Hey! Another short, quick Jate one-shot set during SNBH, a sequel to "A Walk in the Park". This is for my good friend Yas, who continues to inspire me. It might not be as light-hearted and fun as you wanted, but what can I say? I love my tragic, emotional Jate. I hope you enjoy it!
She'd been up since the second she felt him moving around in bed, reaching tiredly for his cell phone to answer the service call. She overheard the nurse's voice on the other end. A fatal ten-car pile-up on the city's busiest interstate highway and they needed every doctor on deck, especially the experienced surgical team that Jack led, which couldn't possibly come together without him. He closed the phone, rose and stepped out from underneath their bedspread, his naked, cute butt catching her eye as he walked tiredly to their walk-in closet, and then the bathroom. She smiled bashfully, drifting back to sleep when she remembered holding and squeezing two handfuls of that cute butt in her hands the night before.
She eventually felt him sit down on her side of the bed, his arm stretching over her, his large hand rubbing up and down her bare back. She opened her eyes, catching the slight rays of the morning sun cast a shadow over his face, highlighting his handsome features. He was fully dressed in black slacks and a white dress shirt with a striped tie that he was still securing around his neck.
"Hey." Kate said, her sleepy smile making him regret having to leave her even more than he already did.
"Hey. That was the hospital. I'll be home as soon as I can, which probably won't be until later on tonight if the emergency is as bad as I think it is." Jack said, hovering over her, laying a gentle kiss to her forehead.
"It's okay. Be careful. I love you." She said.
"I love you too." He said, before he reached the bedroom door, closing it quietly behind him.
She was actually a little grateful that he would be preoccupied at the hospital all day, because she had a few errands to run that she didn't want him to know about until she was absolutely sure that what she was experiencing amounted to the results that she desperately wanted. The nausea and the light-headedness started only a few days ago. To add to all of the hysteria: she was late. Three days late, and she was never late. This could only mean one thing.
Her day went by too fast for her liking. Between getting Aaron up and ready for preschool, going to the supermarket, pharmacy, and dry cleaners, she couldn't keep up with the time. She stood at the bathroom counter, pacing a hole into the floor as she waited for the agonizing five minutes to pass. She remembered only one other instance in her life when she took a pregnancy test, married to a man that didn't even know her first name, let alone anything real about her. Her hopes for the results were wildly different then than they are now, impossibly scared that she was indeed pregnant when it was the last thing in the world that she wanted to be. Now, it was the first thing she wanted to be, and the only thing she wanted to tell Jack when he came home.
The oven timer finally rang, knocking her out of her thoughts. She reached for the stick, eagerly awaiting the results. Her eyes bugged out and mouth came open as she studied what the lines meant.
He came dragging through the front door at around nine-o-clock, completely exhausted. He found her on the couch in the living area, wrapped up in a blanket, watching television. She looked over at him when she heard him approaching her, his suit jacket off and his hands loosening the knot of his tie. He leaned down and kissed her on the mouth with the fervor of a man who had been deprived of the woman he loves for far longer than he ever desired. He plumped down next to her, sinking into the overstuffed cushions with a long sigh.
"Hey." He said, fatigue evident in his tone and body language.
"Hey." She said.
"Where's Aaron?" He asked barely above a whisper.
"He's asleep. He tried to stay up for you, though." She said.
"It looks like you aren't holding up all too well yourself." He said, tucking a strewn curl behind her ear, his fingertips grazing her cheek.
He felt like something was wrong, like there was something that she needed to tell him, but she just couldn't bring herself to form the words.
"I missed you." She said.
"I missed you too." He said.
"How was work?" She asked.
"Hell. Back-to-back surgeries, utter chaos. Four people died on my table. I could definitely use a pick-me-up." He groaned, rubbing his eyes with the tips of his fingers.
"Well, I'm sorry about your patients, but about that pick-me-up, hopefully I can help." She said seductively.
He looked over at her, catching her lips with his own as she crawled over to him, leaning in to kiss him. His hands travelled under the fleece blanket that covered every inch of her body. He was happy to greet the warm, smooth skin of her bare thighs. He moved his hands higher, to her hips, reaching for any sign of underwear, and finding more bare silky skin. He pulled out of the kiss, staring at her with wild, awed eyes.
"Are you naked underneath this blanket?" He asked almost shockingly, the glint of need in his eyes made her feel tingly all over.
"So what if I am? What are you gonna do about it?" She challenged him, removing more of the blanket as she settled onto his lap, revealing her chest and shoulders for his viewing pleasure.
He stood abruptly, holding her tightly in his arms, the blanket falling from her body to the floor. Her yelp of surprise bubbled over into laughter as he moved towards the stairs to their bedroom, her arms and legs wrapped around him, her lips fused to the side of his neck.
