Chapter Text
Abbie doesn’t cry. She doesn’t cry at movies, she doesn’t cry when she reads, she doesn’t cry when she gets angry, she doesn’t cry when she gets sad. Her friends would sob at the endings of movies and shows and Abbie was always the one to get the box of tissues for them, her eyes dry.
Abbie stopped crying a long time ago.
Oh, she’s shed a tear here and there. She can count on one hand how often that has happened. She shed a few tears when she hugged her sister—her sister, who got herself locked up to protect her. But Jenny had taken the fall and needed to cry; it wasn’t Abbie’s turn to cry. Abbie had to be the big sister she (thought) she had always been.
But now—there’s an unbearable pressure mounting in her chest, expanding and expanding until she feels like she can’t breathe. It creeps up her throat into her mouth and then her nose and then suddenly her eyes and there are tears. Tears rolling down her face, and they won’t stop. They are endless and they are terrifying.
And it’s all because of this man: this man who drives her insane and who makes rash decisions and who’s both volatile and brilliant and stupid. He’s so stupid. She hates him so much—hates that he makes her feel, and makes her want things, and makes her cry.
“Abbie…”
She swipes the tears off her cheeks with rough motions before she pushes a finger into Crane’s chest. “No, you listen to me. If you get yourself killed, I will find you and haunt your ass for eternity, do you hear me?”
He smiles. It’s sad—an acknowledgement of his mortality. An acknowledgement that whatever they have—this thing, this link, their threads entwining, as he likes to call it—could end. “I believe you would do that, yes,” he says quietly. He then brushes the tears from her cheek with his long fingers, and Abbie allows herself to close her eyes for a moment, allows herself to weaken. “I will, however, endeavor to return. To you, Abbie.”
Abbie counts this as the fifth time he’s said her first name. She’s secreted each breach of propriety in her mind, like glittering treasures. And it makes her cry harder. Sobs ricochet through her body, and she has to turn away. He lets her cry by herself for a moment, as she sobs great, heaving sobs that wrack her small frame.
But she collects herself. She bites the inside of her cheek. She turns back to him. “Just come back, okay?”
And then she reaches around him and hugs him as hard as she can, pressing her face against his chest. He rests his chin on her head, and in that moment, no one has a reason to cry anymore.