. "He spent three weeks chasing us for photos."

"I did not."

"You literally made Joyce search her loft."

"That," Dustin points accusingly, "was research."

"And you bullied me into writing two pages."

"You wrote three because you got emotional."

"I did not."

"You absolutely-"

"Shut up, Henderson."

Laughter ripples around the room.

Steve doesn't join in.

He's still turning the pages. Slowly. As though every photograph contains a memory he'd forgotten belonged to him.

Then he stops. Halfway through the book.

You can't see the page from where you're standing.

You only notice the way his expression changes.

His shoulders soften. His eyes linger. His thumb brushes gently across whatever Dustin has glued onto the paper. "...You kept that?"

Dustin finally looks up. "...Yeah."

Steve swallows. "I didn't even know anybody still had it."

Dustin shrugs as though the answer should be obvious. "You don't throw away stuff that matters."

The words are so matter-of-fact that Dustin probably doesn't even realise what he's said.

But the room falls quiet anyway.

Because Steve is looking down at years of little moments he'd long since forgotten.

Movie tickets. Drawings. Receipts. Photographs. Inside jokes. Evidence. Proof that people had been quietly collecting pieces of him long before he'd ever thought to collect pieces of himself.

You watch him blink rapidly once. Then again.

Very carefully, he closes the scrapbook, resting one hand against its cover. "...Thank you."

Dustin clears his throat. "Yeah." A beat. "...Don't cry, dude."

Steve laughs softly, rubbing quickly beneath one eye. "I'm not crying."

Robin doesn't even glance up from her drink. "Third lie of the day."

Another ripple of laughter breaks the silence, the conversation slowly picking back up around him. But you notice something Steve doesn't seem aware he's doing.

He never lets go of the scrapbook.

Every time somebody shifts it to make room on the table, his hand finds it again almost instinctively, fingertips resting lightly against the cover as though he's quietly reassuring himself that it's still there.

The presents continue throughout the afternoon, though calling them presents hardly feels accurate anymore. Some are wrapped carefully, others arrive in supermarket carrier bags or with the price stickers hastily scratched away, and none of them are particularly expensive. None of them need to be. Somewhere between Robin's card and Dustin's scrapbook, the day has quietly stopped being about gifts at all; instead, it becomes a long series of people finding their own ways to tell Steve Harrington that they love him.

Lucas is next. He hands Steve a neatly wrapped box with a shrug that tries very hard to look casual, though he watches far too closely as Steve begins peeling back the paper. "It's not a big deal."

Steve smiles. "It didn't have to be."

Inside is a new baseball glove, the leather still stiff and untouched. Steve hadn't asked for one, but Lucas had noticed weeks ago that the stitching was beginning to unravel on the old glove he used whenever he played with the kids.

"You remembered," Steve says, turning it carefully in his hands.

Lucas looks almost confused. "Well... yeah."

"You noticed that?"

"You use it every week."

A quiet laugh escapes Steve. "I didn't think anybody was paying attention."

"Steve." Lucas shakes his head as though the answer should be obvious. "We notice everything."

Steve looks down again, his thumb moving slowly across the smooth leather before he thanks him with one of those small, genuine smiles that always reaches his eyes. Across the garden, Erica loudly informs Derek that the new glove still won't make Steve any less terrible at baseball, prompting Lucas to shout something defensive on his behalf while Steve laughs and calls them both ungrateful.

Max wanders over a few minutes later carrying nothing but a dog-eared paperback she'd spent the last month insisting he needed to read.

"You keep stealing mine," she says, pushing it into his hands. "Now you have your own."

Steve turns the book over. "I thought you liked lending them to me."

"I don't. I like getting them back eventually."

"I always return them."

"After six months."

"They're long books."

"They're four hundred pages."

"I'm a slow reader."

"I know." Her mouth twitches despite herself, but the amusement fades as she hesitates, scuffing the toe of her trainer against the grass. "...Thanks, though."

Steve blinks. "For what?"

"For always treating me like..." She pauses, searching for something precise enough. "...Just me. You never acted like I was broken."

His smile softens immediately. "You aren't."

"I know." Max shrugs one shoulder, suddenly fascinated by the book in his hands. "You just made it easier to remember."

She bumps her shoulder against his before walking away, leaving Steve watching after her for a moment before his attention drops back to the paperback. Nearby, Will quietly makes room for her beside him on the patio steps, neither of them saying anything as she steals a crisp from his plate.

Nancy catches Steve later while he's helping Joyce carry a tray of drinks into the garden. She slips a small envelope into his pocket so discreetly that nobody else notices. "Open it later."

He raises an eyebrow. "Secret?"

"I'd rather Robin didn't make fun of me."

"Fair."

When you find him reading it alone in the hallway a little while later, you discover it isn't really a birthday card at all. It's a letter, short enough to fit on half a page but written with the sort of care that makes every sentence feel deliberate. Nancy thanks him for always showing up, for never once asking whether somebody deserved saving before trying anyway, and for reminding her that kindness and courage were never mutually exclusive.

She ends simply:

The world is better because you're in it.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Jonathan doesn't write anything. That wouldn't be him.

Instead, while everyone mills around the garden balancing paper plates and cups of lemonade, he quietly hands Steve a photograph he'd developed himself. It was taken the previous summer, though nobody had realised Jonathan was holding a camera that afternoon. Steve is sitting on the grass with Holly asleep against one shoulder while Joyce is topping up everybody's drinks without asking. Will is showing Max one of his sketches, Mike is laughing at something beyond the frame, and El is lying flat on the grass looking at clouds.

You aren't looking at the camera either.

You're looking at Steve, smiling in that completely unconscious way people only ever do when they don't know they're being watched.

On the back, Jonathan has written a single sentence.

You always make it feel like home.

Steve stares at it for a long time. "...You took this?"

Jonathan nods. "You looked happy."

"I was."

"I know."

A quiet, bewildered laugh leaves Steve as he looks around the garden. Nancy is collecting empty plates; meanwhile, Robin is stealing chips off them before they can be picked up and taken into the kitchen. Everyone is talking over everyone else. Nobody is paying Steve any particular attention anymore.

The celebration has simply become itself.

"...You all remembered," he says, his voice nearly lost beneath the noise.

Jonathan studies him for a moment before giving the smallest shake of his head. "No."

Steve frowns. "What?"

"We didn't just remember." Jonathan glances towards the garden. "We wanted to."

It's such an ordinary sentence, spoken so quietly it almost disappears beneath the laughter drifting through the open door, but you watch something shift inside Steve anyway.

All day, some part of him has been waiting for somebody to admit they felt obligated; that birthdays are merely something decent people acknowledge because convention tells them to. Instead, every person keeps offering him the same truth in a different form.

Not simply happy birthday, but:

I'm glad you're here.

You make things better.

Life would look different without you.

And, perhaps for the first time in his life, Steve doesn't quite know what to do with the possibility that every one of them genuinely means it.

By the time the sun begins dipping behind the trees, the garden has dissolved into the sort of comfortable chaos that always seems to follow this particular group of people. Dustin and Erica have started teaching Holly a card game that she keeps accidentally cheating at. Mike and Lucas are throwing around a football, while El keeps spectacularly missing the catches and laughing anyway. Hopper has claimed the garden chair furthest from the noise with the determination of a man pretending not to enjoy himself, and Jonathan wanders quietly between them with his camera, capturing moments nobody else seems to notice.

Joyce, meanwhile, has somehow produced enough food to cater for an entire wedding.

Steve stands in the kitchen doorway, staring at the dining table. "...Joyce."

She looks up from the casserole she's carrying. "Hm?"

"There's enough food here to feed about thirty people."

"I know."

"There are, like, twelve of us."

"I know."

He gestures helplessly towards the mountain of dishes covering every available surface. "How did you even make all this?"

Joyce shrugs as though she'd thrown together a sandwich rather than enough food to sustain Hawkins through the winter. "I got carried away."

Robin wanders past and steals a roast potato straight from the tray. "She always gets carried away."

"I heard that."

"I wanted you to."

Steve laughs, shaking his head. "This is ridiculous."

Joyce smiles without looking up. "I know."

Nobody goes hungry when Joyce Byers is involved. Plates are filled faster than they're emptied, second helpings appear before anyone has the chance to refuse them, and every attempt to help clear away is met with a gentle but immovable, "Sit down. I've got it."

Steve tries anyway. Of course he does.

He appears beside Joyce with an armful of empty plates before she's even reached the sink. "I can help."

"I know." She takes them from him. "But today's your birthday."

"I don't mind."

"I know." She smiles at him over the top of the washing-up bowl. "So let somebody look after you for once."

The words are spoken so casually they almost disappear beneath the rush of running water, but you see Steve pause.

Only for a second.

Later, after dinner has dissolved into coffee, cake and half a dozen conversations happening at once, you wander back into the kitchen in search of more plates and find Joyce standing at the counter surrounded by plastic containers. She fills one, then another, then another: pasta, roast potatoes, slices of pie, enough leftovers to feed two people for the better part of a week.

Steve wanders in behind you just as she's clipping the lid onto the final container. "...Joyce?"

"Hm?"

"What's all this?"

She looks at him as though the answer is obvious. "Your dinners."

"My..."

"You work long shifts." She stacks another container neatly on top. "And I know you'll forget to cook for yourself if I don't send you home with something."

Steve laughs softly. "You don't have to do that."

"I know."

"You've already fed all of us."

"I know."

"This is too much."

Joyce finally stops what she's doing, placing both hands on the lid of the last container before sliding the entire stack towards him. "You'll take these."

He hesitates. "I don't need-"

"I wasn't asking."

There's no sharpness to it, no irritation, only the gentle certainty of someone who has spent years making sure the people she loves never leave her house hungry.

Steve looks down at the containers, then back at Joyce, and something shifts across his face so quickly that, had you not been watching for it all day, you might have missed it.

Recognition.

Not of the food.

Of the feeling.

Joyce has done this before: when he'd arrived after a shift looking exhausted, when he'd spent too many evenings helping the kids instead of himself, when she'd quietly wrapped slices of lasagne in foil because she'd "made too much again," despite everyone knowing perfectly well she'd cooked extra on purpose.

You realise, with a sudden ache beneath your ribs, that she has been mothering Steve for years. Neither of them has ever said it aloud. Neither of them has needed to.

Joyce notices his silence. "What?"

Steve blinks, almost startled back into the room. "...Nothing."

"You've got that look where you're thinking too hard."

A small smile finds him. "I was just..." He glances down at the containers again. "...Nobody's ever packed me leftovers before."

The kitchen falls unexpectedly quiet.

Joyce's expression softens almost imperceptibly. "Oh, sweetheart." She reaches out without hesitation, smoothing an affectionate hand over his shoulder as though she's done it a hundred times before. "Well." Another gentle squeeze. "They do now."

Steve doesn't answer. He only nods once, swallowing a little too hard before carefully carrying the stack across the kitchen and opening the fridge. He rearranges half the shelves to make room, setting each container inside with absurd precision before closing the door as though he's placing something valuable somewhere safe.

They're only leftovers. A few plastic tubs that will probably become lunch before work tomorrow.

But as you watch his hand linger briefly on the fridge handle, you realise they were never really about food at all. They were proof that somebody had been thinking about tomorrow on his behalf.

For someone who'd spent most of his life quietly taking care of everyone else, that might just have been the greatest gift he'd received all day.

When he finally wanders back outside, the evening has settled into that soft golden hour where everything seems to slow down. Fairy lights strung between the fence posts have begun to glow faintly against the darkening sky, somebody has started another pot of coffee, and the birthday cake sits half-demolished in the middle of the table, one candle still stubbornly refusing to go out despite Robin's repeated attempts to blow it over with exaggerated determination.

You lean against the kitchen doorway for a moment, simply watching.

Steve barely makes it back onto the patio before Dustin catches him again, insisting he absolutely has to see the scrapbook page he'd forgotten to point out earlier. Mike throws a crisp at him. Lucas joins in without even asking what they're arguing about. Max rolls her eyes so dramatically you're surprised they don't disappear entirely.

And through it all...

Steve laughs.

Not the polite laugh he gives customers. Not the awkward one he used to force whenever his parents invited colleagues over for dinner.

This one is different.

Loose. Easy. It belongs here.

You don't think he'd even realised the difference.

Not until today.

Hopper chooses his moment carefully.

He waits until Steve wanders away from the noise with another cup of coffee, escaping towards the edge of the garden where the old oak tree throws long shadows across the grass. It's the sort of place Steve always drifts towards when everything gets a little too loud - not because he dislikes the company, but because he's always needed a minute to breathe between moments.

Hopper follows a few seconds later.

Not obviously.

You watch from the patio without saying anything.

Steve hears the footsteps and glances over his shoulder. "Oh. Hey."

Hopper grunts something that could generously be interpreted as a greeting before stopping beside him.

For a while, neither of them says anything.

They simply stand shoulder to shoulder, looking out across the garden while laughter drifts faintly behind them. Joyce is gathering empty mugs onto a tray. Nancy is folding paper napkins that don't really need folding. Robin has somehow persuaded Holly to help blow bubbles across the garden while Dustin insists bubbles are scientifically impossible to catch.

Steve smiles into his coffee. "...Nice day."

Hopper nods once. "Yeah."

Silence settles again.

Not uncomfortable. Just... Hopper.

Eventually, he clears his throat. "Happy birthday."

Steve looks faintly surprised. "Oh." A small smile appears. "...Thanks."

Another long pause passes, and you almost wonder whether that's going to be the entire conversation.

Then Hopper speaks again, his eyes still fixed somewhere out across the garden. "You've done good."

Steve frowns. "What?"

"The kids."

A shrug. "They're good kids."

"They are." Hopper nods slowly. "They're better because you're around."

Steve's expression changes almost imperceptibly.

Hopper keeps talking before he has the chance to interrupt. "I've seen the way they look at you." Only then does he turn his head. "They trust you."

Steve opens his mouth.

Nothing comes out.

"You didn't have to keep showing up." Hopper's voice is as gruff as ever. "Nobody asked you to." Another pause. "But you did."

Steve looks down at the coffee cup in his hands. "I just..." A quiet laugh escapes him. "...They needed somebody."

"They did." Hopper nods once. "They got you."

For a moment, neither of them moves.

The sounds of the party carry on behind them as though nothing extraordinary is happening. Someone starts another round of Happy Birthday purely to annoy Steve. Robin groans loudly enough for the entire neighbourhood to hear.

Steve laughs automatically.

His eyes, however, have become suspiciously bright.

Hopper notices.

Naturally.

He pretends not to.

Instead, he reaches out, giving Steve's shoulder one firm, awkward squeeze before offering his hand.

Steve blinks. "...Really?"

"What?"

"The handshake."

"I'm trying."

Steve laughs through the thickness in his throat. "I know."

He takes Hopper's hand.

The handshake lasts barely two seconds.

It's probably the closest Hopper has ever come to saying I'm proud of you.

When he lets go, he clears his throat. "Don't make it weird."

"I wasn't gonna."

"You were thinkin' about it."

"...Maybe."

Hopper points back towards the house. "Go enjoy your party."

Steve smiles. "...Yeah."

He watches Hopper wander back towards the others before letting his gaze drift across the garden.

Robin has somehow ended up with Holly asleep against her shoulder despite loudly insisting children "smell weird". Joyce is packing slices of cake into foil while Nancy labels the containers before anyone can forget whose is whose. Lucas and Mike have wandered to the end of the garden with a football, Jonathan is crouched beside the flowerbed trying to photograph a butterfly Holly spotted, and Erica is shamelessly raiding the snack table one last time before anybody notices.

You catch Steve's eye from across the lawn.

He smiles at you.

Not because anything funny has happened. Not because he's trying to.

Simply because, for perhaps the first time all day, he's beginning to understand what every single person has been trying to tell him.

He hadn't just been thrown a birthday party.

He was home.

By the time the last of the washing up has been stacked beside the sink, the house has settled into a gentler kind of noise.

The loud laughter has softened into quieter conversations, and the music drifting from the old radio has become little more than background static. Through the kitchen doorway you can still see everyone scattered comfortably around the house, no longer celebrating in any organised sense of the word, simply... staying.

Robin has somehow ended up half-curled across one end of the sofa, arguing lazily with Max over what film everyone should watch before they eventually leave. El sits cross-legged on the rug with Mike, the two of them still passionately debating something that nobody else is listening to anymore, while Will quietly contributes the occasional comment that neither of them acknowledges. Joyce is wrapping the last slices of birthday cake in foil, Hopper pretending not to help while hovering close enough to hand her the tape every few minutes without ever admitting that's exactly what he's doing. Holly has fallen asleep against Nancy's side, Jonathan is carefully packing away his camera, and Erica is wandering through the living room helping herself to whatever snacks everyone else has forgotten about.

Nobody seems in any hurry to go home. Nobody seems to want the day to end.

Steve stands beside you at the sink, drying the final plate with considerably more concentration than the task really requires.

He's been quieter ever since Hopper wandered back inside. Not unhappy. Just... Thoughtful.

You hand him another plate, and he dries it automatically before speaking into the comfortable silence. "...I don't get it."

You glance sideways. "What don't you get?"

A quiet laugh escapes him, though it carries none of its usual ease. "Today." He runs the tea towel slowly around the edge of the plate. "They all..." He trails off, searching for words. "...They actually wanted to come."

The sentence settles heavily between you. Not because of what he's saying. Because of what he's accidentally revealing.

You wait.

He keeps looking down at the plate in his hands. "I know birthdays are..." He shrugs awkwardly. "People feel like they have to come, right? You buy a present. You sing. You eat cake." Another small shrug. "It's just... what people do."

You lean your hip against the counter. "Is that what you think today was?"

"I don't know." His smile is almost embarrassed. "It didn't feel like that."

"No."

"They weren't just doing birthday stuff."

"No."

He looks through the doorway towards the living room, where Robin has thrown another cushion at Dustin, Lucas catches it before it reaches him, and Joyce laughs so hard she has to steady herself against the arm of the sofa. "...They were celebrating me."

You smile. "They were."

He looks back at you, his brow creasing slightly. "I've never..." The sentence never reaches the end. Instead, he laughs quietly, rubbing at the back of his neck. "...I don't think I've ever had that before."

Your heart aches. Not because he's upset. Because he says it with such genuine surprise, as though the possibility had never once occurred to him.

You reach for his hand. "C'mere."

He follows without question.

You lead him slowly through the house without saying anything, simply letting him look.

Nancy is gently lifting Holly so she doesn't wake her. Hopper is quietly locking the back door, while Joyce wraps up slices of cake in individual napkins. Jonathan is wiping down camera lenses, Mike has drifted asleep in the armchair, and El gently covers him with a blanket. Robin is trying to convince Max that one more film won't kill anyone, despite half the room already falling asleep, while Erica is counting how much birthday cake she's managed to smuggle home.

Nobody's performing anymore. The party is over. This is simply what remains. People comfortable enough to exist in one another's spaces without needing a reason.

Steve watches them quietly. "They're still here."

"Mhm."

"They don't have to be."

"No."

"They've all got homes."

"They do."

He looks around again, confusion softening into something quieter. "So why..."

You squeeze his hand gently. "They are home."

He frowns. "What?"

"They're home." You smile. "And so are you."

This time he really looks.

Robin. Dustin. Lucas. Max. Mike. Will. El. Joyce. Hopper. Nancy. Jonathan. Erica. Holly. Derek.

People who had arrived separately, from entirely different corners of his life, and somehow fit together now. People who, before him, had never all belonged in the same room.

"You spent years looking after everyone because you thought that's what made you useful."

His eyes meet yours.

"You drove them everywhere. You showed up. You fixed things. You carried everyone else's worries until they stopped feeling so heavy."

He nods slowly. "I thought..."

"I know." You step closer, your thumb brushing gently across his knuckles. "But somewhere along the way... they stopped needing you because of what you did."

His brow furrows.

"They stayed because of who you are."

The words seem to settle somewhere deep inside him.

"You became loved long before you even noticed."

For a long moment he simply looks at you.

Then his eyes begin to shine again.

You smile softly. "I've still got one more present."

He blinks. "You do?"

"Mhm."

You disappear upstairs for barely a minute before returning with something wrapped carefully in plain brown paper and tied with twine.

Steve laughs quietly. "I thought we'd finished."

"We had." You place it gently into his hands. "This one's different."

He unwraps it slowly.

Inside is a dark leather-bound photo album.

No title. No ribbon.

Just his name, pressed carefully into the cover in tiny gold letters.

Steve.

He opens it.

The first page isn't a photograph.

Just a single sentence:

You spend so much of your life looking after everybody else.

He turns the page.

Steve teaching Dustin how to drive. Steve asleep on the sofa with Holly curled against his chest. Robin laughing so hard she's crying while Steve looks completely bewildered. Max stealing chips from his plate. Lucas teaching him a ridiculous handshake. Jonathan catching him mid-laugh behind the camera. Joyce handing him another plate of food. Hopper clapping him awkwardly on the shoulder.

You.

All of them.

Beneath each photograph you've written a single line.

Not describing the picture.

Describing what it meant:

The day Dustin stopped needing a babysitter and started needing a brother.

The first time Robin laughed like she wasn't afraid anymore.

The afternoon you accidentally became Holly's favourite person.

He keeps turning the pages until he reaches the last one.

There are only six words:

Home isn't always somewhere you arrive.

He turns one final page:

Sometimes it's something you build.

Nothing else.

Steve doesn't realise he's crying until a tear lands quietly on the paper.

He lets out a breath that sounds almost like a laugh, shaking his head. "...Honey."

Very gently, you close the album beneath his hands.

"So..." You smile. "Happy birthday."

He looks at you for a long moment.

Then, without saying a single word, he wraps both arms around you.

Not because he doesn't know what to say.

Because, for perhaps the first time in his life... being loved has left Steve Harrington completely speechless.

By the time the two of you finally climb into bed, the house has fallen completely silent.

The fairy lights outside the bedroom window still glow faintly against the darkness, casting soft pools of amber across the ceiling, and somewhere downstairs the dishwasher hums steadily through the last traces of the evening. Steve's birthday cards are stacked neatly on the dresser, Robin's sitting proudly on top, still slightly bent where she'd thrown it at his head that morning.

The leather photo album rests beside them.

Closed now, but not put away.

You curl instinctively beneath the duvet, expecting exhaustion to pull you under almost immediately after such a long day.

It doesn't.

Some time later, you wake to find Steve still lying beside you, exactly where he'd been when you fell asleep. Only now his eyes are open, fixed quietly on the ceiling, his hands folded loosely across his stomach as though he's trying to untangle a thought that's been sitting with him for hours.

"...Hey."

He turns his head. "Oh." His voice is barely above a whisper. "Sorry."

"You don't have to apologise for existing."

A tired smile appears. "I know."

You roll onto your side, propping yourself up on one elbow. "What're you thinking about?"

For a while, he doesn't answer. The silence between the two of you has never needed filling.

Eventually, he lets out a quiet breath. "...When I was little..." He laughs softly to himself. "...I always wished I'd grown up with a big family."

The confession catches you off guard. He keeps looking at the ceiling.

"I used to imagine one of those really noisy houses. People everywhere. Dinner all squashed around one table. Too many birthdays. Too many Christmas presents." He smiles faintly at the thought before it fades again. "I don't know... I just thought it'd be nice."

You reach across the mattress until your fingers find his. He threads them through yours automatically.

"I thought..." He swallows. "...I thought I'd missed my chance."

You shake your head. "No."

For the first time since he started talking, he turns to look at you. "No?"

"You didn't miss it."

His brow furrows.

"You built it."

A quiet, disbelieving laugh escapes him. "I don't..."

"You've got Robin. Dustin. Lucas. Max. Mike. Will. El. Erica." You smile gently. "Nancy. Jonathan. Joyce. Hopper. Holly." You pause. "And me."

His eyes soften.

"They're your family, Steve."

He looks away again. "They..."

"They are."

"I know they care about me, but-"

"No." You squeeze his hand before he can disappear back into old habits. "They don't love you because you drove them everywhere. They don't love you because you babysat them. They don't love you because you fixed every problem before anyone else even noticed it."

You think back over the day.

Robin's card. Dustin's scrapbook. Jonathan's photograph. Joyce quietly packing tomorrow's dinner before Steve had even thought about feeding himself. Hopper, standing beneath the oak tree, trying to say I'm proud of you without ever using the words.

"They love you because you're Steve."

The room falls quiet again.

"You spent years believing people only stayed because you made yourself useful."

His eyes glisten.

"But somewhere along the way..." You smile. "...they stayed anyway."

