I started to understand what was going on only when I read this:

It reminded her of how she’d felt on a cabin porch, years earlier, when another man had reached out to her in anguish.

This death is like an assumption to draw J and MP together. And I've always thought that a death to someone dear to both of them would finally put them together, so I totally agree with what happened in this fic, which is brilliant, well written and so worth reading. You made my day, so thank you.

Thanks for this sad-sweet-short piece. The comparison to ‚sleepwalking’ was very effective for the state of mind you put him in. Among many wonderful lines my fav one was: ‘Were it not for the overwhelming loss, he wouldn’t have had such a powerful need to feel so alive.’ Don’t know why, but it felt like a line that mirrored both their existence.