Without You – By Umbrella_ella

“Sami should be calling soon,” Marlena sighs out, sleep slurring her words, and John smiles from the chair at her bedside. He can’t stop touching her, his thumb tracing the back of her hand like it has for so many years, but now, now it’s different.

He’d almost lost her, couldn’t bear the thought of letting her go.

“Yes, she said she’d call when she landed,” John agrees, voice rough with emotion. His wife, wife wife wife— god, he wants to say that with every breath he takes, for as long as he lives, because he is hers and she is his, and he is never letting her go again— is beautiful.

His fingers tighten around hers, and he’s not quite sure what time it is, but they’d gotten back to the hospital late in the night. Kayla had hooked her up to the machines all over again, and he has to remind himself to fight the swell of panic at the sight of the thin wires that monitor the steady beat of her heart. This rhythm is a welcome noise, reminding him that Marlena is alright, that she hadn’t died— that she’s here with him, her hand warm in his.

“Where are you?” Marlena asks, her eyes open and bright and clear, her brow furrowed as she searches him for an answer, as if it might be etched onto the lines of his face.

“I was just thinking about us, about…” the words are lost to him, stuck in his throat, and his heart aches with all he wants to say, all he must keep away from this tender moment, lest the words break this precious fantasy, but his voice trembles, a traitor to the last, “about you. How much I love you.”

It’s not convincing, he knows. Doc’s always been able to read him like an open book, be he Roman Brady or John Black, and it’s no different now.

“Liar. That’s not a look of someone who’s carried away by thoughts of romance, John.” Even now, in the dim, florescent lighting of the hospital room, she’s beautiful, the remnants of carefully applied makeup clinging to her lashes, and she takes his breath away.

John sighs, and he kisses her hand, refusing to let go of her for one second.

“I almost lost you,” the words spill out before he can stop them, effusing the space between them with a bitter mourning, souring the air with his pain, “I almost lost you and I couldn’t face— I can’t fathom what this world would ever be without you. You are lodged so deeply inside of me, I don’t know how to exist without you.”

They both know it’s happened before, that she’d been lost before, and that he’d moved on. But even afterwards, even with Roman and Isabella and Brady, even after all of that, they’d still been pulled back together. Now, he’s not sure he could do that again, not sure he’d want to.

“I just got you back, Doc.”

Her hazel eyes glitter with tears, and her free hand strokes his face, his jaw jumping beneath her touch.

“I’m here. And I will always be here, with you, John.”

John knows that, but he can’t look at his hands anymore, can’t blink away the stains of his wife’s blood on his hands, can’t undo the bitter, vile things he’d said to Belle. Instead, he closes his eyes, content with the feel of her hand on his face, and her warm digits between his own. She pulls away then, and it’s late, he thinks, or very early, because pink light slips in between the slats covering the window, and he focuses on her.

Her blonde hair is mussed from the pillow, and her gown is rumpled, but he wants to kiss her anyway. He wants to drink her in, he wants to cherish her with all he has; instead she flicks back the covers of the bed, and he does his best to shift into the space beside her.

She’s warm and breathing and here and his.

“I love you,” he murmurs, and perhaps she hears him, because she tucks her nose into his neck and breathes him in.

Her fingers find his wrist and press into the flesh there, and he wonders if she was just as afraid of leaving him as he was of losing her. Marlena tugs at his hand, and he fumbles as his fingertips trace the soft skin of her belly beneath the loose hospital gown and wander up.

“I’m here, John,” she says, and his stomach turns when he feels the ridged square of bandaging that covers the bullet hole that had nearly ripped their family apart, had nearly ripped him apart, “and I’m fine.”

He almost believes her, but for the wince that flickers across her face when he brushes the bandage. He almost believes her, but for the way she looks beneath these lights— he’d much rather see her in the soft glow of their fireplace at home, smiling and laughing and moaning and sighing out his name as he kisses her a hundred times over.

“I was supposed to catch you, Doc,” John says, and the words are angry and snap against the quiet moment, breaking the fragile joy they’ve buoyed against the storm, “I was supposed to— to be there for you, to—”

“To what, John? To step in front of the bullet? There’s nothing you could have done, my love. It’s done, but I’m here with you. That’s what matters.”

She smells like the bite of early winter air that had nipped at their fingertips outside in the square, and he breathes deeply, his palm splaying on her hip, and she kisses his throat, just as she’s done a thousand times before. Her words are a balm to his soul, and he is content to let it all go for now, to enjoy this moment with her. His lips find hers, and he takes his time, tasting her, loving her, his lips tracing hers in a familiar way that still sets his heart racing.

It’s like coming home.