He lets out one small, disbelieving laugh. "...When did that happen?"

"I honestly don't think anybody knows."

You think about Dustin, twelve years old, following Steve everywhere. Robin slowly deciding she could trust him. Joyce wrapping leftovers in foil because she'd quietly started expecting him for dinner. Holly climbing into his lap without asking.

None of it had happened all at once.

There wasn't a single moment where strangers became family.

It happened on ordinary Tuesdays. On lifts home from school. Movie nights. Late-night phone calls. Shared meals. Inside jokes.

One quiet act of kindness after another until, somehow, nobody could remember a version of life that didn't include Steve Harrington standing somewhere in the middle of it.

"It just..." Your thumb brushes gently across his knuckles. "...Kept happening."

His breathing catches.

You nod gently towards the bedroom door, beyond which the cards, photographs and carefully stacked leftovers still wait downstairs.

"If every single person chose to spend today celebrating you..." Your voice is barely louder than the rain-soft silence outside. "...it's because every single one of them can't imagine their life without you in it."

For a long time, he doesn't speak.

His breathing catches once. Then again.

He laughs quietly through the tears gathering in his eyes. "...You're really laying it on thick for a birthday."

"I know."

"You trying to make me cry?"

You smile, brushing the same stubborn strand of hair away from his forehead that you'd smoothed back that morning. "No." A gentle kiss against his temple. "I'm just telling you the truth."

Something inside him finally gives way.

Not dramatically. There are no great sobs. No speeches.

Just one quiet exhale that seems to carry years of loneliness away with it.

A tear slips silently down his cheek. Then another.

Without saying a word, he turns towards you and buries his face against your neck exactly as though that's where he'd always belonged.

You wrap your arms around him instinctively, your fingers disappearing into his hair as he lets himself be held. Completely.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Steve Harrington doesn't apologise for crying.

He doesn't explain it away. He simply allows someone else to carry the weight for a little while.

You press one last kiss into his hair. "Happy birthday, sweetheart."

His reply is almost lost against your shoulder. "...Best one I've ever had."

You close your eyes, holding him a little tighter as the fairy lights continue glowing softly beyond the bedroom window.

This morning he'd asked if he could skip his birthday.

Now, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing against your chest, you realise birthdays were never really supposed to celebrate surviving another year.

Sometimes they're simply an excuse for everybody who loves you to remind you how very glad they are that you did.

dividers: saradika-graphics

Deep and guttural, dragged up from somewhere starved. His hands clamp around your waist, fingers digging into your ass as he hauls you flush against him. Denim rasps against the inside of your thighs when he rolls his hips up, grinding into you.

That thick, heavy bulge makes itself known, humiliatingly honest.

Blood in his mouth. Dirt under his nails and the sour, rotten tang of that other place still caked in his hair. 

And he’s hard.

Something in him is broken that way.

Years of surviving by the skin of his teeth—beaten and concussed and tortured and choked and drowned and devoured—it’s fucked up the wiring in Steve Harrington’s brain.

Pain tolerance shot to hell. Fear braided with dopamine until his nervous system can’t tell the difference anymore.

Getting hurt no longer scares him.

Now, agony comes hardwired with clarity. That split second before impact, when adrenaline screams through his veins and he’s teetering on that razor-sharp edge of death, that’s when he feels most alive.

Your thumb presses into the fresh cut on his lip, smearing his blood back into it. His lashes flutter. His hips jerk up, rutting against you like you’re fucking him.

You grab his jaw, fingers digging into the sharp hinge to force his gaze down to yours. His pupils are blown impossibly wide; barely any color left, drowned beneath an endless wash of black.

“Yeah?” you whisper, venom-sweet. You drag your thumb down his throat, feel the jut of his Adam’s apple jump under your touch. “Does that feel good?”

He nods.

Doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. Whatever scrap of self-preservation he’d once possessed hollowed out by hunger—by that sick, reckless void inside him that only ever seems to ignite after he’s survived something that should have killed him.

A cruel cosmic coin toss that keeps landing in his favor—and instead of gratitude, it leaves him burning for more.

You lift your knee and press your thigh into the seam of his pants. He sucks in a sharp breath through blood-slick lips, head tipping back, throat bared.

You despise it.

You despise that this is the language his body understands. That he can shove you out of the way without a second thought—dangle over two hundred feet of empty air because he decided your life was worth more than his—and still get hard when you hurt him for it.

You drag your bloody thumb to your mouth and suck it clean, eyes never leaving his.

He watches you do it, watches your lips wrap around the pad of your finger to taste, to swallow—swallow his blood like it’s yours, like he’s yours, like the world could never take him from you.  

Like he hasn’t already tried to give himself away.

Only this time... it was for you, wasn’t it?

Hurled himself into the abyss without hesitation, fingers scraping at metal while the yawning darkness waited below.

One second slower. One fraction of a heartbeat, and—

Your palms slam into his shoulders.

Just like his had slammed into yours.

Bile surges up your throat as you claw at muscle and bone, shoving and shoving until his balance falters.

He stumbles back, heel catching on the edge of the bed. Momentum betrays him for a second time and he falls back onto the mattress with a startled grunt.  

Your stomach falls with him. Phantom vertigo clawing up your spine, even now.

And the moment you close your eyes—

You’re standing on top of that tower.

You remember the look on his face.

That awful, quiet resolve of someone who had already made peace with his fate.

You remember his hands on your shoulders. The firm press of his fingers, the way he held on just long enough to make sure you were steady, to make sure you were far enough away.

Far enough that you couldn’t reach him.

Far enough that you would live.

And then he let go.

You remember the force of it careening you backward, your boots scraping against the metal platform as you fought for balance. You remember the cold bite of the railing against your back. You remember watching him move in the opposite direction, his own momentum carrying him toward the open edge.

You remember his hand shooting out on instinct, searching for anything that would keep him there. His palm scraping against rusted steel, leaving streaks of red behind as his fingers curled desperately around the railing.

The same hands that had pushed you away.

The same hands that had held yours on the way up, guiding you over every rung of that ladder when the height made your stomach twist.

You remember his mouth opening like he might say something—your name, maybe—a goodbye, something he needed you to know—but all that came out was a broken, ragged breath.

You remember the color draining from his face as he looked down, the terrible understanding settling in his eyes.

You remember lunging for him without thought.

You remember Robin’s arms locking around your waist, holding you back so tightly it bruised, her grip the only thing keeping you from following him over the edge.

And then his fingers slipped.

You stalk toward him now, trying to outrun the memory, fists clenched so tight your nails carve crescents into your palms.

He’s sprawled across the sheets, chest heaving, arms flung wide in surrender.

“Why?” you demand, climbing over him, straddling him with an anger so raw it shakes your whole body. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

He lets out a quick breath through his nose, incredulous. Raises his brows like you’re the insane one.

“Seriously? You’re seriously asking me that.”

He’s smiling.

A crooked, boyish thing, manic brightness behind the eyes, adrenaline still lighting him up from the inside out.  

It detonates something in you.

You slam your weight down on him, knees digging hard into his sides. The mattress groans, the air punching out of his lungs in a sharp grunt.

You fist the hem of his shirt and yank it up.

The sight underneath steals your air right back.

It never gets easier to see.

Bruises bloom fresh and vicious across his ribs, inky purples bleeding into sick reds. New hurt swallowed by old hurt, skin that never gets the chance to heal clean before something tears it open again.

Jagged crescents from teeth, ropes of pale, warped ridges that split the tan of his skin like fault lines, ready to crack him open. That chunk of puckered flesh on his right side that never healed right—and it never will.  

Your fingers drag down the center of his chest, shaking.

“What was the plan this time, hm?” you spit, nails scraping over the soft plane of his stomach, catching on one of the scars. “What was the fucking plan, Steve?”

You hook your fingers into his belt buckle and rip it loose, hard enough that the metal clangs against itself.

“Answer me. What would you have done if—if Jonathan didn’t catch you? If you slipped?”

His head falls back, exposing the flushed column of his throat, pulse hammering wild and alive under skin you’ve kissed a hundred times.

“What the hell was I supposed to do?” he pants. “Let you fall?”

“You didn’t know I was gonna fall!”

“Well I wasn’t gonna fucking wait to find out, alright?”  

The mattress groans when he pushes himself upright too fast, pain flashing across his face before he buries it immediately, one hand flying to his ribs on instinct.

“I can’t... I’m not gonna just stand there and wait for something to happen to you.”

Your body goes still.  

The bright sting behind your eyes arrives right on cue, the fury choking off in your throat until all that’s left is grief.

“You know,” you whisper, quieter now. “You know I’m not just talking about the tower.”

There’s a moment of recognition in his eyes as the words sink in, a flash of something that might be guilt if he ever let it sit long enough.

He knows exactly what you mean.

Then, just as fast, he shutters himself. Lets the feeling die before it can root.

His gaze slides away toward the ceiling.

“No, don’t... don’t do that,” he mutters. “Don’t make this into some... suicidal thing. It wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No.”

“You could’ve died tonight.”

“But I didn’t.”

“That’s not the fucking point!”

“Well what do you want me to say?” he fires back suddenly, frustration cracking his voice. “That I’m sorry I stopped you from falling?”

“I want you to stop acting like your life means less than mine!”

He clamps his mouth shut, an audible click of his molars as he frowns, incredulity settling behind his wide eyes. His brows pulling together as he stares at you like he can’t understand why you could possibly be saying this.

Steve doesn’t consciously believe his life matters less.

He would never say that.

But somewhere deep down—in the ugly marrow of him, in the abandoned, lonely places built inside him when he was a kid—he believes it instinctively.

You’ve known that for a long time now.

Steve grew up starving.

Not for food.

For affection.   

A reason to believe he mattered even when there was nothing he could offer except himself.

Love, in the Harrington house, was conditional.

And at Hawkins High, he traded one kind of emptiness for another.

Built himself a throne out of borrowed attention and hollow praise.

Then the world ended, and suddenly everybody needed him.

Needed his fists, his strength. Needed the frightening way he could take hit after hit after hit and still stand back up bleeding.

Steve latched onto that feeling with both hands.

And his body became a type of offering.

A thing to spend.

You’ve lost count of how many nights ended exactly like this.

Both of you stumbling back home, adrenaline clawing through your veins, slick with sweat and blood—yours or his, it doesn’t matter anymore. Shaking so hard your teeth chatter while you scream at him, fists slamming into his chest.

Screaming and shoving and crying and kissing and begging—begging him to please, please stop being so fucking careless with your life. What’s the point of any of this shit if you’re dead, Steve?      

It always ends the same way. Your anger dissolving into something wetter as Steve reaches for your waist with bruised hands, dragging you against him, mouthing apologies into your throat he’ll never say aloud. Fucking you on top of bloodstained sheets while the smell of iron hangs thick in the room, face buried in your neck, every thrust a word he won't say.

Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

You stare at him now, chest heaving, lungs scraping for air that won’t come.

Then you reach down and pull his wrists together.

The leather creaks when you thread his belt around them.

Loop, thread, pull, cinch.

Survival knots perfected in the dead of night, in basements and back rooms, hands slick with sweat while you practiced until it stuck. So when the time came, you could hold down something thrashing and dangerous.

Because hesitation is what gets people killed.

It makes sickness crawl up your throat, how naturally your body remembers.

How this world has taught you to restrain someone you love—and taught you well.

You yank his arms above his head, the strap biting into his skin, pulling tight until the leather creaks and his skin pales underneath.

Steve doesn’t fight it, doesn’t even try. Just lets his head fall back against the pillows, wrists falling limp over dark linens.

Has the fucking audacity to smile.

“What,” he breathes, wrecked in an entirely different way now. “You gonna punish me?”

You yank the belt tighter.

He hisses softly through his teeth, brows creasing in a fake show of pain, hips stirring in anticipation.

“Okay, easy, easy,” he mutters breathlessly, grin crooked. “Jesus—easy, honey.”

“Oh, so now I’m honey?”

You shove his wrists harder into the pillow, then drop your hands to his pants, fingers rough and impatient. The button fights you before snapping loose, his zipper dragged down with a harsh metallic rasp. He sucks in a breath, back arching as the pressure eases off his swollen cock.

“Baby...” he tries, a soft laugh in his voice. “C’mon, you don’t have to, just—”

“Shut up.”

You shove him back into the mattress, gaze burning furiously through him.

He just stares back, that reckless, adrenaline-drunk smile still clinging to him like he hasn’t learned a single fucking thing.

So you wrap your hand around his throat.

Four fingers digging into warm, sweat-slick skin. Your thumb presses into the hollow beside his windpipe until you can feel it.

The frantic thump-thump-thump of life.

Life he throws around like loose change.

“S-shit, babe...” he chokes softly, lashes fluttering, eyes rolling back, the fucked-up wires in his brain firing off all at once. He uses what little leverage he has to lift his hips, grinding against your ass until you tighten your grip, a crease of real strain forming between his brows as his breath snags under your palm.

But even then, he doesn’t push you away. His bound hands strain downward, fingers grasping uselessly at your wrist, tugging you forward so he can get you closer, grind up harder.

You hate him.

You love him so much it makes you violent.

And he’s still fucking bleeding.

Face covered all over in fresh cuts and bruises, illuminated by the soft blue glow of the dinosaur nightlight in the corner—same one he’s had since he was five.

This bed once held your first kiss.

Your first time.

Steve laughing breathlessly into your mouth at sixteen years old because he kept fumbling the condom wrapper with nervous hands.

Whispered promises under blankets about senior year and college.

A hundred different somedays and maybes.

About a future that didn’t look like this—didn’t include gates or monsters or watching the boy you love come within inches of disappearing, over and over again.

Now you’re choking him in it.  

Straddling him with your hand around his throat because you don’t know how else to make him understand that you cannot survive loving somebody who keeps choosing death.

It won’t leave you alone, the image of his face on top of that tower.

Not an inch of hesitation.

Like it wouldn’t have mattered, either way.

Your other hand comes up, circling his throat fully now, pressing in. 

Your eyes sting as you narrow them, forcing yourself to hold his gaze.

Barely a whisper, the words cut you on their way out.

“Fuck you.”

Some days you think about killing him yourself.

Ending it before the world gets to.

Precipitate the inevitable doom that is loving a man who would bleed for you, break for you, die for you—

But won’t live for you.    

At least it would be quick, then.

At least you wouldn’t spend the rest of your life waiting for the inevitable moment where his luck finally runs out.

It’s unbearable.

Loving someone who would move mountains to keep you alive, but cannot understand why you’d want the same for him.

Calm in the face of oblivion, martyrdom fits him like a second skin. 

That’s what terrifies you most.

Because somewhere deep down, you know he doesn’t fear death the way he should. The way a normal person would.

Sometimes, you think a part of him finds peace in the idea of going out useful.

And it’s all so completely, irreparably fucked, because you don’t love him despite it.

You love him because of it.

Loving Steve Harrington feels like standing on a fault line, waiting for the ground to split wide and swallow you whole.

It’s a special, exquisite kind of torture, to be so in love with a man who throws himself at death like it’s a dare.  

And it is love, undeniably and irrevocably so.

You love him.

By god, you love him.  

Because his martyr complex is just a twisted language for devotion. When he throws himself into danger, you know it isn’t bravado—it’s instinct. A reflex burned into his bones, older than logic, older than fear.

Love is the only language Steve Harrington has ever been fluent in, and he speaks it with his whole body.  

It turns his skin into armor, his heart into a blade. Sharp enough to carve permanent lines inside you—wounds that might close, someday, but never fade.

And he really does believe it.

That this is what it looks like, loving somebody.

But what good is devotion if it buries you?

What good is love from someone six feet under?

Your hand loosens around his throat, just enough for him to drag in a ragged breath. His chest heaves under you, pulse still racing against your palm.

His Adam’s apple bobs, sending ripples of light over the pale rings circling his neck, thin and white against his flushed skin. Scars that still have him jerking awake some nights, clawing at his own throat, gasping like he’s still back there.

Nightmares that leave him staring at the ceiling until four in the morning because every time he closes his eyes, he sees vines threading around broken bodies. Migraines that get so bad after trips to the Upside Down he has to sit alone in dark bathrooms, forehead pressed against cool tile, breathing through the nausea until the room stops tilting.

His hands still reach for a nail bat when the house creaks at night, before he's even fully awake.

Fear has never made him run. It only ever taught him to step forward.

And the tear you've been holding back all night finally slips free, landing on his bare stomach with a soft, awful plop.

Steve flinches like it’s acid, muscles clenching underneath you.

“Baby...”

You let go of his neck fully as you sink back onto his thighs, fingers gone numb, teeth digging into your lip until copper floods your mouth.

“You didn’t even hesitate.”

You watch as his expression immediately sobers, brows drawing together, eyes flicking between yours.

“Y-you never do. You never fucking hesitate,” your breath starts coming in tight hitches, catching in your chest. “And it’s like—it’s like—”

The rest of the words slip free, torn loose now that everything’s exposed, out there in the open, your handprint around his throat and his wrists bound in leather.    

“...It’s like you don’t even care if you leave me here.”

Steve goes silent for a moment, shoulders slumping with a quiet breath.    

You watch—eyes burning, body trembling—as he slowly reaches for you. The leather belt creaks as his wrists slide down until his fingers brush yours.  

You feel the metal burns on his palms against the back of your hand—his skin split from gripping the railing so hard he tore himself open just to keep from falling.   

He whispers your name on a soft breath.

“Baby, if I ever lost you?” He shakes his head faintly. “That’d be it for me.”

You sniff hard, refusing to blink.

“I mean it.” Light pools in his eyes, trembling along the lower lashes until they glimmer like wet glass. “I’d never… I’d never leave you behind. How could I?”

He closes his fingers gently around your wrist, thumb brushing over your pulse.

“I love you. More than... more than anything. You know that.”

You lift your gaze slowly to meet his.

“Do I?”

Two words, but it’s the ugliest thing you’ve said all night.

It's suffocating, the silence that follows.

“Do you ever think about us? About me?”

Because that’s what this is really about, isn’t it?

For all the names you’ve thrown at him in your worst moments—reckless, stubborn, idiot, a selfish asshole with a death wish—

It’s you who feel selfish.

For wanting him to stay.

For wanting to keep him in a world that seems determined to take him first.

For wanting him to choose you over the next disaster that crawls out of the dark.

Because you’re terrified that when the moment comes, when it’s you or the world, he won’t have to think about it. That the world will always reach for him first—and that one day, it’ll win.

Or worse, that he’ll choose you instead.

That he’ll stop running toward danger because of you. That loving you will make him hesitate.

And you’ll be the reason he changes.  

The reason the world breaks.

Steve’s expression changes in a flash.

The belt creaks as he tries to sit up, a real wince cutting across his brow when his bruised ribs take the pressure. He sucks in a breath through clenched teeth, dragging himself upright.

“Look at me.”

You turn your head instinctively, but he follows.

“Hey. C’mon. Look at me.”

Hazel burns molten in the dim light, the shine in them trembling.

“Of course I think about you,” he whispers, breathless. “You don’t think I think about you? Hey, hey, look at me—you’re all I think about. You’re in my head, all the time. Every fucking second.”

Your tears spill harder, falling freely now, dripping from your chin onto the dark brown fabric of his cargo pants, leaving small damp spots that bloom between you.

“Every time something goes wrong, or—or I’m thinking about doing something stupid, you’re there. First thing. Your face, your voice. Telling me to stop being an idiot, telling me to think—"

You shake your head, a broken sound catching in your throat.

“And if I just stood there tonight,” he presses on, eyes locked on yours, brimming with tears but never flinching, “If there was even a chance you could fall, and I didn’t do anything?”

He swallows.

“I couldn’t live with that. I mean it, honey. I couldn’t.”    

A tear slips loose and slides down his own cheek. He doesn’t wipe it away.

“Baby, I... I wasn’t trying to die. I was trying to end this. All of it. So we don’t have to keep doing this forever.”

His mouth twitches faintly.

“You remember what we talked about? About college? That stupid road trip idea I had with the camper van?” He shakes his head, letting out a quiet laugh. “Six kids, right? Or... whatever insane number I said.”

His hands come up as much as the belt allows, clumsy from the strain in his shoulders, and cradle your face. His thumbs drag across the wet heat beneath your eyes, catching tears as fast as they fall, rubbing salt into flushed skin. 

“That’s the goal. That’s always been the goal.”

He leans forward until his forehead presses against yours.

For a long moment, he says nothing. His hands stay on your face, thumbs brushing softly over your skin, his breathing uneven in the small space between you.

Then, almost too quietly to hear:

“I would’ve jumped with you.”

You recoil immediately, shaking your head hard, eyes squeezing shut.

“Don’t. Don’t fucking say that.”

Steve pushes on, voice low and terrifyingly calm.

“If you’d fallen off that tower tonight, I would’ve followed you.”

His thumb brushes under your eye again, catching another tear before it reaches your jaw.

“Wouldn’t even think about it. I’d just go.”

“Steve—”

“I’d go.”

Your eyes snap open.

Those big, stupid hazel eyes bore into yours.

That stupid nose. Those stupid thick lashes and those stupid moles and those stupid lips.

And underneath all of it, that huge, catastrophic, stupid heart crammed inside a body that keeps throwing itself into danger like it doesn’t belong to him.

Your chest aches just looking at him.

You’ve spent countless nights staring at Steve Harrington while he slept beside you, wondering if loving him would always feel like standing barefoot on train tracks.

Waiting.

Feeling the vibrations underneath your feet before the impact ever comes. Knowing that something massive and merciless will come racing toward you and there won’t be a damn thing you can do to stop it. 

Sometimes you’d trace the slope of his nose with the back of your finger. Follow the shape of his eyebrows. The tiny scar under his chin from a T-ball game when he was six.

You’d study the dip of his cupid’s bow, the soft curve of his lips as he breathed into his pillow, completely unaware of how thoroughly he’d ruined your life for anyone else.

And you’d torture yourself with the same impossible question.

If someone had stopped you before all of this, taken your face in both hands and said:

Here, this boy is going to become the center of your entire world.

He's going to make you laugh so hard your ribs hurt.

He’s going to kiss you like you’re the last person on earth, and he's going to love you so completely you'll forget there was ever a version of yourself that existed before him.

He's going to look at you like you're the only thing worth finding at the end of the world.

Then one day, he’ll start throwing himself in front of monsters and nightmares beyond comprehension. 

He's going to throw himself off a tower without hesitating if it means you get to live.

Would you still choose him?

Would you still let him in, knowing one day he might not make it back?

Would you willingly hand your heart to someone who would protect it with his life—

But never his own?

And even in the quiet space of that hypothetical, the answer had never changed.

You would.

Every fucking time. 

“I love you,” the boy in front of you whispers.

The words slice straight through you, scraping against everything frayed raw inside your chest.

“Shut up,” you breathe, eyes squeezing shut.

Because if he loved you, wouldn’t he try?

Wouldn’t he try?

“I love you.”

“Steve, s-stop.”

“I love you. There’s nothing—nothing—that matters to me more than you.”

“Steve, I swear to god—”

“You’re it for me. And if it came down to it again—”

“Please, stop—”

“—I’d choose to jump. Every time.”

It feels like a seam is splitting inside your chest.

Your breath caves first—a sharp, stuttering inhale that catches in your lungs hard enough to hurt—before your body moves on instinct.

You surge forward, the mattress groaning beneath the force of it as you crash into him, fists tangling in the front of his shirt.

“Fuck you,” you sob.

Steve sucks in a breath as you pound weakly at his chest, his restrained hands jerking uselessly between your bodies.

He can’t hold you properly. Can’t wrap his arms around you the way he wants to.

Still, he tries.  

He shifts forward on the mattress, pulling you between his thighs. The leather around his wrists creaks when he strains to hook his arms around your waist.

You bury your face against his neck.

His entire body folds around yours, chest pressed flush against you so tightly you can feel the frantic hammer of his heartbeat through his sternum, the uneven rise and fall of his lungs where your bodies are crushed together. He presses his cheek against your temple, breathing hard through his nose.

“I know,” he murmurs hoarsely into your hair. “I know, baby. I know.”

“N-no, y-you don’t,” you choke out.

Your hands claw at his shoulders hard enough to bunch the fabric beneath your fists. You need him closer. Closer than skin, closer than bone. If you could unzip his ribs and crawl inside his chest just to keep his heart beating yourself, you would.

“You don’t know,” you sob against his throat. “You d-don’t know what it f-feels like—”

“Hey,” Steve whispers shakily. “Hey, c’mon. Breathe for me, baby. Please.”

