"And I've got no illusions about you.
And guess what?
I never did.
And when I said.
When I said I'll take it
I meant,
I meant as is."

- Ani DiFranco, "As Is"


All that day and night, their apartment fills up with music: Pearl Jam, L7, Mudhoney. Alice in Chains. The Melvins, The Pixies. Bikini Kill, Dinosaur Jr., My Sister's Machine, Nirvana Nirvana Nirvana, "Heart-Shaped Box" on repeat three times. Rachel and Niall brought their CD player with them, and they spread out their shiny square cases across the warped wood on the living room floor. Niall plays a demo cassette by someone named Beck. David dances; they laugh. Rachel roots through Jack and Juliet's shoebox of cassettes; no CDs for them, not yet. Too expensive. When Jack disappears to put David to bed that first night, and Niall's in the bathroom, Juliet hijacks the music with a Tori Amos tape.

Niall's back first, and he stops and stares at Juliet and Rachel on the floor. "What the hell is this?"

Rachel bursts into giggles. "I'll hold her down, you change the tape."

"Wh - "Juliet begins, before Rachel rolls onto her, catching her at the wrists. They're both a little drunk, and suddenly neither one of them can stop laughing. Juliet's feet are free, and she tries to kick up as Niall dives for the stereo, hits eject. Finally she shoves up, flipping so that she's over Rachel now, holding her down.

"Help," Rachel chokes out between giggles, but Niall's focused on the stereo, and The Melvins start up again.

Juliet holds her sister down, moves so she's actually sitting (gingerly) on top of Rachel. She can feel Rachel shaking underneath her as they both laugh. "She's beeeeen everybody else's girl," Rachel mock-sings in a high-pitched whine.

Then Jack's footsteps are at the other end of the room. Juliet tries to contain herself, wiping tears from her face.

"What the hell is this?" he asks, and she just starts laughing all over again.


And then, just like that (as usual), Jack's gone. Thirty-six hours at the hospital, six hours off in the middle which means he just sleeps there. By the time she wakes up on the morning of Christmas Eve, his kiss on her forehead in the middle of the night seems more like a dream than a memory.

"So you're OK with that? Really?" Rachel asks her over breakfast, immediately glancing down, buttering a piece of toast. Niall slides the orange juice across the table toward her.

"Well, what else am I supposed to do?" Juliet lifts David into his high chair.

"I don't know, I just mean... Do you miss him?"

Yes, I miss him, her brain responds, but Juliet hesitates, (there's a him she can miss and obviously it must be Jack, because her brain is insisting, yes, I miss him) making herself look too busy to answer, filling a sippy cup with apple juice, finding the Cheerios for David.

The truth is, most of the time, she's so busy that she barely has time to notice when he's not around. Classes are challenging to say the least, there's lab time, studying, her job, and in the meantime, she pretty much spends every spare second taking care of David, cooking, cleaning. By the time she falls into bed at night, most of the time it doesn't really matter whether there's someone else in that bed or not. But that's not the whole story, and there's no way she could possibly tell her sister that without it sounding horribly depressing when it isn't.

"Yes, I miss him," she finally says, guardedly, sitting down and reaching for a piece of toast. "But he's doing it for us. And I'll probably be in a worse situation myself once I'm an intern."

"But he'll be through his residency by then, right?" Niall prompts.

What's she supposed to tell him, that doctors don't work a hundred hours a week? "Mm-hm," she mumbles. Tears prick suddenly behind her eyes, and she stands abruptly, making a beeline for the coffeemaker. She knows they're not trying to judge her situation, just learn more about this new path she's embarking on, but - but David. Jack's schedule is bad as it is, but OB-GYNs work longer hours, have more unpredictable schedules. What kind of parents are they going to end up being at this rate, if neither of them ever sees him? What kind of... whatever they are... are they going to be, if neither of them ever sees each other? At least right now she has a regular schedule.

