[ He holds her tight in return. A perfect rock, barren and solid. He does not, himself, cry, nor does he drain her of her lifeforce and use it to level the cabin so that it's nothing but rubble above them, even if it's tempting. ]
I don't know.
[ All his theories stay locked up. It's not that he doesn't trust her, when she's the only person it couldn't have been; she wasn't feigning that Odinsleep. He isn't angry with her. He just doesn't have the energy for blame and vengeance and paranoia. Her hair smells rich, though not unpleasant, an intensely Jem smell. She's still a little fuck-messy, sleep crusted. He picks her up. ]
I don't want to talk about that.
[ What if he doesn't come back? What if he comes back wrong? What if John can't love him anymore, if it's vanished out of sheer self-defense? What if it was Ianthe? What if it was Murphy? What if this, like everything else since the world began, is John's fault? ]
I want to have a bath.
[ So that's where they're going, to the nearby pond that still serves as a washroom until they get a real hot tub put in. ]
[Okay, because they’re already moving, and Jem’s wrapped her arms around his shoulders and buried her face into the side of his, then into his shoulder. Briefly, she catches Danny’s eye on the way out, and she resigns herself to being angry later.
For now there’s this: crisp cold, a slight shiver when she’s set down near the water. She strips off with some reluctance, makes a face when the cold hits her skin, makes a noise like a pathetic little huff when she drags Danny’s shirt over her head.
When John’s naked, she shoves herself back into his space, presses her cold hands along his back, her colder nose against his chest, says:] Just dunk me in, I can’t do it. It’s too cold.
John doesn't flinch at the shock of the water, or the contrast of body heat and its piercing cold. He regulates her body temperature without really thinking about it or asking, gently redistributing cold skin level blood inwards, upwards. Only then does he dip her beneath the water like a baptism, bringing them both beneath the surface for a long time before breaking up again and drawing in strong, deep breaths, hair streaming, eyes streaming, cold all over. "Fuck," he breathes, feeling clarified by it. Sopping wet and tight-jawed, all his years so visible.
"Really need to figure out a bath," he murmurs. Maybe as a surprise for when House gets back.
She holds her breath, and doesn't count the seconds. Three, ten, forty - her lungs burn when they break the surface, air sucked in through her nose greedily. She doesn't untangle herself; she holds on tighter, greedier for the solid comfort of his body, buries her nose into the crook of his neck and says, breathless: "So long as it has hot water."
Maybe some heating stones; anything, really, to cut through the cold air of winter. "Danny could build one. It'll keep him busy." Something to do now that the shed is finished; something to direct his anger at, for a little while. Distracting John is another animal entirely; all Jem's got is wandering hands, the drag of her tongue to catch a stray drop of water on his neck. When she moves back to look at him, to take his face in her hands and kiss his nose, it's just another distracted before she pushes him under, and pushes back, grinning.
"Of course. Gotta have hot water," he agrees; he knows there's plumbing beyond the city limits, thinks he could find someone in town to help set something up if they dug out a room for it.
Distracted by the mechanics of building himself a bathroom, John doesn't grin; doesn't follow her through the water; doesn't respond to her hot little tongue on his cold neck. His dick twitches valiantly against the cold, but it has a mind of its own. Instead he just watches her, a little hollow, distant, studying all her wet vitality.
Finally he does move — it's not a playful chase. He's like a shark, certain and immediate propulsion to get her back again. This time he grapples her with an ease in his body, twisting an arm behind her and pulling her in against him, back to front, reaching down through the water with his other hand to grip her by the cunt.
"Danny tried so hard to fuck you awake," he murmurs. "You were like a little doll in his arms."
Her toes curl under the water. The pull and twist of her arm is uncomfortable, a little tight - it doesn’t hurt. His hand is warm, right against her cunt, and he speaks, and her mind goes blissfully empty for a long second. Just hot breath in her ear, the sound of mental static. Her breath hitches, body squirming against him. “You watched?”
This is against her instincts; her instinct is to say sorry. To keep saying sorry. Sorry she slept so long, sorry she slept through the violation to their home, sorry she slept at all. She doesn’t think he wants to keep hearing the sorry’s from her. So she says instead: “Daddy, did you watch?”
Her free hand reaches down, palm over the back of his hand. She murmurs, eyelashes fluttering, wet droplets against her cheeks: “Did you - did you tell him how?”