You curl tighter against him, fists twisting in the soft cotton of his shirt until your knuckles throb from the effort. The tears don't stop. They soak into the warm skin at the base of his neck, your breath catching against him in broken, uneven pulls until your throat burns and your ribs ache with every desperate inhale.

Steve gathers you as close as his battered body will allow. Every so often, he presses another lingering kiss into your hairline, your temple, the crown of your head, each one quiet enough to say what words can't.

“I’ve got you, baby,” he murmurs into your hair. “M'right here, I got you. Not going anywhere.”  

You let his words settle over you, one shaky breath at a time. The sobs begin to lose their violence, splintering into uneven hiccups that leave your chest sore and hollow.

When you finally pull back, it's only far enough to see him. 

Your hand trembles when you lift it to his face.

Steve goes still as your fingertips ghost over the scrape on his cheek, tracing down the line of his jaw. He doesn’t so much as flinch when your thumb brushes over the split in his lip, featherlight over the broken skin there.

The first kiss is soft.

Nothing like the frantic, bruising collision from earlier.  

But it’s worse like this, somehow.

Wet with tears, with blood, salt and iron passed between soft, shaking kisses. Steve sighs into it, a trembling sound that vibrates against your lips as he tilts his head and follows you deeper. His nose nudges against your cheek, his kisses careful, almost hesitant in how tender he’s being with you.

And it’s funny, really.

How grief can change shape in the span of a heartbeat.

One moment it's lodged beneath your ribs like broken glass, your body still trapped on that radio tower, watching Steve disappear over the edge.

The next, it's here.

In the careful way he kisses you, the warmth of his breath against your mouth.

In the slow, wet drag of his tongue against yours, your fingers hooking into the open button of his pants. The zipper presses cold against the side of your hand before you push deeper, slipping beneath the elastic of his briefs.

He’s already half-hard. Heavy and thick and burning hot against your palm, velvety-soft skin twitching when you wrap your fingers around him. The soft curl of hair at his base brushes against your knuckles when you adjust your grip.

He pants openly into your mouth as you slide your other hand into his hair, gripping tight, yanking his head back at the angle you want it.  

Nose to nose, lips brushing even as you’re not kissing—only sharing air and spit, slick between swollen mouths.

And your eyes stay open, watching him.

Darkened hazels and helplessly fluttering lashes, his is a face that will haunt every version of your future. The one you almost lost, the one you’re still begging the universe to let you keep.

“Show me.”

He blinks at your words, lips parted in soft pants.

“Show me how much you love me.”

He swears under his breath, eyes clenching shut.  

“Fuck…” he groans, shaking his head slowly, side to side, grunting when you drag your thumb across the sensitive tip. “Baby, please... just untie me,” he pleads, straining against his binds again. “Please—fuck—let me touch you—”

“No.”

“Please, baby—”

“No,” you repeat, wrist rolling as you start to stroke him harder, feeling him swell fully in your grip.

He grunts, brows creased in pleasure as you continue to squeeze and glide your palm up and down his length, lips parted to keep kissing you in this obscene way, tongues sliding together in slow, wet strokes.

“God, you’re so... so pretty when you’re mad, you know that?” He huffs against your mouth, almost a laugh, throat gone hoarse and dry from how hard he’s been panting.

“You get this look like you’re—ah, fuck—like you might actually kill me.”

You squeeze your grip around his cock, dangerously tight.

“Maybe I should.”

Something catches in those soft hazel eyes, then.

Pinning you in place with nothing but their unblinking stare, almost unnervingly steady.

You watch, helpless, as he lifts his own hands up toward his mouth. He spits lewdly into the hollow of his right palm, shoving his waistband down just enough to free his cock, replacing your hand with his own.  

Wrists still bound, he slicks himself in slow, wet strokes, eyes never leaving yours.

"Yeah?" he asks quietly. "You gonna punish me?"

He tips his chin up toward you, lashes nearly brushing your skin when he blinks.

“You gonna use this cock, baby? Take it out on me?”

He uses what little range of motion he has to rub his tip up and down your glistening slit, obscene schlicks that fill the space between your breaths, spurred by the impatient grinds of your hips.

And the moment he pushes inside you, he breathes the words against your skin.

“I love you.”

His mouth swallowing your whimpers at the stretch of taking him this way—no prep, no lube, just spit—yours, his, it doesn’t matter anymore.

“I love you. I love you. We’re... we’re gonna be okay, baby, I promise. We’re gonna be okay.”

Your hands shake as you reach for the belt around his wrists, the buckle catching under your fingertips before releasing with a muted clink. He cups your cheeks as soon as it does, cradling your face, pressing his lips against yours. 

“I love you,” he repeats against your mouth, over and over. “I love you. I love you.”

Grief really is a funny thing.   

It burns until there's nothing left to consume

And the anger that had kept you upright for hours—the frantic, desperate need to make him understand how terrified you'd been—begins to crumble beneath the weight of what you almost lost.

Your strength gives out in increments. Your fingers slowly uncurl from his biceps, the crescents your nails pressed into his skin easing away. Your forehead finds the warm slope of his shoulder instead, eyes slipping shut as the last of the fight drains from your body.

You sag forward, soft whimpers and low groans exchanged between your lips as you rock back and forth on his cock, letting it fill up the hollowed-out places inside you.

And when you get too tired to do even that—when your strength gives out, thighs trembling with the effort of lifting yourself up and sinking back down—he’s there to catch you.

One arm sliding securely around you as he eases you onto your back, the muscles in his shoulders rippling under your fingertips as you wind your arms around his neck. You cling to him as he kisses you hard and deep, exchanging punched-out breaths as he starts up his thrusts with newfound fervor.

"Gonna marry you," he pants suddenly, stealing what little breath you have left.

You gasp against his mouth, caught between a disbelieving laugh and another sob. “Steve—”

“I mean it,” he insists, hips snapping into the mattress, barely pulling out before burying himself back in. “I-I want all of it. That house with the... the porch. That trip we keep talking about, in the camper van, and—”

His face screws up and he has to stop moving for a second, drawing in a shuddering breath.

“I’m gonna marry you and—fuck—gonna give you a baby.”   

You choke on the words, a helpless sound catching in your throat as you cling to him, bruisingly tight.

“Yeah?” He strokes your hair back, cupping the crown of your head with his palm. Smoothing the sweat-slick strands away from your face, thumb lingering at your temple as his eyes search yours. “You want me to give you a baby?”  

You nod into him, unable to find the words.

“How many?”

His pace is unrelenting—thrusts hard enough that the bedframe is thudding repeatedly against the wall, hard enough that you know the wallpaper’s going to show it tomorrow.  

“Tell me,” he grunts, voice rough with emotion, like he needs to hear you say it out loud. “How many?”

Sweat shining along his skin, hair a damp mess across his forehead, but he never once looks away.

“F-fuck, I don’t...” you break on another sob, eyes clenching shut. “Two. Maybe... maybe three.”

“Three,” he repeats to himself, and his hips snap a little sharper. “What about... what about four? Make it a—mm, fuck—make it an even number.”

And it’s hardly new—the kind of bullshit he spouts when you’re both this far gone, when adrenaline has burned through every last nerve and neither of you are thinking straight anymore. He’s always been prone to making wild promises in the heat of the moment—spinning out impossible futures and reckless dreams, building an entire lifetime in the space of a few breathless minutes—just to get you both off.     

But tonight, they don’t feel like a fantasy at all. 

“You’d look so... so fucking pretty,” he pants, voice breaking. “Pregnant with my kid. Jesus.”

“Mm, close...” you whisper weakly, face scrunched at the unbearably mounting pressure in your lower stomach.  

“Yeah? You’re close? You gonna come for me?”

You nod, burying yourself closer, clinging to him harder. “T-tell me again.”

“Tell you what, baby?”

“That you... that you love me.”

“Fuck,” he groans, thrusts turning sloppy as he buries a loud groan against your lips. “I love you. Love you so fucking much. I don’t even know what I’d do without you. I—shit, a-are you coming? Oh, fuck, that’s—that’s it. That’s my girl.”

Your orgasm hits hard and blinding. A broken groan ripping out of you as you clamp your thighs around his waist, mewling into his skin. You blink your eyes open just in time to see his gaze fixed on you—expression reverent, chest heaving as he watches you shake underneath him.

And as you go to kiss him, feeling the labored grunts of his mounting pleasure against your lips, the weight of his breaths and the slick drag of his cock against your heat—

When you press your lips to his and whisper for him to come inside you, make me yours Steve, get me pregnant, keep me, love me, stay with me, stay, stay, please fucking stay—

When he presses inside all the way to the hilt and lets his own pleasure overtake him—

You finally whisper the words back.

Three syllables against the enormity of what lives inside your chest.

Three syllables trying to hold every sleepless night and every quiet morning, every time you pressed your lips to the places on his body that hurt and wished that love alone could take his pain away.

They cannot carry it all.

They never could.

But when he closes his eyes and tips his forehead to yours—his weight melting against you as he presses an exhausted, dazed smile against your lips—you realize maybe the words don’t have to hold it all.

Maybe he can feel the rest.

· · ·

The seal breaks with a sharp snap, the plastic ring splitting loose and skittering across the bathroom floor.

You turn the bottle over in your hand, staring at it for a moment.

It’s the good kind—the expensive kind stored in heavy glass, the label still clean. You haven’t touched it since the day Steve brought it home months ago, back when you could still ask for things like Epsom salt and a box of chocolates at the general store without anyone looking at you like you’d lost your mind.

He’d shown up at your door that afternoon grinning like an idiot, grocery store roses tucked under one arm and a paper bag in his other hand that clinked when he lifted it.

“Thought we deserved something nice,” he’d said, holding up the bag with that stupid, proud little grin. “We haven’t done a proper date night in a while, right?”

But you hadn't used the bottle then.

You'd saved it.

For a night that felt right.

For a night where you weren’t just surviving long enough to see morning.

Your hands shake a little as you tip the bottle now.

Pouring more than you should, watching the pale liquid ribbon into the rushing stream of water, swallowed by the force of it before slowly blooming back to the surface in soft, frothy bubbles.

The smell hits a second later. Sweet, heavy lavender that clings to the back of your throat, swirling with the clean heat of the water.

For a moment, you let yourself go back.

Back to the day Steve bought this because he wanted to take care of you. Because he wanted one normal night where you could both pretend the world hadn’t changed.

A night where the biggest problem was what movie to put on.

Then, the sink creaks behind you.

You turn immediately, heart jumping.  

Steve’s reflection is blurred in the mirror—shoulders slumped, chin dipping toward his chest. He’s got one hand braced against the counter, knuckles pale from how tightly he’s holding on. The other fumbles with an orange pill bottle.

“You okay? You need help?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, I got it.”

The words are automatic. Steve’s favorite answer to anything that worries you.

He tips a couple pills into his palm, fills the glass beside the sink, and swallows them down.

You watch his face tighten afterward, eyes squeezing shut as he waits for it to pass. His throat works hard, his whole body briefly tensing, muscles bracing against something that should have been painless.

You step closer, hands settling carefully on his arms as you turn him toward you. 

He doesn’t argue when you crouch in front of him.

You start with his shoes.

Fingers working at the laces, easing them loose before pulling them off one at a time. They hit the tile with a quiet thud. His socks peel off next. Then his pants, the buttons still undone. His briefs.

He stays silent through all of it, one hand resting lightly on your shoulder.

It’s not much pressure, but you feel the way his weight leans into you, the slight sway when you shift back, like he’s having to constantly correct himself just to stay upright.

Helping him into the tub takes time. You stay close while he steps over the edge, one hand gripping your arm, the other braced against the wall.

Slowly, carefully, he lowers himself into the water.

The second it reaches his ribs, he hisses.

“Shit—”

His head falls back against the tile, eyes squeezing shut as a sharp breath slips between his teeth. His hand tightens reflexively around your wrist.

Foamy water laps against his chest, darkening the hair across his sternum, rising and falling with each careful breath.

“Too hot?” you ask quickly, already reaching for the faucet.

He cracks his eyes open, shaking his head.

“’S perfect.”

You keep watching him, searching his face for the slightest sign that he's only saying it to spare you.

Then, little by little, the strain begins to loosen its grip.

The hard line of his jaw softens first, his fingers easing around your wrist. His shoulders sink another inch beneath the warm water, the tension slowly melting out of them as the heat works its way into his muscles.

His next breath comes easier. Then another.

After a long moment, his eyes drift open again.

They're hazy with fatigue, heavy-lidded and unfocused, but they find you where you're perched beside the tub, knees tucked against your chest.

He squints, mouth twisting into a petulant frown.

“What?” he murmurs. “You’re not getting in?” 

A smile tugs at your lips. “You want me to?”

He gives you a slow, incredulous look—the classic Steve Harrington stare.

“Uh, yeah,” he mumbles, like it’s obvious. “How else am I supposed to feel better?”

You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling as you stand.

Your hands aren’t as steady as you’d like; you notice it more now, with nothing else to focus on.

You pull your shirt over your head, and immediately hear the quiet shift of water beside you, a soft slosh.

By the time you glance up, he’s already looking at you.

Sitting a little straighter than he was a moment ago, chin lifted despite the exhaustion pulling at him. Steam curls between you, softening the edges of his face, but his eyes never leave yours. They follow every movement with boyish concentration, fixed on you in a way that’s not even pretending to be subtle.

You huff a quiet breath through your nose, fighting a smile as you tug the rest of your clothes off.  

“Seriously?”

The corner of his mouth quirks, all innocence.

“What? Sue me.”  

He shifts deeper into the tub, water rolling around him as he eases back, making room between his legs before patting the space in front of him.

You step in carefully, goosebumps prickling as the heat climbs slowly over your ankles, your calves, your thighs. The water embraces you inch by inch until you're lowering yourself fully beneath the surface, warmth wrapping around you like a heavy blanket scented with lavender.

The moment your back brushes his chest, his arms find you.

They slide around your waist with familiar certainty, one settling securely across your middle to draw you closer.  Your hand rises on instinct, covering his forearm where it rests across your stomach. His skin is warm and damp beneath your fingertips, the fine hairs catching against your palm as your thumb strokes absent circles over his wrist.

His chin grazes your shoulder as he nestles closer, his next breath warming the side of your neck.

“This is nice,” he hums, body growing heavier where it rests against yours.

You let out a slow breath. “Yeah.”

You let your weight settle back into him completely. He answers by tightening his arm around your waist, one hand gliding up to squeeze your side as he draws you a fraction closer.

You take the other one for you to keep.

Turning it over slowly, relearning it by touch. The familiar roughness of his skin, the broad span of his palm, completely swallowing yours whenever he laces your fingers together. Your thumb glides over the callus at the base of his index finger, the thickened patch of skin from years of gripping weapons he never should have had to hold.

You rub over it absentmindedly, once, twice, then again.

“How do you know?”

The words come so quietly you're not even sure you've said them aloud.

“Hm? Know what?”

“How do you know...” You swallow, unable to lift your eyes from where the water laps gently over your joined hands, pale violet opalescence that ripples around you both. “How do you know this is real?”  

He goes still at that, the only sound between you the soft ripple of water and the rush of your own thoughts filling the space.

“We could still be down there,” you whisper, the words gathering speed the longer you speak.

“Maybe... maybe we never got out. Maybe Vecna just made us think we won by giving us...” You gesture around the room. “...this.”

The lavender.

The warm water.

Him.

“What if none of it's real? What if he just—what if he made us think we were safe because it'd hurt more when he took it away? I mean, how would we even know?”    

Your chest feels tighter with every word.

“What if we're still—"

“Hey.”

Steve's voice is so soft that you almost miss it.

“Hey. Look at me.”

His face is drawn with exhaustion, pain lingering in the tightness around his eyes, in the careful way he holds himself, like every breath reminds him of another bruise.

But they’re still his.

Still that same warm hazel you've spent so many nights memorizing, never daring to believe you'd get a lifetime of looking into them.

“You know how I know?”

Your throat goes tight. “How?”

“Because you’re scared.”

Your brows pull together, fingers tightening around his. He squeezes your hand back, gentle but certain.

“That’s how I know. Because you’re sitting here trying to figure out if this is real instead of just being happy that we’re okay.”

Steve watches you for a moment before looking down between you, at the lavender bubbles drifting around your joined hands.

A bead of water clings to his lashes before he blinks it away.

“I mean…” He draws out a slow breath. “I don’t know if I can prove it. How could anyone, right? After everything that happened? I don’t think any of us are supposed to just wake up the next day and be like, ‘Cool. Guess that’s over.’”

He pauses, a small smile pulling at his mouth.

“But then I look at you and… and I just see you doing that thing.”

You blink. “What thing?”

He lifts your joined hands from the water, droplets sliding down your wrists as the surface ripples around you.

“This.”

He gives your hand a little squeeze, lacing your fingers together more securely. 

“You always start messing with my hand when you’re freaking out.”

Your brows pull together. “What?”

He lets out a soft laugh, reaching up with his free hand to gently tuck a damp strand of hair away from your face.

“Yeah, you grab my hand and then you start doing this weird little... I don’t know. Thing. Like you’re inspecting it or something.”

Only then do you realize your thumb has been moving back and forth over the same callus on his palm, tracing the same small patch of rough skin.

“...Oh.”

“Yeah.”

There’s something teasing about his voice now, his smile.

The same Steve who’d make an absolute idiot of himself just to get you to roll your eyes. Who could make you laugh in the middle of the worst days of your life.

His smile softens as he looks down at the water, where your fingers are still tangled together.

His thumb brushes slowly over the back of your hand.

“I guess… I guess that’s how I know.”

The steam curls around you both, blurring the edges of the room until there’s nothing left but this.

His hand in yours.

His heartbeat steady against your back and his voice low and certain beside your ear.

“Because I know you.”

He tightens his fingers around yours.

“I know you.”

· · ·

Eventually, the warmth of the bath starts to fade.

The water isn’t quite as hot as it was when you first climbed in, the lavender bubbles breaking apart into a faint, delicate layer.

You’re still holding his hand.

Neither of you has let go.

“Hey,” he murmurs after a while, giving your fingers a small tug.

“Hm?”

He lifts your joined hands out of the water, turning his palm toward himself.

Then he starts tracing something, slow and awkward, brow furrowed as he studies the lines crossing his palm.

You can tell he’s searching for something—squinting at the grooves in his hand, trying to remember a detail you’ve explained to him once or twice before, maybe more.

You watch him for a second, then mumble:

“You’re doing it wrong.”

“I’m doing it wrong?”

“Yes.”

He turns to look at you, eyebrows raised, genuinely offended in that exaggerated way he does when he knows he’s being teased.

“How can I be doing it wrong? It’s my hand.”

You give him a look.

“Because you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

He glances back down at his palm, then back at you.

“Okay, fine, genius,” he huffs, holding his hand out toward you. “What’s this one mean?”

You smile faintly.

“You don’t remember?”  

“No, I do. Just... tell me again? I remember you said mine was good.”

You did. Sitting cross-legged on the couch years ago, his hand stretched across your lap while you traced the lines in his palm. You’d laughed the whole time because you didn’t actually believe in any of it. But Steve had listened like it mattered, eyes serious, hanging onto every word.

You adjust your grip now, turning his hand so you can see it properly. Then you take his index finger between yours and guide it slowly along the deepest line on his palm.

“Here,” you murmur.

His finger follows where you lead it, brushing over the groove that starts just beneath his pinky and curves upward across his hand.

“This is your heart line.”

Steve doesn’t look at his hand.

He looks at you.

“It’s deep, and it doesn’t break. That means you feel things deeply. You lead with your heart.”

He hums softly, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to the top of your shoulder.

You keep tracing, guiding his finger toward the end of the line where it curves upward.

“And here, it turns up.”

You press lightly into the space beneath his index finger.

“See that spot?”

“Mm.”

“That’s called the Mount of Jupiter. And when your heart line curves up like that, it kinda means you’re... a hopeless romantic.”

You don’t even have to see his face to know he’s smiling. You feel it in the small twitch of his fingers around yours, in the quiet huff of amusement against your shoulder.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

You follow the line with your own thumb, pretending to study the grooves of his skin like they might reveal something you don’t already know.

But the truth is, you're not really reading his hand.

“It also says you don’t know how to love halfway.” Your thumb follows the line one last time. “When you care about someone… you give them every part of yourself.”

When you glance back over your shoulder, he's already watching you.

Something achingly fragile settled over his expression, a quiet wonder in his eyes as though he's seeing himself the way you always have.

“Yeah?” he whispers.

You nod.

“Yeah.”

You lean in to close the small space between you, brushing your lips against the uninjured corner of his mouth.

It’s a delicate thing, more of a press than a kiss.  

His fingers tighten around yours beneath the water.

“Tell me what else.”

You smile, looking back down at his palm.

“You want me to read everything?”

“Yeah. Obviously.”

You turn his hand back toward you, guiding his finger to another line.

“Okay. This one is your head line.”

Steve settles back against the tub, his arm tightening around you as you continue tracing the little grooves and curves in his palm, explaining what they’re supposed to mean.

The truth is, none of this is anything you don’t already know.

You don’t need the lines in his hand to tell you who he is. 

You’ve known for a long time.

So you tell him what you've been carrying in your heart for longer than you can remember.

That he’s stubborn.

That he’s brave.

That he loves harder than he knows what to do with.

That he’s always seen himself as ordinary when he’s anything but.

And Steve listens.

· · ·

You stay there together until the water goes cold around you.

And though the lavender fades from the bath, the scent still clings to your skin, lingering long after the warmth has left.

Outside this room, there will still be reminders.

Things neither of you can outrun.

Memories that return without warning, scars that ache long after the wounds have closed.

Maybe some things never fully leave.

Maybe they don’t have to.

Because the bad things are not the only things that get to stay.

And when the first light of dawn slips through the bedroom window the next morning, washing everything in soft gold, Steve is still there.

Beside you.

His hand wrapped around yours.

Truthfully, you thought he was being a bit of a drama queen. But you weren’t going to tell him that when you were perched on his lap - curled up against him as he ranted on about how Keith was making his job at Family Video harder than it needed to be.

“He’s doing it on purpose too. The asshole wants to torture me into quitting,” Steve huffs.

“That’s so unfair,” you muse, shifting yourself closer to wrap your arms around his neck.

He continues to gripe about Keith being an asshole, Robin egging it on, and the never ending flow of customers who are rude to him.

And you’re trying to listen, really you are. But he’s looking particularly gorgeous today - clad in his light wash jeans that hug his thighs and the cute little polo shirt that peeks out from under his work vest. The first couple of buttons are popped open, exposing a small tuft of chest hair underneath that’s practically begging you to feel him up.

Your eyes wander to his lips as they move rapidly, then to his eyes that look dark brown in the moonlight and hazel in the shine of the daylight. You move on to tracking the unlimited amount of freckles and moles that dance across his skin, the same ones you swear you could count one day if he held still long enough.

God he’s a vision, and you just have to let him know.

“You’re so pretty, Stevie,” you grin, interrupting him mid rant.

Steve raises his eyebrows, “Oh you think so, honey?”

“Mhm,” you hum, pressing your lips along his jawline - giggling when you notice the kiss prints drenching his skin.

“Why’d you stop?” He frowns playfully, arms locking around your waist.

Your thumb rubs at the smudges littering along his jaw, “Lipstick’s getting on you.”

“Don’t wipe it off,” he complains, “I like being marked by you.”

The statement makes you bashful, and you can feel heat creeping up your cheeks.

“You blushing, baby?” He grins, which furthers the flush that you feel rushing to the tips of your ears.

“No,” you mutter, ducking your head.

He pouts, “Oh c’mon, sweet girl, don’t hide from me.”

Steve’s thumb and pointer finger hook under your chin, coaxing you to look at him.

But when you do, there’s something off about him. You can’t tell what it is, but it’s there - like a slight glimmer wavering around him, coating his being in something sickly that you don’t understand.

“Steve?” Your eyebrows furrow, trying to make sense of the image in front of you.

“Don’t hide from me,” his voice turns sour, becoming bitter and dark as it envelops you.

You try to move, desperate for answers, but something is tethering you to him - forcing you to stay still.

“It’s only a matter of time before I find you,” he sneers, face twisting and contorting - human flesh turning into grotesque veins.

You’re no longer in Steve’s living room, cozied up next to him while he frets about his day. Instead, you're in the lap of an all too familiar figure that you’ve been relentlessly trying to run from.

“Let me go!” You scream, fighting with every fiber to break away from his hold.

When it gives, you’re thrust backwards - landing in a puddle of remains, trying not to think too hard about whose they might be.