She busies herself at the counter, pouring coffee, slowly mixing in milk and sugar, tasting it, adding a little more coffee to the top after she overdoes it with the milk. Are they watching her? Are they eating silently? David starts trying to get Rachel's attention for something - his truck's on the floor, and he wants it, and he's not supposed to have toys at the table unless he's finished eating, but Rachel doesn't know that and Juliet isn't saying anything, frozen here at this counter.

David is making little flying-plane noises now, alternating with vroom-vroom, rolling his truck wheels over the tray of his high chair. Juliet takes a long sip of coffee. She hates these doubts, hates hates hates them. Hates that she feels like sticking to her dreams is nothing but selfishness at this point.

"I think we should go get manicures today," Rachel breaks in.

"What?" Juliet doesn't turn around.

"Niall can stay here with David, can't you?" her sister prompts.

"Sure I can." He answers so easily that Juliet wonders if they've been planning this. "We can play in the snow, right, David?"

David doesn't answer. Juliet imagines him giving Niall the Big-Eyed But Suspicious Look. She finally blinks away her tears, turns around, leaning with the edge of the counter at the small of her back.

Rachel smirks. "It'll be fun, come on. A sister thing."

Juliet stares at her. "Since when were you ever the manicure type?" Besides that, it's not like she and Jack are exactly rolling in cash. They barely make it in a good month, and last month David needed to go to the doctor for an ear infection and also they had a flat tire, and then with the Christmas tree and the lights and the ornaments (which at least they won't have to buy again next year) and presents for everyone... Juliet isn't exactly sure she's supposed to be shelling out cash for something so unnecessary. She hesitates.

Rachel heaves a gigantic, fakely exaggerated sigh, rolling her eyes. "Since today. And it's my treat, so just shut up about it."


She wakes up early on Christmas morning, but then she's been waking up early for nearly two years now. At the moment it's in the bluish dark of a late winter sunrise, alone as expected, curling her fingers into the palms of her hands. She hadn't had a manicure since her mom's friend Christie took her before her high school graduation. Her nails look great, though; she ceased arguing with Rachel about that.

David is trilling from his room, and she throws off the covers and slides out of bed, stands up into the chilly room. Last year on Christmas morning she was waking up with Jack in Arizona, a suitable distance apart in that bed. The year before that she was in her brand-new one-bedroom apartment in family housing. Every year she is somewhere different. Maybe next year, they'll still be in the exact same place as now. Is that too much to hope for?

In the living room, Rachel and Niall are curled up together on the fold-out couch bed. Juliet gets David into the kitchen before he can wake them, but within an hour, Niall's in the kitchen with her, making coffee and opining on The Sound and The Fury.

Her mind spools backwards to yesterday's breakfast conversation, and she doesn't realize all at once she's stopped responding. Not until Niall trails off, watching her. "You OK, Jules?"

She pauses, suddenly feeling see-through. "Yeah," she finally says.

His eyes move over her face like he wants to say something, but what he says next, she's just not prepared for. "You're happy, right?"

Juliet flinches at his bluntness. "I - yes, I'm happy. I'm just..." Worried? Lonely? Stressed out? "Overwhelmed, sometimes."

Niall looks down into the galaxy of his coffee mug. "I guess I can understand that."


Jack gets in around 10 a.m., his eyes bloodshot, stubble on his face. David has been poking anxiously around the presents under the tree, probably only minutes away from a tantrum, so good timing there, but first he leans down to kiss Juliet on the couch. "Merry Christmas," he says against her mouth.

"Merry Christmas," she whispers back, pretending Rachel and Niall can't see them.

He smiles, his face still close to hers.

"Do you need to get some sleep?" she asks.

Jack shakes his head, pulling away from her. "After presents."

David really has no clue about presents, just that he knows he wants to rip off the paper, and he squeals in surprise at toy after toy, Rachel taking pictures the whole time. With his birthday only two weeks away, Juliet wonders idly if he's going to think this can be a regular thing. His favorite of the morning is from Rachel and Niall, a Fisher-Price plane complete with plastic people to poke inside through the windows. "Mama, dis one you," he announces, handing a little blond plastic lady over to her before almost instantly demanding it back.

