What amazes me about this ficlet is how you take it from a really believable level of discomfort/anxiety to...relative elation. Just by clarifying that they WANT each other. Badly.
I love your characterizations and how I can feel and hear the dialogue like I’m sitting there watching the SHOW. Seriously, I know I’ve gone OFF about how great the dialogue is, but EVERYTHING is so... God. You really hit the right moods with a degree of perfection unlike anything anyone else can do with them. You know them so well and your love for them just flies off the page in these ficlets. Like how Jack gets a look on his face when she doesn’t eat, the set-up of the scene with outdated house-wifey magazines, like how Renee is nauseous and Jack... oh god. The way you describe him at the hospital all anxious and white with his hands clenched. I can envision that and it’s so JACK. I'm incoherently in bliss.
I can’t get over the reality of how frustrated they’d both be with this situation. Jack can’t STAND hospitals. They bring back all sorts of fear and pain, but he’s so JACK that, like you say, he never SAYS anything. And Renee wants to be so self-sufficient but the thought of Jack leaving makes her tense and “none of it made sense” and that all just works so well and comes across in this lovely story.
She knew that for him, the video played much longer before the fade to black. If the way he slept was any indicator, there was no fade. -- Just. YES! This. Ugh and the imagery that evokes makes MY stomach nauseous, so you just KNOW what it does to them, especially poor Jack.
I <3 this whole paragraph so much. The one that ends: It’s okay. Go back to sleep. ---!!!His fingers! Her breathing! The way sometimes he doesn’t settle down and she wakes up and he apologizes and she hates that. Oh man. This is so THEM and the words are just so beautiful, hon.
And this: the way his body felt too close to hers and too far away at the same time.-- oy contradictions. Don’t worry, bb. You’ll get to have sex with Jack later!
the prickle of goose-bumps rising on her arm, the cascade of heat that washed up the inside of her thighs I love how it’s just his little fingers brushing her wrist that does this to her. They want each other SO BADLY. My gods and then you have them clear it UP and I'm a goner.
“It reminds you.”-- Just gotta say that I love that this is the end of the sentence. She doesn’t have the say the of.
AND FOR THE DIALOGUE OF IC BRILLIANCE:
”When you said that you weren’t going to hold me to any of my promises.”
Her eyes flew up, meeting his. Her face went even hotter. “Jack. You didn’t tell me anything.”
dkjfa;lsdckfaj I love how he’s like “Yeah. I did” and she’s letting that one “sink in” and it’s everything she needs to know about why he’s there and his desire for her and he’s just so reassuring and it parallels 8x17 BEAUTIFULLY. My breath was taken.
“Please finish what you were saying,” I can HEAR her saying that.
as if someone could carpet bomb the place and he’d just be annoyed at having to refocus.-- YES THAT IS THE FACE HE GETS WHEN HE LOOKS AT HER!
AND … omg she says she’ll ask and she leaves him all forgetting that he’s in a hospital, no longer white!
She felt the slight lift as the downward motion began --- that is such a REAL and such a YOU thing to write that makes the scene so ALIVE.
“I assumed you’d bring it up if you-” He paused. “When you felt like saying something.” -- Love how … just. No, I have no words. Just ‘love’!
She walked out into the lobby, her boots tapping the marble as she moved toward the revolving doors. Her smile only grew more uncontrollable when the doors almost shut on Jack before he noticed it was their floor.--- THIS. This is such a perfect way to end this fic. Jack is totally lost in sexy!male!thought and she’s got this air of confidence from their earlier conversation and she can be happy and teasing and grinny now. I WANT TO READ WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! Oh wait! I think I will! :-P <3<3 &hearts
I am just... god i’m so happy right now. Sitting here. Reviewing these. It’s the happiest I’ve been all day.
You make me feel less crazy when otherwise I’d drown
I love your characterizations and how I can feel and hear the dialogue like I’m sitting there watching the SHOW. Seriously, I know I’ve gone OFF about how great the dialogue is, but EVERYTHING is so... God. You really hit the right moods with a degree of perfection unlike anything anyone else can do with them. You know them so well and your love for them just flies off the page in these ficlets. Like how Jack gets a look on his face when she doesn’t eat, the set-up of the scene with outdated house-wifey magazines, like how Renee is nauseous and Jack... oh god. The way you describe him at the hospital all anxious and white with his hands clenched. I can envision that and it’s so JACK. I'm incoherently in bliss.
I can’t get over the reality of how frustrated they’d both be with this situation. Jack can’t STAND hospitals. They bring back all sorts of fear and pain, but he’s so JACK that, like you say, he never SAYS anything. And Renee wants to be so self-sufficient but the thought of Jack leaving makes her tense and “none of it made sense” and that all just works so well and comes across in this lovely story.
She knew that for him, the video played much longer before the fade to black.
If the way he slept was any indicator, there was no fade. -- Just. YES! This. Ugh and the imagery that evokes makes MY stomach nauseous, so you just KNOW what it does to them, especially poor Jack.
I <3 this whole paragraph so much. The one that ends: It’s okay. Go back to sleep. ---!!!His fingers! Her breathing! The way sometimes he doesn’t settle down and she wakes up and he apologizes and she hates that. Oh man. This is so THEM and the words are just so beautiful, hon.
And this:
the way his body felt too close to hers and too far away at the same time.-- oy contradictions. Don’t worry, bb. You’ll get to have sex with Jack later!
the prickle of goose-bumps rising on her arm, the cascade of heat that washed up the inside of her thighs I love how it’s just his little fingers brushing her wrist that does this to her. They want each other SO BADLY. My gods and then you have them clear it UP and I'm a goner.
“It reminds you.”-- Just gotta say that I love that this is the end of the sentence. She doesn’t have the say the of.
AND FOR THE DIALOGUE OF IC BRILLIANCE:
”When you said that you weren’t going to hold me to any of my promises.”
Her eyes flew up, meeting his. Her face went even hotter. “Jack. You didn’t tell me anything.”
dkjfa;lsdckfaj I love how he’s like “Yeah. I did” and she’s letting that one “sink in” and it’s everything she needs to know about why he’s there and his desire for her and he’s just so reassuring and it parallels 8x17 BEAUTIFULLY. My breath was taken.
“Please finish what you were saying,” I can HEAR her saying that.
as if someone could carpet bomb the place and he’d just be annoyed at having to refocus.-- YES THAT IS THE FACE HE GETS WHEN HE LOOKS AT HER!
AND … omg she says she’ll ask and she leaves him all forgetting that he’s in a hospital, no longer white!
She felt the slight lift as the downward motion began --- that is such a REAL and such a YOU thing to write that makes the scene so ALIVE.
“I assumed you’d bring it up if you-” He paused. “When you felt like saying something.” -- Love how … just. No, I have no words. Just ‘love’!
She walked out into the lobby, her boots tapping the marble as she moved toward the revolving doors. Her smile only grew more uncontrollable when the doors almost shut on Jack before he noticed it was their floor.--- THIS. This is such a perfect way to end this fic. Jack is totally lost in sexy!male!thought and she’s got this air of confidence from their earlier conversation and she can be happy and teasing and grinny now. I WANT TO READ WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! Oh wait! I think I will! :-P <3<3 &hearts
I am just... god i’m so happy right now. Sitting here. Reviewing these. It’s the happiest I’ve been all day.