Okay so I haven't really been watching Glee lately but I watched the first three episodes because I used to be an avid Gleek and I was really really upset about Cory's passing.

Oh my God.

That was literally the greatest episode of Glee they've ever put out. I don't care if you don't like Glee, you need to watch it. There was seriously next to no acting going on at all - those emotions were so real. I cried multiple times.

Ugh.

Okay. Here's the next chapter. I'm not gonna say anything about it. Other than I love you guys for sticking with this for so long. I'm taking the rating down again, I'm not sure if I'm gonna do a sex scene after all. Idk. You guys drop a review and let me know if you even want one in this piece. I'm up for whatever y'all want.

I don't own Danny Phantom or Glee.

Enjoy (:

Wide Awake

Chapter Seventeen

October 13, 2013

Jack was a tall, stocky man with dark hair and even darker eyes. He scarcely glanced at Danny as he rushed into the room, hands already fluttering before he reached Sam's side. Blessedly, Jack did not ask many questions. Danny moved to stand at the foot of her bed, eyes flickering warily between the doctor and Sam's motionless figure. Practiced hands roved over her face, her neck, down her arms, across her stomach, over her legs. Jack lifted her clothes and peered at the skin hidden beneath, carefully prodding different areas and humming to himself. Twenty minutes of this passed before the doctor finally straightened.

"Everything on the surface looks okay. I counted three broken ribs on her left side, and there's a laceration across that hip I want to take a closer look at, but aside from that it all looks like surface-level injuries. Keep in mind, I have no way of knowing if there is any internal bleeding, so I'm gonna want to keep a really close eye on her for the next few days. Other than that, I think she's alright."

He filtered in several times after that, staying the longest to pour a small amount of rubbing alcohol across her hip and bandage the cut. Each other time was a quick cursory glance-over before nodding in satisfaction and leaving Danny alone with her again.

The sun was just starting to set when Tucker finally returned. Danny had yet to move from his position at Sam's side, aside from shifting out of the way when Jack came in. He winced against his best friend's shout demanding to know where Sam was, not quite ready to relinquish his position. He doesn't know yet, he'll know really soon, and then everything will be okay, Danny tried to remind himself.

Tucker all but threw him out the window in his haste to reach her side. Danny staggered backwards as he was roughly shoved out of the way, the backs of his knees hitting the side of the bed and giving way, watching through wide and desperate eyes as Tucker took Sam's hand in his own and brought it to his face. In fact, he was seriously debating elbowing Tucker out of the way to reclaim his place as he watched the scene unfold. He firmly believed he would have, were it not for his realization that Tucker's shoulders were heaving with sobs.

He sensed Valerie's presence lingering in the doorway (where she had been standing for most of the day), but he could not draw his gaze away from his two friends. Sam completely unconscious on the bed, positively covered from head to toe in dirt and dried blood that painted the skin not torn from her injuries, pale hand limp in Tucker's vice-like grip as he sobbed harder than Danny had ever seen a human being cry over another human being.

"F-fuck," Tucker heaved, head hanging so low his forehead brushed against the mattress beneath her. "Oh...G-God..."

Danny swallowed hard at the lump rising in his throat, blinking furiously against the burning tears gathering in his eyes. A quiet sniffle out of sync with Tucker's confirmed that Valerie was crying as well.

"Where?" Tucker managed to choke out between heaving breaths. "Where'd you find her?"

"She was in the yard," Valerie answered quickly, shooting a warning look through bloodshot eyes when Danny frantically shook his head at her. "Seth found her in the yard. We think she made a run for it from where ever he had her but she was too weak to make it up the hill and she collapsed."

If Tucker detected the obvious lie in Valerie's voice, he chose not to care, for he simply nodded his head. "She say anything to you?" He asked.

Danny realized the question was directed at him. "Um, no." He said. "She was already passed out when I got to her."

Tucker nodded again. "How long has she been out?"

Before either of them could respond, a low, hoarse moan broke the silence. It was faint, almost imperceptible, and if it had happened at any other time besides a beat of silence Danny was sure they would not have heard it. But it was there, and within seconds the three were crowded around Sam's bedside, watching her suddenly twitching face anxiously.

Her eyelids fluttered spastically before finally cracking open just enough to reveal her violet eyes, dark and cloudy with exhaustion, peering at the trio curiously. "Mmph...whu...mid...mmm..."