Your body is heavy, aching with exhaustion as you stare up into the abyss of the world you can’t comprehend, the one you’ve been trapped in since that fateful night Vecna consumed you.

You know you’re a target out in the open like this, a sitting duck for him to hunt down, but you’re tired of resisting - growing weary that you may never return to the physical realm.

And so you let yourself drift, succumbing to sleep from one world of nightmares to the next.

The combination of the bright fluorescent lights, low drum of machines whirring, and strong scent of disinfectant never failed to give Steve a headache.

It throbbed menacingly, a strong stinging sensation that felt like a bruise being poked over and over again - almost like it was warning him that each time he stepped into the miserable place of Hawkins Memorial, he’d be leaving disappointed.

But he would take a headache every damn day of his life if it meant you weren’t the one resting on the hospital bed in front of him.

“C’mon, honey. Need you to pull through this,” Steve mumbles, thumb stroking along the frigid skin of your hand that’s wrapped in his.

You’re unresponsive, as you have been for the past year and a half, and Steve’s never been more anguished than watching each day tick by without a sign that you could hear him.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this without you. Things are,” he sighs heavily, shaking his head, “not great.”

He grasps onto your hand more firmly, threading his fingers through yours and brings your arm to his lips. He tenderly presses kisses to your skin - careful to avoid the needle digging into the tissue underneath your forearm that's connected to an IV drip.

“This quarantine is driving people stir crazy. The crawls keep leading nowhere. And your brother,” he trails off, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand.

Dustin had been a huge pain in his ass for the past few months. Steve knew the teenager was grieving - knew that he lost a piece of himself when he lost Eddie and couldn’t fathom the idea of having to live in a world without his older sister too. And he knew that Dustin also had far too much pressure thrust upon him than he should at his age.

But your brother was taking it out on Steve - constantly snapping, snarking, and throwing harsh quips his way.

Steve was nearing his boiling point over it - ready to open his mouth and release words of fire that he wouldn’t be able to take back. Each time he almost did so, he was reminded of you.

Reminded that he barely had time to say goodbye before you were ripped away from him, which ultimately always made Steve resist the urge to lob something hurtful back towards Dustin.

So instead of telling your motionless body that your little brother was being a raging prick to him, Steve simply says, “He needs you.”

Steve thinks about the night he lost you often, though it continues to rip open the wound in his heart again and again each time he replays it in his memories.

“You can’t,” Steve had protested.

“I can,” you replied firmly, thumb easing against the little wrinkle that formed over his brow bone.

Steve swallowed thickly, “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you have Nancy and Robin to fight with you. Dustin has Eddie to protect him. But Max and Lucas need one of us. I’m going with them, Steve,” you answered, set in your decision to not leave them behind.

“That wasn’t the plan,” he retorted, gripping your waist tightly.

“It wasn’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t let them go alone,” you countered.

Steve felt his throat tighten, felt the familiar sting of tears threatening to fill his eyes, “I don’t want you to leave me.”

“Steve,” you cupped his face, fingers splaying out gently along the expanse of his neck, “I need you to trust me.”

“I do trust you, but I’m scared. You said it yourself, this time is different. Heavier. One of us might not make it out of this, and it cannot be you,” he implored, reaching up to grasp lovingly at your wrists.

You took a deep breath, “Steve, I love you, and-.”

He shook his head, cutting you off, “No. No, don’t do that to me. Don’t act like this is goodbye.”

“But it could be,” you whispered, “and I need you to know that you’ll be fine without me if something does happen.”

Steve scoffed at the thought, “I would never be the same without you.”

“You’d have to try. For Dustin. For me,” you leaned in, pressing your forehead to his.

He closed his eyes, let his hands slide down to your elbows - tried to ground himself in the moment, because if it truly was the last time he touched you, then he wanted to soak in your presence - bathe himself in these tiny pieces of yourself you were giving him before you were gone.

And when Steve heard the four chimes of that fucking clock a couple hours later, he thought Max was a goner - didn’t realize he was the one that would be brought to his knees at the sight of you, broken and bloody in her arms.

Steve still can’t shake Dustin’s cries that night - had to watch him scream his lungs out over Eddie dying before he repeated the same devastating noise at the sight of you.

He hears it in his nightmares, hears the screeching of the demobats, hears the own strangled sound of despair he let out when he saw you lying lifelessly in the aftermath of the battle.

The steady beep of your heart monitor drags Steve out of the horrific things that plague his mind, trying to focus back in on the sight of you in front of him - not moving, but at least you’re breathing.

“I need you,” he admits brokenly, forehead dropping down to rest against your thigh.

His palm lands against your knee, thumb brushing lazily over the thin material of the white cotton blanket that covers you.

“Please, honey. If you can hear me at all, find a way to show me,” he begs, feeling an overwhelming amount of agony from the lack of your reply.

A light knock at the door makes him look up to see Robin poking her head in, lifting her fingers in a brief wave to announce her presence.

She tentatively walks across the room towards Steve, quietly taking a seat next to him. She knows better than to ask if anything has changed at this point, and Steve finds her silence sickening, because god when Robin is silent - it meant that she thought things were bad.

“Steve,” she eventually says, placing a hand on his back.

He makes a rapt noise of recognition for her, but doesn’t take his longing eyes off of you - admiring your beauty even in the dullness that’s taken over your features from being stagnant for so long.

“When was the last time you showered?” Robin probs, no judgment in her tone - just pure concern for the well being of her friend.

“Dunno,” he mumbles desolately.

“Go home,” she presses, “take care of yourself. You know she’d be heartbroken if she saw you wallowing like this.”

Steve hates that she’s right, but still doesn’t move from his spot, “I don’t wanna leave her alone.”

“She won’t be alone. I’ll stay with her. Plus, I brought another visitor,” Robin tilts her head to the hallway, silently insinuating whoever came with her is out there.

“Dustin?” He questions.

Robin nods softly, “Yeah. The little twerp insisted he come today. Said he had a feeling she might wake up soon.”

“God, I hope so,” Steve admits.

“Me too,” she agrees quietly.

They sit in silence for a few minutes before he sighs, untangling himself from you before standing up.

“Gonna go home and freshen up, then I’m coming right back,” Steve declares while heading for the door.

Dustin’s leaning against the wall when Steve exits, “No updates?”

Steve closes his eyes briefly, disappointment washing over him at the question, “No. You doing okay, man?”

Dustin shrugs noncommittedly, “Could be better.”

“Yeah, same,” Steve replies dully.

He misses his friendship with the boy, hates the strained riff that hangs over their heads.

And he misses you. Misses how you could mediate things between the two of them. He often finds himself wondering if you never come to, if things will ever return to the way they once were between himself and your brother.

He places a soothing hand on Dustin’s shoulder, “I’m stepping out for a bit. Call me if you need me.”

Dustin nods solemnly, not bothering to bid Steve goodbye before walking into your room.

You wake up to the sound of Steve begging, watching as he clings to your frail body.

Please, honey. If you can hear me at all, find a way to show me.

His voice rings in your ears, the statement a loud roar echoing through your brain, but the sound of it is ripped away when you see the clouds beginning to shift - covering the vision in the hazy red of the sky.

“Steve!” Your throat feels raw from screaming his name, pleading for him to return to you.

You’ve lost track of how many times reaching him has been at the tips of your fingers, only for the illusion to fade - like a carpet being yanked from under you with nowhere soft to land.

Tears stream down your face as you frantically spin around, praying that you could see him one more time.

“No, please, no,” you cry, stumbling over a gnarled root that sticks out from the ground.

You land harshly on your knees, hands cutting open from the fall - nauseated by the blood that starts to seep out.

You squeeze your eyes shut, “It’s not real. It’s not real.”

The phrase is what keeps you going - playing on repeat because you know that your physical body is intact, have seen it when that blissful image of Steve appears in the thunderous clouds above you.

You’ve watched him hopelessly for months now, maybe longer, but time has been too hard to keep track of in this prison world that Henry has locked you away in. You’ve been hiding from him - somehow finding holes in his mind, and he lets you linger in pockets of memories that he won’t enter.

It feels like he’s toying with you sometimes, willing to let you go if you can play his game and find the way out. But as each day passes, you find it harder to distinguish what’s tangible and what’s not - slowly dwindling into madness.

The only thing keeping you from spiraling completely has been the glimpses of moments with Steve that flash in brief seconds before withering away.

You can feel one starting to creep into the crevices of your brain; the time you admitted you saw a future with him.

You were at Lover's Lake, watching the sun set across the horizon - fading into faint pinks and oranges as it drifted down.

The two of you were lounging on the hood of Steve’s Beamer, basking in the warmth of the summer evening - listening to the chittering of nightlife taking over.

Steve was leaning backwards, extending his legs to let your head rest on his lap, and his hand was combing gently through your hair.

“You’ve been quiet for a while, Stevie,” you mumbled, eyes growing heavy in content from his fingers working at your scalp.

“Hmm,” he hummed softly, eyes flickering towards you.

“I wanna know what you’re thinking about,” you rolled over, allowing yourself to look up at him.

If you could burn the image of him behind your eyelids you would, because the look on his face was one of pure adoration - staring in awe of your radiance.

“When I was younger, my parents would take me here during the summer,” he moved his thumb to brush gingerly along your jaw.

“Yeah?” You prompted, curious to know where he was going with that lead.

“Yeah. They were always distracted though. They’d be giving each other the silent treatment after an argument, or they were too focused on worrying about appearances in front of other families. Forced me to get really good at being creative since I didn’t have anyone to play with,” he continued, letting his index finger skim over the delicate skin under your eyes.

“There had to have been other kids there,” you remarked.

He shrugged, “There were, but uh, if you can believe it, I was kind of shy back then.”

Your heart faltered at the thought of him being a child and feeling the weight of being left out, even if it wasn’t intentional.

“I’m sorry,” you murmured, curling a hand into the fabric of his shirt.

“Don’t be. It made me realize that I won’t ever let my kids have to experience that,” he mused.

Your breath hitched, “Your kids?”

“Well, our kids. They’d have each other at least and-,” Steve cut himself off after realizing what he revealed.

His eyes squeezed shut, and he pinched the bridge of his nose in embarrassment, “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”

You watched him internally panic for a second, before pushing yourself up so you could relieve the tension that you saw settling over his shoulders.

“Hey,” you started, pressing a reassuring hand against his thigh.

“That was stupid, forget it,” he groaned, dragging a hand roughly down his face.

“What if I don’t want to forget it?” You refuted.

“You mean it?” He asked timidly.

You crossed your legs underneath you and wrapped a hand around his bicep.

“I’ve thought about it too,” you admitted.

His eyes grew glassy as he let out a sharp breath of disbelief through his nose, “Seriously?”

You released a quiet laugh, “Of course. I know we’re young, but I see a future with you, Steve. And I can’t see myself having any of it - kids, marriage, whatever it may be - if you’re not there with me.”

“Fuck, I think I’m falling in love with you,” he confessed.

You let your eyelids flutter closed - nose nudging his, “It’s about time, Harrington. Because I know I’m falling in love with you.”

Steve slotted his lips with yours, no longer able to hold himself back from proving to you the unadulterated affection he has for you - capturing your mouth hungrily in swift, greedy presses to emphasize his appreciation.

You pulled back just a fraction, “Plus, we’ve got practice carting Dustin around. He’s kind of like our trial run, isn’t he?”

Steve laughed against your mouth, giddily pressing his lips against yours until you were light-headed with want.

The memory jolts something within you, like numb limbs gaining strength after falling asleep, and suddenly you can see it; the picture of yourself opening up in front of you, nearly paces away.

A sudden burst of sentences reverberates throughout the inner workings of your being.

Fight for Dustin. For me.

I need you, honey. We all need you.

I can’t do this without you, baby.

Please, come back to me.

It’s the last one, spoken so rawly by your lover that it spurs you on, forces you to move your feet from a trudge to a sprint - recognizing that this moment is critical, the one that could change the tides and tip the scale towards your loved ones victory against the sinister world you’ve been bound in.

There’s only one name that echoes inside of you as you get closer to a taste of the world - the real one, the one that you’ve been separated from for far too long - and it’s Steve.

Steve.

Steve.

Steve.

Steve throws his keys on the kitchen counter, scrubbing his hands over his eyes, pressure building from yet another day without you waking up.

He leans against the cold surface, back digging into the granite as his eyes find the coffee cup that sits idle by the sink. It was your favorite to use when you spent the night at his place, and there’s a faint lipstick stain that’s wrapped around the rim - dust collecting inside the unwashed dish.

Steve can’t help but feel haunted by the ghost of you in his own home.

He lets himself pretend through the fragments of you he has left, because he’s starting to forget what your voice sounded like, what your touch felt like, what it felt like to be looked up and down by you when he wore your favorite yellow sweater of his. The same one he was wearing when you recognized that you were in love with him. Which was now gone, and yet another torturous reminder of his loss.

It’s why the coffee cup sits untouched, why he can’t sleep on your side of the bed, why he can’t bring himself to wash the last t-shirt you slept in. He swears there’s lingering traces of your perfume wafting through the air sometimes from it.

He imagines you dancing in the emptiness of his living room, twirling in his arms because if he lets himself sink into reality; he fears it means accepting that he’s lost you, that there’s no hope for you to return to him.

The first thing you notice when you come to is the darkness that reigns behind your eyelids. You can feel your muscles twitching, aching to move, but your body is not cooperating with the messages that your brain is signal firing.

You hear a sharp intake of breath, feel the warm press of someone’s hand slip into yours, the scrap of a chair indicating they’re moving closer.

The familiar rumble of your little brother’s voice infiltrates the room.

“Dusty?” You slur, tongue feeling heavy from not being used.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he squeezes your hand.

“Where, w-,?” You stutter, feeling an aggravating pain shoot through your vocal chords.

“Hey, take it slow. It’s been a while since you’ve talked,” Dustin reprimands.

“Steve,” you whisper, voice cracking - desperate to know where he is, eyes in a flurry of movement from trying to peel open.

Dustin slowly swims into your gaze, though it’s still blurry, and the intensity of the lights shining in your eyes causes streaks to glide across the room.

Another head comes into frame, and you recognize Robin’s voice before you can even see her clearly.

“Holy shit, Henderson. You’re awake,” she squeals, making your face pinch up in a wince.

“Robin,” Dustin seethes.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just so good to see you moving. Harrington’s going to be beside himself,” she says eagerly, voice lowering significantly.

At the mention of your boyfriend, you try to fight against the lethargy that’s taken over your body.

“Steve, I need Steve,” you croak, feeling like cotton’s been shoved in your mouth with how dry it is.

Robin jumps out of her seat, “I’ll call him.”

“Can you get the nurse after?” Dustin asks, and she nods her head before swiftly exiting the room.

You try to force yourself into a sitting position, wiggling around in frustration at the fact that you can’t seem to control your body.

Dustin places his hands on your shoulders, “You’ve been immobile for a long time. You need to stop before you hurt yourself.”

“Dustin, I need Steve,” you repeat, tears quickly filling your lash line.

“Wow, not even a hi for your favorite brother?” He jokes, reaching out to brush a stray tear of yours away with his knuckle.

“I’m so sorry, Dusty,” your head starts to clear, fog disappearing - realizing your only brother is the one here for you, and all you can think about is Steve.

“It’s okay. I just missed you, you know?” His throat constricts, leaning forward on his knees.

“I missed you too,” you utter, giving him a small smile.

Dustin catches you up to speed on the things you’ve missed - Eddie passing, Hawkins splitting open, El returning, searching for Vecna, and the list goes on.

“Steve brought me out of this. I don’t know how, but he did,” you murmur once he’s finished.

“That doesn’t surprise me. He’s been hovering over you nonstop. Usually isn’t gone for more than an hour at a time if he can help it,” Dustin grins.

“Really?” Your smile wobbles, heart swelling at the thought of him waiting for you.

“Yeah, he,” Dustin pauses, because it was once hard for him to believe his next words, “he really loves you.”

It’s then that the nurse comes in, paging for a doctor before hustling over towards you.

“It would be helpful if you stepped out so we could run some evaluations on her,” she instructs him politely.

“No way. I’m not leaving her,” Dustin scowls.

“It’s okay, Dusty. I’m okay. Just, get Steve for me, please?” You request weakly.

He sighs at your insistence, “If you need anything, have someone get me. Robin and I will be in the hallway.”

Robin frowns when she sees him step out of your room, “He’s not picking up.”

“He’s probably on his way back,” Dustin guesses.

The two of them sink into the chairs that line the hallway, feeling antsy at the span of time without being able to check in with you.

Finally the doctor leaves, sharing some brief updates about the stability of your condition - leaving to contact Claudia Henderson, who no doubt will be making her way to the hospital in record time when she hears the news.

Dustin stands, stretching out his arms, and Robin immediately seizes his hand - lugging him to crouch behind a medical cart that just happens to be big enough to hide them.

“Robin, what the hell?” Dustin yelps, and she swiftly covers his mouth with her hand.

She points down the hall towards Steve, who’s rounding the corner.

“Why are we hiding from Steve? We want him to know,” Dustin slaps her hand away.

“Because if we run into him, I’m gonna blabber about it and don’t you think it’ll be better for him to find out on his own?” She quips back, gesturing at the melancholy look on her best friend's face.

Dustin gives a hesitant pause, but ultimately concedes, “Yeah, guess you’re right. But I call spying on them from the doorway.”

Robin rolls her eyes, “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

Steve’s perfected the route to your room where he’ll avoid running into nurses that like to give him looks of pity each time he shows up.

He first stops by the vending machines to grab himself a shitty coffee and a snack for you. It’s a habit he can’t put down, buying something for you despite the fact that you can’t eat it right now.

There’s a whole box full of items that sits untouched in your hospital room - overflowing with expired food at this point, but Steve doesn’t have the heart to throw them out.

He trods up the back staircase, avoiding eye contact with anyone who could possibly stop him and ask where he was headed. Finally, he stops by your door which is now closed - probably Dustin’s doing he assumes, who likes to claim it keeps the noise level to a minimum. The walls are paper thin not matter what, but Steve doesn’t have the energy to debate him on it.

He swings the door open, and starts to chatter, which is his typical routine when he’s visiting you.

“Well, honey, I got you the regular M&M’s today. They were out of the peanut ones. Can you believe that shit? What kind of establishment runs out of the best type of-,” Steve’s rambling is cut off when he walks into your room and sees you, sitting up - on your own.

The coffee in Steve’s hands crashes to the floor, black liquid seeping across the vinyl flooring - soaking into the bottom of his jeans and coating his Nike shoes with the maroon swoops, arguably having just ruined his favorite pair, but it’s the least of his concerns.

His jaw drops in disbelief, blinking rapidly to decide if you were a figment of his imagination, wondering if his brain is making you up due to sleep deprivation.

“Hi Stevie,” you rasp, wishing you could throw yourself at him.

Steve’s frozen, planted on the spot he’s standing in, because hearing your voice - the same one that he swore he might’ve been forgetting - has just bloomed out of you, flooding his brain as it ricochets around the room.

“Steve,” you whimper, can’t help but let out a breathy sob at seeing him just a handful of feet in front of you.

The whine that escapes you knocks him back into motion, practically skidding through the spilled coffee and kneeling down by the edge of your bed - legs digging into the hard floor.

“Am I dreaming?” He asks, hands reaching out to you - stopping himself from touching you because he’ll surely be wrecked to find that none of this is real.

You smile faintly, “I don’t think so.”

Steve carefully lets his fingers glide across your palm, and when your fingers twitch - feebly curling around his own for the first time in ages, he can’t help but let the tears track down his face which sets off your own.

“God, I can’t believe you’re real. And here. How are you here?” His lips part, uncertainty still keeping him at bay.

You’re not ready to disclose the torture you’ve been through, so you simply lock your fingers through his and plead, “Hold me?”

Steve’s mouth flounders, letting himself finally believe he hasn’t somehow conjured up a replica of you, “Course I can, honey. C’mere.”

He scooches himself onto the bed, maneuvering your body to rest against him - back pressed to his chest, head tucked under his chin while his arms wrap tightly around you.

“I’m so sorry,” he groans, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up, honey.”

“It’s okay, Steve,” you try to reassure him.

“No, I knew not to leave you today. Dustin had a feeling you'd come back to us soon. Little shit is always right,” he grumbles, hating himself for not being there.

Fragile laughter bubbles up within you, “He always is, isn’t he?”

“God, I’m so sorry,” he cries, tucking his face into the crook of your neck.

“Steve,” you tilt your head back just a fraction, the best you can do for now, “you have nothing to be sorry for, baby. I know you’ve been here every day.”

“Because I knew you’d come back to me,” he tenderly dots kisses to the back of your neck.

“And I knew you wouldn’t give up on me,” you murmur, sniffling as you feel the pressure behind your eyelids build again.

“Never,” his voice is warm, laid bare with honesty.

Steve continues to grace you with his devotion, mapping your body with his hands, and it’s intimate in a way you’ve never experienced with him before.

“Can’t believe you’re here,” he repeats himself, letting the phrase hang between you two as he continues to lavish you - nose grazing your jawline, lips attaching sweetly under your ear before catching the corner of your mouth.

You suddenly feel the wet droplets that roll down his pretty face and land on the slope of your collarbone, making you itch to wipe his tears away. You try your best to shift, but no matter how much effort you put into it, you can’t get your body to move, which makes you grunt in irritation.

“What’s wrong? Does something hurt, honey?” He implores.

You bite your lip in annoyance at not being able to comfort him, “No. It’s just, I can’t move yet, and you're crying.”

Understanding ripples across his expression - knowing you're aching to provide him solace. He brings your hand up to his cheek, guiding your fingers to wipe swiftly under his eyes, along the highs of his cheekbones, before trailing down to catch the tears that puddle under his jaw.

It’s messy, but a reminder that you’re miraculously here in his arms.

“I love you,” he rasps, inhaling sharply - still in astonishment that you haven’t slipped away yet, that you haven't dissolved like ice melting under the ray of the burning sun.

And when Dustin and Robin sneakily slide in the room later, pretending like they weren’t on the verge of crying themselves, giving you the space to open up about what you’ve experienced, Steve continues to keep you grounded - unwilling to let you go, declining the notion of letting you go for even a moment, because he’ll be damned if he has to dance with the ghost of you again.

well, this started as a part two to they don’t know about us because i had some requests for that, but it just didn’t feel the same. hence why there’s hints of similarities if you’ve read that imagine!

Divider credits to @lobster-graphics

Main Masterlist If interested

JKC Taglist: @pepsipoet @pr33tygirlavenue @miahslt91 @sparklydelusionearthquake @cuddlyeren @beth-mirrorball @ann-aatn @oliviaharrington

The plastic laundry basket rattles and creaks against your hip. Tapping your finger on the handle without a real rhythm, humming inquisitively and melodically, floorboards groaning under your feet as you pass down the hallway, and into the sun-warmed bedroom where stickers plastered yay high on the door, just below the painted calligraphy of dusty green you had tasked yourself on, even though you'd started waddling and huffing at every sprig of movement at the time. Winnie.

It's oddly quiet, not too unusual for a school day, but even so the padding of socked feet thumping around, excited squeals and giggles and tight little arms latched around your calf fill your days up so full and bright, the few hours of emptiness never fail to have you staring at the unmade bed and sigh with a smile.

Placing the basket down to your feet, you lean down to straighten the linens. Uncurling the stripes of red, tucking them in at the corners, folding at the pillows before starting on those next. Fluffing and placing them carefully to the wall, gathering her favourite blanket she'd pulled to the centre of the room for a late night reading session by the bonfire (her bedside lamp she had also moved) to drape across the foot of the bed.

Once done, straightening up only to stretch out the achy kinks in your muscles, you turn for the finishing touch. Dusty, Winnie's companion. The kind of teddy you must pry out of a child's hand — or at least try and swap it out with a similar weight like a Mission Impossible movie — but your little Win had a sixth sense for her darling dog. Matted fur from bone crushing (or pellet crushing, in Dusty's case) hugs, colour dulled from the years, and eyes wobbled from the thread. He may have been living up to his name, but he carries her love like no other.

But in recent days, you've noticed a difference in Dusty's appearance. His front left leg was simply… missing.

It wasn't hard to put two and two together. Your husband, brooding eyes and tired sighs, Bucky Barnes, had spent the good part of Winnie's first years acclimatising both Win, and himself, to his arm.

