Jack woke up groggy and alone, his phone ringing incessantly on the nightstand. Half asleep, he struggled to figure out why Verity was calling him, why Callum wasn’t home…

“Hello?”

“Jack, you need to come to Huntington Memorial right now.” Verity sounded shaken, like they’d been crying—or screaming.

“What?” he asked, sitting up and rubbing a hand over his face, blinking the heaviness of sleep from his eyes.

“Jack,” Verity trailed off.

“What happened?” Jack asked again, louder and more insistent this time. He was out of bed, shoving his legs into sweatpants and yanking a shirt over his head, not realizing it was one of Callum’s until it was already stretched around his shoulders.

“Callum and Keith were attacked outside Rapture.”

Jack’s heart dropped into his stomach like a brick.

“The paramedics picked him up. I don’t think it’s too bad, but he’s really banged up and he was crying for you,” Verity choked back a cry of their own.

Jack was out the door, not sure if he’d locked it or even pulled it closed. The twenty minutes it took to get from Silverlake to Pasadena was the entirety of Jack’s life three times over.

He met up with Verity in the emergency room lobby, and they quickly pulled him into a hug.

“He’s fine, Jack,” Verity soothed.

Jack shook his head and pulled back from Verity, pushing toward the nurse at the intake counter.

“Callum Jardine, please.”

“Are you family, sir?”

“He’s my fiancé,” Jack informed the nurse, knuckles bent tight around the edge of the counter.

The sliding doors to the emergency room opened and an equally disheveled looking Justin and Micah entered, flocking toward Jack and Verity like a magnet. Verity turned to them and offered them the same kind of hug he’d given Jack, but Jack didn’t hear any of the conciliatory promises he’d been offered.

Jack turned his attention back to the counter. “Can you please just call him and tell him I’m here?”

The nurse made a phone call then looked at Jack with a tight frown. “He’s being moved into a room. You’ll have to go to the main lobby and wait until he’s been assigned and they can get you the information.”

Jack smacked a cup of pens off the counter with a bat of his hand and stormed past Verity, Justin, and Micah, straight out of the hospital. He collapsed onto an uncomfortable metal bench and dropped his head into his hands with a frustrated groan.

Verity followed and sat next to him, silent and solid, their hand settling softly on his back and stroking a path up his spine. Jack turned and buried his face against Verity’s chest.

“What happened?” he mumbled, pulling away to see Verity’s face.

“I don’t know,” Verity apologized. “It was nearly closing time; he asked me to watch the bar then darted out the side door. He didn’t come back…”

Verity trailed off and closed their eyes tightly. “I thought you had shown up or something so I didn’t go check on him right away, but when I realized he’d been gone longer than I expected I went outside, and…”

Verity breathed a rough exhale against Jack’s ear and their body trembled. Jack wrapped an arm around their waist and held them in silence until his own heartbeat slowed.

“What about Keith?” he finally asked, leaning back and pushing Verity’s hair behind their ears. Jack was distraught with his inability to be with Callum right now, and he’d momentarily forgotten that Verity had not only seen Callum, but also Keith. He fought down a sense of panic when he realized he wouldn’t have even known anything was wrong if Verity hadn’t called.

Verity shook their head and sniffed. “He’s alive.”

The doors to the emergency room slid open and Justin stepped out, his eyes wet with tears.

“The nurse said Callum has a room if you wanted to go to the front,” he offered.

Jack stood up and tugged Verity with him.

“How is Keith?” Jack asked.

Justin frowned and went back inside to Micah.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Verity asked softly.

Jack swallowed, asking a question he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to. “Do you…Do you think this is how he felt when he found out about me being sick?”

The weight of his inability to do anything for Callum was pressing against every bone in his chest. His lungs felt too big, his heart, too small. He didn’t have any information and his head was thinking the worst even though Verity had told him otherwise. Callum hadn’t even had that courtesy after Jack’s appendix ruptured.

“Helpless and angry?” Verity asked.

“Yeah, mostly.”

Verity smiled sadly at him then asked again, “Do you want me to go with you?”

“Do you want to come with me?” Jack turned the question around, the concern and worry in Verity’s voice nearly palpable.

“I’d like to make sure he’s really okay. I don’t need to stay.”

Jack took Verity’s hand and walked them around the manicured planter pots outside the emergency room to the main entrance. In the lobby, he approached the front desk, his palm sweaty against Verity’s.

“Callum Jardine, please.”

The nurse looked at a paper list in front of her and flipped the pages around before looking up.

“Room four-one-nineteen,” she said, scribbling the numbers onto two visitor stickers. She slid them across the counter and he and Verity dutifully applied them on their way to the elevator.

“He’s fine,” Jack assured Verity as the doors opened and let them out on the fourth floor, not sure who he was attempting to console more, himself or Verity.

They walked down the hall and found the door to Callum’s room open, the curtain pulled back. Callum was sitting in the bed, a sling around his shoulder and arm fastened to his body. His face was battered, left eye swollen nearly shut and a gash in his lip that was still fresh with blood. His right cheek was bruised just under his eye socket.

Verity pulled their hand free and stepped backward, the rustling of their clothes drawing Callum’s attention to the doorway.

“Daddy,” he gasped, reaching out to Jack with his unrestrained hand.

Jack looked over his shoulder and watched Verity retreat down the hall with a hand over their mouth. He stepped into Callum’s room and closed the door, scared to approach. Callum looked so fragile, so impermanent.

“Daddy,” Callum moaned again, a soft and pained whimper that had Jack’s feet moving across the room. He rounded the bed to take Callum’s free hand in his, pressing his knuckles to his mouth and peppering them with kisses.

