Worth It

"What're you doing?" Kate asked him coyly, feeling Jack's palm wrap tightly around her lower hip and squeeze playfully. She was leaning against him heavily on the couch. They had been watching a movie, until Jack got other ideas.

"What do you think I'm doing?" he mumbled into her shoulder, burrowing his face there and using his free hand to guide her face towards his. He looked up at her, his eyes warm. He looked happy, so she smiled back at him genuinely and kissed him lightly, grazing her lips against his until he captured them fully, teasing her by nipping softly at her bottom lip with his teeth.

She let her mouth open against his and deepen their lock, getting lost in him like she always seemed to. She loved kissing him, the feeling of his lips against hers, the pull they had towards each other, how he always knew what she liked. Jack's fingers danced along the delicate skin around her waist, slipping under her shirt and grazing upwards, giving her shivers. She felt him tug at her shirt and couldn't help but look at him skeptically.

"What?"

"I just- I just didn't think you'd want..."

"Am I allowed to not think about it for five minutes?" He hadn't meant to sound offended, but he realized he came off as such, so he held her wrists gently and pulled her back to him, whispering against her mouth, "Because all I'm thinking about right now is you."

Backing away from him, Kate smirked and pulled her shirt over her head, taking in his smile after the action and lying on top of him, kissing him deeply, lovingly, with need. She unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his chest and down his stomach, hearing his appreciative sigh when she unzipped his jeans and sneaked her hand through.

And soon after, they were both ready and moaned almost silently as they connected. It seemed like it had been forever. Kate buried her face against his chest, biting down on the skin as he moved below her steadily, sending her into fits. She tightened around him and he kissed her as she did, swallowing her incomprehensible words, pulling away when he lost it himself.

She rested against him and enjoyed the feeling of his fingers stroking her hair absently. She didn't have to look, but she'd bet he was staring at the ceiling. He'd been doing it a lot lately, getting lost in his own thoughts, and sometimes it was hard to snap him out of it.

"We should go," Kate told him eventually, and felt his head nod in affirmation. "It's been awhile."

"I know," he said softly.

"We'll do better," she promised him, smiling up at him and tracing patterns on his shoulders.

Eventually, after they'd showered and gotten redressed, they made their way to Jack's car. It took twenty minutes to get out of the city and into the calmer, greener area as they rode in comfortable silence. When they arrived to the serene, sprawling land, they got out and walked to the site hand in hand.

It didn't matter how many times he'd visited his father's grave- every time he saw the headstone staring back at him, with his father's name engraved onto the surface, it reminded him of how final everything was. Four months had passed since his death, and at first, Jack visited the cemetery almost every day, not quite believing that Christian had been claimed by death. Then, he found himself coming up with excuses- he had too much studying to do, he wasn't spending enough time with Kate, he had his future to worry about, and it was then that Jack felt lighter. He wasn't forgetting about his father- he was remembering him how he should've, alive, and not lying in a grave six feet under in the cold earth.

But this visit felt different. It was sunny and warm, a perfect summer day, and somehow, he was hopeful, almost cheerful as he looked at the dark stone in front of him. It baffled him why he visited the site- he'd never believed in anything other than science, and even when the logical part of his brain told him the morbidity of the situation, it didn't matter. He still wanted to see his father.

"I talk to him sometimes," he admitted to Kate. "I know it's stupid, and that he can't hear me..."

She squeezed his hand. "What makes you so sure he can't?"

He laughed lightly, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. "I don't know. I guess you could be right. If he can, he probably wants nothing more than to tell me to shut the hell up..."

"What do you talk to him about?"

Jack blushed slightly. He'd never been one to divulge such details. He was starting to regret that he'd mentioned it at all. "I don't know," he shrugged. "Everything, I guess. I tell him what's happening with school, how mom is doing. I tell him about you," he smiled.

"Did you tell him about med school?"

"Yeah," Jack grinned, thinking about the letter he'd received just a few weeks before, telling him of his acceptance.

"He'd be proud of you... big college graduate, going to med school..." Kate teased him. "I'm just jealous," she admitted. "I wish I was done with undergrad."

"Soon enough," he offered. "I told him about us moving in together, about our new place. I think he'd be happy about that too."

"I'm happy about it," she told him with a smile, kissing him softly.

Christian had passed two days after their return from Iowa. Jack was expecting it, had tried to prepare himself for it, if there was such a thing. Everyone knew his death was imminent, but it had still been the biggest shock of Jack's life. All of sudden, he had no father. He was twenty two years old, and he wasn't supposed to be dealing with this. He'd been in the room with his mother when it happened, feeling the hand he was holding go lax and seeing his chest stop rising and falling. He'd looked at his mother with tears in his eyes and hugged her, so tightly and for so long he thought he'd never let go.

Kate had known when it happened. She wanted to give Jack and his mother their space, and as she was sitting in the waiting room, reading the same line in her book over and over, a sinking feeling overcame her, weighted down her chest, and she knew he was gone. Jack had stayed with his mother for the first few days afterward, and while Kate knew it was probably for the best, and that he needed to be there for her, she wanted nothing more than to bring him home with her and wrap her arms around him. As if it would solve anything. She couldn't imagine what Jack was feeling. She'd known Christian for a few months and she was struggling, grieving from the loss.

Eventually she'd gotten her wish, however selfish it was, when he'd come to her apartment and realized it was silly for him to keep running back to his house, only to pack a bag and return right away.

She spoke and interrupted his trance, but he welcomed it gladly. "So I was thinking we could go shopping later? Get a few things for the apartment?"

He wasn't sure what they were doing, as they stood there staring at his father's grave, talking about normal, every day things like shopping and moving in together, when, bluntly, Christian was rotting in the ground. But it felt normal, and he felt normal, and he wasn't sure whether he should feel guilty or grateful for it. Normal had never felt so good.

Kate laid the flowers onto the bright grass in front of the head stone, pausing to brush her fingertips over the engraving.

"See you soon," she said softly, and Jack smiled at her kindness.

It was hard to imagine that he and Kate had been brought together by such strange circumstances, by a situation that now seemed so trivial but ran his life at the time. There he'd been, worrying more about a single class and his drive for perfection that he'd almost missed her. And then there was his father- and his mother too, he supposed, who had come back into his life under the worst of conditions, not because they wanted to, but because they'd felt they'd had to, that Jack deserved to know. He couldn't believe he used to be so disconnected from his family, so unwilling to accept apologies or give second chances.

But then, he realized, during the worst time of his life, he'd found the people, the love, and the faith that he never wanted to give up. Maybe it hadn't been so bad after all.

So there it is. That's it! I'm not generally a fan of neat, packaged endings, which is why I decided to do the chapter like this, with enough details that you get the picture, but it's up to you to imagine some of it. I really didn't have it in me to write a depressing chapter on Christian's death, as I felt the focus was on what Jack learned, and what Kate learned beforehand. Anyways, I know that being the last chapter you might not have much incentive to review, but it would be really rewarding to me just to read your thoughts, your overall impressions of the stories, what you liked, what I need to work on, etc. Thanks for being such great readers, for the most part I enjoyed writing this:) I have two other stories I'm working on right now in case you've missed them somehow and are interested!