Holding her comfortably against his chest, in the crook of his right arm, as so his left — all shiny vibranium and gold veins — could pat and caress. Holding it up, wiggling his fingers while cooing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star just to see her chubby cheeks round out and gargle a laugh through a gummy smile. Bucky had even found himself soothing her by gently wiping the bridge of her nose with the smooth tip of his index finger, shushing down her cries, murmuring praises into the air, smiling softly as her eyes droop shut and soft croons from the back of her throat quieted into yawns, dribble on ironed work shirts and sweet, even breaths.

But Dusty and his three limbs were nowhere to be seen.

Not on the bedside table, or made as a suspicious lump underneath your neat origami of bed sheets. Not using the bunting hung from the corners as a makeshift swing set, or gathered around the lamp-made bonfire.

The laundry sat forgotten as your feet darted down the hall and down the flight of stairs, all to have been halted once you found yourself in the dining room. Your hair flew back as you caught yourself, hand holding the doorway.

Bucky sat at the table, button up shirt open at the collar, sleeves shoved to his elbow, hair the same colour as his daughters mussed back from fingers, and glasses slipping to the tip of his nose. Before you could fully appreciate the sight before you, you realised the scene. A sewing needle poked out the corner of his lip, held in place by his teeth, a large enough sheet of fabric, black with soft gold accents, laid out on the surface next to the project, cut in meticulous patterns, chalk lines fading off. And the main event was Dusty himself, and the appendage of dark cloth, sewn haphazardly with the kind of skill a boy on a mission would have, into a similar shape to the dog's right leg.

"Jesus," you exhale, holding your chest. "I thought you had work today?"

"I—Uh," He glances up at you over the top of his glasses where they perch low on the tip of his nose. Muffled by the needle in his mouth, he takes it out, leaning both elbows to the table, inhaling as if finding the correct answer. "I did. Have work."

You lean against the frame now. Arms crossed over your chest, smiling in amusement.

"But?"

"But," he imitates, looking back down at the work he's doing, holding the needle between two fingers and waving it slightly. "I have more pressing matters to attend to."

"Oh yeah?" You push off and walk your way over, sliding into the chair adjacent to his, leaning your chin on the palm of your hand. "More pressing than paperwork and board meetings? Pressing matters meaning Dusty?"

He laughs once, an exhales huff paired with an easy smile, but he keeps working. His phone was still open, propped up on a vase of cosmos and baby's breath, a paused video tutorial on sewing. You pretend not to have noticed, pretend like your heart didn't swell ten times the size in that one millisecond your eyes flittered.

"I—ah… I may have hold Win, while tucking her in last night, that I'd take Dusty to the 'hospital' today while she was at school," he shrugged, momentarily pausing to run a hand through his hair to keep it back, only for the strands to fall back over his face. "Was tired of finding stuffing on the floor."

"Tired of stuffing on the floor?"

"Mhm," he drags out, tight lipped, looping the needle through the two meeting points of the inside out fabric, pulling until slight resistance, before going again. "I also wanted to surprise her. Got up early to go out lookin' for some stuff, just to close up the hole, but I… saw the fabric, and… I mean, I understand why she—she'd take the arm off," he sighed again, looking back up at you over his glasses. When he sees you already smiling, he loosens up, smiling too, cheeks pinkening under the dusting from his beard.

"I think she'd like it."

"She'll love it, Buck," you reassure, reaching out to draw a knuckle over the back of his hand. "Didn't know you could sew, though."

The chair groans under his weight, stretching out, leaning back. "It's been a long, long time, sweetheart. Used to watch my momma when I had nothing better to do, sometimes she'd make me help her out until my fingers were all sore and poked raw, and, uh, you pick up some shit out in the field. Clothes get ripped, you know the gist," you do. He waves a dismissive hand. "Did have to remind myself though, but don't tell Winnie, I wanna look smart."

You giggle, easing up from the seat to make your way over. "You are smart, and Win already thinks the world of you,"

Leaning over, you drape your arms over his shoulders and rest your chin to his head, pausing the dismissive shake to your statement.

"It looks good. You're really good at this." You murmur into his hair with a kiss.

Bucky hums, pushing his glasses back up with a knuckle. "M'not."

"Hm, you are. And Winnie loves you, and I love you, and she's gonna love you more after this," you peck his head again.

"You know, everyday I think that theres no way I could love you more? You do all of these amazing things, you've done amazing things — things I can't even fathom — and yet you keep going above and beyond," before you could finish your words, Bucky tucks a piece of hair behind his ear, and you move. Legs walking, mind filing through memories, to the comfortable, organised mess of the living room.

When you come back, standing behind your husband, you clip the strands of hair that have been bothering him back with two tiny butterfly clips, one pink, the other green. He makes no protest, only smiling down at his work, already understanding and thankful when he heard the little snap.

You kiss his head again, in the space between the clips and stay there a little longer. Arms wrapping around his shoulders, massaging your thumbs into the muscle and to the base of his neck.

"You're amazing. I dunno how I could keep up."

He makes a noise, humorous, slightly dismissive. "You don't need to keep up. Don't need to do anything," leaning his head back to your chest, he sighs again. "I fell for you the way you are. Beautiful, talented, funny, witty in a way I have always been kinda jealous of, and so terrifying sometimes, even I get nervous at parent teacher conferences."

You scoff, running your hands down to drape across his chest.

"I'm not that scary—"

"Oh, you are," he leans to the side and kisses your forearm, lingering his lips for a few seconds, rubbing the soft skin and the coarse hairs of his beard across the inside of your arm, before pressing another kiss and mumbling into you. "I remember years ago when you ripped Tony a new one. Dunno what, somethin' about a mission being sent out too early bein' dangerous. God, I remember walkin' in and I don't think I blinked,"

A laugh rumbled through your chest, pushing at the back of Bucky's head. He pauses for a moment, holding up the black and gold cushioned paw in his left hand. The plates whir as if smiling at his work.

"That was when I knew I wanted to marry you."

"Sap," You press another kiss to his scalp, and another, then another. "If I'm remembering correctly, cause Tony just loves to piss me off, we weren't even together at that time."

Shaking his head, you can feel the apples of his cheeks fill with a smile. "Nope. Had it all planned out from there on out. Even Steve could tell I was whipped after we left the room."

You tut, straightening up. "And it took you like, what, three years to actually ask me out?"

Before he could retort, already stuttering on an answer, pushing his glasses atop his head, hands curled on the edge of the table. You walk with a bounce in your step back towards the doorway.

"Okay, you've got about an hour or so til pick up so, it might be best to get that leg on. Meanwhile, I've got laundry to do and dinner to start."

As your footsteps thump up the stairs, Bucky calls up to you.

"It was a year!"

"If you say so!" You shout back, already passing back into the colourful, warm mess of your daughter's bedroom to stifle through the little clothes on the floor.

After tossing a pink pyjama set, two pairs of dirt stained socks and a pair of cherry red jeans stained green at the knees, his voice calls out again.

"I love you!"

You giggle. Big and bright, staring down at the messy clothes of your child's, stained with inquisitive wonder and whimsy. Pens thrown on the ground next to an opened colouring book, handmade crochet blankets in a box by the bed, pre-loved books on the shelf, fairy lights and garlands draped across corners.

"I know!"

-

Amongst the crowd of parents waiting on their kids — hulking them up and on their hips, taking their little book bags out their tiny hands to help straighten their clothes — Bucky stayed leaning against the far wall.

The sun still dripped down through the clouds, leaving a cool enough breeze to ease off uncomfortable warmth. It nipped up his bare arms, still clad in his 'work' clothes, white shirt still slightly unbuttoned and sleeves still rolled up, and Dusty stayed tucked inside of the pocket in his pants, covered by his hands.

Kids laughed, squealed at times whenever their parent would pick them up or bounce them, maybe even swing them from between the two. He stayed indifferent, watching the double doors swing open to a new wave of tiny heads, watching the teachers he's come to trust (reluctantly) wave enthusiastically or high-five if the kid asked for such. He stifled a growing smile as one child missed twice.

It wasn't until the sound of quick footsteps pitter-pattered against the asphalt his attention turned and was completely swallowed by the small shooting star about to plummet straight into him.

Brown hair tied into two low braids waved behind her as her little body came running the wavering crowd. Adorned in patchwork dungarees, a stripy shirt and little red boots Nat had gotten her for her last birthday because 'kids can be badasses too'.

"Daddy!" She giggled as she ran, smile so wide it looked like it hurt.

Dropping down to one knee, he just about caught the little cannonball of energy as she leapt into his arms. Little hands around his neck, feet barely touching the ground. The force of her impact made Bucky topple back into the wall with a groan, laughing into her hair as they both squeezed.

"Hey, sweetheart," he greeted, muffled into the the crook of her shoulder, easing and patting the back of her head. "Geez, you've got a lot of energy, you had a good day?"

"Uh-huh! I found some caterpillars during recess, they were all fuzzy and climbing up a tree and I was their protector! Other kids kept tryin' to poke at them but me and some friends guarded them!"

"That's nice, Win." Bucky groaned as he pushed himself, and an energetic five year old, and her backpack up from the wall. Easing her to sit on his hip, she dangled her legs excitedly, grasping into the front of his shirt.

"And we got to play heads up seven up, but don't tell but I looked at their shoes whenever they got me so I won extra reading time, but i didn't do it all of the time! I only did it once in a while so I didn't look sus… suspi—shuss."

"It's 'suspicious', sweetpea, 'sus-pi-shush', and did Auntie Nat teach you that?"

Winnie shakes her head, still smiling, braids whipping to and fro. "Uncle Sam!"

His brows lower in defeat. "Of course he did."

Pebbles crunch beneath the soles of his dress shoes, bumping Winnie up higher on his side, she hums.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"Is Dusty okay at the hospital?" She fiddles at the collar of his shirt, voice low as she asks.

"Oh, yeah. Hey, you just reminded me, I gotta… got a little surprise for you." he places her back to the ground, following her down to squat in front of her. Rummaging through his pocket, he kept one hand on her bicep to keep her close.

"A surprise?"

Once out, bucky holds out the old dog in his hands, elbows to his knees, cupping around his floppy torso carefully. At this angle, both Dusty and Bucky adorn the arms, and little Winnie watches bright-eyed as Bucky moved his fingers with a whir under Dusty's to greet with a little wave.

"You match!" She gasps before her dad could explain. "Daddy, you and Dusty match!"

He chuckles, "yeah, we do, don't we?" Holding the teddy up, he points out the new leg, nodding and playing along. "Took a little while, but he's good as new. Missed you terribly while you were out here — conning your way into more reading time," he murmurs under his breath as Winnie takes her companion from his hand to smother him in the tightest hug. "Wouldn't stop askin' for you after the procedure, he wanted to show you ASAP."

"He looks exactly just like you, daddy!"

He straightens up, taking her hand in his, making a slight face. "Well, I wouldn't say exactly just like me—"

"You both look so cool!" She exclaims, jumping in his hold excitedly, "Dusty has a cool arm like daddy now!"

His head knocks back in a soft flinch. Despite the slight tingle in his sinuses, the soft smile on his lips and the adoring look he glances down at his daughter, he doesn't cry — not yet, at least, he wont allow it. And while he wants to ask if she really means it, if his arm really is cool, if she did rip it off Dusty to be like him, if she really did love him, adore him, like you said she does; instead he keeps smiling and guiding her back to the car with his chest full of something akin to the cloudy, cotton feeling he got when he held her for the first time.

And he really did match Dusty.

"C'mon, Pea," he clears his throat, trying to hide the bundles of emotion, golden and honey thick in his chest. "Momma's probably wondering where we are."

With one last skip, she giggles, holding the dog up to her face. "Thank you for making him better, daddy."

Comically, his eyes twitch and his bottom lip just about juts out into a pout. Inhaling, exhaling, grounding himself — trying to, at least — he squeezes the little hand in his own once.

"Of course, baby."

And she squeezes back. Once around his hand, small yet mighty, and another around his heart.

-

"Momma!"

The door's barely open before the loud rapt of Winnie comes bounding over.

"In here!" You reply, voice echoing from the kitchen, stirring the pot one last time and easing the flame low on the stove.

"Ah-ah," Bucky tuts, clicking his fingers, whistling once, catching her just in the nick of time. "Shoes off and bag at the door, you know what momma's like."

With a dramatic groan — wonder where she gets that from — she copies Bucky. Toeing off her boots clumsily, before plopping her butt down on the floor to impatiently untangle the knots you had tied that morning, ultimately letting her dad pull them off her feet and place them neatly on the shoe rack.

As Bucky slipped off the last shoe, Winnie made a run for it.

"Momma!" She calls again. Bounding down the hallway, socked feet thumping off the floor. As he follows behind, Bucky wonders how such a small being can make so much noise.

"Hey, babygirl!" you beam, listening to the excited racket thud closer and closer, propping a lid on top of the pan.

A blow hits your legs, catching your breath as you laugh at her dramatics. Stroking the frizzy hairs down from her plaits.

"C'mere," you beckon, pulling her up for a hug, air constricting and tight as it might be, you reciprocate with wiggling from side to side and groaning with playful aggression. You believe you could photosynthesise on her giggles alone. "What did you get up to today, anything fun? Make friends? Change the world?"

"Look, look, look!"

Plastic beading rattles as she holds Dusty up in front of her for you to behold, pressing her little mouth to his head, copying the wave Dusty had greeted her with.

With a gasp, you wobble her happily. "Oh my goodness, Dusty's back!"

"His arm, momma, look at his arm!" She exclaims, kicking her legs happily.

"He had the best surgeon looking out for him, baby," glancing up at your husband's simper, you kiss her forehead. "Doesn't it look great?"

"It's amazing!"

Jumping her up a couple times on your hip, you hum. "Yeah? Did you thank daddy?"

Nodding her head with a beam, a smile bucky can only compare to yours with the way rooms seem to brighten when shown, she pulls her hands up for him to hold her next. "Thank you, daddy!"

"Yeah, yeah," he grunts, holding her without a complaint, "you said that fifteen times in the car already, Pea."

The room settles easily, with the quiet simmer of food bubbling and stove searing, birds whistling in the garden and traffic humming, it's familiar and easy, and it's home.

It isn't long until Winnie's restless little body squirms in Bucky's arms, and he sets her free with a quiet 'go on', sprinting back up to her room with a chorus of high pitched giggles.

Propping himself against the worksurface, arms crossed over his chest, head on the cabinets, Bucky sighs. It's a sigh of ease, contentment. The kind he would let out once the streets filled with the orange of lampposts, and he got home to find you, warm and sleepy, tucked in bed as he stripped himself of button ups and tailored suits, and swapped it out with a bare chest and sweatpants — the sigh would only come once his arms wrapped around you and his nose buried into your hair.

A smile creeps on your lips, moving to take a place next to him.

"You know, apparently she cheated at heads up seven up today. For extra reading time. But only did it enough times not to look 'suspicious'." He squints his eyes, following the word with quotation marks.

Sucking in a breath, you click your tongue against the backs of your teeth. "Ooh, don't tell me," you whisper, patting a finger on your chin in thought. "Nat?"

He shakes his head, tight lipped, "Sam."

"So we're crossing him off the babysitting list."

"Hm, I think he's doin' it on purpose," he hums, tipping his chin up, moving his hands down to find the small of your back. "Keep him on, he's doing the next gig."

Pulling you closer until you stand between his open legs. He holds your hips, rubbing small circles through your pants, holding eye contact.

"I meant what I said today." You murmur, keeping your eyes on his, holding authority. To which Bucky loses with great pleasure, sneaking glances to your lips.

"I know."

"You're amazing," you mumble again, basking in the tiny looks he holds to your mouth, how he licks his own lips and the soft, humming feeling of his thumbs making patterns, and his fingers changing position to subtly bring you closer.

"I mean it. Truly," You rest your hands on his shoulders, squeezing, careful around the soft tissue that bumps around his left. "I love you. We both do. So, so much."

Your eyes hold his, and this time he doesn't sneak away, and he doesn't try to hide with a bashful look or a glimpse at your lips, right there. Though his eyes redden at the edges, the whites of his eyes glisten off the stovetop light, and you can just about see your reflection pool inside of his pupils.

"I know." He replies, quieter than the last, and he finally leans the rest of the way and kisses you. Because it hits, not like a blow but a final blossom. He does know, and he thinks he has known this whole time. From the moment the nurse placed a whaling, sticky, tiny thing in his arms and his body tightened and loosened all at once, his lungs stuttering, and mouth instinctively formed the awkward whispers of 'you're alright, I got you, I know, it must be so cold'.

It's just only now, in the soft warmth of a kitchen, being used and not feeling like mere decoration with takeout in the fridge, the love of his life in front of him, pecking at his lips until laughter gets in the way and dinner sizzles from next to them. With a daughter, who loves to guard critters and create extravagant blanket forts, who reads to her bears and kisses them goodnight, one by one. Who ripped off her favourite teddy's left arm so he can be 'just exactly like daddy' — he's finally let himself realise just how adored he really is.

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As the back doors of the ambulance open and the paramedics start to roll out your gurney, you beg them to just let you go home.

"I promise you, I am fine, I'm just a little scraped up," you plead.

After a minor car accident, you were seriously fine. Just a ding, or a bruised rib maybe, but since your car was totaled and the other driver ended up way worse than you, EMS urged you to at least get checked out. If anything you just felt a little embarrassed being rolled around on a gurney.

As you enter the double doors, and the large letters of PTMC adorn the archway you automatically recognize where you are and your stomach immediately drops.

"Fuck," you swear under your breath. Thinking that if you close your eyes and lay down you'd turn invisible. You cannot be here right now. You didn’t even think about the possibility of being brought here. Quickly, you try to recall what time it is. 5 o'clock, you think, maybe he isn't here yet. You knew that was bullshit. He was always early to work. The only thing he made sure he was never late to.

When the bright lights blind you and the cold air breezes through your hair, a familiar face comes rushing to the gurney for intake.

"Alright, boys, what do we got-...Y/N?" she all but yells.

You grimace.

"Hi Dana, how have you been?" you say with an awkward smile. "I swear I'm fine they made me come in"

Dana’s eyes widen and she starts scanning the room, knowing exactly who we need to be straying away from.

“He’s here, isn’t he?” you sigh. Knowing the one person you have been avoiding for years could show up at any moment.

“We don’t have to worry about that right now,” she rushes out as 2 young…interns, you assume, come rushing beside her. They just get younger and younger don’t they?

“Santos and Whitaker,” she starts, both of them wide eyed and eager. “Take her to West 12 and page Robby.

They nod, confused on her sudden sternness as she emphasizes “And do NOT call Abbot, I do not care if Robby is packing up to leave you leave Jack out of this”

As EMS rolls you to your room, past all the patients waiting and the other nurses and doctors, you attempt to breathe through the pain you were pretending you weren’t having. Anything to get out of there faster.

As you get transferred and hooked up to monitors, an older doctor walks in, introducing himself as Dr. Langdon.

You smirk with nostalgia, remembering his dark brown hair and Ken doll-like build.

“Wait, I know you,” you begin.

He raises his eyebrow, “You do?”

You giggle as you remember Dr. Langdon the intern.

“Yeah you were an intern who loved kissing ass to every attending around you,” you chuckle. Reminiscing about how Jack would complain about him at least 4 times a week.

Santos perks up, seemingly excited to learn about her boss’s past.

 “Wow, Langdon, who would have thought you were a brown-noser?” she says sarcastically.

Langdon, ignoring her, continues his work-up as Robby walks in. He pauses at the door as you make eye contact sheepishly. Again embarrassed to be there but more embarrassed he’s here to oversee you.

“Oh here we go,” you sigh as you sit back in the bed. 

Robby was always protective of you. Like a little sister. You hated it sometimes because you can handle your own and you always have, but you understood where he was coming from. 

“Good to see you too, Y/N,” he says while gloving up, grabbing your chart and walking over. “What’s it been, 3 years? What the fuck happened?”

“Robby, please,” you beg. “I was just telling the paramedics I am just scraped up. I am literally fine,” you start.

You look at him intently, as if telepathically telling him you need to get out of here as soon as possible before Jack shows up, not wanting to bring your business up to the 3 other people in the room you just met.

You can tell he knows what you’re thinking, but he would be damned if he’d let you walk out of here without properly making sure you were 100% fine.

“Y/N…,” he starts.

“Fine,” You dramatically sigh as you finally give up. “Just do whatever you need to do”

“It’s good to see you,” he says. “I hate that it had to happen like this but I have missed you. You could have called”

“I could have,” you look away, feeling guilty. Robby was family. But it hurt too much to continue to talk to anyone that reminded you of him. You needed to completely move on. It wasn’t personal, you just had to be selfish for yourself for once.

The awkward silence is broken by a sharp gasp triggered by Santos prodding your side.

“I’m sorry,” she states in a monotone state, fiercely focused on the work at hand. You respected that. 

Santos turns to Whitaker, asking him to notate bruised and/or cracked ribs.

“Damn it,” you grumble.

Robby chuckles under his breath. “Yeah you are not getting out of here soon”

“That’s not funny,” you roll your eyes.

At the Nurse’s Station, Dana is suddenly hawk-eyed. Making sure Abbot stays far away from the clear doors of the room you’re in, knowing she’d be on the hook first for not telling him.

“Perlah, if you see Abbot can you let him know I need to see him stat”, she says as she strategizes excuses.

“You got it,” she responds, turning towards Princess with eyes that say “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s gonna be really juicy”

Dana makes a round on the floor, making sure everything else is running smoothly as a couple of young parents come busting through the ambulance bay with their toddler who may or may not have shoved a Lego piece up her nose. 

As Jack makes his way to the E.R., she asks him to take a look at this young girl, buying her just a smidge of time.

“Dr. Abbot can absolutely help you guys,” she says with a sense of concerning enthusiasm.

He offers his help of course, but not before giving Dana a look that says “This is intern work”. 

Speaking of, where are the interns? he thought. With no time to actually track them down, Dana leads him and the family to South 20.

Dana sighs with relief knowing that will keep him occupied for at least a while.

Back in West 12, Robby starts prepping an ultrasound probe to check for internal bleeding. Still feeling slightly embarrassed and now wholly exposed, you lay completely flat with your arms up covering your eyes, hoping this nightmare will end soon.

“So,” Robby starts trying to break the silence. “I heard you moved to New York,”

You peek through your forearms. He is really doing this.

“Yeah…my- uh sister is down there. Needed a change and my job was really flexible about it,” you explain, guilt creeping up your throat. Why do you feel guilty? You were a newly single woman, you could do whatever you want.

Robby doesn’t say anything, continuing to move the probe around in your midsection to make sure you aren’t bleeding out.

“I didn’t mean to just run away, I just-,” you begin to defend.

Robby looks from the monitor to you with understanding eyes.

“Hey, if anyone can relate to having the need to get away, it’s me,” he starts. 

You give him a confused look as he remembers you’ve missed the last 3 years.

“I uh, also went away for a while,” he says.

You blink, stonefaced before you crack a smile.

“You, Michael “I’m addicted to my job” Robinavitch, went on leave? Ha ha good one,” you joke. There was just no way he got up and left his job. The only person more committed to the PTMC than Jack was him.

Robby can’t help but chuckle at the joke. It’s true, he was so entangled with his job, he didn't know where Dr. Robinavitch stopped and just Michael started.

“I did, I’d never lie about that. I almost didn’t come back,” he says.

You turn towards him, serious now. 

“Damn it must have been serious for you then,” you say.

After taking out the 2 Lego pieces from little Jane’s nose. Jack Abbot strolls up to the Nurse’s Station to prepare for the night shift. As he waits for the rest of the Night Crew to show up, he takes a look at the ER board.

“Wow, not too busy at the start for now,” he thinks to himself. He wouldn’t dare say that out loud.

As he’s scanning, he notices a familiar name. 

Y/L/N,Y/F/I

MVC

West 12

He freezes. He thinks to himself there is no way that this is the same Y/L/N he was…used to be married to.

Dana comes back to the station cautiously. She can see his gears turning. “Fuck” she thinks.

“Jack,” she starts. Not wanting to cause a scene here.

Jack closes his eyes and sighs. That’s all the confirmation he needed.

“Dana, please don’t tell me she’s here. Please don’t tell me she’s here and no one told me,” he says calmly while his heart starts picking up pace.

“She asked me not to say anything,” she tried to soften the blow

“Bullshit,” he scoffs as he looks around the floor. “Where’s Robby?”

Dana looks down, absolutely not wanting to be involved in the argument that’s about to follow.

When Jack realizes the extent of what the hell was going on as he makes his way to West 12. With each step he grows less angry and more anxious, like his legs could give out at any moment. He doesn’t know how bad it is. It’s also been 3 years since the divorce. 3 years since they’ve spoken to each other. 3 years of him wanting to call her everyday, but knowing he shouldn’t. 

