They stayed like that for a while.

Long enough that Jamie’s breathing matched Lena’s. Long enough that the shaking stopped. Long enough that the light in the room shifted, afternoon stretching toward something softer, and the anime Lena had put on earlier murmured faintly from the laptop like background music for a life he wasn’t sure was his yet.

Jamie didn’t move. He kept his face pressed into Lena’s shoulder, fingers still curled in the sleeve of her varsity hoodie where her name was stitched, and tried to figure out what he was feeling.

Not panic. Not anymore.

Something worse, maybe. Something more dangerous.

Hope.

It sat in his chest like a held breath. Fragile. Terrifying. The kind of feeling that made you want to cover it with both hands in case someone knocked it loose. Because if he let himself believe this—really believe it, the clinic, the appointment, the possibility—and it fell apart, he didn’t think he’d survive the landing.

But Lena’s heartbeat was steady under his ear. And the hoodie smelled like her. And she’d said my pretty girl like it was the simplest fact in the world, and something in him had cracked open at that and hadn’t closed back up.

So he stayed. And he breathed. And he let the hope sit there, wobbly and new, and didn’t try to crush it.

Then Lena moved.

Not fast. Not sudden. Just a quiet shift in energy, like she’d been running on tenderness and had now switched to logistics.

“Okay,” she murmured against his hair. “We’ve got a bit more than an hour. And you haven’t eaten since this morning.”

Jamie made a small protest-noise.

Lena kissed his hair. “No arguing. Sit. I’ll be right back. Do not vanish.”

She slid off the bed and disappeared. Jamie heard her padding down the hall, then the fridge opening, a cupboard, the tap running. She came back a minute later with a granola bar, a banana, a handful of cashews in a little bowl, and her Nalgene—the big one, covered in stickers like a scrapbook that had given up on order. A scratched-up Wildcats cheer decal. A sparkly Sailor Moon transformation brooch sticker. A chibi Jupiter next to a similarly sized, smol Moon, placed shoulder to shoulder like they belonged that way. A Luna cat half-hidden under a peeling Wildcats paw print.

She set it all on the bed between them like a field medic laying out supplies.

“Eat,” she said.

Jamie stared at the banana, then at her.

Lena lifted her eyebrows. “Medical reasons.”

Jamie huffed a tiny laugh and reached for the granola bar.

Lena ate too, cross-legged on the bed beside him, crunching cashews and watching him like she was counting bites in her head. She didn’t talk much, just kept things moving: nudging the Nalgene toward him, a quiet “good” when he finished the banana, her hand resting on his knee like a grounding cable.

By the time the food was gone, Jamie looked less hollow. Not fine. Not even close. But steadier. Like something had been plugged back in.

“Okay,” Lena said, brushing crumbs off the duvet. “Bathroom. Quick wash-up.”

Jamie’s shoulders tensed.

Lena clocked it instantly and softened her voice. “Hey. Warm water. Clean face. That’s all. You can tell me ‘stop’ at any point.”

Jamie swallowed. Nodded.

Lena led him into her ensuite with the same calm certainty she’d used all day, like the world couldn’t bite him while she was holding the leash.

She turned the tap on warm, dampened a washcloth, and handed it to him first.

“Face,” she said. “You do you. I’ll do mine.”

Jamie hesitated, then pressed the cloth to his cheeks and forehead. The warmth seemed to pull him back into his body a little—like being reminded he had skin, had edges, was real and here and not just a collection of feelings drifting through Lena’s bedroom.

Lena washed her own face quickly, then grabbed a second cloth and, without making it weird, gently cleaned the smudged corners under Jamie’s eyes where tears had dried. Jamie flinched once, then relaxed when she didn’t comment. Didn’t stare. Didn’t make it a thing.

“There,” Lena murmured, satisfied. “Better.”

She tossed the washcloth in the hamper and steered him back to the bed. “Sit. Hair next.”

Jamie’s cheeks went pink. “Lena…”

“Shh,” Lena said, already reaching for her brush from the nightstand. “This is happening.”

Jamie sat on the edge of the bed, looking mortified and soft in equal measure. Lena settled behind him, one knee tucked up, and started brushing his hair with slow, careful strokes. No yanking. No impatient tugging. Just patient, gentle pulls from ends to roots the way you were supposed to do it, the way she’d done for him when they were little and he’d let her because he trusted her with everything.

Jamie’s shoulders lowered inch by inch.

The brush moved through his hair like it was unwinding something tighter than tangles. Each stroke pulled a little more tension out of him, a little more of the day’s sharp edges, until his breathing had gone slow and his eyes had drifted half-shut.

“See?” Lena murmured. “Thick. Glossy. Perfect.”

Jamie made a tiny, embarrassed sound.

Lena’s mouth twitched. “I’m right.”

She set the brush down and gathered his hair up with both hands, smoothing it high. Jamie’s heart started to thump again, but it wasn’t panic this time. It was… something else. Something that made him feel too seen.