His large naked body spooned perfectly around the small curve of her back, butt, and thighs, his arms banded tightly but comfortably around her waist as their sweaty skin cooled under the ceiling fan. They lay in the middle of the large bed, the comforter thrown over one side, pillows scattered everywhere, and the fitted sheet coming out from underneath the mattress on three of its four corners. He placed long, lingering kisses over the back of her neck, her shoulder and her upper arm.
She turned in his arms at the same moment that he settled onto his back, folding his arms behind his head. She made herself comfortable over his chest, her upper body lying across his. His hand began to draw comforting circles over her bare back.
"Are you ever gonna tell me what's bothering you?" He asked after awhile.
She knew that was coming. One scrutinizing look from the man and he knew everything or suspected something. She was going to have to tell him sooner or later, she just wished that the news was what she had hoped it would be.
"I took a pregnancy test today." She said, staring up at him, gauging his reaction to the first pregnancy test she took since they started trying to get pregnant.
"What did it say?" He asked, almost too eagerly, like he was expecting her to reveal something of the sort.
"Why aren't you surprised?" She asked suspiciously with a side of humor.
"Your cycle was supposed to start three days ago." He said calmly, but she could hear the excitement mingled with clinical seriousness in his tone.
"How did you know that?" She exclaimed with a laugh, exasperated and amused at how in tune he was with her emotions and her biological rhythms. Nothing ever got passed him.
"I'm a doctor, Kate. It's my job to know these things." He deadpanned, making her laugh.
"That's your excuse for everything, you know." She smiled.
"So, you didn't answer my question. What did the pregnancy test say?" He asked.
The amusement and sparkle fell from her eyes, her smile fading, turning into an inconsolable frown.
"It was…negative." She said as a tear escaped, leaving a shiny trail down her cheek. "I'm not pregnant."
He saw how completely devastated she was, her lips curved downward, emphasizing her disappointment. She looked like she wanted to burst into tears, but withheld them for some reason. He wiped her tears away and wrapped his arms around her. She could feel his sadness in the simple, comforting, strong way that he held her, his hands moving soothingly over her back and his fingers coming up to comb through her curls, as if he was trying to soak up all of her sorrow, so that she didn't have to be burdened with it. It was just like him to do something like that, and she felt it in every part of her, that it was the only thing he wanted to do.
"So, you were just letting me down easy with the sex, huh?" He joked.
"Yeah, I guess so." She said sadly. "Did it work?"
"Sex with you always works, but I wish you would have just come out and told me when I got home." He said.
"I knew you'd had a rough day and I didn't want to make it worse with more bad news, and to be honest, I just needed to be with you, bad news or not. Or do you not notice that whenever I jump your bones when you walk through the front door after being gone all day?" She teased with a smile.
"Oh, I definitely notice. I just knew that there was something that happened between this morning and now that you didn't want to talk about. You were sitting on the couch, like you had something that you wanted to tell me." He pointed out.
"Was I that obvious?" She groaned.
"No, but I have this cosmic way of reading the mysterious Kate Austen that no one else seems to possess." He teased.
"I was just so sure that I was pregnant. I haven't had much of an appetite. I almost fainted when I was cooking dinner yesterday…" She rambled.
"You know what I think? I think you're stressing yourself out over conceiving, that these common symptoms of anxiety are being interpreted as signs of pregnancy." He explained.
"How can you be more in sync with my body than I am?" She huffed.
"Because I love this body like no other and I can't wait to see it full and round with our baby." He said lovingly, his large palm placed over her stomach, the other swatting her lightly on her butt.
"And by full, you mean fat." She laughed, completely in awe of him speaking in the future tense about their baby, already in love with him or her when they hadn't even conceived it yet.
"No, I mean, healthy. Happy and healthy. It's gonna happen, Kate. You just need to let it happen."
She nodded, but he still saw the disappointment in the gesture.
"Give yourself some time. Stop stressing about it, and stop worrying about disappointing me. I have everything I want right here." He said, toying with the ends of her long curls.
"Everything?" She asked.
"Yes. You and Aaron are everything I could possibly want and need. Seeing all of that death and destruction at work today, and to walk through the front door and know that you and Aaron are safe and healthy, I can't complain or be disappointed in the least." He reassured her.
He cupped her face in his hands, wiping at the tears that fell from her eyes, moonlight cascading over the flushed skin of her cheeks.
"Time." He emphasized, erasing all of her worries and fears with one simple word that was all the confidence she could ever ask of him.
She felt so grateful at the moment. To be in love with a man who took her for who she was, and didn't let her feel her grief alone, but kept a leveled head and encouraged her not to let it keep her down. She leaned down to kiss him when he moved her over to lie on her back, covering her entire body with his own. They kissed passionately, laughing, smiling, and embracing one another, content to just lie there, make love until they were too spent to move, and dream of the child that they would one day meet, when the time was right.