Jack busts through the doors as Robby has continued X-rays and ultrasounds. You can’t see who has walked in, as Robby was blocking the door, but you are just assuming it's another nurse as Whitaker keeps ordering labs and scans.

When Robby finally turns you make eye contact with Jack and freeze. Neither of you move. Neither of you talk. The room somehow grows even colder.

Robby begins to speak. “...Jack-,” he starts.

Jack puts his hand up. He doesn’t want to hear it at all. Not now, that doesn’t matter now.

Santos and Whitaker exchange glances and make up some excuse to exit the room that no one really heard.

Robby slowly follows, putting his hand on Jack’s shoulder as he leaves, tapping it twice as if to say, “I’m sorry” and “Find me if you need me”. 

It’s now just you and Jack. Silent and staring at each other from across the room as if you’d entered a staring contest. You didn’t even know what to say. 

“Hi,” is all you can choke out.

Jack stares at the floor and quietly scoffs. “That’s really all you have to say?” He grabs your chart at the foot of the bed.

“Hey, you aren’t my doctor you can’t just grab my chart,” you try and joke.

He isn’t in a laughing mood, not in the slightest. “You were in an accident and tried to hide from me,” he starts.

“I am literally fine,” you groan for what feels like the 100th time. “I didn’t even know I was coming here it all happened so fast I would have-,”

“Would have what?” he interrupted. “Asked them to take you somewhere else?”

You grow quiet, knowing that you probably would have. You weren’t ready to face him again. You were never going to be ready.

“Jack-,” you begin.

“I have missed you…so much,” he chokes. “I always want to call you after every shift to update you on literally the smallest things, but I knew that you hated me so I-,”

“Woah,” you cut in. “Hate? Jack, I don't hate you. I have never hated you,” You were kind of surprised he felt this way

Jack blinks at you.

Flashback to 3 and a half years ago.

For the past few months, you have been internally battling whether you wanted to confront Jack about how you have been feeling lately. About how he keeps putting his job before you, how it feels like you have been out of sync for a while. How every plan is met with “Sorry, I have to go in” and picking up extra shifts because “he wanted to”. 

You lived together but it feels like you are two ships sailing in the night. Where has your husband gone? You haven’t felt married in a really long time.

It’s not like you didn’t know what his job entailed. You’ve dated for a really long time. Between the night shift and his second job as a SWAT medic, he managed his schedule fairly well when you came into the picture. But lately you’ve felt like a second thought.

You’ve called your mom about this a million times. She’s told you the same thing over and over. “Just open up the floor to the issue,” she says. You can’t tell if she’s annoyed if you brought it up once again on your daily catch ups, but she’s your mom. She’s not allowed to hear the end of anything. “He probably is just stressed or there’s something else going on he’s not telling you about. I know you know how he is,” she continues.

She’s probably right, then again when is she ever wrong. But you decide to hold out just a bit longer. 

On an ordinary weekend, you wake up to no alarm, the sunrise gently waking you up through a crack in the curtain. You reflexively move your hand over to his side of the bed, only to be met by cool sheets and no Jack. That’s nothing new, you’ve been waking up to an empty bed for weeks at this point.

You sigh and stare at the ceiling before getting up to freshen up in the bathroom before you stroll into the kitchen, only to see Jack making an omelet.

“You’re here,” you state, surprised. You didn’t mean for that tone to come across as such, but the communication between you two had been so off kilter you didn’t even know he had today off.

Jack, confused on why you’re confused, responds, “Yeah, hon. I do live here don’t I?”

As you move towards the espresso machine, still groggy from sleep you respond, “I don’t know…do you?” at what you thought was under your breath. Jack hears what you say, but he’s too tired to even start whatever argument is brewing along with your morning coffee.

All of a sudden the kitchen feels too small as you both move around making your own breakfasts. It's silent, save for some sizzling, some whisking and some pouring.

You both hated the uncomfortable silence. “Maybe I should bring it up now,” you thought. No better time like the present.

Jack still stands over the stove as you move behind the counter and sit behind the bar. You stare at his perfect back. His shoulders are always so tense and never relaxed, but this time, it seemed different.

“Jack,” you start. He doesn’t turn around. “Jack, can we talk…please,”

You can see his back slowly rise and fall, signaling him sighing. He knew what was coming. He just thought he could avoid it just a little longer.

He reaches over and switches the stove off before turning around. He tries to make eye contact with you, but your eyes were already welling up. He didn’t want to see you cry, especially when he was the cause.

He nods before whispering, “Yeah. Yeah, okay,”

You close your eyes and breathe before speaking. You want to be as concise as possible with what you want to say, but you don’t want to come across as angry because at the end of the day, you weren’t. You just wanted to be seen and heard by the man you loved. 

“I feel…I feel like we’ve been drifting apart,” you start. “It’s like you’ve been putting your job before me and I am an afterthought,”.

Jack continues looking at the floor. He knows he has. It wasn’t intentional. He doesn’t know what it was. He’s just felt off for a really long time.

“We haven’t spent real time together in months, Jack. I don’t even know what is going on in your life anymore. We’re supposed to be a unit, a team,” you rush out. “I am not sure if there’s something else going on with you, at work or something, but I’d really hope you’d let me in. I love you and I don’t want to feel like this anymore,” you finish. 

You feel out of breath. As if holding this in for the past few months was equivalent to being in a perpetual race and you just crossed the finish line.

Jack loves you, you know he does. But he can’t bring himself to say anything, let alone look at you. His continued silence starts to anger you. 

“Do you really have nothing to say?” you whisper, as to not raise your voice. You were getting upset, but the last thing you wanted was to yell.

He finally looks at you, eyes glazed. The look in his eyes breaks your heart.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. Not wanting his voice to break. 

It’s obvious he had more to say but he was holding back, but you don’t say anything. You just keep staring at him. As if you were subliminally letting him know this was a space he could and should open up to you. What happened within him that he feels that it’s necessary to shut down?

“I’m sorry, I really don’t know what else to say,” he repeats. 

You feel a sense of defeat as you look down and start picking at the skin on your fingers. Although the conversation was short. You were already tired. But something pushed you to try one more time.

“Jack, we can’t work through this if you can’t let me in. Please let me in,” you plead. 

The distance between you and him has never felt further. Both emotionally, and physically as you can’t bring yourself to cross over to his side of the kitchen.

He turns back around. He wants to let you in so bad. He almost spoke up at least 10 times, but with every thought he beat himself back down. The last thing he wanted to do was drag you down with his problems. He’s done that enough, he felt.

You finally hit a wall and say the quiet thing out loud.

“I can’t be the only person in this marriage,” you spill out. “It’s been months of this and it's frustrating you never want to talk,” you continue over hot tears.

Giving up, you suck in a breath and wipe your eyes, heading to the door and grab your keys, your bag with your computer and slip on your shoes.

“I’m going to the coffee shop down the street. If you actually want to work on this, meet me there. If not…,” your voice breaks as you trail off. You can’t even fathom the end of that thought. So you don’t. Without another word, you turn and walk out the door.

Jack has been the way he is for so long that he can’t remember being any other way. He can’t remember loving the sun, the light, the way the breeze in the daytime felt as it carried both the noise of laughter and talking and cheering and the scents of the world. He can’t remember being at peace in a room full of people that aren’t patients or doctors. He can’t remember the last time he laughed because he thought something was funny. 

            He can’t even remember the last time, he liked himself. The way he is in the world, the way he moves or the way he looks. 

            He thinks Catherine took it with her, but not when she died. And that’s the hardest part. She sucked all of that away when she was still there in front of him, saying she would love him if. She would love him if, not always. She was conditional. 

            And then she died and he’s the one living with the guilt where his heart used to be. Guilt that he’s relieved, that he’s happy being free, that he likes the quiet of the house, the quiet of a world gone silent, but not from terror but from a kind of peace. 

            He thinks that Catherine stole a piece of him when she was still alive and when that aneurysm stopped her functioning, the piece she stole died along with her. 

            And with them, his hope died too. 

            And so, he lives with the guilt in the place of his heart, the guilt that he doesn’t miss her like he should, the guilt that he can’t even say her name with any kind of love. The guilt that he feels free. The guilt which chokes him, strangling him when he pictures moving on, forming a life. The guilt that makes him put a wall up around him. 

            The guilt which makes the world grow dark—the guilt he tries to pretend is grief. 

            But playing pretend is only really a game for children. 

            And Catherine stole his childhood too. 

            “Can’t you ever just fucking do what I say?!” Catherine yells, her voice high-pitched and scratchy, grating on Jack’s last nerve. He hasn’t been back to the house in a while, his leave finally here and while the guys in his troop—his brothers—came home, to family waiting, happy smiles and tears and kisses, he came home to no one. 

            Just a message to his email that she was busy getting her nails done and she’d see him later at home. 

            “Do what you say?!” he yells back, his voice deeper, but more broken, shattered. He loves her, or thinks he does, and yet when he’s around her, he doesn’t love himself. She makes him feel like he’s useless, like he can’t do anything right. 

            He doesn’t like being around her, the way his skin crawls as soon as he hears her call his name. He doesn’t like the knowing that whatever she says will only hurt him more. He doesn’t like knowing that at the end of the conversation, he will not be whole, a piece of him will be gone, torn out by whatever words leave her lips. 

            “Yes!” she yells and she steps towards him, her eyes narrowed in anger, face drawn tight, pinched and all Jack wants to do is reach for her face, smoothing away the wrinkles and the hatred. He wants her to look at him like she did when they were kids, when she looked at him like she loved him. Or, at the very least, liked him. 

            When her eyes weren’t filled with hate. 

            It’s that thought that has Jack sighing and nodding, grinding his teeth together, jaw rigid and tense, just slightly pained as the teeth grind the wrong way on each other, the jaw locking. But he’ll endure the pain if he can get her to smile. Just smile one goddamn time for him before he ships out. 

            “Sure, sweetheart,” he says, his voice quiet, scarcely a whisper because he doesn’t want to fight, he doesn’t want to have the screaming matches she so loves. He just wants to change out of his uniform and curl up on the couch with his wife, watching whatever movie he missed when he was gone. “I’ll do what you say. What do you want?”

            “I want you to leave,” she says, her tone flat, lips drawing into a thin line as she folds her arms over her chest. “I want you to stay somewhere else for this leave. You wake up too early for me and it disturbs me. And I don’t want that. So, find somewhere else.”

            And Jack is frozen, standing there in his fatigues, bag still on his shoulder, every muscle still as if someone pressed pause on his body and he’s waiting for them to hit play again so he can live. 

            “You…you…” he struggles to speak, his throat growing thick and it’s hard to swallow, his chest constricting, lungs burning and head just slightly light-headed. “You want me…to-to leave?”

            “That’s what I said. And you’d said you’d do it, so, bye.” And then she walks off, her dark hair swishing against her back as she walks off down the hallway and Jack turns to leave, walking out of the house and to his rental car, only crying searing tears once he’s behind the wheel, his hands gripping the faux-leather so tightly that his knuckles are white and fingers numb. 

            He wonders what happened to the two of them, when they went from kids in love to this. Was it when he joined the military? Was it when they got married?

            Or was this the way things always were and he was just too blind to see it?

            See her.

            “Hey, Dr. Abbot,” he hears you call out, your voice soft and gentle, carrying through the ED like a beacon, one of kindness and hope and gentleness. A beacon that Catherine never was. And he hates himself for thinking that, for comparing you to her, for even trying to move on. For even trying to feel things for someone else when his wife is dead and gone and he should remain loyal to her. 

            Loyal in a way she never was. 

            “What’s up, Starlight?” he asks, turning from the nurse’s station, orienting himself like he always does, as if he would know wherever you are, no matter what. 

                         “Are you busy?” you ask him, your face pinched just slightly with concern, drawn together as if you’re worried not just over whatever patient is on the iPad you’re currently clutching like a life preserver, but also worried about him. 

            He finds it strange, you worrying about him, about if he’s busy. He finds it odd as if no one should really worry about him because he’s just not worth it. Wasn’t that what Catherine told him once? You’re just not worth the headache that worrying would cause. So, why are you worried? You don’t even know him and maybe, he reasons, that’s why you worry. Maybe it’s something wrong with him, so fucked-up that when people get to know him, they find the problems and then he’s not worth the trouble. 

            If you knew him, you wouldn’t care. 

            “Not at the moment, Starlight,” he answers, mind half-on the here and now and the other on Catherine, on the grief that feels a lot like guilt. “What do you need?”

            “I have a patient with a split leg and I believe that the proper suture method would be vertical mattress, but I’m not confident,” you tell him, hands still holding the iPad like a life preserver, like it’s the only thing that’s saving you from drowning. “So, I was hoping to get a second opinion. Although…you’re probably actually busy, so I will check with Ellis and see what they say.” You nod once as if convincing yourself of something and spin on your heel, turning, head just slightly turning as you look for Ellis, but Jack is frozen. 

            He is frozen because you’re trying to find someone else, just to make life easier for him. And no one’s ever done that before. 

            Catherine always made him do everything. She never lifted a finger and certainly never looked for anyone else. It was his job to take care of her, why make that job easier?

            But you…you’re looking for someone else even when it’s his job to help you, mentor you. 

            “Hey, wait, Starry!” he calls out, moving across the floor, ducking behind Lena’s chair and crossing the nurse’s station to you. “I said I’m not busy. Let’s check out this split leg, alright? How’d it happen anyway?” He knows he made the right choice when you smile at him, your entire face lighting up, shining on him like a star, just like your nickname—the one he gave you when he almost called you sweetheart once. 

            “He was working construction and something happened with a piece of equipment—sounded like his friend accidentally drove a chisel through his calf!” Your voice is eager and excited, the ED having not fazed you for a single moment, something about you able to look at the ugliest of humanity and still find the positive. Still find a way to spin the darkness to the light. 

            “Well, now I really gotta see it,” he says, following you to the patient room, his hand twitching just slightly, wanting to reach to take yours and that guilt, that grief rises, its hand closing around his throat and tightening. 

            Just like Catherine would have wanted. She liked him loyal even when she couldn’t be. Even when she never was.

            “Catherine? Cathy, you home?” Jack calls out, his voice tired and yet carrying through the still halls of the home he bought back when they got married, just five months after graduating high school. He hadn’t wanted to wait and he likes to believe she felt the same. “Cath?” No response. 

            And Jack thinks she’s not home, that he’s safe to get things ready for her birthday, the surprise. He worked it out with his commanding officer that his leave would land here and now on her birthday so that he could come home and celebrate it with her. So, that he could make her smile again when she hasn’t smiled at him in so long. 

            He just wants her happy. He loves her. 

            He drops his duffel at the door, darting through the house, up the stairs, the sounds of creaking echoing through the upper halls, but he thinks it’s just the stairs. He’ll have to fix those later, preferably before Cath comes home so she doesn’t yell at him about not getting everything fixed. That if he was home, he might as well do what a husband is supposed to. 

            It’s when he’s outside the bedroom that the cries reach his ears, his hearing not what it used to be after being exposed to gunshots, bombs and screams without hearing protection. The cries are Catherine’s, breathy and cracking, either in pain or pleasure. He doesn’t know and it’s why he opens the door—either way, he can help her. At least, if she wants him touching her now. She hasn’t for his last weeks of leave. 

            “Cath?” he calls out as he turns the knob, the metal cool and slippery against his palm as he pushes the old oak door, the sight of crumpled clothes beside the bed, the first thing he sees. Two pairs of jeans and two shirts.

            That’s when he looks up, the sight of his wife’s bare back, her ass settled on someone else’s naked legs, a hand fisted in her long black hair, her body pushing up and sinking down as she rides someone else’s cock. 

            “The fuck?!” he cries and that’s when she turns, her glassy green eyes pupil-blown, yet contracting when they take him in, rolling once before she turns back to the man on the bed. 

            “Get out, Jack,” is all she says and he’s helpless to do anything but listen, stepping back and closing the door behind him, the sting of tears burning his eyes, vision going slightly blurry as his hands curl into his fists, his lungs burn and chest constricts, a thickness growing in his throat. 

            But he pushes past it. Not because soldiers don’t cry—because they do—but because Catherine would only see his tears as weakness, something to exploit. Something to delight in. 

            And he doesn’t want to give her that, the knowledge that her unfaithfulness bothers him. Besides, he’s gone all the time, she should have some form of peace, of release. 

            He’s not able to provide it, but she still needs it. 

            This is really his fault after all. He really should give her more attention. 

            He’s pushed her to this after all. 

            “You okay, Dr. Abbot?” Another shift, another chance to hear your voice, the calm and soothing tone, the notes of peace and tranquility, of acceptance. Something Catherine never had. 

            “Fine, Starlight,” he whispers, his hands still white-knuckling the metal railing of the roof, the urge to just do it, to just end it and find that silence, that peace. That never-ending void of nothing—no thoughts, no feelings, no endless refrains of Catherine and her worst moments. 

            “I don’t think you are,” he hears you say, your words blunt and to the point, tone flatter than he’s ever heard it. “But then again, neither am I, since it seems we had the same idea.”

            “What’s that?” he calls out to you, hoping you don’t say what he thinks you’ll say, hoping you won’t say for it all to end, for the days to stop. He wants to picture you like the North Star, always shining, always guiding, sheparding and protecting. He doesn’t want to picture as a dying star, just waiting for implosion. He wants you always shining. 

            “The final leap, that final hurdle,” you say and your tone is sardonic and dark and not like what he’s used to hearing. It’s not the voice of Starlight, but is, perhaps, the real voice of you. The one you have when no one needs you to be that guiding star. “Eternal quiet.”

            “I just like the view,” he replies, his tone matching yours, playing at a joke, something Catherine would have hated, would have told him to stop saying because it’s just so fucking dumb. 

            “Kinda wish I’d just shut up then,” you tell him, smiling once at him, a shy smile, one dark and yet light at the same time. Your bag is slung over your shoulder and your eyes are tired, sad and tired, dark and light. 

            “Nah,” he replies, turning from you, back to the view of the city that stretches out before him, houses and skyscrapers, people and cars. “I like hearing you talk.”

            “Good to know someone likes my crazy rambling,” you mutter, leaning against the guardrail, your forearms pressing against the metal as you lean against them, stretching your back and sighing before looking out at the skyline. “Does it ever get easier?”

            For a moment, Jack thinks you’re asking him if his grief for Catherine will ever get easier, but then he realizes you’re asking about the Pitt, the Ed and not the pain of losing the only person he’s ever been with. The only person who could ever put up with him—at least that’s what she told him. 

            And she was almost always right. 

            “No,” he whispers, his words landing hard in the silence between you. “It doesn’t. Every shift will tear your heart out all over again until you finally just feel like giving it all up, but occasionally there will be someone in the ED with a smile and crazy ramblings who makes it better. Who makes it worth it to show up every day.”

            “Why, Dr. Abbot,” you whisper, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d almost think you have a crush on me.” He turns his head, turning to you, orienting to you as if you’re the North Star and in a way, since you started working in the Pitt, you’ve become that for him. The bright guiding light that reminds him that people are worth the effort. 

            “I don’t think you do know better,” he says and he wants to take it all back, that pain ripping through his chest as he remembers Catherine, his wife, the woman who put up with him even when he didn’t deserve it. According to her. 

            “You do like me?” you ask him, lips pursing into a thin line, your beautiful eyes narrowing at him as you pivot, only one arm now leaning against the guardrail, your entire body facing him rather than the skyline. “You wear a wedding ring, Dr. Abbot. That doesn’t exactly suggest that I’m wrong.”

            “She died. Seven years ago,” he whispers, looking down at his hands, at the thick platinum band that he’s never removed because he’s always been more faithful than Catherine and why should that ever stop. Didn’t he vow for both life and death? Shouldn’t he uphold that even if she didn’t?

            “Doesn’t mean you’re over her,” you whisper and maybe it’s because you always sound like you care, in a way Cath never did that he replies. That he says fuck it to his vows. 

            “Doesn’t mean I’m not either.”

            Pain. 

            That’s the only thing he knows. Pain. Just never-ending waves of it, washing over him again and again and again, over and over and over. It’s like he’s trapped on a shore, unable to move out of the way of the ever-encroaching tide. The tide that threatens to kill him, drown him, yet never does completely. 

            Occasionally, it’s dulled. Occasionally, the waves only lap at his legs, not his whole body. Occasionally, he’s not in complete agony. 

            But even when the pain is dulled, his mind is still on fire, words echoing through his brain that he doesn’t remember ever hearing and yet cannot seem to get rid of. 

            “You’re lucky I married you before. No one’s gonna love you now.”

            The blue or the red tie? The black or the white shirt? Does he add a suit jacket or go without? 

            Jack is utterly lost as he looks at his closet, only half-filled, Catherine’s stuff gotten rid of before her funeral. He told everyone he couldn’t bear to look at it and that was true, because looking at it made it seem like he was still tied to her and he’s not, yet he is. 

            He knows that she was shitty, that, in truth, she was abusive and he didn’t deserve the way she treated him, yet he loved her. He loved her in a way that was desperate, that feeling that he was never going to have anyone else because he wasn’t worthy of it. The thought she placed in his head before and after the amputation. 

            He knows that he shouldn’t feel guilt for the relief he felt when he found out, the relief that he could finally know peace and yet he does. 

            Because he can’t get rid of the idea that she was right. That it was him. That he was a shitty husband who drove her to do the wrong things, to say the wrong things. That he was the cause of her pain, of her actions. 

            He wants to just feel fine living and yet he can’t. He can’t because Catherine is still a part of him, a piece of who he is, someone who still lives inside of his mind, in his skin. He remembers the good, back when they were kids, before she became who she was as his wife, but a part of him thinks she was always like that and he was just too love-struck as a child to remember and by the time he saw it, it was too late. 

            He was ensnared in her web, drawn into her lies and manipulations. 

            But…maybe it was his fault all along. 

            He’s drawn out of his thoughts by a ringing, one not from his tinnitus, one that exists outside of his sensory system, the stimulation where there isn’t any. One sounding from his phone. 

            A call—from you. 

North Star

            “Hi, Starlight,” he says, putting the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he holds up one tie and then another, still debating. “What’s up?” He can hear you sigh on the other end of the line, a soul-shattering sigh that has his heart jolting, his mind rushing, wondering how long it would take to get to you if you need help. 

            “Blue or red?” you say into the phone and he feels his entire pause, recalibrate, turning from emergency plans to fashion advice. 

            “Blue or red what? Because I’m currently in the same dilemma trying to choose between ties,” he says and he can hear you snort, the sound loud and undignified and the all the more perfect. Catherine never let herself laugh like that—she always had to be pretty, even when what she was saying was ugly. 

            “Shirt,” you answer, tone not quite flat, but not lively. An in-between tone as if you don’t know how to react, how to answer. “What colour do I go with?”

            “Mind if we switch to FaceTime so I can see the options?” he asks, a part of himself drawing in on itself, folding and tightening as he thinks of Catherine, of how he was always faithful, how he vowed that and he’s a man of his word. 

            But she never was. 

            Even if it was his fault for always being gone. 

            “Sure,” you tell him and he waits, not having long before your face is on his screen, a smile on it, not one that’s fake or curated for maximum attractiveness, but rather one that is real and toothy and crooked. “Hi!” It seems you like this better, waving once before switching the camera to backward facing, showing a view of your bedroom, the room exactly as he was expecting—neat, almost obsessively so and blue, decorated with…yep, stars. 

            “I see your room, Starlight, but no shirts,” he says and he can hear you sigh, but this one is different, it’s happy.  

            “Just wait, old man,” you call out and even those the name from most would be said with acid, yours is bright, teasing and affectionate. He wonders how it’s possible. How you can speak to him like that when his own wife never could. 

            Is it that you just don’t know him? Will you run when you see him? All of him? Is it that something inside of him is broken and breaking everything around him?

            Will you run when if it gets real?

            Will you be another Catherine?

            “Option one,” he hears you declare, tone high and dramatic, lilting like a musical song through his room. He looks at his phone, focusing, his mouth going dry as he sees just a hint of your stomach, just a glimpse of the black lacy bra as you hold one hanger up in front of your body, a sleek blue button-up hovering over your frame. It’s beautiful and professional and he knows you would look perfect in it. 

            “Where’s the second shirt?” he asks and he can see you roll your eyes in your reflection; the camera being aimed now at a full-body mirror. 

            “Close your eyes until I say open,” you tell him and he complies, the order not spoken with malice or control, but rather just a wish. Quiet and kind—a way that Catherine never spoke. 

