I WOULD have to start with this warning…..but it's an important one…are you ready? Just in case I need to be clear….NOTHING in this story is meant to spark a conversation about domestic violence. It's a piece of their grief journey…as I imagine it….somewhere in 12x11 probably around the hospital sex….but imagine they make it…this story won't fix everything but I want to imagine no divorce papers are signed. ANY physical contact that isn't sex is just a release of emotion…OK? No one hurts each other badly or wants to press charges. I just don't want to have to write "pushed her gently so he didn't hurt her it was not abuse and April knew it" 1 million times, yah know?

The request was to do a oneshot inspired by Kelly Clarkson's Tightrope (Live)….I listen and what came to me is just another fortune cookie fight. Not a replacement of the first one because I 3 that. Just…another one with more progress because I just love that throwing fortune cookies is a thing our ship does, IDK. Also, spark of what came to me is Jackson watching April cooking breakfast. IDK if that will make it in here but I needed you to know that. Sorry I'm such a rambler….on with it…

April came, stuffing her head into a pillow to muffle her moan while she waited for her husband to finish. If he just wanted sex, that's what he'd get. Of course she knew he heard her, she couldn't help herself. She couldn't just whisper a curse word as she came. There were feelings involved every time, even if their sex was strictly for pleasure, lately. It was how she was wired. But she was determined to make every effort he was to disconnect emotionally, at least.

She rolled off her side and sat up in bed, hastily throwing on a pair of sweatpants before running out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. She slammed the door and turned on the faucet, finally letting herself sob underneath the safety of running water. But not for too long.

After a minute she splashed water on her face and head to the kitchen for a midnight snack, deciding on leftover fortune cookies from that night's dinner because she felt lazy. Jackson always asked for extra, and then kept the bag open and his eyebrows raised until they put two handfuls in, not just one. Take out was just easy after therapy; they'd been going to the same place a lot lately.

She cracked a cookie open slowly like always, hoping for something good, just because. "You will be hungry again in one hour."

"Hmmmph," she rolled her eyes and ripped the piece of paper in half. Disappointed, she started to slowly pick apart the cookie and wipe stray tears from her eyes. While crunching, she went over her schedule for the week in her head, doodling on a legal pad. Mindless circles.

"What?" Jackson asked, when he walked into the room in a pair of boxers, 15 minutes after she'd left him.

"What, what? Nothing."

"April, I know you were crying. Do you want to talk about it or not?" She shrugged. "Not?"

"Can you not curse when you're done anymore, please? You never used to do that." But he did. It was just usually accompanied by affectionate whispers, laughs; at least a genuine smile that didn't make her feel like she was a body in a porn movie.

"Sure. Anything else?"

Fuck, I love you. Fuuu…You're beautiful. Would it kill you to try those again? She shook her head, cracking open another fortune cookie from the huge pile in front of her. "Never bring unhappy feelings into your home."

"Ha!" She laughed out loud, spitting at the absurdity of it in that moment. But at one point in their marriage they'd been following that rule quite easily. It might have been just a few weeks, but those weeks were real.

"What?"

She cleared her throat for effect, turning to him, feet curled up in her chair. "Never bring unhappy feelings into your home." She ripped it in half, like she had done with every cookie fortune she read since she was little. If you ripped it into two clean halves, you absorbed the wisdom of the words, her theory went. Even the most absurd ones.

"Why is that so ridiculous, because you have more to say to me?" He pulled a chair up close to her and sat backwards on it. He caught her gaze with a dead stare, surprising her.

"What are we doing?" She whispered it to the floor, unable to look at him for too long.

"I'm fighting as hard as I can to save my marriage, but I have no idea what you're doing."

"Oh please, Jackson! Would it kill you to try and connect during sex? Kiss me? Look at me?"

"You can't look at me right now. You can't have a conversation about feelings outside of the safe bubble of a therapist's office where they can constantly save you from answering direct questions about accepting responsibility here."

"I'm not just a hole, you know!"

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "OK, you want to start with the sex, we'll start with the sex. That position drives you crazy." He smirked. It was true. And he used to hate it, beg her to hold her gaze, coax her to her back.

"Not anymore." She bit her lip. "Not every time…that's not…"

"Gonna save us? It's gonna take a lot more work to do that."