"I showed him how," John says, spinning them in the water, carrying her to the rocky edge, so he has somewhere to press her against. It's slick-wet, difficult to get a hold on, and he isn't gentle as he hitches her hips up it. Doesn't ask, or play a little game, or even kiss her, just puts her face down over the freezing surface and pulls her legs apart.
"I made you come so many times," he tells her. "But it wasn't my dick you wanted, hey. Or Danny's."
cw: jealousy as kink, under-negotiated kink, continued faux incest kink/daddy kink
There's a small noise of protest against the graze of her chest against the rocks, her knees, her cheek. She wants to keep her arms behind her back, fingers digging tight into her forearms, the way she does in bed, against softer fur. Instead they grasp at the wet-slip of rock, toes slipped into whatever small crevice they can find, and she looks at John over her shoulder, hair clinging to her back, her shoulders, her face, nose brushing his palm, hips shifting back.
She says, truthfully: "That's not true, daddy." She's shivering, just a little. Cold, bracing, wanting. "I want it, you can feel how much I want it. Daddy, please."
His fingers are cold when they press into her, two to the knuckle, careless of if her cunt is ready for it. Maybe wanting, a little, for her not to be. even as she strains her hips and offers it up to him.
It's spongy hot, and he twists his fingers in her, arm splashing the water a little as he fucks her with them, just enough to establish she's slick with more than just the pond, warm and wet and hungry to get fucked. Then he pulls his fingers back out and moves them upwards, to his actual goal.
"Yeah?" his voice is light; maybe he really is angry with her. Not jealous, not of Billy, but grieving and wishing she'd been there, awake, or maybe that it had been her, it's a mess inside his head. "Tell me how much."
Everything slows down, or feels like it does; water droplets across her nose, her cheeks, into her eyes. She's stuffed full and then she isn't; she thinks she understands, then she doesn't, but it's not unfamiliar territory. Her breath hitches, clarity coming slow, creeping. John's fingers are hot against her hole, but he looks emptyemptyempty, just like -
She licks the pond water from her lips. She could kiss it from his, if he'd let her. She turns her head instead, nose dragging, mouth against his wrist, just briefly, before it hurts too much to strain. She says: "Daddy, fuck me, please," and pushes her ass back, and means I'm sorry, and it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, even if they aren't, and maybe things aren't. She still wants. "I want it, I want it, I need you, I need you," and her voice is catching, ass pushing back. She says, sincerely: "You can fuck me like he fucks you, like you fuck Danny, I'll give you it."
He shifts his hand so he can put fingers in her mouth to stop her talking, breaches her soft lips and her asshole at the same time. One slick finger, testing the give, and then a second almost immediately like he's already confident she can take it. If she's begging for it she can take it.
John could easily make this more comfortable for her in so many ways, but he doesn't. Likes watching her shiver and twist, hearing the noises she makes around the intrusion in her mouth. He hitched himself up onto the slick rock, grabs a jut of it near her shoulder that's so sharp it cuts his palm. Thigh all along the soft white of her ass, knee digging into stone, the other leg keeping her open. He'd be here whether or not she begged for it, the thick head of his cock plugging up her tiny little hole. He's too big with not enough prep, but that's exactly how he fucks Danny, so she's getting what she asked for.
The shaking keeps going for a long moment; rattled trembling as she grunts around his fingers, whines low in her throat, aching and bracing up on her forearms. His fingers are heavy on her tongue, they taste like pond water and salt, like John. It hurts, and stays hurting, for a while. Feels like too much, feels too full, too everything. Her hands close into fists, sharp edges of rock digging into her ribs, her chest, her hips. The pain is more clarifying than the cold, keeps her present, stops her drifting off.
She sucks in a deep, deep breath through her nose. She pushes up onto her palms, back against his front, slipping, a little, brows furrowing, eyes wetwetwet. Her teeth graze his knuckles, breath fast, a little agitated. Experimentally, she drags her hips forward, pulling along the length of him, trembling with the effort, worse still with the effort to push back with no easy glide, no lube, so slick-easy slip, just water, just Johnjohnjohn.
She cranes her head, mouth closed around his fingers, tongue against the pads, his knuckles, drool slipping down, wetter than her ass feels, and she looks at him with those big blue eyes, wetter still, and it's fine, it's okay, she pulls forward, pushes back, clenching around him tight, and whines, needy, desperate, wounded.