"Sh, sh, it's okay, you're okay," Tucker soothed her, lightly stroking the skin inside her forearm. Danny bit back a ferocious wave of jealousy at the action. "Everything's okay now...sh..."

"T...uck...er...?" Her frustration was obvious in her furrowed brow, as though she was struggling against a very large, unseen force for her right to speak. "Whe...re..."

"You're safe. You're home. Everything's okay now." He murmured, his voice low and melodic. "Everything's okay."

"Mmm..." She hummed and closed her eyes again. Beneath her thin lids, Danny could see her eyes rolling back and forth. He wondered how disoriented she felt.

"Val and Seth are here, too," Tucker said, glancing up at the two as he spoke. "We've been worried sick about you. We thought you ran off without us."

"L...Lars," She gasped, her eyelids flying open to reveal pure terror in her eyes. "Lars," She repeated with more force. She made a move to sit up, her torso rising off of the mattress, and before Tucker could stop her from moving she felt her broken ribs and cried out hoarsely.

"Dammit, Sam, lay down," Tucker grunted, gently but firmly pushing her back down by her shoulders. Her eyes were screwed shut and she breathed deeply, a thin sheen of sweat already glistening on her brow. "Lars kidnapped you?" Tucker asked, a new edge to his voice. "Is he the one that did all of this to you?" Sam merely whimpered, which Tucker seemed to take as a yes. "Do you know where he is right now?" He asked, suddenly dark.

"Dead," She whispered, eyes still closed. Her throat worked against itself as she swallowed. "They're all...dead."

"You sure?"

Her brow furrowed and nodded. "Saw it." She muttered. "Tried...tried to help...but...I was too late..."

"No. Don't feel guilty for that. Okay? Don't you dare. They did horrible things to you, didn't they?" She nodded, her eyes fluttered open, and suddenly she looked like a three-year-old with a scraped knee being comforted by her father. "Then they brought it on themselves. That's karma. I don't know how you got out of there alive, but you -"

"Danny," She rasped, eyes going wide, and Danny felt his heart lodge itself firmly in his throat. "Danny!"

A kind of deathly silence Danny was sure he would never grow accustomed to fell like a blanket over the room. Tucker quite literally froze at the sound of Danny's name, and after a tense moment Danny realized he had never actually heard Tucker say his name. Either of them, in fact, besides when Sam spotted him in Phantom form.

"What?" Tucker finally managed to force the words past his rigid lips.

"Danny was there...he saved me." She mumbled.

They locked gazes and immediately set into a silent conversation. Valerie took the opportunity to fix a hard glare at Danny. I thought you said she wouldn't remember, she seemed to hiss. He shrugged weakly in response. That same silence from before came slinking out of the floorboards, threatening to choke them. Danny was just about to lose his nerve and blurt the truth - the whole truth - when Sam beat him to the punch.

"I saw him!" She exclaimed so suddenly they all jumped. "I saw him. I talked to him. I know...I know what I saw."

"You were fucked up on drugs, Sam, you could have seen anything. You could have seen a purple dinosaur making french toast and believed it. It wasn't him."

"It was." She said firmly. "I know it was."

"Do you have any proof?"

"How the hell do you think I got here?" She asked, words still slightly slurred. Though, Danny mused, she already sounds much better. "D'you think I walked like this? Fuck, no. I wouldn't've made it half a mile, not with all this blood on me. They'd've been on me like flies on shit. In seconds."

"Look, I don't know how you got here. I wasn't here when that happened. All I know is that Valerie said Seth found you lying in the yard at the bottom of the hill alone. You were knocked out when he found you."

Sam turned to appraise Danny, the look on her face suggesting she had completely forgotten his presence until that moment. "I was in the yard?" She whispered, the faintest gleam of hurt that he was sure had nothing to do with her injuries in the back of her eyes.

Danny hesitated. "Um...well...yeah...but you looked like you were almost to the hill...maybe you were walking and when you recognized it you just..."

"I didn't walk," Sam spat, suddenly turning a hard glare to Tucker. "He took me to a place, like, ten miles away straight through zackland. I wouldn't have made it three feet like this."

Tucker glared back at her, before abruptly turning to Danny and Valerie. "Could you give us a minute?" He asked quietly.

Valerie prodded him hard on the back, urging him to do what Tucker asked. With a final, lingering glance at the look of determination on Sam's pale face, Danny allowed Valerie to usher him out the door. He turned his back when she closed it behind them.

