#tbh i should just go around wearing a 'ask me about agnes montague' shirt because i could talk about her for hours

[tired-beholding-bitch]

fire exists the first in light

guess who’s in love with agnes montague and decided to make it everyone’s problem ❤️ it is me, yes ❤️

honestly this is just self-indulgent fluff because she deserved to have soft and kind and gentle things and she never go to, and jack had such a sweet and bright love for her. idk it just makes my heart clench to think about them.

enjoy! here you can find the fic on ao3 if you prefer ✨

ASHES denote that fire was;

Respect the grayest pile

For the departed creature’s sake

That hovered there awhile.

Fire exists the first in light,

And then consolidates,—

Only the chemist can disclose

Into what carbonates.

— Emily Dickinson

Agnes forgot her scarf.

Jack confirms that’s still the case by stealing another sideways glance at her, as if anything would have changed in the last minute or so.

He’s usually better at not staring at her quite so plainly. Usually, though, he isn’t as distracted.

Her throat is pale and delicate, her skin smooth like cream.

Jack wants to run his index finger down the long, perfect column of it, and press down gently in the hollow between her clavicles.

Instead, he curls his hand into a fist at his side, tendons tensing and relaxing as he tears his eyes away.

It doesn’t last, really. She’s hard to look away from, the way she stands tall, her shoulders drawn back and her chin tilted up, trusting her feet to find their place on the earth even on the irregular terrain of the park.

She approaches most things like that – unwaveringly certain of the end result, never pausing for questions – and sometimes he wonders what that makes of him, when he hardly knows where he’ll be next week. If she’ll look at him one day and decide, as one would decide whether to wear a white or black shirt, to simply never show up on his doorstep again.

It’d hardly be surprising, but he doesn’t like dwelling on it.

There’s no point to it – either she’ll stay or she won’t, but she is here right now, and that’s enough.

He sighs, glancing up at the sky. It looks like rain, but then, every day looks like rain in November. When he risks another look at Agnes, estimating enough time has passed as not to make it weird, she’s already looking back.

Her expression is wide open, thoughtful. His heart twinges sweetly at the sight of her lips, curled into a subdued version of her lopsided smile.

Jack isn’t a poet.

If he was, he’d be able to find better words to describe the way her hair burns against the slate-grey winter sky, dead branches threaded through it like dark, engorged veins. The subtle warmth of her body next to his, growing stronger every time their shoulders brush in passing. The white mist of her breath, thick and opaque like smoke.

He wants to hold her hand.

The next time their arms touch, he can feel the heat radiating from the back of her hands, curling around his wrist like a warning.

He doesn’t reach out. Instead, he swallows, and speaks before he can talk himself out of it.

«Do you want my scarf?» he says. It still comes out tentative, somewhat. He’s nervous around her. At this point, perhaps he’ll never stop, and he’s alright with the idea. It feels right, that there would be a price to pay to see her eyes widening, all amber and muted gold, as she hums in pleased surprise.

Her hand goes to her throat, long fingers wrapping around the naked skin, fingertips tapping an absent-minded rhythm. She nods.

The scarf is stifling around his neck, wound too tightly in his haste to leave the house. He unravels the knot quite gladly at her assent, holding out the bundle of fabric for her to take. It’s easy to imagine stepping in front of her, carefully tucking the ends into her coat. Her fingers twist in the soft cotton, tugging it closer, and he lets go of the thought.

She doesn’t tie it at all, letting it hang loose and swing slightly back and forth as she walks. The black cloth is a stark contrast to the paleness of her – it makes her face look sharper, carved roughly out of bone-white driftwood. 

He wonders what she’d look like clad in vibrant greens and the dark yellow of autumn leaves, in robin egg blue and lavender purple. He hopes to be still here in the spring, if only to see a sundress flutter in the breeze around her knees, and feels adrift.

They walk in silence.

It lingers, stretching in the yawning distance between their fingers, scant and yet impossible to breach. It’s familiar.