All of Jem so wet and easy except for here, where she's barely opening for him, muscle fluttering and skin dragging with unpleasant friction. She moves on him and John grunts hard and lets his weight sink him in further, head popped past the first muscles which slide cruelly tight down his cock. It hurts more than it feels good. He keeps going anyway, digging away with his hips, fucking just a little more, a little more into this tight little hole.
He gets about halfway before there's blood; he pulls out, heals her, and after a moment to adjust the angle, buries most of his big dick in her vagina instead. Groans at the inviting wet of her, she's just so wet all the time, wonders if there's still Billy's cum in there, Danny's, fuck.
But it's only a layover fuck; he pulls out lubricated and tries her ass again with more success, screwing into her, all his concentration entirely on the place they're joined, so much he nearly loses his erection. Shrinking just slightly allows him to slip home, and then he digs his bloodied knee harder into the cruel rock and starts to ride her, working himself back up, masturbating with her tormented little body like she's asleep again.
There’s the sting and then there isn’t. There’s the briefest, nicest moment of pleasure when he lubes himself up inside of her, and then there’s the uncomfortable fullness, the anticipation of feeling good that is a slow, torturous climb rather than anything else.
She hiccups around his fingers. Sucks, like it’s a comfort. Her hands squeeze his wrist before they let go - and whether he keeps her upright or lets her rest her head back against the cool of the rocks doesn’t really matter - to reach one behind him, resting whatever piece of flesh she can reach. His hip, maybe, or an arm. The other one slips first to feel where he’s breaching; to feel the swell of him pushing in, making room. He feels so fucking big still; like if he pushes to the hilt she’ll be feeling him in her guts for days after. Like every time she sits down, the shape and length of him will be there. It hurts, but the sigh she lets out is pleased, even if it’s also watery.
The hand moves, in the end. It dips down to her front, elbow grazing painfully on the rocks so that her fingers and circle her clit lazily. Her eyelids droop slightly; everything goes a little numb, save for the dull flashes of pleasure that she drags out of herself. She feels like she’s floating; head made of cotton, but not quite the syrupy way Eddie brings out in her. It feels borderline; like she’s almost there, save for the instinct to stay alert, to listen to every change in John’s breathing, every change to his thrusts. She sighs around his fingers and swallows, moans in a reedy, high pitched keen when he fucks in deeper.
He gets a hand under her so he can fill one palm with her rock-scraped tit, mounts her like an animal, teeth in the skin of her back to keep her there, keep her good for him. Fucks her like that — like he'd fuck Danny, brutal slap-slap-slap against her ass without a thought for anything except how her body can make him cum.
When he feels that bright peak drawing closer from his mercantile determination, he simply does what he did to try and wake her, slips into her nerve endings and electrocutes her clit, swells her cunt up hot and ready, kickstarts an intense little orgasm. She's awake to feel it, this time, the possessive way he simply takes what belongs to him, the perfect execution of pleasure she has no control over her, one peak barely subsiding before he forces her into another, this time joining her, flooding her ass with a broken sob.
When he's done, he's crying softly against her back. "Sorry," he finally tells her in a ragged whisper. "Baby, I'm so sorry." For letting House die. For not being there to wake her up. For using her to offload a little of his screaming grief.
She’s shaking through the orgasms, thinks maybe she screamed a little through the shock of the second, and feels a little embarrassed about it. But she’s breathing hard too, and John’s crying at her back, and she doesn’t have time, really, to sink all the way into whatever cottony, cloudy headspace is coming on her.
Instead she reaches for the hand over her tit, coaxes it into her own and threads her finger through his. She squeezes it tight, holds it close to where her heart is hammering in her chest, thumb gently stroking over his knuckle. She’s aching everywhere, not all of it is pleasant. Not all of it is terrible. “Don’t pull out yet,” is what she manages to say, voice hoarse, and realises, belated, that she’s crying too. “Stay like this with me, please.”
Close, she means. Skin to skin. It takes more energy than she really has to twist a little, just enough to knock her forehead against his. This somehow feels more deeply intimate than his cock inside her, than the wet stick of their flesh together. She says, and maybe she means it reassuringly, maybe she just means to make him laugh despite how horribly unfunny it all is: “You fucked me nicer than you fuck Danny. But I’ll forgive you, if you stay here with me for a little longer.”