"More than pulling my pants down and turning me sideways? I agree. Affection would be greeeeeat. In the beginning, you kissed me. You were trying there when we started this, and then…"

"I realized 'sorry' is the one word you refuse to say sincerely. And this woman is helping you avoid it, for some stupid reason."

"I. WAS. DYING!"

"SO. WAS. I!"

"NOT LIKE ME AND YOU KNOW IT!" She screamed at him through gritted teeth.

HOW WAS DYING FOR ME THEN, IF I'M SUPPOSTED TO KNOW HOW IT WAS FOR YOU?"

Feeling the hot tears form behind her eyes again, she got up and moved to the other side of the table, doing what she always did when words failed her lately. She started throwing cookies. "I DON'T KNOW!" she finally admitted.

"IT FELT NOTHING LIKE THIS!" He screamed and dodged an avalanche of cookies, catching some as they came at him to throw back at her. He stood up and walked toward her, grabbing her wrists to stop her like he did the night before the sex that inspired him to try. It was déjà vu, but he was scared to repeat the cycle. He pushed her away forcefully this time. "We've done this!" He grabbed her shoulders and shook, desperate for it to sink in.

"I know!"

"I'm not doing it again, April! I'm not! We constantly go in this circle!"

She pushed him in reply, and picked up more fortune cookies to throw in his general direction. "Don't say that!"

"Then break it! Break the cycle. Tell me something I haven't heard!" He dared her, tears visible in his eyes. Suddenly, the fate of their marriage was in the balance. They both felt it more in that second than ever before.

"I hate you," she whispered it. But she at least meant to say it and they both knew. They were almost nose-to-nose. She was looking directly into his eyes, and tasted lead as the words came out. She slapped him and he gulped, tears still in his eyes. He had no words, but he was there. "You put my baby inside me and then he died! Samuel died!" She fell to the floor, sobbing in the middle the huge pile of cookies.

He didn't hit her back. He didn't have to. But he got in her face, purposefully falling to the floor and to her level. "Look at me, April." She did, saltwater dripping down her chin. "I. Hate. You. Too."

He said it slowly, so she felt every word. They spent too much time in therapy talking about April. April's feelings, why she came back, what her goals were for their marriage. He was done with that, and wanted to make sure it was crystal clear.

Jackson had put April first, ever since Samuel died. He held her as she cried, or backed away when she didn't want to be touched. When he was home, he made sure she ate; and if he had to go to work, that there was a Bible in her line of sight before he left the house. He understood best he could why she had to go away, and tried not to make the first time or even the extension an issue.

But the third time was a different story. He asked her to stay, needed her to stay. She begged him to come with her, sure, and he tried. It really did take everything in him, every last minute he used to realize she was offering him everything she could by asking him to join her.

Watching the plane taxing down the runway without him had been deflating. He left the airport and sat in the parking garage for an hour, feeling the fight drain out of him. Alone was the only place he felt comfortable crying. It wasn't the first time he cried for Samuel. He missed his son everyday. But it was the first time he cried for himself, for all of his loss. Because he knew he was losing his wife, but he was just so tired of holding himself together while he waited for her to be saved. If only she needed him to save her, things might be different. But she was looking everywhere else but him.

Then she came home whole; expecting her marriage would just be there, ready to be saved. Jackson just wasn't sure she cared about the person she left behind to keep the marriage together. He was ready to be considered. Him. Not just the man behind half of the vows that make a marriage whole. "You. Left. Me."

"Screw you. Someone else left you, and I made sure that when I came back to you, I was your wife. I made sure I was myself. I never left you. The person who left you wasn't the person you married. I am." She shoved him. They were both desperate for their word to sink into each other, even if they had to literally push them.

"I didn't do this. I didn't do this to you or my son!" He pinned to the carpet as he yelled, but let go of her wrists quickly, unprepared for and unable to stop the sobs that overtook him. They both lay in the middle of their living room and cried.

Neither of them hated the other, of course. They loved each other more than anyone else in the world. April had never known true acceptance emotionally, physically or sexually before Jackson. Before her son's death, she did not take her husband's love for granted one bit. They fought, sure. But she'd never stopped fighting for their love, either. When Samuel died, she'd stopped fighting for everything. Perhaps she realized her marriage was on the line too late. But she wasn't going to give up easily. April was convinced the depth of the love in her marriage was beyond anything most couples dreamed of.

