A/N: atthtt: "delicious complexity" might be the best compliment I've ever received on my writing, so thank you for that.

Jude was looking at him like she was studying him, and it made him nervous. They were lying in her big hotel bed, him on top of the covers and her partly under them, wearing his T-shirt. She had her chin propped up on her fist next to him, and she was stroking his hair and studying him with a slight frown on her face. Finally he sighed and asked, "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

She shook her head. "Sorry, it's nothing."

When he'd showed up at her room, she'd given him a big smile as she said, "Hi." She looked different tonight, more like the Jude he remembered from years ago, in a T-shirt and jeans, messy hair and not much makeup. She was still gorgeous, and after murmuring his own hello, he'd pulled her to him, kissing her deeply, but she'd pulled back. "Whoa, have you been drinking?" she asked. "Are you drunk?"

"I am… not sober," he admitted, suddenly feeling like maybe he'd done something wrong, or maybe that showing up drunk was letting too much slip about what his life these days was like when he wasn't with her. She frowned for a second, and he raised his eyebrows. "Sorry… Is that a problem?"

Her face had cleared. "No. No, sorry. I was just surprised. Come here."

But… now she was studying him. He frowned and said, "Seriously, Jude, what?"

She hesitated a moment, then said, quietly, "You're still in love with your wife."

"What?" He pulled away from her hand with a frown, then muttered, "Ex-wife," and lay back down.

"Not technically. Not yet. And you're still in love with her."

"What the hell makes you say that?" he asked, defensively, sitting up.

"Well, this, for one thing." She sat up with him and grabbed his left hand. "You still wear your ring."

He pulled his hand out of hers. "It's stuck," he muttered, a transparent lie.

She raised an eyebrow. "Soap and water, Tom. Plus, the look you get when you talk about her…"

"I don't talk about her," he protested.

"Fine, when I talk about her. Clearly you still–"

"You don't know me," he snapped, cutting her off. "Don't pretend you do."

It was a comment meant to hurt her. It was the sort of thing that would've made the old Jude's eyes fill with tears, would've started a fight, but this Jude just looked at him for a moment with pity in her eyes, then shook her head. "You're wrong. I have always known you, Tommy. Even when you tried to convince me I didn't."

He wanted to get mad, wanted to yell at her, but he couldn't, because she was right. He couldn't hide from her. He used to pretend that he could, but she had always seen him, even more than she knew. He sighed and lay back down, shutting his eyes. "So what if I am? What if I do still love her? It doesn't matter anymore."

"Are you really so sure she doesn't still love you too?" Jude asked, gently. He didn't respond. After a moment she pulled his head gently into her lap and resumed her stroking of his hair, then asked, "What happened?"

He sighed. He didn't really want to answer, didn't feel like he should tell Jude anything, but he was still a little drunk and her fingers in his hair were oddly comforting. She was asking with such genuine concern, and it had been so long since he'd felt like he had someone to talk to…

"It's complicated," he said, finally, not looking at her. "We… stopped talking. Started fighting all the time. We just weren't happy anymore." Jude gave a "hmm" but she could clearly sense there was something else. The old Jude would've pushed, which would've made it easy for him to get angry and shut the conversation down, but she just continued silently running her fingers through his hair and waiting for him to speak. He hesitated for another long moment before saying, "So, uh, a couple months before we got married, Erica got pregnant. It wasn't good timing, I mean, even on top of all the wedding stuff, our lives were both gonna be kind of crazy after the honeymoon. She was on a serious deadline to finish up rewrites of her novel, and I was working on something insane like ten different albums or something. But we talked about it , and we decided to keep it anyway." He sighed. "And then a couple weeks later, she lost the baby."

"I'm sorry," Jude murmured.

He shrugged. "It was really early on, and it was unplanned, and the timing wasn't great, so we agreed it was probably for the best. But then a little while after we got married we like, started trying, for real."

"You wanted kids?" she sounded mildly surprised.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I wanted… all of it, with Erica. The house and the dog and the kids and fucking growing old together and…" he trailed off, squeezing his eyes shut. He didn't want to see Jude's face, see the pity he knew would be in her expression. He could feel it anyway, in the way her fingers caressed his hair, slow and methodical and soothing, patiently waiting for him to continue. Eventually he relaxed a little and spoke again. "It took a long time and a shit ton of really frustrating false alarms, but she got pregnant again, a little less than a year ago. That time she made it almost four months, 13 weeks before…" He clenched his jaw. "We had started telling people. It was awful. They had to… take it out." He was whispering now, barely moving his lips, the memory of it hitting him again, of sitting numbly beside a hospital bed, holding a sedated Erica's hand, trying and failing to process what was happening. "The baby had died and we didn't even know. We went in for an ultrasound and they were just like 'sorry, no heartbeat.'"