"Okay," he snuffles, wet. "Okay, I won't — go anywhere, but I gotta, mm."
He shifts, weight onto a different knee, shuddering a little whine as he does in fact ease slowly out of her ass, replaces his dick immediately with his fingers just to heal where he's hurt her somewhere deep inside, the bright thalergy of her blood smeared between them.
"I won't go," he promises, but he just, he needs her — closer, wants to be able to hold her tighter, maybe climb in under her lovely skin. "I won't, I'm with you." She's with him, awake and alive, thank god thank god. He kisses her shoulderblade, her neck, tries to peel her around a little so he can kiss her throat and face and mouth.
She feels a little like a doll right now. She’s never been especially easy to direct, she thinks; before, when she was still just raw nerves and broken, she would have rather bit than roll over with her belly up. This is nice, though, even if she and John are both crying, and even if there are parts of her that ache and sting. This is safe, this is trust.
She lets him twist her around, and she would go all the way if she could bear to lose the fingers stuffed inside of her. She can’t. Not yet. Half around, she goes very sweet under his mouth, and then kisses him sweeter with a hand on his cheek, and after that sweeter still when she kisses his nose.
He's going to cry again, which should be more embarrassing than it is; he barely ever cries, had thought that level of emotion lost to him, but it's here now between the tangle of their bodies. It's here for Jem kissing his nose, for the image of House's slumped body that he sees every time he closes his eyes for any length of time, for the aftershocks of sex still rippling through his nerves alongside the cold. He tucks his face away and sniffles and weeps hot tears, impossible to ever mistake for a god.
"Sorry," he says again, muffled, even with her reassurances, this time apologizing for being an ugly wreck, for taking his suffering and using it to make things worse for everyone, like always. "Sorry, I just need to — splash my face." The water is right there, and he wants to retreat to it, not running away but trying to shock himself out of his misery with the clean cold.
“Okay.” There’s not much else for it. When he’s pulled away, created enough space between then for her to slip back down into the cold, Jem winces and splashes her own face, wipes at her cheeks and sinks down to her chin.
When Kieren died, Jem didn’t leave her room for seven days. She barely ate a thing. She cried so much her eyes stopped being wet. She knows now that he was back within weeks. She knows now that House will be back with them within weeks.
It doesn’t feel reassuring, today. The loss is too new. The grief is too raw, and Jem doesn’t know House the way John does, and Jem cannot possibly love House the way that John does, but loss is loss, and she feels a horrible swell of guilt for having been right there. That she fell asleep at all.
She watches John for a long time, doing what he has to do. He doesn’t look like a god at all, but Jem’s really only ever saw a man, even with his eyes.
She ducks her head under the water. Counts and holds her breath until her burning lungs force her back to the surface. After this she reaches for John’s arm, pulls him back towards her and wraps herself around his middle, presses her face to his chest and holds on very tight. “I think,” she says, with less of a tremble in her voice. “That we should have tea, and eat something. And then we should drag Danny back inside and lie down for a little while, until it’s late enough to drink something stronger. Then we should all be really morose while listening to the cannibal album, because I think House would find it really funny and a huge ego boost if we all get really drunk about it.”
John gathers her in, kisses the top of her head, and holds her. He feels a multifaceted kind of awful, but this is nice. Carefully, he heals her - physically, the only kind he can manage. Washes her up with gentle hands.
"Okay," he says quietly. He feels strangely peaceful. "Let's do that."
She’ll never really be used to the way John is able to make the physical sting and the aches disappear; the way he’s able to get down into the flesh, straight through the muscle and into the nerve endings to make it all better. It’s nice. It’s nicer to be held.
She doesn’t bother dressing, really, when she drags him out of the cold water. She’s holding their clothes against her front like a shield against the wind with one arm, taking his hand with the other hand and leading him home. From there it’s harder, she knows, to exist or be peaceful. It’s a house without House. It’s a bed missing a key component. There are so many corners of this cabin which House should occupy and simply is not.
It’s not easy to ignore. It’s easier to pretend he’s at work while she fixes the tea, still naked, thawing out only by the grace of the fire. It’s easier to imagine he could come back later, in a matter of hours, to cook, to fill up the terrible silence that he’s left behind. Jem’s never been good at grieving, or comforting - she’s decent at tea making, though, so that’s what she does. She makes them a pot, lets it heat them through. She sits on John’s knee for a while, with her face pressed to his shoulder and her fingers stroking his back. After this she drags Danny back inside and puts them all to bed, either side of John, and she strokes John’s hair like she’s doing a dozen times before.