Jackson didn't believe in soul mates before April. And then, a few days before her other wedding, she laughed at something he said, and he hadn't been able to stop thinking of her ever since. That day, he looked into her eyes and for a split second everything in his life made sense. It was only a split second, but once he realized he was in love, once they were married, all he had to do was look into her eyes and everything made sense. Even when they were fighting, her eyes were his home. Samuel died and changed everything. She'd left, just like everyone else in his life. Even though on some level Jackson knew what she said was right, a different person left him, looking into her eyes now felt different. It scared him, because he didn't know if he'd ever find home again.

"I just want to hold him, I just want to hold my baby!" she sobbed.

"I know. Me too." His own tears had calmed now, and he fought against the urge to comfort her too much. Not because he was evil. Comforting her would just start the cycle he'd just asked her to break. She had. With harsh words she didn't mean except to hurt him, but she'd broken it. She'd given them a chance. It was all he'd asked of her and he didn't want to jeopardize it.

She knew she'd held Samuel his entire life. Her son had looked into his parents' eyes and felt loved. Jackson had promised her that a million times. They couldn't comfort each other right now. They just had to exist in pain together.

"I want you to love me. I want us back," she said, when she calmed down.

"I'm trying."

"Try harder."

"You try harder, April." He got up and went to the kitchen, searching the cabinets for a bowl.

"I'm here, I'm trying. I show up every week. You wanna go twice a week, I'll go twice a week."

"You wanna go twice a week?"

"If that's what you want, sure. I'll go twice a week." She sat cross-legged on the floor, in the center of the pile of fortune cookies.

"You know what? Yeah, let's go twice a week." He took the box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch from on top of the fridge.

"Fine. You want me to call Dr. Weston or will you?"

"You do it," he snapped, not looking up from pouring his bowl of cereal. "Are you going to show up for me, for our relationship….or just to preserve the sanctity of your marriage license?" They were his most hurtful words in weeks, and he meant them to be. But he had a good reason to ask them, and that's why they hurt so much.

"Are you going to treat me like a human being you at least used to love while we're home?" Her question hurt him for the same reason his had hurt. He knew he hadn't been very kind to her lately. He did not feel forced into trying to save the marriage. As determined as April was to literally save it, Jackson wanted to at least try.

"I do love you, April." He'd been on his way to the couch, but doubled back. "Would you like a bowl of cereal?"

"Yes, actually, that'd be nice. I came out here because I was hungry. Well, partly…"

"You want the Corn Flakes, or…"

"Nah, I'll have what you're having."

"Ok." They shared a smile and he sat across from her on the floor when he brought the bowls in.

"You eat this a lot while I was away, too?" Jackson shrugged, but recognized her effort. She was trying to talk about his experience while she was away.

"Hey," she looked up expectantly, mouth full of milk, and Jackson couldn't help but laugh at how cute she looked as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Tonight…and these past couple weeks…Sorry if I made you feel…" He looked a way, in part ashamed, but also just searching for the words. "I want sex to be more than…just….Can I be honest?" She nodded but gulped a bite down. "I love you so much, but it's going to take time for us to get back to…"

"I know." She nodded. "It hurts but, I don't want to have sex with anyone else, so…"

"Whoa, neither do I."

"I know that."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"You can feel whatever, just stay where we are and tell me."

"Ok, deal. You too, with feelings….mostly when we're in that room…I'll listen more. But please don't get angry I can't read your mind."

"Deal."

"We're on a roll tonight," she said, mouth full of sugary milk as she drained it from her bowl. "While we're here, you want to practice that staring exercise she wants us to...we kinda suck at it and I just…"

"You like to win." She gathered their bowls to bring them to the sink.

"Well, I just….I think we can do better and we should be doing more work at home and…"

"Relax, April. I want to win this fight too." She smiled as she sat back down, making sure their knees were touching.

They set a goal for five minutes. He kissed her forehead before starting the timer. When it went off to tell them they succeeded, they didn't break their gaze. Jackson just picked up his wife and carried her to the bedroom, leaving crushed fortune cookies in his wake, and they kept practicing maintaining eye contact during sex, thankful they both had a late shift.