Rachel gives Juliet two photographs in a split frame: the two of them, tiny children with button noses red from the cold and wool caps pulled over their foreheads, gathered into a hug by their mother, who's squatting down between them, a rainbow-colored striped scarf against her throat and trailing to the ground. In the other half of the frame, Juliet is pulling David in his red plastic sled, last winter in Flagstaff. Their breath is puffing out into a gray-white sky; she's smiling, her hair everywhere and her hiking boots pretty much buried in the snow. David's pointing at something out-of-frame, his little mouth opened into an O.

Juliet is half emotional and half embarrassed for some reason; after thanking her sister and setting up the frame on the coffee table, she keeps sneaking glances at those pictures. She knows the intent, but she keeps asking herself, where is her sister in that second picture?

But just then, Jack drops a big package into her lap, and David climbs up as close to her as possible, "helping" her open it. When she lifts out the snow pants, they seem to practically inflate right in front of her. She laughs, Jack grins sheepishly, and Rachel and Niall just look clueless.

"Snow angels," she tries to explain.


After presents, Jack heads to the back of the apartment to finally get some sleep. The rest of them play with David and his new toys, and there's spiked eggnog like last year. They pause to call assorted relatives before diving back into the eggnog, their music playing constantly, The Yule Log on silent on their little TV. (Jack is here but also not, and she just needs to get used to that.)

She wakes him up for an early dinner when she gets David from his nap, and after they watch silly kids' Christmas shows on TV. The Peanuts special comes on, and they share a smile that seems almost sentimental. Two years ago almost seems like a lifetime ago by now. David points eagerly at Schroeder and his piano, then he's up and running into the playroom/office/fake dining room (they really need to come up with a better name for that room) and hauling his own little piano back into the room.

Whatever notes Jingle Bells begin with, he seems to know already, poking at the yellow key six times, a pause, yellow again, then blue - but the notes all match Schroeder's before he sort of trails off and just begins playing whatever he wants again.

Is that normal? That seems... hmm.

"Me!" he explains, pointing at the TV.


When Juliet gets to bed that night, she expects Jack to be sleeping, but instead he's awake, waiting for her, a huge wrapped gift on her side of the bed. "I had one more thing for you," he tells her.

"You didn't have to - " she begins, and he shakes his head.

"I didn't want to give you this one in front of an audience."

"OK," she says slowly, a little unnerved by how closely he's watching her. Whatever it is, it's light, and something seems to slide within it when she tips it to one side. She unwraps the paper to find a plain cardboard box, but when she opens the box, there's another wrapped box inside, and she giggles.

"Thought I'd make you work for it," he teases her, and she rolls her eyes, grinning.

Inside that box is another wrapped box, and then another, like Russian nesting dolls. "OK," she begins, trying to sound wary and skeptical.

"We'll recycle," Jack promises her, sitting up straighter.

But her heartbeat kicks into overdrive when she opens the fifth box, this one a small shoebox left over from David's new sneakers. Because inside that one is a tiny velvet box. The room seems to swim around her. On the bed next to her, Jack eases onto both knees, reaching in and scooping up that little box.

"Juliet," he begins, shifting the box from one hand to the other.

She can't even think straight; her mouth gapes open.

"I've, um," he begins. He looks so uncertain and afraid and she doesn't know what she's supposed to do to reassure him, but she leans over, close to him, cupping the back of his head in her hands. "I... Ever since David was born, I've tried to be a good dad. And I've tried to be good to you. And I hope..." He's almost shaking.

"You're good," she tells him. "You're good at this." She's getting a little teary-eyed, not sure how either one of them has somehow figured out this family, thing, considering where they came from, but... "You're good at this."

He reaches over, touches her face. "Will you marry me?" he almost whispers, drawing back, opening the box. Where did he... how did he...? "It was my grandmother's" - like he needs to explain in the middle of their financial problems why he is holding this box with this beautiful, beautiful diamond ring. Now he's getting a little teary-eyed, and she'd laugh if she could, but instead she's just staring staring staring at the ring, her head swimming and her heart...

