Title: Missing Your Love

Genre: Songfic/Angst

Rating: T

Summary: Well, it may be my name you call, but it's his name I hear.

A Jesse drabble. Contains Season 6 spoilers.

…0...0...0...0...0...0...

You lay me down, whisper in my ear
Well, it may be my name you call
But it's his name I hear

It hurts to know you're girlfriend is only with you because she can't have who she really wants.

She says she cares about me, swears she does, but can see it in her deep brown eyes that she's just pretending.

Ellie is in love with someone else. Craig, to be specific. Not that I've ever met him, but I have a feeling that I should hate him.

Ellie's pretty tight lipped when it comes to Craig. All she'll say is that they were really good friends and that she had a crush on him. But I'm not stupid. I see the way her eyes light up whenever Marco or Jimmy mention him and I know that she would be with him if she could.

You promised me through thick and thin
You told me you loved me, you told me a lie
'cause you love him

I came over the other day, wanting to surprise her with a picnic in the park. The last few weeks have been hard on her with school and the paper and everything. I just wanted to make things a little better for her.

The front door was open, a rare warm day in December and she was airing out the smell of Marco's abundance of scented candles. Then her phone rang and she fished it out of her messenger bag, abandoning whatever she had been typing on her laptop, probably that piece on the new admissions policy.

I stopped to watch her. Standing right in the middle of the streaming sunlight from the picture window, her hair was glowing and cast a soft halo on her face. And then this huge smile, more real than any I've ever seen from her, breaks across her face and I can't help but think that no one has ever been so beautiful.

"I miss you, too."

A cold wind sweeps through my stomach. The only person she's ever told me about missing is her dad, who is currently safe and sound at home with her mother. The tenderness of her tone is what really alarms me. She's gentle, protective, and more touched than I've ever heard.

And I'm missin' your love every day
I'm missin' your love every way
Though your here with me,
I'm still missin' your love

"I know its hard, Craig," she says, "but you'll get through it. I have faith in you."

Craig. I know that name. It comes attached with dreamy stares and secret smiles and a picture of her and a dark haired guy that she keeps in her bedside table.

He's in rehab. That's what Marco told me the day Ellie wouldn't tell me why she was crying. The sight of her eyes red and puffy from apparent long weeping had me in knots and her not letting me in just made it worse. At the time I chalked it up to us not really being that close yet. Maybe it was something about her dad and she wasn't comfortable telling me about it yet. But the more I hear about Craig the more I realize how close to her heart she holds him. That's why she can't tell me, he means to much to discuss him me when I so obviously wouldn't understand. I just know she thinks that.

The knowledge that the person you've decided to give your heart to thinks you're second rate, for lack of a better word, sucks. Hard.

And when we talk, you look into my eyes
Your talkin' to me but baby I can see
He's on your mind

I met Craig a few weeks ago. He played here on campus. The first time I saw Ellie after he came back she was practically lit up from the inside with the knowledge that he was once more in the same time zone.

But the days wore on and Ellie's smile vanished, replaced with a haunted look in her eyes that she couldn't hide and wouldn't explain. Craig came to the Core looking for her, and I was shocked that this was the amazing musician I had heard about.

He didn't look like the picture Ellie kept hidden away. That preoccupied, worried look Ellie was sporting was all over his face and he was pale, paler than what was healthy. Huge dark circles ringed his eyes, shifting rapidly around the room. His movements, jerky and erratic, betrayed the inner struggle he was fighting as he demanded to know where my girlfriend was.

I took him to her. She was in class, and when she exited to see him, sweaty and exhausted, standing beside me in the art building, her eyes filled with tears as she threw her arms around him.

That was the last time I saw her until he left a few days later. His stepfather took him to a clinic in Winnipeg that specializes in dealing with musicians and actors trying to be discreet. Because there is such a thing as bad publicity.

Ellie came to my apartment, crying and rambling unintelligibly, and I merely held her until she wore herself out from sobbing. Laying her on the couch, I thought about the depth of feeling she must have had for Craig to risk such heartache for a guy with fresh track marks on his arm and had been very recently dumped.

She said his name in her sleep. Over and over and she tossed on the couch all night. I sat up and watched her, wanting to be there in case she needed me, while she dreamed of him. Just like she does when she falls asleep at her desk during an all-nighter. She doesn't know she does it. Or that I hear it.

She doesn't know that I know.

And I'm missin' your love every day
I'm missin' your love every way
Though your here with me, I'm still missin' your love

I want Ellie to love me. I want her to give me that piece of herself she reserves for the person who means the most to her in the whole world. I want her to want me.

Yeah, she kisses me and looks into my eyes while she tells me that its real for her. But we both no its just a matter of time. Because Ellie loves Craig.

And I'm not Craig.

…0...0...0...0...0...0...

'Missing Your Love' by Johnny Lang. If you haven't heard it, I highly recommend it. Or anything he sings really. The guy's amazing.