"We'll tell them, okay? I swear. I just...I want Sam to be fully aware when we tell them. I don't want her out of commission in any way." Valerie said quickly, cutting him off before he could even open his mouth. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Just...it's just for a few more minutes. As soon as they're done. I think Sam's aware enough now, and if she isn't she will be when we get back in there."

Danny nodded begrudgingly, trying not to stomp his foot in impatience. He could hear the sounds of Tucker's voice wafting through the panels of the walls, a low bass vibrating in the next room, and suddenly Danny was violently reminded of his first night on the ranch. He recalled the sounds of the crowd roaring in approval as Sam ducked and rolled across the grass, Tucker revving the engine of the four-wheeler, the sounds of his footsteps echoing off the tiled walls leading to the locker rooms below the stadium, the smell of stale sweat and dried blood and something faint but achingly familiar, like lilies right after a rainfall. He swallowed hard, trying to bring himself back to the present, scarcely able to wrap his mind around the fact that those things had only happened a few days earlier. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

When the bedroom door opened again, Danny had officially given up on standing. He was perched on the edge of the bench to the dining room table, elbows planted on his knees, fingers intertwined before him. He jerked up at the sound of the door opening, eyeing Tucker warily as the boy exited the bedroom. And in that moment, Tucker really did look like a boy; his eyes were red-rimmed beneath his glasses, obviously fresh tear tracks dried down his cheeks. He barely even glanced at Danny before moving toward Valerie. Without a word, he gestured for her to follow him into their bedroom. Valerie followed him, her confusion evident in her face. She threw a glance over her shoulder at Danny before the door shut.

Sensing the change of plans, Danny stole forward quietly, tip-toeing into Sam's bedroom. She was still laying exactly where he last saw her, though she sat up a some point during her conversation with Tucker. Her legs were bent before her, and she leaned heavily into the pillows piled behind her. She smiled sleepily at him when he entered the room, lifting a hand to beckon him further. "Seth," She sighed, her voice making the name sound like the sweetest song he'd ever heard.

"Hey," He said, taking her hand as he sat on the edge of her bed. She snorted when the mattress dipped, causing her knees to fall against his back, but he did not mind the weight at all. In fact, the warmth of her legs against him made him feel something close to whole again. "How're you feeling?"

"M'okay," She shrugged, squeezing his fingers weakly. "Been better, but I've also been worse,"

Danny shuddered. "I'd hate to see your version of worse," He muttered.

She laughed, a quiet, tired noise, and Danny smiled at the sound. "I was so hoping I'd get to see you again," She murmured, still smiling. Danny felt a faint blush color his cheeks, but he did not break eye-contact with her. "I wanted to thank you for not telling them about my deal with Lars. This could have been a lot worse if they knew."

"S'not my secret to tell," He muttered.

She shifted slightly, a faint look of discomfort flitting across her face, before settling again and peering at Danny nervously. "Can I tell you something?" She asked hesitantly. "You can't tell the others."

"Okay," Danny whispered.

"I'm not sure if Lars is actually dead," She admitted, staring down at her knees. "I mean, I'm pretty sure he is, but...he ran into the trees when the zacks came out of the lake and...I never actually saw him dead on the ground."

"Why wouldn't you tell them that he might have survived?" Danny demanded, his voice slightly sharper than he intended. Sam withdrew slightly, her eyes widening. "That sort of seems like an important thing to tell them about."

"Lars is my battle to fight, not their's. I need to be the one to fight it. Besides, I'm sort of...protected now. Lars can't hurt me."

Danny stood and immediately began to pace the length of the room, desperately choking down the aggravation bubbling in his chest. "What do you mean, you're protected?" He asked when he finally regained control over his voice.

"Remember the friend I told you about? The one that died on the night Tucker and I left Amity Park?" Danny nodded once, a short, staccato movement. "His parents were professional ghost hunters. A few years ago they built a ghost portal that was kind of a doorway between this dimension and the dimension ghosts live in. Except when they first built it, it didn't work. They screwed up the power sources and accidentally put the main switch inside the portal. So I dared him to go in and check it out and he did and...he never could remember exactly how it happened but somehow...he accidentally hit the main power switch, and the whole thing turned on. With him still inside it. It sort of zapped him and when he came out he was half-ghost. His appearance totally changed, like his hair turned white and his eyes turned green and it was the scariest thing I've ever seen. Well, the scariest thing I've ever seen up until about a year ago. Anyways, he could change back and forth between his human appearance and his ghost appearance and when I was in that house I saw his ghost half. I just know it was him."