It feels a little like waiting for the clock to hit 5pm, but of course there’s no clock, and of course House isn’t coming home. At the very least, for the rest of the night, she doesn’t cry again.
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no subject
I don't know.
[ All his theories stay locked up. It's not that he doesn't trust her, when she's the only person it couldn't have been; she wasn't feigning that Odinsleep. He isn't angry with her. He just doesn't have the energy for blame and vengeance and paranoia. Her hair smells rich, though not unpleasant, an intensely Jem smell. She's still a little fuck-messy, sleep crusted. He picks her up. ]
I don't want to talk about that.
[ What if he doesn't come back? What if he comes back wrong? What if John can't love him anymore, if it's vanished out of sheer self-defense? What if it was Ianthe? What if it was Murphy? What if this, like everything else since the world began, is John's fault? ]
I want to have a bath.
[ So that's where they're going, to the nearby pond that still serves as a washroom until they get a real hot tub put in. ]
no subject
[Okay, because they’re already moving, and Jem’s wrapped her arms around his shoulders and buried her face into the side of his, then into his shoulder. Briefly, she catches Danny’s eye on the way out, and she resigns herself to being angry later.
For now there’s this: crisp cold, a slight shiver when she’s set down near the water. She strips off with some reluctance, makes a face when the cold hits her skin, makes a noise like a pathetic little huff when she drags Danny’s shirt over her head.
When John’s naked, she shoves herself back into his space, presses her cold hands along his back, her colder nose against his chest, says:] Just dunk me in, I can’t do it. It’s too cold.
no subject
"Really need to figure out a bath," he murmurs. Maybe as a surprise for when House gets back.
no subject
Maybe some heating stones; anything, really, to cut through the cold air of winter. "Danny could build one. It'll keep him busy." Something to do now that the shed is finished; something to direct his anger at, for a little while. Distracting John is another animal entirely; all Jem's got is wandering hands, the drag of her tongue to catch a stray drop of water on his neck. When she moves back to look at him, to take his face in her hands and kiss his nose, it's just another distracted before she pushes him under, and pushes back, grinning.
cw: undernegotiated kink
Distracted by the mechanics of building himself a bathroom, John doesn't grin; doesn't follow her through the water; doesn't respond to her hot little tongue on his cold neck. His dick twitches valiantly against the cold, but it has a mind of its own. Instead he just watches her, a little hollow, distant, studying all her wet vitality.
Finally he does move — it's not a playful chase. He's like a shark, certain and immediate propulsion to get her back again. This time he grapples her with an ease in his body, twisting an arm behind her and pulling her in against him, back to front, reaching down through the water with his other hand to grip her by the cunt.
"Danny tried so hard to fuck you awake," he murmurs. "You were like a little doll in his arms."
cw: fake incest kink
This is against her instincts; her instinct is to say sorry. To keep saying sorry. Sorry she slept so long, sorry she slept through the violation to their home, sorry she slept at all. She doesn’t think he wants to keep hearing the sorry’s from her. So she says instead: “Daddy, did you watch?”
Her free hand reaches down, palm over the back of his hand. She murmurs, eyelashes fluttering, wet droplets against her cheeks: “Did you - did you tell him how?”
cw: jealousy as kink
"I made you come so many times," he tells her. "But it wasn't my dick you wanted, hey. Or Danny's."
cw: jealousy as kink, under-negotiated kink, continued faux incest kink/daddy kink
She says, truthfully: "That's not true, daddy." She's shivering, just a little. Cold, bracing, wanting. "I want it, you can feel how much I want it. Daddy, please."
🚨🚨🚨🚨
It's spongy hot, and he twists his fingers in her, arm splashing the water a little as he fucks her with them, just enough to establish she's slick with more than just the pond, warm and wet and hungry to get fucked. Then he pulls his fingers back out and moves them upwards, to his actual goal.
"Yeah?" his voice is light; maybe he really is angry with her. Not jealous, not of Billy, but grieving and wishing she'd been there, awake, or maybe that it had been her, it's a mess inside his head. "Tell me how much."
the flags are still red, the vibes? borderline!