“Don’t cry,” Callum said, covering his own whimper with a choked-sounding inhalation.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked, reaching for Callum’s face but stopping just shy of touching his bruised skin. “What happened?”

Callum moved Jack’s hand to his face, wincing as his fingertips brushed the bruising on his cheekbone, but he didn’t shy away, instead holding Jack’s hand in contact with him.

“I saw Keith and went after him. He said it wasn’t safe and he’d come to warn Justin and Micah, and then two guys showed up. One of them went for Keith and I tried to stop him, but the other one grabbed me.” Callum squeezed his eyes closed, trying to not remember the memory. “I’m afraid Keith got raped.”

The spark flickered out of Callum’s less swollen eye and Jack’s blood boiled.

“Did you?” he choked on his words.

Callum shook his head then inhaled sharply, shifting the other side of his body with a grimace.

“No,” he confirmed, easing Jack’s nerves. “I blacked out so they checked. But no. Oh God, Daddy, please don’t cry.”

Jack ground the heels of his hands against his eyes and clenched his jaw.

“I’m just a little banged up,” Callum told him, reaching for his hand. “My collarbone is busted, but I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack blurted.

“What for?” Callum scoffed in disbelief.

Jack launched up from the bed and walked to the window, lacing his fingers together behind his neck and staring out the window. It was dawn now, the sun cresting over the horizon but still sharing the sky with the moon. Jack squinted, looking for stars but unable to find any. He turned, eyes landing on the brightest star he’d ever seen, beaten and in a hospital bed.

“I should have married you the day I got here. I should have told you I loved you long before I did. I should have spent my entire life being the man you deserve.”

Callum rolled his good eye and reached for Jack. “I agree with two of those things. But if you’d been here the whole time, I might not have even liked you.”

Jack returned to the bed and sat beside Callum, lacing their fingers together.

“I wouldn’t have appreciated you the way I do if I’d had you all along,” Callum rasped. “But you’re gonna need to wait a lot longer to marry me now.”

“You’re kidding,” Jack paled. “I was planning to marry you in this damn hospital bed, kitten.”

“Definitely not. I don’t want to look like death in my wedding pictures. Sorry, Daddy. What I do want is to go to sleep.” Callum exhaled and closed his eyes.

“Do you want me to stay?”

“Obviously,” Callum retorted, tightening his fingers around Jack’s hand before quickly falling into sleep.

When he’d been out for half an hour, Jack untangled their hands and stood up, stretching and cracking his neck. He stepped out of the room and rummaged in his pocket for his phone and called Verity.

“How is he?” they answered.

“Broken collarbone. Pretty bruised, but otherwise fine. He’s okay, Verity,” Jack promised. “Did you hear anything more about Keith?”

“He’ll be fine.”

“Are you still at the hospital?” Jack asked, walking to the elevator banks.

“Of course. Landon and Gregory came, too.” Verity sounded beyond tired.

“Do you want to meet me in the cafeteria for coffee?”

“God, yes,” they replied, hanging up.

Jack dropped his phone back into his pocket and rode down to the cafeteria, finding Verity, Landon, and Gregory already there.

Landon was on him as soon as he saw him, wrapping him in a tight hug and weeping into his ear. Jack automatically patted Landon’s back in a soothing motion before letting his hand drop to his side. He lowered his forehead onto Landon’s shoulder, a cry leaking from his lips.

“He’s okay, yeah?” Landon asked.

Jack nodded, shoulders heaving with the weight of his tears.

“He’s really fucked up,” Jack whispered. He stepped back and sniffed, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands and forcing a smile. He ran a reassuring hand down Landon’s arm and nodded as positively as he could manage. “It’s okay, though.”

Landon looked at Jack sorrowfully, with Gregory at his back and Verity by his side. He wiped his eyes and stepped back toward Jack, pulling him into another hug that had Jack instinctively rubbing a calming hand through Landon’s hair.

Landon reached behind him and swiped his hand away. “You’re not my Daddy, Jack,” he whispered. “Okay?”

Jack mashed his teeth together and forced a nod, a dam shattering behind his eyelashes as the tears he’d tried to hide from Callum broke free. Verity’s arms wrapped around him from behind and he sobbed in the hospital cafeteria while Verity and Landon held him steady.

“I want to marry him. He won’t let me marry him until he’s healed,” Jack hiccupped with a self-deprecating laugh.

Landon tensed briefly, then tightened his hold.

“Nonsense,” Verity whispered.

Landon stepped away, backing into Gregory. Verity loosened their hold on him and wiped his cheeks with their fingers.

“Jesus, I work tomorrow,” Jack scrubbed his hands down his face. “My first day starts in two hours.”

“That’s obviously not happening,” Gregory confirmed, handing him a cup of coffee.

“Isn’t Justin your boss? I think he’ll understand.”

Jack’s shoulders tensed and he took a drink of the shitty hospital coffee. “I should go find him.”

“No, you should sit down and collect yourself so you can be there for Callum,” Landon countered. “We’ll go track them all down and see what’s going on.”

“You stay here,” Verity said, pointing at the plastic chair Jack had just lowered himself into.

“I told Callum I’d stay.”

“You are staying. You’re in the hospital still,” Verity twisted their hair out of their face and leveled a warning look at him. “If I’m not back in half an hour, you can go back to his room, but you need time to gather yourself together and take a breath.”

“Alright,” he agreed, knowing Verity was correct.

“We’ll be back,” Landon confirmed, pulling Gregory toward the doorway.

“Thank you,” Jack whispered, unsure if anyone heard.