Through her entire speech, Danny remained perfectly still. He blinked quite rapidly when she was finished, finding himself unable to form a coherent thought. "S-so...lemme get this straight. You think...because you saw the ghost half of your dead superhero best friend...who may or may not have actually been there...you think you're...what, invincible now?"

"Not invincible. I think he's been out there all along, looking for me and Tucker. I think he knew somehow that the two of us survived. I think he's been looking for us and now that he's found us, he's protecting us. But he's weak, so he can only manifest for a little bit of time before he has to wait and rebuild his energy."

Danny turned his gaze down to his feet and pursed his lips. "That might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard." He said finally, looking up and holding her defiant gaze.

"How is that dumb?" She spluttered. "I know what I saw, I'm not crazy!"

"I'm not accusing you of seeing things, I'm saying that you operating under the assumption that because he swooped in and saved you when you needed him, you're now invincible, is dumb. It doesn't mean he'll always be there to save you if you're constantly putting yourself in life-threatening situations. You should have told Tucker and Valerie that Lars might still be out there somewhere."

"First of all, I'm not planning on constantly putting myself in life-threatening situations. Secondly, I can't tell Tuck and Val because it's not their battle to fight, it's mine. Third, the absolute worst-case scenario is that Lars zacked out on us and that's even safer than when he was uninfected. And fourth, I don't think he just happened to swoop in right when I needed him, I think he's been around all along. I know something's changed recently, I've felt it. I think he's been around here, haunting this place, trying to find us. I think he's here right now. Hell, for all I know, he could be in this room at this very moment."

"He is!" Danny shouted before he could stop himself. Thick tension suddenly sprang up between them, making the silence they immediately fell into heavy. "He is," He repeated before he lost his nerve.

"Seth?" Sam whispered.

Danny shook his head slowly, refusing to meet her eye. "My name's not Seth." He said quietly. "I'm not from Wisconsin, and I wasn't on the run for a year with my mom." He sucked in a deep breath and forced himself to look up, catching and holding her unreadable gaze. "My name is Danny."

She recoiled slightly, tugging her blankets up higher around herself, fists clenched tightly around the fabric. "N-no," She rasped.

"My name is Danny Fenton."

"You're lying," She mumbled, half-formed tears already brimming in her eyes. "He died a year ago, his house -"

"- blew up, yeah. I got out before it happened. I swear to you, I am Danny. I'm your Danny." A heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulders, and for the first time in over a year he felt as if he could breathe again. He took a hesitant step toward her, and she recoiled, wincing as her broken ribs were agitated by the movement. A few stray tears streaked down her face. "Sam -"

"Don't!" She shrieked. His mouth snapped shut instantly and he dropped his gaze to his feet. "How do you know his name? I've never said it in front of you!"

He almost pointed out that she said it not twenty minutes earlier, but common sense told him it probably would not help his cause to point such a fact out to Sam. "Because," He said carefully, "I'm him. It's my name." From his peripheral vision, he could see her scrambling further up the bed in her desperation to put as much space between the two of them as possible. She'd ripped the blankets up to cover half of her face, leaving only her blood-shot eyes and the bridge of her nose visible.

"Prove it." She whispered. He peered up at her through his lashes; her eyes were suddenly hard, the warrior in her coming out to protect herself at all costs. "Prove it." She repeated, her voice only faintly audible.

He moved to the foot of her bed, waiting until he was centered behind her footboard before meeting her gaze. He sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly before closing his eyes and forcing the rings to appear around his midriff. He heard her stunned gasp before the rings were even moving, and when he opened his eyes, the blanket had fallen away due to her burying her face in her hands.

"I've been dying to tell you all along. I'm sorry I lied to you, I just...we panicked when you guys didn't react well to seeing me that night and lying seemed like the only way to get you and Tucker to let me stay."

Her hands parted and she peeked out at him slowly, her face pale and lips trembling. "It's really you?" She whispered. He nodded. "It was you at the house?" Again, he nodded. Fresh tears welled in her eyes and her body jerked slightly with hiccups. "You're here?"

Tears blurred his vision, but they did not stop him from nodding a third time. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere." He promised, ignoring the tremor in his voice.