She licks the pond water from her lips. She could kiss it from his, if he'd let her. She turns her head instead, nose dragging, mouth against his wrist, just briefly, before it hurts too much to strain. She says: "Daddy, fuck me, please," and pushes her ass back, and means I'm sorry, and it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, even if they aren't, and maybe things aren't. She still wants. "I want it, I want it, I need you, I need you," and her voice is catching, ass pushing back. She says, sincerely: "You can fuck me like he fucks you, like you fuck Danny, I'll give you it."
no subject
John could easily make this more comfortable for her in so many ways, but he doesn't. Likes watching her shiver and twist, hearing the noises she makes around the intrusion in her mouth. He hitched himself up onto the slick rock, grabs a jut of it near her shoulder that's so sharp it cuts his palm. Thigh all along the soft white of her ass, knee digging into stone, the other leg keeping her open. He'd be here whether or not she begged for it, the thick head of his cock plugging up her tiny little hole. He's too big with not enough prep, but that's exactly how he fucks Danny, so she's getting what she asked for.
no subject
She sucks in a deep, deep breath through her nose. She pushes up onto her palms, back against his front, slipping, a little, brows furrowing, eyes wetwetwet. Her teeth graze his knuckles, breath fast, a little agitated. Experimentally, she drags her hips forward, pulling along the length of him, trembling with the effort, worse still with the effort to push back with no easy glide, no lube, so slick-easy slip, just water, just Johnjohnjohn.
She cranes her head, mouth closed around his fingers, tongue against the pads, his knuckles, drool slipping down, wetter than her ass feels, and she looks at him with those big blue eyes, wetter still, and it's fine, it's okay, she pulls forward, pushes back, clenching around him tight, and whines, needy, desperate, wounded.
no subject
He gets about halfway before there's blood; he pulls out, heals her, and after a moment to adjust the angle, buries most of his big dick in her vagina instead. Groans at the inviting wet of her, she's just so wet all the time, wonders if there's still Billy's cum in there, Danny's, fuck.
But it's only a layover fuck; he pulls out lubricated and tries her ass again with more success, screwing into her, all his concentration entirely on the place they're joined, so much he nearly loses his erection. Shrinking just slightly allows him to slip home, and then he digs his bloodied knee harder into the cruel rock and starts to ride her, working himself back up, masturbating with her tormented little body like she's asleep again.
no subject
She hiccups around his fingers. Sucks, like it’s a comfort. Her hands squeeze his wrist before they let go - and whether he keeps her upright or lets her rest her head back against the cool of the rocks doesn’t really matter - to reach one behind him, resting whatever piece of flesh she can reach. His hip, maybe, or an arm. The other one slips first to feel where he’s breaching; to feel the swell of him pushing in, making room. He feels so fucking big still; like if he pushes to the hilt she’ll be feeling him in her guts for days after. Like every time she sits down, the shape and length of him will be there. It hurts, but the sigh she lets out is pleased, even if it’s also watery.
The hand moves, in the end. It dips down to her front, elbow grazing painfully on the rocks so that her fingers and circle her clit lazily. Her eyelids droop slightly; everything goes a little numb, save for the dull flashes of pleasure that she drags out of herself. She feels like she’s floating; head made of cotton, but not quite the syrupy way Eddie brings out in her. It feels borderline; like she’s almost there, save for the instinct to stay alert, to listen to every change in John’s breathing, every change to his thrusts. She sighs around his fingers and swallows, moans in a reedy, high pitched keen when he fucks in deeper.
no subject
When he feels that bright peak drawing closer from his mercantile determination, he simply does what he did to try and wake her, slips into her nerve endings and electrocutes her clit, swells her cunt up hot and ready, kickstarts an intense little orgasm. She's awake to feel it, this time, the possessive way he simply takes what belongs to him, the perfect execution of pleasure she has no control over her, one peak barely subsiding before he forces her into another, this time joining her, flooding her ass with a broken sob.
When he's done, he's crying softly against her back. "Sorry," he finally tells her in a ragged whisper. "Baby, I'm so sorry." For letting House die. For not being there to wake her up. For using her to offload a little of his screaming grief.
no subject
thinks maybe she screamed a little through the shock of the second, and feels a little embarrassed about it. But she’s breathing hard too, and John’s crying at her back, and she doesn’t have time, really, to sink all the way into whatever cottony, cloudy headspace is coming on her.
