Chapter Text
The neon green numbers of your alarm clock blink over to the cursed hour as you stare blankly up at your ceiling. Nothing good happens after 3AM. You know this. You dial his number anyways.
He picks up on the second ring.
“Hello?” Jack answers, a frantic edge to his voice.
“It’s me,” you say.
He sighs in relief. After a second, he adds: “You okay?”
You hear the worry in his voice, and feel a tinge of guilt over contacting him so late.
“Can’t sleep,” you reply.
There’s another pause.
“Thought it was just me…” Jack murmurs.
Your heart thuds in your ears. And you decide to go out on a limb.
“Can I come over?” you ask.
No response.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three – your text notification dings in your ear. You glance at it. He just sent you his address.
“I’ll make the coffee,” Jack says, and hangs up.
So that’s how you find yourself sitting on Jack’s couch at 3:26AM. You cradle a mug of coffee in your hand, staring down at the dark liquid, watching steam trail off it into nothing. Jack sits across from you on the couch with his own mug. There’s an empty seat cushion between you, but the gap feels so wide and empty it might as well be a ravine. You look at him.
“We’re about to say some shit, aren’t we?” you ask.
Jack takes another sip of his coffee and sighs. “Probably,” he says.
“This is gonna suck.”
“Definitely.”
He grins at you. You shake your head, a smile breaking through your tense expression as you look back at your coffee. There’s maybe a half second of quiet before you break again.
“I love you, Jack,” you say.
You meet his eyes, and he nods.
“I love you too,” Jack says. “Always.”
You blink back tears, and look away. “You go – say whatever you’re gonna say – I… I’m ready to hear it now.”
“Okay,” Jack says, his voice somehow soft and steady at the same time. “But let me be clear, I want this to be a conversation. If it veers too far one way or the other, I’m shutting it down. We’re not fighting, and we’re not fucking.”
You sit with his statement for a moment, and feel guilt claw at your heart. You didn’t come over expecting either of those things to happen, but given the track record between you two, his boundary isn’t out of pocket. You remind yourself that you’re as much a part of this mess as he is, and nod.
“Agreed,” you say, and feel another stab of guilt as Jack relaxes.
There’s another brief moment of silence. Jack reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper – pieces of paper, you realize as he unfolds them. They’re covered front to back in his scribbled, barely legible handwriting.
“I’ve thought about everything I’ve needed to say to you for years,” Jack says. “It’s actually one of the first things my therapist had me do; write a letter to you.”
Your eyes widen as you realize he’s holding that letter. Jack sets it on the empty couch cushion between you two, and your fingers itch to grab it and read it but you stay still. Frozen in place.
“I’m not gonna read it,” he continues, “Mostly because it was for me, not you. But I wanted you to know that, and know that I’ve thought about this, and that I’m trying to be honest and sincere with everything I’m about to say.”
You can’t bring yourself to speak so you just nod.
“I hurt you,” Jack admits. “I hurt you worse than I’ve ever hurt anybody. I hurt you with my words, with my choices, with my own inaction and unwillingness to deal with my issues. I was selfish. I was hypocritical. I was mean. I let my trauma run amuck in our relationship. I abandoned you, and rejected you when you tried to reach out to me, when you tried to fix things.”
Tears race down your cheeks faster than you can blink them back. Jack keeps going.
“I am so sorry, Grace,” he says, voice breaking. “I’m sorry for all of the hurtful things I said and did to you. I’m sorry for blaming you. I’m sorry for breaking your trust. I’m sorry for every time we fought, every time I yelled at you, every time I swore at you. I’m sorry for all of the worry and pain and heartbreak I caused you. I’m sorry I wasn’t the person I promised you I’d be. I’m sorry for being a coward, and not facing my problems. I’m sorry for throwing away the life we built, and the future we’d planned.”
You’re shaking. You have to set the coffee down on the end table otherwise it’ll all spill over.
“I’m sorry you had to walk away,” Jack finishes, struggling through his own tears. “And I’m sorry I pushed you to that point.”
You try to breathe, but it gets strangled by your tears. Part of you feels so deeply vindicated you want to scream. And part of you, the part that had waited for so long to hear those words from those lips, feels like the whole world is right again.
So you cry.
You cry in relief over hearing his admissions. You cry for the version of you that wanted this so badly but had resigned to it being an impossibility. You cry for the still-sore wounds his words irritate.
You cry.
Jack shifts in his seat, but he stays put. He’s crying too though not quite as hard as you are. Eventually, you wipe away enough of your tears to speak.
“When we were deployed,” you say. “That mission, I remember thinking ‘This is it. This is where I lose Jack.’ Every fucking step we took. I was convinced that’s where we would end. And then again, every fucking day in that hospital, all those hours I spent by your bedside waiting for you to wake up. I thought ‘This is it. This is where I lose Jack.’ And then again, sitting with you through PT with the threat of civilian life hanging over us, I thought ‘This is it. This is where I lose Jack.’ But the truth is, I don’t know when I lost you. I just remember looking across the bed one night and seeing a stranger instead of you. And that broke something inside of me, Jack.”
You spare a glance in his direction. He’s crying. You see shame, and guilt, and heartbreak on his face. And you watch as he doesn’t shy away from it. He doesn’t hide from it, he sits with it.
And he listens. He hears you.
“I thought I was going crazy,” you say. “I thought there was no way we could go through all the shit we did for it to just fall apart like that. And it felt like a fucking bullet in the gut having to stand there begging you to do anything that would keep me from walking out the door. And instead of taking an ounce of accountability, you threw every mistake I’d ever made back in my face.”
Jack hangs his head, unable to meet your eyes any longer. His hand clenches down on the couch pillow, knuckles turning white, coffee cup long-abandoned on a nearby table.
“Of all the things I regret, I regret that day the most,” he admits. “I think that was when I finally realized how badly I’d fucked up, and I lost it. I’m sorry. I — No, I’m just sorry. You deserved so much more from me, Grace.”
You wipe more tears away. You read the sincerity on Jack’s face as he looks up at you again. Your heart twists in your chest.
“So much more…” Jack says. “You deserve the world, and I should’ve been the person to give it to you, and I did a piss poor job when I had the chance.”
He uses the back of his hand to brush away a few of his tears. Then he reaches across the couch to take your hand, but stops himself before touching you.
“I could spend all night giving reasons for my past actions because believe me, I’ve spent a significant amount of time picking myself apart, but the bottom line is I hurt you, and I didn’t get help when I should have, and I’m sorry,” he says.
Whatever remained of the defenses around your heart crumble and crack. Your residual ire can’t hold up against the weight of his words. Your breath shutters and spurts and then evens out again.
“Thanks,” you whisper, and the word lingers in the air between you.
Neither of you speaks for what feels like an eternity. You try to reorder your thoughts, but it’s a pretty useless task. You run your hands back through your hair.
“Can we, um, take five?” you ask. “I just…I need some air.”
“Yeah,” Jack replies. “‘Course. Yeah.”
You get up off the couch and beeline for the balcony, opening the door and stepping out into the dark of early morning Pittsburgh.