Lena reached for a pink scrunchie from her nightstand and looped it around the gathered hair, forming a high bun—not tight, not polished, deliberately messy in that way that looked effortless but absolutely wasn’t. Then she tugged a few strands free on either side, pulling them down to frame Jamie’s face, adjusting them with the kind of focus she usually reserved for competition routines.

Lena leaned sideways to catch his eye. “Mirror,” she said, nodding toward the one on the back of her closet door.

Jamie didn’t want to look.

He looked anyway.

His face was still puffy. Still tired. Still him.

But the bun sat high and soft, and the face-framing strands curled against her cheeks in a way that changed the whole shape of her face—less angular, less harsh, less like someone bracing for a fight. The pink scrunchie caught the light.

She blinked fast.

Lena appeared behind her in the reflection, chin hovering near her shoulder. Voice low.

“See? Pretty girl.”

Jamie’s breath hitched.

Lena didn’t linger. She knew better. She stepped back and clapped her hands once, brisk again. “Okay. Clothes. And—” She ducked back into the ensuite and reappeared with a stick of deodorant. “Here. The good one.”

Jamie took it, and the scent that hit him was clean and floral and distinctly girl in a way that made his chest squeeze. He put it on quickly, not looking at Lena, cheeks warm.

Lena didn’t comment. She just took it back and tossed it on the counter like it was nothing.

Jamie looked down at himself: Sailor Moon tee, pale pink joggers, Lena’s varsity hoodie still hanging off his shoulders like protection.

“I—” he started.

“You keep it,” Lena said immediately. “Hoodie stays. Tee stays. You can change pants if you want, but we don’t have to. Comfort is the goal.”

Jamie’s shoulders loosened. “Okay.”

Lena turned away, giving him space without making a show of it. She tugged on jeans, threw on an anime hoodie, then paused and, with a quick little huff at herself, put a bra on under it like she was armoring up too.

She grabbed her small crossbody bag from the desk chair—a little Luna and Artemis charm swinging from the zipper pull—and shoved her phone, keys, and wallet inside.

She glanced over her shoulder. “You good?”

Jamie nodded. “Yeah.”

Lena took one last look at her—hoodie, bun, sleep-soft face—and her expression went tender for half a second.

Then she slung the bag across her chest and straightened up like a woman going to war.

“Okay,” she said, voice steady. “We’re going.”

***

They went downstairs together.

Jamie kept his eyes on the steps, one hand drifting near Lena’s, the other half-lost in the sleeve of her varsity hoodie. It hung on him like armor made out of softness, unzipped and warm, smelling so strongly of her that his brain kept doing this thing where it forgot to be afraid for a few seconds at a time.

Lena walked one step ahead, just enough to go first. Not obvious. Not dramatic. Just positioned. Like she’d decided she was a shield and that was that.

At the bottom, the kitchen light was on, low and warm. The rest of the house was still dim. The dishwasher hummed faintly. The clock ticked too loud.

Four adults were there, arranged in the way people arranged themselves when they were pretending the afternoon had been normal. Auntie Penny had a book open on her lap that she clearly hadn’t been reading. Uncle Alex was leaning against the counter with a mug, scrolling his phone. His mom and dad sat at the table with mugs of their own, talking quietly about nothing—the kind of conversation that existed solely to fill silence.

They all looked up at once.

Jamie’s stomach dipped. His mom’s gaze found his face first, then drifted up to his hair—the bun, the pink scrunchie, the soft way the strands framed his face—and something moved behind her eyes. She didn’t cry. She didn’t say anything. But her lips parted slightly, and then she closed her mouth again, like she’d started a sentence she didn’t have the language for yet. His dad’s jaw tightened in that way it did when he was trying very hard to be the right kind of quiet. Auntie Penny’s eyes went bright, but she held still. Uncle Alex’s expression did that careful-lawyer thing—present, controlled, trying not to make anything worse.

Nobody said a word about the bun.

Lena didn’t give them time to.

“We’re going out for a bit,” she said, casual and firm. “We’ll be back later.”

Auntie Penny blinked. “Lena—”

“It’s fine,” Lena said quickly, a tiny edge in her voice that meant: trust me. “We just need to do something.”

Uncle Alex’s gaze flicked to Jamie, then to Lena, then softened. “Okay,” he said carefully. “Be safe.”

“Always,” Lena said.

His mom stood slowly, not rushing, not pushing. “Do you want—” She stopped herself. Swallowed. Started again, gentler. “Is there anything you need?”

Jamie’s throat locked up. He shook his head once, small.

His mom nodded like that was enough. Like she understood, somehow, that the answer wasn’t no so much as I can’t say it yet.

Jamie didn’t speak. He just stood close enough that his sleeve brushed Lena’s hand.

Lena’s fingers found his for a second, a brief squeeze.

Then she steered her toward the door, out into the early evening air, into the next thing.