"Of course I will. Yes," she gets out, and he almost sags in relief, but a huge smile spreads across his face all the same.

"We can get it resized if - your sister said to check what size your class ring was and - "

Now she's laughing and crying at the same time, glancing down at the manicure her sister had made her get, half-furious that Rachel knew before her, half-glad somehow. "Will you put it on already?"

He leans over to kiss her, sliding the ring onto her finger as he does, and it fits perfectly and right now everything feels pretty fucking perfect. She pulls him to her, and they're pushing all the wrapping paper off the bed, the empty boxes falling with muffled thunks, peeling off each other's clothes and Merry Christmas and peace on earth and fuck, fuck, yes, of course she will marry him.


Her head is pounding with music and adrenaline and too much second-hand smoke and probably, too much happiness. They're all in a throng of bodies at the Nirvana show, sweating and dancing and drinking and this is ridiculous, this is so not her scene and yet it's dramatic and fun and silly and intense all the same, these people taking things way way way too seriously, body-slamming, head-banging, screaming to the lyrics, pounding the air with their fists.

"Heart-Shaped Box," not in their living room on a CD boombox, but here, now, live.

She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box for weeks
I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black

"Hey! Wait!" she and Rachel scream at each other over the din, everyone around them howling the same chorus.

Rachel had greeting them the morning after Christmas with a giant smirk, tilting her head, her eyes going straight to Juliet's left hand. "Lemme seeee," she practically crowed, lunging toward them, giving Juliet a big hug before grabbing at her hand. "God, it's beautiful. It's so Art Deco, oh my god, it looks like Miami Beach." She'd looked up at Jack. "Good job. I know it was your grandmother's, but... just. Good job."

Niall had leaned over, kissed Juliet's cheek, shook Jack's hand, reminding Juliet that somehow, after all, the two guys still barely knew each other. "So when's the big day?"

Oh. OH. We have to have a wedding. The thought crashed into her. Somehow she'd imagined being married, and yeah, it really probably wouldn't seem all that different than the life they were already living but - they couldn't afford a wedding, not until... she had no idea how long it would take to have money for something like that, no, they'd have to go to the courthouse unless they waited forever, or...

She slid her eyes over to Jack, who suddenly looked none too cheerful, either. "I guess... well, we can just go to the courthouse," she said slowly, her heart sinking. Juliet had never been one of those little girls who'd wanted to dress up as a bride during playtime, had never been one to daydream about her fairytale wedding. But all the same, the thought of not having one at all seemed to just remind her of all the ways her life was turning out to be not what she'd expected, her heart sinking. The things she was missing out on, by having all of this come so, so early.

"We can wait," Jack promised her. "We can save, and we can do anything you want."

"Why don't," Rachel began slowly, tugging on Niall's wrist. They had some sort of secret eye conversation, ending with Niall nodding. "Why don't you do it in our backyard? We can invite people, have a cookout, put flowers in your hair like a goddamn hippie if you want."

Jack reached over, squeezing her hand. The edges of her new ring dug into his skin, she could feel it. "I love that idea," she says, looking up at Jack.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." But she was trying to think. Will they even have time, money this summer to get to Flag? Maybe next summer would be better? That would be a year and a half out; they could have time to scrounge up money for plane tickets, whatever expenses this backyard wedding would incur, maybe a quick, very local honeymoon if Rachel could watch David. "Maybe the summer after next?" she asked.

"Nuh uh," Rachel told her. "This summer. Why wait?"

Hey! Wait! Hey! Wait! I got a new complaint! Forever in debt to your priceless advice, the crowd is chanting all around them now.

Hey! Wait!

Juliet's looking over to Jack at her left, and her sister is pressed up against her right shoulder, and she's there until somehow she's not anymore, Juliet's arm cooling without her sweaty sister right there, but the next time she looks over in the flashing lights, Niall is crouched down on the ground next to Rachel - Rachel, crumpled on the floor, and then she and Jack are trying to hold the crowd back, Niall scooping up her sister like she's no bigger than David, all of them dragging themselves through a sea of bodies, out into the vestibule of the club. Jack is feeling for Rachel's pulse, opening her eyelids, and then there's a black-clothed bouncer, shining his flashlight into Rachel's eyes.

