a chuisle mo chroí ♡ JFK ✔️

𝐗𝐗; 𝐑𝐚𝐠 𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐥 🎀

The chilling scream asking for help next door woke Jack up. In an instant, he was already barging in with worry.

"Alice! Are you alright?" The man's voice asked, and then the lights went on.

He noticed the widened eyes first. They were lost, as if she were still in a dream. She was sitting up, propped up by a jump when she woke so abruptly.

Jack hurried over to the edge of the bed to sit on it. His hand over Alice's, which she gripped as though she were holding on for dear life. He spoke softly.

"I'm right here, it's alright."

The main door to her room also opened with force, almost banging against the wall.

"I heard a scream," Alex, who was never far, stood by the door in his robe with an alarmed expression. "What happened?"

"It was just a nightmare, Mr. Mason. There's nothing to worry about." Jack informed. "You can go back to sleep."

The younger man appeared to relax, and his eyes showed sleepiness once again as the fright wore off.

"I'll first find Miss Olivares a cup of tea," Mason insisted.

He disappeared again after a rather lingering look toward the joined hands.

Finally, Alice came to her full senses, but instead of saying anything, she found comfort in Jack. Desperately reaching out for him in something similar of an embrace but far more anguished and hopeless; her hands travelled up and down his form, her fingers brushed the back of his neck and went all the way up to his head as though she wanted to make sure of Jack's tangibility.

Her small, shaky hands grabbed onto the folds of his robe. She was only comfortably satisfied when, while resting her head under the crook of his neck, she noticed his heartbeat going on and on. This was reality. This was the present. Everything was as it should be.

"I'm so sorry for waking you," she told him, leaning back again against the bedframe. "so silly of me."

"Nonsense." Jack pulled the sheets over her just as Mason came back with the warm chamomile.

"This should put you back to sleep nicely," Alex said, placing the glass on the nightstand.

Despite the appetizing, calming scent of the cinnamon that Mason had apparently sprinkled on top, Alice shook her head. "I don't want to... I can't."

"It's still nighttime, Alice. You have to try to catch some more shut-eye." But her eyes told Jack just how she felt. "That bad, huh?"

Alice decided to drink a little, if anything, to show she was grateful of Alex's attentiveness.

"Thank you, Alex," she said after a yawn. Mason went away, happy that the situation was more or less resolved.

"Do you want one of the stuffed animals to cuddle?" Jack jokingly asked, holding them up in the air trying not to appear or sound too condescending.

"I'm not three," Alice complained, which made him put the plushies back down. "give the teddy bear, though." Alice stretched her arms out after changing her mind.

However, something better than a plushie walked into her room; Pushinka jumped onto the bed after sensing the commotion. The dog licked Alice's hand and settled at her side. Alice petted her, feeling warm-hearted.

With a smiling kiss on her forehead, Jack pressed the light off, said goodnight once again, and hoped the nightmare would stay away. But unfortunately, that certain nightmare had already taken place once before and nothing was to say that it couldn't recur.