Chapter Text
Another week passes until Jack’s day shift coverage lines up next to a day off. He comes home from work mentally spent and exhausted.
Robby was off today. He had to cover. Alone.
The urge to fall asleep in his dirty scrubs on the living room carpet is tempting, but Linton’s words echo in his mind. It is a limited opportunity to experiment. He can call Robby… No.
Jack tries.
He does everything Linton said: he pulls on soft, fuzzy, honest-to-God pajamas, turns on gentle lullabies he remembers Frank mentioning that Tanner liked on his phone, steeps lavender Earl Grey tea just to let the steam rise onto his face before sipping on the cooling liquid, and tries and struggles with the thin piece of tape over the coloring book.
He tries a few deep-breathing exercises, feeling more and more like a failure with each passing minute– the pain tugs at his heart. He sits there, waiting for something to shift, trying so consciously to not be his version of normal. Nothing works. The quiet feels forced. He feels as though he is watching himself from across the room; that a camera will pop out from behind the curtain with a laughing crew behind it.
He exhales through his nose, restless. The tea’s gone cold. He’s struggling against the near-clear material blocking his opportunity. He stands, dizzy.
Jack tries again.
He tries the sound machine next, cycling through every setting—rain, ocean, white noise—but each one feels wrong. The rain sounds too clean, the ocean too far away. He turns it off, letting the distant noise echo through the house, fighting the anxiety he feels without the police radio.
He grabs the coloring book again, ripping it open with frustration, flips to a page with bright cars, and tries to fill one in. The crayon breaks. He stares at the stub, jaw tight. “Come on,” he mutters, voice cracking. He presses harder, the wax squeaking against the paper. The color looks wrong. Too harsh.
He pushes the book away, stands, paces once. The prosthetic catches on the rug. He curses, sits back down hard, rubbing his leg. The pain spikes, then dulls.
Then he remembers the box.
He kneels beside the bed, ignoring the throbbing protest on his stump, and reaches underneath until his fingers hit cardboard. Pulls it out, dust clinging to the tape. The box he shoved there months ago—things he didn’t want to see. He opens it anyway.
Rabby’s inside. The old stuffed rabbit, fur matted and burnt, one ear bent wrong.
Jack stares at it for a long time. His chest tightens, then loosens. He picks it up, thumb brushing the seam where the stitching’s come undone.
He sits back on the floor, Rabby in his lap. The music hums low from the hall. The air feels different—warmer, slower.
He doesn’t fight it. Doesn’t hide. Just breathes and relaxes his clenched jaw.
The edges start to blur again, not in the way they used to. He’s still here, still aware, but smaller. The tension in his shoulders eases.
He thinks about calling Robby again, missing him more and more, as Linton suggested, but the idea knots in his stomach. Too much, too soon. The longer he snuggles Rabby on his bedroom floor, the further away the suggestion feels.
He rubs his palm over his fuzzy blue and black pajama pants, slow circles, trying to coax warmth from friction. The texture catches against his skin—rough, soft, familiar. Rabby is tucked into the front of his shirt, sticking out from his collar.
He smiles, small and crooked.
Faintly, he hears soft, lullaby instrumentals. He looks around and sees nothing that might be the source. He crawls towards the door, frowning at the pain in his leg. He plopped back down on his butt to inspect his stump. Huh. He pokes it, just to retract his hand with a hiss. He looks back over at the stump cage by the bed and determines he doesn’t want to risk getting in trouble by breaking it.
The coloring book and his phone are still in the kitchen, down the hall. He thinks about getting up but looks down at Rabby instead. “A’venture?” Despite the pain, he stands against the doorframe and discovers he can bunny hop, just like Rabby, if they do it together, all the way to his Hot Wheels coloring book.
The hallway felt colder than the bedroom. He loosely snatches the sound machine, opting for it over his phone, and essential coloring materials from the counter, and bunny hops to the couch where the good-smelling clothes and blankets are from last time. He buries his head into the hood and pulls the strings as much as he can around him and Rabby. He tries to wrap himself in the equally fuzzy blanket to feel safer. A gust of wind comes through, and he shifts, curling tighter, rubbing the fabric again. The cold doesn’t bite as hard now.
The lullabies drift through the apartment, soft and distant. He hums along without meaning to, the sound small and uneven.
He reaches for the coloring book, flips to a page with a bright red car. The crayon wobbles in his loose grip and squeaks against the paper, leaving uneven streaks. He giggles quietly, the sound surprising him. “Oops,” he whispers, and fixes the line, tongue poking out in concentration. His shoulders drop from his ears and he just… breathes.
His thoughts slow until they stop making sentences. They turn into fragments—color, warmth, Rabby, safe. He hums again to himself, allowing flashes and memories of Robby taking care of him to enter and leave his mind.
A small boat of anxiety tries to sail in. His stomach threatens to tighten– work, therapy, work-Robby…
He lets them fade. The thoughts don’t vanish; they lose their urgency. The coloring book page is half‑finished, but he doesn’t care. He traces the outline with his finger instead of the crayon, following the curve like it’s a map. His eyes begin to droop.
The nightmares don’t come.