a chuisle mo chroí ♡ JFK ✔️

𝐗𝐕𝐈; 𝐁𝐚𝐛𝐲, 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 🎀

Alice escaped the situation by running to her favorite spot in the White House. Concealed by surrounding bushes and branches of the magnolia trees at the end of the garden of roses. She felt safe there. Maybe it was because of the good memories of watching birds fly around and drink from the bath. It was a space free of noise, drama, stress...

A bird's feather fell and got carried by the wind far away. Alice wished she was that feather. She couldn't bear having to confront the circumstance she was in.

Being that sensible, that insecure, and emotional... It was excruciatingly tiresome. Having to worry so much about other's opinions, having to rely on validation and support, needing constant reassurance... all of it was Alice's cross to bear. It was not fair for anyone else to put up with these defects, and yet, as she sat in the gazebo, flooded by her quiet sobs, someone sat next to her. Someone fully willing to-not put up with it-but be with her through it all. Someone committed to everything that she was and ever would be because he saw no flaw in her. The flaws, he thought, were all his. And Alice, the poor girl who'd fallen victim to them. But he was sure that she was not a fleeting whim like the rest. If she let him, he would try his best to be who she deserved.

"I feel like a dumbass," the voice reigned a storm on her, involuntarily causing her weeps to worsen in humiliation. It was as though all Alice ever did was cry, and she was sure Jack was sick of it by then. "I should have seen it coming from a mile, but I'm blind as a bat around here. All I focus on is work when I know there are far more important things, and yet, I'm neglecting them..."

His approach worked in soothing her. At least she was realizing Jack had not taken part in Elizabeth's games.

"What did she say to you?" Alice's sobs finally gave her a rest so she could speak.

Jack looked away, suddenly finding interest in his surroundings. He could already tell the conversation would be awkwardly unavoidable.

"It bears no worth repeating," he said. The rude words that escaped Elizabeth Raymond's mouth were nothing short of graphic. With that, Alice could more or less figure out as much.

Alice wiped away the tears on her cheeks and sniffled in an effort to recompose her dignity. Then assumed the necessary bravery to catch Jack's face in her blurry sights.

"I know I'm nothing spectacular," she started saying brokenly. "I don't have the looks of a model, or a promising starlet... But Jack, please," the man in question burned his gaze on hers, attentively listening to her one and non-negotiable plea. "promise you'll never be untrue to me."

As shocking as it was to hear that word coming from her quivering lips, it was to be expected. Sooner or later. And Jack took no offense at all or see it as an accusation, considering his nature, which she had been aware of before. All in all, Alice was right to put this out in the open, for he was eager to show her that he, at last, was changing for the better. And it was all because of her.

"Goodness, I would never think of doing such a thing to you. I admit I have never been one to settle. In my youth and even up until now, I went from flower to flower," he recognized, much to his mortifying embarrassment. But he knew it needed being said no matter how humiliating it was to utter it to her. "But you... You are the exception. You're my rosebud." Irreplaceable. Delicate. Invigorating.

Alice couldn't hear the words in his mind describing her, but she didn't need to. If there was one thing they had learned from each other already was to see the sincerity in their eyes. Alice memorized each nuance of his like she was afraid one day she'd lose them and wouldn't be able to remember them. Jack considered hers an aquamarine treasure, Atlantis lost in her ocean eyes.

Jack looked around, making sure the coast was clear. Then, his fingers grazed her salted cheeks, rubbing the rest of the tears away. Alice closed her eyes to appreciate the touch more deeply.