Her face crumpled slightly and she dug the heel of her hand into her temple. "I missed you," She gasped between heaving breaths, moving her hand away to fix a watery gaze on his face.

He all but crawled up the bed in his haste to reach her. The silver light of his transformation blazed through the room as she threw her arms around him, burying her face in the crook of his neck and releasing a broken sob that shook her entire frame. Her hands scrabbled across his back as he crushed her to his chest, carefully avoiding her broken ribs. He rolled them over so that he was on his back and she was sprawled across him, her injured side exposed to open air. A considerable amount of time passed that consisted of nothing more than Sam's muffled sobs, his own quiet sniffles, and their hands roaming over the other's body, slowly refamiliarizing themselves with each other. Eventually, though, her sobs tapered and their hands slowed.

"I think I knew." She whispered, tracing circles over his chest. He hummed and braided his fingers through her hair. "I saw a lot that made me think...but I didn't want to give myself false hope." She shifted her head up so that their eyes met. "I saw you on your first night here."

"By the tree?" He murmured, hand half-extended, frozen mid-stroke. She smiled and nodded. "I thought I felt someone looking at me,"

"Yeah," She said softly. "And then, at the body shop...they way you talked about the Ghost Zone was way too familiar, I got the feeling then...oh, God, Danny," She said, suddenly burying her face in his shirt. "I'm so sorry," She said, her voice suddenly considerably higher.

Her change of tone sent a flare of panic through his chest. His arms automatically tightened around her, drawing her closer to him. "What? Why are you apologizing, what's wrong?"

"I slept with Lars," She cried, and he froze. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

"Hey, sh-h," He smoothed her hair down and stroked her cheekbone. "Calm down, you're gonna hurt yourself, sh..." He kept her pressed up against his body, holding her there while she heaved and jerked with renewed sobs. "Please, Sam,"

At the sound of her name, she quieted considerably. He continued holding her close, tangling his fingers in her hair almost absently. "I'm sorry," She whispered hoarsely, her hand balled in his shirt.

"It's okay, really, it's okay," He said soothingly. "I'm not mad at you."

"You should be," She spat, her grip on his shirt tightening. "I betrayed you, it was so...so...it was wrong."

"We weren't dating before the Event, it's not like you were cheating on me..." He trailed.

She turned her head up again, her expression sarcastic and familiar. His heart ached at the sight of it. "Look, I know it's been a long time, but you can't still be that clueless, can you?" He snorted and shook his head. "You know I liked you, like, a lot, right?" He studied her face for a moment, before nodding and tucking a few stray hairs behind her ear. "So it shouldn't be shocking for you to find out that I was actually waiting for you. I wanted you to be my first, and..."

"You thought I was dead." He said firmly. "You didn't think you were ever gonna see me again, I don't blame you for one second. Now, Lars is a different story. But you...I don't blame you for any of that. At all. He took advantage of you."

"But I let him..." She whimpered, her forehead falling against his chest. "The whole time it was happening I pretended like it was you...and I even called him by your name...he didn't even care," She sniffled. "He just kept going,"

"Let's stop talking about it, hm?" He said, choking down the nausea rising in his stomach. "Like I said, I'm not mad at you, but I'd really rather not think about you sleeping with him."

"Sorry," She whispered.

For the first time in over a year, Danny lapsed into a comfortable silence. His hands drifted up and down Sam's back, lightly scratching between her shoulder blades, her scent everywhere at once. She traced lazy patterns across his chest and down across his abs. When her fingers toyed with the hem of his shirt, he took her chin in his hand and tilted her head up toward his. Their gazes locked for only a moment before he was craning his neck toward her.

Kissing her was like going home. He could not stop the tears from leaking from his tightly shut eyes, desperately trying to remind himself that she was injured when his instincts urged him to roll on top of her. She hummed lightly when he traced her lower lip with his tongue, granting him access immediately.

He phased his shirt off upon feeling her tugging a bit harder than before at the hem, letting it fall to the floor somewhere to his left. Her nails raked across his torso, leaving jagged pink marks in their wake, but Danny felt no pain - he felt instead an intense pleasure that made it hard to form a coherent thought.

"Danny," She breathed when he kissed down her neck. He grunted, closing his eyes and biting the inside of his cheek at the sound of his name. She'd said it plenty of times before, but never like that. "Danny..." She sighed, her fingers snaking through his hair.