"You take any drugs tonight, sweetheart?" he's asking, and Juliet wants to punch him in the face.

"Just some - only pot," Rachel suddenly mumbles, trying to dig her heels into the greyish white tiles of the floor, pressing against Niall as she tries to get back onto her own two feet.

"You have too much to drink?" His walkie crackles at his hip and Juliet feels dizzy. "How much did you have to drink tonight, sweatheart?"

"She's all right," Jack tells the bouncer. "I'm a doctor, I'll take care of her. Just leave us alone."

"You're gonna have to leave if she can't stand on her own."

What an asshole. "We're going."

The ride home is long and dark and - once Rachel stops insisting she's fine - very very quiet.


Juliet lays out her equipment. She's sterilized everything three times; she can't risk anything.

Her patient is on the table, floating somewhere in twilight sleep. It's just the two of them here. She checks the IV again, changes her gloves. "Is - is he - " the woman mumbles.

"He'll never know," Juliet promises her. She would rub her arm, but she'd have to change her gloves again, and she wants to get this done before it seems like they'd been gone too long. "Just relax. It'll be over before you know it. Think about something nice back home." The yellowy-green lights will flicker when she turns on the machine. This she knows. She's been here before.

She picks up the syringe, taps it, thinking about how she once created life. She can also take it away.

Juliet jerks awake. The bedroom is pitch-black, not even moonlight through the windows tonight, and she drags a hand over her face, her ring getting caught in her hair. Whatever that dream was about, it was... what's the word she's looking for? She's has all kinds of dreams ever since moving here, but - that was...

Unsettling, she decides, sitting up, watching Jack sleep beside her. She lies with him in the dark, watching the minutes tick past for close to half an hour. Finally she gets hungry, slips out of bed without waking him, tiptoeing down the hall, past David's room, past the pile of blankets on the foldout couch in the living room.

There's a dim yellowy light on under the kitchen door, though, and Juliet realizes she didn't really look at who was or wasn't on the couch bed. Niall's at the kitchen table, a cup of tea in front of him, his head in his hands. The little oven-top light is the only thing that's on.

"Hey," she says softly.

"Juliet," he says, and starts to cry, and that's when Juliet feels the axis of everything start to wobble.

She's at his side in a flash. "What, what is it?" she whispers fiercely, grabbing onto him. He grabs back, just as tightly, and she can feel his chest heaving.

"Something's - something's wrong, I just - her tests, they weren't - she needs to get more done after the new year, and - "

Niall can barely breathe, and then suddenly she's right there with him, only her knees give out and she's just there on the kitchen floor beside him, like she's about to beg, beg him to take it all back, and how long Rachel took until she was willing to enter into a relationship, not until she was better, and why wasn't Rachel in that second picture, why did she want to make sure Juliet's wedding was this summer instead of next and no - no - no -

"But you don't know anything for sure yet, right?" She is trying to stay calm. On the outside.

He shakes his head, fiercely. "She's going to call Rose, if she has to - and, but Tahlia's biracial and the doctor said - he said, that makes it harder, and - she's just, always taking pictures, and sometimes I think - "

"No," she tells him, firmly. "No. You don't think that. Just - just don't."

"I - she didn't want you to know, and I'm so sorry. I just... I don't know what I'll do, if - "

"There is no if," she tells him. "Not yet." Her voice wobbles there. She stands up, digging her heels into the floor the way Rachel did only hours before. Somehow she finds a chair, drags it toward him. Her fingers dig into his forearm, hard. "You call me," she says, and her voice is so strong and forceful it almost scares her. "If Tahlia isn't a match - you listen to me, Niall. You listen to me. If Tahlia isn't a match - you call me. You call me."


Whew. This chapter was hard to write. Very, very hard. Please excuse any errors. And please, please leave a review!