Instead she reaches for the hand over her tit, coaxes it into her own and threads her finger through his. She squeezes it tight, holds it close to where her heart is hammering in her chest, thumb gently stroking over his knuckle. She’s aching everywhere, not all of it is pleasant. Not all of it is terrible. “Don’t pull out yet,” is what she manages to say, voice hoarse, and realises, belated, that she’s crying too. “Stay like this with me, please.”
Close, she means. Skin to skin. It takes more energy than she really has to twist a little, just enough to knock her forehead against his. This somehow feels more deeply intimate than his cock inside her, than the wet stick of their flesh together. She says, and maybe she means it reassuringly, maybe she just means to make him laugh despite how horribly unfunny it all is: “You fucked me nicer than you fuck Danny. But I’ll forgive you, if you stay here with me for a little longer.”
no subject
He shifts, weight onto a different knee, shuddering a little whine as he does in fact ease slowly out of her ass, replaces his dick immediately with his fingers just to heal where he's hurt her somewhere deep inside, the bright thalergy of her blood smeared between them.
"I won't go," he promises, but he just, he needs her — closer, wants to be able to hold her tighter, maybe climb in under her lovely skin. "I won't, I'm with you." She's with him, awake and alive, thank god thank god. He kisses her shoulderblade, her neck, tries to peel her around a little so he can kiss her throat and face and mouth.
no subject
She lets him twist her around, and she would go all the way if she could bear to lose the fingers stuffed inside of her. She can’t. Not yet. Half around, she goes very sweet under his mouth, and then kisses him sweeter with a hand on his cheek, and after that sweeter still when she kisses his nose.
Softly, she admits: “There’s nothing to forgive.”
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"Sorry," he says again, muffled, even with her reassurances, this time apologizing for being an ugly wreck, for taking his suffering and using it to make things worse for everyone, like always. "Sorry, I just need to — splash my face." The water is right there, and he wants to retreat to it, not running away but trying to shock himself out of his misery with the clean cold.
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When Kieren died, Jem didn’t leave her room for seven days. She barely ate a thing. She cried so much her eyes stopped being wet. She knows now that he was back within weeks. She knows now that House will be back with them within weeks.
It doesn’t feel reassuring, today. The loss is too new. The grief is too raw, and Jem doesn’t know House the way John does, and Jem cannot possibly love House the way that John does, but loss is loss, and she feels a horrible swell of guilt for having been right there. That she fell asleep at all.
She watches John for a long time, doing what he has to do. He doesn’t look like a god at all, but Jem’s really only ever saw a man, even with his eyes.
She ducks her head under the water. Counts and holds her breath until her burning lungs force her back to the surface. After this she reaches for John’s arm, pulls him back towards her and wraps herself around his middle, presses her face to his chest and holds on very tight. “I think,” she says, with less of a tremble in her voice. “That we should have tea, and eat something. And then we should drag Danny back inside and lie down for a little while, until it’s late enough to drink something stronger. Then we should all be really morose while listening to the cannibal album, because I think House would find it really funny and a huge ego boost if we all get really drunk about it.”
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"Okay," he says quietly. He feels strangely peaceful. "Let's do that."
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She doesn’t bother dressing, really, when she drags him out of the cold water. She’s holding their clothes against her front like a shield against the wind with one arm, taking his hand with the other hand and leading him home. From there it’s harder, she knows, to exist or be peaceful. It’s a house without House. It’s a bed missing a key component. There are so many corners of this cabin which House should occupy and simply is not.
It’s not easy to ignore. It’s easier to pretend he’s at work while she fixes the tea, still naked, thawing out only by the grace of the fire. It’s easier to imagine he could come back later, in a matter of hours, to cook, to fill up the terrible silence that he’s left behind. Jem’s never been good at grieving, or comforting - she’s decent at tea making, though, so that’s what she does. She makes them a pot, lets it heat them through. She sits on John’s knee for a while, with her face pressed to his shoulder and her fingers stroking his back. After this she drags Danny back inside and puts them all to bed, either side of John, and she strokes John’s hair like she’s doing a dozen times before.
It feels a little like waiting for the clock to hit 5pm, but of course there’s no clock, and of course House isn’t coming home. At the very least, for the rest of the night, she doesn’t cry again.