The fire in your eyes

10.

Jade
I was ripped from my sleep by a ear piercing scream that came from my side. There she was, my beautiful girlfriend screaming and crying, breaking right in front of my eyes. Her eyes were closed so I just pulled her into me and began rocking back and forth reminding her who I am and why I'm here.
"Pez, baby it's me. You're ok. Just open your eyes. You're ok." I repeated those words into her ear for about five minutes whilst she screamed until her throat must have ripped to shreds. She began to stop screaming after a while and resorted to just muttering the words "no. Don't take him. No." I was begging Her to calm down by the end of her little episode. She had calmed down to balling her eyes out as I rocked her back and forth trying not to cry myself as my girlfriend broke into pieces in front of me. I checked the clock,3:00am , I don't know what happened yesterday but it must have really shook her up. At about half past I decided to go down stairs and make her a hot chocolate along with one for myself. Perrie hadn't stoped crying but had definitely calmed down. I went over to my wardrobe to grab one of my Disney hoodies that I knew she loved and helped her pull it over her head. I turned my back to her ready to give her a piggy back down stairs.
"Come on I'm getting you something to soothe your throat a little as well as help you calm down too." She nodded and hopped onto my back.
I carried her down the stairs. By this point I was so worried that I kind of felt sick so the hot chocolate better make me feel better. When I got into the kitchen I let Perrie down and she went to sit on a seat. It wasn't long before she was up though and I could feel her hugging me from behind as a I moved around making the hot chocolate, she was still sniffling but I'm pretty sure the crying had stopped which was a step in the right direction. We sat down on the sofa and my arm naturally swung round her shoulder. There was a quiet moment before I turned to her. For a moment I just admired her, her nose, her hair which was being illuminated by the morning sun. Finally my eyes landed on her eyes, her beautiful ocean eyes, I never wanted to see her cry again.
"Perrie I think we should talk." She just stared forward.
"Pez, baby, after you got that phone call last night something happened, you nearly forced yourself to throw up you woke up screaming this morning. You said 'no.don't take him.no." Instead of a reply I saw her eyes start to water.
"Perrie I don't want you to cry but I- I'm terrified, I need you to be ok." She sniffles before turning to me completely.
"My-my d-dad." She was shaking and her voice was jittery. "H-h-he's" she started to let tears slip down her face "gone" she whispered the last part as all my worst fears were realised. Perrie's dad had died yesterday.
"Oh Perrie." I pulled her in for a hug whilst kissing her head, trying to comfort her. She must have been all cried out because she just turned back to me determined to Finnish the story. "My mum called last night, she was crying and I couldn't really make it out. She said t-that he just w-went to sleep and never..." she stopped herself from saying the final part, Finally realising what she might say next.
"Perrie I'm so sorry." She just looked off into the distance and spoke.
"Don't be it wasn't your fault." My heart broke at the sight I just couldn't watch anymore.
----

We spent the rest of the day lazing around on the sofa just watching whatever came on the tv, we were both knakered from our early start as well as the revelation from this morning. Perrie's head was in my lap and she was just staring intently at the tv like she wasn't even focusing I softly raked my fingers through her blonde hair. I was bitting the inside of my lips periodically, a nervous habit I'd picked up when I was young. It wasn't until the channels flicked again and a crappy soap came on when Perrie moved. She lifted her head from my lap and stared at my face intently. Before I could react she straddled my lap and just simply bear hugged me; after a moment she spoke:
"Do you know how perfect you've been?" I shrugged my shoulders in response a little taken back by the sudden contact. "I love you" she murmured against my shoulder. At this point my body cooperated as if on impulse by pulling her impossibly closer to me and whispering "I love you too" Into her ear. There was a moments silence.
"It's not even been 24 hours and I already want a hug from him, badly." She sighed.
"Do you trust me?" I answered.
"Always." She replied and I smiled.
"Then trust me enough to believe that it'll get easier, trust me that you'll (we'll) get through this together." She grabbed my hand.
"Together." She repeated. "How are you so good at this?"
"I lost my mum when I was 14, her office block set on fire, she couldn't have been saved." She hugged me closer. "It's why I'm a firefighter, the more people I save the less people who go through that. Thought I was going to loose my dad too through all of the grief, he's still here though, we hung on." Perrie pulled away from our hug and cupped my face.
"So between us we have one mum, one dad, two siblings, a bunch of insane friends and one life threatening job." I breathed out a sort of nervous sounding laugh, it was weird to think of it like that.
"I guess so." I said staring into her eyes, loving the feeling of her hands cupping my face. "Scared?" I asked. For a moment she hesitated, like she didn't know how to form the right words. Then after a brief pause she leaned in and gave me the most delicate and wonderful kiss ever. We both smiled into the kiss which caused a break out of giggles and we realised in that moment that we were almost certain we'll be fine.
"I love you." I heard Perrie say, she was still straddling me with her arms around my neck to anchor her back up after she threw her head back in laughter.
"I love you too." I replied in the most sincere way that I could.

Perrie
The past few days have been an absolute nightmare. Of course it's all started on Saturday and it just snowballed. Jade had to go to work on Monday which was fine because I had to start the funeral planning with my mum, yay me. Then on Tuesday I had to go into the school and explain why I've not been at work which, obviously, ended in tears. Wednesday was just as bad as I spent it alone crying, all day. Then Thursday Jade got the news that Lauren was back in the hospital at 3:00am. We jumped out of bed to go and see her, as Jade's been staying at mine. Since then Jade and Dinah have turned into corpses. Jades only been home once since Thursday and it's Sunday. She speeded home in her car to grab clothes and a shower before speeding back and moving right back to Lauren's side. Camila is not so good either, at least she's letting it out though. Normani and I have been talking about the lack of tears from Jade and Dinah for days now, they just stare into the distance each holding one of Lauren's hands. To make matters 1000 times worse my dads funeral is on Friday and I don't know how I'm going to peel Jade away from Lauren to get her to it. God I wish Lauren had never been on call when that fire happened a few months ago. I remember the phone call Jade got.

It was 3:00am and we were asleep together clinging to eachtother like we had been for the past week, we'd gotten a lot closer emotionally. I learnt that Jade and her dad haven't really spoken much since she moved over to London and he stayed in South Shields. I could see how much that killed her in her eyes. I'd also learnt that Jade practically depended on her friends at the station completely. Her ring tone sliced through the cool morning air it was one of those remixes of 'shape of you' and the actual ring tone. Jade groaned before turning over to get her phone.
"Hullo?" I giggled at the sound of her morning voice.
"What?" She sat bolt upright. "Yep i'll be there in a moment." She dropped her phone and just stared in the the wall in front of the bed. I touched her arm and her eyes flickered over to my hand. Suddenly I felt extremely self conscious of having it there. Never the less I asked anyway,
"Jade? Baby what's wrong?" She turned to me, not like normal though, like when your staring off and you can't move your eyes so all you can do is turn your body. She whispered,
"Lauren, its Lauren." That was all she needed to say before we were both up and changing, on our way to the hospital in 20 minutes. After that she never said a word. She just silently held my hand sometimes or if she was talking she was asking about food or drink, telling me to go home and get rest or something. And Dinah? She was the same. Corpses.

That day we found out that Lauren's head had taken a nasty hit during one of her boxing sessions. This triggered some clearly unfinished business in her brain from the concussion a few months back, her brain began to swell and now she's in an induced coma and no one has any idea what will happen next. All I know is that sitting here in the bloody uncomfortable hospital chairs, one hand loosely tucked into Jades, is hell.