            “As the doctor orders,” he says, closing his eyes while you switch out shirts, most likely not wanting him to see more of your body than he can around the shirt. 

            “Okay, open,” you say and he does, taking notice of the silk red shirt you hold up, the neckline more plunging than the blue, the material most likely more clinging, more fitting. “So, which shirt?”

            “The red,” he says, no hesitation as he swallows, the motion hard and just slightly uncomfortable, his mouth dry and his heart skips a beat and then another when you laugh and he can see your face crinkle in laughter, your body bending forwards with the force of the laugh. He can see the way your hair falls, your shoulders, your back, the lacy straps of your bra, the smoothness of your skin. 

            He feels a stirring that he doesn’t think he’s ever felt before. He doesn’t think Catherine ever made him feel like that and all of a sudden, the feeling is gone. Sucked away just like she sucked away so much of him, that piece that he can never get back. 

            Maybe that’s what he grieves—not her. 

            “Then wear the red tie,” you tell him and then you hang up, his house still ringing with your laughter, tinny from the phone speakers but yet still oh so beautiful. 

            And he does. 

            But not because you make him feel like he has too. No, you make him feel like everything is a choice and you’re just there to help. 

            You are what Catherine never was. 

            But how long will that last before he poisons you too?

            “Can’t you fucking do anything?!” Catherine screams, her voice loud and shrill, cruel. He doesn’t know what he did wrong, only that he did something and he hates it. Hates that he doesn’t know, hates that just by existing he does something to hurt her. 

            “I don’t know what you want!” he cries, the feeling of being overwhelmed, overstimulated rising in him, that feeling of being unable to fix something that is broken. 

            And it’s him. He’s what’s broken if Catherine is to be believed. Although, his brothers, his troop, tell him it’s her, not him, but he can’t believe them. 

            He can’t because Catherine’s been there his whole life, telling him he’s broken and maybe she’s right. 

            But he can’t fix what he doesn’t how to. 

            “I laid out your outfit and yet here you are! I laid out a suit and yet here you are in your fucking uniform!” she screams and for a beautiful woman, she isn’t pretty when her face is mottled and twisted in rage. 

            “This is what I’m supposed to wear, Catherine! I’m a soldier!” he yells and he watches as she rolls her eyes and walks away from him, up the stairs, the door to their bedroom slamming closed. 

            “THEN GO ON YOUR OWN, YOU FUCKER!”

            And he does, silent tears falling down his cheeks as he drives himself to his best friend’s wedding, making excuses for his wife that his best friend just shakes his head at. 

            “She wanted to come,” he says, “she just felt sick.”

            “No, she didn’t, Jack. Stop making excuses for her, man. It’s helping no one.”

            “Can you tell me about her?” you ask him, your fingers interlaced with his, your head on his shoulder, Pretty Woman on his TV—a movie you said he had to see. “Your wife.”

            It’s been a precious month, one of hand-holding and sweet kisses and laughter. Lazy mornings and coffee on his patio, your legs on his lap, your voice lilting through his house, gradually helping to erase the echoing sound of Catherine’s angry screams. And even as precious as it was, he’s been wondering when the bubble will burst. 

            When the pretty idea he’s built up will shatter like Catherine always said.

            He supposes it’s now.

            “What do you want to know?” he whispers, pressing pause on the movie as you shift until your seated to face him on the couch, legs crossed as you look at him, your free hand coming to rest on his cheek, thumb tracing back and forth across his cheekbone. 

            “What was she like? How did you meet? I don’t know, I just know that she was a part of you and still is and if…if we’re gonna get serious…I should know her too,” you tell him, your nostrils flaring just slightly as your lips curve up on one side, touch grounding him in the moment. 

            And he finds that he doesn’t want to lie, doesn’t want to pretty up the truth for you. Most of the time, he spins Catherine so that she’s the perfect wife and he’s always the one at fault, but he wants just one person, just one to know the truth. 

            “She wasn’t an easy person to love,” he whispers and when you squeeze his hand, he spills everything to you, everything she ever said to him, every lie she told, every time he found her sleeping with someone else. He tells you, most of all, how it’s his fault. 

            He tells you that if he had been a better husband, she would have been a better wife. He tells you that the first thing he felt when she was gone was relief and then he felt so much guilt that he convinced himself it’s grief. He tells you that she stole a piece of him and he thinks that his grief is really just for that missing piece. 

            He tells you everything, crying when things get too hard, your hand leaving his, instead both of them resting on his cheeks, wiping away his tears, soothing him and grounding him. Holding him steady, guiding him forwards like the North Star. 

            And when he’s done, there is a silence that descends, but not the one of Catherine, not the one where she used it as a weapon, but rather a silence of rearranging. A silence of deciding but not of anger. Just recalibration. 

            “She was a bitch,” you whisper, tone soft but words blunt and matter-of-fact, cutting straight to the point in a way that makes it impossible for him not to laugh. And he laughs and cries at the same time and you are steady, simply holding him until he stops, until he falls silent, the peace he feels at you speaking what he used to think late at night before the guilt choked him into silence, submission. “You’re none of the things she said you were, Jack. You are kind and caring and perfect and wonderful and she was a horrible, abusive person. It was not you. Nothing you did caused that, that was who she was. You did nothing. You were—are—the victim, Jack. And I’m so sorry that you have been carrying this alone for all these years.”

            “How are you real?” he whispers, his voice soft and shattered at the same time, his hands coming to rest over yours, lifting them from his cheeks and folding them in his own grip, settling them over his heart and holding tight to them, letting you feel the beat of his heart that he is slowly becoming convinced beats for you. 

            “My parents had unprotected sex and I am the product of the fusion of two gametes,” you tell him, your lips quirking up on the ends, bottom lip folding back between your teeth, top lip pursing just slightly as you bite back a laugh that he wants nothing more than to hear. 

            “Good to know,” he says and then he’s letting go of your hands, gripping your face gently and pulling your face to him, his lips finding yours, pressing against yours with a hunger that he’s never felt before. A hunger that is desirous and ruinous and perfect in its messiness. 

            A kiss that is destructive, knocking down the wall he’s built around himself with his guilt, his fucked-up grief. A kiss that is ruinous but in the best way. The perfect way. 

            And when you pull away, your chest heaving just slightly with breathlessness, you smile, lips kiss-swollen. “You’re a very good kisser, Jack Abbot.”

            “Oh, am I?” he asks you, watching as your smile deepens and you nod, glancing down, the flick of your eyes, hinting at just a bit of embarrassment. A bashfulness that he loves. “I think you’re better.”

            The crutches are strange. Not because he’s never had a broken leg before, of course he has, but simply because this are the only reason he’s moving at all. When he woke up in the hospital, finally weaned off of the morphine and brought back to the present, he found out that the bomb that had exploded, that took his best friend’s life, took his leg. 

            Took only his leg because his friend knocked him out of the way. Took the brunt of the blast. 

            It’s a scar that he will carry forever, that knowledge that his friend could have lived, could have made it for his wife, for his son—if not for him. 

            “Thanks man,” he whispers to his troopmate, one of the other survivors, the luckiest, if you can say that, having survived with only a deep cut across his abdomen, internal bleeding fixed up good as new in surgery, or as good as any soldier ever can be. 

            “You don’t have to thank me, brother,” Flynn whispers, pulling him against him in a tight embrace, the two of them clinging to each other, silent in their grief, holding onto the pain, but also embracing it. Together yet alone. “I owe you my life.”

            “And I owe Jeffrey mine,” Jack says, his voice cracking just slightly as he pulls back from Flynn, pulling his key from his pocket, his weight thrown off and he stumbles just slightly unused to having no leg there to catch him if he falls, Flynn catching him and helping him unlock the door. 

            “You good to be alone?” Jack knows what he’s asking, but he doesn’t want to face that now. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. 

            “I’m not alone,” he says, smiling at his friend, the saddest, fakest smile he has ever put on his face which hurts more than that ripping feeling through where his leg once was and never will be again. “I have Catherine.”

            “That’s as good as being alone, brother. Probably worse.” But Flynn closes the door, shaking his head as he does so, leaving Jack in the entrance to his, most definitely not accessible house. 

            A house that Jeffrey has spent countless hours in. A house that Jeffery has laughed in and joked in and yelled in and cheered in. A house that Jeffrey will never again set foot in because he chose to save Jack. He chose to save his friend, to give him a second chance when he was the one with a wife so in love with him and a son who needed him. Jack doesn’t understand why Jefferey gave it all up for him. He doesn’t understand, doesn’t like it. 

            He doesn’t like this relentless ache in his chest, this feeling of being cracked open. He doesn’t like this feeling that no about of rubbing can get rid of, that no cough or yell or scream can dislodge, that no pain can erase and no painkiller can numb. He doesn’t like this emptiness yet present. 

            He doesn’t like feeling like something is missing and nothing to do with his leg and everything to do with the man who in two days will be buried. Who in two days, Jack will stand with crutches at his funeral, saluting the body of the man who saved his life. 

            And the feeling is why Jack crutches to the living room, sinking down upon the couch and crying, tucking his head between his knees—he was told he was lucky that his knee was able to be saved—and crying. And he doesn’t cry silently this time because as Deran, another troopmate another brother, assured him, soldiers are allowed to cry. 

            After all they see, they have every right to lose it when they need to. 

            “You’re pathetic,” Jack hears Catherine say and that just makes him cry harder. For his best friend, for his leg, for his best friend’s son and wife, for himself. For the life he could have had, had he not been so love-sick. 

            For the life he feels too guilty to want. 

            Maybe Catherine’s right. Maybe he is pathetic, but only because he stays. 

            Five months. 

            That’s today marks: five months of dating you. Of being with someone who lifts him up and doesn’t put him down. Who cares for him and his feelings and what he wants more than anything else. 

            Which of course, means that it’s the day his worlds collide. 

            “Hey, Uncle Jack!” he hears across the ED and he pauses for a moment, glancing down at the smartwatch you insisted on getting him, setting it up so that any major alerts of ill health would immediately be sent to your phone so that you could know he was okay and get him help if he wasn’t capable of it, noticing the red dot at the top. He swipes at it, noticing a text from Brett Barnes—his best friend’s son. 

            His nephew. 

            Whose here. 

            “What happened, Brett?” he asks, turning around, taking notice of the way he stands, the way he’s dressed, the cadet uniform and the buzzcut. 

            “Nothing except that I got leave to ask you something,” he replies, striding across the ED with the posture of a soldier, hands clasped behind his back, feet standing apart as he faces Jack, eyes locked on his face, those dark mahogany eyes so perfectly Jeffrey that it takes Jack by surprise, that ache solidifying in his chest, sharp pain ripping through the leg that once was but never will be again. 

            “You’re in training?” he asks, throat thick as he swallows, taking in the man that he’ll forever remember as the little boy clambering into his race car bed and begging for stories of his dad. The dad he never got the chance to meet. 

            “I’m about to graduate,” Brett says, voice barely above a whisper, still focused on Jack and Jack alone, already having Jeffrey’s singular focus. “And I got leave to ask you to come. To go with my mom and tap me out.”

            “You want me to…” Jack can’t finish his sentence, his throat too thick because Brett looks just like Jeffrey did back when they were cadets, back when they had hope and hadn’t yet seen the horrors of the world. 

            “Yeah, Uncle Jack, I want you to tap me out. And bring your girlfriend too, I’ve heard she’s around my age, might be fun to steal her from you,” he says, lips curving up just like Jeffrey’s used to. 

            “Sorry,” Jack hears you call out, your voice not far behind him, your hand finding the place in between his shoulders, “but I cannot be stolen.”

            “Are you sure?” Brett asks, his eyes not on you but on Jack, a shit-eating grin stretching across his face, which is so Jeffrey that sometimes Jack thinks he was just copy and pasted. “Because I probably have a lot more stamina than my ol’ uncle over there.”

            “You need a few more years on you before you’re hot enough, kid,” you reply and Jack can’t help the laugh that escapes his lips despite the pain flaring through him hot and bright. “But we’ll be there to tap you out. Jackie wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

            That’s another thing—you call him Jackie. 

            Catherine never did. She hated even saying his name at all. She said it like a curse. 

            You say it like it’s everything; like the whole damn universe. 

            “I hate you!” Catherine screams, her voice shattering on the last syllable, a screech more than real words. “I fucking wish you had died, you one-legged freak!”

            Jack wants to die, right now, right here. He wants the ground to swallow him whole, to end this. To silence the voice of Catherine and the voices she’s created in his head. He hates himself the most. 

            Because she’s right, he is a freak. He can’t do what he used to be able to do. He has to slow down and think about what he’s doing and he has to be conscious about things in a way he never has before. 

            He hates himself because he’s different. Because his entire life is changed. He has a whole new reality and every day is a goddamn struggle because this is not a world meant for him. He has to deal with sidewalks that have no ramps and walking with a prosthetic, a weight he has to throw differently, overcompensate for. 

            He hates himself because he can’t move without help. Either from a metal and plastic limb or crutches or a wheelchair.

            He hates himself because he’s weaker. He hates himself because of the pain he wakes up to everyday in the limb that was there but isn’t anymore and yet feels like it still is. He hates himself because this is fine for other people but not him. 

            He was never supposed to be this way. He’s supposed to be someone that everyone else can rely on, someone who can do what others can’t and yet here he is—the one who can’t do anything anymore. 

            He was never supposed to be like this even though he knew it could happen. It’s just that he went his whole life thinking that it wouldn’t and now here he is, living in a world that wishes he didn’t exist, living in a body that he wishes he didn’t live in because it’s just so damn hard and it’s just so damn painful. 

            But one thing that hasn’t changed—he doesn’t give up. 

            Dying would be giving up and that’s not who he is. He sticks it out even when others wouldn’t. He’s sticking out his marriage, after all. 

            He doesn’t give up. 

            He won’t give up on himself. 

            He can hate himself for now, but he knows like he knows the world, that he will conquer this. He will conquer it and it will be like his disability was never a problem at all. 

            If he can handle this, the loss of a limb, the phantom pain and the loss of his best friend, he can handle anything.

            “SHUT THE FUCK UP, CATHERINE!” he yells, his hand slamming into the wall, a dull slam echoing through the house and causing her to freeze. To look at him with glassy green eyes gleaming with hatred. 

            “You disgust me,” she hisses. “I don’t want you touching me.”

            Jack loves these moments with you, the intimate ones, the ones where you kiss him with a ferocity that has him gasping against your lips, his hands finding your hips, gripping them tight, pulling you against him, your hands wandering across his body, slipping underneath his shirt, trailing across his abs, up to his pecs, touch lighting a fire in him. 

            “Need you,” you whisper against his lips, kissing him again, licking into his mouth, your tongue brushing against his, making him groan against you, his hands drifting from your hips to your ass, squeezing it and making you gasp against him, one finger flicking against his chest underneath his shirt as he walks you backwards to the bed. 

            “How do you want me?” he asks you, tone serious as your lips find his pulse point on his neck, your tongue flicking out against it, his cock throbbing painfully hard in his jeans, but a kind of pain that is good, not the kind that destroys you. 

            “Do I really have to say it?” you ask him, your eyes pupil blown and Jack thinks that’s his favourite way to see you looking at him—love and lust and desire all rolled into one. 

            “Consent, love,” he whispers and he’s delighted in the way your breath hitches, the way you lick your kiss swollen lip, eyes glassy with desire and heavy-lidded. 

            “I want you inside me, Jackie,” you whisper and that’s all the encouragement he needs, his hands lifting your shirt up and over your head, his cock twitching again at the sight of your lacy bra, the one he’s pretty sure you wore on the first date that he saw a peek at on the FaceTime all those months ago. 

            “God, pretty girl,” he groans, his hands rising up to your waist, pulling you against him as he presses a kiss to your lips again, trailing his lips from yours, down your jaw and down your neck, licking and sucking and biting and trail to your collarbone, his hands creeping up your back, unhooking your bra and helping guide it off of you while his lips never part from your skin. 

            He can’t remember the last time he touched someone like this, felt like this for someone. Most people would think Catherine, but he never felt this way with her, another piece of guilt that strangles him some days—that you make him feel a way that she never did. Catherine hated him even more after the loss of his leg, refused to let him touch her, said that he was a freak and he grew to believe it. 

            It’s why each time the two of you have had sex for the past four months, he’s kept his leg on. Even when you ask him if he wants it off, he says he doesn’t even though he really does, because he doesn’t want you to look at him like Catherine did. 

            He just can’t risk it. 

            “Jack,” you moan as he reaches your breasts, pressing kisses to them before taking your left one in his mouth, his tongue flicking against your nipple, your hands clawing at his back as he presses you down onto the bed. 

            But something happens today and pain shoots through him, not phantom pain but real pain through his thigh, something screwy with his prosthetic and he ends up on the bed beside you, hissing. 

            “Jack?! What’s wrong?! Honey, what’s wrong?!” you ask him, your tone panicked as you asses him for injuries, your hands drifting across his body, not for sex but for wounds. Your pull up his pantleg, taking in his leg, your expression growing irritated and just slightly angry. “Why the fuck does it look like you’ve had your prosthetic too tight? Or on during things it shouldn’t have been on for?”

            “It’s just the st—” he doesn’t get to finish because you cut him off, tears in your eyes. 

            “Jack! Don’t lie to me. I love you, okay? I’m in love with you and I want you to take your leg off when it needs to come off. I haven’t pushed you because I know Catherine was fucking ableist bitch, but I don’t fucking care if you have two legs or none, Jack Abbot. I just love you. It doesn’t fucking matter if she thought you were a freak because I don’t. I think you are a gorgeous and perfect and loveable and goddamn impossible with how precious you are. Your leg is not a problem, Jackie. It is beautiful, okay? Do you know? Because you survived. 

            “This says, I survived hell. This says, I survived something that most people don’t! This says you are a fuckingmiracle! And it’s also hot,” you tell him, tears pouring down your face, a strangled laugh escaping from the both of you. Jack has never had someone love him so loudly, so perfectly that it hurts him. 

            But for once the guilt is less. 

            “It’s hot?” he asks you and you laugh, your head thrown back and then you nod, your hand coming to rest against his cheek as you nod. 

            “Yeah, because it means you came home. We all carry scars, Jackie, and they all have meaning, but this…this is a scar that says I survived. It’s a scar that means I got the chance to love you. And that’s hot, okay?” And all he can do is nod as you press the softest kiss against his lips. “Now let me take care of you, okay?” And he nods again. 

            And then you help him undress, pulling his clothes off and getting down on your knees before him, hands undoing his prosthetic and gently setting it beside the bed as he guides himself backwards on the bed. 

            “I love you, Jack Abbot,” you whisper as you press a kiss against his leg, right on the scar where they repaired it. “I love you and all your scars.” And then you press another kiss against it, murmuring “beautiful” and Jack can’t help but let the tears slip down his cheeks, tears of pain and love and surprise and most of all, healing. 

            Because something in your voice tells him that it really was just Catherine. 

            That maybe he is that miracle. 

            “And I love you,” he whispers as you climb up his body, to his lips, pressing a soft and lingering kiss against them. 

            “Do you want me?” you whisper and he can feel the surprise cross his face and you arch an eyebrow. “Consent, love.”

            “Yes,” he whispers and then you shed the last of your clothing, sinking down upon his cock with a muted cry, your walls so perfect against him that he wants to cry just from that and as you begin to ride him, bouncing on him, breasts bouncing, your hand comes to his cheek, brushing a stray tear away. 

            “It’s okay to cry, Jackie. It’s always okay to cry.” And he does. Because this, sex with you, your words, your continued whisper of perfect, beautiful, I love you, you survived, miraculous all make him feel a way he never has before. 

            Loved. 

            And when it’s over and you lay beside him, arms around him, his around you, he tells you how much he loves you, how much he cares for you and how much he needed to hear what you told him tonight. 

            And your reply?

            “Tell me whenever you need to hear it, Jack. I’m here for you. I love you and I’m here for it all, the good and the bad. The ugly and the beautiful. You just need to let me be there.”

            And he’s starting to understand how one can do that. 

            He starts by letting go of the guilt. 

            Catherine didn’t deserve him when he was alive and she certainly doesn’t know that she’s gone. 

            He can live the life his best friend gave him that chance at now. 

            “I’m sorry, Dr. Abbot,” the morgue attendant says, voice somber and face pulled into an expression mock sympathy, eyes conveying how bored he is. 

            “Thank you,” Jack says, looking down at the body of Catherine, his Catherine. She’s still and quiet in a way she never was when she was alive, but even dead, she looks pissed. Face pinched and drawn tight even though it shouldn’t. 

            Maybe Jack’s just seeing what he wants. 

            But as he walks away from the body, knowing that he has to make preparations, plans, has to buy a plot, he can’t deny the feeling of relief. 

            The feeling that he can finally learn to love himself, to love the way he is. To live the life he never had. 

            To find a love she never gave him.

            And that’s when the guilt starts, the burning in his heart that he’s awful and evil and wrong. 

            Just like Catherine always said. 

            “Congratulations,” Jack whispers, throat thick, his hand in yours as he and Eve both tap Brett on the shoulders, tapping him out at his graduation ceremony. “Your dad would be so proud.” Brett looks at him with a soldier’s eyes but a little boy’s smile. 

            “I know,” he says and then he pulls Jack against him and for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t curse Jeremy for his mistake. 

            Instead, he thanks him for the second chance. 

            And promises to always be there for his son, for his wife. To protect them along with his own. 

            And when he glances over at you, he wonders if maybe he will be a father. If every dream he used to have is a possibility again. 

            Maybe. 

Epilogue

            “This child is gonna be the death of me,” you whisper to Jack, your voice that familiar soothing note, that beacon of light that it has been since he met you. Since he started calling you Starlight because you’re his North Star, his guiding light. 

            “While, yeah,” he whispers, pressing a kiss against your cheek. “He’s half you and half me. Of course he’s going to be wild.” 

            “Wild? You call him stealing your leg when we’re watching a movie, wild?” He can’t help but laugh, remembering when he took it and grabbed it, running off with it, leaving you to chase after him. 

            “In his defence,” Jack says, “he just wanted my footprint for that painting thing.”

            “Still,” you say and all he can do is laugh, pulling you onto his lap as your son dances around the lawn with the dog, the rescue loving him almost more than the two of you. “I just worry.”

            “I know,” he replies, kissing your cheek again, his hand pressing just slightly against your stomach where Baby Two grows, “but he’s us. He’ll be fine.”

            “I just don’t want the world to beat him down. Or take away his spark.”

            “We survived it didn’t we. I survived the scars she left behind and you survived the scars they left behind on you. We survived and we’ll make sure he survives.”

            “Promise?”

Across the department, you were leaning against the nurses’ station with a cup of coffee in hand. You were talking to one of the paramedics. Jack couldn't remember the man's name, but he knew he was younger than him. He was in his early thirties, tall and charming. 

The paramedic said something, and Jack watched your face light up. You laughed, not a polite laugh. Not the kind you gave patients or colleagues. It was a real laugh that made your eyes scrunch. The one that Jack loved. He watched as the paramedic mimed something with his hands, acting out what must have happened on a call, and you doubled over, covering your mouth as another laugh escaped.The paramedic grinned at you like making you smile was the easiest thing in the world.

Jack looked away.He told himself he wasn’t bothered. Except you seemed so light over there. Young, happy and beautiful. He watched you tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear as the paramedic handed you his phone. You smiled at the screen for a second before laughing again. Jack’s stomach tightened. He knew he shouldn’t stare, of course he knew that but he couldn’t seem to stop. He tried telling himself again that it was playful, friendly and nothing more. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had reached into his chest and squeezed. “Dr. Abbot?”

Jack blinked, dragging his eyes away. One of the residents was waiting beside him with a chart.

“Sorry.”

By the time he’d answered the question and looked back, the paramedic was walking toward the ambulance bay. You caught his eye and your smile was immediate and warm. Entirely for him.

“You ready?” you asked twenty minutes later, slipping your bag over your shoulder and Jack tried his best to force a smile.

“Yeah.”

You reached automatically for his hand as you walked through the parking lot. Usually he’d lace his fingers through yours. But tonight, his hand stayed loose. You noticed.

The drive home was unusually quiet. The radio hummed softly in the background, some classic rock station playing a song neither of you was really listening to. Streetlights flickered across Jack’s face as he drove. One hand on the steering wheel, the other resting heavily against the centre console. You stole another glance at him. His jaw was tight.

“You ok?”

“Mhm.”

You waited for something more, but nothing came. 

“You seem tired.”

“Long day.”

“Yeah.”