"God, Tommy, I'm so sorry." Jude sounded so sad, and it made him feel sick, but he couldn't stop talking, felt like he needed to get the rest of it out or it would suffocate him.

"And she wouldn't talk about it. She just wanted to forget it ever happened. She wouldn't see a doctor about it, she wouldn't talk about IVF or adoption or anything, she was just like… done with the conversation. She just locked herself in her office and wrote, and she wouldn't talk to me and I… should've tried harder to understand. But I didn't." His words came out in a rush, quick and angry and disgusted with himself. "I started drinking, and I drank and I yelled and we fought, and she was cold so I got angrier and then she kicked me out and here I am, and she's got a lawyer and a Tinder and it's over. So it doesn't matter whether I still love her or not, Jude, because we're fucking done."

He didn't know exactly what he expected Jude to say in response, but when she asked, "How much are you drinking these days?" he pulled his head out of her lap and glared at her.

"None of your business. You don't get to judge me, Harrison."

She looked surprised. "I'm not! Whoa, I didn't say I was judging you. I just asked because I'm concerned."

"Well, don't be," he snapped.

She sighed. "You're self-destructing again, Tommy."

"I'm fine," he muttered, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I'm fine. Forget I said anything, I shouldn't've told you any of that."

"I don't get it though. If you still love her, why haven't you been fighting for her? You guys just jumped straight to divorce, you didn't even try counseling or anything? I mean, even my parents at least did counseling, and they pretty much hated each other by that point."

He flipped over so fast she actually jumped, and glared at her. "None of this is any of your fucking business. You may have convinced yourself that you know me, but you don't know shit about marriage, especially mine," he hissed.

That time the comment landed. He watched the flash of pain in her expression, then the glare. "You should go," she said coldly. She pulled his shirt off over her head and threw it at him as she put a robe on.

His heart sank. "Wait. Jude, wait."

"Out, Tom!"

"Hey, hey hey," he said gently, standing up and walking over to her. "I'm sorry," he said softly, looking her in the eyes, and she stopped protesting. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to yell at you, okay? It's hard to talk about. It's complicated, alright? I don't want to talk about her." He brushed a lock of hair behind Jude's ear, trailing his fingers along her jaw and then grabbing her chin gently between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face up towards his slightly. "Especially not while I'm in bed with such a beautiful woman."

He could see her trying to decide whether to roll her eyes and tell him again to leave, but he put a hand on the back of her neck and kissed her gently, and she didn't pull away. After a moment she wrapped her arms around his neck and deepened the kiss, pressing against him, so he gently pushed her back to the bed and pulled the robe open, trailing kisses down her body as she wove her fingers into his hair. When he reached the apex of her thighs, he knelt beside the bed and she spread her legs, gasping his name as he flicked his tongue out. He didn't let up until he had her panting, until she writhed and moaned and cried out and he knew for sure she'd forgotten all about his wife.

… ... ... ... …

"Oi, Harrison!" Mitch, her drummer, called from behind her. She stopped walking and turned as he jogged up to her. "You coming tonight?"

"Coming where?" she asked, genuinely confused.

"Uh… Bunch of us are going out. Nothing major, just a late dinner and a few drinks, sort of a good luck kind of kickoff to the North American leg of the tour." He frowned. "I was standing right there when Tariq suggested it to you, you said it sounded like a good idea. Do you not remember?"

"Oh! Yeah, sure, I remember. I can't, though, sorry. I have plans."

"With your sister? Can you bring her?"

Jude cringed a little. She had actually rescheduled her plans with Sadie at Tommy's convincing. He was just so damned persuasive when they were both naked. "Actually no, um…"

Mitch raised his eyebrows. "Same guy again? Is this the third night in a row?"

"What? What guy?" she asked, too defensively. "Who says there's a guy?"

"Uh, that does, for one thing," he said, looking amused and gesturing to the hickey on her neck. "Oh, and that does as well." He gestured to the other side of her neck, near her shoulder. She'd yelled at Tommy for that one, and she silently cursed him now.

Jude pulled her jacket tighter, trying to conceal the marks. "Uh… Right. Okay, so yeah, he's just… He's a friend, he's…"

"Good friend, looks like," Mitch said, close to laughing.

"It's… complicated," she muttered, her face flushed.

"Alright. Well, we'll miss you. Have fun." He smirked. "Not too much fun, though, or you're gonna have to buy more concealer."

"Thanks so much for the advice, Mitch," she intoned dryly, and he laughed as he walked away.