He pulled away just far enough to see her eyes. "I love you," He whispered humbly, feeling fresh tears trickle down his face. Her eyes instantly filled with tears. "I always have, Sam."

Her lower lip quivered as she pushed his hair away from his face. "I love you so fucking much, Danny," She whispered. He could sense an edge of desperation there, he could see it shining in her eyes. She craned her neck and kissed him hard on his mouth, before turning slightly and kissing along his jaw. "I...love...you..." She punctuated each kiss with a word, before reaching his ear and pausing. "Make love to me," She whispered.

He jerked away from her immediately, his eyes wide and jaw slack. "What?" He choked.

"Make love to me," She repeated, slightly louder than before.

"You're hurt," He said dumbly, still trying to process what he heard.

"I don't care," She said, her voice ringing with conviction. "I love you and I need you. Please, Danny?"

He was speechless. He felt as if his entire head was stuffed with cotton. Sam stared down at him, her expression imploring him to say yes, but he could barely bring himself to breathe. "I can't," He heard himself saying distantly. "You're hurt, I can't do that right now..."

"I've been waiting for you my entire life, Danny. Please don't make me wait anymore." Her chin quivered. He swallowed hard.

"I want to. Believe me, I want to. But I can't...I can't do that when you're in this state. I can't hurt you."

"Danny, you won't hurt me! I'm begging you, here, please! It won't hurt me!"

"Yes it will, and I won't do that!" He nearly shouted. She jerked back slightly, her eyes wide. "I can't! I can't hurt you. Jesus, Sam, I can't hurt you. Lars...he already fucked you up so bad and I'm so fucking pissed off about it and right now I can't do anything to you that might make it worse. I'm the one that's supposed to keep you safe. I'm the one that's supposed to take care of you when you're hurt and...and if I...make love to you right now, if I give in to that urge...I'm going to hurt you. I just know I will." Tears were flowing freely down his face, but he did not care. Sam raised a trembling hand and wiped a few of them away, gently cupping the side of his face. "I'm so mad at myself for not finding you that night..."

"It was complete chaos, there's no way -"

"I went to your house. Well, I went to Tucker's first, but I went to yours right after. Maybe I should have gone to yours first, maybe everything would be different if...but I didn't, I went to your house second, and by the time I got there the whole place was up in flames and...you were already gone but I didn't know Valerie had gotten you, I just noticed your car was gone...so I figured you'd gotten out and so I started looking for your car..."

"Oh my God, don't tell me you found it?" She whispered.

He closed his eyes and nodded. "I saw it and I thought it was you...I don't know why I didn't go down there, I wasn't thinking...I just followed it and...and I watched it crash into the gas pump and when I got down on top of it I could see in the window and there were two people and the guy in the passenger's seat was wearing a red hat..." Her free hand covered her open mouth. "I thought...I really believed...I thought you were both gone."

"It was right down the street from your house." She said hoarsely. "We were standing a few feet away from your house when it crashed into the pump, I started running toward it...I had no idea...you were right there all along..."

"If I had just turned around...I would have seen you...I would have seen you coming and everything would have been okay..." He buried his hand in her hair and pulled her head down to his chest, burying his nose in the bend of her neck. "I wouldn't have let him touch you, I would have been there to keep you safe..."

"I know. I know." Her voice was muffled but her hands were comforting as they stroked down his bare sides. "Sh, I know."

Eventually silence overtook them once more. Danny kept Sam carefully balanced on top of him, positioning her so that he could feel her heart beating through her chest. She toyed with his hand, interlacing their fingers, and he smiled in spite of himself at the way her entire body rose and fell as he breathed.

"Hey, Sam?" He whispered.

"Hm?" She hummed. He had not been expecting a response; her hand had gone still by then and her breathing had evened out considerably.

"What's the French song about?" He asked hesitantly.

She tilted her head up to look him directly in the eye. For a moment, she did not speak; he could tell she was choosing her words very carefully. "The chorus translated means 'I'll wait for you there, will you come for me? I'll wait for you there, only you.'" Her eyes slid out of focus. "I wrote it. About you. For you, really."

"I'll always come back for you." He whispered. She blinked rapidly and suddenly tears were streaking down her face; he caught a few with the pad of his thumb and wiped them away.

"Stay with me tonight," She mumbled, burrowing her head down into the crook of his neck as he drew the blankets up around them.

"Always," He whispered into her hair.