Silence settled again. You watched the city blur past the window. Normally he’d tell you about an interesting case. Ask what you wanted for dinner. Reach over at a red light to squeeze your knee. But tonight there was nothing. You shifted in your seat.

“Did something happen?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

His answers came too quickly and your stomach knotted. You knew Jack better than you knew anyone.You knew the tiny crease that appeared between his eyebrows when something was bothering him. The way he rubbed absent circles against the steering wheel with his thumb.

The way he got quieter instead of louder. He’d been doing all three since you’d left the hospital. You reached over, resting your hand gently on his forearm. He looked at it for the briefest second, then back at the road. He didn’t move away but he didn’t turn his over to hold yours either. It hurt more than you wanted to admit. 

“You know,” you said softly, “whatever it is, you can tell me.”

His grip tightened on the wheel.

“I know.”

Another red light, where usually he’d look at you and smile. He would steal a kiss or maybe two. But he just stared straight ahead until the light turned green. You looked back out of the window, your reflection staring back at you. You knew something was wrong, you just had no idea what it was. 

By the time you pulled into the driveway, the silence felt heavy enough to touch. Jack switched off the engine but didn’t make a move to get out. The dashboard lights faded until the car was swallowed by darkness.

“You coming?” you asked gently. He blinked, like he’d forgotten where he was.

“Yeah.”

He climbed out slowly, his limp just a little more pronounced after the drive. You unlocked the front door and stepped inside, kicking off your shoes. 

“You want something to drink?,” you called over your shoulder.

“Ok.”

You frowned. Usually he’d already be behind you, stealing a quick kiss while you busied yourself in the kitchen, his arms wrapping around your waist. Instead, you heard him lower himself onto the couch with a tired sigh.

“You’ll never guess what happened after you left the department.”

No answer.

“Mrs. Murphy, the little old lady in bed six? She tried to set Mateo up with her granddaughter.”

A faint hum drifted from the living room. Not quite a laugh, not even a response. You glanced around the corner. Jack was sitting exactly where you’d left him. Elbows resting on his knees. Hands clasped together, staring at nothing.

“And apparently she had photos ready.” You laughed softly. “Poor Mateo looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him.”

“Mm.”

Your smile faded. You carried the glasses into the living room, setting one on the coffee table in front of him. He didn’t reach for it. Instead, he just thanked you quietly without lifting his eyes. You settled beside him, close enough that your knees brushed.

“So,” you said, trying again. “What do you want for dinner?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Pizza?”

“Whatever you want.”

You looked at him for a long moment. Every answer was automatic. Like he wasn’t even hearing the questions. You watched him stare at the untouched glass as if he expected it to tell him something. Your chest tightened.

“Jack.”

“Hm?”

“Where are you?.”

He looked over at you now.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m not mad. I’m worried.” You turned fully toward him, tucking one leg beneath you on the couch. “You’ve been gone since we left work.”

He opened his mouth, then quickly closed it again.

You reached across the small space between you, rubbing your thumb over the sleeve of his sweater. His shoulders sagged. You searched his face. The exhaustion was there. But underneath it there was something else. Something that looked like fear. Real fear. Your stomach dropped.

“Jack,” 

Your voice softened.

“You’re scaring me, please talk to me.”

His hand settled instinctively on your leg, warm and familiar. Like it belonged there, because it did. You covered it with yours.

“I don’t care if it’s work. I don’t care if you’re angry with me. I don’t care what it is.” Your thumb stroked slowly over his knuckles. You searched his eyes. 

“Just please don’t shut me out.”

He looked down at your joined hands. Took one long, shaky breath. For a long moment, neither of you spoke. Then, with a sigh that sounded like it had been trapped inside him all day, Jack finally looked up.

“I’m not blind.”

“Jack, I don’t understand.” You shook your head.

“I’ve got some pretty obvious wear and tear,” he gestured to his leg and you felt your heart sink. 

“I am trying to deal with my mental load. I go to therapy and it’s working.” He turned to you, nodding his head like he was trying to convince you. Your heart broke a little more with every word. It took everything in you to keep from shaking sense into him. You wanted to stop him talking, kiss him and tell him how much you love him. But he needed to talk this through, you knew that even if it was killing you.

“I got so lucky when I met you. I don’t know what I did to deserve you. But I am happy with the time we’ve had together. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.” 

Your whole body tensed and your hand slowly slipped from him. He noticed the absence immediately. 

“What does that mean Jack?”

“I think,” He swallowed hard, his jaw tightened. “I think maybe it’s time we stop pretending this makes sense.” Your stomach dropped.

“No.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, like hearing you say that hurt more than he had expected.

“You deserve someone who doesn’t come with all this. Someone your age. Someone who isn’t carrying around thirty years of mistakes and bad habits.”

“I don’t want that.”

“But you should.”

“No.” Your voice came out sharper than you intended. “You don’t get to decide that.”

He blinked.

“I saw you today, you were laughing with him.”

“The paramedic?”

“He made you smile.” His voice was almost a whisper. “Really smile.”

“So?”

“So,” he laughed once, bitterly. “I couldn’t remember the last time I made you laugh like that. I watched you two together and,” He shook his head. “It just hit me. We just don’t fit.”

You stared at him, completely stunned.

“That’s what this is about?”

“It’s not just that.”

“It sounds exactly like that.”

“You deserve more than this. I’m trying to do the right thing.”

“For who?”

“For you.”

“No.” You shook your head, tears burning behind your eyes. “You’re trying to protect yourself.”

He didn’t argue.

“You think if you leave first it’ll hurt less.”

He looked down at his hands.

“You think I’ll wake up one day and realise you’re older than me?” You let out a disbelieving laugh. “Jack, I knew your age when I first met you.”

“I know.”

“I know your past. Maybe I don’t know everything, not yet. But I know enough.” 

You stood up from the couch, suddenly unsure of what to do with yourself. 

“I choose you every day, and now you’re not choosing me anymore.” 

His eyes were glistening as his hand reached for yours, trying to catch you and bring you back to him, but you stepped back.

“The paramedic,” you shook your head, raking your hands through your hair. “He’s proposing to his partner.”

Jack frowned.

“He was showing me the ring and the flowers he bought.”

Jack just stared back at you.

“And he joked that I was next,’ you laughed out a slight cry. “And I laughed, thinking about you picking out a ring, and the perfect flowers.That’s what you saw. And from that you decided to end our relationship? You didn’t talk to me, tell me you were feeling insecure? You just try and break up with me.

“No.” He stood up this time to reach for you, trying to defend it. To take it back, but he knew it was true. That was exactly what he had done.

“You didn’t trust me enough to have one conversation.”

His shoulders slumped.You gripped his face, pulling him to look at you. 

“I didn’t pick you because I couldn’t find someone else. I picked you because you’re it for me.” His hand reached up to hold yours against his face, tears spilling out as he closed his eyes. Your anger had softened into something infinitely sadder.

“I love you, I want you and I’m always going to want you. So if you want to end this,” your breath caught at the thought of that being a possibility. You swallowed the ball in your throat. 

“If that’s what you want then fine. But that’s what you want, not what I want.” 

Jack's eyes snapped open, his head shaking side to side. 

“I don’t want that. You’re what I want.” He kissed you, like he was trying to cement the truth. 

“I am so sorry.”

You lean forward until your forehead rests against his.

“If you ever get scared again,”

“I’ll talk to you.”

“You don’t get to make decisions for both of us.”

He nodded immediately.

“I won’t. I promise.”

The bedroom was quiet. Jack laid on his back, staring at the ceiling. You slipped beneath the covers beside him. For a moment, neither of you spoke. Then, almost shyly, his hand reached for yours. You smiled. His fingers threaded through yours before he turned onto his side to face you. His eyes searched yours, as though he was still looking for the moment you’d change your mind. You lifted your hand to his face. Your fingertips traced the lines beside his eyes, the silver at his temples, the familiar curve of his jaw.

“So handsome,” you murmured. He let out the smallest, embarrassed huff.

“You don’t have to keep saying that.”

“I know.”

You smiled.

“I’m saying it because it’s true.”

He looked away. You gently guided his face back towards yours. His cheeks coloured.

“You always do that.”

“What?”

“You look away whenever I compliment you.”

He smiled sheepishly.

“I don’t know what to do with it.”

“You could believe me.”

“I want to.”

“I know.”

You brushed your thumb over his cheek. His eyes glistened. You leaned forward, pressing a slow kiss to his cheek. He closed his eyes.

“I love this face.”

A quiet laugh escaped him.

“It’s just my face.”

“It’s my favourite one.”

That earned you the smile you’d been waiting for all evening.

“I’ve missed that today.”

“What?”

“Your smile.”

He ducked his head instinctively.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologise anymore.”

He loved you, you knew he did. You just wished he knew how much you loved him. You slipped your hand upon his chest resting your head against him. His heartbeat was steady beneath your ear. For a long while, neither of you spoke. His thumb stroked absent-mindedly over your hand. 

“You should try and sleep.” he murmured against your hair. 

“So should you.” 

You pulled away, looking up. Your fingers skimming along the line of his jaw. The familiar scratch of his stubble brushed against your skin. You planted a kiss on the underside of his jaw. Then another. His hand snaked up your spine, pulling you in closer. 

“You know,” you said in between kisses. He hummed slightly to tell you he was listening. 

“I still get butterflies when I’m around you.” You felt his chest rumble and he laughed lightly. 

“Is that right?” He asked, combing through your hair, pulling your head back to look at you. 

You nodded with a big grin on your face, completely unashamed of the effect that he had on you. 

“I love you so much.”

He went still under you. His throat moved as he swallowed. 

"I don't know how you do that," he said quietly. "Look at me like there's nothing wrong with me."

He exhaled, long and shaky, like something in his chest had finally loosened. 

"I love you so much it terrifies me sometimes."

You gripped onto him, rolling gently, so you were beneath him, his arms bracing himself as he steadied above you.

“Jack,’ you whispered to him. You gripped his wrist, slipping in slowly between your legs. You bit your lip to suppress the moan that threatened to slip through you. 

“Jesus, y/n,” his head dipped into your shoulder taking a deep breath, breathing you in as his fingers glided against you. 

“Do you feel that?” You asked him, breathlessly. He nodded, lifting his head to look into your eyes. 

“Yeah,” he moaned into your mouth, kissing you deeply. You reluctantly pulled away from him. 

“That’s because of you Jack,” you stifled another moan as his fingers continued to work against you. Your grip tightened at the hairs on the nap of his neck. 

“Before you’ve even kissed me, touched me. That’s what you do to me, just looking at you. Thinking of you, being close to you.”  

His free hand slid down to your waist, pulling you flush against him, and you felt the last of his hesitation give way entirely. Slowly, deliberately, your hand reached from him, feeling him through his boxers and he cursed again your mouth.

"Let me show you," you whispered against his lips. "Let me show you I mean it."

The rest of the night unfolded slowly, every touch a quiet argument against everything he'd doubted about himself. By the time you both finally slept, there wasn't a shred of that doubt left in the room

You don't know what he's dreaming about. You never really do. Only fragments ever slip through afterwards. Running, somebody shouting, the sickening weight of the nail bat in his hands, blood, fear. Always fear.

You hesitate for a moment, watching his face crease with another expression of quiet distress before making up your mind.

Carefully - so carefully - you reach across the small space between you.

"Steve..." Your voice is barely louder than a breath.

Your fingertips settle gently against his shoulder. "Easy, honey..."

The change is instantaneous.

His entire body jolts violently beneath your hand.

Before either of you has time to understand what's happening, his arm lashes out with frightening force, driven entirely by instinct, by adrenaline, by a nightmare that hasn't realised it's over yet.

You recoil on pure reflex.

His fist cuts cleanly through the space your face had occupied barely a heartbeat earlier.

For one impossible second, time seems to stop.

Steve's eyes fly open.

He isn't in the dream anymore. He's here. In his bedroom. With you.

His gaze snaps immediately to where you've instinctively shuffled backwards against the headboard, your breathing suddenly just as uneven as his, one hand still frozen in mid-air where you'd reached for him only moments before.

He stares. At you. At his own outstretched fist. Back to you again.

The colour drains from his face so quickly it's almost frightening.

The silence that follows is absolute.

Not because neither of you has anything to say.

Because neither of you remembers how.

For a long, suspended moment, neither of you moves.

Steve's arm remains frozen exactly where it landed, still outstretched between the two of you, while his chest rises and falls in short, uneven breaths that sound far too loud in the silence of the bedroom.

The realisation hits him all at once. It crashes over him with such force that his entire expression crumples.

"Oh my God." The words leave him in a whisper so strained they barely sound like his voice at all.

He jerks backwards as though the sight of his own hand has suddenly become unbearable, scrambling away from you so quickly that he nearly tumbles straight off the edge of the mattress. The bedframe creaks violently beneath the sudden movement, but he hardly seems to notice, his breathing already dissolving into something ragged and panicked.

"I..." His voice breaks. He tries again. "I-"

Nothing - his throat simply refuses to cooperate.

You can almost see the moment replaying behind his eyes, over and over again, each repetition somehow worse than the last.

His fist. Your face. The space between them. Just inches - barely inches.

"Steve," you say softly, your own heartbeat only just beginning to settle now that the initial shock has passed.

His head snaps up. "No."

The word comes out immediately, almost desperate. Not angry - never angry. As though he can't bear for you to comfort him.

"I'm okay," you tell him quickly, instinctively reaching one hand towards him before thinking better of it. "You didn't-"

"I almost..." He stops. His jaw tightens. The sentence refuses to leave his mouth. He looks physically incapable of saying the words out loud.

Instead, he drags both hands back through his hair with enough force to leave it sticking up in every direction before climbing unsteadily off the bed altogether.

"Steve..."

He backs away another step. Then another. Keeping as much distance between the two of you as the small bedroom will allow.

He won't look at you. His gaze stays fixed stubbornly on the floor, his shoulders rising and falling with each uneven breath while he shakes his head over and over again as though he's trying desperately to wake himself from yet another nightmare.

"Oh my God," he whispers again. His voice is cracking now. "I'm so sorry."

You open your mouth to answer. He speaks over you before you get the chance.

"I'm sorry." Another breath. Another shake of his head. "I'm sorry."

It's as though he doesn't know any other words anymore.

Each apology sounds quieter than the last, spoken more to himself than to you, every one carrying the same horrified disbelief that he's somehow become the very thing he's spent years trying never to be.

You watch him standing there in the darkness, wrapped not in anger but in unmistakable fear.

Not fear of the nightmare.

Fear of himself.

And somehow, you realise that frightens you far more than the fist that never reached you ever could.

Steve remains exactly where he is, standing on the opposite side of the bedroom with his back half-turned towards you, as though even looking in your direction feels like something he hasn't earned the right to do anymore. His breathing has slowed a little, but only because it's been replaced by something somehow worse - a heavy, crushing silence that settles over him until his shoulders seem to sag beneath its weight.

You carefully push the duvet aside and swing your legs over the edge of the bed.

The movement is enough to make him look up.

Immediately, he takes another step backwards.

"No." His voice is rough. "Don't."

You stop. "Steve..."

"I don't..." He shakes his head, swallowing hard. "Just... stay there."

The words don't sound like an order.

They sound like fear.

As though the only thing he can think to do is put more distance between the two of you, convinced that somehow it will make you safer.

Your heart breaks. "I'm okay."

"I know."

"No, you don't."

"I do."

"You don't."

He finally looks at you properly, and the devastation written across his face almost steals the air from your lungs.

"What if next time I don't wake up?"

The question hangs between you.

"What if..." He laughs once, bitterly, the sound catching in his throat before it can become anything real. "What if next time I don't stop in time?"

"Steve-"

"What if I actually hurt you?"

His eyes flick helplessly towards his own hand again.

"What if one day..." He trails off, scrubbing both hands over his face as though he can physically push the thoughts away. "What if one day I screw something up so badly that I can't take it back?"

You realise then that he isn't really talking about tonight anymore.

Tonight simply cracked something open.

This is every fear he's ever carried quietly inside himself.

Every time he's worried he's said the wrong thing, every moment he's wondered whether he was enough, every lingering doubt that, despite trying so desperately to be good, he might somehow still become another person who lets somebody down.

"I keep thinking..." His voice is barely audible now. "I keep thinking that one day I'm gonna make some stupid mistake." He gives another tiny, humourless laugh. "And you're gonna realise you deserve somebody better."

Your eyes sting, but he doesn't notice.

"Somebody who doesn't wake up swinging. Somebody who doesn't have..." He gestures vaguely towards himself, unable to find the words. "...all this." His shoulders rise in a shaky breath. "I don't know." He looks down at the floor. "...Somebody safer."

The word lands like a punch.

You don't even think. You cross the room. He hears your footsteps and instinctively retreats another pace.

"No."

You keep walking.

"Please."

Another step backwards. "I don't want you anywhere near me right now."

"I do."

"Baby..." His voice cracks completely. "What if-"

"You won't."

"You don't know that."

"I do."

"No, you don't."

By now, you're close enough to reach him. Steve instinctively pulls his hand back behind him before you can take it, so you simply reach for the other one instead. His fingers are ice cold.

He tries to pull away. Not forcefully, just enough to spare you from touching him. You refuse to let go.

For a long moment, neither of you speaks.

Then, very quietly, you ask, "You know what I was actually scared of?"

He doesn't answer straight away.

Eventually, without looking up, he whispers, "What?"

Your thumb brushes gently across his knuckles. "That you were having that nightmare alone."

His head lifts, finally, and his eyes meet yours. You feel his hand tremble inside your own.

"I wasn't scared of you." Your voice is so soft it almost disappears into the silence. "I was scared for you."

The last of the distance between you seems to collapse all at once. Not the space in the room. The space he'd spent the last ten minutes desperately trying to build between himself and the person he loved most.

And for the first time since he'd woken up, Steve stops looking at you like someone he needs to protect from himself.

Steve's hand trembles inside yours, though whether from adrenaline or sheer exhaustion, neither of you could really say. His eyes have dropped back to the floor again, unable to hold your gaze for more than a heartbeat at a time, as though looking at you directly only reminds him how close he'd come to something he can't bear to think about.

You squeeze his fingers gently. "Steve."

He doesn't answer. Instead, he gives the smallest shake of his head, blinking hard against the tears gathering in his eyes.

"I can't..." His voice fractures completely. "I can't look at you."

Your heart aches.

Very carefully, so slowly he has every opportunity to pull away if he wants to, you lift your joined hands between the two of you.

"Hey." Your voice is barely louder than the quiet hum of the refrigerator drifting down the hallway. "Look at me."

For a second, you don't think he will. Then, almost reluctantly, his eyes find yours. They're already full of tears.

You guide his hand upwards until his palm comes to rest against your cheek. The contact is feather-light, almost hesitant.

The instant he realises what you've done, he tries to snatch it back as though your skin has burned him.

"No."

You hold it there. Not forcefully, just enough to stop him retreating again.

"Steve."

His breathing catches. "I almost-"

"I know."

"I almost hit you."

"But you didn't."

"I tried to."

"No." You shake your head gently beneath his hand. "You had a nightmare."

He closes his eyes. "I don't care."

"I do."

When he opens them again, you're still looking at him with exactly the same tenderness as before. No fear, no anger, no hesitation.

"You had a nightmare," you repeat softly. "You woke up." A pause. "You stopped." Another. "You apologised."

His face crumples a little more with every sentence.

"You've spent the last twenty minutes being more frightened for me than you've been for yourself."

You slide your other hand over his, gently closing his fingers against your cheek instead of letting them hover there uncertainly.

"That isn't what dangerous people do."

A tear slips free before he can stop it, and you brush it away with your thumb.

"You know what you've done since the second we met?"

He doesn't answer.

"You've walked me home because you didn't want me crossing the car park alone."

Another tear.

"You've learnt exactly how I take my tea."

Another.

"You carry the heavy shopping without me even asking. You check that I've locked the front door when I'm anxious. You always sleep closer to the edge of the bed because you know I like the wall."

His shoulders begin to shake.

"You remember when I'm overwhelmed before I do. You notice when I'm pretending I'm fine. You have spent every single day we've been together making me feel safer than I've ever felt with another person."

Your own voice trembles now.

"So don't stand here and tell me you're dangerous because your subconscious mistook my hand for a monster."

That does it. The last fragile thread he'd been clinging to finally snaps.

A sob tears out of him before he can swallow it back, his knees almost giving way beneath the weight of everything he'd been trying so desperately to hold together.

He folds forwards instinctively, forehead dropping against your shoulder as though he's finally run out of strength to keep himself upright.

"I'm so sorry," he chokes out, the words muffled against your jumper. "I'm so, so sorry."

You wrap both arms around him without hesitation. "I know."

"I scared you."

"You did."

Another sob. "I hate that."

"I know."

"I never..." His voice disappears completely.

You simply hold him tighter, one hand smoothing slowly through his hair while the other rubs gentle circles across his back.

For the first time since he'd woken up, Steve lets himself cry properly. Not quietly, not politely, not trying to hide it. He just... cries.

And you stay exactly where you are, holding him together until he remembers, little by little, that the person clinging to him wasn't afraid of him at all.

She was just afraid of losing him to the nightmare he'd carried home.

Neither of you even attempts to go back to bed.

The bedroom has become too tangled up with everything that happened there, and besides, neither of you is tired anymore. Not really. The adrenaline has long since burned itself out, leaving behind only that strange, hollow exhaustion that arrives after you've cried harder than your body knows what to do with.

So, sometime around four in the morning, the two of you drift quietly into the kitchen.

The lights stay off - there doesn't seem much point in turning them on when dawn is already beginning to soften the edges of the sky outside.

Steve fills the kettle as quietly as he can, wincing apologetically when it clicks on with a sound that somehow feels far louder than it really is. You wrap an old blanket around both of your shoulders while you wait, neither of you speaking very much, because there doesn't seem to be anything left that still needs saying.

By the time the tea is ready, you're sitting on the kitchen floor with your backs resting against the cupboards, two steaming mugs forgotten on the tiles between you as the first pale streaks of morning begin slipping through the window above the sink.

The silence isn't uncomfortable, it's simply tired.

Steve hasn't quite returned to himself yet.

He still startles a little whenever your hand brushes against his, still catches himself glancing at your face as though checking, over and over again, that you're really alright. Every now and then you catch him looking at you with the same wounded expression that had broken your heart in the bedroom, and each time you simply smile back until, little by little, his shoulders loosen another fraction.

The conversation drifts wherever exhausted conversations tend to go. Half-finished thoughts. Quiet apologies that no longer need repeating. Long stretches where neither of you says anything at all.

At some point, without either of you really noticing, your tea grows cold.

The warmth of the blanket, the gentle hush of the early morning and the simple relief of having him beside you begin pulling at the edges of your consciousness.

You don't fight it. Instead, you shuffle a little closer until your shoulder brushes his.

Steve glances down immediately. "You okay?"

You hum softly. "Mhm."

Another minute passes. Then, almost absent-mindedly, you let your head come to rest against his shoulder. Your fingers find his beneath the blanket, threading themselves through his with the same unconscious familiarity they've done a thousand times before.

You sigh. Not from pain this time - from comfort.

Steve goes perfectly still. "...Baby?"

You don't answer. Your breathing has already begun to settle into the slow, even rhythm of sleep.

For a few long seconds, he doesn't dare move. His gaze lingers on your hand curled trustingly around his before dropping to where your cheek is resting against his shoulder, completely relaxed, your forehead tucked lightly against his neck.

You're asleep. Not despite what happened - after it. With him. Because of him. Something inside his chest gives way all over again, though this time it isn't panic. It's relief.

Slowly, so carefully that he hardly disturbs you at all, he lifts your joined hands to his lips and presses the gentlest kiss across your knuckles before turning his head to kiss your hair.

"...Thank you," he whispers.

You don't hear him; you're already dreaming again.

Outside, morning arrives exactly as it always does.

A car rumbles past the house. Somewhere down the street, a neighbour opens their front door before leaving for work. A bird lands briefly on the windowsill above the sink, chirps once, then disappears again into the growing light. The kettle cools quietly on the counter. The world keeps moving.

And somewhere between the nightmare he'd woken from and the sunrise he'd been too frightened to watch, Steve finally begins to understand something he'd been utterly incapable of believing in the middle of the night.

The fact that you'd fallen asleep in his arms without a second thought wasn't proof that he'd failed to protect you.

It was proof that, even after everything, you still felt safest there.

And perhaps the greatest measure of a gentle man was never that he believed himself incapable of causing harm.

It was that the possibility of it terrified him enough to spend every single day choosing tenderness instead.

dividers: saradika-graphics