Agnes doesn’t talk often.

In fact, it’d be maybe more accurate to say she doesn’t talk almost at all, except to offer tidbits of information in response to some rambling anecdote or other about his family or his friends or his job. He had quickly run out of stories, his life exhausting itself into her steady breathing and the cracking of twigs under her weight, and now they spend most of their time together just walking in the rapidly darkening light.

He holds what little she volunteered close to his chest, even if it paints a rather strange picture.

Something about a large family, and religion, and years she spent away, tangled in something bigger than he can understand. She doesn’t mind the cold. She doesn’t like spiders.

The time she told him about the spiders was the only one in which she’d let something like anger slip in her voice – it had seethed, crackling and powerful, and the air around them had grown hazy with the smell of smoke and burning dust.

He’d never talked about it again. He tries not to think too hard about any of it.

It’s kind of hard to do, though, when the only other occasions Agnes initiates conversation involve the kind of question that makes him freeze on the spot, anxiety writhing in his chest like it wants to scoop something out of it.

«Do I scare you?» she asks, today. She’s smiling as she speaks – the sort of there, sort of not smile that makes his heart contract and expand too violently, recoiling against his ribcage like a faulty gun –, her head just barely turned towards him. Her voice doesn’t raise at the end, and it comes out not sounding like a question at all.

She doesn't wait for an answer, either.

Her expression doesn't change, but he can still tell – with the absolute certainty of dreams, that lingering conviction – that she's sad when she wasn't before. Something in her choice, her gaze meaningful and heavy.

«It's okay if I do. I'm supposed to.» she says, and he can't gauge the emotion in her tone but it clings to the words like blood, her expression unreadable. Final.

Jack hates it with furious, single-minded intensity.

Then the streetlamp next to them blinks to life, casting its warm glow against the encroaching darkness of the evening, and suddenly she's awash with light.

It takes his breath away.

Agnes has always been beautiful. Now she's lit from within, almost, and he has the insane thought that if he touched her he'd burn.

He still wants.

Her eyes flicker like a summer bonfire, dark specks of terracotta dancing in her irises. This close he can make out the golden freckles dotting her nose – the red, suffused glow of her cheeks, the rose-tint of her lips he wants to kiss brighter. He might die if he did, he thinks, his wildly beating heart bursting out of his chest at last, but she's real and warm and breathing, and she might well be the only real and warm and breathing thing left in the world, in the island of light the streetlamp paints around them, his breath freezing in the glacial November air before he can fully exhale.

It leaves him unbalanced, teetering on the edge of something he isn't quite ready to face.

He falls.

«Can I hold your hand?» he asks, and it echoes too loud in the quiet between them. Presumptuous, maybe. 

Heart rabbiting in his temples, climbing up his throat to pulse in his palate as he waits to see if he finally pushed his luck too far, he waits. Stops two steps behind her, leaving her space.

Agnes doesn't leave.

Instead, she stops, two steps in front. She rummages for a second in the deep pocket of her big black coat, making a small sound in her throat when she finds what she was looking for.

She slips the leather gloves on one at a time, primly, tugging them under the cuff of her sleeves until no skin is left exposed. They're maybe a little small for her – he watches her flex her fingers inside them, stretching them out, like

It's endearing. Even more so when she thrusts her arm behind her, fingers wiggling a little. He can't tell if she's trying to encourage him or just still getting used to the feeling of leather.

Jack takes her hand anyway, and ignores the way his own shakes as he does.

It feels momentous, when she tightens her grip, squeezing gently.

Warmth seeps through where their palms touch, flushed together, sensation coming back tingling and prickly to his cold skin.

«No one had ever held my hand before.» Agnes says, and her smile is more there than it isn't, her mouth soft and open with it. She doesn't sound sad anymore.

«I won't let go until you ask me to.» he says.

It isn't until the words are out he finds they sound as sure as hers ever did.